1-22-2026 NBSD Board Work Session

001North Ben School District uh work session January 22, 2026. The board fear uh Michelle Roberts, Carol Yardley, Dan Weedman, uh Megan Bronsteiner, Kah Hill, Nathan, Anna Huitt, and Julie Hale. So, if we all stand, we'll do pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. agenda. Anybody move to approve agenda? >> Second. >> Okay, we got a motion to approve the agenda and a second. Any discussion? >> No discussion. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? None. Carry 70. Uh the one item we're going that is on the agenda is the discussion of potential K2 and 35 school configuration or reconfiguration. I I do want to state

002that Uh the purpose of tonight's work session is to discuss this particular topic. The session is intended for board members to engage in discussions with one another in an open meeting setting. It is not designed for public engagement or comment or comment session. If you'd like to sh if anyone on there no one here right now uh but if anybody comes in or is online wishes to uh share feedback or address the board, we welcome them to do so by email. board member contact information is available on the school district website. Uh in addition uh if you wish to make a comment about this particular issue. Uh I believe it is going to be on the agenda uh for consideration at the next regular board meeting which is on J uh February 5th uh 6

003pm where it's going to be held I think still up in the air but you it's on will be on the uh uh on the school board uh website. Uh with that in mind, um we're moving on to item number three or item the discussion of potential uh K2 through five school reconfiguration. And I believe we start with Tim's presentation. >> Thank you. Um here too. So, we have carefully considered and acknowledge all of the community feedback that has been received so far through the community input sessions where we were presenting information to the community so that they too could make informed decisions about the future of our schools. and gathered information from those sessions. And we also um had a a survey that had gone out communitywide and we've been collecting responses on that

004is still open. And we've incorporated all of that information into um some summary docu documents that will go out and be posted on our website um early next week. um where we have essentially taken all of the information gathered and um categorized the information and Heather will speak to that a little bit later and um provided a summary of each category and we will provide some very specific answers to some of the questions that are there um addressing a majority of the concerns and we have been addressing them. Um if the um someone has attended a community session and and and um listened to the presentations they would see that many of the questions have been answered although individuals may feel that specific ones haven't but in some form or another we have tried to

005address them and we will again tonight. So, tonight we have a new presentation put together that has updated information specifically addressing those areas um of concern from community sessions. [clears throat] So, we want to make sure that everyone understands that concerns are acknowledged, appreciated, and addressed. And we understand emotions are strong on this topic. And um often times the the emotions um that it's hard to move past them at times in in order to really see the larger good, the greater good that can come from a potential reconfiguration. And so I appreciate the board I'm engaging in the discussion and helping lead us through this process. Um it is no experiment. This is something that is educationally sound and best for a majority of students. It's a model that we see taking hold around the

006state in the nation. Um, in our region, I believe there's one other district that has a K5 school and it's a very small school with only one elementary school, I believe, and it one elementary school. There is a K8 school which is also a small and very different model. We have two K5 schools. The other districts all have another forum schools um similar to what we're proposing. So it's it's not just something that we're trying to try out. We we have sound reasons as we've presented um for why this is happening. Those are available in the other presentations. So we won't dive too far into that this evening. Again, the issues that are facing Northbend School District and that make this a priority in addition to the strategic plan which we've discussed in the other

007presentations. That was community-led, communitydriven, and the entire community had an opportunity to participate in that as was evident by over 2,000 unique voices contributing to that. in one way or another, which which was verified information by our strategic planning partners performance. And we also had multiple focus groups, multiple planning groups that engaged in that. And it was not an administrative-led process. And we have room for every single individual who wanted to engage in the process. And so the strategic plan was the origin of the discussion. This is not the first time it's come up. It's been discussed prior to that, but it became a real focus and topic of discussion during strategic planning and it does in fact address many of the needs and the goals we see in those plans. We have declining enrollment

008and more importantly uneven enrollment. And to clarify, [clears throat] just balancing numbers between schools does not address the uneven enrollment in specific grade levels. So we will discuss what enrollment looks like in each building. But the declining and uneven enrollment goes beyond building total numbers. It goes down to the individual grade level classroom numbers between buildings as well. The declining enrollment is a statewide issue that all the districts are facing and that is causing budget constraints and limitations that we must address as we cannot continue to add services when the funding is not present to do so. So this is another issue we must face and with declining enrollment we do have to adjust staffing to match the student population. However, we do not and we are committed to not reducing services to students and

009uh elementary school reconfiguration ensures that we will not reduce services. We will in fact expand current services with the staff on hand which is a very powerful thing to say which really is the ultimate goal here to improve the student experience and student outcomes. All of the decisions made by this administrative team and by the school board are student centered and that will remain the focus I believe of Northbend school district for many years to come. imbalanced class sizes, increased student needs, both academic and and SEAL based needs, social emotional learning needs are are growing and expanding. They've become more and more challenging. Um, since we've recovered from COVID um and and the recovery is more than just moving past the school closures um that we are seeing this in our schools more and more.

010So these are also needs we need to address of our students and and we want to make sure that they can be academically successful so they can be successful in life and providing intervention services in academics and social emotional learning needs is a priority and doing so with our current staff can be greatly um improve through reconfiguration and that is not to say that our staff is not doing an amazing job. We could walk into any school and see the Title One reading program serving kindergarten through fifth grade students very successfully. It's not to say they're not successful. they can be more successful focused on a specific grade band as we have discussed in multiple community input sessions and with information that is released including the community brief three-page document that was released after the

011winter break which addressed many of these things as well. So in addition to our feedback sessions, we've also released documentation that has supported this. Operational inefficiencies and duplicated services can be reduced. Not having to cover K5 in both schools. You are only covering K2 in one school, reive in another means you're not duplicating services, which has a cost impact. long-term facilities and growth planning considerations as we are addressing declining enrollment reaching to meet these needs of our students in our community through sound educational decision-making processes. We must also understand that we need to continue to do this with a projected decline in enrollment which could quickly shift. We will see a shift next year when a new housing development is completed and that will happen throughout the year. But we could also see future growth

012through the port activity um through construction phases and finalization when the families move in when when it's fully operational. Um we need to be able to adjust either way declining or growing. And this opport this is an opportunity to do so without impacting operations under those conditions. Frequent boundary redrawals to balance enrollment would be a requirement if the port comes in. We don't want to be reactive. We want to be proactive. Let's get ahead of this issue so it's not something we're constantly trying to solve and problem solve as we move forward. We want to get ahead of this so we don't have to worry about decline and we're instead we get to focus on students and district cohesion. Equal access to our buildings is another issue we want to solve with [clears throat] that.

013We want to take a quick look at elementary numbers as we go through them. The box on the left are Hillrest numbers. The box on the right are North Bay numbers. When you look at the current enrollment for Hillrest, you will see that first column there. Thank you, Tim. First column there on the left or right in here. Hillrest is a total of 429 students currently. And it ranges from 48 kindergarten students up to 101 fifth grade students. So, there's a big range of numbers in there. To project next year's numbers, we rolled our numbers up and you can see the incoming classes are much smaller than are the exiting classes going through. So next year projected enrollment for Hillrest is 378 students in there. Now that doesn't account for the new housing project which

014is in the Hillrest zone. What we did was we looked at the the numbers of of kids that had end in the other housing project that's up on top of Airport Heights up there and there's 60 units up there. We took the number of kids up there and projected that down to the number of units they have in that housing complex that will come online in a staggered phase next year. And we got somewhere between six and 10 kids per grade level. We use the number of six because we couldn't couldn't really accurately predict it because we don't know who's going in there. So given that number, this is what happens to the numbers at Hillrest when we add that six to every grade level. And you'll see that some grades grow at a little

015different rate than other grades in there. And some numbers are a little bit bigger. Uh you're looking at some 28s and 27s in here. Uh and you're looking at a 32 in there uh within the fifth grade here. even though overall they're still smaller than they are this year. But that's what happens when the numbers come online. >> Well, the parentheses 32.3 25. What does that mean? Class size. >> That's how many classes we have. Uh that would be the average class size, but the number of teachers we have per grade level. I'm sorry. Okay, good question. >> Good question. And there that shows where we currently are >> and then what happens as we add those other numbers in there. on the right hand box up here. These are the current numbers at North

016Bay right now. Uh and you'll see the current enrollment there is 332 students and there's no projected roll up next year. Uh you'll see the numbers next to it. We just bring the numbers down from the current grade. We had an influx in first grade. So you'll see first grade is a little bit bigger in both buildings because we anticipate it to grow a little bit more next year because we didn't get as many kindergarters in on IDTS that we did uh but we didn't have room for them. So we didn't we were not able to get them all in uh moving forward. We anticipate being able to get a few more in or moving in one of the two. We're not sure which one. Uh that will bring the numbers much more uh in

017line with what you see here. And that gives 313 kids at North Bay. They'll be down a little bit in numbers as well. You're exiting a large class and you're bringing in a small class. We're bringing in under or just right at somewhere between 90 and 100 kindergarten students and we're exiting somewhere between ohund what is it 150 to 170 kids over the next couple years. So you're going to see a decrease in enrollment at both schools as we move forward. >> Can can I clarify? So, so the projection with the new housing is using the same ratio of students to housing in the other affordable housing project. So, we're we're just we know they're going to get filled up. >> We we might not know if there's some shifting, but even if they're shifting,

018someone's going to fill the other units. So, that those students are going to that using those same ratios, we can make that assumption, but you can't make it per grade level. that will continue to be a difficult issue and create the imbalance between class sizes. So when when when I feel like sometimes we're saying well there's 414 313 move corn kids to North Bay that's not the problem here or balancing the building still has the problems with the imbalance between class sizes in specific grade levels with reconfiguration. don't have that issue because all the students are together with all the teachers and you're balancing out all the classes now and we don't know if we're going to get six per grade level here or if we're going to get 10 in one grade level and

019three in another. We can't predict that till we get actual enrollments put in the building. So fifth grade next year, assuming that only six are in fifth grade, would put class sizes at 32.3 kids per per class in fifth grade. At North Bay, the classes are 21.3. I wonder what happens if they were combined. We might be able to show you that. [clears throat] >> But before we do that, we want to show you a couple. Any questions on these slides here at all? The next slide's going to answer some questions that we were presented with. So, if we can go forward one, >> uh, there's a little arrow there. Yeah. >> All right. This is the bit differently. Now, on the left hand side, you see a box at the top. It says Hillrest

020and below it is North Bay. One of the questions that was posed to us, what if we send all the intra districts, intra district transfers back to North Bay and all the inter districts back to North Bay. Remember interd districts are the ones that come from out of district would be Cous Bay, Kokil, Reedsport and intras are the students that are zoned for North Bay or Hillrest that are going to the opposite school in there. So we first looked at intra district interd districts and when we looked at intra districts uh we saw that there were 30 intra districts at Hillrest in varying grades as we did that. So we said let's let's subtract the 30 and we'll add those to North Bay's numbers. Then we said what about kids are out of zone? How

021many kids are out of zone in each buildings? When we looked at at Hillrest, there's 38 kids that are zoned to go to North Bay at Hillrest right now. Various grades, all different grades in there. And there are 10 kids uh that are the opposite that are at North Bay that are zone Hillrest. So, a net difference of 28 kids there. So, we added that up and when we came up with numbers on here, Hillrest moved down to 356 kids. North Bay moved up to 371 kids. We didn't run the grade level comparison what that does to class sizes, but we we imagine it'd be very similar what you saw on the last slide. Some highs, some lows as you go through. >> Bruce, do we know how many of those in our staff? Because

022don't we have a thing where like teachers get to lump their kids >> in the same school? They're travel to be in their same school that they teach in. I think we have two or three but but not a not a large not a large might be you know four or five at the most in there but not a huge number as we're doing that and it'll vary by year as you do. So those are the numbers that we get in the in each of the schools if we move all the intra districts and inter districts back. You can see we have a fairly large number of interd districts. Now, this is just the inter districts at Hillrest. I did some uh quick number crunching one before I came in and I wanted to let

023you know we also have 32 interists that are out of the district, ones that are going to North Bay. So, we have a total of over 60 kids that are not not North Bin residents that are attending our elementary schools. On the right hand side here, we said there's been some talk about boundary redrawing. So, we said, "Let's take a look at boundaries. What does that do?" And we just picked some uh areas that seem logical as we did that based upon what our current boundaries are. And for those that might be listening online, our current boundary is Virginia Street. Pretty much everybody that's to the north of Virginia Street goes north of the bridge. And that changes a little bit when you get to the top of the hill in Airport Heights. And it

024encompasses a little bit area to the south up there. So, we said since we're going to the south up there, what if we went down Ash Street at the top of the hill up there, and that's this one right here. If we reszoned uh down Ash Street all the way to 16th Street, because those streets don't go through down to down below down to where the new housing is down below there. So we took all those streets down Ash Street, the little spurs that went off those and counted the number of kids that are in that area all the way down to 16th Street and we came up with 36 kids that fall within that area. Then we said, well, what if that's not quite enough and we took that same area down Ash Street

025and went all the way down to Newark. If we did that reszone, there would be an additional 12 kids and we pull in for a total of 48 kids that we would affect there. And then you'll see the numbers at Hillrest drop from 414 where the first zone changed to 378 and then 366. And you'll see what happened to the numbers at North Bay. 313, 349, 361 as you did this. And that's with a zone change. Now, we're not saying that is the zone change. We're just saying that is what would happen if we picked that area and made that area zone in there and included that to North Bay as we did that. So, does this solve the imbalancing class? >> No, it doesn't do anything about the imbalanced class sizes. All it does

026validate school numbers, complicated services. >> No. So, >> as before we move forward, where are you doing this one? You got one more. >> Yeah. Okay. Well, we'll stop after the next one and let the board have some discussions about what we've seen so far. >> The next one is is as you see here, we took Hillrest projected no enrollment with a new housing on there. We took the Northbase projected enrollment. We've given you um we've given you the class sizes up here. You know, we'd have two sections currently. These are the same um sections we have now. We've taken two sections. They'd be at 27 next year in kindergarten and then two sections at North Bay at 21.5. If we put them all together, we'd get a class size of four sections at 24.5

027in there. In first grade, we have 56. We have two sections of 28. And you notice those are yellow. Uh they're yellow because they fall beyond what's our recommended cap in our contract. Not our mandatory cap on the contract, but a recommended one. Things that we need to get together with the teachers and come up with some accommodations uh to make sure uh we can provide the best education in there because of the class sizes. So we'll look at numbers in there uh and and see if we can help support the teachers if they get this large larger than we want them by all means as we're doing that. So you see Hillrest is at two sections of 28 North Bay at two sections of 22.5. If we put them together we end up with

028four sections of 25.5 in there. So it does alleviate some of the problem with the big numbers in there. still large numbers, but it brings the numbers down until less than 26, which happens to be the cap size that we're looking at, >> right? And that [snorts] and and that is a a sustainable number budget-wise, too. >> When we look at >> when we're looking at the declining moment, >> when we look at second grade, which is this is our exact first grade numbers um that that we had at the time. When we looked at this, we looked at two sections of 56 at Hillrest, two sections of 57 at North Bay that gave you an average of 28 to 28 and a half in there. We said, and we looked at what could we

029do this year to bring some of those numbers down. And we we did provide some educational assistance in there, which is not like a teacher by any means, but it does help in there. But we said if we if we had that type of situation, we can't add a teacher at Hillrest at North Bay. It's cost and it drives the numbers really too low in there to be sustainable. So what we said was if we had them together, we'd have 113 and we could add that fifth teacher bringing those numbers down to 22.6 in there, which is where we'd really like to see those numbers somewhere around that range. You see the same thing over here. Here's third grade numbers. 24.6 26 25 you bring them together 24.8. Fourth grade 25 77 25.6 two sections

030here 23.5 bring them all together you're at 24.8. Fifth grade you see 32.3 is where we're at. 23.6. You bring everybody together and they're down to 28, which is under the cap size for that third through sixth grade and two second through sixth grade in there. And you look at the enrollments that you have, it does affect the enrollments because we notice that our enrollments are tailing off the most at kindergarten first, second grade. Uh so Hillrest enrollment would be at 311 and North Bay's enrollment would be at 416. you know, if the trend continues, it wouldn't be long before these folks, you know, he'll he'll North Bay would catch up to or decline at the same level and become the same numbers as the one thing we didn't talk about was, you know, each

031year we get a bunch of kids on IDTS that come in. This year we were only able to accept, I think it was seven IDTs, and we had close to 20 that wanted to come in. But one of our problems was we couldn't tell those folks that we had space or didn't have space and whether it was going to be at Hillrest or North Bay. And so they have to wait almost the Friday before school starts before we can really let them know if we have space because we're going to accommodate North Bend students first. And when they're in both buildings, it's really hard to respond to something that grows beyond those numbers quickly. If we had them in one school and we could accept them early, we could easily uh add another section and

032meet the needs of those kids and our kids reducing numbers down to even lower than what we're seeing in here. And that's what we'd love to be able to do. >> And we could we could again this is proactive, not reactive. What you see in the yellow is now that puts us into reactive state where we're now struggling to find the supports for the teachers and we found ourselves in that situation at Delgress this year with these class sizes where we then said, "Okay, let's scramble some resources together. Let's let's see what we can cut out and and and maneuver around from some grant funds and let's get some educational assistance into these classrooms because they're so big." Well, now we're hiring somebody midyear takes there's an onboarding process that takes us six to eight

033weeks minimum if the people apply. You know, it's hard to find people to apply and and Miss O'Brien can speak to that. I mean, she's struggling and working really hard to fill these positions to provide those supports for those teachers. And then we're hiring somebody who doesn't have the experience in most cases to really support the teacher. So instead of reacting and continuing to put ourselves in a reactive stance in order to best serve all students under this other model, we could accept all those IDTs and we could accept them in spring, not waiting till the very end of August to tell people whether they can or can't come. So again, North School District becomes the destination school district for families who want a better education for their families and for their children. And we

034can take all those IDETs because he just said seven out of 20 we took. Let's say we got 10 more. That's this year's budget from the state school find an extra $115,000. And we didn't and we wouldn't have to hire those extra EAs, four extra EAs. We could easily hire another teacher from this additional income without hurting our current budget, our current staffing, and then add that teacher to first grade to bring those 25 class sizes down to 20. So now we have small class sizes in first and second grade without the additional four EAS. There's the other teacher for kindergarten bringing those numbers below 20. This is about maximizing services for students with the current resources bringing more people into our district because once they come to Northbend they stay because this is an

035amazing place and it's an amazing staff serving kids. One of the an interesting concept is in fourth grade right now, which would be fifth grade's numbers next year down here in this class right here, you're looking at uh 22 kids that are interd district transfers. 22 kids in one class. And that was a year that a previous administration had said, "Take them all. We're going to take them all early. I don't care what happens to numbers. We're going to take them all and we'll respond afterwards." And we didn't have the systems to support it. We put all that extra stress and strain on the teachers and that was hard and that creates a difficult working environment and makes it difficult to serve students. Again, puts us all in this reactive stance and it's not the

036best working environment and it's not what we want to provide for our families. It's not what we want to provide for our students. >> Let's say my son's in that poor thing at Hillrest. I I walked into the classroom the other day cuz I was volunteering for their field trip and I have to tell you I was somewhat shocked by how many kids were in there. Like actually, you know, you go in and you see the desk there, but when you actually see the bodies in the desks and that many that this teacher is teaching, it was, you know, I was like, wow, how does she do this? You know, it really kind of made me re-evaluate some of the things I was thinking, you know, wants and needs as a parent when I was

037like, that's a lot. So, >> they're just such amazing teachers, too, and they still provide the very best for the students, but >> what they could provide is so much more. And we see it when we meet with them. We had meetings earlier this year with that group of teachers and and they're in tears because they know they can't provide enough to all those students and they really really want to try and then they internalize that and that's not fair either. Here we can we can we can fix that. >> What is the recommended cap for third >> 30? It could go up. We don't want them that high but they can go that high. I mean it's not uncommon to see that around the state. Um it's not it's not what we want for

038for those grades. >> That's what triggers a conversation of what can we do for sports when you hit that number older students are they can you know self-regulate a little bit better in those situation you know majority students can self-regulate you they can logically understand their choices. So you you can have a larger class. Um and and again, as we've discussed in in several different forums and settings, and the the idea of having more teachers on a team, rather than having the two fifth grade teachers at North Bay, two at Hillrest where there's only those two, when you combine them, you now have a team of four. So when you're then even if you were at that you know 28 2930 number when you do things like walk to read and your interventions you can

039spread them out into very specific groupings for that extra half an hour to an hour a day to really focus on targeted needs like tag services for the talented and gifted students. you know, you your high achieving groups and you can have your more core groups and then you can have your students needing some intervention and then your title one reading groups need intensive intervention. When you only have two teachers, you just you're just not able to. It's not that they can't and it's not that they're not trying, they're doing a fantastic job. We could do more >> with the services if we had them set up all in place. So, this is really helpful. We did do the board member. So, we've presented some information on the numbers. Is there is there any conversation

040you'd like to have? >> Well, I would think you would get a lot better uh teacher retention from the new plan. >> Yeah. >> I mean, more of a teamwork. >> Yeah. >> I understand like, you know, 30 is the cap size, but you know, to me, I'm not happy. I'm not happy with 30. I mean, I understand it's a cat, but that is to me that's not acceptable. You know, like I I want lower smaller classes. So, Um, from just my personal experience and just, you know, with friends and stuff who have younger kids, when I lived in Idaho, the class sizes were huge. Like 25 to 30 was the average of kids from like K to 2, K to three. And, you know, the teachers were great and the kids were great, but

041like it was chaos. And then we moved out here and my kids started attending North Bay years ago. huge shift in their academics, their education, their overall behavior, the way they came home. And so, and I think that, you know, there's a lot of information statistics that back up that experience. But, you know, just seeing the shift in my kids, I I would expect that dropping those class sizes down, >> you're going to see a big shift in how your child comes home to you every day, how they're learning, and just the overall kind of stability in them. um because they're getting more one-on-one attention, especially in those little grades where their little grades are so busy, the more chaos around them, the less they're going to be able to lock in. And and the

042teachers, they just they are they I mean 15 kindergarteners is exhausting. You're talking about 25 to 30 kindergart I cannot even imagine. >> So I would love to see a lot of stress being taken off of our of our staff, too. >> Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned expanding services that you know reconfiguration would be would result in expanded services. Can you can you explain a little bit I think you touched on it some but can you explain a little bit more uh how and >> well you lead right to our next slides. >> Oh but you know it's like you planned that we will we will we will we'll get we will get into that. So and and let's revisit that question um when we get closer to make sure we answer it because I want

043to make sure we cover that. you talk about later I I don't know what it is here the teachers that's a concern that I've had in some of the emails was that the the teachers might be unhappy with all of this and so then that carries down to the students. So, do we have a feel for the teachers, both Hillrest and North Bay, and how they will um blend and how we will determine what teachers move or stay or change grades? Do we have a plan for all of that? What? >> Yes. Um >> or is that a different time? >> No, the No, it's this is a good time. There's um there's a lot there's a lot that you wage into that it's okay. Um so like you know um one of our teachers

044Ruth Mountain who's been in the district for a good time over 30 years teaching um who's now an instructional coach working as an attendance advocate. um is is was at her session last night and spoke kind of to some of this and and when she talked about the heart that our teachers have and and what they put into the education of the children and what I've witnessed because you know I when I when I moved here from California many years experience I I went into Hillrest and taught right across the hall and it really reinvigorated my career and I mean my my belief in educational system if you're going to be didn't realize that this is the the district I wanted to to serve and and and because of what people put into the education

045of their kids and the same thing is happening at North Bay as I went out there as the assistant principal and instructional coach and so where there there might be concern about this initial clash someone has called it I believe our teachers are so professional that that they would not they would not let the students if I mean they first of all I don't think that that would happen. They're all professionals and they're all very talented. You bring those teams together, that just amplifies the talent. It amplifies your resources as a team to spread out students during certain times of your day to provide um uh various service to kids like like the interventions and the Walgreens, the differentiated services. So, they will they will and I fully believe they will work very professionally together

046and and work very well together. we've already brought we already bring teams together to meet. It's just not as effective as it is if you have all the students in that same building too and they're meeting together regularly. Um so I don't see that being an issue and when discussions are had and and talks are had with staff you know any change is hard any change and and when you have spent a majority of your career in one building you don't know what it's what it's like elsewhere and that alone is an anxiety producing however again we're talking about very profession professional educators who have extremely high levels of skill and talent. And it's not going to matter where they're at, they're going to be successful in creating this type of environment to help them

047feel that success will show in their working environment. And as Carol stated, um, and just their feeling, general general happiness in the jaw and, um, it it's hard for a few to see past the initial change. And so yes, there is a handful of teachers that are are very adamantly opposed because of that change aspect. And yet there are far more teachers that are fully in support of this. Um and and and we can say that for certain through individual conversations with staff members that other staff members are having with them. Um we're not trying to put people in uncomfortable spots. So I'm not walking up to people asking them where they want to be because you know who knows they might just say yes you know because of my position. So these are peers

048that are bringing this feedback to us and they it will increase job satisfaction. Absolutely. Um I don't anytime you have less students in your classroom you can address the needs of your students. You're making better connections with them. the the job itself is more is is more satisfying. And we've heard this for years when we move with the teachers. We we meet with our unions, we meet with our teachers, and we have these discussions and we see the pressures they're putting on themselves and and they talk about this imbalance. They talk about this large class size. They talk about these things impacting. And so we're constantly saying, "How can we improve this?" and and without me >> this slide here what we've done is we've outlined Mr. Crider and uh Mr. Martin also have talked

049about some of these issues and really I just want to echo that balancing our buildings the number in our buildings doesn't address many of the issues that Northman school district is facing. So what we've done here is listed some of those driving issues and then each column here um are potential actions we could take and outcomes that we see um in relation to taking those outcomes. So those so no action let's stay everything stays exactly the same. Does it address declining enrollment? No, we don't. We know that it doesn't. There would still be the budget constraints. We would certainly still see un unbalanced class sizes just as we do now. Um, would this be able to would a no action plan be able to meet the increased student needs like a reconfiguration would? No, we

050we know that strategic planning priorities. We did we also did see that regardless of the direction that our school district and our board takes here, we will be we are committed to our strategic plan and that we will be continuing to to drive forward on those. And so we do have a little bit of we've got some red and some green there. We talked about some operational inefficiencies, talked about the long-term planning and growth and then continue considering frequent uh redrawing of the boundaries and whether some of these actions we could take are going to work for the families but also for students. We know that a reconfiguration and not having boundaries would allow us to best meet the needs of our students. And also talking about uh this the district cohesion and equal access.

051We see that right now taking no action there. There still can be some of that district cohesion and equal access, but we know that in a reconfiguration that um we we certainly would see more of that. Now, what I will say is that we we did want to highlight this last one that we understand and after receiving input from from uh our community and from staff that we recognize that there is an inconvenience factor that has been communicated to us. And so we did want to outline that. We did want to um sort of sort of draw attention to that. Uh I meant to mention here at this declining enrollment but a big question mark because one of the issues that Bruce had talked about was not being able to uh accept as many inner

052district transfers to our district because of constraints and we could see reconfiguration as a potential that we could in um accept more interd district transfers into our district. So it it essentially will help with the declining enrollment issue by bringing more resources in through the IDTS to provide more staff that can directly support students whereas none of the other models provide that. In fact, if we move the IDTS and interest and we essentially revoke some of those things that we've already set down, it's like, okay, you're in the North Bay zone in Airport Heights, but you know, this year there's room, so you can go to Hillrest. Well, we have to revoke all those. That doesn't help solve any of this and then we potentially lose a lot of those families as well. Um, so

053that that will be an issue that that will happen too. Um, and then then the size of the check. You know, you'll notice there are differences sizes of the marks, and that's purposeful because when you're weighing these and and our teams are discussing the pros and cons, um, you know, maybe like like with the the family and student inconvenience, yeah, no action at all. It's a bigger it's a bigger check mark, right? It's it's less inconvenient. Um, but it doesn't solve does it solve our problems with that? Not not really. because there's still 50% of the students from in town going to North Bay. I mean, that level of inconvenience still exists, although that has been the norm since 2014. So, it and it's been successful. Um, it, you know, it's just been happening since

0542014. >> Was that last resell? 2014. >> Last time that we recon, it was kind of a reconfiguration and a resell at that time. I mean Bruce, you've been here >> back in 2014. We brought fifth grade from the middle school into Hillrest. Okay. >> Fifth grade was attending North Bay. So we made both schools like at that time and that's when the boundary was redrawn on Virginia Street. That was when same time that the lighthouse school moved from North Bay to Middle School, but there were major major changes at that time. And and just roughly estimate how many of these things have happened throughout the years. >> There have been a lot of them. A lot of them. I mean, at one time we had a peak of what was it, seven or eight

055school elementary schools in the district. And each time we made a change there, you know, there were changes in reconfigurations. We did that >> and and numerous schools have closed throughout the years. and and and this provides an opportunity to allow us to scale quickly, adjust quickly to decline or to increasing enrollment because the decline won't last forever and then there are other projects that could in fact make it increase quickly. So, um, this allows us to adjust either way. Keep two schools open, adjust either way for long-term sustainability and not to have to do these types of things multiple times, you know, um, and, you know, every few years or even try to address this change. If if if we reraw I mean, again, it but by by saying that it's like, oh, this

056is an option, redraw the boundaries. It doesn't fix anything else. It does all it does is balance overall numbers. But by saying that, okay, so redraw the boundaries or move all the IPs back to where they go where where they were zone for it, it doesn't fix any problem and we're going to hit that that unbalance again. We're going to keep hitting it and and that and then we're duplicating services. It it just it's not financially sound and it doesn't allow us to quickly increase >> or to scale back but still provide enough services. So we went out to gather the community feedback. So we just want to talk about like where we got all of the information from. So we held a community forum on December 15th with 75 people attending. We were here

057in this room and then we had a second community forum last night with 22 22 people from all from the Hill Press school representative and no one from North parents from North. good staff went through there. Um, and about 8 to 10 of the people that attended last night had also attended in December. So, some of the feedback is duplicated um, in their responses. And then we also had a community survey that's been open since December as well with 137 people responding to that survey. Both um, the community forum and the survey kind of have four driving questions on it. what potential benefits do you see? Um what are some concerns that you have about reconfiguration? Also, um are there any other solutions or things that maybe we haven't thought about yet? And then any

058unanswered questions or additional feedback do you have for us? Um there also was a teacherformational session where Tim came to a Friday afternoon PLC to the teachers of both schools and we had about 84% of our teachers attending that. um session with Tim and then a feedback survey went out to all the teachers at the elementary level and we had about 82% of our teachers responding to that survey and then we did the same thing again with our classified staff having a a session with Tim present the presentation was very similar to the one at the community forum and then elementary classified survey went out and we had 10 responses from that. So, in reviewing all the responses from the two forums and the 137 survey responses, we've gone through and found these nine overarching

059categories and fitting each of the responses into one of these nine categories. So every piece of feedback, so if um somebody was responding to the four questions on the survey, we've isolated their benefits column on the survey and counted that as one respondents and it might tagged with multiple categories. So if they're doing a long form answer um and they're talking about their concerns, they might be talking about their family impact and transportation and possibly academics in that. So that's why you have, you know, 230 responses or mentions. That just means that topic was brought up that many times. And so there's multiple times one person can bring up the same topic. >> Um, and so looking just looking across these nine categories and compiling all of the feedback. And so we're going to go

060in and kind of talk about what the feedback in each of these categories was and how we plan to address all of this. >> So I started to explain that previous one a little bit earlier. Um th this is this is what we plan on now producing a document that takes so so just so everybody's aware anybody online anybody watches recording later we're taking all that feedback from the post that's at the community forums from the surveys from the teachers from the classified staff and from the parents and the community members that have filled that out um and and the responses have been identified as these nine areas. And so we then have a synopsis, a summary of each one that talks about the overarching theme of the challenges, the overarching theme of the positives

061that were noted, and an overarching theme of the questions that were noted for each of the nine areas. So, we'll provide that statement and then some of the answers you'll see in the next few slides plus um a little bit more explanation making sure because we're going back in and making sure we're addressing each of the individual questions that [clears throat] haven't been answered just on the slides we've already put together. And we when we went through it today, we realized, you know, we have answered um a majority of that stuff. It just, you know, I don't expect everybody to see everything every everything. Um so, we want to make sure we provide another opportunity to answer those. so people know we're answering. So in the community feedback, family impact on community trust as said

062that there were comments about that that theme. Okay. And so in various um and it could have been mentioned in various categories but fit this theme. So there are a lot of that there. So when we're looking at that and the types of questions that were brought up, the types of challenges and barriers that were brought up and some of the positives that were brought up that we want to make sure that we're embracing and and taking a hold of so we can make sure that we really maximize the effectiveness of this. We as a district leadership team said we want to provide some commitments and some solutions that we think can help benefit this and help benefit the district overall. So in terms of the family impact of community trust, we if the decision

063is made, we want to make sure that as soon as it's made that we're bringing a planning team together that establishes clear timelines for different stages of this roll out in in terms of how do we get from then that decision to the first day of school. And we want to communicate that clearly and regularly to the community to the families so that people understand what's happening every stage of the way. They can plan accordingly. We we commit to the transparent communication process by having this happen on a regular cadence so that everybody can expect to see something at certain stages of this implementation. opportunities for families to visit schools, ask questions, and provide input. So, if the decision is made to move forward, who want to make sure that families who are not familiar

064with Hillrest or not familiar with North Bay have engagement opportunities to come visit the campus, to get tours, to become familiar with staff members now. And we and I don't know if we mentioned it here or not, but the staff members will be, you know, the staff members will be switching at every school. So you're going to get a combination of each staff that you really get the you know a powerhouse really coming together because you get the best of both worlds combining to build [clears throat] a stronger system. So you know essentially the assignment that was a question that you asked. So the assignment piece of that and we're still working with the union. I've talked to Eva briefly about this but you know and and we're going to work closely with the union

065on this but h how do we we want to get feedback from the teachers? What do they prefer to teach? you know that that that interest piece is huge but there's also the assignment you know your current assignment in your building is your teaching assignment. So if you are assigned to fourth grade in either school, we step forward saying okay these are the assignments you're both fourth grade teacher you know at both schools this is your assigned fourth grade however then we're going to take this input that we gather what is the interest what is the desire and then that will be something else we'll look at does it make sense to maybe say you know what they would really prefer to teach this actually we have an opening over here let's let them teach

066this you know and kind of so then we move to that next phase then if we get to a point where it's okay somebody's got to move and and no one wants to, you know, and then now we're looking at, okay, the the things that are outlined in our contract already, seniority, experience, expertise, education, things like that. So, it'll be a phased process taking into account what people want to do with the recognition that there's already a current like assignment, which is like where our starting point is the base. So, um if we get our families into the schools visiting them, if you're not familiar with one school or the other, you see that they're both terrific schools, amazing schools. The campuses are beautiful. Um they're well-maintained and and we we did show that in

067one of the in the other two community forums presentations. Um in 2019 we had an engineering company do full ratings of all of our schools and both the elementary schools had very high schools. Um so that will be a wonderful thing to have happen. Attention to the impacts on families with multiple children across schools. So, we really do listen and hear what's happening and and as part of the transportation and logistics, we we're trying to mitigate some of that impact and we'll I'll talk about that, but we'll continue to pay attention. We'll continue to listen and we'll continue to problem solve with families to try to overcome these barriers and challenges. The um support structures during transitions to maintain school community connection. So again, we will have a plan in place to provide supports to

068students and families during the transition. So even after the transition takes place or or during this one, you know, how many visits can we have back and forth, how many time the kids can have a field trip to the other school and vice versa so that they can get familiar with the campus with their current group of friends and become familiar with it and have the kids start to interact with each other before the end of this school year so that that that they have those connections too. Um the transportation and logistics is by far the biggest concern and and one we 100% get and we 100% have concerns and we 100% want to solve. So we've been talking extensively with our current transportation company. We are also at the end of a transportation contract

069that ends this year. And so you know we put out RFPs request for proposals for transportation services. The typical process is you get a five-year contract. We did that last time. We had a 5-year contract that ends in June. So, we are now putting out another RFP that will go out the beginning of February. And I already know our current bus company wants to submit a proposal. First Student has already reached out and wants to submit a proposal. First Student is Kuzbased Transportation Company and they're also a very large company. We also know that um Durham Transportation um which is doesn't have doesn't have a a setup here locally, but they're looking to move into there. Another large transportation company is interested. They've already contacted us. These companies are aware when these contracts end. So,

070the good thing about this is when you put out an RFP, you get to put in the guidelines, your expectations, your needs as a district. So, we're taking this feedback from families and from staff and we're putting this into our RFP. We're we're outlining exactly what we expect and we're going to hold the company that is awarded this contract accountable for this. It's a lot of money that goes into transportation and we need to make sure that what's currently happening is not is not going to happen again. And our in our mid Columbia is trying really hard to overcome this. They haven't been able to hire the drivers. Um there's six drivers short right now. We have we are six routes short. So six combined routes. So that is causing a huge issue with the

071extended bus routing route times. Now that's not any individual family member or student's fault. So we don't want them to feel that impact which is why we also want to have in our RFP examples of how they'll mitigate that. Whoever gets award the contract, how are you going to ensure that your problem doesn't become our family's problem? because that can't happen. And right now, Mid Columbia has already committed to bringing in a couple smaller buses because they can get those driver's license faster than the larger buses so that they can take care of some of the smaller chunks of students in different locations that are on combined routes to help speed up the other routes. And so we we will see that happening and and the good thing is about therapy, we we get to

072make sure it happens, right? Um because we're going to watch that before we make our decision on the company we move forward with. And so that's happening. They're also we asked them to take our current route routes, the current routes they've identified, give them to another mid Columbia group in another city with one of their experts in routing and look at our routes. Somebody from the outside looking in to see, you know, what are we what are we not seeing here? Because we've been doing it like this for so long, we might not even see some of the opportunities. and they've already identified some opportunities to shorten those bus routes. So, we should start seeing that impact. And they also just said today that they that they brought in another driver who will be ready

073to drive one of the new routes by the end of next week hopefully. So, I mean, and and I I want to say that and I say hopefully because, you know, something could get delayed a week. They've had multiple situations where thought somebody was going to be hired and they had them all trained up and then they they backed out. Yeah. So, any thoughts, and this might just not even be a possibility or in the realm of possibilities, of possibly thoughts of maybe changing middle school and high school start times to later and and the other ones earlier to allow bus drivers to make more routes. I don't know if you can make enough of a flux >> bottom column, right? >> Yeah, I saw that. So, and I wasn't sure if it just meant

074the elementaryaries or because I was talking about more like actually, you know, with the >> boat. Okay, cool. Yeah, that's >> and that's and that's a great point too and and what you know one thing we did learn from first student is that you know they do pay their drivers a couple dollars more an hour and it's it's helps them retain drivers and we know wants to do the same thing too. Um they also pay their drivers for a minimum of five hours. So even if they're only doing a two-hour route, they're getting five hour pay. So that helps them maintain a more stable staff. And so again, the putting things like that in the RFP means that they can provide us a proposal that has all that included and those expectations met so that

075we know we don't find ourselves in this situation in a couple years. >> You talk about the in RFP the minimum maximum right time >> maximum ride time we get to put in there. So we're we're talking maximum 45 minutes, you know, 50 max. I mean maximum should be 45 minutes. I mean, and we were just looking at that today going, should it be 50? Should it be 45? Um, it's going to be 45. Yeah. >> When do we need to or when we see the proposals and when do we vote on the bus? >> We're going to we're going to finalize the proposal. We have to have you have to you have to put it in a um publish like a a paper print. So, with here with the world, you have to give

076it like two weeks notice. I think we have to have it done by tomorrow. So we want it in the paper in two weeks. >> So mid-Marchch we will be evaluating. >> So whatever we receive the the deadline was the March 6 I think it was or was >> that's when they need a decision. >> That's what No, that's when they'll have to have >> it to us. >> Then we will evaluate the next week. We'll have a team. So um we'd love to have you on the the team scoring. We we do want we do want a board member or two um on you know up to three on the scoring team with the admin um group >> because I would I'm just thinking ideally >> if we can come to a decision about

077yes or no in the reconfiguration. It'd be nice to know >> what so we so we have a more focused um >> idea for what we want out of our bus company because I think whether the reconfiguration goes or doesn't it will impact the needs from the busing system on the tracking and the timing of all that. >> Sure. and it'll it'll help us to in the RFP, we put in there that the school district is considering >> a reconfiguration and that we anticipate an a final decision being made >> before the final RFP is due. >> Okay. >> So that allows the bus companies that want to submit proposals >> to sort of finalize their proposal based on the decision. So having a decision before we receive a proposal and then and then we

078would then vote on the actual proposal that we recommend on the beginning of April and then we could move forward with plans to then actually have transportation in place >> and maybe asking them to prepare something for both scenarios might be a little >> is that too much to ask or is that appropriate to ask? >> No, we can ask whatever. >> Okay. Well, I guess we could just consider that if it if we get there. I think I think the way we have the timeline built that that they they'll have time to turn around either proposal. Okay. >> Um and and either way, a lot of the things we're talking about we we're going to want no matter what, you know, we don't we don't want to have I mean details that be shifting.

079>> Yeah. So So that So what because that is like the one place where it sounds like you know there will be like an increased cost. Do we have like an idea of and I know that's one where we are subsidized a bit by the state which helps out but we have an idea of like kind of just so a general idea of what we're talking about we don't even have a contract yet so that hard >> it is hard because the the previous contract with Mid Colombia um you know that was written with a clause in it that that we could extend it with them but at no more than 2% at the current rate. I mean the costs of everything have just grown so phenomenally they said we can't do that. I mean,

080so they were already saying, you know, it's going to be this this it was a really higher number, much much higher than two. So, you know, we said, well, we can't do that either because the contract says this. So, let's go for the RFP. Um, we I mean, transportation knowing that this contract would end. This is one of the things that I've been planning for proactively in the budget for the past couple years because I've anticipated up to a certain amount of a dollar increase next year anyways. No matter what we do, costs are going to go up tremendously from where they are. We're subsidized 70% from the state. So if you It's not a million, but it's it's a million, but it's more for transportation, but 70% comes back to us. So, and that's

081a standard rate um you know that other districts get too. A few districts get 80 two or three maybe get 90% but that's they're the largest districts. They have the most enormous costs in the state. So right now when we met with Mid Columbia and said and and again everything we're talking about everything we're proposing we put a ton of thought into and tried to make sure that even talking about it makes sense. So when we met with Mid Columbia and and and said, "Hey, this is a discussion, what can you do with no additional things that we just talked about? Not maximizing your route efficiency, not having full staff, not having the smaller vehicles out to transport to reduce the rides for the people closer to their schools. They were looking at an additional

082six buses is what it said. Six or seven. I think it was six. >> Six. So, six buses. So, you know, and I think I, you know, I heard somewhere they, you know, they said, "No, no, no. My my friend said that the bus companies going to have to double their routes." No, they're not. They We sat in a meeting with them and they showed us that six routes and it's six routes under the current conditions. We and within 10 minutes we all sat here and said, "Well, what about this? What about this? What about this? Oh, okay. May maybe we don't need six routes. Maybe we need one route. Maybe we need two. We just need to maximize our efficiencies and do things a little differently." >> But talking today and they look the

083lakeside area, they've eliminated two of those six. >> Yeah. So now they're just now they very interested in in in reducing this very interested and so in maximizing services. So now today they said well yeah we can actually reduce the lakeside buses by two if the reconsidering duration goes through not under the current model. So so so we so >> we know costs are going to go up. We don't know how much until we get the RF but we do know there's things that we can be done to maximize routes and we're prepared for the budget increase. Either one is the easiest way to do it and we know that we can reduce the right time to kids and we will expect it and we will hold them accountable to it. >> And we're gonna

084have probably three proposals >> at minimum. Yeah, I'm expecting three companies have contacted us. Three companies want to submit proposals and there's a few more out there that I'm interested in. And whoever wants to get contracts put up. >> Awesome. >> Keep it as low as possible. >> We'll make it work. >> You know, we're going to put things in there. you know, some of the other things that that are interesting that we want to put in there and I didn't want to talk too much about it. I'm just real excited about the options that are out there these days. You know, because again, five years ago to now services have expanded in great ways, but things like a little card scanner. Every child gets on their on their student ID card or their lunch

085card, a little scanner, and they walk onto the bus and scan it. When they walk off the bus, they scan it. So, a parent's able to follow their child on the bus, not just the bus driving around when it works, but actually where their child is. We're going to put that in the proposal. see which companies can provide it. If they can't provide that, they'll have to explain what they can provide. That's similar. Um, is one really exciting thing that we want to see happen. And and I think that that would benefit everybody. You know, you want to know exactly where your child is at all times. And I I I I want you to know that I thought about financial incentives. >> We're going to write in a piece. >> So, well, I guess

086now I do. I mean essentially when things aren't running smoothly, when expected routes aren't happening, when communication is not happening to the families as expected through the contract, that imposes extra duties and significant work at the building level for the building administrators, site secretaries, support staff, district office administration. And so when that happens, there's a cost impact to that, right? Because now we're all shifting our focus to something that should be happening that we're already paying for. So when those things happen, we should be reimbursed for those costs. So that will be written into our >> an expectation that when certain things don't happen >> Mhm. >> and we have an impact that we are um giving us some some funds to address that because our costs increased. So expanding uh single drop school drop

087off. I want to talk about the single school drop off pickup. So, it's a single school. I think last night and I talked to a parent afterwards and I I said like what if there was a a single spot drop off and and I I could be a little more clear. If you have a child in both schools, you could and you want to take your children to Hillrest because you live right next to Hillrest, you can drop both your children off at Hillrest even if it's and we're going to we're going to expand before and after school services for students. So having something available for the family so that you can drop both your kids off at Hillrest and then the one takes a bus, a one-way shuttle bus straight to North Bay. So

088that a group of kids that that get dropped off there can take a shuttle to North Bay. It's not another route, but just a quick shuttle bus that'll be in the RFP. Same thing at the end of the day. Those students at North Bay get shuttled to Hillrest to meet their sibling, hanging out together, getting a snack, doing some fun activity, having a great time, laughing, having fun. Their parents pick them up and their parents like, "Oh my god, they're so happy." So in and in the same way same same thing you know for North Bay the Lakeside family can have their kids or you know or the bus can pick them up at their house and take them both to the school so they're riding together and then the other child gets on with

089their age group on the shuttle bus straight to the crest you know or vice versa. So before school after school and that really does address a whole bunch of the concerns that are in there. Um, another thing we're putting in the RP, might as well talk about it because these are expectations for us and these are things that we're saying our bus company next year is going to provide, is training for the bus drivers to be able to work with students with special needs. A bus driver needs to communicate with that child the same way we would expect our teachers and our staff members to communicate with that child and support the child. Same with students who are maybe feeling a little feisty that day. You know, the bus driver needs to know how to

090address that. some PBIS strategies, positive behavior interventions and supports. Understanding the child's escalation, deescalation cycles. How do you talk the child through something? You know, when the kid on the other side of the bus, you know, chucks their Chromebook at them and ruins their day. You know how to talk to the child so you don't escalate the situation. We expect our bus drivers to be trained in those behavior management techniques and uh ability to support the children so that they can start their day positively and end their day positively. So that is also something that will help address the transportation need so then more people feel confident and comfortable with their students riding the bus. Expanded walk zones for student. There are a lot of practices we discovered things that have just been kind of

091going on for years but they're causing these transportation problems like the walk zone. you know, we if a student's at high school, we don't need to pick them up if they're a block from high school. I think a student who's in high school can walk a few blocks to school so that our younger students can get picked up and not spend an hour on the bus. And so, and and and there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of leeway in that walk zone. If you look at Oregon state law, we're not even talking about expanding it to where it where it actually legally can be. We're just talking about expanding it out so we have less routes running for students who are old enough to walk to school. We don't want them crossing

092major thorough affairs. We don't have to do that. There not a whole lot of them. So, we can we can handle that. But this this right here will also reduce the number of routes and be very very effective in reducing ride times for students. Um reduction of out of zone bus routes. I talked about this last night is that that part of our system has been like so we talked about that imbalance the numbers at Hillrest. Let's say fourth grader. Fourth grade has a lot of kids in their class, right? So, a new family comes in. I just bought a house next door to Hillrest. They're in fourth grade. My kids are in fourth grade. Sorry, fourth fourth grade's full. You can't you got to go to North Bay. North Bay has really small classes.

093So, now that families going to North Bay to enroll their kids and this has been happening and this happens throughout the years and there's still a whole bunch of students in schools that that this happened to. I I don't like this. I don't think it's fair. and reszoning eliminates all this um or the not reszoning reconfiguring but but we because of that practice there's all these out of zone bus routes because now the school district has told the family they have to go to their school. So now it's the school district responsibility to transport them to the other school. So now on top of some of these other issues that the bus company's trying to face, they're also trying to pick up the pieces for all of this and now there's all these kids that

094are getting bust in different locations, which is why we see three buses show up at one location and none of the buses are full. That can all be fixed, reduce ride time significantly. So again, what they proposed to us when we met with them was an additional six buses without fixing any of this. And then already they've reduced two routes and they haven't even we haven't got started in my opinion. So like standard start times was discussed too. Um it and and we would have to determine this. This is why we kind of you know understanding if we're going to go this direction. We can't wait to make the decision because then we will have a bus contract and a system in place for next school year that will then have to change again and

095then we'll be in renegotiations with them and then we'll be changing everything up again. So, but understanding if we're going to make the decision or not and knowing that we can then talk about staggered start times. Does it make sense to have the two schools 15 minutes staggered start for the two elementaryaries or not? Does it matter? If what if we take the stag what if we take the elementaryaries and then we push up middle school 15 minutes, high school 15 minutes. That would then allow exactly we were talking about drivers going out doing a short route then going back out again. And that really maximizes efficiency too. So yes, >> we're saying junior high high school starting earlier middle school week. Who later? I would say is it late? Yeah, that was my question.

096>> I would think that it would be earlier, but >> are we talking 15 minutes sooner or later? >> Wait, who knows? But it could go either way. >> It could go either way. Um, there's some interesting studies out there about older kids starting later >> and and a lot of it has to do with with mental health and and and I was actually surprised that some of this some of this stuff was newer and that students who start later, the older students are are are mentally prepared for school and act actually the the suicide rate is down. Yeah. for students when they start later in high school. And so things like that have a huge impact. And so there it it would be beneficial to start a little later. >> And I think younger

097kids tend to be morning they're they're ready to go at 6:00 a.m. but then by 3:00 2:00 even they are absolutely toast where I think teenagers they hit they have a later in the day window when they're really productive. And I think younger kids like under 12ish their their prime time is during earlier times of the day. >> Yeah. also cooking kids up. You know, you can't leave your elementary kids at home, you know, to go to work, but with the middle schoolers and the high schoolers, they can wait for a bus after you're gone and it's not enough, you know. So, that other thing. >> Yeah. Great points. >> So, um we will dive into that. That'll be part of the process once we know the decision because then and then we can actually

098make a a specific plan and then communicate that. So student experience safety well-being uh how student experience well these concerns be addressed planning for transition supports to reduce student anxiety during transitions visitations during the school day family opportunities to come spend the day you know hang out with the student at school um have multiple events like this family opportunities to come tour the school um there there's also the transition support meetings around academics and social emotional learning so again taking and I'm going to focus on the second to third grade transition ition. We will do it for all the grades transitioning if this is what we plan for this year into next. But I'll just focus on second to third which would be the norm. So having those teams meet at checkpoints throughout the year

099so the third grade teachers understand the needs of the second grade students coming into third grade and and having that happen more than once. Um the same thing will happen with students who are getting supports and social emotional learning. uh supports from the social emotional learning team. So if they have goals, things like that, their progress, what what are their specific needs? Um what are their triggers? Things like that. Um having those that information in hand, it it it creates what we would call a soft handoff, right? So, we're we're taking the student with the people who know the student to the new setting, talking to those people, making sure they understand the children's needs. And and again, by having all these students together, it eliminates that um that combining the students later who don't

100know each other and then we don't know who should and shouldn't be in a classroom together, which is a big thing. you know, middle school, and you know, they're spending half first half of the year trying to figure out who who should and shouldn't be together. And we figure it out at each school site, but you don't know. Now, you got two groups of kids coming together. You don't know which ones of those students are going to clash and which one of those students shouldn't be together or maybe impact other kids learning. Well, that will all be sorted out because this will be the same group of kids transitioning together as a whole, Northbend students going through our Northbend school system. and they won't have to waste that beginning of the year trying to figure

101out what makes them successful in middle school. So, um so that that transition support extends beyond elementary. It also happens going into middle and it'll help share and expand current emergency response plans. Well, we have a slide on that. Um potential benefits for age specific learning environments for students. U so we've talked about this a little bit. Well, probably a lot of it a lot of it potential benefits for age specific learning environments for students. So, at the end of last night, we talked about school focus, the identity of the school. So, you take something like PE for example, we have a PE specialist in both schools. So, this this PE specialist is now trying to do PE for kindergarten, first grade. They're planning for six different grade levels. And that's a challenge. Now that's

102one problem there. The other thing is then what what are you doing with those kids? How is it unique to the age group? How is it developmentally appropriate? You know, I come from a a child development background. That that's that's where I started was was early child development and I understand the developmental stages. Our K2 students should be focused on play theory in PE. Focused. Play theory produces better cognitive functioning. So PE has a purpose as well. And then students are enjoying the activities. They're then ready for school and they're growing developmentally and cognitively at the correct pace. When those students get into third grade, now that PE specialist is shifting their focus team sports, team dynamics, working with the team and and playing actual athletics together. And North Bays is built for that. And

103North Bay also has a track. So now you can get into some track and field activities. PE becomes focused and developmentally appropriate by age. The same thing happens and is available under this model for social emotional learning. and the focus and the supports provided to those students instead of a social emotional learning team which each school has a certified teacher a social skill specialist and they have two three check and checkout staff members who help support behaviors and in your binder in one of the last pages we have a model of what that looks like so we can show you that in a little bit but again same concept they're doing this for kindergarten through fifth grade so If that social skills specialist is sitting in a room with a social skills group and teaching

104some skills, this little group means and all of a sudden, and let's say you're doing it with a first grade, let's say a first grade group, you got your social skills group going on, trying to teach them how to um, you know, recognize some of their emotions, how to respond, what tools they have to calm themselves down. And then next thing you know, you got, you know, you got a little Joe coming in off the playground, fourth grader, and he's ticked off and he starts throwing chairs around the room. Now, that's when that that's the situation I'm talking about about having the fourth grader with the first grader. That situation that doesn't blend. Now, those services stop for this other group. In a K2 model, in a 35 model, those students being closer in age

105makes it easier to deal with that. They're again, they're more developmentally and age appropriate together. >> We also double the time they can spend because instead of that social skill specialist working with six different age groups, they're only working with three. So that doubles their capacity to meet with groups and to meet the needs of students. So that's going back to your question. How do we increase services in this model? We double their capacity. Same thing happens in resource room. Resource room, students on IEPs, the teachers trying to meet and work around six different grade level schedules. All their different language arts and math and specials are all different. Their recesses are different. Their watch is different. Put them in a three grade band. Their schedules are much more aligned. They're doubling their time with

106those groups. Focused intervention services align to the child's need. That happens in language arts. It happens in math. It happens in social emotional learning. It happens in life skills. It happens in all of our programs. We can improve our services with the same number of staff. We the increased student needs. We've talked about needs increasing. We can't increase staff levels anymore than we have. We're see we have a lot of resources going into these teams and they're still challenged. This becomes the proactive approach to meet those needs without adding more staff. Keep the same staff double the amount of time they've been spent with students. Family events offered at staggered times. So, you know, you don't have to have both of your meet and greets beginning of the year at the exact same time. So

107families can go to two events and we could even as this gets rolled out, you know, increase our ability to maybe help the families transport to both events. Get a bus. Hey, take a ride on the new bus. It's really fun. The drivers are well trained. They have fun with the kids on the bus. Everybody loves riding the bike. So that's the goal. Waterfall clinic. Awesome. Big goal. Waterfall clinic, a schoolbased health center located North Bay. So again, student well-being, we talked about this. There's another slide on this, too. I think it's a slide. So, a a lot of people don't know this. North Bay has a medical clinic in the school right there in the main hallway, Waterfall Clinic. Advanced Health Partner with them a few years ago. Bruce was principal at North Bay.

108I was assistant principal. I remember this setting this up and it was like, wow, this is amazing. They Waterfall now can partner with your family position position. So, you're not giving up services with your family physician. They're just help helping implement that. Student needs some vaccines or the student needs needs to have um you know, has a feeling sick or the student, you know, tell them got a boo boo. >> They miss a lot less school. >> They miss you grab them from class, >> walk them down the hallway, take them right back. Or if it's just like some talk therapy, they'll just go get your kid out of class. You know, I don't have to drive across the bridge for 30 minutes, then drive all the way back. It is excellent service. >> Yes.

109Love it. >> It the staff, they're amazing. >> Yeah. >> Really, really cool to have that in. >> That's cool. And and the staff can use it, too. >> Yeah. >> I mean, the staff member, you know, I got a spider bite. >> I know that cuz my wife went in there and then I mean, it was a really bad spider. Um, so a lot of great things come out of that clinic and it's not I mean it it it can it can increase too the services it's providing. It kind of scales down based on the need and it can scale up based on the need and provide mental health services too. So that at North Bay is a huge benefit. So it addresses a lot of the community concerns about oh now I got

110to take my kid to their doctor's appointment. I got to come pick them up. I got to go here. I got to go there. No, actually you can have waterfall partner with her doctor and they can go there while they're at school. So no one has to miss a word. No one has to miss a full day. The child can go in. They're not missing a day. So really great service. >> Just starting to talk. I'm sorry. I'm just get excited about it. academic impact, instruction, enrollment trends, districtability, finance, and funding. So, uh, some of the main themes here, again, these are coming straight out of the community feedback, staff feedback is are things that we're saying we can provide or we can promise and we can do to help address those needs. Increase targeted

111instruction. Talked about that. Are there any questions on that? who would would that someone like another example title one reading intervention same thing same staff doing reading intervention groups kindergarten first grade second grade third grade fourth grade now they can focus on a two intensive liter literacy support so by the time they're hitting third grade we've now had the resources to help them improve their reading get the skills they need to be successful in the next setting three through five to be ready to read to learn older kids too. We can now use the same staff to in include some math intervention because right now in either school because they're doing so many different grade levels they can't they can't we've been talking about how do we get them to increase we want some math

112groups we want some math groups they just can't I mean they're working so hard they can't fit it in in the schedule they could now we could now focus on numerous skills balanced classes obviously huge huge huge benefit there consistent in instruction through those balanced classes and through the age appropriate learning environments and the teachers working together. All the teachers in that grade level working together to make sure that there's consistency in instruction, increased access to grade specific enrichment interventions, continuity of services during state testing. This one we this one we've been talking about recently. So state testing takes about six weeks and when that happens we need every single educational system on campus to help support this because some kids now K2 doesn't have state testing rates three through five have state testing when

113three through five are testing for that six week period we need all the educational assistance including the ones that also work with K2 students that would be resource room that would be title one Um, that would be our social emotional learning groups and and educational assistance because some kids also have in their plans things written like they need to be tested in a specific environment. They need to be tested one- on-one. They need somebody to read this question to them or that question to them. So, because of all those specific needs, we can't then provide all the services to the K2 students. So, you have the six to three week block time cutting the services for those other kids. This model ensures that our early literacy school doesn't have to stop services because we have

114to administer state testing. So that is a huge academic impact right there. It's six weeks of intervention and enrichment services for kindergarten, first grade, and seventh grade students. Additional differentiation walk groups talked about that. Did I hit that one okay for you? I put we put this on there. Majority teachers remain with their current grade level just so people understand that we are getting the best of the best from both schools together. >> What will that look like? Will teachers get [clears throat] to ask term in third grade or they just like how does that work? >> Like if we had if if their grade level assignment is kind of where we start all third grade teachers are all third grade teachers just like they are every year, right? That's their assignment. For whatever reason,

115that's a main concern in the teacher's comments when you read them is that they want to make sure that they stay with their grade. >> That's exactly the base starting point. They stay with their grade. Now, we also wanted to talk about preference. So, we so the secondary aspect then is let's look at what do teachers want to do. >> So, maybe somebody says, you know what, because sometimes you do need to change, you know, sometime maybe you've been teaching third grade for the past 10 years and you're like, you know, I could do something fresh. I need to do second grade. I want to do fifth grade. I want to get real grades in doing kindergarten. Um so, >> so then you put in your preference and then we could that could be the

116secondary factor. We look at that. Then we could look at seniority. So that's kind of how that process will work. But again, working with the union, working with the teachers so that we can ensure the best instruction for the students, what's best for students to help. >> Okay. for I mean we have an enrollment trend but I mean someone could say well have you done a study how's this going to impact this how's it going you know we don't know we don't know yeartoear what's going to happen if we do nothing we don't know who's going to go to an online charter school we don't know who's going to go to home school families make these decisions and I think as a school board you support that families have every right to make those decisions

117we don't ever want to take that away from families we believe they have the right they and they also have the right to come back because many Many of them do. Many people say, "I'm going to homeschool this year." And two months later they walk through the door and say, "You guys deal with this." So I mean I mean again and some families it works fantastically for them and and it's just a beautiful thing and and different children in the same family can respond differently to that. So sometimes you just don't know till you do it. So will people leave? We will people go just because of this? We don't know. But what we do know is in 2014 when many many people and we can go back dig up we could pull up a

118paper from that has comments from community forums and it looks like it's this. It I pulled some up the other day and I was like I didn't read this one yet. I didn't read this one. I was halfway through the page and then I realized this is from 2014. It was the exact same things that people were saying. They're not saying that anymore because right because this is what's happening. So um when that happened in 2014 the next year 40 kids we increased enrollment by 40. So so again I mean what happened in 2040 it didn't that's not why we increased by 40 but we increased by 40. Maybe it was I don't know maybe somebody got real excited about it and said this is what I've been waiting for and maybe they're waiting for

119this. It could happen. The reality is we don't know. But we also know we can mitigate that enrollment trend because we can take all the IDTs because that's something families around the area will know and get engaged in and say yes, I'm going to go to Northbend because I'll know in spring if I can go to Northbend and I've been wanting to go to Northbend, but when I call them, they say they're full. We won't be saying that. We'll be saying we are happy to accommodate you. we will make sure that the classes are not full and we will make sure that your child has a positive experience in Northbend. So that is how we will follow our Roma trends mitigate some of those concerns again just to quickly look at it again very fast

120talk about that a lot following configuration 2014 there it's 40 right there when I say 14 finance funding policy expansion of services students will same on minimal financial impact again same number of staff doubling the impact That is huge. Not increasing it. Pause. Clear communication. So because because we have to be so much more careful with the finances. Clear communication about financing for we do this. We communicate very clearly about financial forecasting. We do it in our budget committee meetings. We do it in our board meetings. We do it in our board packets. The information is there. The constraints, the trade-offs. We talk about this often. I know that um when we when I when I talk with union leadership, I talk about where we are. I talk about what's expected. I talk about what

121the legislator is doing because these are things we all are concerned about. And and the the great thing is that the you like we we're fortunate because you know our union works really well with our administrators and with our schoolboard. They just it's all a good a good um working mechanism. and higher up at the state level, you know, you get high enough up at the state level in these different organizations and uh the Oregon Education Association, KOSA, the Oregon School Board Association, they're all advocating for the same thing. They're all watching the financial trends. They're all watching what the legislaturator is doing and they're all then combining forces together to try to make sure the education funding stays stable. but they don't always win because there's so many other competing things going on in

122the state that also need funding too. So, um having that ability to work together and discuss this funding and have clear communication about it with our local um groups is is very beneficial. We will continue to do that. We will continue to do that with our school board. Aligning our budget to the reconfiguration. We know enrollment affects funding use of financial data informed not determined decision making. >> Hey, can we take five? >> Yes, we can return Nathan. Thank you my shall proceed. All right. So, final three areas, facility, boundary, staffing, capacity, workforce stability, equal access, and specialization were three areas that were also kind of identified with overarching themes. We have hit on all of these numerous times in presentations. So the information is on this presentation and if you are willing to watch

123one of the previous presentations and actually go through it and listen then you will see that these questions are being answered and they're outlined here so that we can also answer them if you have more questions based on what you're seeing because we want to make sure we're addressing these areas. Um so any any questions in those three areas from the board members? Is there something there that maybe you haven't heard or you're looking for more information on? Um, I don't know what category this would be, but the reconfiguration potentially open the door for more for maybe another music instructor or to get our music back to all the grades or Miss Massie and Miss Yester have some more help so they're not so tied up with >> Yeah, I do think that again bringing

124in the extra IDTS provides extra resources. So that 100% contributes that we we already recognize the the the problems that have resulted from this and so we're committed to fixing them and we also want that for our students. You know that that is an important service for them. So recognizing that having the ability to bring in extra items and also not having to add additional staff to increase to meet the increased needs of our students gives us the ability to then shift some resources that maybe we thought we had to put over here into that so that we can ensure that we can have that and then make it consistent because we are committed to doing that. >> You're committed whether we go this route or not. >> It will be a lot easier with

125this route. >> Okay. to make sure like I would say that that that we can 100% do it with this and make sure it happens. Um we will have to be a little bit more crafty and figure out where you know maybe we have to pull some resources from to make it happen either way but we do want to do it but we do want to do it. Yeah. >> Yeah. For multiple reasons but but primarily for the students first but also for the staff members involved. So um anything else up here members? Okay. And again this presentation will be made available on our district website. There were other options that came up from from community members uh such as move the middle school to North Bay. Quickly we looked at that found some barriers

126in doing that. Uh you know the shared staff the athletics uh North Ben uh North Bay facilities would require quite a sign significant investment to be able to do that. Uh so you it's very difficult to do that and to share some of those resources the high school with some of the middle school students that go across um you know they do take some classes at the high school and that would be difficult to do if you had them at North Bay. Some folks talked about a phase implementation. Why don't we do this over a time period? Do one grade at a time or maybe a couple grades at a time. Go. Boy, that would just blow transportation out of the water when we looked at it. It'd be very difficult to do. logistical issues

127in there and it really doesn't address the balance of class sizes that are facing us in those periods now. >> And then we're talking about anxiety every year through the implementation phase because now we're moving staff every year. We're moving students every year. So that creates more that's doing a reconfiguration every year. We need to do the reconfiguration in order. >> And they talked about different grade configur reconfigurations. You know, doing a K3 and a 46. Really the middle school's pretty stable right now. And eventually they're going to see declining enrollment as we move through and there's not a need to do that. We've talked about looking at sixth grade at the middle school and doing something a little bit different there potentially down the road maybe a phased in elementary model. Uh taking a

128look at that as we move forward. >> No room for growth under this either. >> No, there isn't. That would fill both schools completely the capacity to do that. And then we've talked about a K4 and a 58. Uh you know again uh there really wouldn't be room to do that. it it would require some significant changes uh and and it just doesn't feasibility of doing that. >> We've already done the five through eight before we we had the fifth and sixth graders at the middle school and then we're dealing with the fifth and sixth graders, the seventh and eighth graders >> and there's no capacity to do it, right? >> And then secondly, bro, now we're reconfiguring again. So this is again that that same concept of redrawn boundaries every few years. Now we're

129reconfiguring every few years. We've looked at these ideas in depth. They don't work. and to build a new school in town. That's just, you know, nobody's going to vote for a levy right now. Bond, >> a bond, a bond's not going to happen, >> even longer, right? Five years bond, we're talking 20 years. >> Bonds came up for to for vote recently. >> Twice one passed. >> So, if those had passed, potentially this wouldn't be happening or maybe not yet, but they didn't pass. So, now here we are. >> Right. >> Okay. Well, that bond was I mean we're going to build a new school with that bond. >> No, it wasn't even the maximum and it was identified as one of the things we could have done um that the minimum cost was like

130$60 million and which by now would have gone up significantly. But so then a whole bunch of other things were identified through the community form. I guess I just bring that up because I know the public >> has repeatedly brought that up and I think it's good for them to know that this >> was not out of nowhere that like there were options that maybe would have >> I don't know maybe prolonged the way things were now or >> whatever and that that's what has brought us here so it wasn't just something that just popped up overnight because I hear that a lot they want a building school well if pass that's never going to be an option so >> no we could never afford to do is that's the current state system. And again,

131I encourage people to advocate at the state level to change these types of systems because we can't change them alone. That is a problem in all school districts. We shouldn't be paying to rebuild schools when when we need to. Our schools, you know, are old. This this is a whole another issue. We know we're not going to pass a bond, >> right? >> So, any more on this one? >> Nope. >> Another one that keeps coming up, emergencies. What's going to happen in emergencies? Well, it right now the in last year all the emergency responses to North Bay it says 6 to8 it was about seven minutes I mean we got the actual data >> 67 68 minutes all of our interview responses except there were two outliers which are totally different scenarios but that's

132not a bad response time for being outside of J that's an average response time in a town that is out out of town and rural areas usually that doubles. That is a really good response time. Part of that has to do with the fact there's three fire departments. There's hower fire department right next door and then there's another fire department a few miles down the road south and another one up in Lakeside. There was emergency response in the area. That is a that is a fact and we can see it here in this response. The other thing is our Hazard Fire Department partnership. A lot of people don't know about this partnership and it goes back a long one ways. School district donated the land for the Hower Fire Department to build that firehouse. Fun

133fact, if they ever move and they're rebuilding it, if they ever move or or consolidate with another fire department, that building comes back to the school district. We get to keep it. So, that is a benefit, too. But in the meantime, just so we know, we've always had a we have a code access to get into the building. The fire department doesn't need to be there for us to access it. So in the event of an emergency, we have access to the building, we have access to radio communication, ham radio communication. Now, last year when the tsunami drill happened, it was the it was not a drill, right? But everybody panicked because it's it looked like it was real. Communication did not go down. >> Just so everybody's clear that the bridge did not panic.

134>> The bridge people might have panicked. Public >> I panicked. staff did. Staff did not staff handed it amazingly well. Amazingly well. And and the district leadership handled it amazingly well. And I'm not complimenting that. It's because we were at Eugene at a conference. So administrators that were on site did extremely well handling that under that very stressful situation because families were terrified. And I understand why they press none of our schools are in the tsunami zone. Now the high school now this this yellow is local earthquake. a big one. This is like a 9.0. This kind this information is available on many websites. It's also comes to us from our fire department and we met with them about emergency response. This is a local earthquake and the tsunami. But we're talking about a 9.0

135and a tsunami is the yellow. This right here is the high school. It shows the water line going right up to the to the door of the high school, right up to the to the multi-ervice room. That's a complete unknown, right? I mean, we're talking 9.0 now here and the tsunami happening. So, but look at North Bay up here. Hillrest obviously is up on the hill. They're safe from that. So, if you know obviously it's a big earthquake. There's going to be other things going on, but the the building is safe. I mean, the students are safe on the hill. North Bay sitting out here pretty North Bay is in a really safe safe spot. North Bay is not in a flood zone. It's not in this the the tsunami zone. It's not in I

136mean an earthquake could happen anywhere, but we have access to this building. We have access to ham radio. We have access to satellite Wi-Fi in the building. They have a generator. Some of this is being rebuilt obviously and they are rebuilding it. And there's also already a a trailer like office station there for dispatching for some of this other equipment. It's a cert center and they're expanding this capacity as a certified emergency response team to help increase their ability to respond locally within the community and school district right next door. So, this is all part of our partnership with them, which is an amazing resource. The students are safe in an event if it happens. Seismic retrofit, $2.4 million grant. We're going to retrofit the gym, which also lines up with our kitchen and our

137boiler room. So, that keeps a nice safe dry facility with all our schools have all our schools have one to two weeks of food kept on site. So, North Bay if something happens if there was a delay. Now there's multip there are other ways to get around. By the way, count the bridges in town. Count how many bridges you really drive across. Lots of them. If a earthquake and tsunami happens, a lot of these little bridges are going down here. There's going to be a lot of transportation problems. These students out here have access to cert supplies to one to two weeks of of food. That doesn't mean they're going to be out there for one two weeks. Somebody panicked last night. That's not the point of this. The point of it is there are

138resources there and they're very prepared. We are very prepared to respond to this. Um seismic retrofit again all schools have one all north school buildings outside of three fire departments on the bridge. Waterfall clinic is another one health center on site. So uh there's a slide on here on the benefits of the schoolbased health center. So you can review that >> school focus quickly. >> Sure. Yes. Um, I guess I just to kind of recap, Tim had talked about kind of like branding the schools, kind of looking at some of that. So, we kind of focused in on K2 being the early literacy skills and numeracy. You've got um, you know, your skills, talking about foundational, functional, adaptive skills as opposed to our 35 school that would be focusing on lagging skills and social skills

139building. When we look at our K2 school, we would focus on handwriting and fine motor development and writing readiness. And then as we look at 35, that focus on writing continues, but we add in keyboarding skills and more of those technological skills. We want to focus on art, music, PE, library. In PE, we talk about movement and being more play-based. When we talk about it at the at the uh 35 school, we talk about it being a little bit more maybe athletic or game based or sport or uh team sports based. So um I won't break this slide. I just wanted to kind of give a high level overview that we do have a vision for each of these schools having a focus having um a a sense of identity um in each of them

140um and science. By the way, as you recall, $15,000 dedicated to a trail system in our forest out there in addition to another chunk of money we have from a from a tribal grant that will help us expand that and make it also an outdoor learning experience for science. So again a a branding of the schools developmentally appropriate academics supports and play and enrichment on both schools that the staff members and families will help build with us. So we also have we've talked about lots of reasons why this is urgent why this should happen now. We need to be proactive. We need to make sure that in a st defining enrollment in a time when budgets are shifting when we still have a bunch of things coming our way from HR1 that are going to

141affect the state how are we going to ensure and maximize our resources and be do it in a proactive way not just keep trying to struggle to catch up that's a reason why we need to do this now so we're established for that but we also have another very important reason >> um inviting me up to >> I am inviting Hey Joe, I sent you an email. >> So polite. >> Oh, could you pull up? >> Uh, actually there's a an image I'd like to show you some numbers that will be especially important to anybody who has a child in fourth grader. >> Maintenance. Don't you have a fourth grader? I do. two fourth graders. No, fourth gra fourth grader and >> oh fourth three fourth graders fourth graders that's a pop [laughter] >> I

142can sit at one of those desks. >> Oh, so recently I had a a reminder of my former life at the high school where I I loved being at the high school. I love being at Northway. I I saw a post I had put in uh a few years back uh my during my last year at the high school where I was digging through the trash looking for an allegedly marijuana laced cupcake and I was beginning [clears throat] to question my life choices. And so it's great to be back at the elementary level, but the high school is a great but there was no marijuana in the cupcake. I think they gave me a false >> clue just to see me digging through the trash. Anyway, so that >> actually we we had the SRL

143come and take a look at that. >> So, uh, while I was at the high school though, um, I learned quite a bit about what it takes to be a comprehensive high school. uh because during the pandemic when we were forced to change the way we're delivering instruction, we had that one primary goal of maintaining our position as the the jewel crown jewel of North Bend School District and the premier comprehensive high school on the coast. And so we we did some drilling to to figure out what it took. Couple key indicators that are hallmarks of a comprehensive high school include a 4-year uh foreign language program or at least a 2-year program so that the majority of your students can have the option of going to the 4-year college of their choice because that's

144required at many four-year colleges. And additionally uh you want to have advanced math which includes pre-calc and calculus because without those classes students do not have an equitable opportunity for success in the the true sciences at a at a four-year college. Um additional factors come into play but but those are those are some of the big ones. Uh if you take our roll up in enrollment over here uh column A we've got the grades currently column B the current enrollment and then in these uh rectangles going up it's it's the size of the high school over the next several years. So uh down in column C at the bottom 598 that's our current high school uh high school enrollment. As we move over to 2034 we can see we drop down below 503. And just

145to let you know, consistently each year, we've been a few students under what we projected the high school to be. We're just because there's so many opportunities being offered out there. Our our high school continues to decline in enrollment from, you know, when I first got there, we were over 800 to now we're under 600. So, that impacts programs. I had a big long list of uh former dual enrollment classes that we offered that that now we can't offer because we don't have enough students. And there's a few of our CTE pathways that we can no longer offer because we just don't have enough students. But I won't go into those right now. I'm just going to focus on these two issues because I don't want to keep keep you here all night. But it's

146the language program even very important to use. So non non-heritage language programs and also uh math. So I I did some studies on on uh how many students typically enroll in foreign languages and then metriculate yeartoear in order to maintain um the critical mass to keep your teachers in place. Uh the smaller your school gets the more precipitously or dramatic the drop in enrollment in those advanced classes becomes. And it has nothing to do with how good the teacher is. It has to do with scheduling opportunities. Once you get down to where there there's a lack of flexibility in your schedule because you have only one possible place you can put a class, people are going to have limited opportunities. So if you look at this, the question was asked last night, why the urgency

147of now? The majority of requests for IDTS happen when kids are in the elementary grades. So next year's fifth grade is would be the first year that had the opportunity for the expanded opportunities at IDTS that this reconfiguration would happen. So that's this year's fourth grade students. So why is that important? Because those are the students who would be graduating in 2034. And if we don't increase enrollment by then, they're going to be graduating at a year where we will have had a challenging time maintaining advanced math classes because under 500 it's it's really hard and we will have had several years of a very fragile opportunity to offer the advanced foreign language classes. So, if you want your your children to have the freedom to pursue rigorous sciences at the 4-year college of their

148choice, you want a comprehensive high school. You want to maintain the availability of these advanced classes. Not to mention the college level biology classes, um, our advanced physics, advanced chemistry, our college level US history, our I mean, we have so many amazing dual credit opportunities we offer right in our building with with our teachers, you know, giving dual credit. You lose those opportunities as your student population drops because you you have to address the basics. There's a standard level of service. uh all of the high school accreditation um agencies cog I think we use Cogna right now. So so the advanced math and advanced languages they are part of their um their accreditation rubric. So you want to have those programs it becomes increasingly difficult to offer those programs as our student population the high

149school goes down. So if you want the student population at the high school to stay I mean really the target is 800 or 792 if you can keep 792 to 800 kids that's that magic zone where where you can have a robust program below that you start to lose programs which is exactly what's happened here. Okay. So, um, but if you want to have the opportunity to keep that comprehensive program and grow it, potentially grow it, the time to make the changes now because the fifth graders next year would be the first group to get that that bump of opportunity for increase of IDTS that we believe will come with this and and it's consistent that folks from the region want to come to Northbend >> IETS, >> interd district transfers. show up. Okay. >>

150And and by the way, the IDT students, people say, "Oh, those are tough kids." No, they're great kids because if they don't behave, they don't get to stay. We have some leverage, you know, to to help them follow the expectations. So, this this is why it's so urgent like if if we make this decision as a district now, we can start bringing students in and it will and elementary is where the the growth impact is. So, our current fourth graders, those students that would be in fifth grade next year, won't have to face graduating in class of 503 where it's really going to be fragile as to whether or not they're comprehensive. And our current third graders won't have to face that magic number under four 450 where I mean it they will have to

151make choices about where they want to go to school if they want to have the opportunity to have the highest level of college admission or the highest level college that they can be admitted to because of the advanced science, advanced math, and advanced language programs. And it's possible they could still get it by dual enrollment at the college. But but the number of credits we can offer at the college is impacted by how many students we have in the high school. As your student population goes down, you can offer fewer credits or you you are compensated less money for offering those dual credit classes at the at the college. So it's not wide open where you can take whatever you want. There's a limited number of credits available based on your student population. So you

152you have fewer credits you can offer if your population drops. So that's why I I believe there's a sense of urgency. I love our school. I you know whatever as a as a team you guys decide you know I can support as the principal at at North Bay and I'll be honored to to do whatever you guys decide. But as somebody who loves the high school also and who has grandchildren in this community and more grandchildren who keep talking about or whose parents keep talking about moving back. I want my family to have the opportunity to go to the comprehensive high school that that Northbend has offered for decades that has so many amazing choices. My youngest son graduated from there. His son is born here and used to live in in North Bay's attendance

153area. They're in Ecuador now. I'd love for them to come back and have North Bay or North Bend as an opportunity for his high school. I'd love to come back and go to North Bay cuz that's love to see my grandkid more. But but this high school is a draw to me personally as well as professionally. And that's all I have to say. I don't know if you guys want to run these numbers or have check for >> it's fantastic information. I mean it really drives the conversation home. When we when we accept the IETS and we get the requests in elementary they stay with us. When the kids are older you get less IT requests. So this is a critical moment to address this because we can start building this class up so we

154don't lose these services in the future. So it's not just about now. It's not just about the current Bill Northbase students. It's about the success of future Northbend students and the school district. >> That's it. >> All right. >> Yeah. So any any discussion you guys have questions? >> I have a comment and I hope it comes out right. I know Hillrest probably has a lot of teachers, but in reading the staff comments, I'm appalled that these are the people that are teaching and modeling for children. These comments about our students and the staff at North Bay are sick. And I am so offended by it that it it pushes me even more to see the need to put those teachers with the North Bay teachers where they can learn some kindness. I actually have

155a comment in lane with that. Um, I've heard similar chatter and read a lot of responses both online and in person and this and that and I was a little shocked and not just because just the fact that people feel free to speak about children that way. Um, of course I don't like that they talk about the staff, but it's for me it's even more intense when you're talking about children in in a unkind way. Um, but also comparing that to my experience at North Bay with three of my four children who have attended there doesn't make sense. It's not my personal reality. I'm in that school literally every single day. Mr. Johnson sees my face every single day. I have to walk Jojo to class every day. And I have never seen anything but

156kindness and camaraderie around the kids. I mean, Jonah doesn't like to hug people, but he's made like three friends who he allows to give him a hug. That's huge. Nora and all those little kids in when that hallway, anybody new that just gets there and they're all hey and they give each other hugs and how are you and they're there's so much love there between the kids and the staff and it breaks my heart and I would like to believe that it's a small percentage of people who happen to be loud but even if that's not the case I would encourage the public to visit North Bay more um to interact more with the families from North Bay. We live over here in airport hides, but we drive the bridge every day, twice a day

157to get my kids there. And if the reconfiguration goes through, I think one of the things I hope most is the community sees our children not as North Bay kids and Hillrest kids, but as just our kids. These are just our kids. And if they're having an issue um or whatever, the first question is where did they come from? It doesn't matter where they came from. these are our kids and our responsibility to take care of them. Um, and I think that at an adult level, if we demonstrate that behavior and that narrative and it trickles down to the kids, then not only are we going to have happier kids and happier teachers and have a well hopefully they stay here because they've had a good experience and they and then they serve along each

158other in the communities, the grocery stores, the hospital, the teachers, whatever that is. And they've built that comp. They don't have to be they don't all have to be best best friends, but there's some kind of thing of like I've grown up with you and I've seen you and you see them more as a human and I I would really love and ask the adults who may have been spreading this kind of narrative to remind themselves that these are children and they're humans first and you know see them as children. And that's the biggest thing I hope to come out because like Anna, it's it's been very upsetting cuz you're not just talking about whatever like my kids go there. Are you talking about my children? You've never met my children. >> How do they

159teach us? >> And I've met all these other kids and they're all great, too. Like I don't understand how that teaches to problem solve when they write things like 80% accuracy. We couldn't tell by middle school which kids come from Northbend or Hillrest based on their behaviors. Northbend, out at North Bay, the administration doesn't hold kids accountable. They write this stuff >> and there's no there's no positive to that. There's no problem solving. This is negative hate. >> And these aren't the people who should be modeling for our children. This stuff is mean. It's also baseless. I've never seen information to support those claims. >> Well, and children are little sponges. All of the adults that are saying this about the children, they are consuming that. >> And if they hear it, they buy it.

160>> And are they teachers saying that? >> Yeah, it's in our notebook. the words that they wrote on their survey specifically from Hillrest teachers that say hateful stuff about North Bay staff and kids. And for me, I know we're talking about the reconfiguration, but >> almost at a crisis level, I feel like we need some training for those those staff. >> You you can't model for children when you're willing to write this hate in here. >> That's that's hateful. >> Yeah. Whether this goes through or not, that has to that has to change. >> It's appalling. It's not okay. Yeah, it's not. Even some of the parents who were really angry and not nice didn't say stuff this bad. >> I have two things to say. One was last night, um I don't remember who

161told me, but there were a group of kids that you guys said could go back. They were at North Bay and they were given permission to go back to Hillrest and they chose to stay at North Bay. That says something. >> It does. >> Okay, that's the first thing. And then the second thing is um not under the community survey verbatim transcription tagged by category and you go through each one and the first question is what potential benefits do you see in a dedicated K through2 school and dedices was none none none none none that means that they're not even open-minded to listen and try to understand where the district is coming from. It's all emotional and self and selfish >> about their specific situation because almost 50% of the kids are coming from over

162from this side of the bridge to go over. It's just not them. >> And I I just find it really um I don't know what the word is >> disheartening >> to say none. >> Yeah. Because even if you disagree, >> you you should be able to come up with >> with things that are positive to anything that we're doing. I disagree with a lot of things, but I can still find a positive about it. >> And so for them to just say none, it it's like there's no open-mindedness. And those are the people who are the loudest. >> And it's it's yeah very disrupting. >> So >> change is difficult. Change is always difficult. People don't like change. people fight change. Um, and we saw that 2014 here as we're talking about the uh

163the the reaction we were getting from a certain group of individual they were advertally affected. Um, you know, as long as the teachers are willing to teach, we have two great facilities, Hillrest and we have North Bend and uh great >> great teachers at both. Pardon me. >> And great teachers at both. >> Right. I was gonna say great teachers at both. And there's probably going to be some from Hillrest that go over North Bend. Maybe some from North Bend then go over to Hillrest. And they're all going to learn what great facilities they both have there. And and they should have frankly already know. Um I would imagine you know that they would visit each other's school occasionally. Um but change is difficult and I understand people's anger um and that knee-jerk reaction you're

164talking about here. um that that they don't want to change. My concern more has always been uh the transportation issue and talking great length about transportation. I remember my kids um I have two seniors. Um we were living up um up the hill. Oh, I'd say probably about 3/4 of a mile to a mile from probably 3/4 of a mile from uh the middle school. And they they took the bus a couple times. took them 45 minutes to get to school. They started to walk and it took them 20 minutes. So, they didn't take a bus anymore. Um, unless it rained. But, uh, anyway, that's a problem. That was a concern I had. And, um, I am concerned that that, you know, 45 minutes is a long time for little kids on the bus. And,

165um, as much as we want to make it a wonderful experience, reality quite often riding in the bus is not a lot of fun. And especially when you have some kids are misbehaving. That's a concern, but that's a reality, frankly, whether we do a transition, a reconfiguration or not. Um, there's going to be longer long bus rides or long brushes. Now, we're trying to obviously the intent here is to shorten them as much as possible. And and again, that's the main issue I have is the the transportation issue and how long kids are on the bus, what time they get to school or that kind of thing. How easy is it to get phone? Um, but I mean the safety thing doesn't seem like I mean tsunami hits it it's going to be a problem

166anyway you look at it and we have the facilities and resources around the community to um to aid them as best as you possibly can under the circumstances. So that's and whether we have reconfiguration or not we're going to have kids at North Bay. We're gonna have kids at Hillrest. Um, so that doesn't concern me that much. And if we can devote more resources, more I guess more focused resources on the kids at the K2 level and more focused resources from 3 to 5 u at different schools, it makes sense. And and I remember well I don't have to hate to listen. You guys might not like this, but I was on a on a committee uh probably 25 30 years ago when my older kids were um at uh in the CS Bay School

167District and that was one of the things we were talking about, one of the things that was implemented. I remember there was uh Ma Madison, not Madison, excuse me, Miloma and Sunset and they both had seven, I think 6, seven, eight. They decided to make one a 56 and the other seven eight. And that's the way they're doing it today. people didn't some people didn't like it worked fine and actually work to to benefit um so these kind of things are hard but um sometimes in the long run they're they're they're real advantage and you know I still got to think about it I want to look these things over more so but I'm inclined to go that route I've talked about someone Come on, bro. You got to explain. That's [laughter] >> just happy

168to be here. >> Yeah, just happy to be here. Um, well, I personally have have a problem with people thinking they're better than other people because they're from one area to another area. No. We've all come here the same way and I think we need to make sure or do our very best to encourage respect >> and just like what you had said just common courtesy. Um and it seems to me other than the busing that was my concern too. Hey, we got to have this busing issue. Correct. Um, are we talking about what's convenient for the parents or what's best for the kids? >> A lot of the responses that I'm hearing and seeing is a lot what's convenient for the parents. And I'm not putting that down. I understand that. That is a

169reality. However, we are here to serve what's best for the students >> in the long run. And that has to be the decision that we all have to be thinking about here uh when we make when we make this decision. But regardless of what we do or don't do, you're going to have some people mad and some people not. >> You can't get around it. So again, we fall back what's best for the kids >> and everybody else. I'm sorry. You'll just have to get over it. >> Okay, put that back up. >> There we go. [laughter] >> Yeah, good education and a good experience. >> That's what the main focus is for for the board. >> My turn. So, I I talked a bit last night at the forum, you know, about, you know,

170why I ran for school board, why it's important to me, and where I think we're getting with this. And I I will say through this discussion and I've struggled with this personally is is that um you know I'm trying to really develop empathy for all these parents that are upset with the change because I I in some way you know a while ago when I first heard about this and it affects my kids both being at Hillrest you know um you know my first thought like oh what do we think you know but I've had time to think about it I've been able to learn about, you know, what's to come from this. And while I get there's a lot of concerns for the families that will be affected at both Hillrest and North Bay,

171though I feel like most of what I'm hearing is the Hillrest families is who I'm hearing it from. You know, it's being a parent isn't easy. I mean, I you have to reorder your life. There's a lot of trade-offs. Um, your priorities change. There's a lot of stress. So, I get that. But, you know, just in the last, you know, my oldest kid is is nine, you know, almost 10, nine years old. So, I've only been doing this for 10 years, and I still, you know, have had a lot of struggles, but I've been able to get through them. This is another struggle that the parents are going to be able to get through. It may not be fun. It may not be what they want, but guess what? We'll get through this. And you

172know at the other end of this is what I'm hoping is when I first started volunteering by you know joining the strate strategic planning committee and you know sitting there and going through all these meetings I remember the end I spent a lot of time so did all the volunteers doing that. I was like okay we had this great plan now what you know are we going to see anything happen? Are we going to implement this? Are we going to use our ideas to make North Ben you know a better school district? Are we actually going to see anything come of this? And that was my biggest question. And you know later when I was on school board and talking you know to Vince and Tim yes that is the direction we're going in. They're

173very serious about this and I believe that this is a step forward where we can go and just even improve on what we have and you know we're never going to make everyone happy. And I really think that that the time of change is where we're going to have the most opposition and you know the most people being upset and you know there's certain things about it. some people, yeah, it's going to suck, you know, but we're going to be able to get through it and make it work and we're going to try and do the best we can to make it better. This is, you know, what we go through. >> Um, and, you know, I've heard a lot of people listen to me talk and say, "Oh, she has her mind made up."

174I know with what I know now what what my position is. I'm not the type of person that if, you know, someone came to me with this information, that was a total game changer that I'm just stuck there. But I I've taken a lot of consideration, a lot of time to develop what I think about this and and so yes, I mean I I'm not like stubborn in that position, but I have not been given any information to make me think that I am not following the right path. So >> yeah, you haven't said much. >> I tried to and then I broke down. No, I just um my my biggest concern for all of this was the transportation, the parents ability to get their kids to school. I don't I mean I I ran

175on I want to see enrollment increased and I want to see kids actually in school. Just because enrollment is high doesn't necessarily mean the kids are in the school. >> Um and I know that it can be a barrier like if um I know that there are some kids out there where their parents drop them off at school and they just walk away. the kids don't actually go to school. The parents thought they did, but they didn't. Um, and so transportation, it's it's always going to be a big part. And so, I just I thought that that was really important. And I I really I love to see us putting those things into the RCP or whatever it's called, right? or sorry I have over time. Um but I I like seeing that we can

176put that like that step in there bust no more than 45 minutes like trying to accommodate parents like you guys can drop your kids off at Hillrest and then one can go on to North Bay. Like it it I feel like that's good problem solving for the issues we keep hearing about. Um and then I just I people need to remember like the community needs to remember children are sponges. They hear everything. They internalize it and it corrods with them. And so when we call them like the schools that they go to it was a bad school. They internalize that and they grow up with that feeling and it's not okay. Leave it at that. >> Thank you. You're right. It's not. And I thinking and staff members that are completely honest will say that

177they've heard this before too. And I know that that it's it's easy to be a bit defensive and and and not acknowledge it, but the reality is in this district, you have heard it and it's not fair. It's not fair to the staff at at North Bay or the students or the families that are there. Um it is not okay. And this is an opportunity to bring the community together in one unified district and build off of the best we have from both schools and improve the services we provide to our students under the limited resources we have available. Yet we have very powerful resources and and we can make this very successful and we have the team of educators that can do this. And this is why we want a few board members on

178the the RFP scoring committee for transportation because, you know, we want you to also see, hey, this is what these companies are promising. This is how we're going to solve these problems. And I think that that then the board can help communicate that when we make the decision on which company that we decide toward the contract to. Um, as you stated, many of the statements, many of the responses when and and you see it in the and we've seen it in the forums, we've seen it in the responses and the surveys when there's this immediate shutdown in every single area and you only want to give a list of of of emotions. That's not the reason to not do this. It is real and I acknowledge those emotions and and they mean something. They mean

179something to all of us. We don't want people to feel upset, but our mission, our job is to educate all the students in Northbend to create a better society and create a better future for the students. And they all deserve to feel empowered on that path and and not feel that there's a difference between the two schools. And this eliminates that difference. It eliminates the economic disparities of the schools and it brings the students together which provides them more and more opportunities. And when people respond emotionally, they say things on paper that are hurtful and and not kind. And it I want to acknowledge it's not a reflection of all of our staff members. It's not a reflection of all the community members. It's the ones that are most emotionally impacted that are responding in

180this way and they're letting that come out and we're seeing what is underneath in in some of these cases. It's not all of our staff members, but it's enough for us to recognize that this is another reason that we can help as a school board and as a district administration make this district better and make this community stronger by doing something like this. And I think you've all said very, very proud proud. I'm reading the sticker. Very, very wise statements tonight. And I really appreciate your guidance and leadership through this, >> Carol. Oh, that's my signal. >> That's your signal. I'm supposed to stop talking. >> I'm gonna jump in before Michelle wraps. So, um, sorry. [clears throat] >> Um, I have worked now uh with everybody for some time. Uh, some of you less

181and more with others. Uh, and one of the things that is um, oh, I don't know. I I think it's uh, well, whatever. Uh, [laughter] it's that school board members aren't really doing their homework. >> Oh, yeah. >> Okay. Um, that we don't weigh everything. We don't re and I mean everything that has been very um [clears throat] piped in the public and you you know they come out with the torches and they want to burn down your house you know that's not true. Uh each and every one of us donate a lot of time, a lot of effort and uh a lot of commitment to really making the best decision we can make for the well-being of the kids and um just because we are being recorded. I I like to put that out

182there. You you can believe what you want to believe that's fine. But as far as saying that um any one of these schoolboard members or the staff that's here are not doing their best to make the best decision based on the information they've got and the reality of what is I'm sorry you're wrong and u yeah we can be voted out. Well, come on, run for school board. You know, get off your butt because most of them are right in there for quacking away, but you don't see them running when it's election time. Okay? It's it's not an easy task, but you know, we each and every one of us have made the commitment to do it, and I'm proud of each and every uh one of the members here and the staff. And uh

183it it's unfortunate that that's the view that some people have. They can have it. Uh but uh they're wrong. Michelle, >> I just want to say um one of the things that I did respond to somebody today um because one of the concerns is just with the kids and their emotional stability, moving schools and and and so forth. And I want to say kids are more resilient than we give them credit for. >> And they feed off of the emotions of the parents. And so if the parents can be positive >> about something that they can do hard things, >> kids can do hard things. They can be resilient. And and I I guess I mean I I told Tim earlier today I went to six grade schools, three middle schools and three and two

184high schools. Okay. I went to 12 schools before I graduated from high school. >> Yeah. >> I survived and I made a [laughter] What did you say? >> Now you understand. >> Here I am on the school board. Um and now I've lived in Northbend for 26 years. So my kids have the stability of the same of the same but I did not. And and but you know what? I learned a lot of things do going through all those schools. I learned flexibility. I learned a whole lot of things. And a a child who is moving with his entire his or her entire class to another building is not the same as me moving around constantly to a different school in a different state in a different, you know, district and so forth. And I'm

185okay even with what I did. And so kids are resilient and and I know that it's going to be hard if this passes. >> But um we have we as a school board, we have to look at not just individual families and what's convenience for them. But we have to look at what's what what is best for the district right now, but also for the future, >> right? >> And and and moving forward. And so we have to look past the emotions of of the current families and and what is best for for us going forward. >> Right on. Yes. >> Here. Anybody else have anything to comment? I I just was looking at our our uh uh our plan uh uh certification plan and said our promise our promise is every Northbend student is

186known, valued and supported on their path to high school graduation and future success. And that applies to those from Hillrest and it applies to the homes of North Ben. And if this configuration goes forward, we're not going to have to sit around and talk about North Bend and Hillrest and who's better or who is worse because they're all going to go to North B, excuse me, North Bay and they're all going to go to Hillrest. I think that's >> the more I more I hear from you guys and the more I hear reading some of these comments, that's a good thing. And I will add too, you know, we are when we're talking about, you know, the transportation issues in the Budying, and I know this has been brought up over and over again, but

187I just sometimes I feel like I just want to make this clear. There's already a number of families in the city of North that pass the bridge that are already dealing with this every single day and have been for the last 10 years. >> Not only that is, you know, and I'm not saying we do the other thing, but it shows that we would like that that even get greater over time, right? Um, so it's just all the busy. >> So, so is it is it, you know, so what makes sense? Does it make sense, you know, that everyone I mean we get all these benefits from doing the realignment and then everyone just, you know, three years at one school and three years at another or that we just have these certain select families

188that live in this area, you know, busing out there and and to me, I mean, it's kind of a no-brainer. Don't we just spread it across? We we we take care of the whole district, not just certain families. And not no one family is better than another. And I think we need to treat them the same and give them all the same advantages. And to me, that's really important. >> So, >> well, with that, why don't we close this meeting? How's that? >> All right.