001All right, good evening. We are live for our school board meeting on Monday, March 23rd, 2026. Mr. Chairman? We're going to convene to executive session. The purpose is to review and evaluate the performance of a public employee. Just a reminder, no decisions or actions will be made during that session. Set to convene back at 7 p.m. from the executive session. Back in a few minutes. We are back from our executive session. Mr. Chairman? Coming out of executive session, no decisions made. Into the open session. Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good news. Yeah, I'm going to make this short because they're actually going to
002be talking about it later, but Marathon Kids Running Club is happening at the elementary school. I told you I'd make it very short because I don't want to steal their thunder. They're also going to talk about this a little bit later, but we're excited about this new opportunity for our students down at Columbia Elementary School. So I'll save the rest for them to talk a little bit about later. Board Operating Principal Review. The first one, Michael, you'll be the second one. Okay, possible responses to handling controversy at meetings. Board, take the initiative to suggest to the chair the issue might best be handled by the superintendent and or staff. It's not that we aren't interested, but the superintendent is the person we hire to deal with these very issues. unanticipated controversy that it is a
003non-agenda item should not be allowed to dominate an otherwise well-planned meeting stating up front that quote there's a time limit and that concern will be dealt with formally in the next board meeting as an agenda item is an appropriate response When involved parties become emotional, the situation can be diffused by saying, quote, I recognize that this is a very important issue to you. We need a chance to gather more information. Our superintendent will work with you to resolve this problem. Thank you for coming. Thank you all. Any changes or additions to the agenda? Tonight you'll see I have one change. I'm asking you to replace the old quote in your board packet with a new quote, specifically 7.5 Chromebook Replacement. I'm asking you to remove the quote dated March 18th. Sorry, the spacing's off on
004that one. But the new quote I've added is from March 23rd at $93,000 and some change. So we'll be removing that. The equipment that was originally we looked at is not the one Andrew had a last minute adjustment substitution on the machine that we wanted. And I'll talk a little bit more about that when we get to consent. Okay. Moving on to the consent agenda, looks like we've got five items. You wanted to speak to number five anymore? Yeah, I was just in case there was any discussion, a reminder that the quotes that we have, this is part of our ongoing Chromebook replenishment. And so you can see we have a quote for $93,000, and that's just kind of the world we live in now. The Chromebooks have a life expectancy, and at that end
005they become donor parts and pieces. So this is just us looking out ahead. We're getting out in front of this, bringing in that next batch. And so Andrew has ordered a set of Chromebooks to be rolled out for the group, this next one. I will tell you, or a good reminder, that these are levy dollars being well spent for our tech levy. What was the for? I mean, was it for a different quantity or different price? It was a different machine. We moved away from a touchscreen model. Okay. So remind me, have we done replacements already? We've done these before, yeah. So every so many years, you'll take a set. And actually, Chromebooks, the way they work, they install an end date to those Chromebooks when you buy them. It's a standard across anywhere you
006go. So you have them for so many years, they'll be able to update. And at the end of that date, they become obsolete. You can't update, you can't do anything with them. That helps them continue to sell. things, but you're no longer able to. That's a standard. That's nothing for Burbank. That's every Chromebook, those devices you get out there on those. So they have a life expectancy. And that really, I'll be honest, initially upset me when I started looking at that. But the average life expectancy is pretty close timed out to those pieces in terms of the amount of use and love that those devices receive. So we still keep them. We keep parts. They become keyboard parts. They become screen parts. That becomes our boneyard, right, for all your other pieces that come in.
007So land, office license. Okay, any other? I had to entertain a motion, I guess, first. I will make a motion to accept a consent agenda with the updated public replacement, updated 323 of 26. I'll second. We've got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Further discussion? None. All in favor? Aye. Hearing of visitors, anybody like to address the board today? Thanks for being here. Reports and discussions? Student members? All right. So our board reps are here tonight. They're going to share with you, again, a more traditional board report. This is kind of their spring report. Next month, they're going to go back to a specific topic. Again, going back on this, but just generally what's going on in the Columbia School District in March. She's celebrating her grandmother's birthday. She hasn't seen in a long
008time. So we celebrate girl. So I started with high school. We wrapped up winter sports. We had state basketball, which was really fun. The boys played really well the first day. And, you know, they tried their hardest the rest of the time. We're just so gosh darn proud of them. I don't think we... technically placed. We weren't like top six I don't think. They still gotta play in the arena. State wrestling, I know people placed, I think Jake, which that's the picture on the left, Jake Johnson, I'm pretty sure he got third. And you can see his bright purple hair, they all shaved their heads and then dyed them and Jake's dog even got dyed purple, which was actually adorable. So then spring sports have started. We started baseball, track, and softball. Baseball has a
009new coaching staff this year, Mr. Curtis and Mr. Alley, and I've seen Mr. Johnson there. And so far from what I've heard from the boys, they actually really like it, and they've been doing okay. I think they're like, we played in Goldendale, and we played White Swan. Softball, we've won all of our games. We're doing really well this year. Brent and I and Brian Millenbacher, which is, they're great. They're awesome. I love them. Baseball, I think, is 2-2. I'm pretty sure they lost both the Golden Dome games and won both the White Swan games. Track had their first meet. I only had the opportunity to talk to one track player, but she said her events weren't great. For Honor Society, we're starting to help the science class with the plant cells so we can hopefully
010make money from that. We help them every year. FBLA is also going to state this year. This year we're taking a bigger group of people. Last year it was only three, and this year we have five. This is very exciting because to me that's a big improvement. Honor Society, we're also getting ready to do the blood drive. I think that's also in April. Other clubs, you know, do them at the other clubs. For other spring happenings, we had a St. Patrick's Day scavenger hunt that Ms. Melton put on. She's always doing super fun, awesome things for the students. I don't think she gets enough appreciation for it. She really is amazing. Our yearbook was due the 20th, which was kind of hard to get in, but we're really excited about it. We have like a
011certain... Like timeline for how we do it spring sports is the hardest to get in because it was due before we really had me like games to take pictures of but We got it in we'll be starting the spring supplement soon Miss Maxwell will be taking I believe seven of us on a spring break trip We're going you know to Oregon and Seattle. It's gonna be over spring date break. I think it's a I'm going, so I guess next time I see you, how long it was. We're going to be touring colleges and going to some museums, and I'm really, really excited about it. The prom is coming up. It's going to be May 2nd. So far for themes, we're thinking Alice in Wonderland. I'm excited to make it. And then graduation, we have a
012lot of things coming up for that. The students in the right, the most far right, are applying for scholarships, and I know... Faith wanted me to shout out Ms. Benito because she's been very, very, very helpful for the seniors. And they all applied. Like, as a class, they applied for over 100 scholarships. I mean, Ms. Benito has encouraged me to open my opportunities up. I was, like, very set on the University of Washington and now I'm considering Whitman. So, I mean, I'm also very grateful for Ms. Benito. I mean, she's taking us to visit the UW campus the 31st, and it's not like something great like Europe, but I mean, it's still an opportunity for seniors, and I'm very grateful. But, yeah. I know they're ordering their caps and gowns for graduation soon, which is
013always exciting. I keep forgetting I'm not graduating. I still have another year, but, you know, I'm excited for all my senior friends. CBC graduation is coming up also. In June. In June. So... We're getting things ready for that. Spring quarter starts. Winter quarter is ending this week. This is the last week, so we all have finals. And super excited to take those. And then we also have signed up for our classes for next... No, we've signed up for next year's classes at the high school. We can, I'll do it on Skyward now, which I actually really, really liked. I like doing that a lot better. And Mrs. Maxwell has been a really helpful resource, at least with my grade, because she can pull up how many credits we have and what we have to do
014and talk us over, like, what counts for what to make sure we all graduate on time. So that was really exciting, actually. I'm looking forward to. The middle school, I mean, I'm going to go based off the memory. I turned it in too late. I'm so sorry. Well, they had Eastern come visit the middle school, and they basically talked to them about the opportunities at Eastern, and they showed them the campus and a lot of insightful information. They also taught them about College Bound and how it's a good opportunity, how the state of Washington puts money in for students. Obviously, students to go to college here in Washington has to be in-state. So they learned about that and how they can start, how they can apply because you have to apply for it. And they
015taught them like some of the process of applying for it. They also gave them free Eastern hoodies, which I thought it was cool. Something bougie. Yes. Middle school started picking out their high school classes, which is very exciting. I got to help my sister. And I basically told her, oh yeah, like this teacher is very nice. This teacher is very smart. The after school program in the middle school is also helping them a lot. I mean, my sister has to stay sometimes. She says that she really enjoys staying even if she doesn't have homework. So I mean, it must be fun. I mean, she doesn't have homework when she gets home, so it's benefiting her. Sports started. I know track has started because the eighth graders go up with the high schoolers. And then softball
016and basketball start after spring break. Not basketball, baseball. I'm so sorry. Softball and baseball start after spring break. So my sister's excited to do that this year and her friends also. And then here's elementary school. Thank you. I wanted to add about high school volleyball starting a fundraiser. We're on Thursdays. We're going to have open gyms to play volleyball. It's like $5 per person or whatever. I'm really excited about it, actually. I just remembered that. Elementary school. Apparently, Mrs. Newell won a classroom makeover. That sounds pretty cool. This is face slides, so. I don't know much about it. That sounds really cool, though. She put in for a grant and received a grant. So you can see the pictures in the middle there. That's them coming in to present her a grant that she had
017applied for. The Marathon Kids Club. So I guess before school on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, they run. I've seen them running out there just in circles. They just run and they run and they run. Mrs. Taylor's worked really hard, obviously, getting kids working on healthy habits. Kids go out, and they can go out before school, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and you see them as she's talking about they're running, running, running, and they're doing this over kind of this year in the spring, so they get to continue to accumulate laps, and they're counting how far they've progressed, and you meet different milestones for completing different miles and things of that nature, and so... She's got a lot of kids out there running. And obviously, as you know, Chelsea does such an amazing job, not only just
018talking to kids about running, but translating that to life and healthy habits and things like that. So just wanted to really promote the work that she's been doing with that. Elementary school PTO also put on Bingo on Friday. It was really super fun. I was the only cheerleader that showed up to help. I got to be like Ivana White and do the little numbers on the board. So that was really fun for me. There were so many prizes, like so many prizes, so many different baskets, and they had a lot of different raffles. It's just really cool to see how the community gets together to support things like that, and the kids obviously really like it, so do the parents. I think Mr. Don and Mr. Dexter also really like it. They seem to have
019a lot of fun. Any questions for our board reps? I know it's towards the end of softball season, but I'll let you know when I find out. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you guys for being here. Appreciate it. All right. So, well, I guess I would say I'm going to hand this over to Amber to talk financials. But to preface it. before we jump into this is unfortunately, Walla Walla County is still having difficulty with their finance software, even to the point of superintendents in the group drafting some correspondence as clarity around the transition. We'll talk about financial records and how we receive those. So unfortunately, I'll have her add if she wants to add anything to this, but she's going to continue to report financial data that's two months old because we are
020waiting on updates from Walla Walla County. So I wish I had better news from that. Amber, you can add anything to that. Anything you want to add to that? I think in your packet, the status is as of December. In your packet, is that cash flow statement? For January and February, I have updated all the amounts we get from the state. Any funds we get directly from the county, taxes and other deferring, those are estimated exactly what they are. So I'm trying to give you the best information. So kind of give you a little bit to date. So hopefully. We'll get those statements. All right. So enrollment. So as of March, these numbers include our TK students. We are at 736.92. Our average is at 745.67. And bucket status again is as of December 31st.
021General funds are at $200,000. Capital Project Fund, $274,000. Debt Service Fund, $295,000. ESP Fund, $194,000. And Transportation Vehicle Fund, $136,000. We had on Transportation Vehicle Fund, one of the legislative updates that came out of this last legislative session was extending the life of a... on that depreciation schedule. We'll see how that plays out. Basically, we know they've added some years to that. So we had a couple of buses that were ready to come off that this last year, which you get that balloon payment make up for the end of that. So there's a likelihood that that balloon payment might be delayed a year or two based on that. We're waiting to see. They haven't told us exactly. They've asked us to wait, see how they finalize that. Worst case scenario, because you go out and
022you have to order buses between six and 12 months ahead of time, which if you remember we did already to do that, we'll still receive a bus depreciation piece this next August. We just have to see based on when they roll it out. We'd love to think they would delay that a year for knowing that schools had already ordered buses. But if they don't, we may be short financial in transportation vehicle, which we'd have to pay out of. general fund and then you JV and veto that back over once you have that. So just know that's one of the things we're working through waiting to get guidance on that. See what happens there. Questions on that? Unfortunately you have to go out and order them ahead of time. So by changing that schedule it changes
023our schedule. Yes. The thought was it would save the state money because you're paying that out which someone could argue it is short term. That's saving you that payment that year. But the idea of the prolonged extending that out and now you're giving that assessed value on that a couple years later, the life of that bus, we're actually probably going to be getting more out of that than we would have a couple years ago. So I think it was fairly short-sighted in the idea, but it would save them short-term, maybe not long-term, unfortunately. Okay. Make sense? Following that last payment remember you get whatever that last year is and they'll take whatever the value of that bus is and say what does it take to replace that bus so instead of getting that last year
024I call it a balloon payment you get that last year plus a little bit to offset the replacement of that bus well you're extending that life right so now you're taking the value of that bus two years later which is probably go up because it costs you more to replace that so they thought they would save some money short term by You know, that was done at the legislative level. Mr. Miller, thank you for being here tonight. First off, hey, thank you for having me. And I hope you all eat those crumbles. I'm sitting for a favor out of all of you. Take them and scribble with them a little bit to make sure that all of them work. I'm going to be asking you. Sorry, I should have scooped you out. That was stupid.
025Sometimes I don't think so. Sorry, I wasn't following instructions. You said cookies and I lost you. 60 seconds from now. Here's what I'm going to beg you to do. You're going to write the alphabet. The other one, you're going to write letters. We're just going to do it for 60 seconds and we're just going to do it the best we can. If I talk while you're writing, then that's kind of part of the process. At the same time, that's all the instructions you get. This is an activity put out by a guy, Dr. Jared Holvath, another education author. Jonathan Haidt. Kind of the kickoff activity for how we started off our book study, An Ancient Generation, is... They consider Generation Alpha students, kids born 110 and beyond. That's some pretty tough things to say about
026those guys, even though I know kids are pretty stellar. Strangely enough, according to both of their data, Generation Alpha is the first generation in history to have an IQ, on average, that is less than the previous generation. less than their parents. That's the first time in history that that supposedly has happened. And that's 60 seconds. So how'd you do? Anyone willing to share? I didn't know we were supposed to start. Well, that explains everything. I didn't know I'd start. Did I not say it? So do we get 20 seconds for each or 60 for each? If you get 60 seconds, you're right as much as you can. R13, that's probably better than anyone in the high school staff did. Well good deal. So at the staff when we did this, we had multiple steps where
027we talked about what was frustrating, what are some strategies, and then go on. The whole point of it is to push through a frustration, to make some strategies, and then to experience something that you're experiencing tactilely. Remember I don't know more years ago than I wish it was. You remember the brain thing you talked about at a board meeting? You hold your fists up like this. You're looking at a mirror image basically of your brain. Each area that fires, or writing, anything that you put your hand on paper or a pencil is going to fire an area from wherever the learning is occurring to wherever the writing is occurring and the connections. This does that. This and definitely not this those do not through the rest of it. That's kind of a what was this?
028What was that? Was that a phone? So yeah, just to be clear scrolling on the phone or typing on the keyboard Don't fire the same connections in the brain in the learning center and the writing center the hate book study That's what it's all about these two guys and in society today Perseverance has taken a backseat problem solving strategies have taken a backseat Technology is a tool really taken over, which isn't necessarily a great thing. Technology is great if you are using it to promote people's thinking. It's not easier. It's not a great learning tool. They blame quite a few things with that alpha generation, generation alpha having a lower IQ. They blame lack of perseverance. They blame limited problem-solving expectations. And they define that as anything that has to be well over 30 seconds.
029or for it to sink in as a problem-solving learning. Think about this type of stuff on a phone, nothing lasts even close to 30 seconds. They're even bad on, like, if you do Duolingo or Babbel, those learning apps, 30-second snippets on Duolingo. It doesn't do anywhere near as much for learning vocabulary as probably how we all learned it, where the teacher gave you the list, and you had to write it down, and you had to write it down again, and you had to write it down in a sentence, and you had to write it down in a definition. It's that act. And they're very anti-social media. Anyway, switching off of that, or before I switch off of that, we've done that book study. We're almost done with it now. Three staff presentations. But each staff
030member has taken a piece of that and done a really nice job of the gist of the section along with actual what can I do with these kids Monday morning to fit that. We're not. Using technology less, but we're definitely trying to use it in a more meaningful manner as much as possible So with that shifting to I ready scores where you're looking at here is our I ready math the numbers on those bars represent average mean grade level of a class the class of 2028 Only brought up the class of 2028 because I have a year plus one testing for that class of 2028. The yellow lines represent, the yellow bars represent the mean grade level when they started as freshmen. They took the test early October. The purple one next to it represents
031the scores were the following winter, this winter. So right at about 15 months of growth. Kind of bummed because obviously the first pair of bars represent overall mathematics readiness. 5.3, fifth grade, a little bit. 6.3, sixth grade, a little bit. About a year's worth of growth. Would have liked to have seen at least a 15-months worth of growth represented. But a year's worth of growth, I guess we'll take it. Second set of bars, 5.6 to 6.4 is in algebraic sense. And then the last set, 5.3 to 6.3, is geometric mean. I think last year, maybe two years ago, I talked about rough straits mean because our special populations don't really fit in the below grade level, at grade level, advancing past grade level thing. Mr. O'Brien, you had some questions for me about that. And
032thankfully, doing the data this way gives a little bit better of a representation of our special population. And wow, those are impressive. They're not impressive being that they start out at 3.3, third grade, plus a few. But the growth's pretty awesome. So our special populations, meaning migrant, bilingual, and IEP students, when they took the test the first time around, October of their freshman year, their mean score was a 3.3. 15 months later, it was a 4.9. Pretty awesome growth. Algebraic sense 3.6 to 5.1. Geometric sense 2.8 to 4.9. Reduce that. Everybody else, same setup. I'm not sure how those got smooshed, but same setup in i-Ready reading. This is for everybody. Probably 15 months worth of overall reading. 5.3 to 6.3 grade level. Vocabulary 5.6 to 6.4. comprehension 5.3 to 6.3. Seemed better, but a
033little over a year to have close to a year's growth. I guess that's what we want. Did the same thing with the special population kids, again, migrant, bilingual, and IEP students, and that's the kind of growth we're looking for. Mr. Alley probably had a ton to do with this, along with some hard-working kids. That's what, 1.2 grade levels of growth in overall, .85, hopefully I wrote that down. 1.7 in comprehension, 2.8, I'm sorry, first one, middle one's vocabulary, 2.8 in comprehensive. In our special services population, we are making some massive strides. It makes me super happy. Mr. Miller? Yes. I understand the growth. That's grade level? Yes, sir. So when you were back in the math, that's grade level. So when you were back in the math, testing. Freshman, sixth grade? That's mean, yes. Testing
034in fifth grade when they start. That's quarter of the way into fifth grade math level. As a mean, our math reasoning class, they're not there. We still have a fair percentage. Maybe I should have brought both sets of statistics in, but the little triangle chart where they have the group at the top is at or above grade level. Middle of the chart is... pursuing grade level and the bottom of the charts below grade level, we're without a doubt half that chart is below grade level. So the good news though is that you can progress them more than a year in the year you have. The bad news is they come to you so far behind on average that you can never really get them to grade level. You can move them more than one year,
035but if you get them four years behind... You can advance them between a year and a half and two, but they're still two years behind. I think that is a trend across the district and, frankly, across most. Every fourth grader starting the year at the fourth grade grade level. I've seen the sixth graders start at the sixth grade level. I'm excited about the district busting our tails to make big strides. And yet, if these are averages, though, you've certainly got some population. who come in pretty close to grade level when they come in. You've got some, you've got your really higher end students that come in on grade level, which means that you'd have to have some that are even lower than what's here to get the average. Well, if you look at special population
0362.8, that's 18, 19 kids in special populations. That's a big chunk of that group. Remember the question, I kind of was... I was talking about how that population, our special populations, that triangle that has at or above, nearly, and below, you're seeing big blocks, but you're not seeing growth. You can't tell. If a kid's in the bottom section that's red, they should be a freshman. They're labeled the same if they're at an eighth grade level or if they're at a zero kindergarten level. I wanted to show particularly you the growth. Questions on that? I have a question actually. From a student perspective, I know a lot of people when we have to take the I-Ready score, well, I don't know that a lot, but I know several people who when we take the I-Ready test,
037they tell me that they don't try, they really just press the buttons. So I'm wondering if the I-Ready, like, can they recognize that or is that part of the mean score? It's just the people that press buttons. That is part of the mean score. I-Ready is kind of neat. Mr. Taylor and I both, how do we get them to take it more seriously? If it rushes, they have an estimate of how long a section should take or range. And if they get it done well before that, it flags. And we'll make them start to take a quasi-appropriate amount of time based on the range that that section should take and do well. They're going to have a lower score. And I'm sure that some of that is happening. If I said dollars for every grade
038level you pass, they'd probably be a lot higher. If we have lunch today, if you don't do a good job, we'd probably end up with some higher scores. But there are some flags for sure. Yeah, there are ways, as he's talking about, for it to flag. It'll put a red flag on you if you're just simply doing that. There are some statistical analysis on that that give us that information. All right, I did want to talk about two other quick things we're doing. Mr. Hoyt, our MTSS director, really way back in the fall that we look into what's called a Check and Connect program. The little form in the middle is not stellar legibly wise. But in a nutshell, Connect means it's on a caseload. Probably for underperforming, there's both social and academic. We're really
039targeting academic because what we're most concerned about is credits. But each day or week, but sometimes it's tough to do daily. Mr. Merlin, who Beth Harrington was wonderful enough to hire for us as a lap program paraed, he meets with those kids, set a goal for us on our end of campus. It is absolutely targeted toward missing assignments and getting them done. Rather than Dr. Hoyt would like it to be targeted toward missing skills and accruing those skills, we're targeting it toward missing assignments and getting those assignments turned in. Way back in the I think it was mid-october MTSS tier 2 team assigned this caseload to mr. Merlin So we didn't why I don't have a midterm set of scores there. I'm a typographical error I hit it my tactile rice instead of type But
040by quarter one in his nine students out of 63 possible grades for seven classes each 47 F's and you can see who we had absolutely no success with. Contacts from Mr. Merlin, dragging him into tutoring after school. Myself bumped that up to semester by semester from 16 past classes originally to 45 past classes out of the 63. So pretty great success. When he presented on this, or the tail end of the semester, the staff was impressed enough that we jumped to... the next tier up of kids who were not performing to the extent we wanted them to. And the staff did a mini lottery and chose out two, three, four kids, almost every staff member. Mini Check and Connect for the final midterm. You can see those scores. Bump that up from that 31 passing
041class to 87 passing class. The highly targeted ones. That's pretty good growth. So we're continuing on the Check and Connect program and hopefully going to expand it. I appreciate having Mr. Alley because most of the Mr. Merlin working his tail off comes from Mr. Alley giving him direction and pushing him to work his tail off. Questions on that? Is there something I wanted to throw out there that we're doing at MTSS and toolkit? And then last but not least for me, some dual credit opportunity. So right now we have Eastern Washington University. Those are actually university credits. My favorite, not just because Eastern Washington is the best. Because the university credits transfer pretty much university to university. We sadly don't get to offer all of those all the time. We have an average calculus and
042a couple of, we tend to flip flop trigonometry and math reasoning. We tend to flip flop literature and exposition. Down below that are the career tech ed courses. Asterisks at the bottom is business and business communications. We're going to be adding those on next year. All of those right here on our campus. The kid takes advantage of every opportunity they've got right on our campus. They have the opportunity to go to college without ever leaving Columbia for class. They have the opportunity to walk into their college setting midway through their sophomore year. Running Start is pretty darn lucrative as well. Any class that they offer at Columbia-based college is available to a Running Start student. They don't have to just take ours or just take graduation requirements. They can take a mix of graduation requirements
043and electives and obviously have far more electives than we'll ever be able to come up with. I actually pushed my kids to doing Running Start back in the day. Neither of them wanted to do it. They just wanted their dad to pay for it. But some of the things I'm particularly proud of, I think I've talked about Running Start. College in the high school on our campus and it's always been kind of the big equalizer the equity piece Historically we have not had students represented At CBC and running start seldom bilingual kids very seldom very seldom had Free or reduced lunch students represented and this is the first time we've had an IEP student represented So those numbers are low. If you're thinking equity, if you're looking on the right-hand side at CBC, 19% of
044those enrolled at CBC are classified as minorities, where our population is 48% overall. It should be higher if you want equity. 14% is considered migrant bilingual at only 8%. That's actually a huge number compared to last year or the year before, or you go back three or four years, that was zero. 15% of our student population is on an IEP. We have one student, not 1%, one student going to CDC that's on an IEP. And our free lunch percentage, that's the lowest socioeconomic status. We have five students there, 12% of that 35. Some of those are obviously more than one category. About 53% of our student population. That's free and reduced. Is that the same? That's how I'm using it low socioeconomic status is free or reduced on the left hand side every kids eligible
045historically it's been If a kid has a mom or a dad that's gonna say here's the keys to the car and here's some gas money You can make it to CBC but everybody can make it to call minority participation rates right on Well, our minority rate is our migrant bilingual shockingly is right at our migrant bilingual We do have several more students on IEPs that are going to be able to get a college and the high school credit. It could be higher. That's going to be a struggle to get. And then, of course, we have low socioeconomic status students are going to take the same kind of classes and have access to those same classes that everybody else is going to get right here. College and the high school, it can be frustrating a little
046bit. Like I said earlier with the calculus, five kids or three kids even. take calculus at CBC. We're going to start a law firm on our campus. We have no problems, matches, questions. That's kind of the end of my spiel. Coming in. Appreciate it. Oh, you bet. Eat them up. Yum, yum, eat them up. Okay, I'm going to move on to reports. So, I want to talk to you about cell phone use in schools. Okay, so this is something that has come up at the state level from OSPI, and I show you an image here of back in August of 2024 when some of this stuff began. Our superintendent of the state public schools, Reich Dahlpush Schools, to really take a look at limiting cell phone use during instructional time. So keep in mind this
047goes back a ways. I'm just providing you a quick update. I'm sure you all had an opportunity to read the summary I put together. in your packet, but I provided you a one-pager in there to talk about some of the research that's on this. But basically why I'm bringing this up to you, I'm not asking for any action, just a report tonight. I want you to know that a lot of schools that are having conversations about these devices and what should be allowed, how often, all the above. So I bring this to you to kind of push me, based on your guidance, a couple things. One. I gave you a quick summary of the Hanover research, NEA, Common Sense, and the Pew research. You can see from anywhere from 2022 to 2024. I have all
048the research here, everywhere from 10 to 30 pages on each of those, which is why I used AI to synthesize that research for you into a one-paragraph summary. Okay? So I thought that would be helpful of your time. So what I thought I would do is give you a chance just to review that if you want to find that in your packet. It looks like this. If you just want to read the very front page, that saves you from reading about another 70 or 80 pages on the latest research on this. But I also thought since you're looking at that, I would give everyone else just a minute to read the brief summary. So brief summary, again, just high-level, big picture. That's why the conversations are being had. That's why they're talking about OSPI has
049released several communications on schools, what they're doing with cell phone use in schools. And so the result is, obviously, they're asking us to have conversations about our cell phone and use or non-use of those. on campus. So our challenge that I put down there is as leaders is to review and revise, if necessary, cell phone guidance and expectations as a part of a broader strategy. It mentions things on there, everything from academic to mental health pieces as we prepare them still to compete in the world. So why is this important? To at least entertain the conversation, obviously classroom disruption, number one. to the academic environment, student mental health. There's a lot of things in there about social media and its access and what that does to students. And if you really got into it, you
050could talk about how they truly build social media and what that does to our youth and their brain and some of those pieces and how that plays out. And really, I bring it up, for me, as how we look at that and how we enforce that. And I just wrote, you know, on inconsistent enforcement, how does that play out of policy versus procedure, making sure that we have consistency on that? So I don't need to tell you what the research says. You read a summary of that piece. But where do we stand today? I can tell you 3245, which is our policy on that. That is the policy number. It does say just flat out, phones may be used only before and after school and during lunch. That's directly by policy. School officials may confiscate
051devices with reasonable suspicion if we have any policy violations. It walks through, you know, what that looks like. Students and guardians consent to search when bringing devices to school. If you bring a device to school and we have reasonable suspicion to think you're doing something you shouldn't be doing, you have the right, just like other pieces, to do that. So I bring that to your attention just to give you a quick review. This is a quick summary because policy does exist. You can see on there on the checkbox that we already have a solid foundation where we say only before, after school, or during lunch. That's what's currently in writing on 3245. I will tell you handbook language is it varies okay and what I say that's more the procedural side of things that will
052be one of the things we want to look at and just have a conversation when I say we look at that that's more of what I'll look at from myself down through the window through building principles and through our staff on is this still the language that we're using with our students is this still how we're enforcing this and I say that because I can tell you had a conversation even with Mike at the middle school and they're making some adjustments on some of these pieces as we're working through these tiers and the behavioral pieces and some of that stuff. These conversations are ongoing. Okay. But I bring this to you because obviously OSPI is pushing us to engage in the conversation. I feel confident where we're at in policy. but come to you with,
053because I would think you're going to ask me at some point, what's your recommendation? Where do we go from here? My recommendation to you would be for me to continue to look at procedural updates on this. And if the board provides direction tonight, again, there's no action taken on this, but we'll develop and implement updated procedures to start the 26-27 school year, making sure all our procedures are in line with these pieces. That's what I do on my end. You direct me to do that. And highlights, this is not exactly like what I'm thinking, but potentially these areas such as what we do during instruction, what does that look like? We have policy that helps guide some of those pieces. But if you read through some of the research, it also talks about are there
054places and times for that to be applicable? And what are the rules, regulations, and the pieces around that? Is it to be used during a specific instructional time? And how do you monitor that? How do you guide that? How do you address passing period on lunches? Those are things we'll want to talk about and discuss. What do you do with emergencies? I talked about there, you know, the push on that is families obviously can still contact students during the office during that time. And confiscation returns, those are all areas that we would want to address through those procedure pieces. So I bring this to you tonight just as a talking point. You can see it provides direction on preferred approach. I briefly gave you, it probably feels like through the fire hose, but I want
055to give you a quick summary of it and tell you where we're at policy-wise. My recommendation on touching base on procedurally pieces, making sure we're aligned on those pieces, and really to get your thoughts. because I want to bring it to the board first, because no matter which direction we go with these pieces, cell phones, I know it sounds simple and easy, but it's never quite that simple and easy. You know, I bring this to you to get your thoughts and ideas on directions. We can go a lot of different ways. We can go simply by looking at the procedural piece, which I talked to you about myself working through that with staff, what that looks like. There are pieces that are schools around that are actually going out and doing parent surveys, community surveys,
056doing things like that. Could if we needed to. But I think the research is pretty clear on some of those pieces. So I bring this to you that no matter which direction we go, you have the opportunity to. Ruffle a few feathers when you talk about access to devices such as this, whether it's for a student safety issue really piece or whatever. And you can play it out different ways. Student safety, limiting for social media pieces, bullying, harassment, things like that. Or you get issues of I want to get access to my kid at any point in time, right? What is that potential for that? But I want to bring this up to you saying it's being talked about, it's being discussed. I gave you a very high level. summary on you know Without their
057hundreds and hundreds of pages on the latest research Do you have any thoughts on options and directions? Before I begin proceeding going down this direction looking at these pieces So I just want to bring it up to the board and give you an opportunity to guide or push me wonder one way or the other Before I start down this road the waster conference in November. I attended to break out on this and there was a district I want to call them Bellingham. It's in my notes. Maybe it was Marysville. It was up between Everett and Bellingham. They had a pretty restrictive policy that they had implemented, and everybody was on board with it. They had some trivia, and I won that book, The Anxious Generation. I have a copy of that book because that's what
058they were giving out as the prize to people who won the trivia about cell phone use. But the story that sticks in my mind that they talked about was There was a student who was on the phone all the time. They confiscated it. The parent had to come get it. The parent comes to school mad. The parent gets the phone, gives it to the student, and says, here you go. I want you to have it in case there's an emergency. And the whole dialogue of that was, you know, how many emergencies can you really legitimately have where the student would need to call home or home would need to call the student? Are we enforcing the policies as they are written now? Yes. What's written in the handbooks. Which means not during class, before school,
059after school, during lunch, not during passing time. It looks a little different when I say that in each of the buildings. What's in the handbooks? So the board has laid out their direction. The direction says no cell phones, right? Policy. The board directs through policy. So in policy. It's rule, it's law. The procedure, like you were saying, there's a little bit of a procedure gap. So the handbooks that are put out are a little bit independently written, I guess. Building a little different. They all have a different flavor. So, I mean, for me, we need to change policy. We want to allow cell phones, in my opinion, to go down that road. We've got to figure out how to get to what policy says. That would be my recommendation is for you to maybe figure
060out some ways to get there, what that looks like, what our challenges might be. I mean, we looked at going to that flex school, flex stuff, you know, just to find more time. I forget the balance calendar. Balance calendar, thank you. You know, we wrestled the heck out of that thing, and we were just trying to get more time, more unstructured time. And why wouldn't this be the very first thing we do? I mean, it seems like low-hanging fruit. I can tell you the handbooks are written in a way that still supports that. The one outside piece of that piece that has it is there's an option where it would be permissible use by staff for instructional purposes. And that goes in line with, you know, staff would say, all right, I need you to
061get this out and use an example. Here's your Chromebook. Here's this. I need to use this. Use this device for this. Use this for this. And that's currently how the handbooks would be used for permissible use of that. So, not to put you guys on the spot, but how do you view the phone policy and the rules within the high school? Is it just based on each teacher a little different? Yeah. That's kind of the way I understand it. Most of them are very, there's not any teacher that I've had personally that's like, yes, please have your phone out. Please do. That is not my experience. We do have what we call tech stop points where there are times teachers will put it on green or we can, but. I've never been on green in
062any of my classes. However, I am running start, so my experience with that is a little bit different, but from what I've also seen with my peers, it's pretty keep your phones in your pockets off your desk, especially during tests and stuff. I know I have missed Kelly twice of my three periods, and every time I take a test in their class, it's phones in the basket. We don't get them until the end of the period. So it's pretty, from my experience, we're pretty locked down. I know it is harder when we have substitutes and stuff, especially the less experienced ones, I would say. They kind of do whatever for the most part. What she brings up, Mr. Miller could talk about this probably a bit better, but it's a strategy of the tech stoplight.
063So it's stoplight, red, yellow, green. They've set guidelines on when it can be used, when it can't be used, and that's an instructional strategy for when it should or shouldn't be out based on that, depending on the piece going on. Would you add anything to that? Yeah, that's about sums it up. That's an MTSS thing that we stole from another school. Probably say... At least a teacher or two, if you walked in at random, at least one classroom or two, would have Chromebook out, cell phone, or the kids who don't have a smartphone, which is very, very few, would have an iPad that the teacher provides. And they're doing some other app, Kahoot, or something like that, researching with their Chromebook, ringing in with their phone. What would be the alternative to that? There is
064an alternative providing a device. Sure. I mean, that's one lesson. It's an easy lesson for a teacher to do. You're going to do this with this, and we're all going to do a quiz game just to solidify or check understanding rather than sampling and circulating. It's a rotten issue. Exactly what you were talking about, Mr. Shrimpshire. I've dealt with that. Are we being pushed by parents or by staff or by students to have cell phones more available in the school day or less? I'm not pushing anyone regardless. Well, I guess I shouldn't say that. If you push me on that one, I would probably push less than more. Put it away, you know, it shouldn't be out unless you do that. So I would push go based on policy on that piece. I'm not here
065to push us in a new direction. I'm informing you, as you mentioned, it's out there. People are talking about it. I want to refer back to what's the latest information. What is it saying out there? I certainly would pursue a course of action that would limit its use based on what the research says, right? Not saying there isn't ever a time for it. but I would want to limit that. And it's not just the device itself, but it's that or the earbuds or all the things that go along with it, right? So it's more than just this. It really is, is this device a distraction to the academics, right? And if that's the piece, that's what I'm trying to target and avoid. How do we do that, right? Schools are doing it a lot of
066different ways. I'll give you an example. I'm not suggesting this, but to give you an idea locally around here, we have two schools, that's secondary schools, where students truly go in and they put their phone in a pouch that gets magnetized and locked and gets put away. Now, I'm not suggesting that, but I'm just saying there are schools that are going as far as purchasing devices to where it's like you don't even have it on you. You don't have access, right? I myself am not pushing that. But I don't think it's unreasonable to say, hey, while you're here, from bell to bell, I'm off, away, not out, not in your ear, not in your, you know, unless someone's specifically inviting that conversation for whatever reason. And I would say, for the most part, from what
067I hear, that's the expectation. I think we could clean some things up in writing that would help clarify some of those pieces, but I'm not going to tell you it's 100% or perfect. I still think it's always something we have opportunities for growth in those areas. I would like to add, perhaps for clarification, what Mr. Miller was talking about with the quiz apps and the Kahoot and et cetera. There's never been a time where I've been in class and... There is something that I absolutely need my phone for for school. Everybody has a Chromebook and everything, obviously everything I can do on my Chromebook I can also do on my phone, but there's never been a time where my teacher said, pull out your phones, we're all doing this. It's definitely, sometimes when we're doing
068like cahoots and stuff, they'll occasionally allow us to also do it on our phone, but there's... There's never been a time where I've been in class and my teacher I said pull out your phone. We're all doing Carter and all the years I've been on the board We have student reps those two paragraphs are some of the most valuable and input and information a student rep has ever given us in board meeting Thank you very much. I guess Coming to the most high school argument though. I work in a facility in Richland that makes commercial nuclear fuel We have a big order book coming up. We're hiring people. And the biggest challenges we have in these 18, 19, 20, 21 high school graduate year olds is getting them to be able to put their phone
069away for four hours. And when they're not working, when they're on break, it's like their phone is their total life. All they need to do is eat, sleep, and have the phone. They don't want to court. They don't want to marry. They don't want to have children. The phone seems to satisfy every need that they have. Intellectual, intimacy, entertainment, sports. It's scary to try to work with these kids and see the panic in their eyes when you say you can't have your phone for four hours now. You have to work for us. You can only have it at lunch and on breaks. You just see this look of panic in their eyes like, I don't think I can do that. And it's a battle we fight every day. And turnover in that class of our
070employment is massive. I don't know if it's because of the phone, but it's not pretty. So this is kind of near and dear to my heart on multiple levels. I don't have children in school anymore. But we have to temper this discussion somehow to help our students be successful after school. in the career world? Going back. Policy has direction. I'm seeking to move from policy and flesh out procedure a little bit more. That would be my recommendation. But going through that, you know, you may perturb community member X, Y, or Z through that. You can send them to me if you wish. I'd be happy to talk to them. So I just bring it up as a talking point, knowing... Is this something we want to continue and pursue? Is there something, would you direct
071me otherwise? I believe the benefits far outweigh any negative. I mean, I just, if our job here is to figure out how to grow our kids with less distractions, it's easy. It's easy. I don't know why we haven't gotten here sooner, to be honest. I'm a little disappointed with myself. Do you think it's possible to make it more consistent across the buildings? Each building doesn't have its own little silo of rules. There's always a possibility for that. I mean, just the fact that we bring up and have a conversation about it and going about it, it's something we focus on. I think it's something we certainly can always do better at. I mean, it doesn't matter what it is. It might look different in an elementary versus a high school. I don't know. I want
072to flesh that out a little bit. I mean, it plays out that way right now already. How do smart watches fall into this? It's interesting you mention that because when you talk about that procedure-wise, it's actually addressed in one of the handbooks, smart watches specifically. I'll go back to the handbook piece. That's the part I look at in the procedure piece. You can get on all social media on your watches as well. We've had them, not you. I'll just be very specific. The elementary handbook actually addresses smart watches very specifically. There's a procedure for that. When we've had to put like our phones away for tests, we will miss at least in my experience. We've included watches also I don't have one Smart watches are probably more common in elementary school than they are. I
073know very few high school that where they're like Oscar, what do you think about all this? Well, I mean, teachers aren't very comfortable taking away a student's phone. And I mean, a student is uncomfortable having their phone taken away from them. I mean, I've seen students refuse to forfeit their phone. So, I mean, a teacher doesn't want to argue with the student over a phone. So they are going to allow it and let the class continue. Oscar, what do you think the student's perspective is as to why they're so resistant to give up their phone? Well, I mean, it varies by student. I personally can go more than four hours without my phone. But, I mean, some students cannot. And, I mean, I'm not very popular, but some students who are have to keep their
074social media updated. Mr. Scripture, at the spouse and son work, the biggest rise in domestic violence cases, parents taking away their child's cell phone. Domestic violence. So isn't that another data piece we could collectively consider as to the addictive and all-consuming nature of these devices? The latest generation absolutely talk about social media. The phone itself, I guess, technology, but specifically, absolutely drugs. Put your phone out, scroll through everybody else's highlight reel. You look at your boring life and say, gee, I can't compete. I'm a nobody. I'm a loser. It goes beyond that, though. I mean, if you were to take time to look through the, I put some statistics following that and what I sent you in your packet as well, too. I mean, it wouldn't surprise any of you, but I mean, you know,
075bullying, harassment, it's an easy tool, target. Don't have to do it at school. You can be at home and be surprised how many times we're dealing with stuff. We'll call it at school from things that happen outside this purview because of things that are going on at home. Now again, we can't control that piece, right? But it's just another way of going about, you know, our day and how students use those devices. To clarify Mr. Miller's comments for everybody. His wife and my son both work at the Ben Franklin Juvenile Facility. When he talked about that problem, that's over two counties. That's Ben Franklin County. And so Skyler has talked about that some, but you're kind of the second witness there. I don't know if there's much to say. I mean, I agree with your
076comments. You have the policy. We have the research. We're not coming from our angle as a generation that was raised without cell phones and take them away. We're coming from research that is saying we have to do something to change the lives, the future of these students. And so I think it's where we're at is more of a procedure, which is back to you guys to decide where and how and where the biggest resistance is going to come from, the parents, the students, the teachers. A lot of this research talks more, maybe more of a focus on individual, impacts to an individual by cell phone use. I think there's also an impact of, if I'm using my cell phone at work, does that impact my co-workers? Not just with bullying and other things, but we
077also have to look at it that way, to where if I'm on my phone, how much impact do I have to my neighbor sitting next to me? The overall experience. I think it's a policy I don't think we have. Much to provide more. Unless you want to adjust policy for any reason. I think policy is pretty cut and dry in what it says. The board could take action to adjust policy. I know other places that have decided to go out and research and do studies and do community surveys and what do you want and things like that. That's always an option. But knowing what we know about best practices and research and what our policy is already at, why I bring it to you as a procedural piece, and that's not for you to say,
078you know, let's change procedure. That's you just saying, all right, Todd, I'm informing you that this is what it says, and we want to make sure we're, you know, doing right by that in research. That may upset a few, you know, along the way. And so... You are our eyes and ears out there. It's my way of bringing to you, unless you have another direction of preparing you for, you know, if we look at some things procedurally and have these conversations, most reasonable parents are going to have a problem with this. So it would be my recommendation that we have you look at some ways to bring the procedure more in line with the policy. Does that help? Yeah. I don't feel like WASDA procedure. It's not really helpful because WOSDA's specific procedure is really
079about violations and things of that nature which are not pertinent to this really conversation. It's really talking about, and that's again the way that procedure was vetted. So it's not like we're not following that. I think we are. I just think it's an emphasis. We need to look at some of these pieces and look at how that plays out and the conversations that were had and how we move forward looking at this with a renewed emphasis on, you know, let's be honest, it's more than just... It's more than just having a conversation about these. It's all these other things you've got to take into consideration. If we're saying don't get them out, shouldn't have them out, ever shouldn't have them out, are we communicating? Parents, they're using the office to contact kids, right? Or how
080many kids are still doing that, but then they get buzzed by someone in check-in. So what are we doing with that, right? What if it's the parent doing that? What if I'm in the middle school? And I get a phone call, myself as a staff member. What am I supposed to do at that point, right? What is the expectation? And there's things beyond just the very simple don't have them out that we need to have thought through real clear expectations on those pieces. What does Mr. Alley do if his phone rings? And he's got it on silent, of course, because it would never ring. But it's buzzing, you know, during second period. What's he supposed to do? Is he supposed to get it out and take a look at that? Is that part of a
081procedural piece that we have going on in a building? Maybe there's a notification or, you know, that's his cousin calling him with an NCAA update. I mean, you know, so how do you handle those things? If I can tack on to your short direction just a tad. And where possible, try to do things to bring our district more in conformance and alignment to the national data that's out there. Tells us what problems there are you guys want to add anything I didn't open it up much want to see if you want to add anything to the conversation living in the classrooms and that Well, I think right now the procedure in the elementary is that they are not allowed to have them out at all during the school day Of course in kindergarten. That's not
082really an issue thankfully at this point. They're not bringing it but Yeah, and I like that is what it should be is that they are not allowed to Have anything to add to that for me? Well, that's a conversation we kind of had in our book study this morning, too, is that the age of getting a cell phone used to be 17, 18 years old, and now you're looking at 10 years old to keep up with the Joneses sometimes or to have contact with your family or whatever it might be. So it's going to become an elementary problem just because we're seeing more and more of that. I know districts like Spokane have put some... rules out on cell phone use and some of the teachers up there really enjoyed not fighting the battles of
083having to see the cell phone and I believe I read an article right before I came up here today it kind of mixes in but the state of Georgia just put out some policy on cell phone use during instructional time so I think I think some states are stepping up and putting out some of those things through the data as well anything else from anyone I have things I would like to say, if that's okay with you guys. Because I actually, I spend a lot of my free time thinking about this. Because I think it comes from a... More of an overall, beyond the national level problem with everybody that everybody is experiencing. I know I wasn't allowed to have a phone until I was in middle school. And even then, it was a flip
084phone. It was only because I had to travel for sports to contact my parents. And I know some people I go to school with, they got a phone for their eighth birthday. And that's just... Beyond me that's just wild, but I know I personally experienced a lot of FOMO As a middle schooler I I often didn't know what my peers were talking about what they were a Fear of missing out It can be really What's the word? Like polarizing to not be able to connect with your peers on that level. I don't think it's definitely not just an our district thing, obviously, as other states are doing other things to worry about it. But it really is. I feel like we should not lower our expectations because obviously as a district, we can do as
085much as we can to help the progress of that in our children. But maybe to. set our expectations at a more reasonable level because I know people that do freak out when they can't have their phones for four hours and it doesn't it's not just an our thing it also comes from how you're I guess like when you've had a phone since you're eight years old you're obviously used to having your phone all the time so it comes from a from what parents are doing at home too and I don't know. I think it's just a really big picture thing, and I really do think it's a really big problem in our society as a whole. The use of AI is just... It's absolutely bizarre how in my in my college classes We have to
086be telling people not to use AI telling me that's not just a problem with our middle schoolers and high schoolers It's becoming a problem with our adults too and how they're furthering their education And it really freaks me out to think that our possible doctors someday are using AI to pass their exams That's just I used it to synthesize the research But I do think it's a great tool but honestly I really do think it's slowing down the development of people, especially my age. And not to be evil to my peers. I mean, I'm sure I'd get a lot of hate if they heard me say this, but I do think... What's the word? Like, pushing the procedure more, making sure every teacher in every classroom is... Keep your phones away put them away collecting
087them whatever it is. They have to do because there are certain teachers I know that people will be like oh take her class. She doesn't care if you're on your phone Which is definitely not furthering your education Asking for action report, so I'm planning to go a procedural route unless told otherwise bring back some stuff and we need to adjust the policy. I'm comfortable with the way it's written. Okay. Michael? Is it more detailed than that? I was trying to give you the cliff notes on all of it. We'll look at the policy at some point. That's basically the cliff notes of the policy. I don't think there's much for us to change on that. You think we'll be potentially forced by SPI or make it more strict? I don't think so. They've already collected
088data on it, and I submitted our data through the piece they're doing at the state level. I don't see them doing anything with that at this time. Of course, you know, they asked me procedurally, policy and procedure, what is our policy, and I shared with them what our policy is. So they're collecting evidence for the legislation. There's some things we can always look at. Okay. Anything further? Okay. Sorry to drag that one on. Policy 2320, field trips, excursions, and outdoor education. So another report. This is, even though it's policy, this is not adoption. I want to bring back, last month we met and we talked about field trips, outdoor, and I want to bring this back for your review and discussion. Currently, up there you can see policy 2320. And this is again at your
089board's discretion. I've given you a very small, you know. highlight of that, that's the word I use, that talks about the school board discretion for field trips. And it reads, the board must be informed electronically or otherwise about field trips and excursions, which, and it continues, are planned to keep students out of the district overnight. The pieces that you see struck out through policy on there currently live in the policy as struck out, which is interesting. I'm not used to seeing policy done that way. Going back to, I want to say almost 2013, there looks like there was some work done on there and that was struck out that took be approved by the board. Why I bring this to your attention is because in procedure 2320, and again that's at my discretion, there are
090still several spots in there that I've underlined for you that says prior to the submission of the board, at least one week prior to the board meeting, should attend the board meeting after approval by the board. So all that's at procedural level when I did kind of a deep dive into policy and procedure and why field trips are brought to the board. Now, it looks like action was taken previously to strike that, so I'm, unless otherwise told by the board, going to go back and clean up policy to match procedure to where I would be informing the board of those pieces, but not necessarily asking for your approval. But I know typically they've been brought to you, and I want to just be real up front on what that looks like, the discrepancy between the
091two, and get your thoughts before I move on this. Almost a similar conversation, but I want to clean up policy versus procedure on this. Is there something that requires you to bring it to the board? Here's my reservation. WOSDA's best practice without policy at that. There's nothing in a WAC or an RCW that would require it. I did the research and the homework on that that would require that. So that's just they're using discretion at that. So there's nothing going to require that by law. So it's me. I look to you and your team to make those good decisions. You know, if you're coming to us asking us for approval, I feel like I need more than what we've gotten in the past. You know, I'm worried about chaperones and transportation. And, you know, I
092just, I think you guys are the most equipped to make those informed decisions. I don't know why it comes to us, but that would just be my, you may have some more history with this. I guess I'm reluctant to relinquish control of those decisions as a board. When I was a student, I... I went on a couple high school trips that were approved by the board. But the board at that time, and they weren't chaperoned well, and there was alcohol, and there was promiscuity, and there was legal charges, and there was theft. It was a horrible deal. Yet the board approved it, you know, in good faith. But the chaperones didn't pay attention, or there weren't enough of them, or the students were extra sneaky and devious. And so this is kind of a tender
093soft spot for me. I know that as the head of the school district, you know, that you would face any blowback or liability if it was a problem on a school trip. I don't so much worry about the out-of-state ones because here, you know, you can go 30 miles and be out-of-state. That's not that big a deal to me. But the overnight thing, you know, if you've got both genders, if you have enough chaperones, if the chaperones are the kind of chaperones who are going to... I'll be the not be the buddy of the student the hard calls about discipline and about being in and about activities Then that's great but How do we have those conversations as a board though, right? and we're not going to have those conversations in this format. Right, I
094know. So the list of things that used to be on there that were brought on there is very checkbox. It is an itinerary. It is a plan. Kyle, you can speak to those things because they talk to you about those. Number of chaperones, ratios, all those things. And those are the things that are brought to us for first his approval that climbs up the ladder to me and then would come to you. I noticed just a discrepancy between policy and procedure, which is why we engage in this conversation about policy. At some point back in 2013, out of state and must be approved in advance by the board were struck. But in procedure, you can see there's still procedural language that references something being approved by the board. So I'm seeking clear... guidance from the
095board on maintaining the policy as is and striking the language that was done back in 2013 and then cleaning up procedure to follow suit or if we need to bring that back to a first and second reading and Revisit that policy for that purpose and then follow suit based on that. I think it's it's so what do you propose in it? Board out of the decision-making or leave it in there Well, what currently is in policy is that the board does not have to be by by policy back in 2013 that was adjusted the board does not have to be right Yes Other than overnight correct. Thank you for the distinction on that. So you're just wanting to clean up the procedure piece Well, it's a policy. It's a two-piece. It's a policy and procedure
096piece. Well, if we leave the policy exactly how it is... Then I need to clean up. I need to clean up procedure. That's what I'm in favor of. I don't know what you guys are in favor of. I'd say clean it up, both of us. Do you guys prefer that they come to us for overnights as an additional layer of approval? Are you guys fully responsible or you got it taken care of? And you're just going to, are you still going to inform us of the overnights? One, regardless, I think I would still inform you regardless of that. Do I feel like I need it? No, but I have no problem doing that. They're going to run it by me whether I like it or not. Because it's got to go to him, it's got
097to go to me. I'm still going to inform you. It's a question of whether or not I'm informing you or I'm asking you to take action. The procedural piece on our end. I hate them regardless. I mean, they could take a field trip to McNary in it. stresses me out. Well, it just came to light for me that, what was the last thing? Gear up. Gear up. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, you're asking for approval. Well, the media, you asked me for approval. I need to know everything about it if I'm going to approve it at this level. I mean, it's just like a budget. You know, you got to kind of know what it entailed, you know, like the chaperones and all that stuff. We are not day-to-day employees that know all that stuff.
098You guys are. And I believe it should be totally in your world now. Can we inform you? I'll continue to provide all the information. I will not be seeking your approval. I'll go back in and clean up all the procedure. In fact, I'm going to clean up policy by actually removing the stuff that was removed back in 2013. There's no longer a discrepancy. Thanks for the conversation. I know it wasn't easy. All right, now to actually go through policy. Okay. First readings. We have three that are out there. The first one I want to give to you is something that's not critical, but I want to bring to your attention. It has removed unnecessary language. What I mean by that is there's language in there that says, yearly the school district will do X, Y,
099or Z, and that's no longer required or necessary. So I want to get that out of there that says that we no longer have to do that. When old language, if we kept it in there, would say we'd have to do that. The other two are updates. They've actually taken the policy 5401 and 5404. They used to be very detail-oriented about sick leave and family medical maternity leave. But as you know, that's changed so often and so frequently that they have to come back and keep cleaning up policy. So they're removing the specifics and saying, see this link. for the latest updates and laws and changes, and so that we're not going to have to keep coming back and cleaning up every time the state does something new with leave acts. Making it more generic
100in general. Any questions or greetings? Okay. New business seeking approval Several months ago you tasked me with going away when we had conversations about taxes And levies and you said following that if we're gonna do X Y or Z and adjust our tax structure and levy structure on that you asked me to do two things one was fix the bleachers and to fix the I mean underneath the middle school. I've got quotes on that I'll come back to you on that one later, but I bring to you tonight a high school bleacher renovation quote in your packet. Again, levy dollars being used at its best to replace our aging bleachers that are 20 plus years old. It's new made, it's made of a new material promising us that we'll never have this issue because of
101when those were made. There's the, I won't go into the science of it, but... It's basically a gas-injected mold versus a new different type of mold. They found out many years later after I did that they wouldn't wear as long. I'll give you the short version of that. The price you see in front of you is including material, and the total price you see on there is installation. So I guess I want to have two conversations with you. One is whether or not you want to approve it as is. Or B, whether or not you want to adjust and do something different and look at installation being done differently. Outside of that, I will tell you I'm not sure we have the time for our maintenance crew to work on that this summer with the
102things that are going on unless we can get a third party vendor, company, team, somebody that... wants to take on installation of that and do some of that work in-house. So, seek an approval of purchasing the bleachers, moving forward with that. Option A or Option B, we want to handle that. Do the people we buy them from not install them? They subcontract that out. All you're giving me approval is to give the order and get the order placed. This will not change the pitch or the seating capacity at all. It's the exact same colors, the exact same design. You'll still see the purple and gold, you know, writing on that as you see on there. It's actually, they had the original as-builts for these how many years ago that they sold us. almost 20 plus
103years ago. Going through this, it is a KCDA state approved bid, so that it also removes the procurement pieces. They have the state quote, the state bid on that. That's what going through KCDA saves you on that. Obviously, I mean, it's been well documented. It's something that's needed. Do you have any thoughts on that before moving? 45 days delivery. I believe we can get it done this summer. I will make a motion to purchase the bleacher seat modules. How about the ad for removal and installation? I think we should approve both of them, and that will give flexibility to, you know, if there's another way to do the installation, we can... I will amend my motion to include the removal and installation. I don't think we should throw the removal and installation on our own
104staff. I mean, we should hire somebody to do it who does it, who's a professional, who's bonded. and who will do it on time and do it right. I'm not saying our own staff couldn't do those things, but to me it's kind of unfair to throw this on top of them. I'll add this to all the list of other things we have you doing this summer. I do not plan on taking that. The only option I would consider, hypothetically, would be, let's say we deem it's truly a project. It just takes, let's say, time, right? Because you're unscrewing some bolts, you're sliding them off a rail, you're putting them in. We've done it. I'm not going to put it on my summer crew, but I'm going to use a for instance. If Kevin says, hey,
105a football team wants to take this on, we'll take the $18,000 and we'll get those installed for you on that. And we feel like it's something they can do with the expertise and we can train them to do that. Is that something we want to put towards one of our own programs, teams, or something like that versus, you know, something like that? So that would be my only question if we feel like we can get that done. I'm not saying you need to do that, Kevin. I'm just using an example, right? But will the – The volleyball team, maybe, yes. Will the supplier warranty the material regardless of who installs it? My conversation with the supplier was he asked, do we want him to subcontract that or do we want to find someone out? He's
106selling us the product, right? They have people that work through them on that. I will ask some of those questions to find out on that. But he asked me how I wanted to build that quote. Above my spending threshold, which is why I'm coming to you tonight saying I need approval on it and if you want to give me the asterisk of going one way or the other with that then I'm great pivoting. If you feel strongly about one way or another then I'll proceed one way. For a second. Did we get one? Second. So I would like to see our clubs have the opportunity to pick that up. I think that's a perfect opportunity for basketball, football, I mean even if two or three clubs picked it up. It's pretty good chunk of money.
107They're always raising money for summer ball and those things. So I would totally love to see that happen. But if it doesn't work out, let's get it done. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. We'll be here doing our CTE report. Any other questions or follow-ups? That's it for the night. Anything other that
108we need to get on the next agenda? Thank you. You guys want some cookies up here?