001okay hmm click hmm hey i can hear you jim all right good good hi mary hello you i think we're going to be good tonight yeah it's looking good so far and i was panicking there for a minute yep we're already streaming on live tube but i'm not worried about it we can just you know have everybody move forward to the meeting when it gets time sure sounds good um you c okay running screaming outside my office did you say screaming oh yeah but i don't i can't really see anything so nothing to see here so i have not received any information from stephen or spencer that they're not coming so stephen's coming i i talked to him a little bit ago he said he'd see me see me tonight so see if i received
002anything i don't see anything okay i make it uh 6 p.m okay 6 p.m we ready to get started yes nice i can hear you okay i got a external microphone i love having a microphone so all right we will call to order it is uh february 17th work session and we'll have a roll call what do we see i see eric gleason christina simpson julie thies and mary shilling and myself uh currently we don't yet have steve ryan and spencer gordon but we can hope that they will be soon joining uh item two approval of the agenda i don't have any additional items but there was a request to move the elliott state forest to the first item that we talked about because we have uh jane stebbins there this evening and who is
003going to give us uh some guidance on the elliot and uh i don't see her signed in yet jim oh okay i thought she might be there in person with you guys but no i did too okay oh there's spencer i just heard from steve and he's gonna join us here should be shortly hey can you guys hear me okay perfect i couldn't hear you guys for a little bit so i just want to make sure okay with that uh is there a motion to approve the agenda i'll go ahead and make that motion motion all right uh i think what we'll do uh jane stebbins will be joining hopefully here in a little bit and she was going to give us an opinion on the uh oregon advocates for state trust lands if there
004was any liability to us to join so with that um i will move on to the agenda item three district goals and strategic planning process uh we talked briefly about this uh and i wanted to uh start the process i'm going to let kevin talk in a little bit there is a strategic planning process i don't know that it's formalized but uh you know it's going to be for us to put together some priorities and goals for the school district it'll be probably several that'll take over several other work sessions um and probably involve some other folks some some other stakeholders and uh but tonight is the first step in the process and what i would like to do tonight is spend some time uh brainstorming from the board some of the major buckets that
005you guys uh or major items priorities that we ought to uh have as priorities and goals for the school district and uh before i get going i'll let kevin do you want to talk a little bit about the the planning pro the strategic planning process this is this is definitely some work that we need to do we have a we have a strategic plan that um had a few different items that i inherited and then we've been really dealing with the pandemic and and i think i i had really part of my objective this year was to to engage in a more formalized process and really get this process rolling district-wide um beginning again i think it's really important that the board is interested in this process involved in it and so i think this
006is good to kind of get some preliminary some work and some direction and so that really is around what what do you start to see as some major items and then i think if we have a little bit of a conversation about a process and stakeholders um and kind of a way we kind of maybe map that out and i can come back with that and formalize that with a recommendation on some process that would take i'm guessing you know probably the course of the next year right so a year from now we would really have a much more solidified strategic plan that we'd be presenting reaffirm our district mission and vision really have very clear priorities for the district have strategies that we're looking at very clear articulated goals so that's this is again
007i think really kind of beginning of that process um what you the document that you have was really developed more by me listening to our our our stakeholders through the student success planning so one of the things that we were required to do when we looked at the student investment account on the corporate activity tax that was passed a number of years ago was to engage more people around hey we're getting some additional funding how should you spend those funds and so out of that process we one develop the plan but two i kind of said well this is what i'm hearing that become that are beginning to emerge as priorities and started to try to articulate what that might look like to give us a little bit more direction one just me direction and
008then as sort of a starting point as we begin this process and engaging more stakeholders down the road so that's that's kind of what you saw today okay thanks kevin uh so i you know i hate starting with a blank sheet of paper so kevin had done this prior work and there's uh four priorities on there and then there's uh some more specific goals within those priorities and i'll i'll just read them over and uh i'm not gonna go into a lot of detail probably except uh maybe the first one priority number one educational excellence uh gosh i thought that was a great one kevin and i thought it was uh yeah i liked uh some of the goals that were the goals that were in there and i thought you know that's uh you
009know that's really the role of the school district is uh educational um i like that um moving on priority number two multiple pathways to student success uh i thought that was a very good one also and i think what for me what that brought in is the career technical education and really that uh you know when a student graduates from north bend um you know he's really hopefully he's got a plan and he's ready to launch into either a college a career technical education or work uh and then item three attending to the social emotional health of students and then item four was non-discrimination in our schools uh did just to open it up to other brainstorm for other buckets did did any of the board members have some uh priorities that came to mind
010for them that you they think that we should be working on or consider developing this process i have a question under priority number one under i'm not really sure what embedded secondary mathematics professional development maybe kevin can explain that one to me we are currently working with uh professional development we have a we have a professional development person that comes but they actually do some work in the classroom so they're actually seeing teachers in work in in the classroom t instructing um they do some sample lessons with with our math instructors and then there's some outside professional development that's occurring so that has been occurring throughout this school year okay yeah i had i had one and it's kind of woven in and one of them's uh a priority that i'd like to see and
011there is performance metrics and you know just to describe it a little bit that would be the the district will publish on the north bend school district website performance metrics for all grades and that would be state assessment testing whatever other local testing and some of it's mentioned as part of the uh priority number one educational uh excellence and you know the intent is that uh by doing by having metrics we know we know how we're doing we know what we're doing well and we know what we need to work on and uh you know i'd love to have that to be very visible you know uh to parents and parents students and folks that are considering coming to the area and uh you know that would include key courses uh english math science that
012was one any other thoughts i i just want to say i do like all the goals i don't really have anything to add to it but i just yeah i'm all for it i think all of them look really good i agree it's a it's a great starting place thank you kevin i agree working on that there's sort of the data that just is a listing of data i actually am um our i've asked a couple of our curriculum technology folks to help put together more of a data dashboard and we can look at that down like at a future date that starts to give some guidance to this and some ongoing longevity and tracking so then we're working on that it's not it's not like we've just identified goals or identified data we'll actually
013take a look at that and and what is again doable and measurable and share that out um so we'll that'll actually i should have that even by the time we meet in the next uh probably within the next month so okay um could we have in number two when it says uh the north bend school district will review and adopt a new english language arts curriculum aligned with state standards signatures equitable access for all students do we have an oversight or can we have a preview of that curriculum we'll have an update um that's going to be on the march 3rd board meeting and so we'll give you uh those the curriculum actually is available for you to come look at currently in the district office um but they'll be a brief overview of just
014which ones are being piloted um and so we have that on the march 3rd agenda okay uh the other things i had and they they may fit in some other buckets and this was just a brain dump you know uh courses that students should should have taken or personal finance i think that's that's going on goes on it's probably worth having that a couple several terms of that uh critical thinking and uh [Music] what else civics and i know civics is taught but those were some things that just uh came to mind i'd like to see that fleshed out in a little bit of detail in whatever dock wherever that those buckets may fall in what buckets okay anything else any other thoughts on this priorities and goals any other brainstorm ideas i have a
015question about the priority three we're attending to social emotional health stamp of the students is this where our character strong program is going to be used is that how that's going to be implemented so character strong was one of those um that has that kind of emerged out of this and it was just sort of the ongoing it was um really in the end i when we started talking to staff and principals and um some issues going on in schools was one around kind of behavioral support we're seeing this increase in behaviors and somebody that says we will attend to like students with behavioral problems it's really this broader around maybe with some underlying conditions or underlying things so yeah men some of the characters strong and really teaching how do we teach some of
016those expectations the other one is around how do we support kids that are coming in struggling they're dealing with um homelessness they're dealing with poverty they're dealing with issues in their you know whatever that's going on in their lives struggling with academics we do have a lot of kids that um more so than i'd like to share like that have suicide ideation kinds of things and so how are we supporting kids to make sure that they can then continue to attend school usually those interfering with their ability to access their education in some way so there's a bit of i i heard that a lot from teachers and i don't know if i have like metrics to show i think this might be one of those it doesn't have a lot of clear metrics at
017this particular point something we're kind of looking to see how do we measure this and if we're going to put investments money towards this what would be the outcome that we'd expect like what change would we expect to see um we're not tracking the number of kids that are suicidal in our district i don't i don't but i think we could get some of that information county-wide like i know our county does kind of keep some data like that so it's again it's one of those things that were i heard it as a issue i'm not sure how to really quantify it being a priority other than we have invested some so this is it came again i mentioned that this this work came out of our student investment account so you saw us since
018we heard this we kind of saw behavioral incidents the investment in counselors counselors at the elementary level behavior support our check and checkout support additional counseling um kind of making sure that we invested that at the at high school middle school um and having some of those supports in place was where a bit of this came from good you answered two questions in one thanks everyone we need a little bit more work on two i think okay any other thoughts or comments on district goals and priorities prior to us uh moving on okay uh a little bit more of a present like a more uh formal kind of outline of a maybe a proposal and a timeline and some of that here down the road yeah yeah that sounds good um i notice uh jane
019stebbins has joined us so we will go to item uh we'll head off to elliott state forg forest oregon advocates for state lands trust and jane you are our local attorney i am some guidance well i have uh i i am here to answer some questions and i have sort of an overview of my assessment upon review of the documents how's that for a lawyer answer um so kind of my my opener is gonna be i'm assuming you got presentations from these guys you've probably read the same things that i read i went ahead and followed up on the documents that he gave uh the district and i also looked over the oregon advocates website and also the national advocates website and um kind of went down the rabbit hole a little bit into some
020of their lawsuits it was fascinating um but uh two things two things i would just draw your attention to and i'm gonna tell you when i'm what i'm here for and this is one of those questions that like opens this explanation up really neatly uh as your attorney i see myself as being here just to not not to tell you what you should do necessarily but to tell you you know this is what this is what i'm seeing as the pros cons be the board and do your thing um reading through all of that stuff i saw a lot of save the children um which always gets the attention i um as far as i understand it and i think that kevin can give you better details on this than i can but the way
021that school funding works in oregon um is a little bit more complicated than the way that they have it set out and uh the thing that did not get answered and i looked because they made this argument over and over and over again you're they're taking money from the schools by not by not using the trust plans because back in the day that was how schools were funded um and yes back in the day that was how schools were funded and yes that money has been getting farther and farther away from actually helping the schools since 1930 those two things are definitely true um but what i couldn't find was well but but there have been alternate sources of funding that have come in since then right and i didn't know the answer that i
022actually had to ask kevin after i'd been through and he was like but we have fun there is funding right there's funny coming from somewhere and um it's my understanding that there's actually a bunch of funding that should be coming in because of some new legislation and at this point money from the timber sales has to go through so many weird little bureaucratic filters that it doesn't come back to the school directly anyway or to our area is that does that sound about right kevin yeah well and i would say we have when you talk about alternatives one of the things we mentioned is the corporate activity tax that came out under that student investment account state lottery funds is another one there where portion of state lottery funds are dedicated to public education so
023there has been replacement revenue um from because again i think there is definitely no a lot less money in the common school fund regarding timber the other part of this is um i can't give you the exact date but oregon went through a formula distribution like equity distribution of funds and so if you happen to be a really rich timber rich district that was just logging the heck out of your area and you were getting all these local revenue receipts your district was doing really really well back in the day the law changed all that money goes into just a general pot whatever you have and you raise locally gets offset statewide by lottery funds and others and it's equally distributed across the state so if you happen to live in a state that's really
024remote or poor doesn't have any of those resources you get the same exact funding as a very um very wealthy or has a place that has a lot of resources so again that's that's our state has changed over the number of years it no longer is dependent upon all of your local local revenue local taxes so the most the most rich districts that have the most expensive land in oregon they get funded exactly the same rate as everybody else so and the reason i'm i'm going into all that is because when i'm looking at these questions as a lawyer my what i'm looking at it as how's this going to affect my district that i'm working for and after digging into this uh um i can't see that it's going to affect you guys much
025one way or the other uh other than politically and that's outside my wheelhouse political is not my job um i i'm liabilities and legalities and money um so it looking over those things uh i see some arguments that have a few holes i see some really dedicated people who um want a school to be on their list of supporters and i'm a little concerned that they don't have a single one yet to me that's concerning um the fact that they don't really go into the fact that actually since 1930 there has been money coming from other places to the schools um is a little concerning that said if you guys sign up to join these guys i don't see that there is anything written anywhere that says what joining up means other than you pay
026them 250 bucks once and you then they have a school who can be their plaintiff for whatever lawsuit they want to do next and they have a school that's on their list when they're trying to get money from donors um so i think it's most i think it's mostly political that's my assessment um hit me with questions hey jane one of the things we you know we wanted you to have an opinion on was if we were to join and like you said it you know they were wanted to you know sue sue the state of oregon over the elliott state forest and we were named the named plaintiff in that case is there a liability to the school district it would depend like there's no way to know that unless you know what specific
027claims they're making what the counter claims are going to be what facts come into all of those claims i think it would be pretty hard for that liability to come back to the school district but that's it's too broad a question to answer and i don't really love that there is nothing anywhere on any of those websites that says what your membership actually means uh that that you know and maybe they have an answer to that i'm not here to ask the guys who run it but but they do have a place where if you're under 12 you can give them a dollar and say you're a member which is weird um sorry i know that's not super clear but it's just it depends on what happens with the lawsuit but i don't know you
028have to get creative to bring liability back on the school district again i think most of what you're looking at is political back backlash one way or the other okay any other questions for jane i do if they actually filed a lawsuit and we were one of the school district if the only school district on their claim and they won a lawsuit would we get any money nope no there is what they're going after is is nationwide from what i can tell they're they're trying they're they're trying to make some adjustments in the whole environmental law versus the business of agriculture and timber that whole back and forth they're looking for more ways for timber to get in and make money and and and that's what it is but if they win then they can
029log the elliott and then we can get whatever if we if that lawsuit ends anytime in the near future which right now he's got two other ones that have been going and are on appeal and whatever uh you guys would get whatever amount of money got filtered back through the whole statewide um amount of whatever got logged i'm sorry that wasn't super clear if you won the lawsuit and they proved that we should be able to log the elliott they log it and make a bunch of money goes back up to the state the state takes that money and divides it amongst all the school districts across the state and everybody gets their even amount so maybe you might get some gotcha so there's really nothing in it for us you know just if there
030was more money going in there i i guess the the only thing that comes to mind that would be in it for us is local jobs that are generated from from the logging in terms of the local economy potentially i can't speak to that because i don't know who they would when and if that lawsuit ended who would be brought into log would be the next question you can't guarantee that's going to be our guys gotcha okay any other questions for jane from the board so hey thank you very much jane appreciate you are welcome good night appreciate you investigating that no problem uh for the board's cons consideration i don't know if we want to work this topic further at a thor at the third march meeting or uh there is another side to
031this there is a pending uh senate bill 1546 and that has support by two local representatives uh david brock smith and boomer i'm told i've spoken to david brocksmith so we've kind of heard the side that favors uh the oregon advocates for state trust lands uh i'm not going to summarize the bill but essentially the bill the bill that that's being supported by david brock smith uh is to sell essentially stella the elliot for 211 million to and it become to osu and it becomes a research forest there's limited harvest and uh he mentioned to me that that there was some type of accommodation worked out with where they could be able to do that without uh environmental lawsuits so kind of a pragmatic approach did the board have any thoughts where they would like
032to go just let this die take a vote to join the oregon advocates for state trust lands any comments um could we have david brock smith or boomer wright come on to our board meeting on march 3rd at least to explain what this house bill is and and let us know what that means for us as schools not just us specifically but just for schools in oregon is that something we could do yeah he did offer that i didn't discuss i don't think i discussed dates but uh yeah is there any yes are there is there other interest in that it would be kind of the other side being presented and uh i'm certainly open to that any other thoughts from the board thank you julie for that yeah yeah i don't know when is
033he he might not be available i haven't and i have an interest in hearing the other side i mean we've we've heard from mr gould and i would really rather wait and hear about that pending bill before i make a decision on going forward with uh becoming a member um i mean in terms of the putting it on the march 3rd i mean there's enough interest at least have you guys consider this and and we can see if we can schedule that for the third i mean i'm sorry spencer i didn't mean to cut you off no you're fine you're fine um i i um i'm gonna i'm gonna i think that this is an important issue but at the same time i feel like there's so many other important issues that we need to
034be focusing our attention to and so i'm not i i'm personally in favor of just letting this thing as the board just not focusing our time on it i think as individuals i don't think that's i don't think it's a bad idea um i'm obviously concerned about it but at the same time i feel like there's a lot of other stuff we've got on our plates so that's that's that's where my thought is because if we support one way or another then we we might just be getting down a rabbit hole so i i feel like we have a lot of other um for lack of a better term we got a lot of other crap to deal with that's a good point spencer thank you um maybe we can have david maybe send us
035a letter and we can just read it and just have just to have the information not waste time or take up time not uh investigating it i mean i do want to hear his side i definitely want to understand and know especially since it's in session right now i think i can reach out to our representatives and see if i can get a statement they have they have their own kind of folks in their offices and i'll see if i can get a little bit more we can get some information that that kind of talks about why why they support this and what a recommendation around there around a support um just kind of from our said i can do that in a in a letter and then if there is some interest in saying
036yes we want to pursue this so i'll try to get that pretty soon between um and myself we can reach out and get that see if we can get you a different information before we kind of agree to do a board meeting good sound reasonable i think that sounds that sounds good to me okay all right good good well if if that's it we'll move on from uh the elliott to item for non-discrimination resolution that sound good your silence is agreement yes okay uh yeah so where there's another uh version of the non-discrimination resolution that got sent out uh uh to the board um you know i'd like to preface the our discussion of that with uh kind of what i mentioned before you know it's uh you know when we talk about this topic
037it's a crucial conversation on on a controversial topic and i believe that all the board all our board members uh have the student's best interest in mind and the intent of this resolution is to be forward-looking not looking uh back since we last met 20 january spencer and i uh collaborated on this current draft we met in person twice worked through some language tried to make it flow we inserted four of the five statements from the non-discrimination committee what they had determined in their uh summary report and we i did highlight uh at spencer's request on the second therefore highlighted in yellow for the board's consideration uh and i'll read i'll read this this bullet item you know spencer uh wanted some feedback on this from the board and i thought it was a good
038i agree with his his thought on that but it's district schools and teachers are expected to provide a comprehensive education on america's history both good and bad and here's the highlighted part from the horrors of american slavery and segregation in our country's treatment of native americans to the triumph of america's greatest generation against the nazi empire the heroic efforts of americans in the civil rights movement and our country's defeat of the soviet union and the horrors of communism we must provide the context necessary to understand these important events so with that i i open it up to the board for feedback comments i can see some of it but basically there's there's certain tenses in there i would probably take out just to streamline it and make it not as divisive in a way what
039would be your what would be your edit uh steve um i would probably say i mean i kind of looked at it and kind of reworded it wordsmith it per se but kind of say you know education on american history the good and the bad from american celebrity to segregation to the treatment of native americans from the horrors of world war ii the civil rights movements and the collapse of communism we must provide the context necessary to understand those those important events that was great um i'm good with that that was that's good wording yeah because it's just it's just a little two wording you know i just wanted to streamline it and just kind of hit all those those points that we had in there okay i like it that sound that sounded good
040yeah i'm in agreement yeah good even if you can you put that in the chat by chance and then i think we'll have it like actual what you said i think would probably help amy um as we look at this down there there you go you said it too fast i couldn't even hear you but um i don't disagree because i'm not really sure i heard everything you said um i think you guys did a great job this is a great compromise um i have no issues with any of it i want to point out the fact that your last bullet point no items one through seven were like spot on thank you for putting those ones in there i really really appreciate that okay any other feedback so jim i just had a clarifying
041question um so under number two it says individuals are either a member of the oppressor class or the oppressed class because of race or sex um can we clarify a little bit what the oppressed class versus non-oppressed class is um i'm specifically thinking of the highlighted portion above so when we talk about slavery or segregation native americans the um the nazi empire all of those different things that are talked in that above paragraph i view those like for example slavery i view that as being something that relates to oppression um so can we just kind of clarify that because for me bullet point two kind of uh contradicts that highlighted section right there if that makes sense yeah i'm just typing a note or writing a note uh any thoughts from any other board members
042on that yeah i that's the one i had a hard time you know just looking at it it just seems like a slippery slope and then also to the references to to title 911 of the civil rights act those are more like like non-discrimination employment kind of stuff so to me it didn't really make sense um and it sounded like we were just tying our hands what's up but my first question is is this this is not a policy this is just more like a statement more than anything i guess that's a fair question i'll uh i know kevin explained what these board resolutions are and clarified for me that they're not laws and they're not they're not actually policy so kevin any thoughts on what what this these where these resolutions fall falls under
043i mean i feel like it's the beliefs or like these are oftentimes these resolutions are beliefs of the district um so i mean again and board of this board but the board sort of speaks on behalf of the district and so these this resolution it would be a it's kind of this this current board's beliefs about non-discrimination and what they believe about it and so again it doesn't necessarily have any teeth to it in terms of policy and law but it starts to set it's just like any other belief statements sets sort of a course for a future lens to look at policy changes to look at other things that the district is doing so i mean that's that's kind of how i would perceive this is is we would be looking at this around
044you know as lens of of part of what we're doing in our future work i know that's kind of a muddy answer to that because it's i don't i don't think we do a lot of these kinds of things in my again i haven't done a lot of this typically resolutions that we're doing one you saw one with a bond right which is more of a formalized process required we tend to do resolutions around teacher appreciation classified appreciation that says hey we we appreciate you and we want to um have this resolution that that declares our appreciation for these staff members so that's my experience we i'm not very experienced in in this area and so part of this would be is hey if you set these beliefs what is your expectations for for your
045leadership for me for not as we move forward and i don't i don't know if that's super clear out of this other than it sets some guidance around future work for me yeah i think and somewhat okay no thanks thanks for that answer i'm just wondering if we could just reword that first sentence there in a way that it doesn't i just i just feel like if this is a policy or this kind of goes down that road of a policy i think we need to be careful what we say because this could tie our hands down the road which sentence were you talking about steve specifically the first one just saying you know like north no north bend district teacher administrator or employee of the school district shall require or make part of the
046course the following concepts i'll just say refrain from probably and then like i said that the civil rights that's from my understanding and that's more of like an employment type of rights rather than an education teaching of theologies or whatever yeah so i mean the the origin of the these items one through seven were related to uh i first saw them in states that had removed critical race theory from the curriculum so that was their that was their origin and so that was it answered to you christina that's where item two was uh you know would come from uh they're concepts that are part of uh critical race theory but i i i hear what you're saying so do you have uh steve do you have some proposed revised language don't get me wrong it's
047like you know i don't want to you know demoralize or do anything like that to anyone i'm reading this by the way over here but um you know i just don't want to have this in such a way that it ties our hands on you know teaching anything i mean we said in the earlier statements that we want to you know still educate our students on the good and the bad you know we have to we look at we have to look at what has happened in our history just in order to move forward and make it a better you know history for our kids going forward more or less but then too i just don't the verbage can also have a slippery slope in a bad negative way so it's a very critical aspect
048of what we're doing here you know and and yeah it's just it just we could probably reword it in such a way i may have to think about that one more or less but i think if we reword that first sentence maybe those this would make a little bit more sense and more you know reasonable and i could i could think of something and send it to you later if you like okay i'm good with that any other thoughts uh from board members i i'm not really sure if i understand steven's issue with is it sentence two i don't know i'm just not i'm not understanding what you mean um i mean it's just it's just well first off when you use the civil rights act it's it's to me it doesn't make sense with
049the rest it's you're talking about not teaching certain things or you know or just doing a certain disparity when the civil rights acts are more like an employment type of thing you know um so it doesn't make sense to me in in that way but um and two we just don't want to like say i mean you definitely don't want to disparage anyone and do any of this stuff you know per se but i just think we need to be careful how we word this yeah well well the first you know with respect to history um the first bullet where we talked about districts schools and teachers are expected to provide a comprehensive education on america's history both good and bad i i do remember there was a you know public comment from a history
050teacher that that i know personally and and there was concern about how you know can we now not teach those things and what i think that first bullet does is you know absolutely these things need to be taught and you know i think it needs to be taught in blood guts and feathers and as a history major i happened or a history graduate who i happen to know on the board said it you know it it's good to study history from the perspective of both sides so you haven't you know because history is quite often written by the victors and uh so it may not fully explain the other side and uh what their thinking was so and i do i support that i think it uh we should have both sides and you know
051there's there's a lot the united states has come a long way um i think that as of now because the civil rights act obviously was the civil rights was a long time ago and it's still applicable but now in today this instance none of us are either a class of oppressed or oppressor so i think it's fine to make sure that as of right now we make sure that that person's not the class of oppressor and that person is and that person is and that person isn't i want to make sure that nobody is being labeled an oppressor or an oppressor or being oppressed from because of the past that's why i think it still applies as far as that now i understand that in the aspect of history that could apply in teaching that
052there were people who thought that they were better than others and decided who they were and decided who wasn't and i get that and that's wrong and that's their own personal pride and whatever else they have no color of anybody's skin makes them better or worse than any other person that's their own issues inside themselves and they have to deal with that and clearly they took advantage of it um but right now in people's own hearts they have to deal with that i don't want the teachers having to think that they have to teach that because of the past right now you and this people are oppressors and you are the oppressed it does not apply anymore and if people want to say that is then that's in their own heart and they have to
053deal with that and we can't legislate or make up resolutions of any kind that will support personal moral standards we never will be we will never be able to um do that so anyway um if so so steve i i did some research on um because because i so with title four and with title um six of the civil rights act um this was from research i did earlier but now i had to look it back up um because i didn't know it all written down so so um uh let's see your title title four is about sex based discrimination and then title what's your title four sorry i gotta focus on my roman numerals title four is about sex based discrimination title six is about um is about the actual uh discrimination of based
054off of race and and and and other things um uh let's see here it says uh for title vi says discriminate prohibits discrimination on the basis of race color or national origin and any program or activity that receives federal funds or other federal financial assistance so but but i i do agree with you um absolutely steve about the because the language where it says no no north men's school district teacher administrator other employee of the school district shall require or make part of the course so shall is is obviously very strong language and that's usually used in contracts and everything else and if i i don't want to speak for you steve so maybe confirm with me but but the the word shall in there is pretty pretty intense and and i think there were
055some questions from some teachers saying well so if something like that were to come out or or if you know maybe something worked on that way the shall in there does this now mean that they get fired does this mean that there's disciplinary action since this isn't a policy you know maybe maybe different language in the sense of like um uh we we do not condone any teachings um of you know title four title title six something like am i am i on the right track steve yeah yeah no definitely i got my room and noodles mixed up sorry four and six not ten or nine eleven um no no i agree with you and i and i did a quick view of this before the meeting and i was just but i saw a
056lot of this stuff with you know more business practices and so forth i mean it's out on the department of justice i've got it sitting here but there's just a lot of material to look at for those you know civil rights acts there's just volumes of you know data and information there but i think i think rewording and certain verbiage in there is pretty pretty you know divisive in a way so i think you know we should probably make it in such a way that it's it's not as but it's also kind of like it's a guidance or just saying you know let's not make you know individuals feel x y and z i mean we still have to talk about slavery you know back in you know 18 you know right after the the
057civil war 1880s on up you know and what what happened and so forth and you know the good and the bad of it so but i mean you kind of have to talk about racial aspects of it to some level yeah absolutely and all that kind of stuff so that's history that's what's happened they shouldn't make any kids feel that way now you know and they can feel in present time yeah and and i totally agree with that and and julie i think to your point i i i definitely agree with with with the aspect for sure of you know we we we need to learn from the history and move forward right i mean we need to make sure that we we we definitely we definitely do that and not not make anyone feel
058as though um you know they are an oppressor or an oppressed because something happened in history back it you know at one point in time um uh and and to learn from those those um things and move forward i i do agree with you steve i think that the word shall in there maybe because that definitely would come more into play with like a policy um because that's more that legal jargon um uh how about should the should fix it we're talking i'm kind of doing a little bit of wordsmithing here just to see if i can get this knocked out but should so so should honestly should would should would sorry um that would definitely change that legal language you know to to make it to where we're not tying our hands or something
059like that so i mean i think at the very least we we should change shall from should or shall two should um see if i can give my time well you know you cross out shall require or and you cross out that and you say will you replace that whole thing with will which is a a softer word you're you're correct on shale shell is uh his contract language yeah administrator or other employee of the district will will require so replace shao with will yeah is that does that i mean that softens it yeah no it does it softens it but at the same time still still brings the you know the you know don't we we should not be teaching these things so um i i i don't mind that i think if we
060change that shell to will i for that for that portion of the sentence i do i do agree with that part there um i don't know i don't know everybody else feels about that i'm good with that i'm in agreement with that and and i'm kind of um in agreement with julian about the part that we can move forward we can learn from history but we don't have to be um ashamed or anything because of something that happened in the past i think that's that's what i'm getting from number two uh and we just don't wanna label individuals nowadays it doesn't have any place in school so i i i absolutely i i agree i i definitely agree with that mary um i to the same point though too with christina what you're talking about
061and maybe i just have to make it right in my own mind or something um but you know before him we we do talk about and even with steve's you know with the change language that that steve put in here um you know with number two is his individuals are either a member of the oppressor class or the oppressed class because of race or sex so at one time in history that that that in fact was the case you know you were either the oppressed class or the oppressor class i mean um and and that that was i mean that's that's that's fact and so um so you know we don't we don't want to teach that today i mean in the sense of of for you know for to today but at the same
062time i mean that was part of history so i'm just i'm not sure if we're tying our hands by having that number two in there or maybe rewording it in a way because if we're saying we won't teach that individuals are either a member of the oppressor class or the oppressed class but then we teach about slavery aren't we contradicting ourselves i'm putting that out there as a question i think we could probably reword that so it focuses more on today's you know today's teaching um and not so much on reflecting from the past i think there's a way to probably reword that so um that clears that up a little bit i just don't know i'm trying to think how you know what what it would be rewarded to is it essentially item two
063and i'm just throwing this out here that today individuals are either a member of the oppressor class or the oppressed class because of race or sex so that takes it from yes you know in a historical context that that may or may not have been the case uh but certainly yeah there were some but in the context of today that's not the case that that should you say so jim so so you said so that today and then like comma individuals are either a member of the oppressor class of the oppressed class because of race or sex is that correct i to me that that seems to fix it i don't know christina does that here are we talking about the whole thing or just the first sentence or we're talking about just number two
064on the on the last page there the the second bullet oh second bullet yeah sorry no it's okay i just i'm just i'm more because i'm thinking if we look at that first sentence of that second bullet and then how the rest you know plays out but then that's the question too is does this is the past tense is this the present tense is this you know which way does this go so then that's where that slope goes and i think i think if you if you word the first sentence in such a way that that it just defines it as present tense then it might work better for for you know because there was definitely oppressed classes and oppressor classes in the past and history and stuff like that which we've got to talk
065about so steve i kind of like where you're going with that um so if we were that first bullet point that whole no north men's school teacher administrator you're talking about that part right there but if we were that in the that we won't teach that in in present tense today that and then we go through the bullet points an individual by virtue of his or her sex because then we're talking about like you just said yeah the present tense but in the past you know you can point to a lot of these things on here that yes that's that's history there there has been that in the past it was i mean what i've written so far it's like no no north district teacher administrator or school district employee shall bestow any intent on
066any student or staff member on the following premises one yada yada yada you know but then we need to probably clarify that some more with more present tenses i i really like the idea of making that present tense i i really like that idea yeah i think that helps with uh a couple questions that have been asked so yeah i think that that that second bullet that that stevie you were just talking about if that if we can work a present tense to you know work today that would clear i think that adds some clarity yeah yeah i don't have a problem with that um i think that's a a good compromise for us i just want you guys to remember that this is not policy and and this is just a statement by the
067board and i understand you want to clarify it but if you want to clarify this so deeply and so um go through with a fine-tooth calm then [Music] what about the resolution that is was set before this one because that one has a lot of stuff in it that i disagree with and i'm not willing to go back and find to find pick that at all wouldn't just leave it be but um that was a passport and this is a new board and this is not policy operating procedures this is just a statement about non-discrimination so i get why you want to make sure that um we're not trying to limit education i don't have a problem with that i think they do need to know the history and all the ugliness and all the
068the good um but i don't i don't think that this is gonna tie anybody's hands this is a policy this is just a statement no i i get that i just i just well this is us speaking out as a group and i think we all should have our own you know take on it yeah and i respect that that makes sense yeah a good discussion so uh as a path forward um that second bullet uh you know i think that helps with the clarity of it with respect to present tense and today that we weave that in there are there any other are there any other comments are we can we make in terms of moving forward can we make those revisions that we we talked about with the tents and then we had
069steve rewrote the first bullet which i thought from what i heard that's that sounded fine if we make those two changes is this ready to move ahead and vote on at the third march board meeting yes and i my only comment was on number two um at the time i think when we were going through this we were also concerned about a training for administrators and teachers uh not leaving their uh you know training session of feeling like they belong to one of those but either the oppressor or the president i think that might be where where this originated at any other comments so so we was the group okay uh making the revisions to those two bullets and then voting on it on the third of march i'm okay with that jim okay yes
070can we send that to you as the group and go from there yes i would appreciate that yeah okay so just to confirm the forward plan um steve if you'd send me well i think we've got it in the chat i can yeah i just i just said what i said i i may try to add something in there more as a present tense but that's pretty much it right there okay all right um yeah then i can send i can send that out uh with those revisions and then uh you guys can look at it are we okay with it being voted on at the third march yeah i think so yes okay okay yep i'm okay with that i think we should just remind everybody when you do send when you do email
071that out we we don't want to comment on that as a group it's just simply the information coming out because otherwise that's a that um what is it kevin that's a something you got it well we'll talk we'll go into debate you can debate it at the board meeting we're not gonna debate on you during email so yeah there you go yeah don't debate it over email yeah there we go okay well i'd i'd you know i i'd like to thank the board uh i think the process we went through got some stakeholders involved and i think this is the the end product here is a pretty good product so i want to thank everyone for their their patience and input in this process well jim i want to thank you and spencer too for
072working on this so well you guys did a great job all right thank you for the work thank you for the kind words appreciate it okay anything else on non-discrimination are we ready to move on to item six k-12 k-12 indoor mask requirements are we good ready to go yes okay with this uh i'm gonna turn it over to kevin and kevin has uh some so i guess the guidance from uh the oregon government regularly yeah sorry i'll just give you where we kind of land on this today which is a moving target to say the least um the state continues to sort of like hey we're going to have more information about this i think there's some question about what exactly um is expected of districts around local control um tell you what our
073you know in terms of my initial take on this is to certainly recommend that we um follow the recommendation that's coming out or the the change in law on march 31st that we would adopt that or that we actually we're going to just follow that if you wanted to make it more restrictive we would take board action so that would really be there really isn't any board action to follow the law as those changed i think there's two aor oars that change that drops the mask indoor mask mandate for k-12 schools i would just say yes we're going to follow that there are other things that we're trying to work through and get some guidance we have the vaccination mandate and one of the things in there says you're going to have you have to
074put i don't have the language right in front of me like more restrictive something more restrictive if you're have an exception we're trying to get the the state has come out and given us some examples but we're trying to get some clarity again i don't i think it's going to be really problematic to have um folks school-wide not wearing masks and then our folks with exceptions having to wear a mask if that was part of the requirement i'm not sure what again we have to submit a plan to the state that says how we're going to be in compliance with some of this so that's a piece that we're working out and maybe by march 3rd i'll have a little bit more clarity for teacher groups i want to again this is an opportunity for
075our board to weigh in a little bit um today um and where we want to go um we'll get other stakeholders so we're wanting our our union groups we have a couple mous that center around some of this work so we'll work with them and get some information um i heard a bit today more rumor that the federal government has which which governs bus transportation that that law expires in the next couple weeks your sort of rumor that it will not be continued and so it needs to be reauthorized or re-adopted and it's kind of hearing that that may not occur which would end the mass mandate on buses if that doesn't happen at the same time as the indoor k-12 map it gets really confusing i think for kids and families so we're gonna
076we're watching that um and getting again i can expect more information in the next bit of time there is a meeting from ode i believe it's next thursday um around this guidance so i think we've been told if i showed you um like a more recent email it's it most of it says don't do anything quite yet don't make any promises quite yet we're looking into that we're looking into that um we were expected to turn in a revised plan on february 25th part of our esther plan says i think the federal government says for us to get esther funds you need to have every six months review your plan that got extended to march 31st to kind of align with this and so yes we're gonna have to turn in something eventually here i
077don't know exactly so that's i know that's a lot of sort of i don't have a lot of clarity other than where my my inclination and where i've kind of seen our community our region we talked today with superintendents none of us are super interested in making things more restrictive for kids or families again i want people to be safe and i want people to be healthy and i want us again we will be making sure again kind of supporting don't have sick kids come to school don't if kids want to wear a mask or a staff wants to wear a mask i don't want them to feel um [Music] picked on tees bullied harassed any of that so i want to make sure that people if they want to wear a mask they're comfortable
078wearing that and then the other aspect of this around you know how do we um sure that we're just supporting folks as we move forward so that's that's kind of where i'm landing today again more guidance is going to come but again i don't think more restrictiveness i i'm not i'm not hearing that we're hearing we don't know how to do cr like contact tracing um we're getting different messages that our local health authority maybe air can speak to this they moved a couple of their key people out of that role um we're kind of getting sort of an indicator that they're not super interested in in massive contract tracing they did a bunch of that and really pushing that responsibility to schools and i kind of look at it's like my staff can't do
079that either so those are the kind of things that we're getting back and forth with oregon health authority ode and they're hearing that from school districts and i think we're going to get maybe some different guidance in the coming weeks eric i don't know if you're hearing something different from a health department side but that's that's sort of just some feelings that we're getting kind of locally kevin did i hear you say that teachers who have um a vaccine exemption that they'll have to keep wearing a mask oh not necessarily what what the message what right now our current plan our current agreement says they will you know everyone was wearing a mask there was a theirs was a tiny bit more restrictive that said you need you can't take yours off you can't eat
080in your classroom it wasn't super significant and we didn't make them wear a special mask but what the state is saying and again there's not really clarity yet on this so it's saying if you have an exception you have to have some additional measures in place such as requiring a mask requiring x i i don't know what those such as that would kind of meet their definition of sort of additional protection um and again i think making aware mass seems really problematic to me so i'm with you julia i'm like i don't know how we would do that or enforce that or i don't know i'm a little it doesn't quite fit but i don't i don't know we're looking for some guidance on that can you ask our insurance if they're gonna um drop
081any coverage or have any issues with us if we just as a district take control locally and just say what we would feel we would need and want and desire for our district as a board would our insurance be like well new i think we already have a little bit about yeah spencer has a little bit of information on that but i yeah because he does this for school districts also oh how convenient for you yeah so i'm on the insurance side of things so so yes this the the insurance side of it if if we just kind of went off and did our own thing um the really the insurance and the form that it follows and everything really is whatever the mandate is is what we need to follow so if we don't
082follow that we're at risk depending on the claim um of not having any insurance coverage and having to pay for something out of pocket so local control like this set this basically the law changes the mass mandate drops and us doing following that law and allowing more parental choice in this will not create any more liability than we already exist someone could always make the argument that we we caused x harm right so that that this this is where this kid got sick this is where this happened and they sue us that's always been the case and we don't have much protection around disease in general i'm not even saying copig if if someone got the measles and they're saying that the only reason my kid has measles is because your school district they could
083sue us our liability protection on that is probably pretty sketchy um i don't think there's a lot of case law on those kinds of things so some of it's like um potential what we think might happen but i again there's not really examples of where families have done that i'm aware of where we're sitting today i can no questions or any other a health department standpoint did you have any i don't know why we started listening now yeah i guess i i've got some thought just to make my thoughts visible and just as a board member you know kevin i certainly you know i was in favor of local control um i guess uh it's something to be celebrated that this masked mandate is gonna end uh you know then it can be a parent's
084choice if they want their their student to wear a mask that's fine um i guess regarding the teachers in the union group i guess i support uh no mask mandate or any regulations irregardless of vaccination status um so you know i'm i'm hoping for a return to uh a return to life uh three years ago essentially that's my hope let's go i i would definitely like to say that that um whatever we can do um i really hope that culturally and this is like this is a national thing that it would be more acceptable for people to wear a mask when they are feeling ill or things like that because i mean it's it's um so so i absolutely agree with you know earlier kevin you did say that if people choose to wear a
085mask if you know parent if teachers choose whatever it might be i i i would love to figure out a way if we can to try and prevent any any form in any way any type of bullying or anything like that i mean because it's if you know if if somebody needs to or chooses to wear that then that's fine that's absolutely you know that's okay so i'm hopeful and i'm optimistic but march 31 is a long way away and the next day is april fools okay well kevin kevin i'm just a little curious have you gotten much feedback or um with the staff of the district on like what have you heard as far as the staff goes in that the home asking thing yeah i'm hearing i i'm not hearing a lot i'm
086hearing a little bit from a little bit on both sides i got an email the other day from i think one of it might have been a fourth or fifth grade class and it was like my kids can't wait to take off their mass right and and i think part of it they they included actually a reference to the state potentially dropping the indoor mass mandate early and i sort of clarified that right as we sit today on february 17th matt the march 31st is sort of a hold firm it won't go earlier that being said i have seen our system change in a overnight so um i so i just wanted to clarify the kids like yes i i'm we're we're all you know march 31st probably can't come fast enough and it may
087not come earlier and and be okay with that um the other part is i had um a couple different staff members just say i'm going to keep wearing a mask can you provide us some you know some better quality mask and i said of course we'll do that and so we'll try to support them they weren't really happy about us moving in this direction but they're not they don't they're not blaming the school district or you know they just kind of are they're living in still of a state of some concern and they all have their own story of why that's the case right it's you know my spouse has cancer and i'm super i just am super nervous about this um or they're dealing with some other underlying health condition are super nervous about
088this and and just don't want to get sick that it's not really anything more than that so um so there is concern because they felt like some of this was a level of protection and whether you agree with that or not for them for them it was at least a psychological feeling and this sort of takes that away for for that and so um i hear it a little bit i'm not again not a ton um i'm waiting i know our our teacher union group i think met today and i think they were beginning to have some conversations about this and will give me some feedback in the coming days um so again we'll we'll do some outreach to them as well but i'm not i'm not hearing a ton um i wanted to make
089a comment on on my i know my youngest made a statement like a week ago or something like that and she's you know about the mass mandate being lifted and she's like i really like having my mask i like having that you know anonymity in school and you know but then she also has anxiety so i think it's like a security blanket for her as well so knowing that you know the germs and stuff like that are out there and it just kind of gives her that sense of protection and so forth so i think you know there's there's that aspect of it as well there's there's some people that just feel like they they want it they need it it's a security blanket to some level i think one of the things that one
090of the things i guess you should know like we have outlawed in the past like hoodies right so you know kids would wear their hoods and they pretty much just like suck into their turtle shell and you can hardly see them and schools have basically said no you can't do that right you need to have your hood off and you need to participate and you need to sort of be part of this class the mask is sort of a way of of doing that and again i can assure you we are not going to outlaw mass any time i can't really foresee us any time in the future doing that partly because of you know a lot of less there's a lot less colds a lot less flu a lot less other things and and
091mass probably attributed to that there's probably lots of other reasons too but i don't want to discourage some of those things if again i think um i think more of us are all highly sensitive to someone coughing or sneezing or what um and we almost were like oh please put this mask on like if you're going to be around us and again we so i think we're going to want to encourage some of that if you're if you're not feeling 100 either one you're not at school or work um but two if you are you're feeling okay but you have some of those things that a mask is is totally appropriate and again the kid that kind of wants to hide behind the mask yeah we're going to kind of support that too i think
092i had some like you know acne problems as a kid thinking maybe mask would have been great on in certain days well i definitely i'm in agreement with you and i definitely feel like if someone still wants to wear their mask that's okay with me let's have to see how our culture sort of sort of modified kind of molds with this this change as we move down the road it'll be interesting to see just societally how we handle this i don't have a problem with people wearing a mask if they they feel ill i do have a problem with people using it to hide that is a social emotional issue that is very extreme and i don't feel comfortable with that that needs to be addressed it'll be one of those that we will have
093to sort of go down that pathway because you kind of hear i'm pretty confident we'll be we'll be having those conversations within our school systems well kevin i appreciate the update any further questions on uh the masks we'll keep you posted throughout uh before now and be up until that date um i am planning on having this on the march 3rd agenda just to give you our current update on what we hear at that point potentially look at uh our revised plan um that's due at the end of the month so since that's before april so um it this we will hear about it again in march and then again any changes i'll try to keep you bus rest of that uh prior to okay good thanks for the update good news uh that's all
094we had the only other thing is is is an fyi uh uh a lady named pat cho pierce who's been heavily involved with the north bend scholarship fund called the district office earlier in the week and wanted to talk to me and i gave her a call and really what she wanted to pass on was that they had been fished while transferring some funds but she wanted to assure us that our five thousand dollars uh related to diane i can't say that last name it's an unusual scholarship fund yeah yeah that 5000 is is safe and in good hands and and just fyi she passed on to me i i believe the north bend scholarship fund has in excess of six million dollars uh at this time and i think they give out approximately 300
095000 a year so that's that's something that's grown a lot okay with that and anybody have anything before my gosh it's 7.21 anything else i do i have a comment um kevin i really want to um thank you for sending out your superintendent update on valentine's day and um i was wondering if so regarding for a state basketball tournament i was hoping that maybe mike forrester could just speak briefly on march 3 and uh tell us about that because that's pretty exciting absolutely we'll invite him he will be there anyway so yes i'll make sure um well that is the first day of the three i'll see if he's available he might be busy but if not i might ask him just to pop in even if it's in maybe in the public comments so
096he can keep his comments to just even three minutes but i'll ask him to give us an update on where how that is and what he's seeing if that sounds good so then maybe he can he can commit to like three to five minutes for us check in from the game well ask him he's in his office i think he could do that so yeah okay it may be that mike could coach his students the representatives that will be speaking at that meeting and maybe give us some information that way regarding those tournaments that's a great idea either one of those we will suggest so we'll we'll get you an update on them on the march 3rd for that because i think it is it is a huge financial you know for this community um
097a pretty significant hit um boost in the economy around restaurants and hotels and such and to do it two consecutive weeks a ton of work ton of volunteer work that he's coordinating and organizing and to support officials and to support coaches and um and just to put on a good a good event they're trying i don't know if you know this and he'll give you he can give you a little bit more i'll give you just a sneak preview they find families to uh basically take each team that comes into our community out to a local restaurant and basically they fit the bill for the for the school um so we have yeah so it usually is um 16 teams so there's 16 people in our community that basically take out these players and coaches
098and pay the bill and they end up uh doubled that and they found they found 32 people to do that so yeah pretty crazy those are that's just like a small example of how this community sort of rolls out the red carpet to really make this a special place and a special event wow that was nice to hear thank you yeah kudos uh you explain briefly how that all came about but uh yeah congratulations to the folks involved that were able to bring the foray here i think that is a great deal for us for sure okay with that anything else before we adjourn all right thanks for the time uh one action we will have is uh i'll get out a revised uh version of the non-discrimination uh get it on your email sometime
099uh next week and i might i might touch base with spencer also on it before i send it out so all right hey thank you very much for your time and let's call it early let's move to adjourn good night thank you