001Um, it is April 13th. I will call our meeting to order. Please join me in stating the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the At this time, I will do our roll call. We are um Director Tash is excused for the evening. Everybody else is here. Um, well, excuse me, Director Oz is on her way, but we have a quorum. There are three of us that are present. I will look for the approval of the agenda. The agenda has been distributed in your board packet. If there are no objections, the agenda will be approved by unanimous consent. All right. The agenda is approved by unanimous unanimous consent. I will now move to the consent agenda. Are there any items on the consent agenda that the board wishes to discuss? Okay. Hearing
002none, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I move we approve the consent consent agenda. Is there a second? Second. >> It has been moved and second to approve the consent agenda as published. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing no, I will call for a vote. All those in favor say I. All those opposed? The motion carries to adopt the consent agenda as published. All right. We will now move to public comment. We are very excited to have a person here this evening that would like to talk to the board. We appreciate hearing from the public. Our will have 3 minutes for the speaker, and our speaker tonight is Aaron Hedrick. Thank you very much. >> [laughter] [clears throat] >> I wrote this all down so I don't go on
003and on. Um, hello. My name is Aaron Hedrick, and my daughter is a student here in the Oak Harbor School District. Um, I want to begin by expressing my appreciation for the incredible teachers and support staff we have in our schools. We've consistently had a a positive experience, and I deeply value the dedication and care of our educators that they show every day. I'm here today to address concerns related to the district policies and accountability, specific with the level of support available in our classrooms to manage increasing behavioral challenges. Um, currently, our teachers do not have enough physical able-bodied adult support to effectively respond to the behavioral issues present in many of our classrooms. Budget cuts that reduce paraeducator and support staff positions are having a direct and negative impact. What is happening in our
004elementary and intermediate schools is not sustainable, and it's not acceptable. I understand that some of these challenges stem from broader state challenges, uh, state level issues, and that factors like parenting are outside of the district's control. Um, however, what is within our control is ensuring that our classrooms are staffed with enough trained adults to maintain a safe and productive learning environment. Teachers are being placed in an impossible position. In many cases, they're forced to rely on ignoring disruptive behavior, not because it's best practice, um, but because they lack the support it um needed to address it effectively. What was once one or two disruptive students um can now be a significant portion of the class creating ongoing interruptions, disrespect, and chaos that impact every student's ability to learn. To be clear, I am not referring
005to students with identified special needs who require additional support and services. Those students deserve understanding and appropriate resources. Um however, ongoing defiance, disruption, and unsafe behavior without meaningful Excuse me, meaningful intervention or accountability is [snorts] a separate issue that must be addressed more effectively. Um I urge school board members to spend some time in our classrooms and have direct honest conversations with teachers about the challenges that they're facing. Um observe firsthand the realities of today's learning environments. Our teachers have built the relationships, they've pursued professional development, and done everything that we've asked of them and more. Uh they [snorts] need and deserve stronger support. I also ask that you re-evaluate how our policies such as zero tolerance for bullying and expectations around respect are being implemented. [snorts] These policies must be consistently upheld to ensure
006safe and inclusive environments for all our students. Our district goals around safety, inclusion, and strong teaching and learning cannot [snorts] be achieved if students are in classrooms where disruptions, evacuations, and unsafe behaviors are daily occurrence without meaningful change. All of our students deserve to feel safe, valued, and able to learn without constant interruption. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you very much. I will now move to the next part of our agenda. We are in a work study session, so we will be learning learning. We will be hearing from our information service and teaching and learning report. So looking forward to Dr. Couch and Trevor. Be Tyler. It's spring break. You look like a Tyler. I've been called worse. Okay. Good evening. It's nice to see you all. Um we're going to share
007a clicker here and I'm going to make sure Yep, it's on. Okay. Um I'm going to kick us off. We have a lot of numbers to share with you this evening. So um look forward to that. Uh please stop us if you'd like a little bit more context or information. We'll do our best to fill in as we go here. Uh just to start um as Tyler and I were talking about what we wanted to talk about tonight, um we wanted to make sure that we were making connections to our strategic plan because they're all over the work that we do. And so you're going to see two of the foundation areas show up this evening. Um strong teaching and learning systems and there's going to be a little note on the bottom of slides
008when that happens. And then also a lot of conversations about money this evening and fiscal integrity. So So I'm the one that get gets to give you the the big numbers first and foremost. So what I wanted to do is share kind of generally what we have across the district in terms of the number of devices that we have, how we have to support those devices, and kind of the the impact um obviously that that that has. And so if you just look right now in terms of our Windows devices that we have which is PCs, it'll be desktop computers, it'll be laptop computers. Um if you look at the Chromebooks that we have, so all of our student Chromebooks, we have staff Chromebooks as well. Um we have CTE labs that have um Apple
009computers. And then we have a large number of iPads across the district. And if you just look across those, it's over 8,000 devices that we currently support uh in the district not counting our servers. And I will talk a little bit more about printers and copiers here in a minute as we uh kind of dig into that as well. I also wanted to kind of show you that over the course of this year so far, I counted from August until now or last week, uh we had 2,250 help desk tickets opened and we had uh 2,100 of those were closed. So we still have some open and a bunch of those are Chromebooks. Chromebooks is probably our biggest number of tickets that we have and it's an ongoing target in terms of uh repairs. Uh
010the other thing I wanted to show you is that even though we've got all these help desk tickets, we also have 1,900 help desk calls that basically coming into our help desk system uh over that same time frame. And so not all of those are going to be obviously asking for help because I'm just looking at the phone number and the number of calls that we get. Uh but many of those are are calls where people are asking for assistance. And I to me, I feel it's vital part of what we do to support our staff is having somebody answer the phone which is something that a lot of districts don't have. Uh in terms of applications and software that we have across the district, um and this is Windows software, it's uh Apple, it's
011Google, it's across the board. It's about 3,000 different applications. Um not all the all those are visible to to the end user, but they're ones that we have to support and we push out. And we've got about 7,320 um user accounts that we support as well. And I need to actually press the button myself. Um that the uh we wanted to talk a little bit about some of the instructional tools that we use. I'm going to talk a little bit about Vivi cuz that's one of the ones that that we've deployed here a few years ago. Uh Vivi is a tool that allows our teachers to essentially present information to their students in their classrooms. Uh it has other functionality to it and we're actually looking at um using some of those additional functions as
012we move forward because I think they would be very powerful. Right now, you can see by on the instructional side, you can see on average this is over really over the last 5 months or 6 months. Um if you look at the last three where it's over 7,000 hours of usage. So they're very well used. Our teachers are using them in the classroom. And we have some student usages as well because it allows the students to present as well as allowing the teachers to present. Uh there's some other functionality that I talked about and and we have some of these that we're using for digital signage in our in our buildings so that they can when you walk in, you see a little information key, you know, uh panels up. Uh we were using it
013for those. Uh we're also looking right now at getting into school announcements and they actually have a functionality where we could do emergency notifications through the system and that's something else we're looking at so that it could essentially push out notifications on any panel or any projector in the in the district. We're going to be talking a lot about subscriptions this evening and subscriptions are the new way of materials for teaching and learning and IS. And so when we think when Tyler and I sit down and we're talking about subscriptions, we can kind of group them into three categories. And the first one is instructional materials. So you might be familiar with CKLA or Amplify which is our K-4 reading curriculum. Teachers need to get on to our digital platform and for example, access slides
014for daily instruction. Um instructional delivery is another way that we think about it. So Vivi which Tyler just talked about is a good example of that. Many teachers in our district also use Pear Deck. So if you're in classrooms, you may see that used. Um it makes slide decks interactive for students. And then we use a lot of different subscriptions tools for assessment and management purposes. Everything from Skyward which is our SIS system to Panorama which we use both as a data dashboard and to collect student voice information. We wanted to share just a little bit about how these tools are being used. So this is an example of um usage data from Big Ideas. Big Ideas is used for seventh grade math, eighth grade math, algebra. So secondary math. Um and you can see
015on the right hand side that um as of March, students had logged in 84,000 times over the course of the school year and teachers had logged in 5,000 times. Um that continues to go up as the school year progresses. So um the tools are well used. Um they're not sitting there idle. They're they're used quite frequently. Um I also wanted to share an example of um Kami. Kami is a digital tool that is not curriculum, but it is used as part of our inclusionary work and it um allows teachers to take a PDF or a document and make it into a living assignment. And so we have um a lot of teachers who have done that for students who need to access learning in a different way perhaps than their peers. Um and you can
016annotate on it. There's all sorts of different things that you can do um for students who have dyslexia, you can use specific fonts for them. It's just it's a great tool that provides a lot of flexibility for students who benefit from that flexibility. >> [clears throat] >> So when we start to think about the the different applications that we're using in the district, I think one of the big concerns we have is that the data itself is safe and secure and that we're making sure that we have agreements in place or we can verify how the data is being used to if we don't need an agreement. Um and so we actually have a student data privacy process that essentially is in place right now. And if a new staff member wants to use a
017resource uh for the first time and and it's not being used currently in the district, there's actually a process, there's an application. It gets vetted by T&L, it gets vetted by IS, and then there's actually an agreement that's a national agreement that there's actually there's state levels. It's a uh the student data privacy consortium is actually the nationwide organization and then each state has their own agreements that we sign off on um so that we all how that data is being used. And it's not just about the the data and how it's being used currently, it's also how it gets disposed of. So if we decide to stop using a particular application, it makes sure that that data is is destroyed and then it's gone and it doesn't sit out in the in the on
018the internet. And currently we've had about 500 applications. Not all of these have gone through this process, but we've vetted them. So in some cases the applications don't share student data and so we we say yeah, they're okay to use. So when I've got 500 up here, that's 500 different applications are being used in the district, but not all of them have gone through this entire process because in many cases they don't necessarily share student data. Um uh as an example, we've had 25 actual requests go through this process this year and um you know, I I don't know if I should have put the number that we actually approved, but but um I think it's probably about 10 or 15 of those have been approved and 10 we've we've denied. Um and denial can
019be for a variety of reasons. It can be the data um concerns about how their data uh privacy policy policy is written. There could be concerns about uh it's it's basically replacing or they're trying to replace an existing solution that we're using already. So there's a couple different reasons that we um utilize for that purpose. So I'm going to talk briefly about that 11%. Um one of the challenges with the subscription model as it exists now is that prices for curriculum in particular subscriptions are rising astronomically. So we took a look at curriculum subscriptions in the last 5 years and just did our best to get an average number at the percentage that it's going up each year and we're at 11%, which is huge. Um we we are at the point with some vendors
020um a digital tool vendor for example, Screencastify that we use um where we've said um like we're not paying it. This is absurd. Like you'll hold our price for another year or we're out. And we're getting some response with the negotiation, but it is difficult. Um so I think that's a good number to be aware of and um to think when you're s- buying curriculum for 5,000 plus students um that the cost and the increased cost year over year is pretty significant. Um and then when you look at um as Emily said, when you look at a lot of these applications, some of them are ones that we're currently using. So Google for instance or Microsoft for instance, those are ones that there's not a lot of room to negotiate on. So we pretty much
021are stuck with whatever renewal they come at us with um or we need to change our model. And so and I'll talk a minute about that cuz we're we're we're actually having conversations about what we're currently doing and maybe how how we could potentially change that. Um the the one that's probably the bigger concern and while software cost is a is definitely a concern um is the hardware cost right now. So I'm not sure how much you're following, but um memory cost is driving up the cost of PCs and Chromebooks and servers significantly right now to the point we're talking literally 30 to 40% um increases uh for hardware. And so as we're looking at replacing our Chromebook fleet or our our Windows computers for our teachers or you know, any of this, now we've
022got this additional cost that we have no control over. Um but it definitely has a big impact as we're looking at replacing that technology. Director Jensen. >> Yeah, thank you for all of this so far. And since we're talking about costs and some of the specifics here on this slide, I had a question earlier when you were talking about, you [clears throat] know, us having 8,000 devices and you said something about not including servers and I put question. Um when I was working for small architect firm and [clears throat] I was their accountant and it seemed like just when we were sort of oh, catching our breath from the last server update we had cuz it was a huge amount of money. I was like, what? We need another new server? So I'm curious how
023the server cost, where it falls on this slide and what kind of expense and how much that's going up and how often we replace it. Yeah, [clears throat] so so in general it's a probably a 5-year cycle, 5 to 7 year depending upon the hardware itself. We try and stagger it so we have um I'm not sure if you know what a virtualized server is. So but essentially we have a server that hosts a number of additional servers. We replace the main server that hosts all the others and we can replace those. We try and stagger those so that as we replace one, often times the hardware is not completely obsolete so we can use it for other um tasks. So it could be a backup server or something else where it becomes kind of
024a secondary server. We still use the hardware, it's still functional, but I wouldn't want to use it as a primary production server. So we try and get that in a rotation. Um and in general I I try and do like an 8-year cycle on all of our our uh server hardware. So basically 4-year, 4-year and then I kind of keep that going. So we've had pretty good success at that rotation. We just replaced uh two of our servers I think within the last couple years. So I don't see that we need to replace them right now, but it's definitely always on our radar as we as we go through the cycle. Uh well, it's going to be the same. So unfortunately the memory cost is something that's happening across the board. So it's it's the
025hard drives that are in the servers. It's the RAM that runs the servers and those are are things that are happening across the board. So >> Yeah, memory costs about triple what they used to be last year. >> tripled what they were last year. >> probably pushing out the server repairs this year hopefully. >> the Chromebooks I purchased last year at $400 are likely going to be $500 this year. I mean that's that's a real uh rough number, but it's probably pretty accurate one. So Um and so as we're talking about costs and we're talking about models and we're talking about all this kind of stuff, one of the things that um we did this spring was we reformed our TAG group, which is our technology advisory group so that we could start having conversations
026about how we are doing um how we're doing multiple tasks in the district. So one of the things we were talking about with this group was what are we doing with our Chromebooks, our our K4 Chromebooks um and what is that model? So right now it's a one-to-one. Every classroom has a cart, every student has a device that's checked out to them. Um but after a lot of conversations with the TAG group and then I surveyed our teachers, um likely what we're going to see there is we will change to a more of a shared model for our K1 so that not every student will have a device. It'll be a shared device model so that um that'll reduce our overall cost on hardware. It'll also help with reducing screen time, which I know is
027a concern with a lot of our our parents and obviously our our our staff as well. Um the other thing that came up was really at the 7-8 model or the 7-8 level where right now it's a one-to-one take home as well. But there are a lot of reasons that we're considering maybe changing that. One is damage. Um we've had the the biggest uh Chromebook damage that we see is at the seventh and eighth grade level and so we're looking at potentially changing that out and there seems to be not only um I think uh staff interest in changing that model, but I think our parents would probably be interested where there's even a potential that they wouldn't even take the devices home and the devices would stay at school and there'd be a reduction
028in um hopefully overall screen time there as well. So I think that's a real consideration that we're talking about with the TAG group and and um I've been working with Bees and Russ and they've been surveying their staff on that on the on the moving forward with the decision. Uh we're also looking at the general student Chromebook device itself. So we've done a two-in-one, which basically is a touchscreen. They flip around, they can touch on both sides and and um we're looking at maybe moving to more of a clamshell device, which would be a cost savings there. Um and from the feedback we're seeing, students aren't using it really to take full advantage of it. It would still be a touchscreen, but potentially not the two-in-ones that we've been purchasing. And then right now as
029we talked about, we're looking at what are we doing with our teacher uh device in their classrooms? Right now there's a desktop and they have a laptop. We want to simplify, save money on that, go to a single device. There's a potential that that single device could be a Windows machine or it could be a uh Chrome device. So some districts are looking at going to Chrome device because Google's offering some additional functionality if the teacher has the same device and operating system as the students that they're only allowing if you have the same device in in both places. Uh and then the Microsoft Office we talked about the licensing and so it's a question of do we need to keep paying for Microsoft Office if only we're only fractionally using it and we're already
030seeing it's not being used in our in our um classrooms as much. Um definitely in our business office, definitely in our offices in our schools, but we could potentially save if we change how we're purchasing Microsoft. And then the other big one that um is is uh a big concern is our printers and copiers. Right now we have 382 printers and copiers across the district. Printers in general cost about four times in terms of per sheet cost than a copier does. So there's a lot of incentive to change and move away from that, which is what a lot of our other school districts have done to save money on our ongoing expenses expenses for for paying for printing and copying. Tyler, can I just add? So um the beauty of hearing both from Tyler and
031Dr. Couch is the relationship between technology and teaching and learning. And in particular when um COVID hit, devices, a lot of our kids started relying on devices. What we're hearing and seeing now in the classroom, especially at an earlier age, is the need to go back to things such as more writing um and uh how do we strengthen that? So we're actually getting more and more teachers and even students saying we'd prefer paper pencil. So it's very interesting to see that pendulum shift. So it's not just all about cost savings, it's also thinking about re- introducing some of those skills that we've seen kind of decline in our students. Okay, Director Jensen. Well, I just like to piggyback on that comment. I I read a very thorough article on in a periodical last week and
032I'm not I'm not sure the date because I was behind, but it really did talk about screen time and the impact on kids and maybe we're not learning as much. Um not being able to create that kind of tension that you have one-on-one with a teacher, you know, kind of pushing you and whatnot and that personal relationship, if you will. So, I'm really much of what you're saying is really making a lot of sense in in many ways. So, thank you. Director McLain. So, the printers are using a managed service for that, like a Rico or somebody? No, it's all you guys. That's a lot of work. >> [laughter] >> I'm sorry. [clears throat] That's another incentive to And and when >> Reduce reduce the fleet, yeah. Yeah, it'd make it much easier for you
033guys. That's That's tough. Um do you have any estimate on what how many Chromebooks you would be cutting out of the fleet? Like percent wise, I mean. Well, a lot of it's going to come down to the final model and we have there's not a final model yet. I mean, if we talk it at K1 it's half the devices, so if you figure half of our student, I mean, you're talking hundreds of Chromebooks that we would we'd be cutting out of our our replacement plan, yeah. So, um when do you think your TAG group you're going to adjust the model or are you thinking >> This year. This year >> And you'll be coming back to >> I need to be purchasing devices before summer, so. And I would just ditto on what Director Jensen
034said. I think when we're listening to the news and reading, you know, things about education, the conversation about how much screen time, technology, and what are we doing now that there's a little bit more conversations going that we need to pull back and um that paper pencil writing and less screen time. So, I'm excited to see that this is how we are thinking about things. >> [clears throat] >> Okay. And so, the the last slide I think is my last slide anyways. Um was really about AI and kind of where we're at uh currently as a district. And so, right now we do allow our staff to get to most of the AI resources. Uh Gemini Notebook LM are are our Google uh AI tools that we have access to. Um teachers also also can
035get to chat GPT, but I've more or less I am discouraging them to use it and there's a reason for that and I'll explain it in a minute. Uh and then there's some education specific AI that we have access to as well that really is used can be used in the classroom environment isn't really an open uh model or open platform. Um but one of the concerns we've got about using other products other than Gemini right now is that technically uh any AI prompts and responses are public record. So, if our staff are using it and they're searching and they say whatever their question might be, you know, tell me write a paper about blue whales, whatever. That is a public record and there have been public records requests. Thankfully, we haven't had any, but
036it is all public record. Google is easy to track that. If we get outside of that environment, it's a little more difficult. So, um ideally Gemini and Notebook LM, which is also why when you look on the AI tools for students, currently students don't have access to AI tools, but um Gemini and Notebook LM are the likely candidates for a couple reasons. One, we can track what they're searching. Um for public records not necessarily public records for students, but we can track what they're doing, so I can search it um if there's something inappropriate that they're searching for. But it's also covered on our data privacy agreement with Google, so there's protections in place for that. So, that's likely going to be the first um entry into that and we've already got some buildings that
037have asked for it, so I think that's probably going to be our our initial entry point. We want to make sure we talk about professional development uh when we're talking about instructional technology because we have a wide array of really high quality tools and we want to make sure that teachers are equipped to use them in the way that they were intended to be used um and to their maximum benefit. So, um I wanted to highlight just a little bit of what it's looked like this year compared to last year um for professional development. The uh first line that you're going to see is just the total hours that T&L has offered um last year compared to this year through March. So, if a student or if a teacher, excuse me, had participated in every
038single professional development hour opportunity, they could theoretically have done 240 hours professional development. That would never happen, but in the theoretical world, that's available. >> [snorts] >> Um T&L had organized at the end of March 167 of those. And I will say the focus of those hours has had a pretty significant switch this year because we have spent so many hours on standards work and that piece of our um >> [snorts] >> you know, teaching and learning ingredient. And so, that hadn't that wasn't part of that 176 hours from the 24-25 school year. So, that's something to consider. But I added the hours that are devoted to technology there for you to see because that is an area that we have um honestly struggled to provide professional development in. Part of that is we no
039longer have a tech TOSA and we for years we operated with a model where we had a tech TOSA that liaisoned between the teaching and learning office and IS and provided hours of professional development each year in-house. And those five hours represent primarily professional development that we have paid for um to be provided by an outside source through uh a subscription or a contract. And that's a very expensive way to provide professional development hours. Um so, one of the ways that we have in the past several years tried to scale back on the cost of both curriculum and digital tools is to reduce actually the number of hours that we're paying for for outside support. And so, it's kind of this tenuous line that we're walking right now. We need to support teachers if we
040want the tools to be used and be used well and also we're trying to save money. And so, um you can see that there. Um and also special education offers a significant number of those PD hours every year and it continues to grow, so I wanted to highlight that as well. Um and that's part of that 241 hours that we've offered so far this year. Yes. I had written this down earlier, too. So, for this slide, my question is what kind of professional development do you guys um get during the year? So, for example, um Pear Deck is uh yep, it's an instructional instructional delivery tool that we use. Um lot of teachers that Ohi use it in particular um and use it very well. And so, um we purchased, for example, a 75-minute PD
041session. And so, I asked teachers at Ohi, like, what what would be most helpful for you to learn from a Pear Deck trainer this year? And I got 10 responses, right? And so then, Pear Deck and I sat down, we put together an hour of PD and those teachers logged on and we did an hour of PD around the focus that they had asked for. Let me clarify, I'm sorry. I meant for you two individual at individually for you because you're still learning just as we all are. So, I'm I'm hopeful that there's some hours for you as well. So, I'm just curious. Um so, I've had a couple opportunities this year. There was a cybersecurity event over um in Anacortes this year that I was able to attend. So, that was a full-day session
042all about cybersecurity. They were talking about risk to government agencies. Uh CISA, which is a national organization, is the one that put it on, so I was able to attend that. Um I also attended WASWUG, so that's kind of in preparation uh for us rolling next year uh to cumulative. >> [clears throat] >> And then I'll every year I have ACPE, which is the Association of Certified Professionals in Education and that's a yearly conference that's held in the state uh for uh education educators in technology. Um and they've got multiple sessions over multiple days. And so, that that basically those are my opportunities that I take advantage of. Most of my opportunities are opportunities that teachers have. So, I sit in on those PD sessions as well. I did attend WASWUG this year for the
043first time um in preparation for that massive undertaking that is coming up with our switch to cumulative. And so, um that was new for me. In the past, our tech TOSA has attended conferences and things with Tyler. And so, that's something that we're figuring out, like, what does that look like going forward? Um I wanted to share um as a last slide just some efforts that we've made towards streamlining subscriptions. Um to Michelle's point, when COVID happened, we responded quickly, right? And we're like, okay, how do we ramp up instruction via all of these devices that we have. And so, like many districts, we got several things to support learners at different levels. And since that time, we have tried to streamline as much as possible. We want to make sure that we don't have
044three tools that do the same thing, right? And so, um we have since 2020 really cut back on the number of tools that we are providing to the district. Um occasionally a school will find something that's really important to them and might purchase it, but that is separate from this. This is what we provide for the district. Um and um yeah, and worked to think about, for example, Screencast-o-matic has a feature that will do translated text for students. Edpuzzle had that feature, but we knew we could consolidate, right? And so, we got rid of our Edpuzzle subscription and now we use Screencast-o-matic both for the video portion and for the language piece as well. So, just want to highlight some of the effort that's gone into making sure that we are um yeah, being responsible
045and thinking through the application of the tools that we do have. Okay. That's it. Any questions? Are there any comments or questions? I think I go back to your last slide. Yeah. I I found when I was looking at your presentation that I really applaud you guys and I think it's really important with the financial situation that we pay close attention in doing that streamlining. So, I was very glad to see that and I felt your presentation was great. I loved seeing all the collaboration in what we're doing and now go back to the slide with all of the increases. Yeah. I would like to give Amber Porter a shout out as well and I should have said this on this slide, >> Okay. but Amber Porter has allowed us to sign multi-year contracts for
046curriculums that save a significant amount of money year over year and that has made a huge difference to keeping this number at 11% rather than 15 to 20. Yeah, I was just going to say that slide really caught my attention as you guys are talking about the importance of working together to see how this and and I'm thinking that all school districts are in the same spot and when we ask for material supplies and operating costs, this is an example of the material supplies and operating costs to run a district, but looking at all of that, your cost of the technology. So, thank you and thank you Amber for keeping us in tow. All right. I I just want to thank Tyler and Emily. They've both seen significant reductions in their departments and in fact,
047it's been a very interesting year for team T&L and Emily has stepped in and stepped up to the interim director position. So, a huge shoutout to both of them for their hard work. Thank you. We will now move to our facilities report. So, good evening school board. Good evening Dr. Cashabola, all our our cabinet and guests here and all of our many, many guests online watching us. Tonight, it is my honor, I believe it's an honor to be chosen to represent our facilities department and talk about what we've done over the year, what [clears throat] we'll be doing, you know, in the future and things that are ongoing. Um so, I'm going to try and condense an entire year into a short little presentation. So, that being said, um if there's some things that you
048need filled in, feel free to to interrupt the presentation if you have a question and there'll also be time at the end to to ask some questions if you have additional questions. >> [clears throat] >> Excuse me. So, let's go ahead and get started. So, I want to talk about the year. Um this is we do work orders all the time. That's kind of a cornerstone of our our job is people saying my heater's too not working good or something needs fixed and so, this year we did approximately 2,200 work orders completed. That represents um small, little short work orders just to turn on the heater or fix a heater or could represent a large project. A two-week project could also be just a single work order. Those include um actually emergencies um and just
049routine. Um I'd like to say this is the same, but actually next year it's going to be more. 850,000 square feet of building maintained. Next year it's going to be about 900,000. So, that number is going up. Um we maintain 450 acres. In addition to that, I want to include that we are our grounds department. I'm referencing our grounds department here. But they also support the the many sports activities. There's a lot of their job is just supporting the activities, making sure the baseball fields are ready to go, making sure all the all the fields are ready to go so our students have a good sports experience. I want [clears throat] to take a little minute here and shine a big old spotlight on our latest addition. That's Ms. Toni Carlson and uh she has
050been a breath of fresh air to have her uh a great positive attitude along with the skill that she brings and the knowledge that she brings are just a just a rare combination. She's really improved things in the entire department. It just it just goes to show how it office administrative assistant can just just help the whole program. Special note to Mr. Harrington, she's not coming back to HR. Yes, [clears throat] I just wanted just wanted to recognize her. She's probably watching online. Um Plenty of challenges this year. Um One of the biggest one is our is our new budget levels. I've I've a kind of a pleasant surprise is so, our service is has been reduced in some areas. We had to be a little more choosy about what of our projects are required
051and what can maybe we don't need to or maybe could do later. But the fact is everybody's going through the same thing. All all of our principals and all our buildings, they totally understand. They have the context of their own budgets being being cut down and so, everybody's been very understanding. Our staff has been really good about uh helping our custodians make sure the rooms are clean before before the day is over, they'll help clean up a little bit. Um we have a reduction personnel just like our budgets in other areas of our district. We're or excuse me, our personnel are reducing and we're asked to do the same if not more with with the same amount of personnel. And we're managing and like I said, everybody is has been very understanding and helped us
052through that process. Something I really want to talk about here is a increased public use of Oak Harbor Public Schools buildings. This is on the weekends and the evenings. I have I've never seen such a concentration and such a a heavy use of our buildings, which is great that the community's buildings. We we fully uh you know, we we uh are aware of that. We acknowledge that these are the public's buildings, but it's a cost. It's a real hidden cost. Not only the money from the support for for us cuz we have to pay our substitutes. Most of them are substitutes that help out and we pay them to help out and uh there's also an availability cost and so, our substitutes that work on the weekends or later in the evening to to help
053these groups, they're less available for other groups, too. So, there's a there's a behind the scenes cost of of kind of a struggle to keep enough subs, but not too many subs. So, it's this it's interesting little balance, very dynamic thing that you got to maintain all the time. One of our celebrations, I know it looks kind of lopsided there. There's there's more than more than one celebration. I can guarantee you that. Um I have never in 30 years of doing this, I've never seen a higher number of work that's been paid for by grants. There's a lot of a lot of grants we're going to talk about a little bit in some of the some of the future work we have. A lot of these are funded by grants. There are I want to
054recognize the people, some in this room, that have done a lot of work. There's a lot of work behind these grants and this is in addition to the what these people do in their normal job. They this if they want grants, there's there's extra work to do. So, I want to recognize that. There's a lot of these projects that just wouldn't be done because of the money situation, but grants have allowed us to do that, given us an opportunity. >> [clears throat] >> So, I got I put the our two big projects here. These are our two big projects that uh we have project managers and of course, they're contracted out, but I want to just kind of let everybody know there's there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes that the facilities department does,
055whether it's going to trainings, whether it's going to meetings or whether it's just kind of kind of helping our project managers, you know, answer questions and make sure things are just kind of the wheels are greased, so to speak, you know, and just everything runs smoothly. The top picture was this this kind of my celebration of this week our excuse me, our our spring break was the movement of the two portables over at Crescent Harbor Elementary and so, we had a team. This is our team that that unloaded and they came back three days later and and put all the equipment back in and set the rooms up for the students. The teachers came in and did some work, too, but that's our team, most of who had already this is Friday at 3:30 in
056the afternoon after school was out and most of these people had already done full days of work, but they volunteered to get that done and and it went great. Actually, had wanted 20 people and upon reflection, this number here was the perfect number cuz there was a lot of other electricians and and other trades there that we would have been stepping on each other and really kind of wasting time. Does the board know the move with the portables? So, we had an opportunity with Tiger Construction to get a jump start on the parking lot area on the east side of the new the existing Crescent Harbor site, but the will be the new parking lot area. So, Brian and his team worked extremely hard to coordinate with the staff and the building principal at Crescent
057Harbor to flip-flop the site to allow an advantage of creating that work to happen by moving the two portables from the east side of the campus to the west side of the campus over spring break in 1 week. So, by moving those portables to the other side, we're able to get a head start on that parking lot on the east side. That [clears throat] project was actually done a day a day early. And so, our teachers were given the opportunity to come in on Friday instead of Saturday. I think they really appreciated that. A couple of them did take us up on that offer. But, I want to go back. I had forgotten. I wanted to go back here. And the reason I forgot is cuz I it wasn't written down, but I wanted to
058include in the challengers, even the facilities department is touched by unfunded mandates. There are things facility-wise. The first thing that comes to my mind is the Clean Buildings Act of Washington state that was was enacted a couple years ago. And so, every building above 20,000 square feet, that's all of our schools, is going to have to benchmark benchmark our energy use. We have to have make a maintenance plan. And we're going to maintain that energy use. And uh So, it's it not only is it initial cost, but it's an ongoing cost, too. I like the concept of it. So, it it it forces us to really pay attention to our buildings and how they operate. I do like the concept, but it's it's something that is going to be expensive. We're going to be asking
059a contractor to help us out on the initial on the initial uh get gathering of information. Then, we'll take over from that. But, uh it's just kind of out of the blue. It's big big cost. Yes, ma'am. So, I have two questions on this challenges um area. Thank you for mentioning that. What When was that Clean Buildings Act When was that What year did that come into effect? It's been for a couple years now. And so, it's So, it's a graduated uh mandate mandated uh time. And so, buildings over 200,000 square feet would do 1 year. Then, the next year they they graduate down down in square footage. I met someone a couple summers ago who was speaking about that. And he had a lot of concerns, too. He was a architect and builder, I
060believe. And thought it was much better for new construction versus retro going back, you know, with existing buildings from what I remember. My other question, can you I'm sorry. I was a little bit slow. On the increased use of our buildings >> [clears throat] >> and the subs and who's paying for these and whatnot. Can you go back? Like, what subs? Give me an example of how this works out. Our custodians are the ones that generally take those after hours projects. We have a basketball game or a volleyball tournament. And so, our substitutes come in for a couple hours in the morning to to open up and get it ready. And then, they'll come in for a couple hours on average afterwards to help clean up. And they're available if there's any if this group
061needs any help just to support the group. No, these are our subs. So, they're straight time. So, yeah, we have enough substitutes that we don't have to you know, we don't have to use our our normal 40-hour staff. You know, we we can we get some extra work for our people. Brian, I have a question, too, that about increased public use of the Oak Harbor public school buildings. So, are you keeping data in regards to that? And can you sort of tell me when you say increase is it How much is increased from last year? I mean, what's going on that you made that statement? >> [laughter] >> Well, it's anecdotal. I mean, I I I feel and and literally it has increased. We have actually looked at that and it is absolutely increased. I
062don't have those numbers right now. I probably should have had that if I put that on my presentation. >> Well, I'm I'm just sort of thinking we have a lot going on right now with the city of Oak Harbor about a community survey, about a community recreation building, and things like that. So, just wondering how these, you know, people are using our buildings. I'm going to say it must be the gyms. Is it mostly gyms? I just think it'd be nice to to to have a clear understanding and, you know, what's going on. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. I'll get some some I'll articulate that a little better. All right. So, now we're going to go into some upcoming work. Um So, I put the Hillcrest Elementary Broadview Elementary solar projects. That was a grant. It's
063called the solar resiliency grant. And so, ultimately this began 2 years ago. Broadview had a lot of work done last year on the roof. We're preparing the roof for the solar panels. I'm not going to put solar panels on a roof that's 24 years old. So, we're we're upgrading the roof. So, so they'll be a longer term >> [clears throat] >> longer term investment of those panels. Um So, this over over spring break, we did some subgrade work at Hillcrest Elementary. There's going to be a parking canopy with solar panels on it. That is going to be both of these projects are going to be finished this summer at the end of this summer. And it's going to the concept of this project is called the solar resiliency. And so, both of these schools were
064chosen because we literally have had school during a power outage and, you know, 3 or 4 hours. And if it's not 40 below, we're not sending kids home. We can't send kids home early. And so, what this does is some select loads, fire panel, PA system, some safety-based loads, some extra loads in the main office for the computer, and some refrigeration loads so we don't lose the food. It's not going to power the entire building, but certainly the the safety things and some central heat. You know, we we heat the gym, I think, in Hillcrest and in Broadview. But, it's it's so we can actually have school. And this is this was paid for by a grant that we got 2 years ago. Noise mitigation. This is another grant. So, Oak Harbor Elementary, Olympic View,
065Northwood, and Hillcrest Elementary are within a noise radius from the base. And we have a grant to do some architectural upgrades and some mechanical upgrades. Actually, this this summer will be completing Northwood Middle School. It's been designed for a couple years now. Northwood Middle School is getting a chiller and window upgrades to make the building more quiet. And if we have to close the windows, then we'll have to cool it down. So, we got a chiller out of it. And that's going to to really the entire school. I mean, it's like uh it's needed air conditioning for many years. It just gets really hot in there. So, this is really exciting, but there's a lot of design going on. There's a lot of uh from our technicians kind of offering a design advice and and
066kind of maintenance advice to the engineers. So, we make sure we have a product that we can maintain. It's going to that's going to last a long time and work best for the school. So, there's some kind of hidden hidden work behind the scenes there that we're supporting those. Brian, [clears throat] can you go back to that slide for me, please? Can you start with the noise mitigation? Can you sort of just give an overview? You talked about Can you talk about the other schools? A little bit about the timing and how they're going to be? Um so, it's going to be a mechanical up All of the schools are going to have a mechanical upgrade and window upgrade so there's sound and there's and there's air conditioning added in places where isn't air conditioning.
067Oak Harbor Elementary, we're going to be doing upgrades to the north building and the B building. We're not going to be doing any of the south building cuz we're not sure what our long-term capital project or capital plans are for that. Um Hillcrest Elementary is going to be done simultaneously Oak Harbor with Oak Harbor Elementary. That's going to be individual air conditioners in the room. It's called a called a variable refrigerant flow system. Good for retrofits. Going to be very efficient. It's going to be really good for the indoor indoor environment. And Olympic View Elementary is going to be like Hillcrest, but that's the last of the three we're going to be doing because we're not 100% sure what's going on there. So, we're kind of delaying that a little bit in case there's some
068some major changes at Olympic View Elementary before that happens. So, this year Northwood Middle School, next year Hillcrest and Oak Harbor Elementary. And the year after that, if needed, will be Olympic View Elementary. And a reminder, those are the federal grants for the noise mitigation. And qualifying is the decibels that we use with the aviation to qualify for writing grants for those four schools. So, at Oak Harbor Intermediate School, we just signed the or had a purchase order made for inclusive playgrounds at Oak Harbor Intermediate School. This was a Healthy Kids Healthy Schools grant that uh the entire staff of Oak Harbor Intermediate School and our special education staff kind of collaborated together. Got a got a great design. It's going to be great for our students. It's going to be really exciting. And we've
069been promised that this will be done in the summertime, too. So, it'll be it'll coincide with the beginning of school next year. >> [clears throat] >> Down at the bottom, we actually today was actually the beginning of construction. That's uh probably a long time since you heard that. I was I was reminded I reminded myself that when this when the whole concept started, the first number of my age was a four. So, it's been a while. It's been a little bit. Um that's actually starting tomorrow. We are and it's scheduled to be We actually have substantial completion at the end of October, but our contractor claims that that'll be easy to get get done before that. And so, this is you're probably aware, but our our CTE program is just so popular that we've just
070outgrown it. And you may have seen the bus that they actually use for storage in the in our area. They They have a a little shop tents set up and a and a bus that they use for storage. And so, we'll be seeing the bus go away. We're going to get rid of the bus and they'll actually have a nice nice new building to expand into. All right, that actually >> Director Jensen has a comment. Well, thank you. I always appreciate these presentations very much and I remember hearing some of this stuff a few years ago for the first time. So, it's exciting. Um related to CTE, I I once a little over a year ago President Gobel and I had a tour with Mr. Salisbury at the high school and I hadn't been there
071yet. I didn't know that Tyler's team worked over there. I helped pass the bond back before we moved away from the community for 13 years, but I hadn't been in the new high school. And when I walked into that CTE area, I was so darn impressed and I do not impress easily. And I saw two women a young you know, female students working on this big motorcycle, not a scooter, not a bicycle like I ride. And I was so impressed and and everybody there was so focused and everything that's coming out of that group is wonderful. And I recently had a conversation with a neighbor of mine and saying you know, his thoughts about education. People like to share those when you're a school board member. And you know, was really saying we need more
072education like what we're doing here at Oak Harbor with the CTE program. And I said we have a great program and it's my understanding this is growing across our nation as well, which I applaud greatly. But I'm wondering you know, could a community member come and tour you know, the CTE program? Could we have an open house? Could we do something that really shows off to some of the I don't want to say skeptics, but some of the people who only focus on the concerns we have in public education and not all the wonderful things that are presently going on in the and things that are moving in a really positive direction. So, I just love that program and I think is it Mr. White? He's teaching the Revit program to um high schoolers and
073that is a very complex architectural design program that most architects you know, struggle using. It is is wonderful. He's introducing that to them. He's learning that on his own and and teaching them. It's wonderful. We actually have a lot of community participation. We have Excuse [clears throat] me. Local architects and local engineers that will come and and teach our students. And actually the architect that is that is helping us with the expansion building is is one of the architects, Mr. Carlson that that helps teach our students. Whenever I get the chance I like to remind everybody how many national level awards these students get. It's just It's It's remarkable. Just concentrated in our little CTE program is just really really impressive to me. Thanks for sharing. >> We also have at the end of each
074trimester advertised to the community is the opportunity to come and see artwork. And in that is a lot of the CTE programs. The staff will come and open up their doors in the evening to allow community members to come in and see the space. I think Director McLean. Uh yeah, I had a question about the new schools going in. Um when things go wrong at the new schools, you know, little electrical things, landscaping things, those kind of things. To the to the new schools? Yeah. Yeah. Is that something that's covered by the the builder or is that something you know, be more pressure on you or It will be. We have great CSG contract services group. We have great project managers. In 30 years I've never had a project manager that's so thorough. And the
075attitude of we're going to give you a school that you need to maintain for 50 years. What's going to work best for you? So, they we we love the work and it's it's a lot of work, but we love being involved in this and involved in the decisions that are going to pay off later on to make these places easier. So, we have a very attentive attentive group that if there's any problems, we're welcome they they welcome us our input to make sure that these get taken care of. And so, nothing major has been noticed yet, but I have to No, no, no. I I just little gremlins with anything new something so complex. Yeah. Yeah, I'm confident if something were to come up that they would be able to respond appropriately. To answer the
076question in terms of after the buildings open, we do have a timeline within our contracts about warranties and the ability to um call the contractor to come in to take care of those issues. So, there's a date called substantial completion and when that date happens our warranty begins and uh much workmanship is is a year and some electrical stuff is just a year, but a lot of it is 5 years. The larger components are 5 years and some up some some to 10 years. Yeah. Okay. Are there any more questions or comments for Mr. Hunt? I'm looking at our student board members down there. It's sort of hard to see you guys. Okay. I just want to thank Mr. Hunt though and his team again also as noted reductions across the system and the ability
077to continue to provide supportive learning environments for our students by day and at night creative spaces for our community. Well, thank you again for the opportunity. >> Sounds like lots of work on spring break. >> [laughter] >> Sounds very busy for you. It was. It did We had It's precious time when our when our students are taking a break and people are in well-deserved vacations in exotic places like Hawaii and Gleneagle. Did I pronounce that right, Mr. Lundstrom? Okay. I think the other thing is Brian's team, they're really proud of their work and I've had the opportunity to sit down with the team and Dwight's been helping out a lot at team meetings this year. I love that they're proud of their work. That That makes that one Oak Harbor. So, well done. All right.
078Thank you everybody. Thank you. At this time we'll move to 8.01 board comments. I'll Well, I'll look down at our students. I'll let our students go first. Any comments this evening? >> [laughter] >> I think it having a board meeting after the spring break might need to be revisited. Okay. Okay, Director Jensen. I just want to thank all the presenters. Tonight it was really beneficial and helpful and I just love hearing the direction that we're going and all the collaboration that's happening in our community within your groups and and more. So, I love that and thank you for all the people that come committed every board meeting and you're so vested and we appreciate you, too. And I really wanted just just to thank Ms. Seaman over at Hillcrest and her team. I had a
079tour of the school just between our last meeting and now and I just loved the building, loved the people there. We I I'm quite fond of Team Elementary. I'm not shy about that, but I'm quite fond of our whole district and I'm just excited to keep learning and and seeing the people out there and the great work they're doing. So, thank you for that team. Okay. Director McLean. All right. Director Ross. All right. Okay. Well, I'll just No, Tuesday night during spring break I had the privilege of representing the Oak Harbor School Board at the City Council meeting. I read the proclamation for the city for our military children since April is the month of the military child. So, it was a wonderful opportunity to be there. And then Wednesday night I had the opportunity
080to moderate the 10th District Legislators Virtual Forum. So, that was a very interesting experience and so represented the Oak Harbor School Board in that avenue. And I'm looking forward to this Wednesday for at OVE welcoming students for the coming to school. I think we've all been invited to do that. But it is just a reminder that we are celebrating our military children this month. All right. Thank you. I'll leave it to our superintendent. I'm the closer. Um couple things. One is I have art placemats for the board. Um unfortunately I stole Gwen's. Um but I will pass these along. So, just featuring Oak Harbor artists. So, feel free to take one or two. Um so, congratulations to our incredible art teachers starting from kindergarten all the way up through the high school to be able
081to have such incredible artwork. Um second thing is congratulations to Mr. Lundstrom for his many hours that he spent being able to be certified to apply to be a school district recognized for Purple Star. So, we are a Purple Star School District. So, that takes many hours to complete all the clock hours required for that. So, thank you for that and OSPA has just announced those school districts that are the recipients of that. So, congratulations. Okay. I will look at upcoming meetings. We have a regular meeting scheduled for Monday, April 27th and then Monday, May 11th. We will have a study session on capital facilities following the April 27th school board meeting. And on the regional director meeting is on Monday, April 20th. We will be meeting at 4:30 to carpool to that event. If
082there is no further business, I will adjourn this meeting. All right, the meeting is adjourned.