June 8, 2023 School Board Meeting

001Hmm. Thanks. Hmm. Oh. He's pointing at you. Good evening, everyone I'd like to welcome you all to this meeting of the Tacoma Public school board of directors for a business meeting tonight on June 8th 2023 and what everyone like to please rise and join me for the flag slip. Allegiance flag. United States America, just saying nation as well. Yeah. Tacoma public schools acknowledges that we are on the traditional ancestral and historical lands of the Puyallup tribe of Indians. We honor with gratitude, the light land itself and the Puyallup tribe. We acknowledge this acknowledgement serves as a first step in honoring our nearest tribal neighbors and partners who have inhabited this reason since time in Memorial and to whom we give thanks for allowing us Passage to their lands. We shall intentionally create inclusive and respectful

002partnerships that honor indigenous cultures, histories, identities and socio political realities. General counsel. Ben Row. Would you please call the roll. President Bumbry here, President Georgia here. Hmm. George Tenet, Director McAlary. And. I think God directly on on the way. Yep. We have a problem? And what about do we have any student reps in the room? I don't believe this evening that we do okay? I think a man is it was less there last you never know. He might just because they love being here so much. Yes. Okay. Thank you general counsel. Um I would like to have a motion for the adoption of the agenda. Please move to it at the agenda. Second been moved and seconded. Anyone looking at you have any Comments, questions or additions to the a. Hearing them. Okay. All those

003in favor say, Aye aye opposed. Abstentions. Okay. We have an agenda item number six recognition of staff, students and community. 6.1 state holidays and civic observances, and I will turn this back over to general Counsel Ben Row for a discussion of this point. Yes, we have one civic observance for this meeting in June in June and one state holiday. So Adam 6.1 A L G B T Q I A plus pride month under our C W 43.1 14.070 The Legislature declares that June of each year will be known in Washington state as LGBTQ Pride month with the stated purpose of celebrating and recognizing contributions made to the state of Washington, LGBTQ people and the arts, science, commerce and Education W also encourages educational institutions, public entities in private organizations to designate time for appropriate activities

004in commemoration of the lives history achievements. And contributions of LGBT people are second item 6.1 B, and it's Juneteenth under scw 1.16 0.050, the Legislature declares the 19th day of June shall be recognized as Juneteenth Holiday, which celebrates the emancipation of those who have been enslaved in the United states on Juneteenth. The Legislature encourages that this be a day to revisit our shared solidarity and commitment to anti racism to educate ourselves about the history of enslavement in the United States and to continue having conversations that uplift Every Washingtonian. So this year. Juneteenth 1000 on Monday. So for our students and families listening there will be no school on Monday, June 19th and school and district offices will be closed. Thank you anyone have any comments from the dice? Neither this okay? So moving on before

005we move on. I would like to say that you might notice that Superintendent Garcia is not with us this evening and we have our illustrious deputy Superintendent Lisa Nolan here in his said the reason Um Dr Garcia is not here is is a vote Very noble one, and we're all very proud of him today this morning, he testified before the US Senate Committee on health, health, education, labor and pension. Which is probably the biggest policy committee in the Senate on behalf of students. Um Social motion well being mental health, and he was on a panel. It was the only superintendent from the entire nation there today. Testifying and talking about the impact social, emotional health and well being have on our students and some of the some of the tricks of the trade we're using

006here and Tacoma. That seems to be working, so he did really well and answered some tough questions and answers and gave a great presentation. So We are all very, very proud of our superintendent for representing Tacoma wealth, So that's why he's not here this evening. So item. 6.2 recognition of students admitted to Pluto as part of the T P s Pou degrees of Change partnership, and I See our assistant superintendent of teaching and learning. Zeke. Edmonds is here to introduce this item. This in its assistant superintendent of teaching and learning, recommends that the board of directors recognized the district's first Members of the Seed Teacher Apprenticeship program and to give you more on that I'm actually turn it over to Pat Irwin, director of educator pathways. Good Evening Board board President, Dr Nolan and everybody

007here. My name is Patrick Kerwin, director of educator Pathways and I really should come to more board meetings because I only come giving you good news every time I come here, and this is good news. Um, this is I'm going to introduce the idea behind the seed teacher partnership. This is a relationship we have with Pacific Lutheran University in just a moment, President Belton will come up and speak. And it's a partnership with degrees of change in the incoming CEO, Marquis Dixon will come up and speak as well. And then I'll introduce all the students to you. But. Really? Before we get started. I want to give credit to Dr Garcia? Because? This was his idea. He called me last year said Hey, I want you to come downtown? I've got this idea And. This

008was the idea that he had in mind and we can get into the particulars of the details. You got information on the board report. But the bottom line is we need to have a dedicated teacher pipeline of sending students to us so they can become teachers And who better to teach our kids than our current students? So we started recruiting in about January of this year, and it was a little tough initially, just because a lot of students already had their plans in place. They wanted to go to what U Dub was ooh! Wherever And we ended up with 16 elite. Excellent candidates will introduce them to you shortly. But it was it was a great journey and in the coming years, our plan is to have 20 students every year going through Pluto, the

009seed partnership and then in the course of four or five years will start to reap the benefits of having these students come back to us to become teachers and become a public schools. Now, as we say we're better together and in the audience tonight you have the students. You have their families. We have representatives from Pluto. Degrees of change. We have representatives from our schools that his teachers who nominated these folks and also I want to give special recognition to Lisa eagerness who's over on the wall there if she wants to wave to everybody, and she started a program called Teach 253 at Lincoln High School, which is a pre teaching program that was part of the inspiration for this, And. Then. She Vonda Simmons Smith, she wanders in the back. Who is her cohort

010at Mount Tehama. So at this time, I mean introduced President Belton following him will be Marquis Dixon. Then. I'll come back up. We'll introduce the students will have them. Come up here, Shake your hands and pose for a picture. Thank you. Evening board members. Community members. Um thank you for having us here tonight and thank you for sending such wonderful students to peel you. We are about to welcome one of the largest classes we have in the last decade and I'm happy to share that we have set a record for the number of students coming to peel you from the Tacoma school district and that we are, there are none. None that we have more proud of than the 16 future teachers coming from various Tacoma schools to peel you to become teachers. It will

011be our distinct honor to take care of these 16 students for the next four years and two happily send them back to Tacoma from beautiful Parkland in four years to become teachers in this amazing school district. Thank you. Mm hmm. Good evening board and community members. My name is Marquis Dixon. I, Come to you wearing two hats this evening, I come to you as an employee of degrees of change where we've been investing in to comment. Public school students for the past 21 years that we've seen close to 80 students received for tuition for any scholarships to our partner Colleges. I, come to you again as a father of three amazing young Children, who are middle child who wants to be a future educator. So If you walk into the Dixon household you'll walk in.

012You'll see our daughter teaching her studies and Because of the commitment and the passion. And that teachers have instilled with her. Our child is very shy reserved, but her teachers have been able to influence her and build that belief that she can't believe B and then she wants to be. It's because the teachers, so if you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she said, she wants to be a teacher. So I'm thankful not only to Pacific Lutheran university could be partnered with for the past 16 years, and they have over 110 acts $6 on our campuses. I also want to say thank you to our C teachers scholars for accepting this call because my Children will have the opportunity to be a to see someone that looks like them, leading

013them in a classroom. So. Thank you for your time, and we're grateful for our partnership with CPS specifically through university. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so at this time, I'm going to announce the students who are the recipients of the seed scholarship, and they we have 13 of them here, so I will call them up and I will name their school. So we have Jocelyn Alanis, who is from Mountain home. A High School. Come on up, Jessalyn. Talia carry AGA colleague A from Lincoln High school. Come on up. Coleman Fleetwood, also from Lincoln High School. Coleman. Elizabeth Garcia to Palais from Lincoln High School. Lillian Garibay from Lincoln High School. Hmm. Hmm. Kyla M, also from Lincoln High School. Enhance from Tacoma Online. Rebecca Prieto, also from Lincoln High School. Amy Stephens from idea. Silly

014to really from mountain home, a high school A team, a Yannas Prieto from Lincoln High School. To Yeager from Sammy. And Crystal is a cop who from Lincoln High School. Why didn't this time I liked them to come up and kind of do the circle and shake your hands. And. Then afterwards when you finish stay on stage so we can have the group photo. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing, right. Okay, English government. Every kind of Yeah. Okay. Good, you're under 55. You know your small I am here today to make sure you listen to the board member McIlroy. She's got this all figured out all the time. I don't know who's behind the distinction. 23 Thank you very much. Okay? That's how that works and just to recognize We also Jasmine to Santiago from mountain home. A

015will be joining us in this program. I have awesome from Sammy and Corina Lopez Pacheco from Lincoln High School. They could not be here tonight. But those are three others will be here. Thank you thank you So much for your hard work and a new project. We appreciate it. To, uh Right and thank you to pl you and degrees of change for partnering with us on this experimental project, and, uh, we really appreciate all of you and working so so diligently to help us create a pathway for these youth to become teachers in return to come up public schools and give back. We appreciate that. Alright item number seven. Superintendent Report 7.1, A budget update And. I see our CEO? Rosalind Medina. What? CFO CFO. It's been a long day already coming to the promotion

016podium, so Good evening. Thank you. So tonight. I'm going to give you approve a real brief overview of something's going on in the budget, as well as a financial update of where we're at right now. We actually hoped to be just a little bit further along tonight, but we are working our tails off. The poor budget team has been, um, really putting in the midnight hours, burning the midnight hours trying to get these things put together and we just weren't able to make it there tonight. So instead of bringing you data that we know is going to change significantly. We held off a little bit. However. I will say that we have plenty of other information to share with you. And to give you kind of a taste of what's coming in our budget, and

017that will be bringing you a presentation a little bit later on in the month to get you where we're going to be at imbalanced in our balanced budget. For our financial update. This is as of February. It's actually 22 components. There's one in February. There's one in April. We wanted to give you an update on where we're at and our current year. This is a 22 23 impact. And so we've talked a number of times over the last several months about how we ended last year, a little bit lower in our fun balance than we anticipated that we might Some of that was a timing issue. Some of that is just trying to understand where we were at the time of with with extra dollars and we were coming out of the pandemic. Still, and

018so it's a little more difficult to estimate where we're going to end those years, So we came in a little lower when we started the beginning of this year. Our revenues are right now being projected at $527.6 million roughly And. That's about $42.6 million lower than what we had budgeted. Part of that is capacity where we budget to receive additional revenues in as well as funds. We weren't anticipating that we would get the S R funds to the to the level that we budgeted. And so it's not unusual or unexpected. But at this point, that's where we're at in our revenues. In our expenditure projections are at $552.6 million and you'll see there's a deficit between those we had anticipated even in the budget that we would be using fund balance reserves to help balance

019us and we're seeing that that is coming to fruition. We are using those resources in our projections and what we saw in February is that are fun balance would be down to about 19.3 Million, or about $10.5 million lower than what we thought it might end. In that In that From our projection. Excuse me from projection to budget. But where we're at right now in April, is closer to 23 million, So. We've closed that gap just a little bit This. This is one of those years where we knew we were going to be really close on our budget and our fund balance and we had budgeted our fund balance down to the 5% reserve amount where it stands right now, With our projection. We're going to be below that 5% reserve Now we don't want

020to be in that space. That's not what our anticipation is, and that's not what the policy requires for us. However, it's kind of like trying to land an elephant blindfolded on a on a peanut. I mean this is really very challenging. Difficult work. There are 200 people that work in managing our budgets, The revenues change. One expenditure can throw us off in our projections. And so if we have a large project if we have a large expenditure that comes in last minute and we weren't anticipating that would come in. It can throw off our projections. And so what we've done is worked through some mitigation strategies were scrutinizing the way that we're hiring for positions were pulling back on some of the discretionary resources that people have access to the budget managers have access to

021try to control and shift that projection for the year end, and those are typical budget strategies that we've used in past years as well. Our anticipation is that will see the fruits of those labors in the next projection or so and that we still have an opportunity to help us mitigate any of these, uh, anywhere we're at in our fund balance reserve. But what you see here is the in February. We were we were projecting ourselves to be at 3.7 million. Right. Now we're projecting ourselves at the end of April to be at 4.4%. And so we we, we should be getting Some updated Numbers here in the next two weeks and get you a revision. Back on Where where we're going and what that looks like, But. I do expect that with some of

022the mitigation strategies that we are employing currently that we'll see that number continue to grow to the point where it's possible that when we're done, we even have a fun balanced reserve. That's closer to 6 6.5%. It really could swing that much, just depending The importance of fund balance, and this is probably more for the public than for you because you've heard this so many times from me. You could probably present this slide yourself but the reserve requirements by policy are 5%. We. Keep those reserves on hand for emergencies to help us with our bond ratings and in case of an extraordinary events so that we can make payrolls in a situation where Ah, you know there's an emergency in earthquake or something like that. Or you don't have access to your bank accounts on

023a regular basis or revenues aren't coming in from the state because there's something wrong with the state of the state level. We try to set our internal goal between five and 8%. Clearly. We're not quite there right now. And so that's part of the mitigation that we're working towards. As. We work towards finalizing our budget. This is our Our large budget here, and this was also the large budget cycle for the Legislature. State Legislature. They went a little longer We go a little later that we do are bigger process where we run the budgeting by priorities where we ask people to submit proposals to us and then we make determinations about which of those proposals we will fund. And in order to help us Prepare for that work you have provided us with these guiding

024principles and these guiding principles have been what the Cabinet has used to make decisions about what positions to eliminate what adjustments to make in our budget. What improvements to make and our continuous improvements of efforts and those are pretty standard practices, I would say, despite the fact that we have announced a $10 million shortfall Ah, we're doing a pretty typical business practice and the way that we manage the budget, the Cabinet is getting together on regular intervals and going out and seeking suggestions on what we think we might be able to change shift. Just add, modify and then implementing those as we process through each of those items. From our enrollment perspective for next year. We're going to be down about 226, according to our demographer 226 students, T e, the primary area that we

025will be losing enrollment will be in the middle school level about 200. I have the number right here. Let me not guess 242 students in the middle school level and we'll be down 13 at the high school level but will be up 29 at the elementary according to our projections, so we'll be watching those projections very closely come October. When. We do our first real official count to see if that will have an impact on our revenues for next year as well. As I said. This was the larger legislative cycle year and some of the biggest changes that we are seeing are, um Special education got quite a bump. Um many, many millions of dollars. It's very exciting to have those resources available to us, and we will be employing those resources primarily within the

026special education program. They did just the multiplier. We've talked about this a little bit in the past. They adjusted the multiplier and they adjusted the cap, which gives us two components that there monkeying around with on the calculation methodology, which is great news for us because we'll get those additional resources, But it also puts us in a position where it will change the way our safety net is calculated. And. So while we are gaining some resources over here, it will change some of the resources that we have access to over here. So that was a new wrinkle for us that we found as we were processing through all of these adjustments. And. Then. We have some prototypical allocation enhancements they had promised two years ago to make some improvements related to physical, social and emotional

027supports, And this was the last year that they made that they finished making those improvements. So. We got some resources for that. And. Then on the EMC. We went up $45 on our end socks and sock is a material supplies and operating costs. That's just a generic overhead allocation that they provide to us from the state on the wages and benefit increases from the state legislature perspective. We did receive a 3.7% cost of living adjustment called the implicit price deflator. And that 3.7%. We received revenue for 3.7% of the people are Excuse me 3.7% for the people who the state funds, but all of the people that we fund through our levee or in excess of what the state provides funding for. We have to also pay that 3.7% and we do not receive any

028resources from the state in order to do that, And. So what That means is we have to make room in the budget, carve out expenses and set those aside. So that we can make. Increases to the salaries and benefits of those staff, which are not funded by the state. So that helps to contribute to, uh Uh, deficit that we've expressed earlier. On the sub benefits. So SEB is our school employee benefit board. That is our health benefits that increases Also going to have the same impact as the implicit price deflator. This sub benefits or a monthly contribution that we pay on behalf of each of our employees for their for their health benefits that we only get the portion from the state and revenue that they actually fund staff for and the remainder of those

029staff that we fund we have to pick up the cost of those stuffs, health benefits increases and then on the retirement. We had talked earlier about how Under the sentence version. They gave us this really preferential savings. And we thought, Oh, that's really great and we may be said that seems a little strange. We didn't think we would actually get something like that. But on the House side, they didn't have any improvements. It turns out, they figured out where their error was, and they reduced the revenue down and they reduced the expenditure down. So for us, it's pretty much a wash, but there was a modification to that. I just wanted to circle back with you on that. And then as far as budget adjustments go, we have we have annual maintenance level cost increases

030and changes every year. This is nothing overly new or exciting. I think probably the most remarkable piece will be that there s r funds are winding down. So this 23 24 cycle will be our last cycle with the federal stabilization funds called Esser. Those resources will probably be around $10 million that will end up budgeting for this next year. And anything that we don't spend by September of 2024 will be reverted back to the federal government. So enrollment fluctuations or another revenue impact. And then, of course, state enhancements will be an increase for us for those resources that we're getting in that we didn't have in the budget before we have standard cost increases every year, People move up the salary schedule. We call that incremental or step increments. We have costs and inflationary increases.

031Gasoline keeps going up utilities insurance costs keep going up, and so we have to build a budget room for all of those expenses as well. And then, of course we bargain. Um 11 different groups, so we have salary increases that have been negotiated with each of those groups that we have to make room for in the budget as well and then a new item that's kind of exciting is our transitional kindergarten plan. Uh, we will be expanding our traditional are Excuse me are transitional kindergarten programming. I think we will receive a few more slots available for preschool, So that's exciting. So With that I'll say that we will have a few components of budget coming up June 22nd. I will not be here. But Kristen Bell will be and she is our budget director. She

032will present you with our balanced budget. With. Any luck We should be able to get there by then. At. The end of June will also do some budget video launching and release the budget calculator with the 23 24 budget information included within it, give people an opportunity to engage with the budget understand a little more about the changes and the impacts of what we've got going on in that budget, and then we'll have a formal July 13th hearing. I will be back for that. And then August 20/4 is our planned adoption for the budget. Be happy to answer any questions. Yeah. Go ahead and look director kidding, wondering if I'm a C slides six when talking about just for the those who are listening for the special education increases if you could just explain what

033it means, what the cap means and also like the money that has been allocated are increased for said That special education funding that that's not just for the school district that and just touch on that that it's a statewide increase. Okay. So on the cap. We only received funding up to a certain percentage of students in our whole population and that part that percent went from 13.5% of our population We could get funded up to that if we have students identified so if we have 12% of our students identified as special education, we get one of our funding components funded up to that point now that they moved it up to 15. If as long as we're in excess of 15. We'll get that full 15%. Of our population included in that calculation, so they've

034expanded the number of people with which they will provide us with resources for I don't think I understood the second part of your question. Please save her. That's exactly what? Thank you But just in time. I and I feel like I think you touched on it last time when you presented us, but there was a significant amount of investment by the Legislature and special education funding. But not all of that goes to come in public schools like that, that it that the money that's been allocated is for across the state. And maybe I'm still not asking. My question is clear as I host so that I mean, we're talking about the multiplier specifically Or. Are we talking about safety net the amount of funding like the like. I think there was. I Feel like you

035did touch on this a little bit last time. Last time you were presented to us, but that there was maybe this, um To clarify that the amount of money that has been allocated for the increase in special education funding is is across the state. And. It wasn't specific to to come and stop public sports, so will receive about in total $9 million roughly of new special education funding within the com school district. I think statewide, we received an allocation of $300 million roughly help. Thank you. I remember something too? So and then also, doctor Garcia was there when we talked about it last time is that the cap is just the amount of states willing to fund but just also for the public. We have more students than what we are actually being funded for,

036so we're getting it. We're getting an increase, Which is good so we can serve more, but we even have more students than that identified that we continue to serve. And me I P goals even though we're not being funded through this thing, absolutely correct. There we go. We're on this slide. There's another point for the public because I think it's you know, there are a lot of acronyms that we've been throwing around, and I think one of the things to just clarify what I believe Rosalind was saying about why we have, um, the impress the Plus it price inflator deflator, You know that 3.7% When You say it's only for those that are splendid by the state and people are going to be thinking. Well, what else could they be funded by so we have

037other programs that are like federal programs that are coming come down or Wednesdays are funded by, you know local local resources level or other resources and they are not considered state funded. So We don't want to treat our own employees differently. So. We are giving all of our employees across the board. This 3.7%, but we only are getting enough money from the state to cover the state funded employees. And So that's a yes thank you something for the for the sub and the retirement, So it's it's we Don't pick and choose among our our staff by who they are funded by their staff and their treated equally so Thank you? Thank you. Anybody else have any other questions or comments? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Rosalind, and we will look forward

038to seeing Kristen next board meeting. Right, and then we have to get back to you. The didn't do that, but I'll just do it all from here. All right. So we are going on to item number 7.2, the McCarver Elementary renaming Process Update Deputy President in the rivers of the board. I am happy to report to you that there's an update on the McCarver renaming, um, proposal And behind me to my left arm. Any members of the committee here this evening but to share the update and to share the information related to the proposal that they shared with Superintendent Garcia. Stephanie, right, our principal at McCarver Elementary will come up and move Knowles, who is not only a committee member, but an alumni of McCarver Elementary. Okay? Good Evening, Deputy Superintendent Nolan President Obama bright

039and members of the board as principal of McCarver Elementary School. I proudly stand here with McCarver alumni Mu Knowles on behalf of the McCarver renaming committee to bring forward a proposal from a Carver school name change. Tonight. We would like to share our process that has led to our recommendation and proposal. Board policy. 69 70 was initiated last fall when a community member reached out to the superintendent, raising concerns about McCarver Elementary school being named after Morton Matthew McCarver, a known racist, the community member asked the superintendent to consider a school name change. Policy 69 70 as principal McCarver Elementary school, I was advised to establish a committee gathered the voice of our stakeholders and submit the findings. Summarizing the support or opposition to the proposed change. After a pre committee phase of researching consulting

040with schools that have undergone the process and communicating with staff. A committee was established. The school Name Change Committee consists of 18 members representing staff. Students, parents, alumni and community members. The committee gathered eight times starting in February with our last meeting, concluding in May, the committee began by setting our purpose and committing to a fair and equitable process in a listening community voice in this decision. Members of the committee dedicated time to providing historical context and designing a community survey. We discussed opportunities for outreach to ensure we gathered all the voices from our McCarver and hilltop community. We wanted to provide more information to our community by hosting a community information event, which allowed our community to learn more about the historical context to this proposal, while also giving alumni and opportunity to revisit

041a remodeled school and eliminate any barriers and completing an electronic survey as we had a paper pencil survey at the event. During meetings. The committee viewed the status of the survey results to see what audience we were reaching. The community members also created a student video for the current McCarver students that included historical background and proposal information. A survey was administered to all McCarver students. When the survey closed. It was open just about four weeks. The committee analyzed the survey results. The community used the results to make this recommendation and proposal. That went to the board actually in June. Not in May as we did extend our timeline due to an additional meeting. I wanted to just take a moment to acknowledge the work of our committee and thank them for their dedication, intentionality and

042care they took in this process. So if you were part of our committee, can you please stand Acknowledgement. Hmm. Hmm. My turn. Good evening. This is my first time in this building. My name is, um at least I think so. My Name is Moon knows they them pronouns born and raised in the historically black hilltop neighborhood. Um and I'm here tonight to just tell you a little bit about my role in the committee's role and also the outreach we were able to do so. I. Um, before I do that, I just want to give a little background on myself. I am a McCarver alumni. Um and I was a part of the Gene and Linda Park Project. Raise your hand if you know anything about the Zen Olympic Park project, maybe, you know, maybe you

043remember her story, right? I was actually in fourth grade when the event happened, and tragedy struck our community and our goal as a community At that time that was back in like 2008 ish. Obama was president. Um and We continue to build community and that was kind of a key moment in my life. Um, in order to build my leadership skills. I was a key stakeholder. I spoke in front of the Senate Budget Committee City council. The list goes on, and this was just as a 10 year old. Right. So. We got this experience to build this project together and that has shaped my journey. Um So far in my life, and I just thought that was an important aspect of this because it's kind of full circle moment for me. Especially being on this

044committee because I had the honor of playing the role as a facilitator. I am an experienced facilitator. I might be young, but I do have experience. I work in the community. A lot. Um, so my main goal was to make sure community members that were on this board, which it was a diverse room of individuals, um, that they were included in that their voices were valued throughout this process. What I like to call it is a participatory process. So We come from different backgrounds. We have varying kind of abilities and gifts to bring to the table right, And. We also had different levels of capacity. As, you all know you're on the board so coming to a committee meeting in the evening. Time is not easy. We have parents. We have students who are here

045We have you know educators and people who have varying, um needs in order to be able to participate varying responsibilities, So, we really had the opportunity to balance each other out and really harness our Collective power together. Um and I work as a committee. I would say in my experience, facilitating this space, we did our due diligence in order to explore the different the different complexities that come with renaming the school, especially with someone like Morton McCarver more Matthew McCarver, someone who was outwardly anti black, um, and his anti black racism actually led to legislation changing, um, and it impacted the black community across the um United States. Dates but in particular on the West Coast. Um, and our goal as a come as a committee was to really build consensus and Through that consensus

046building. We really made sure that utilize the communities voice and the survey results in all the community gatherings that we were able to have, Um, we use those as our guiding compass in our decision making. Um I also had the opportunity. Um Stephanie spoke of the community engagement night that we had to add the opportunity to EMC that and we've seen familiar faces faces. We didn't know that were part of the McCarver community, and we really got the chance to have more of a personable experience. Right. Um and I think that's really important when you think of community engagement and the most effective ways to really reach community in these kinds of moments where the decision is really important. Um so we I believe we were really able to truly harness the communities voice and

047really promote the survey in the way that allowed us to see the decision we needed to make. That decision was built upon the voice of the community. So. Thank you I'll. Pass it to Stephanie. Unless You want me to say something else but that that's what I came prepared to share is just that we were really focused, Um on centering community and growing up in the hilltop that's really important to me. Cause. It doesn't happen often. Thank you. Moo? Hmm? As you mentioned outreach Was really important for us as the committee we wanted to reach as much of our community as possible in collaboration with the TPS Communications department and the affiliations of our committee members we used to variety of platforms to get our survey out. Communication went out through the global school community

048email and phone systems. Family newsletters. Social Media The News Tribune and our community event. Our survey results when asked when they When asked whether they supported a name change the survey results of our community survey showed 74% in support of a McCarver name, change and 26% opposed to a macabre name change. This reflected 831 responses, including TPS Step staff TPS students 300 TPS parents, 160 alumni and more than 160 community members. The survey results of our current students survey showed 70% in support of a name change and 30% opposed to a name change, which reflects the 198 responses. When. Asked about potential names for the name change, the community survey results showed that 53% of our community would like McCarver to be named after a person and 74% wanted a local role model. The community.

049The Committee used this data to create criteria for possible names. The criteria included being a person who embraced diversity and equity. Someone with a direct connection and contribution to the hill hilltop community, along with consideration of year and time of service in the community. And, someone connected to education and or dedicated to working within supporting BIPAC Children. The community also had an opportunity to write in name suggestions. Few names were suggested multiple times. Tacoma resident and leader. Nettie Asberry was identified 16 times to the survey and to come. A resident and leader, Dr Edna Travis was identified 71 times through the survey. The committee decided to take these two names into consideration. And time was spent to research and gather information about the two candidates, and the meeting was dedicated to share and align the

050findings with the criteria that was established by the committee based on the survey. The committee thoughtfully listen to and heard all sides of the strengths and considerations for each person before voting on the final recommendation. The committee, then met one final time after the vote to continue further discussion and address any other thoughts or concerns before voting to move forward with a proposal to change McCarver elementary school to a doctor and a Travis Elementary school. Dr Edna. Travis overwhelmingly embodies each criterion established by the committee. She was a humanitarian advocate and mother whose daughters attended McCarver Elementary as Children. She was one of the first black woman pastors in Tacoma, founding the New Covenant Church on the corner of 23rd and MLK just a block from a Carver. Dr Edna Travis champion many causes during

051her life of 90 years, including opening a feeding program, which served many families. Served, many hilltop individuals and families experiencing food and housing insecurity five days a week. Dr Travis was known to be a constant source of hope, Courage and comfort to many in her role as a community leader and her Children and grandchildren continue her legacy through their community organizing and service, mutual aid and outreach efforts and advocacy for the empowerment of young, black and brown students. Including those who attend McCarver today. Dr Travis touched many corners of Tacoma, leaving many residents of hilltop with personal stories of their connection to her beautiful spirit. Dr Travis spoke. To power build community, open, safe transitional housing and carved a space in the neighborhood that welcomed all who sought a place to be seen, acknowledged and

052valued. Proposing this name gives to come a public schools a great opportunity to honor the life and legacy as well as the seeds of equity planted by Dr Edna Travis. Again on behalf of the McCarver name Change Committee. We thank the board for your time and consideration of this proposal. Thank you very much doing many of my colleagues have any questions for the committee? I just I want to thank everyone on the committee. All of you that are here today and those that weren't able to show up. I know how much work this is? Believe it or not, it was in the past 20 years. I think there have been two named named new schools named Willie Stewart Academy and to come online and then, um, so it's a really unusual and all of a

053sudden since we've been on the board several of us it's Done. This will be the third name change, so it's like out of nowhere. This has been, um really a lot of work for you not communities to do this and for us as well. It's a wonderful experience, so Thanks for all the hard work and I appreciate that. And, um what we're going to going to do here is give the opportunity of each board member to hear what you've said. Think about it and it one of the next couple of board meetings. We will take this up for a vote, but we really appreciate all the work that you put in and and and and the the input from the community and also like this to take this time for those listening, um to if

054you have thoughts on this issue, too right to us and board At Tacoma dot k 12 dot what got us and that will give us an opportunity also to hear from from others that might not have answered the survey. But anyway, we really appreciate you and you are awesome representatives of the hilltop region and we're thrilled to have you here tonight. Thank you thank you so much. Right? So now up Item number eight staff report to the board. Number 8.1 strategic benchmark monitoring report Partnerships, volunteers and organizations. Yes, thank you, Director Scott Thomas for sharing this evening when you look forward to the monitoring report, all right? Good Evening board of directors, beloved community. My name is Amanda. Scott Thomas. I'm the director of the Community Partnership office, and I come before you about twice

055a year to kind of update you on some key benchmarks for partnership. We have a plethora, but we highlight to a year that we come and report and let you know what we're how we're doing. Ah, so we'll get started. You were pointing in the wrong direction. Oh, here we go. Volunteers. Alright, So. Um, as you know, um and have been paying attention the last couple of years. Um, the pandemic hit our volunteers. Volunteers number numbers in a serious way. Of Course people weren't able to volunteer and so it took us a little while to pick up the momentum for of course, safety first making sure that, um, our families and students were safe. Um, and there was incremental opening of buildings and we are back on trend. I'm excited to say that we set

056a 10% goal or an increase of 10% for the year and we have exceeded that goal. Um, we were last year we had 2967 volunteers. Where we stand out is about 5000 or 5571. So. It's an 88% increase versus the 10%. So Whoo hoo! We're trending upward, volunteers and families are back in buildings back. Volunteering, um, are Community Partners have been excellent. And so we're really excited about meeting and exceeding that goal this year for volunteer numbers. Um, as you know, historically of about 50% of the volunteers for an entire school year, usually register because we registered them annually. They usually register in the first couple of months of school. So, September and October is our biggest push for volunteers. But what we've been seeing, Um, since the pandemic is that we're having volunteers engage

057and register throughout the school year, And so we had our regular normal big bump in October and September, but we had another huge bump in March. Himself. That's a time where there are a lot of field trips and a lot of different things going on. So we're seeing a little bit more consistency. Um, as far as registered registration with our volunteers happening throughout the years, not just, um, the beginning of the year, so 41% of our volunteers registered in February and March and April of this year. Um, and that's something new and again we see we surpassed our goal. Our next steps, um in in terms of increasing volunteers and working on this bench benchmark is that we're continuing to. Um now I have a really good support system within the office that's helping with

058us with automation and cleaning up. Some of our process is so we're going to continue to keep the watch users, um updated, so that's a list of in our district who has access to volunteer information and able to run volunteers at the school site. Um, when we went through and did an inventory of that list we had Hundreds of people on that list. We were able to find out who was still active. Who should have access to that list, so that was a great piece of work this year, so we've cleaned that up and we'll continue to manage that. We're continuing to work with the comms teams. They've been supporting us in volunteer engagement, getting the word out, making it easier for folks to volunteer. A lot of our processes have went online so again,

059we do not have a centralized system so people have to volunteer at a school you have to go to school and fill out the form. And so we get a centralized system. That's the way we do it, and we're tracking that from the partnership office will continue to support buildings with family community engagement events and activities. It's a great way to engage folks in volunteerism they come to school have a great time, participate in one of the family fun nights, the paint nights, and they're also asked to volunteer so you'll see. Many continue to increase in our number, and we're really hopeful. The next priority Bunch benchmark that we take a look at each year. I point to you and talk to you a little bit about, um, our former partnership. Um, these are when

060we say formal partnerships, and this is good for the public to know the district has formal partnerships and we define those as partners that are either entered into a contract or an MOU with the district. That doesn't mean that if you have heard of an organization that works with the school district but doesn't have a contract, or an MOU doesn't mean that they're not a partner. It just means made mean that there In an informal partner and they may be working with one of our former partners are working in an informal way, but we we do track and what we keep in a database or our formal partners. Um, and though that formal partnership database is really, um, district wide, and our focus here is around, expanded learning opportunities and working with community based organizations

061to support students, so we track a number for every year that defines or that looks at those particular organizations. As, you can see, um again. These partners for this year are number was 61 the other thing that impacts this data is that our partners we bring all new partners every year, but we have partners that their M O. U s R contracts expire and then we have some that are multi year. So. The number stays around, Um, in the sixties, usually so as you can see, we picked up from last year. We had 40 last year. We're back at 61 this year, and that's for those community based organizations that support Um, a students and those were the ones that were established the beginning of this school year. September 2022 2 now September or mate

0622023. So those are new partners that were established that it fit that e L O community based organizations. Student support programs 61 for the year doing pretty good. Um you like to take a look every year about what partnership looks like throughout the district. We know that the partnership office is not the only department that establishes M O using contracts. They happened throughout the district. Um, we do a chunk of those and work with a lot with community based organization. But that gives you kind of a visual to see how out of the partnership I. That's how it split up across the district and who creates and establishes, Um, those partnerships throughout the distri. Um are key findings again. I share that these the data that I shared with you reflects new partnerships or is

063it the partnerships with this year we've implemented again. We're always trying to make things easier for our constituents and stakeholders and community based organizations to partner with the district. Um, that we have an open door policy, but it's not always easy for people to find a pathway to partnership and be directed in the right place, So we have implemented an online partnership intake form. So when somebody comes to the website, how to partner with the common Of the schools. There's a link to say Yes. This is who I am. This is how I would like to partner and we're able to filter those applications or those intake forms to direct things to green trike. If. It's more of an E L o after school program that fits beyond the bill over something that we would

064support or help to establish animal you might service high school students and we know beyond the bill and school beyond is for middle and elementary school students, so there are lots of partnerships that come in, and we're kind of the liaison. On and, um, filter those in and and support people in establishing those. We've Established 10 external, It's extended or expanded learning opportunities this year through MOU and, um, the Aesir funding, So. I'm really excited about what the S R funding allowed us to do Our department usually seeds out of our budget, a couple of community based organizations, small, community based organization expanded learning opportunities because we got some extra funding. I had some partners in the pike that have already been delivering great services and S. Er, with Allowed to enhance some of those

065programs and expand and then see some new programs. So this year we have Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. They created a mill program at Steph Stafford Elementary. We had Proyecto Mole, which is a mentoring organization for Latino youth and young adults has a longtime partner that has been doing good work without any funding from the district. So. We were able to support some of that work. We had rock Paper Scissors Foundation, Um and they did a social and emotional learning trafficking. Sex Trafficking Prevention and mentoring program at our middle schools. A couple of our middle schools. We had Big Homie Ministries International. They didn't after school program for students to engage in anti violence, counseling and gang avoidance. That was something that was able to be seated by funding. We had Dr push gains pushed inspirations

066he was able to provide a social, emotional curriculum and character development program for middle school students doing after school tutoring and mentoring program. We had money verse, which was financial education done at elementary, middle and high school, Um, at the high school level for students built to lead an organization that's a community based organization run by a person of color as well. Offered social Emotional Learning and Leadership Development workshop and activities for middle and high school students. We had El Camino, which is the multicultural center. They provided education and early intervention for students at risk of drug or substance abuse. Uh and then student connections was a peer to peer tutoring counseling program they had offered free academic support and consistent academic role models. This was created by two students and we were able to

067support With that and then kid Vantage, which was a formerly East side Baby center. We were able to work with them to provide early learning. Um, uh, supplies basic needs for infants. Um, for some of our families, So those are some of the partnerships that were just established this year. Super proud of the work that we were. We were done. We usually established anywhere from 4 to 6. New expanded learning opportunities. But with the S er, um and just with the community engagement we were able to do 10 this year, so I'm Happy to report on that. Next steps will continue to focus on partnership around the district goals and benchmark data. So everything we do, um, supports the strategic goals of the benchmark around family and community engagement and also partner supporting student success.

068Those are the strategies and benchmarks in the partnership office will continue to develop the partner portal, a platform for partners to access data that's still ongoing. Um, it is a machine. That we are working on. Um and with all databases and systems. It takes a while for things to really, you know, work like a well oiled machine will continue to work with the contracts office to refine and report on E l. O s and student and family support partnership data. Um, the reason this is interesting and key is because when we have so many people throughout the districts establishing formal partnerships, they don't always check the E l O Box, where they might be establishing and expanded learning opportunity. So. We work with Dr I see it? We got our definition for expanded learning opportunities,

069So it's going to take a little bit of a learning curve for everybody to understand. Hey when I do this, um mou or contract. This actually, um, does qualify as an expanded learning opportunity, and that will be in our partnership data that will be able to report to you. Um, also just to give you a heads up. Um, myself and Victoria keys from the partnership office are going to be, um, presenting at a national conference. Um in D C or no Atlanta this summer in W ea which, um, that project that we got grant funding through the Gates project and we created those family engagement model modules. They invited us to come and present about our process and about the module, so we'll be doing that at the end of the month that were excited

070to share that. At work partnership is working to support again the citywide summer late nights continuing to engage the faith and social Service provider community this summer. We do have a meeting with some of the folks that we met with during the school year to brainstorm and strategize and get a head start on this upcoming school year. Um And so those are our next steps. I. Keep going backwards. That was it And But while I have the microphone. I wanted to, um, also talk about a work. Um or a partnership. Um, and some community work that we've been doing so as it was acknowledged earlier this month is Juneteenth June 19th will be celebrating Juneteenth in our in our state and in our country, um, the district as, um, uh, we'll have an HR table

071at Juneteenth event that's taking place at Stewart Heights Park. Um, it's called the Juneteenth Celebration Road to economic freedom. It's a The all day event will have an HR table out there will be in community but I did want to hype up and let's make sure everybody knows and was able to come out. We're having our first ever missed Juneteenth scholarship pageant and program. So. Um, we actually have seven candidates. Five of those candidates are TPS students. We opened it up around the county and we got five TPS students to participate. We're super excited. The First place winner will win $1000 scholarship, The Second place winner A. I think it's a $700 scholarship and then um or first runner up in the second place winner, we will win a $500 scholarship, but we've raised enough

072funds from community that have Been buying ads from the program and then just gifts from colleagues and supportive community that every girl that participates will walk away with the scholarship. So, Please come out and join us if you want more information, it's juneteenth war dot com is where you can find information about the event and the day but we want to support our young people, and I just appreciate the district support and always engaging in community events and just walk in the talk. Um, but we'll see you hopefully all on June, the 19th the support our young ladies. Thank you, Amanda as always a very full report. Does. Anybody have any questions on the diets? Have Any questions? Well. I have one quick question Because, remember, I know you've told us before, but I think

073that's the theme of my questions tonight? Um, is that when on slide seven Yes, there's and I feel like this was a data input. There was something about software, but that's why I can't remember. So in 2020. To 2021. There's that jump from the previous year from 127 to 366. And then so could you talk a little bit about why they're those numbers are the way they are so user error. It was how we were counting the partnerships that, um Josh told me like, get all the expanded learning opportunities. Use the database and we were counting on partnerships that actually were not. They were partnerships, but they were not expanded learning opportunity. So what you see right? There is kind of a fluctuation in definition and defining the data that we were providing for you.

074Um And, So it was just a larger number because it was they were actual partnerships, but they weren't yellows. Mhm. Anybody else? Any questions? Right. Thank you as always, Amanda. Great job and thank you to your expanding team. Yes, thank you. I shout out to Victoria and rent. I appreciate them. Good luck next month when you and presenting all right now I have flyers for anybody that wants You can put them on the back table. People can get them on the way out. All right. Thank you so much Alright, Moving on to item number nine members of the public wishing to address the board school board members encourage public participation. Your civil input is appreciated. Board members will not respond to your comments during the meeting the superintendent or a designate will follow up with

075you after the meeting if action is needed. Instead of speaking at a meeting. You may also send an email to the board and board at coma dot k 12.1 dot us and please contact the board office in advance of the meeting for disability accommodations. So as many of you or maybe all of you by now. No, we have two ways to interact with the board. You can write as we had just said an email ahead of time. Which we all read before the board meetings. And. So that is the written comments and you'll see on the on the on the agenda that there are some individuals that have done that. Um and then the first option or the other option is verbal comments and I saw several people filling out blue cards tonight, so I'm

076going to turn this over to our general counsel, and he will read the First tell you how to do this, and then he will read the names. Thank you, uh, public comments proceed on a broad policy. 14 30 under 14 30, the board president may interrupt and or terminate comments when the speaker exceed the time it lauded when comments or abusive, obscene or irrelevant, So we have 13 public comments today, so I will ask to stick close to the time if that's possible to give everybody everybody time to put their comments in. So. Our first public comment is from Morgan Powell. Yes. Okay stepped out, so we'll we'll come back. Come back come back. Next comment is and Travis Parker Also stepped up. All right. Mm hmm. You're a little slow. Yeah, Take your time.

077Oops. Sorry. She has a type problem. I have a leak problems. Okay, You're a great pair. I love it. One good pair. We are doctor Travis's daughters. This is Beverley. I'm an Dr. Travis had four girls. Alright. Youngest sister, Lisa. Past just a little over a year ago. But. They're here in spirit. Lisa. What's the school principal? Won many awards. Our older sister, Sharon Path. Seven months ago, she was a medical social worker. I retired from Bank of America as a pool. Vice. President. Beverly retired from D s. H s s a social worker. The careers we had it was because of our mother. Depressed. Education. We press education with our Children. All of our Children have degrees. And are quite successful, Dr Travis But. I wanted to understand why She would. It would be

078an honor to name the school after her because she pressed for education. Many things people don't know about her home. What open to anybody in need. I can tell you right now we never Ever lived alone. We all can't I With wonder Maybe this Christmas will be for us. Mm hmm. No. Dr. Travis fell somebody that needed to live with that? And had to. We had to help. And. Then she started up a situation where You had to take your best Christmas gift and give it to someone else. We had to learn that and and today my great grandchildren has to do the same thing she went on, not only opening up her home She went on to open up the ceiling program. We only got 54 sections. You want to say something, okay? The

079thing I want you to remember what Dr Travis with at the hilltop. That she Stay when many fled. There was gang violence, even at her house. There was time we would come to 16 06. You couldn't get up there because there were so many gang members, but she would say to us treat them nice. They're just lost right now, and we did and they didn't do anything to us. Her nephew was murdered in the churches. Parking lot. His brains was blown out. And. We thought, well, now we're going to leave, she said. Absolutely not. And so I want to do that? Understand that we have a house called the Shalom House. Okay. I'm out of time that existing today Thank you for your time. Thank you for coming, ach! Hmm. Yeah. Right. Our next speaker

080is Rinaldo Grant. Aah. I'll see you. Hi, I'm Renaldo Grant hello to come off school board. I would like to speak on the renaming of McCarver Elementary, Um, after I received my driver's license I was driving Dr Travis home down 19th Street here in Tacoma. I was in high school at Bell Erman and nearing the end of my high school career. She asked me. What are you going to study in college? And I told her I wanted to be a nurse, but quickly decided against that after I realized that field wasn't for me. As. We approach 19th and Union. I looked over at KeyBanc as we stopped at the stop light and she said to me, you should study computers, she said. One Day. Everything will be ran by computers, even cash registers, and I

081thought that was absolutely crazy, but being a 19 seventies baby, I learned to respect my elders and just listen. And. You have to realize this was like 1987. And. Now everything is what ran by computers. We knew why. She said that she had vision for the future. She said to me this famous statement that she told all of us stay in school. Get your education because I don't want you to have to work hard. I don't want you to have to lift anything heavier than a pencil. Use your brain today I can say her encouragement on that particular day was a vital force in my life. I graduated from Bell Erman. I went on to Tacoma Community College graduated in 1991 of my associates degree. I went on to Langston University in Oklahoma and graduated

082with my bachelor's of science in computer science, and I've worked it. City University to get my n B. A. Why because of her influence and education. Today, I'm on the project right down the street or hilltop link extension to make sure that we activate link extension in our neighborhood. Why because she inspired me and education. Her impact on youth goes way beyond me hundreds of youth and adults because she went on as an adult to get her education as well has impacted this city. And today I encourage you to rename McCarver Dr Edna e Travis School. Thank you. Our. Next speaker is Michael Malvo. Uh, hello, board and everyone else. I also would like to encourage you to rename McCarver after Dr Travis. I was her neighbor for a couple of years. Vietnam. Thanksgiving Edit

083house several times I've heard her preach even though church isn't really my thing, Um And I can't think of anyone who more embodies the spirit of education. Uh, for everyone, Um Naming the school after her would be the most fitting thing I could think of. Thanks. Okay? Our. Next speaker is Janelle Walter. I'm sorry. Okay? Sure, shall we? Let's circle back to Morgan Pell. Okay. All right. So those were this speakers who had signed up to speak on the carbon dating project will keep working power that will keep you know, Walter. Um we'll move on to the next topics. Okay, the next speaker we have is Joseph Gavin organ. The process five times. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening to the Common Public Schools board and to our community members here in the Great State of

084Washington. My name is Gavin Morrigan. He him pronouns and I've been joyfully teaching social studies in the district for 12 years, the last five of which have been at Baker Middle School, Baker Middle School home of the Bulldogs. It was my pleasure to pilot this educate areas curriculum. My colleague, Jill Patrick had already introduced me to the D B Q s document based questioning a strategy that strives to help teachers help students read smartly and think and write clearly with educational documents and teacher development, so they jumped to educate areas. Inquiry based learning was smooth. Increase based allows students to explore and ask questions the world around them. There are some of the questions. These are some of the questions that are seventh graders explored this year. What decisions and whose stories define Washington state.

085How can dams in Washington sort of the common good. How does innovation Impact communities in Washington? And how are people in Washington connected to each other and to the rest of the world? In the poster summit of in the first unit connected. You can see how students communicated their learning about how Apple's aviation salmon and hydro electric dams connected us to each other and to the rest of the world through the use of interactive community bulletin boards, and I will show those in a minute. Imagine how impressive How 30 of these interactive community bulletin boards would look hanging around Baker Middle School. Exploring these questions helped our seventh graders develop critical thinking and problem solving skills. The educational curriculum also aligns to the standards and the C three framework of college career in civic life.

086It is exciting. Watching my students learn history, geography, economics and civics through inquiry based research. Evaluating primary and secondary resources, including multiple perspectives fo. It is rewarding to watch them collaborate come to consensus and then process press forward was sharing what they've learned with the community, as in the examples provided earlier. It was also extremely rewarding to watch my students learning about the Puyallup tribe and whose ancestral lands we live. Not only does the Puyallup tribal and create work validate the many tribal students in my class. It also allows me to comply with us since time immemorial requirements, which helps us increase racial equity in our schools. I would like to express my gratitude and Nicole Everette, the K 12 social studies instructional facilitator who skillfully and gracefully facilitated this pilot and two Ryan, Whitlock

087and Robin strong, my uber dedicated Washington state history partners in crime. From hilltop Heritage and Mason respectively. We joyfully spent many hours together collaborating to tailor this curriculum to most effectively and efficiently meet our students needs and I have six seconds to show you Select exam poster with fantastic interactive bulletin boards. Q R codes. Um people walk by could stand the codes interact right on them. Ask the kids questions. It was fantastic. Thank you. Our next speaker is bland Whistler. Good evening to you. Members of the Tacoma school board and community. Uh, my name is Ryan Whitlock and I am currently the Washington state history teacher at hilltop Heritage Middle School. This is my third year teaching the course. And. I hope I'm given the opportunity to continue this journey next year. During the first

088year I developed my own course content independently. The. Second year I attempted a different pilot. And this year I was able to pilot the educate areas curriculum. I am here today in support of the adoption of the education, Serious social studies curriculum for 6/7 and eighth grades. As, a project based learning curriculum. Students are encouraged to embrace inquiry They are inspired to dig deeply into topics tailored to our state and region with the wealth of inclusive and very varied resources. Articles videos, treaty transcripts, podcasts, infographics, e. These resources build on the funds of background knowledge our students already possess creating connections between self and community. Students are afforded opportunities for rigorous reading and writing throughout and multiple modes with which to demonstrate their understanding of the priority standards from this curriculum. Students have learned the

089major industries like aviation and agriculture that connect Washington state culturally and economically across the globe. How. Our State history is the product of the many voices of indigenous people, immigrants and early settlers and the importance of considering the common good when planning and developing major public infrastructure project. Throughout this year I have seen students find their own unique interests in the story of Washington state. For example, learning that Boeing is one of the largest producers of aircraft and other aviation and aerospace technology in the world inspired one student to design their own airplane. I also have no doubt that the majority of my students will remember that Washington produces over 12 billion apples. Each year they were fascinated by apples. I have also seen students who would normally be content to turn in an essay

090and never talked to another soul. Get up in front of their peers and discuss the key features of the Steve Ines treaties. It was a student's line of questioning that taught me how immigrants were able to send money back to their families in China in the late 19th century. As, an educator. I find value in giving students voice and options with rigorous content work to Carias. Does this strongly recommend the adoption of the midlevel, educate areas. Curriculum for social studies. Thank you for your time. All right? Our next speaker is Arthur Perkins client. Good evening school board and fans of the school board. My name is Arthur Bergen's Klein. I'm middle School social studies teacher. I teach sixth grade social studies, which is ancient history, and I'm also here in support of adopting the education

091areas, curriculum. I'm not sure how many of you remember your ancient history, social studies class, but, um Getting students to buy into connections and how it actually you know, applies to their life is almost impossible. And I thought that until I became a social studies teacher and then got to experience this curriculum from the very first lesson that we did, I could tell that this curriculum is different. It was supposed to be a 30 minute lesson investigating the remains of Some early humans, and it turned into a three day lesson of inquiry where the students tried to just find out exactly what happened to these people. Um, which was fantastic. I wanted to stop it because we had other things to do. But. I couldn't stop the inquiry. Um, So this is a project based

092learning curriculum, as my colleagues have just let you know. And the first thing we did was a project based on food instability in our community. And. This is something that was very close to home to the students at hilltop heritage. Um Further on. We focused on issues that indigenous communities across the world face and we had similar posters to the ones that you just saw with the Q R codes where students were able to research their own issues of choice and shared that information with the school through posters. Um, we also had a few debates about the best form of government. I had my face put on a poster that said dictatorship, So. That was fun. Um and then most recently, we did, uh, Um, debates on the most influential candidates of the Islamic golden

093age. Uh, the all time winner was Fatima, who helped create the first university in the entire world. In fact not helped. She created it, and it is still around today. So, um Let's see. I got a minute left nice. So educate areas as a company has been incredibly involved in our work with us and any time we've had an issue or needed some adjustments they have worked on that gotten us to the materials and so partnering with this company, I think would be an excellent choice for the students. The staff and everyone in Tacoma public schools. Thank you. Okay, okay. Moving on to our next topic. Our speaker is Kristen Hall. High school board members. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Kristen Hall and I have a distressed

094TPS high school student. Over the past few weeks, rumors of significant impending changes to the grading system have been circulating. These rumors, which originate from teachers include the following one TPS will be switching to what is known as standards based grading to the grading system will change to a numeric system ranging from 1 to 4. Three teachers have stated it will be impossible to achieve a for us A students will be downgraded to a be on the traditional GPA scale, and for this change will occur starting in the 2023 24 school year. These are U. S appear to have a basis as the school board is set to approve revised policy 24 20, which provides broad authority to the district to implement significant grading changes. While the term standards based grading is not used in

095the districts proposed policy. The bulleted items described in the policy mirror the principles of standard based grading. The optics are bad. It appears as though TPS is quietly making policy changes to fundamentally change student evaluation without informing constituents. Why hasn't this policy change been communicated? In. The agenda from your May 18th study session on grading. There's a presentation discussing TPS grading policy. The presentation includes the two opportunities that the parents have had to comment on grading a listening session and a family survey. I took the survey. The questions did not suggest such a major shift in assessment practices was coming. The Family survey had 2469 responses TPS serves about 28,000 students, assuming a one parent to one student ratio about 9% of TPS. Parents responded in no way can the results of a survey with

096such a low response rate be considered valid? As. The number of respondents is too small to accurately represent the opinions of the T P s parent base. Yet these results are being used as evidence that families have been engaged and supportive. This is bad science and bad governance. Improvements in the existing system can surely be made. My expectation, however, is that my school system will communicate. Explain and justify any proposed changes to existing grading policy and provide an opportunity for parents to have their questions addressed. I asked the board to postpone voting on revised policy. 2024 24 20 until all stakeholders have been engaged and the rumors dispelled. Thank you. Our. Next speaker is Amanda O'Halloran. Um, good evening school board members and district representatives. My name is Amanda Halloran and I'm attending the board

097meeting this evening to also discuss my concerns regarding revised policy 24 20, which is titled Grading and Progress Reports. I understand that the district is asking the board to approve revised policy 24 20 at tonight's meeting. I also understand that pursuant to this policy the district is planning to implement a new grading system and to come up public schools referred to as standards based grading. As Kristen explain standards standards based grading. Well. It's a significant change to our longstanding grading policies and reportedly will involve eliminating student GPS and converting to a new system which grade students on a winter for scale. Well. There's been some mention of the district, sending families to survey and conducting listening groups regarding these grading practices. It doesn't appear that the district has really fully informed the constituency or bend

098fully transparent with respect to the instant intentions behind instituting this new grading policy. And. Also, it's worth noting that the revised policy 24 20 is also very vague on this point. It does not mention standard based grading. However, I have Children at Stadium High School and many stadium high school teachers have shared with my Children and other students that they do in fact. Intend to impose or in in institute. Standards based grading. And so it's disconcerting. I think to parents. I can speak for myself and other parents. I've talked to that this information regarding this very significant policy change is being shared by teachers to students. But we as families aren't receiving the information directly from the district. Um, so instead of approving a revised policy 24 20 this evening. I am requesting that the

099board encouraged the district to provide parents and families and community members with a fair and open process to learn to learn more about the policy. We want to learn more about what standards based grading means and what the impact is. I would recommend that the district put information on the website that clearly defines the proposed policy. I would recommend that the district hold meetings to answer parent questions. And I really like to hear a discussion about how adopting this new grading system may impact students of various levels because clearly, you know, standard based grading on a scale of 1 to 4 is going to impact an elementary student more severely than they would it would impact a high school student, and I think there's just a lot of issues to address in questions about how

100this is going to impact college admissions how it's going to impact grade points. And so I'd Really ask if you could just create a fair process so we can all learn more. Thank you. Our next week. Here is tomorrow. Jones. Thank you, madam President members of the board. My name is Tamara Jones. She her pronouns. I'm here. Also Speaking on policy 2024 20 I am a product of to come of public schools. I am a very proud Foss graduate class of 95 few minutes ago. Um and I am very proud that my daughter, nieces and nephews will also be products of Tacoma public schools. I don't have a position on standard based grading, grading or the actual policy because I simply do not have enough information. I have lots of questions, and I asked to

101the board tonight similar to those who went before me is that we simply slow down. Um there's a lot of processed questions as a public servant who works in public policy in the last five years, there's been a great shift. Of stakeholders expectations to be involved in decision making nothing about us without us, This does not seem to be happening. I was really excited to hear the McCarver community update earlier and hear how extensive the community involvement and stakeholder in was because, unfortunately, I have a list after a long list of where Tacoma public schools hasn't done that. Um, whether it's from the Stanley play Fields Bryant community involvement in the new building, and the list goes on and on, Um lots of questions. My daughter at stadium participates in college in the classroom. We

102don't know how this change would translate to grades that the colleges are giving them for this work. Um this feels like just another thing that they have already spoken. I'm going to skip on things that have already been talked about. Um one thing that when I started talking to teachers about this, the comments that I received as they've submitted right in writing comments those were supposed to be publicly posted, they said, when they went through the website, none of their comments were posted from any of them. The only comments that seem to be posted are those that are in support of the policy change. That's concerning So again. There's a question of Why now a core principle and change management is to not to make multiple big changes at one time. We know our teachers

103and students have been through a lot of change in the last three years. Our teachers are stressed to the max next year. TPS. We are already rolling out Social emotional learning curriculum. It's important coming out of the last three years it's needed. But. This feels like an unnecessary another change that is to something as radical and simple, fundamental as our grading system. So again. My ask tonight is simply that we slow down. We allow for more outreach. We get more input from teachers and parents. Thank you. Our next speaker is Penny Cramer. Good evening. My name is Penny Cramer and I am speaking to you tonight as the president of the Tacoma Education Association. About the revisions to board policy. 24 20. Well, many educators have been involved in the revision of this policy. There

104are a few concerns that may not have been addressed regarding our collective bargaining agreement in section 41 it states quote the teacher shall have the authority and responsibility to determine grades and other evaluation of students. Quote. There is some concern that the first bullet point under the grading practices headline Limits the rights of the teacher to determine the grades because the grading scale will be determined by the district. That Bullet point reads, based on district adopted standards the district will establish consistent grading scales at the secondary elementary levels. First of all For those of you who don't know teaching is a performance art. It is not only about being an expert in your content area. It's about building relationships mostly and then learning the skills to know how to deliver the content. How to assess

105the learning and Revising and re teaching over and over again so that each student can access learning at whatever level is needed for their individuals needs and skills. It is one of the most difficult jobs to do well, and as you've heard, we have many educators who are doing a fantastic job of it now for our main concern. If. The grading scale is the same throughout the district and the weights of the categories of classwork within the class are determined by the district than the individual teacher does not have the right to determine the grade teaching a performance art is practiced by skilled degreed professionals who differentiate for each class and each student that they teach. Because of this. We urge that the implementation of this policy not include Setting consistent percentages for the summit

106of and formal assessments within the classroom. Here are a few examples where this is important. In Socratic seminars. Participation is a part of the curriculum and the process of learning in music classes. If, a student is not participating in their performance based class. They may be able to just demonstrate their individual mastery. But. Their lack of participation affects the learning and the progress of the ensemble as a whole. In multi lingual classes. These are often targeted, focused on targeted support for other class contents and participation is essential for progress. While I see that the word generally has been included in this policy. It's important to leave these decisions to the degreed professionals. I represent the over 2000 members of the two Comma Education Association and on their behalf. I extend an offer to partner with

107district leadership on the implementation of these grading policies policies if they are approved so that our educators can continue to meet the needs of students. Thank you. The Next speaker. Our next speaker is Michael Green. Good evening, everyone. My name is Michael Green. I'm coming to the school board as a hired to come a public schools, educator with the rights and a parent of two students enrolled in the district with the rights because my rights as both are being damaged by the decisions of the Tacoma public schools and a handful of its employees. And both my livelihood and my character are being attacked him first asking For your help. From you leaders before I seek help from the American, Civil Liberties Union legal counsel. And the local press, among other organizations. Why such strong language

108because the district has placed a defacto restraining order on me without merit. I have been told not to have contact with my child's teacher. Sounds terrible, right? I must have done something awful right? Be. Careful not to instantly criminalize me. Did I break any laws or rules? No and my band from the school's campus. No, but for unjust reasons, I have been told I can no longer observe or volunteer in my child's classroom. This stems from a student conference in the fall in simple terms. The teacher told me my child was acting up and I attempted to schedule class observation. The teacher was a reluctant to allow this and only allowed it when I got the principle involved. This is a major point. She never wanted a parent in her classroom observing she I never

109wanted me there. At the classroom observation. I was not pleased because I did not get to exert observed any instruction and that was the primary area of concern mentioned in the student conference that my son was struggling during her instruction. All I got to observe the whole time with students doing one on one testing and students doing desk work independently, So I'm left in the room watching my son, the teacher, the adult others who don't giving tests and the kids with a frown on my face, part of the time waiting and expecting some instruction to happen, and eventually Remember that she never wanted me to observe. So the fact that there was no instruction while I was there could have been intentional and keep in mind that she decided on the date and time period

110that I could visit. Why. Do. I make this accusation because this teacher has continued to take steps to keep me from seeing her teach my son. And be in the classroom without justification. She just never wanted me in there and any real or perceived actions from me incur occurred after this stance had been taken already by her after the observation, I attempted to schedule another one another observation for my child and instruction environment to see how he and my teacher interacted because besides, the misbehavior mentioned In the student conference. By the fall I was getting more and more reports from my son about the teacher treating him unkindly and unfairly. Was there any merit to that? Maybe, maybe not, but I have the right to see for myself and have the opportunity to attend to

111evaluate the interactions between my son and someone that spends several hours a day with him, whether they be a babysitter, family member, coach or teacher. But I've been denied. That right administration told me I could not visit the classroom anymore. Let me jump to this parallel nowadays. If. You say you're scared of someone. You can often get away with hurting them so that because this teacher says she's uncomfortable with me she's leading administration to hurt me. Something needs to be done and you'll be getting this full information very soon. Okay, finally circling back to Morgan . And to channel water. Okay, that concludes rubble comments for this evening. Thank you. Consequently, you Thank you all right? Thank you everyone for coming this evening, and we're listening to each other. That was All, right, Moving on

112to item. 10 on consent agenda moved to adopt the content agenda. It's been moved and seconded any comments or additions or subtractions from the consent agenda. Hearing none. All those in favor say Aye. Aye, you posed abstentions. Can't agenda Consent Agenda passes 5 to 0. Okay moving on to item number 11 policy matters. Um 11.1 2nd reading of revised policy 24 20 grading and Progress reports. And. I see the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning Zeke Edmonds coming up to the podium and my nosy Ki were listening. So you've heard some of the comments and I know that we've had some letters to the board that we've shared with you. And. We've also had conversations so I'd love it if you could respond in your presentation to the questions in hand in the confusion, um,

113that would be really helpful for sure. So. We are not going to a abandoned at the secondary level, the traditional grading system that we're used to. AZ minus B Plus B s. It's still a 4.0 G p a scale. Um I'm wondering if maybe in our communication, the 4.0 GPA scale is part of that thinking at elementary we do a wonder four that's developmentally appropriate for kindergarten through fif. But in sixth grade. We go back to that traditional letter grading system all the way up through high school. We have no interest in taking on the colleges and universities and changing all that, Um and so in our system for grading synergy is our new student information system. Teachers will be able to go in they still pick their assignments. Obviously, Sanders are loaded in there,

114but they're not loaded as in. You'd better do them in this order. It's still that teacher making 90 plus percent of those decisions so Right. Now we're working on this assignment. I can name it. However, I have traditionally named it. I can assign my standards And then I plug in that traditional grade score. So what a kid would see when they log in or a parent or the staff is Ah Zeek Junior got a C minus on this assignment and then over the course of the semester, those would add up and calculate into average GPA and letter grade as we've seen historically, so there's no change. In that piece report cards, transcripts all would look the same with no interruption between what a kid might receive. Let's say, I'm sophomores. I've already learned freshman sophomore

115year worth of credits. I've got about a dozen going into next year as a junior, it would accumulate the same way it has historically. I just have a question. I was wondering, so you mentioned synergy Information system. Can you just explain for this sure not know what that means. So we've been using E school. Um, and another system they may have seen as school g we brought on during Covid to help us with the remote learning so you can see grades and grade book. That the teachers put in before we brought in school G in the school system or hack, and that's where we store all our student information, so when they go to look up, how do I contact family or your contact information is in there your health information all your grades and

116transcripts of all been logged into that, and that's our running record that reports to the state, so we have to have some kind of system like that. In our current one e school, the grade book. Just we've had it for what I think since 2011 so they hadn't made a lot of updates. It just kind of got dated. So. We were using our school system as a live grade book, and we'll switch now over to our new synergy system. So the thing we used to store all student information and report to the state also has a great book for teachers to use. Where they go in? And? Uh, you know, it's secondary. I could go in. There's my first period class second period class. Here's all my students and go in and assign assignments, assessments,

117quizzes projects. All teacher discretion question if we do move forward with adopting a change to a policy because that also changed the resolution attached to that policy. What do we have to have another vote to change the resolution attached to a policy regulation regulation? In resolution, Mar do one thing at a time best right here because I was trying to keep track of it all because one of the parents started talking. I really wanted to understand. Was it a resolution. Was it. Regulation. What was I missing And does that change when we change the policy? So, yes, we will update the regulation in alignment. So when you look at some of the bigger bullets that are in the policy for you to review the regulation gets into the specifics of how those functions and so

118when it talks about students having opportunity to earn from missing work, we in the regulation unpack that lockstep. Mhm. So in a, you know, kind of taking that to the next step If you're looking at the red line That's before us and you're seeing the policy is really at this level. Some of the rumors that have been going around are sort of copping to what the regulation might be necessarily accurate. And. So. I'm saying tonight passing a policy doesn't put into place a regulation. It actually sets the groundwork for the regulation, which is what's what is stated here. Correct those pieces of superintendent or superintendent designate to then lead that work through Cabinet. Your No. Then who's the dawn? Because I know we have applause Review team, they go through politics, but they don't go

119through really regulation who goes through regulations? Cabinet produces regulations. Anyone else? Nope that question. There's a flow chart on how it goes from, uh, idea to something written on the public facing website so people can find out It may be in the Policy about our regulations our past, but not specifically for this for this regulation includes things like sending, Um, the regulation for review by principles and like some of these other steps, but It's. It's for all regulations, not like one in particular. We do have the authority to question and plus I. Also. I heard Penny Cramer, um, offer rather enthusiastically and that you and you know, be willing to work with the administration to make sure that the issues of the teachers are reflected. Um and I. Guess. My suggestion is unless There's a

120difference of opinion, but I'm looking at the grading policy, which is what we're adopting to give direction to the superintendent's team to look at the regulation. And. I don't see anything in here that is troubling in terms of changing, um, any of the specifics that were mentioned in the comments, so I'm. I'm feeling comfortable doing the policy? But I do think that if the regulation you know, we could always ask for the regulation to come back to the board, you know, for for a look. So anyway, I'm I'm just thinking at this point It's really at the regulation level where it gets to that minutia piece. Correct will we be able to request Thank you like a lot of public meeting to hear about the regulation? I do. Read them on my own, But I

121am not and even in the 2000 yet I'm still in the 1000. Okay, and I skipped around 6000 because I learned that I need to know that. Um So for me. I think I'd like to hear back on the regulation publicly when it does go through. If that is a possibility. Legal counsel. If you guys could do that certainly a possibility to request that of staff. Yeah, okay. Just. How are you guys feeling about that I would move to a doctor item level one on where I'm asking about questions for questions. That's one. So, um The issue of bringing back the regulation to us in the menu ship agree In January. Our roles and everyone in the community. Probably. There was this, But not everyone knows this is reset. Vision and policy, but we don't

122get into weeds on detail, and that is the job superintendent Knowledge staff to do right. Um, but I'm And backing this up a little bit more. Maybe you can expand on this a little bit more. The reason We brought this up as a O issue around grading is that There's. There's not the current system of grading that's been going on in the world since The university was created. Bye. Fatima in no two years ago as different ways of grading, But not always, um, fair. Let's just say, and we know that there's bias and institutional racism and institutional biases. In grading has been going on for a long time. We're trying to get away from that improve our system there. Um, I have here. The parents that spoke today. The educators who spoke today will be

123we've been hearing from them, you know, through our contacts online. Everything. Very recently more than prior. So. I'm hearing this concern around not enough time They're boys, they feel like their voice hasn't been heard. Um, we give an opportunity to the community to partake. Um 2000 people surveyed doesn't sound like a big number Compared to what? Um, what our district is Um I don't know the basis of the facts around this comment that was given around negative. Um, feedback not being Printed on the website, but I don't know how to, uh, account for that, nor if it's true or not. So, um But. I hear the concerns of folks, but I want to make sure he understands why we're trying to find a better way in a better system to do this, and hope you

124reassured some folks in the community around the grades and the numbers versus that the letters and how that corresponds to hire people who want to choose to go to collegiate level work and how that won't be impacted. Um So I just don't want to think about us doing the minutia work up here. Um, but I also want to public and to be nobody's ever gonna be comfortable, comfortable everywhere at all times when we try to make improvements and change, so I'm not sure what to do. How do you do this right now? I'm not sure if it's time to go ahead and Have the vote now and whatever, however, it goes. And then later have more information. More involvement from teachers. The Union parents students as the details. Get Um, ironed out because there are

125intentionally some general language in this right around the word it's even in here. Therefore do not generally include general included, but there was a lot of latitude there another similar language like that. So I would like, and I want to just clarify when when I meant I didn't mean to bring back the regulation to us from boat because that isn't something we vote on, but it that you would bring it back to explain it to vote on it. So I want to be crystal clear about that anyway? So, But we so okay, So the other Idea we could have is to what's going on this for a couple of weeks or are we vote now? But? I'd like to hear from all of us. I think that you kind of spoke to the heart of

126the reason why it was being adopted for change is to get away from we passed a policy policy 1600. That's an anti racism policy and in grading practices, there are power and dynamic within our school in our district in every school in the nation and even across the world where there is a power imbalance between students and teachers and As someone who hold Your life in their hands with their grades, and their grade will dictate who you become and where you will go and where you're allowed to go, and we touched on that we passed that anti racism policy and you touched on it the way you said it really clarified for me because I was getting into the weed like you said, And that's not what we do. Our job is to guide the

127district in the right direction, and I really appreciate the way you worded it, and it helped me understand and remember why we wanted to look at this policy. And. It's it's general language, but this general language aligns with our anti racism policy and our civility and kindness to students policies and so I feel like We should hear from everybody. But I really appreciate that. You brought up the heart of why we looked at the policy. Can. I expand on that to your point. We also, we're looking at mental health. This tied to a board goal in August of last year, so we have been talking about this for well over a year even before because we were talking about the modifications we made in, um, spring of 2020 Covid actually was the first time we

128started as a board talk, at least in our my involvement. We started talking about the needs to To upgrade our policy our grading policy because we knew the policy implements or impacts the implementation and practice. And. So. When. We set this the goal around mental health like we were really focused on. How Does. Our grading policy impact the mental health of our students, and they sometimes feel it's so confusing to be told how we're not transparent that we don't ever communicate. What I cannot imagine how many additional ways besides going and knocking on someone's door and saying, Hey, this is what we're doing. We actively are trying to communicate and engage on a genuine level to do things that decrease the barriers and the systematic racism to increase equitable equitable. Um, practices. And I just

129like on a personal level feel really frustrated. When. We're told that we're not doing our job that we're being accused of not being transparent that we're not actually engaged in the community because just there are so many different ways that we do work and continue to improve. How because we have like we didn't up until almost three years ago. There was no way to engage with policy. On the website. There is now and if that's not communicated, we say it almost every single board meeting We talked about how every time we talk about a policy, this is where you can find it. And. I think the thing that we've feel we've talked so deeply about in terms of mental health is how do students get impacted by homework by grading by, um, the way that

130they're treated in classrooms, and this is one of those steps for us that we have. I believe in a genuine, authentic way. Been working towards something that is Um Less harmful that actually meets a student where they're at and provides those metrics and the framework to do the kind of work that we are trying to do through our policy and through our governance. Making Lisa. And. In addition to that met so many of you may not know that when we were talking about mental health, we actually all of us went out and met with students in classrooms for middle schools and high schools with the administration and Zeke was at almost all of those meetings, and Lisa was to Lisa Nolan and listening to kids students about what was stressful about grading and what they'd

131like to see differently about how their teachers were treating them, and they're there. Work. And. What's reflected in here? Is exactly what we heard back from the kids. I mean they were the ones saying we want to make these changes, so it is confusing when then we had we hear from from parents who don't understand, but I understand that it's just because we may be in some way haven't communicated what those results might be, But that's because you haven't written regulations yet, so we don't have anything to communicate. What we're doing today is passing a policy. It's going to give you a new framework to look at how to pull those regulations together. So, um, Madam President. It might be helpful for Assistant Superintendent Edmund to remind us of of the opportunities that were available

132in addition to the survey, the listening sessions, everyone I was that there was at least one educator in the room. Um, but invitations, participation. Um Surveys that went out multiple times and Unfortunately. We're not able to Make people participate in a in a survey as far as opportunities if if you can, just, uh on March 9th you shared publicly on May May 18th you shared publicly study session on So. Um yes. Would you mind giving us and then I want to make sure that Director strip Vice President Strozier has a moment to say something He's like? Nope. I'm. I'm done. Okay So, yeah, So we started with our first small teacher group and December cabinet was looking at great data through last spring and this fall. And in part to kind of monitoring what's happening

133as we come out of covid and kind of re align. And then in January, we started listening sessions with board members at different schools. We did most of the high schools half the middle schools. We also made it into three elementary schools to hear from even down to third graders. So. That was great. We then asked each principle of to send us to teach her name's We could not host every teacher, but we wanted to engage them, so we had two different sessions. And we kind of did a phase one and Phase two and Phase one. It was their input. They also had a chance to hear what kids wrote. So as you saw, and you mentioned the staff members. We took notes during those student listening sessions so they could hear from students as

134well. We did our first survey out to all staff, which included teachers as well as administrators. Based on that we took kind of the big ideas and themes. And, then drafted up our second survey and in the themes that you saw. Those are what also went on to the family survey and back out to staff. We did a second listening session as we got those results. We've been trying to do our best to publish all those on the site, both the data from the survey as well as the quotes, part of the reason we did not put all quotes on there is on the family side. I did not commit so in the first round, I had sat in the survey. We will be sharing these In the second round. I did not so and

135I appreciated people's transparency, but it probably wasn't something I should post so we didn't get all those on there, except for the ones where we did communicate. We will be sharing these publicly just to be fair to the participants since it was anonymous, and then that second round of teacher piece really digging into counting time out the weeds or that granular level What. Does it look like if a kid is going to retake, and we're not here to let every kid retake every single assignment over like there has to be limits. There is a reality to the school year. There's a reality to the workload, So those were kind of those thematic buckets that we started getting more feedback on. So. What would be realistic. What does it look like to do this within a

136week or within 10 days, so getting into some of those metrics? So that's the content we pulled back out, which helped us draft some of this general language and then start drafting what might show up in a regulation. But we heard from kids, You know we've got a lot of athletes out there people working. We heard a lot from the kids about life after high school and so part of that G p A. It's a approved right like we're just not looking to change that. Okay. So any other questions your thoughts before we proceed to actually do what? You came up to the podium to start on your time line If you just on how the parents there Input was Fraught in your emails or texts, however, their power power parents or guardians reached Yes.

137So we we also have our superintendent breakfast, so we did two sessions. There was a fall one and, uh, Spring ish one. So we did listening sessions and those as well for the families that were present and then in the survey, the communication office directly sent that message out to families. So. We saw pretty immediate turnaround for a lot of folks and then we left it open for several weeks, so folks had time we've done updates on our public side under the curriculum instruction. We've done a lot of updates on our hub and internal staff principles also had listening sessions they've had to instructional coaches have had to at every level, so we've same thing kind of phase One big ideas phase to unpack the big ideas. All right. So. Do. You want to continue

138with the Reading the item so that we can start Think, Malik. That's your No. No, not the rhythm do the recommendation Alright, Superintendent, assistant superintendent on behalf of general counsel and teaching and learning, recommends that the board of directors adopt the revised proposal policy 24 21 2nd. It's been moved and seconded any further questions. Hearing none. All in favor. Say Aye aye opposed. Abstentions. Okay, passes 50. Thank you, everyone and we will be, uh, Thank You. Very excited. Okay, So now being on a second here, so item 12 is a financial report District next quarterly financial report is planned for August 20/4 2023. Monthly. Financial statements can be found on the district website at Https Colon Backslash Backslash. Www dot koma schools dot org BACKSLASH departments backsplash business and finance. 13 curriculum instruction 13.1 approval

139of contract number T s d 23-060 between callow and to come up public schools from September 1st 2023 to August 31st 2024, deputy superintendent on behalf of the director of Student services recommends that the board of directors approved contract number T S D. Dash 23-060 between Kayla and common public stores from September 1st 2023 to August 31st 2024 funding source. Student Services moved to adopt. Um 13.1 2nd seconded and anyone have any questions? Hearing none. All those in favor, say, Aye Post. Any abstentions passes 50 13.2 approval to adopt and purchase EDUC your ius curriculum materials grades six through eight for the 2023 24 through 2030 31 school years. The assistant superintendent of teaching and learning recommends that the board of directors approved the adoption purchase and delivery of grade 6 to 8 educators. Social

140studies curriculum materials before the opening of the 2023 24 school year and the amount of $515,400 including sales, tax shipping funding, Source curriculum suction, basic advance 13.2. Second. It's been moved and seconded any comments or questions. I just want to say it was exciting to hear the how well it worked in the classroom. So that's I Want to thank the educators that did come and share again like tonight And then last time. Thank you thank you for helping us understand? Learned through you guys, A lot of time spent on this and the fact that you love it gives us great Hope So. Thank you. Right? Um, I didn't know no other comments. All those in favor say Aye opposed. Passes 50. Alright, Um, business matters is item number 14 14.1 approval of the guaranteed maximum

141price GMP amendment for to the contract between Tacoma School Department district number 10 and Abner Construction for Phase, two of the safety and Security upgrades Bundle project. Captain. Mm hmm. So, we We had a small mistake that we need to just correct a man. Don't 14.1 the amount listed there 17 17,671,496. That's actually the total contract and not the GMP that we're proving that GMP is actually 180,000 like going down to 653 so The, executive director of planning construction for the chief operation, also recommends the board directors approved GMP amendment number four, which states that the guaranteed maximum price for purchasing installation completion of access control and choosing detection intercom upgrades and authorizes the superintendent designee. Two said. GMP number four in the amount of $180,653 excluding sales tax could have one thing in the

142agenda item for this item. They do have that 1 86 53 noted correctly and properly contextualizing it with the 17 4 being the total. I'm up, so the actual item itself has the accurate professional. So before we move it in second and Tracy, I. Just want to make sure that this is reflected in the minutes and that we get a corrected version of the of the actual agenda so that It's all related future history. All right, Do. We have a motion to adopt. Um 14.1. Okay, thank you. It's been moved and seconded any comments or questions for Morris on this one. Okay hearing. None. All those in favor say Aye Opposed extensions passes 50 14.2 approval to purchase playground equipment and fencing at Stanley Elementary School from game time care of Greater Western Recreation, the

143executive director of planning construction for chief Operation officer officer recommends the board directors authorized superintendent or designee. To expand $454,814 exclusively schooling sales tax for playground equipment fencing at Stanley Elementary funding Source. Capital Project bonds. I moved to an opt in 14 point. Two. Second moved and seconded any questions or comments on this one and hearing none. All those in favor say Aye posed abstentions is 50 Thank you and thank you, Morris. Appreciate your coming item number 15 15.1 adoption of resolution 21 24 resolution of the board of directors of Tacoma School district number 10 to support the prevention of gun violence. Yes. The District General Council recommends at the border of directors adopt resolution 21 24 in support of the prevention of gun violence in our community and country that one second Okay, it's

144been moved and seconded and he comments or questions. I would just like to say that I want to thank the general counsel and his entire team as well as everyone up on this diocese for all of the work that you guys have put in that we have put in over the years but especially recently to work with our community partners and really put Put out a statement about gun violence in our community because we have lost way too many of our youth to gun violence this year, So thank you. Anyone else have a comment. I think it's important to note that this piece of paper isn't going to change anything. Um, so the idea here is that, uh, we continue to engage with our community partners, which I know we're going to do to all

145take a stand to understand the importance of preventing this From happening. I can tell you that the summertime is is near, and it's going to be hot. So I didn't tell you that the school district Is doing our part and we're doing a little bit more. Um, our community partners are stepping up and they're going to continue to step up. But just know that just because we passed this resolution doesn't mean things are going to immediately stop. There's still tons of work to do more work ahead of us than behind us. But. This is the first step in making sure we keep our young people safe. Thanks. Thank you. Yep. Director Leon As most people know this is a public health emergency, and it is the most common reason Children die. It's gonna balance so

146it's it's the most common reason in America for death of kids. Um, and for that reason and It's important that we stand with our other partners in the whole community to work on this and this Terrible problem. And also so folks know that is one of the reasons we are doing the late nights for summer from Monday through Friday from 5 P.m. to 10 p.m. at 12, different locations. Six of the Middle School, six of them High school and every community around our of our within our district become a public school students to come and find a free space to come where it's you know, relax, and it's off the streets. And they have available ability to just have some quiet times and chill time or maybe play some basketball. Um and that is pardon

147me. Dinner forgot about the dinner. Yeah. There's food and it's so keep Keep looking at our website and other places to find out more about the details of where that is, But again. It's only open to become a public school students. You will need your student student idea to get in. But it is because we want to keep you safe and so parents, you know, you know you have that as a as an option for your middle schoolers and high schoolers. So. Um, and this resolution is just the beginning of the work that we're all going to do with our community to help change the trajectory of violence in our community. Right. All. Those in favor. Oh, no, no, no. Its resolution. You're on. You're on top of it, so we'll do a roll call

148Vote president. Bam! Right, Oliver. I Vice president already built. I Sure, Keating. How do you vote Director McAlary. How do you build directly on how do you vote? Resolution passes 50. Alright. Thank you everyone Alright We're onto board comments. Who wants to go first. We have a long night. I can do it. All right. So, um As many people know I'm the newest person to the board. Very new, um, but not so much anymore. You. Don't get to say I am new because you've all been here longer than me. Which makes me the new hot commodity I did when I got here on sports. I really joined the board to understand the way students were treated in school because that was where I was as a community partner would only hear about the student experiences,

149so I spent a lot of time driving into the student policy. Policy 3000. I learned a lot about what students can do with the can't do all the kind of cool stuff but I've been learning about other policies because of my committee assignment. I AM, the early wedding director rep. And Today we had our head start federal review. Uh, they asked me a lot of questions. These are national people talking about what do we do as born and how do I communicate with you all? Yeah. They told me that like how are you talking to them, like I do talk to them. In what way And, Then I. Tell them about quorum and all the rules and regulations like how and when we can communicate. That was really interesting because again like I said, I'm

150new, So. It's like being grilled on. Do. You know the laws on how to be a school board director and I passed, But that's not to say that we talk. Of course you did crossed those are federal head start review that they were really keen on our program. They loved our parents, the ones who come here to present to us They are Policy council. Parents are amazing our heads. Our teachers have been meeting with them the past week, and they were impressed by teachers and staff. Our assistant teachers even like our janitorial staff and the food services that Willard they were like This place is amazing if I had a kid would have a kid in Tacoma so I could be a head start here, so that was really nice to you. Um, but then

151also I was thinking about our community as a whole. Um, I talked about it. Our last board meeting. I talked about places where people can find information in community on our landing page are T night, right there posted but then also at all of the Metro park sites they've been having these co create to recreate And I think they say, recreate because it's like a rec center, but it's recreated and go to this event and you learn about what's happening in your neighborhood. Um, within the boundaries of their specific like community site. They feed you dinner. My kids were there They were doing their thing tonight. Um, but also there's a lot of people from the community who just pour in. They come for the free dinner, and they learned about the services in their

152community. And I really think Like what we do here. At, this diet we don't get into the lead, but there are places that community in Tacoma that are really getting into the leads of who we are and what we do, and so that was really cool that I got a report back already from one of the parents are like Did you know, all these things are happening. I'm like Yes, I told you to go last month. Um, and then lastly, just talking about like who This community is and where we come from. I really appreciated learning about Dr Edna Trump, Travis and the work that she's done in community. I am a pill, a descendant of pillars of the hilltop community. My grandfather ran churches in that neighborhood. All of my childhood. My father was

153a gang member who was saved by a church in hilltop community because somebody dared to go into that violent neighborhood and say I care about you. I will feed you and you don't have to make bad decisions. Um, hearing her story in parallel mine and so many ways and the legacy of impact. Um I don't lean one way or another in anything but just understanding who black people are and who and where we come from. I think it's really important. We have this conversation about who a person is because the pillars of our community we come from slavery and the church was the place that fed us that killed us and they told us that we were okay and that we didn't have to be these misfits of society that Jim Crow laws and So

154many lives and so many people made us feel, and so I feel that We have to roll back sometimes and imagine who we would have been in 1958. Sometimes when we reflect on people. So I'm taking taking deep reflection on what we're going to do and who we're going to be, but also understanding exactly what I am and who I am going to be. So thank you all for giving me a platform Always alright, anyone else? Sure I had. I mean there's I don't know where there is a lot of really great events. We had the TPS reindeers night, which was really fun, and I have lost count on how many schools participated and were there But. It was, I thought 20 or so I'm looking at Deputy Superintendent. At least I. Just remember that

155scroll on the screen like there was just school after school? Um and it was really, um I'm grateful that it happened this year on non school board meeting night, whereas in the past that has not we have been here while that has gone on, so it was really fun to see that and what? I didn't realize it was that it was also raising funds. For beyond the bell. Correct. I get that right. It is beyond the belt. I think we're probably extracurriculars. But? Yeah, but yes, but not for us, but for the program and that ticket sales $5 of each ticket that was sold went to that and I was told I thought by Katherine McCarthy that we raised over $2000. Plus. There was the auction of the jersey that was designed by one of

156our students. Correct. I'm looking at the president because we sat together. Mm. Probably still, um, but I, just like there was pieces of that particular night that I didn't realize were happening or part of it until we repair. So. Um, that was that was really exciting. And just to see um so many families and staff were there. It was really, really fun. Um, and then. Um, I had attended, so stylists had their on accord ceremony and then um, a couple it might have been five days later or the same week. I don't even know they also had their They call it the senior awards so many, but they were giving awards also to community members, and because of covid. There were words that people who had contributed specifically to stylists and or previously will send

157because some of the folks were on Honored prior to the name change. Um, And. So. It was really amazing. Xavier Cooper was one of those individuals who was the the community member that helped initiate the change of Silas. Um there was a retired transportation TPS employee that was just hilarious and wonderful, and just there were a number of different people on top of students who were honored for different scholarships and awards that they'd received. So just seeing all of that, Just in one space was really meaningful as we have already started our graduations, and next week is the American week of that, Um, and then I just wanted to stay. And. Of course you know, mostly, it's just our wonderful staff predominantly in the audience now, um I wanted to talk about pride. Um And

158Talk about it in two different ways. So pride month often every pride month. There are people that you know, have feelings about why it shouldn't exist or what's the point? Or, um, often even far, more bigoted opinions about it. Um and I just want to say is someone for 12 at least 12 years that have been working With staff directly with families directly on the inclusion and safety and acceptance of LGBT Q students, regardless of their age. Um on June food first when the districts um Facebook page changed their profile picture to include the progressive pride flag and the history behind that is that it includes to represent LGBTQ people of color as well, um, was extraordinarily meaningful. Um and I remember by one of the first TPS pride shirts and over five years ago

159and I learned from the director of Whole child, Laura Allen, um, that we have sold the district over a number of years has sold over 10,000 of those T shirts and sweatshirts now, like six of them are in my house, but I just you know, Um, but that and and at the on the Rainier's price, um, the Rangers game night. I saw dozens of people wearing TPS pride T shirts and I go out in the community, and I see a number of people I go into buildings and I. See people wear them. We were at a groundbreaking yesterday and today and people are wearing that yes, as a as a as a reminder right as as a direct reminder and a symbol of You are you are welcomed and belonged. Um and during a time

160when, um The L G B T Q community is on the number one list of domestic terrorism right now for the Department of Homeland Security. Against People. No. The threat of domestic terrorism threat to L G B T Q people and the community is the number one threat we and That that is like so incomprehensible the level of violence. The pride celebrations are deep grappling with threats of severe violence, and there is a point where We we have to as a community and I know we are getting We are better at that at stopping that language and that those sentiments on the onset and I will say on our Facebook page on the district Facebook page. It had a number of vile, awful comments and community matters came in and said no. This is unacceptable.

161Not here. And I just as as challenging as this month is in terms of the rhetoric around LGBTQ people and trans people have continued to reach epidemic levels of threats and violence. At the same time we are a district And. We are school board that says you belong you were valued. And. We stand alongside you and I. Just want to say how meaningful that is to me to my family and so many staff and family members and students who are among the LGBTQ community Thank you for sharing that? She you Mm. Anybody on this side linking to share Pleasure to couple. Couple of things. Uh, since the last board meeting. We did the on June 1st. We had the TPS retirement. Celebration. We had some one of our staff members were present and they had

162been working for 42 years old. 42 years of education, long time, but a beautiful demonstration of commitment to making young people's lives better. Everybody who was in that room celebrating retirement, definitely, we're committed to young people, and we're glad that they chose to come to schools to do their work. Um TPS night at the rain ears. I hadn't been to the Rangers game and I don't know how long but this was an opportunity to take my kids today. First game and, uh, Yeah, Kids are kids, so they got to experience it and they got some food and some chips and had and that's all that they needed. Uh, Yeah, that was exciting. I got to do college familiar that Gina Regeni read, uh, which is kind of like, uh, Hogwarts where you get separated by

163houses, and then you've got to fifth grade leader leading you through activities. That's. That's How. That's How Miss Sloane broken down to me. I didn't make that up. But. Fifth grade students are the leaders of this of this for for their younger peers and man, it's like, I guess this is This obviously isn't the first time they did it this year. But it was, I heard multiple teachers say this is the best that it's been like. Folks were students were falling in line. One kid pulled me to the side and said, Hey, I got this college on my name tag. Does that mean I have to go there and I was like, Oh. I. Don't know you do you have to know I'm kidding. But. He was he was excited to participate in at least

164show me around. And how things went down. So that was exciting to participate in some of those circles. Um What else I took so many notes here. This is wild. Okay, uh, I was able to kick off our graduations with Willie Stewart Academy. Uh, it was this week. Um, Abortion day Tuesday, but we had 44 graduates. That's the most ever. I've got some history with Willie Stewart back when it was the re engagement center in 2014. And just to see the growth from 18 18 to where we currently stand at ninth and Broadway like the students really? I. Don't think I'd be wrong to say that the environment in which they were in contributed to the number of graduates graduates that we had this year, just like a place to call their own anyway, so

165it was really exciting to see. Um Families fill up that mountain home, auditory. I'm telling you if we keep going at this rate, we're not gonna be able to do it there. I mean it was it was packed, which is just a beautiful sight to see. Um And finally, I would just share something happened at Lincoln yesterday. I mean aims were everywhere tonight, So. I guess I'll talk about this. We broke ground at the for the Lincoln Ball Field project shout out to the voters for sure for the $535 million bond that was passed in 2020 allowing us to do this something that's very well deserved by Lincoln athletes. I can tell you that. Um, our baseball team back when I was at Lincoln went out to the mud, and if it was raining too

166hard, then there was no practice. There was no game. Um, are fast, same with our fast pitch team, our tennis team which my wife played tennis would get on the bus and go to Stuart Heights and practice, so it's always a travel but to be able to have the level of success that these student athletes have without, uh, Their own home. Turf is phenomenal, So I'm extremely excited to see what happens in a planned, uh, spring of 2024. When. Folks start to get get to use these fields so really exciting, And. That's the end of my report. Well. Speaking of groundbreaking, um Director. Keating and I were at Reed Elementary today for the Um, the groundbreaking of the new Playfield which playground area you know, Um, and it's part of the metro parks, everyone living

167tent within 10 minutes of walking to a park project probably has a better name than that, but that's the functional project and so read Elementary. Stafford Elementary is the next place on the list, but but read, we got fifth graders got the shovels out today and we got to shovel some dirt and Um, hopefully within, you know, before school starts, there will be a beautiful new park their joint project with Metro Parks Tacoma and the, um Land the land trust the national the lively and Washington Land trust, So. I think it's us. I don't think it's the Washington trying to picture the T shirts, too. But anyway, so that was a fun event. Um, and then, so that's um And. Also. I did my tutoring again this week at Wainright Intermediate with the 4/5 grader

168girls who are doing a project on child's preventing child trafficking and it has been, I think my fourth time sitting down with them, and I'm just so relieved because there's there there, you know, really have gotten pulled together. I thought when the first couple of times, I was not optimistic that this was going to come out to fruition. But they have pulled it together in the end and the presentations all next week, and they're you know, they're parents, and I'm going to go Tuesday night and get to meet their parents and and congratulate them on the finished project. So that has been a fun experience a little. I do have a deep, deep respect for the teachers. It's, uh, you know when you don't when you're not a teacher every day, you don't realize how

169challenging it can be to corral bodies, kids and their different perspectives and It's a lot anyway. So the teachers, um, so we are ready to move on to item number seven. Did you have something you wanted to hear. It had already said no item number 17 announcement over a regular board meetings minutes. Then meetings. June 22nd will be our next meeting right here at 6 P.m., and then we have one meeting in July and one meeting in August. So. June. 13th will be the sorry July 13th will be the one in July and August 20/4 will be the business meeting. Mm. At that point So. I am going to officially adjourn this meeting, and then this group up here, five of us will be adjourning into an executive session. So for this meeting is now

170just a a Move to the boardroom.