May 8, 2025 Selah School Board Study Session

001that guard. No, it helps. That helps. Oh, can I g this in? Is that okay? Okay. At 7 o'clock, uh, we have four out of the five here that stand. Ready? Begin. To the flag of the states to the republic of All right, welcome to the uh May uh study session. Um we do not have any public comments today. So uh we will move on to the first uh item on the agenda after public comments which is architectural services. Uh Kevin. Yeah. Uh we have uh responsibility to select architect for the upcoming construction projects. Um and we have advertised for architectural services in the local newspaper. Uh two different times. We had four uh architectural companies apply and put together a proposal for the district to consider. And after evaluating each of those four proposals,

002Chris and I and Frank did the evaluation, the top uh architectural firm that we'd like to recommend to you tonight architectural spoken, please. All right. Uh I move that we approve Knack Architecture of Spokane for uh the um architectural services. Are there any com or any second? I'll second. Great. Any comments or questions? All those in favor signify with an I. I. All those opposed and abstains. All right. Excellent. Thank you. That's exciting. All right. We'll move on to item number four, which is the board principal uh round table. We're here uh at Sila Middle School today. So, thank you uh uh Mr. Galloway for having us. Um and uh we're going to hear from Mark Galloway and Pani this morning and maybe a little bit on Hunter. A little bit of Hunter. Uh Kevin,

003do we need to do any more setup for that? Other than that, I just uh remind everybody that is still a public meeting. We are recording. We do have people I don't know if we have anybody online with us this morning, but that's okay. Uh this is the second in a in a two-month series of an annual uh principal roundtables. Last month you heard from the other three elementary principles and this this morning we'll hear from our secondary principles. Uh with that I think you guys as traditional we've done this before so you know the purpose of it. Uh they're going to share with you successes, challenges and then things to be for you to know about potentially for next year. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Hunter and then we'll

004get right to the principles. Yeah. So like I say, this is going to be a similar kind of cadence um structure of what our committees thought. They're going to share the celebrations from this year. What are the some of the challenges they've noticed this year compared to others? And then kind of future planning, what's coming on the horizon for for each building. Uh hopefully you'll be able to see uh some alignment. Alignment gets trickier as kids get older and there's more options and choices. Um, but you should see a through line from what you heard from elementary schools to the work that our secondary schools are doing. Um, and then also kind of where there's some autonomy and where the the special catching and then you should hear kind of like you guys know the

005Viking promise and how that's playing out. Um, so if you have any questions around that, just feel free to ask. Um, again, this is our our visual kind of systems of how we try to align our our buildings to really to to serve students on both ends of the spectrum. those who are already achieving mastery uh and then those who are showing some addition additional need um for for the learning uh and then again the PLC work the CSL work that our buildings do how our teachers collaborate and the standards um that they collaborate around should be something you hear kind of through the presentations so any questions before I pass it over to the principles okay all right uh Hunter said we a short amount of time. 10 minutes. 10:15. Okay, no problem. So,

006um just a little s snippet of where we're at right now. About 892 students, grades six through eight, 45 certificated, about 32 classified, three admin. That hasn't changed uh over the over the course of the last couple years, I know. Um just I throw threw a few photos in here. You can't really see those, but uh just some different things. Band of mentoring. We sent a group of kids to the color of justice last week. Um got to go see some attorneys at work at the courthouse. Um those are some members of our star team. Um great experience for our kids. They came back pretty jazzed. Little pep assembly down in the bottom there. One of our eighth grade mentors uh loves to play the guitar. Final mentoring session. Jammed out to a little tune

007as they entered class. Uh Andrew played a little Nirvana little Nirvana song. So then we took a group of cap to the Capitol Theater uh upper right hand corner. Uh I do just want to spotlight the band real fast because uh they went to Silverwood. Eighth grade band went goes to Silverwood every year for the music in the park. Um there's an award that they give out every year to the school. I don't remember the name of the award. It's kind of a weird name, but they apparently they watch every school as they get off the bus till the time they get on the bus throughout their time there. Um and it's an award that goes to the most respectful, most polite, just kids that are following directions, doing the right thing. And our eighth

008grade uh band won that award this year. first time ever. Um clap. So, uh we thought that was pretty cool. Um Sarah and Nate Gross just do an amazing job. So, uh thought thought that was a cool thing to spotlight. Um all right. So, there's a couple things that I'm not going to read all of these to you. Um you know, we talked about just some things that are going well. Um and some challenges and some some things for some future planning. You will see some some uh some through lines between Colton and I high school. Um, you know, we collaborate quite often on on a lot of our courses as we develop more CTE courses here at the middle school and how do those align to the high school. Um, sounds like we just

009might have got two more math teachers to do with CTE at seventh grade. So, uh um anyway, so there's a lot a lot of things that are going well. Um I think what we've one of the things I do want to spotlight is we've we've been able to spend a whole lot more time in the classrooms, the three administrators this year. Um this is our second year with our full pride team. So there's four members on our pride team, one certified and then three classified that really respond to day minutia, middle school behavior. Uh we get involved with their when they're fights, you know, any type of drugs or alcohol, things like that. Um but they handle the day-to-day minutia and so they just know that we're going to be in the classrooms. Um so

010we've been able to provide a lot more clear feedback, specific feedback to our teachers. Um and so that's made a world of difference. they've noticed the difference of how much time in the classrooms, which is where we should be. So, um, that's something that I'm proud of. We do continue to expand our CT courses. Um, and and we're even adding adding a couple more out in the A world in the greenhouse side of things. So, um, and again, our dual language is is expanding as well with some electives. We we kind of figured out a way not to silo those kids. we actually got them a choice where they can have an English elective because they were kind of all targeted into just dual electives. Um so we kind of worked out a way this

011for next year in our master schedule they get to choose an English elective. Um that was kind of a a not a rub but just a sore spot for our dual kids like how come we can't take life prep, we can't go out to the greenhouse, we can't do those sorts of things. Well guess what? Now you can. Um so the most popular class we have here elective wise is digital photography. I think it's because of the middle kids. What do they get to do? they get they get to roam the campus, take pictures, do some different things. Um but uh continue to work with our star team. So uh those are just some things that are going well. Um challenges. Mark, before you tell us about that very last one right there. Yeah, so

012we we uh we really restructure our building leadership team this year. Um it was it seemed like it was always more of a a management type team where we'd come in, you know, we'd look at bigger level decisions. They were they were kind of the cabinet to me. Um, but we we took a lot of some of our our professional development money and we're like, why are we why are we we don't send people to conferences much anymore. That kind of is outdated. We're like we we tapped in our into our building leadership team to lead professional development within the building. Like we have good people here. Why aren't we tapping into them? So, um, we we had uh several of that of our team, which we totally revamped. I won't go into that, but

013we had more PDS led by our our staff than we've ever had. Um it didn't help that we had two interns this year, administrative interns one and they're both on our building leadership team, but we didn't just use that as part of their platform for that. Kelsey uh Kelsey Mayor now um did a lot of literacy work with our specialist teachers um that you know typically they're just focused on the content like no we need you to be literacy teachers using your content. So um they're like well we haven't we don't we're not really sure how to do all that. So we spent a lot of time um through our staff meetings. We did a lot of differentiation where we didn't just have 50 staff members in a room where I'm dissing information and you

014break them out into different groups and and do some training. So it was just it was nice to have our own people doing that. It to me that having been through professional development, educational professional development, having uh the credibility of the people that are in the building with you, I think uh is a really good move. I think that's awesome. Yeah. I'll highlight just because I put this up here. There's active participation and frequent response. This was a October 11th was our only full day full PD day within the school year this year. And so we had a group of teachers. Uh we sent a group of uh we did send three teachers to Tacoma to a conference and three to Spokane for the same conference came back October 11th they led a schoolwide PD.

015U Anita Archer is an old is a is an old guru around literacy and it was all just about how do we get our kids to actively participate? How kids are opting out? How do we get them not to opt out? Uh, I had more staff come to me and say, "That was the best PD we've ever had." And I'm like, "Oh, wow. That's that's great news." And then we saw the evidence and one of the challenges we is is every almost every one of our class has a set of whiteboards and there's many whiteboards. And so now every kid has a you know, we spent thousands on whiteboard markers because now they're writing on the whiteboard marker and showing their sign and hey, we don't Jamie, I don't see your sign up there. What

016do you got on there? Um, just to get kids not have to be able to opt out. So anyway, that was a that was a highlight there. keep one to go laptop challenges. Um there's always going to be challenges, right? And there and so I I won't read those to you and a lot of these are are some similarities between us and the high school. Um you know, we know uh we are going to change and you'll see that in the next slide. You know, we we focus a lot on interventions. How do we get our what do we do with our high cap kids and kids that don't need to be intervened with? Um so we have a plan for that next year. Uh we do see our kids struggle with stamina. They're just

017they're just not, you know, they don't attain them. Right now we're on block schedule for state testing hour and 40 minute block and they're just they're just dragging. Um uh but we do we have seen some uh some some uh the apathy part with the frequent response like no you're we're not we're not letting you opt out. Um you know we do see still our tenants has improved. I'll have a slide later to talk about where we're at with attendance. We didn't been doing a lot of work with ESD around that. um you know, you do see that it has decreased, but our substance abuse is still an issue. We still are seeing um some kids with vapes and marijuana and even had a few cases of alcohol, which we haven't really seen. It's kind

018of been a non-issue, but we've seen a couple of those this year. So, um you know, I put this up there, but dealing with challenging parents and guardians, that's an ever that's on an ongoing thing. you know, they they don't really understand the educational system, so they get frustrated and you try and talk them off the edge. But, um, any questions about those? New York State just uh is implementing a ban on phones in the classroom, and I know you have kind of a ban here as well. Uh, you have social media and screen time up there. Well, I put that up there because it's not so much here at school, but the social media stuff that happens outside of school, comes to school and it's it happens weekly where parents will come in and

019this kid sent this to me. They saw, you know, I just sent a message about Tik Tok challenge now is that kids are sticking lead pencils into the charger of their Chromebook and it's supposed to spark. It could catch on fire. It's all from Tik Tok, social media. So, just the amount of screen time our kids are used to having that screening. Um we're debating whether we have them next year maybe no phones at lunch you know so um it's just they have enough screening. You also done some things changed up your Chromebook distributing Chromebooks as well. We have changed up our Chromebooks. I'm surprised you haven't got any. But uh this year we we put we put um Chromebook carts. There's one right over here in every sixth grade classroom. Our sixth graders do

020not take their Chromebooks home. We've seen a tremendous amount of less damage. Um you know there's not a lot of work. They can check one out if they need to do some extra work, but we don't. We did a research on what are they doing at night. They're not doing homework. They're on YouTube. They're playing. They're they're not doing homework. Um, we're rolling that up to next year. So, our seventh graders all, you know, their Chromebooks will be in the classroom soon. So, some of that just be aware. One of the most common uh concerns from the staff was to bring it or wasn't charged, right? So, just remove that barrier. Yep. We did. So fix any student questions or comments because like I would always just keep my phone in my locker because I

021was so scared I was going to get taken and that's like one thing I really did appreciate about the school is that we weren't honest. We weren't allowed to have anything honest except when our school so I really enjoyed that. Thank you Charlie. Not everybody would feel the same. Yeah. Yeah. Now, we're not stupid either. We have kids that bring this to to class every day. You know, they're sneaky. We expand. They got this. They haven't watch. We don't We haven't banned much yet. Future planning. Here's just some different things. We continue to focus on our school culture. That's a big part of of my belief around relationships and how we're um providing opportunities for kids. We are looking at a change belt schedule um for next year. It's just adding a carved out block

022of time to intervene and extend so that every kid gets that opportunity. It's not just if you need it, you get it. Everybody's going to have an opportunity to pushed. We're working on some materials right now for our highly engulfable program. Um and so, uh the alignment with the high school, that's something we continue to do. Colt and I meet frequently on that. Um I put I highlighted doubly in literacy through humanities because, um we we got to look at math and ELA. And so our humanities folks, we've really worked uh we started this year, but we've really said no, this is not this is not optional. We looked at all the literacy standards that are tied to social studies and that's what we're focusing on using social studies as the content. We don't want

023you to go away from that because you need to learn that, but we're going to use literacy standards. So speaking, listening, writing, and reading are all going to be embedded in uh in the humanities for next year. So we do need to get stronger tier one. We we our pyramid's got to be inverted and I won't go into a lot of detail on that just because time wise, but uh we continue to focus on tier one. 85% of our kids should be at a spot where they're meeting standard and we're not. So we are making some growth. I'll show you that here in a little bit. So I've got next four slides are just some quick data. Feel like last year I had like 15 slides a day. It was way too much. So I

024kind of condensed it a little bit. I'll kind of this is kind of hard to see. Um but I just I highlighted this just so you can kind of see the difference. This is a comparison from I already reading from from fall winter of where we closed this three or three three or more grades in the fall was at 40%. We went down to 30% in the winter. Um so you I I don't need to read every one of those, but but we've seen that that gap shrinking. Um more kids moving up to this way here. Um obviously in math um still from 36 to 28, not as much as as literacy, but we're still seeing some movements. we're excited about. Uh we have a a spring I ready coming up and obviously we're SBA

025testing right now. Um I just contribute that to a lot of our our ELA folks have embraced a lot of different uh strategies in the classroom to to work around our reading skills, but that still is a roadblock with our stamina, their kids. Um that's just a quick snapshot. I think I had like five slides last year on academic. This is an important slide because I would imagine if we were to go back in in the past few years, you just you wouldn't see any movement. you either stagnation or move it the wrong way. So what this slide says for me and I hope you as a takeaway is that we've actually seen it now start to move the way that we're hoping it. A lot of that has to do with the work that

026they've done to get us back to to kids showing us what they know. The problem with I already as I think we pointed out before is is it's time consuming. They don't see a benefit to it. And so Mark and his team have maybe had some philos philos changes early in the morning about the importance of it that from a student's perspective, you need to show us what you know because if you're not showing us what you know, you may be missing out on a lot of other things because we're going to place you based on the data that we have on. So this is it's an important slide that we're we're finally seeing some some change in direction uh in the work. Yeah. And that's been an emphasis of Mark and and his work

027about shrinking the number of students that are very level behind and then growing as you can see the yellow. Yeah. I I tend to look at the green see where we were at before and and just add that. So uh Tammy Turners, our assessment coordinator, done a great job. We'll pull kids in because a lot of kids they'll they'll it'll red flag it. big chest bass. They just click click click click. So we're like, "No, we're come back in. We're going to reset that. We're going to take that in a small location. Here's where you're going to sit." So uh trying to be more intentional with that. Hey Mark, this is kind of a off-the-wall question maybe you can step in too, but seems like at the younger grades these test scores are maybe reflective

028of what the students the level they are at. And then when it gets up to your guys' level, it does become, you know, being I think somewhat in my opinion that the kids don't take as much precedent and much effort into it. So where do you think like because then the debate comes up about graduation rates still really high? Our test scores are really low and how we doing that pushing people through the system. So when you see, you know, your test scores and you see your graduation rates, do you kind of where where do you think this data actually how much does that actually show what the kids know? Are we seeing just that apathy and that truly I think Jamie that's a great question, but I think our kids are burned out on

029taking tests. Yeah. Yeah. They're burned out. We, you know, we start them in third grade taking I ready. By the time they get to eighth grade, that's six years. That's 18 times they've taken this assessment. They're they're they don't like it, right? they're burnout. I mean, it's a diagnostic that we, you know, that we use. I could get on my soap box about state testing, all that stuff, but I think that's what we see. Um, because what we see in the classroom is not what we see here. And that's the importance of us being in the classroom. So, so that they don't they don't mesh. I see Jamie that their view of whether we're successful on the state test. Just to give you some some some metrics, we had 30 people refuse to take the

030state test at a certain grade level. Those are automatic zeros, right? So we know the power of a zoo. Okay? So in any business, any industry, you get 30 zeros out of the percentage. Then we have probably another 70 to 100 kids that took the test, the state test in less than 10 minutes. That means they're not actually trying. Okay? And so by the time you look at that, you're getting a it's negligent, and I say negligent to to view what we're doing in our school system by looking at state tests. There's c certain people in our community that want to bash us for our state tests, but they're they're refusing their kids to take the state test. Okay? and they're the same ones calling me, well your state testing scores, what did your son

031and daughter take the test? They didn't. Okay. So, I think we have to be very very clear. And also, I've gone away from my focus with with teachers. We we we offer multiple modalities trying to have choice boards and different ways to present information and present their learning. State testing is a very very narrow narrow focus where certain kids now we know with anxiety rates being as high as they are. know all the different things that kids don't share their information in a state test as just the one modality. There's so many different ways to share your learning that you have something and so I think it's it could be a metric but to say that that's the metric we need to use to measure the success of schools is negligent and it's it's it's

032really leads to bad taste um because it's not accurate at all. It's it's in in no business would you look at the the incomplete data and judge a business based off data like that. So this is pretty unfair. So I think we need to make sure um that we're shifting that narrative and really looking at what matters and I'm going to help that today. Okay. One thing I'll add too about I ready is that there's there's no false positives already. Right. So that's why when Mark said focus on the green like if students are in the green it they they can't they can't guess their weight because it's such an adaptive test. um there are false negatives didn't do the best the best effort they clicked through it right um so that's why we when

033I presented on I did we really looked at the growth right to try to see how much are kids growing based off where they started that shows uh how much from where they where they began to where they're at but yeah it is there there is no one perfect metric out there you could say this is the most most accurate IR is the one that is the most used not only within our region but our state and our it's the most normed. Uh but it's it shouldn't be I mean we and and SBA the golden metric we use to judge whether or not being successful. It's just got to be hard from your guys's position to present this data knowing that probably the numbers are better than this. Not testing the numbers are but where

034they are in comparison to their grading are actually better than right and this is this is middle of the year data right so these are end of year standards students are being assessed against. So some of the standards that they're being assessed, they haven't been taught yet. Um, so really it's the end of the year that we really have the most accurate or this for this type of metric to say this is where kids landed within ready. I think personally for me I faint testing is not a good judgment of how I learn because I'm a pretty capable student and I can do pretty good work and when I'm just staring at a screen for a couple of hours I can't really I don't I can't show what I've learned that way because I get

035bored. I get like I don't want to stare at my screen like my contacts dry out. Like I don't want I don't want to stare at a screen for a couple hours trying to show people like what I know because I know what I know. My teachers know what I know and I just don't like it's just like testing SP state testing not for me. I don't like it. It's it just drags on and it's boring. And then I ready it's also really boring. Like I know it adapts to me but it's just not fun. And the only thing that was fun about was the little games you get to play in between. Right. At least you play those in between. My son tries to play those as he goes. I have to beg him

036to do I have to beg him to I ready. I'm like dude that's why that is so boring. But but I mean Charlie Charlie you're right and that's where we're at. Even when you get to eighth grade now we have three I read then they have the eighth grade science then they have the SBA in math and ELA. I mean they're they're bombarded with it. So I don't think I mean it is what it is. It's what we're read. We use this data, you know, a lot of different ways. We recognized every kid who made their who met their goal and made their growth, their typical growth and their growth. So, we're trying to do some different things, but it's still it it's the data we have. So, all right. Hey, let's note that Hunter

037and Colton took 10 minutes of my time. Yeah, you see that? I'll be quick. So, this is a this wonky. This is our we have an attendance team that is really embraced uh focusing on attendance this year. They meet every week. They work with a cohort out of ESD. If you walk in out of our office, we have a board in there for parent. This is how many kids checked out early. This is how many kids came in late today. They can see it right there. Um we're trying to encourage parents, hey, we know appointments come up, but I just want to highlight um our median attendance. This was kids that missed two or more two or more days in a month. uh 22 23 23 24 is at 67% uh that that didn't meet

038that. So now we went to 76 right now. Um so we're just we're trying to focus on attendance. It's still not great. Um but we're making some we're making some growth there. Those are excused or excused or unexed but not include like school not include school activities, anything like that. Yes. Yeah, that was a rug. We have some parents because letters go out. School activities shouldn't be on there. So anyways, we are we are seeing some some improvement in attendance but still it is it is an issue. Um we try to to not look so much at first period because that sometimes can be a parent issue. You don't want to penalize but this is the data. Okay. Um I put in this again hard to see but we we've we still continue to focus

039on these two areas in our in our school climate data. The sense of belonging and and the safety. The one on the left this is um this is student responses and this is our staff responses. Um, so those are still just things that we continue to focus on. We have again we have this survey that we'll give after we're done spa testing for this was from the fall. Um, we'll come back to that. Um, but we're looking at some increases in kids. 85 I think it's about 85% of our kids said, "Yeah, we feel safe here. There's some anomalies and you know, you can dive into a little bit deeper, but um, those are two areas that we still uh focus on as far as just kids want we want kids to feel a sense

040of belong. 75% is not good enough for us." Okay. So, we're continue to focus on that. And then um last one here. I always put some behavior data in there. Um I will be fully transparent. You can see over here that uh that I I I cut the numbers off because we put everything in Swiss. So it's not all we document everything. So it doesn't mean that it's a that it's a referral. It's just just for documentation, but it runs through the report. Um we love our sixth graders. Look at this. I mean this is great. They're they're awesome. There's it's a good it's a good group. Um usually at Right. Isn't sixth grade usually sixth grade is usually yeah that their transition from intermediate to middle school we see a spike um but our

041sixth graders have been tremendous this year um total out of school suspensions last year we had 88 total we're down to 37 um we our biggest partly our biggest one is inappropriate language our kids just that's the language they hear on YouTube Tik Tok that's what they hear they use it here at school um we like I said substance abuse has gone down but it's still an issue we see the 45 to 36 um you know We we always hear a lot about fights and things happening in middle school and things like that. Uh we've had 22 last year, we've had 11 this year. Um and so that you know, we're seeing we're seeing our behaviors go down and we're you know your typical behaviors at middle school, but these are the kind the ones

042that we that we highlight just because those are ones that we deal with, you know, on on the regular basis. Are last year's numbers up to this date in 2024 or the for the whole year? That was for the whole year. Yeah. So, yeah, that I didn't have obviously our data for this year. We're not done with school. We have, you know, 20 some days left. But, uh, you know, we do see some things and I think a lot of that, like I said, we have a good pride team that that responds rapidly and efficiently. Um, and so that's just some behavior data that I wanted to share with you guys. So, uh, with that, I think that's Oh, look at Oh, I put some priority goals. Again, we've kind of talked about these already.

043We're our active participation. We're still focused on that frequent responses. That's all the feedback that we give the teachers on our walkthrough. Um, it's a form. It's a duplicate form. We rip it off, give it right to them before we even leave the classroom. We go enter that into a database. Um, so we have the data that we've collected on that. Um, show that with our staff. Hey, this is how many teachers we walk. We did I think we did 92 walkthroughs in October. You know, we show them here's how many kid teachers had this, this, and this. We don't put the names. We just there's here's our data. Okay. Um, and then we're we're doing the literacy work is really something something that we focus that we're focus on and that's going to move

044into lit into humanities um just because our our kids, you know, reading is is where that's the meat of of what we're trying to get all the kids to do. So, all right, take my 10 minutes away. I'm right at 14 minutes. Oh my god. Mark took all any questions at all or anything? Like I said, we got room to go, but we're seeing questions for Mark. Sorry, it went over. We may have some questions. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so excited. Thank you. I always enjoy this day because I get to come share um kind of the successes, the challenges, and kind of the reality. I think what you'll get with Mark and I, you're going to get the honest transparency of what's going well and what's a struggle, right? And I think uh public education

045is under constant scrutiny. Um and uh there there's the reality of what's happening uh and the perception of others and there's a reality of being there dayto-day. So I think I'm going to try to paint the picture of what's happening dayto day. Um so you guys can can honestly have a a a viewpoint that is uh neutral and unbiased. Um so we have about uh over 1100 kids. Again, I'm going to put a plug in. Our building was built for between 750 to 800. So, we have every space in our building full. When I mean that, ask Scott Rüur. He's in a what do we call it? The the the closet, but he has a new name for it, right? He's up like literally I have a our staff lounge is a is a art

046room now. Uh so, every single space in our building is is full with kids or staff. It's it's packed. Come to our hallways during school. I'm surprised there hasn't been more issues because it is it's again we're we're over capacity. Uh we have 67 staff, 41 classified and there's four admin. Um what's going well? Like I'm I'm gonna start with our course offerings. And I will say this, I collaborate. I lead um uh uh a PLC with uh SWAC principles uh once a once a trimester. And I will tell you, we are doing things at our high school that no other high school around us is doing. Okay? And I and I say that proudly, but I also say that because the work the team has done and the experiences that we're able to provide

047our students. We have kids that transfer in from other schools and they're shocked by how we do things. Okay. And so one of the things is our course offerings. Uh CTE obviously we have the most robust CTE program uh in the ESD. So out of 23 high schools we we are at the top of that list. And on top of that okay so that's a vehicle to get student choice and trying to be relevant to provide our kids opportunities so that they can have a competitive advantage when they go out into industry. Right? That's the biggest goal. Okay. shifting our focus of what we're here for. Um, secondly, okay, on the on the hey, I'm I'm collegebound or I want to take more rigorous courses. Well, we offer the most college and high school courses

048of anybody in the state for our size. Okay, so nobody else is doing what we're doing. Okay, so we have almost 250 college and high school credits that you earn for free and you can walk away with your the Viking to Wildcat that we rolled out earlier this year. You can walk away with your first two years of school if you go to an instate institution. you walk away with your first two years almost completely done if not done the savings for our community, the savings for our kids and our families and taking away those barriers and talking about equity. That's the work that we've done. Okay. Uh we just actually got last, you know, two nights ago got two more classes approved for computer science through Udub. So now we'll be able to offer

049a computer science path in our pathway uh through UDub. So our teachers are buying into that. But it's it's dual. We want kids to experience industry related courses, but also we want them to experience what it's like to be in a college rigor type course. And so we have a balance of both of those. Um, and so that's the goal is that we're continuing not to not to just offer those, but offer those with quality. So they go through training, they go through all the they're they're professors for the university. So um, and and then the universities come in and evaluate our teachers and our teachers teaching college and high school and talking to the university um, u admin that come in and view them. They're all all top-notch. So, I'm I'm pleased with the

050product that we're producing. Um, academic success, I'll show you next slide. Our our passage rate. So, at high school gets a little more challenging and how you the metric for academic success, but we do use failing grades versus non-failing grades, right? And this year, um, is the best data we've ever had. Um, I think I'm I'm going to allude to why I think that is um, as as we go, but our data this year um, has been the best. first first trimester um was about 20% better than last trimester and second trimester is about 16% better than last last year and last year was our highest. So every year we're getting a little bit better. Um staff culture uh we revamped two years ago how we do everything uh within our building leadership and within

051our staff meetings. So everything we do professional we do a ton of professional development. It's all teacher le for the most part and then all of our culture work that we do with our staff is within cohorts. Um, so two years ago, I just didn't like the disconnect that we had um within our staff. So we moved into cohorts and they're um diverse cohorts. So I have a I might have a math teacher, a CTE teacher, an art teacher. So it's it's cross content, crosscurricular, and they're they're with that cohort for the entire year with a cohort leader. that cohort leader is part of my uh building leadership team and we do a lot of leadership development training and we also do a lot of our professional development what we're going to do to to

052roll out and continue to uh sustain the things that we're trying this year we brought in Catelyn Tucker to start the year who's an uh secondary former secondary English teacher big on blin learning active engagement strategies and so we kicked off the year with her and then every single we do what we call instructional resets once once a trimester and our staff leads that within their cohorts and they do it so it's a lot of I'm really not leading a ton of professional. I plant seeds. I hold the vision and the mission. I talk about where we're going. I hold them accountable to it and continue to provide different things. But our teachers are actually doing the learning. And so our staff meetings are really opportunities for us to learn together and also learn and

053and show kind of what's working, what's not working, provide feedback to one another. So our cohort structure, not only are they like you go up there right now, it's been the coolest thing. Staff appreciation week. We've done something. We have breakfast every morning together. Our whole staff's there. I mean, we we have 70 people. We've never had that. So, our staff likes each other, too. And I got had an opportunity to to hire many of those staff. They have the intangibles and characters u characteristics that we look for. So, our staff likes each other, but then also they're holding each other accountable to the standards that we've set. Um, our improvement uh in student behavior uh Mark said it there's where have a through line. We have we call it our engagement team. Um and

054so we have four engagement members and uh Courtney Shrader who kind of certificate that oversees that. I'm not handling minor level discipline at all anymore and a lot of our admin arms. We have a process for that. Our behavior has been so much better this year. Now, do we have challenges? Abso. Absolutely. Okay. But we've seen a decrease across the board in major referrals and in major incidences um from last year to this year. Now, last year was a tough year. This year's um been significantly better. I think it's because of our presence. I think it's because of our structures of our engagement team. I think it's because Courtney's done a phenomenal job and her leadership. Um, and I think we're we're um I'm gonna allude to I think our classroom instruction has gotten better.

055And then um I'm going to talk about our improvement instruction. Our instructional walks, that's one of our priority goals that I'm going to show you the data on that. But we've been living in classrooms as an admin team and living in hallways. And so we're constantly there's constantly somebody around in our building to supervise and support kids. Um I want to say uh Thors Council has been a and that's gonna I'm share that later on but Thors Council is my principal advisory group. Uh this year we focus on a variety of things but um equity and student belonging has still been an area of focus. I'm going to share the work that they did earlier this year uh that I think I want you guys to know about because I'm pretty dang proud of these

056kids. Um and then we've had state academic champs and and that's one metric, right? But state academic champs in multiple different areas. And I'll say people say, "Well, let's water them down. Look at your" I said, "Actually, if you look at those kids, they're taking college and high school courses just like other kids at other high schools, right? And they're performing at this level." So, I would disagree with that statement. Um, based off of that, I think our kids are producing at a high level in classrooms and doing a nice job. Now, I'm also going to So, this is just an example of kind of So, we had we do what we call boot camp. So kids that haven't demonstrated proficiency on the standard right after the trimesters they get assigned to a boot camp

057for two weeks they're able to come in and turn that F or that incomplete into a passing grade if they come do the work they show the learning there's multiple modalities multiple teachers involved and so we see an improvement for that and one of the areas I'm really proud of is we used to have a huge gap in our socioeconomic disparity that's like exactly on par so we're like 57% trained so this has been last year we really focused on it. We at 70% at this point in time. So we've shrunk that gap. Okay. So that's a phenomenal job of recognizing the inequities in our system, the lack of opportunities for some of our kids and then system systemically providing those opportunities and really focusing on trying to help kids that get lost in the

058education system. Um and I'll also tell you if you look here, we had 104 kids with an I. That's less than 10% of our population. That's pretty dang good for a high school. Um, and so we'll figure out ways to intervene with those kids uh in a reactive way. Um, because that's what you have to have at high school. Um, but I'm really really proud. We need to do some work around ELLL and our sped uh populations right here. Um, but that's always kind of an area of work. Um, we have some some ideas that we're going to do next year that are going to help hopefully offset that a little bit. So, just just an idea. We look at this every trimester building. We we look at data every single trimester with our building

059leadership team. And also I look at data with our kids at Thors Council. We we look at student academic data. We'll look at instructional practice data. We we do everything everything I do with our building leadership I do with our kids. So challenges uh student a student apathy and student attendance are at all time high. Like kids I I we're re-evaluating like even assemblies for example. We we think something's going to be fun. Our attendance rate kids are just skipping out dipping out. They're they're going wherever. like they so I'm asking are assemblies a thing of the past like how do we better engage our kids so we're getting feedback on those things so any anytime a kid doesn't want to do something they just leave and their parents will sign them out it's crazy

060right and so the the student attendance pieces is is a challenge so trying to message that trying to we have an attendance team as well our attendance rate is about 72% which by the way is top three in in in the SEWAC for attendance so this is a systemic issue across all high schools, okay? And really across all schools, and you're seeing it at the secondary, even more so. But it's it's a challenge. Student apathy, I think, is a twofold thing. Kids don't have the stamina. Okay? And it's hard to hold them accountable to practice that stamina. Um, so there is there is I mean, it's it's it's a challenge, but I've seen more apathy than than ever. Right now, we have those motivated kids, right? And they're still there. They're killing it, right? They're

061they're motivated. They're doing all the different things. But we're not talking the 60% that have always been successful in school or 50%. We're talking our kids that maybe haven't been successful K8. Then they get to us and they have all the baggage of K8 experiences and it's how do we remotivate them, reinspire them, get them to see the purpose in what we're doing, right? So that's extremely challenging. Um and and when you have all the other factors that that are there, okay, with with technology being what it is, um um parents having their views of what education should be, it becomes even more and more challenging. Um student emotional social emotional well-being, guys, this is like talked about anxiety earlier. I talked about like just the social emotional state of our kids. um their social

062emotional well-being is is crushed across the board. I see we see more things our counseling office is coming all the time. Our we have a mental health um specialist in our building. So, we offer um in intentional intensive mental health treatment for 30 kids because that's all we can offer for and she's she's booked like like we can't even so that the mental health state of our kids is extremely alarming and it's not just a certain group of kids, it's across the board. Um and so how do we get ahead of that? How do we put our now having mental health in our building for the second year in a row I think is a right step, but we could probably have 120 kids that really could use that support once a week that um

063really need that. And then with that goes substance abuse and substance use. So I think um those are those are challenges. So how do you when you're mentally not in a good state, then how do you come and sit in five classes and and behave in a certain way when you just you just witnessed a domestic violence with your mom and dad the night before? you're, you know, all these different things that are happening that we deal with every single day, okay? Every single day. Um, and so those are the challenges that then it's like, how do we look at our system? How do we look at our services that we're providing? How do we look at the support we're providing? And then how do we meet every kid where they're at? Like I got,00

064kids coming in. This group of kids might need this. How do we provide them that? But then I got a group of kids that need something completely individualized to them. So my job as a principal is to set up systems and supports to meet all kids where they're at. And that's that's getting more and more challenging than it's ever been. This job is harder than it's ever been. Like hard way harder than it's ever been. I I've been here 12 years now as an administrator and and it is more challenging and more thought stimulating because every decision you have you make has to be really intentional, well thought out. It didn't used to be that way. Can I ask you a quick question? Maybe this is a district level question. There's uh a pull back

065of some federal funding for counseling um that it may be affecting Heritage University, but I also saw that they might backfill that. So, in terms of pipeline for school counselors, Yeah. Yeah. So, we just got uh notified Friday that our mental health counselor, which is through a through a federal grant through ESD, um they were reducing, she's a full-time, she's a full-time ESD employee, 260 days, but with us entirely. So, works throughout the summer with students that they're reducing because of the uh pulling back of some of those grants, they're reducing her from 260 to 190 days. And it's not just her position, it's all the mental health positions through that grant which is I mean it's a 27% uh what we're going to see is they're going to leave and try to find stable

066elsewhere. So we've been in discussions around how how can we continue to can we backfill and and keep the first because also the counselor we have has fit really well in with our team. But yeah, it's directly hit us uh that we're going to have less counseling services offered or it's going to be interrupted or we might lose. Okay. Well, sounds like that would be something we'd really want to hang on. Okay. Yes. And people don't see like if you if you were you wouldn't notice the impact just by being but you see dayto-day the kids that are getting the support that they need and the impact it's having on those kids because we get to know our kids through the system. And uh it truly is we're seeing now the kids that she's supporting

067she's truly helping. She's truly um providing that the resource and the the intervention that they need. And we're able because there's a substance use professional and mel there's a lot of coorbidity between mental health and substance use um the the team has really worked out a a good referral system to figure out what is the the primary uh service that would be needed before because if you don't have mental health it's gonna it'll most likely lead to some type of substance use. And so are that that's my uh theory around why we've seen some reduction in in some of our substance use at the high school specifically because we have the services that are actually needed for the students. How does a kid a student end up out of mental health? So so we have

068a we have a referral process in place but really it's through our counseling team. Our counseling team we we view as primary care, right? So they're they're our primary care physicians. Like think about that and then they do a referral to mental health. They do a referral to substance and then we sit and staff those uh every week we have team meeting tier one, tier two or tier two, tier three meetings where we staff those referrals come from parents, students, staff and ultimately goes to our counselor and our counselor advocates on their behalf, shares specifically and then we determine what service or what level of care they might need. And this year I'm really proud our counselors did uh small groups so maybe they don't qualify for mental health but they they're struggling with anxiety.

069Great. our counselors are going to run a quick small group with four or six of you and try to help you with some skills around that. That's the at the high school level. It's extremely rare to have counselors be able to do that. And I think we had success in it. I think we need to now how do we continue to make that impermanent structure that we have in place. Is there parent involvement in when they students going to some of those? Do the parents know about it, request it? Yeah, I I'd say I mean Washington law is uh it's up to once they're once they're 13 students students have the right to decide whether or not um they want to disclose that to parents or not. So it's very rare that students would say

070that that they don't want parents to know. We we always try to encourage make sure parents are involved. So I would say 99% of the time um they're making one case where this the student because of the issues the attention from home that is leading to the mental health uh need is why parents kind not be aware of it but our counselors do a phenomenal job of encouraging make the connection that for this to really get better we need to have parents involved in this um so it's very rare that parents uh are not aware of it or not in the loop or not involved in it, right? Would you Yeah. I don't I can't think of a situation where this year that the parent hasn't been it hasn't supported it. Yeah. Um I already

071talked about the data piece like just just just finding data. It is a challenge to find data that and so now we're looking at college and high school metrics. We're looking at CTE path completion. We're looking at industry recognized credentials. There there's a lot of different things and we got back data from um ERC is it ERC? What? Uh so it was post-secary data how our kids were doing and we were above the state average uh significantly in a few of the metrics that our kids are being successful postsecary. So that's the data that I really like looking at. Are we preparing kids to really go and be successful postsecary? It's cool. I just talked to a parent yesterday. their son's graduating from Gonzega in three years because all of our college and the high

072school and they're they're graduating uh highest rank in the class right from CA. So again, we're hearing that time and time again that there is a process a personalized process for our kids to receive rigorous opportunities, but there's choice in that. So you can pick and choose how you want to enter that, how you want to come out of that. The data is really interesting. They actually track kids from the high school where they go off to to uh I think it's more than just Washington state in general, but they track them and they determine how many made it through the first year and return to the second year, which is an important point for colleges as you know that first year you get by the first year and return to your second year. It

073betters your the percentage of your ability to get a degree at the end. And then it tracks all the way through to determine if they actually completed the degree. And it also tracks if they switch too. You say if you start at a community college and then move into a into a university tracks. So it it does take a lot of effort to dig through all that data and determine all of it. But it is worthy to consider and it it does it does show that what students are learning academically and the other life skills that are being taught, you know, that those are those are working. Again, the data is really difficult. They can put it all together and uh make it, but you can get there. Our uh next two challenges, social media

074screeners, so we do have a cell phone policy high school. It's a lot more challenging to enforce than people would think. It's it's it's probably and when I say the social media usage, by the time they hit that, parents no longer think they need to monitor their son or daughter's social media. So, we deal with issues every single day related to social media, related to harassment or bullying on social media, how it's impacting school, and kind of we've gotten pretty good at dealing with those situations and handling those. But even the screen usage, if you look at kids, anytime there's a split second to be bored, they're not bored anymore. They just start swiping, right? And it's a it's a generational issue that I I don't know how to help solve. There's two sides to

075this. So, um any feedback on our cell phone policy for you guys as as as our board, I am I'm all I'm all ears. Um I don't know. Other schools are trying different things at the high school level. It's not working. Um, so we're we're I I think our issue is in certain spaces in our building it works really well because that teacher has developed a system that's really consistent and the engagement and participation in the class is awesome. But then in other areas it's they're less consistent and then it leads to anytime you have not a consistent policy being followed in 57 classrooms it becomes really challenging with kids. So we're still like looking into that. I I've met with Thor's Council, which is for 40 kids, getting feedback from them. Um, so yeah,

076we're still racking our brain around how do we um help support that. It's not as easy as just saying put your phone away or put your phone in a locker or this or that. Like it doesn't at the high school level, it's not quite that simple. Did you get any helpful feedback from parents conference? I know I was asked that question about how I felt as a parent regarding the cell phone policy. My default is the classroom policy is the policy. Yeah. The the the problem is actually I'll be dead honest. A lot of the communication with kids using their phone is in contact with their parents. And so like we've tried like they'll they'll pop out of class on the phone with mom or dad or they'll be texting mom and literally I'll say

077let me see. Sure enough, you know, I even will grab the phone if I know the kid pretty well. Hey, mom, don't call during class, you know, like like but but again, it it is constant and it's consistent and it's and that's not just all it is because it's so accessible at all times. But they say what research says is it takes anytime you check your phone, it takes your brain three minutes to fully refocus. So you got to think if you check your phone, you get seven notifications during class, you're spending 21 minutes of your time, not so it's a challenge. Um but again, how do we teach social how do we teach digital citizenship? How do we teach kids at that age as they get to our age? They're almost adults. So, I

078mean, we have kids in our building that are 18 years old and they're adults. How do we teach them appropriate? So, it is a challenge. Uh, and the last one, uh, parent demands and parent I think that's more challenging than it's ever been. Like the the way that parents treat educators is is is wild. Um, and the expectations that they have is wild. The way that they uh is Yeah. And so we're constantly remaining poised and and serving people the best we can, but it it it gets exhausting um to constantly deal with the things that come up that are inaccurate that aren't aren't really related to our issues, you know, and there and it's worse than it's ever been. It just continues to and I think we're getting better at dealing with it than

079we've ever gotten, but it it's it's challenging. Um, so future planning, I I went a different direction with this. Um, we're I actually this excites me. Um, I've been I've been the principal seven years. I've to be honest, I've accomplished everything I set out to accomplish when I took over. Like we're we're in a much better spot. Um, everything from college and the high school to CTE to our staff culture to how our students are to the energy, the excite like what we do every day. It's night and day from from year one to year seven. But this excites me because this is the next phase to go from good to great. And this is where we got to dig into. And I know it might not be popular with some, but this is the

080reality. If we're truly preparing our kids to have a competitive advantage and be able to go beat kids from wherever in the state, this is what we have to do. So, we're answering the essential questions. These are the two questions that we're focusing as we gear up for next year that we're going to focus all our efforts on is one is how can we intentionally design support learning experiences that equip our students with the skills, the mindsets and the adaptability needed to thrive in today's evolving industries. Secondly is how do we continue to cult cultivate a school culture that every student feels seen and valued heard and that they have a spot in our building that they can thrive and be successful and they're able to develop some self-confidence and they're able to develop some

081selfworth and they're able to develop some empathy and some kindness and all those other things. But really our shift is going to be to 21st century skills. So what we're going to try to do and this is going to take some time and a lot of intentional work but our teachers are trained to teach English. Our teachers are trained to teach math or teachers are trained to see social. That's not that's not what society that's not what industry needs. Okay, we know that. Mark Pera who came to us two years ago said 92% of businesses industries are hiring based off of these skills. But yet we're not teaching explicitly teaching these skills in our classroom. So we're going to go through the process and we just started it this spring and it's going to be

082a shift over the next probably two to three years is how do we better embed these skills into our classrooms? not going away from content level skills but using these as our endgame and and using our content skills to get there. So it should look differently like our goal in math should not be that you you manage an algorithm. You guys are in business. How often do you go back and use what you learned in algebra? Jamie, you run an insurance company. You run a business. Are you using algebra and geometry skills every day? Not geometry, but but okay. Thank you. Okay. But but are you using critical thinking and problem solving skills every day? Right. So that's that has to be our shift is how do we begin to look at that and guys

083that's a difficult mindset shift for our teachers but there we were uncomfortable at our last staff meeting but it was a great level of discomfort it was phenomenal right so we're beginning to think how do we better serve our kids support our kids to give them that advantage because I I want our kids from CIA when they leave they know they can go kick anybody butt right they know hey I got a job or I got a scholarship interview or I got this great we got it we're prepared because we we we are fluent in these 21st century skills. So that's going to be a big shift for us. Um and it's also going to be some tough work that we do. Uh and then other areas continuing to as middle school has began to

084develop a robust CTE department, it's challenging us. For example, Mark said their most popular class is digital imaging. It used to be our most popular class. It's no longer our most popular class, right? Because kids are taking it here. They've experienced it. Now they're coming up. And so we're going to have to realign some of the things that we do in CTE because they're doing a good job exposing kids to it and then they get to us and that now they they're like, "No, I don't want to go try that. I've done that. I'm going to go try something else." Um and so this year um we saw some anomalies in our master schedule. I finished the master schedule yesterday. It's which is a extensive process because my goal is to give every kid what

085they what they requested. Like we want to offer all the cool classes that we can offer. Get them what they requested. that's really challenging to do, but I think this year we're able to like do it to the best of our ability. So, again, taking the numbers of kids requests and making sure every kid can get that class that they want. Um, see if I got just priority goal instruction. I'm really proud of this. So, our goal was to increase student voice in our classrooms. Our goal is to have our teachers facilitating learning and our kids actually doing the learn, right? Learning is done by those who are talking. Okay. So, um we actually last year we were in 416 classrooms. We have a slick process. It's kind of AI generated. We go in, we

086have a form that we use. We fill out form. We're looking for four things in classrooms. Oh, can you get me back to Oh, sorry. Thank you. So, we're looking for four things in every classroom. identified actually we've gone through this with our kids and we've gone through this with our doors council and then our staff this is all we talk about our cult okay there's strategies used to promote student voice there's a clear purpose in the lesson that's articulated by students there's student voice that's prominent in the classroom and then teachers making an effort to connect with learners okay so we go in and we're we're literally monitoring that so we're in there in 10 to 12 minutes and uh then we provide feedback in a fill out the feedback teachers get automatically a

087k PDF form with exactly what the feedback is in real time. Um, and then we go follow up with teachers and talk about it. So this year, last year we had 416 formal walkthroughs. This year we've had 1,50. Okay, we're living in classrooms. We're providing quality feedback. I think that's why instruction's improvement. I think that's why behavior is improving because of our system to allow us to help coach and reinforce the things that we're doing with teachers. Okay, time out. So I want to connect you to a the next level of through line. So when Colton and I get together at the beginning of the year or at the end of a year, we always talk about between the two of us through the evaluation process, where is it that we want to focus our

088efforts for the coming year? Where do we feel like we want to get better? And he identified this. He identified, I want our administrators in classroom. I want to increase this. And so the through line would be from the superintendent to the principal to his other administrators who he's holding accountable to the benefit of the teacher what ultimately is going to be the benefit of the students. And so it is it is nice to see that this has continued and that the the the evidence is there that they have totally increased the amount of time that they are in classrooms based on his commitment and our I he even said you need to hold me accountable to this. So every time we get together on our meetings with regards to evaluation I get the data

089to see that he is doing what he wants to do. The other thing is I hope you realize that Mark is doing the same thing that there's a connection between the two about committing to get themselves into the classroom more and providing feedback and then and then monitoring it. Well, and then also then going based off of we take the feedback back to our teams and say, "All right, we need to reset a little bit. Student voice, we're not seeing it as frequently. So, let's have some of our teachers that are doing it well do quick breakout sessions on student voice and and getting people there. So, we do, like I said, our staff meetings are professional development. They are truly learning by our adults to get better and they're teaching each other. They're talking

090with each other. I'm helping to to encourage, facilitate, inspire, provide different ideas, but really it's it's teacher led. Okay. Yeah. Because similar with us, we will we'll take like five or six teachers that we know that we need to be in their classroom more and then we'll we'll we meet once a week on our our PLC with our admin team. Will, okay, there here's these five teachers. Okay, so I'm this week, then that then Tammy's in the next week, Paul's in the next week. Uh it's so much more valuable than the law of 60 minutes of an evaluation throughout the year. Now, we're giving weekly feedback these people that does go into the evaluation, but it's more immediate than waiting till May 15th to give them the final message. Every teacher has had I went

091and looked, every teacher in our building has had 15 different at least 15 different times where they received a message on and really this year we're in there so much. We're trying to validate what we see that went well and then throw in a little tidbit of, hey, have you thought about this? Hey, what about this? And then go following up and saying, hey, let's go through. your learning target. You kids had no idea what they were doing. So, what are the steps and processes that you could turn that over to kids and have them discuss a little bit further? So, I think I asked you about this when I came to visit, but uh the uh SEA has totally why in on this. You say that's accurate. We separate it from the evaluation system

092completely. Um our our building reps are both part of u uh what we're doing. We don't use it as a gotcha. We use it as an area of growth. And um our sea has been fully like the sea in our building has been fully supportive of everything we're doing. They know transparently what we're trying to do. We're trying to improve improve opportunities for kids. We're trying to improve experiences for kids and it it does take us taking a coaching lens and helping provide that feedback and work side. And um I think we've done a nice job in our entire admin team like Becky Becky's in classrooms, Joel's in classrooms, Brandon's we we all take it. And so sometimes kids are funny like Mr. Monty, you've been in three of my classes today. Well, it's on

093my schedule. here I am, you know, like, but it's fun to see the different environments. It's also good for kids to see that we're there, right? I think from a TNL lens, it's really exciting to hear this because at the secondary level, um, it's hard to like our our challenge has been administrators should be instructional leaders, right? That is that is the primary role of any school administrator and you need to be in the classroom observing instruction, giving feedback to instruction. hard to do if you didn't have the systems built so that you are freed up so you can get in the classroom. So, it was really cool to hear that this year was a um not the first step in that, but it's just there now I I'm hearing like they're just being they're

094able to be instructoral leaders more I think because of some of the systems like our having the behavior or engagement team set up where they're not being pulled for the managerial thing. It was a PD we did a few years ago like where are we spending our time and it a lot of our time was spent around managing putting out fires right and so some of the systems that we built are now starting to take effect I think you heard from the elementary teachers too how much they are in classrooms and the systems they're building uh and then the only other thing I want to add is our focus this year across for all aid has been around collecting quality evidence and giving and giving effective feedback right both through informal and and and formal

095formal evaluation process. So, it's just for my lens, it's really cool to hear that that's really taking root, right? And RSC is same same boat because it if it allows them to to the teacher comes to them and complains about an observation or like that, well, what's been your feedback on your walkthroughs? Oh, well, it's it's been this. Okay. Well, can't I can't can't support you on that, you know. So, there it's been great to have that, honestly. And they know they knew who we're working with closer. So we have full support from our sea reps in the buildings. It's really the indirect things, too. It's not only the time that they spend in the in the classroom that's that's beneficial obviously for the for the teacher, for the students, but it's the time that

096they're walking to the classroom. It's the time in between classes they're out in. It's it's just the visibility aspect. Now, we have had parents who who question why are they not in their office to to to deal with my concerns? When we share with them, well, they're not available. They're in the classroom. So, I I they have that has come to me like I can never their their complaints are I can never get to the principal. I would say, well, then why what is it that you've been told? Well, they're in the classroom. And it's an easy for me to say that's what we're asking to do is to be in the classroom and better the educational experience of their child. There's time outside the day. But that that is the one push back I've

097got from parents is that I think they're still in that mindset that administrators sit in the office and just wait for issues to come to them with regards to discipline or other things that are happening. We're pushing them into the classroom. It's so easy to be in meetings all day. Yeah. And I bet you you could do that all day long. I I think of the principal as the principal teacher, right? P A L P L E. Uh yeah. So that's and we're not there yet. I would love to get to that, but I mean we're still working on our systems for that, but yeah, we're we're getting closer and closer to that. Uh and my our our last goal really was around um creating a sense of belonging. We continue to monitor are we

098are we doing a good job making the kids our kids from come from all different walks of life. Our kids come from all different experiences education. How are we doing connecting with them? So last year um we when we did the same exact survey, we were at 72% of our kids. Okay, not good enough. Okay, but 72% of our kids felt like they had a sense of belonging and rooted in in what we're doing at the high school. This year, uh 82%. So increase of 10%. Um and I think that a lot of different things that we're doing, I think feeds into that, being really intentional and focused on that. Um our goal next year is going to get get to 90%. Right? We want to continue to grow and continue to create a better

099space. But what I'm really proud of as I transitioned part of this was done a lot of work around embracing different cultures, embracing um making sure that all students feel comfortable and we really focused our Thors council last year really focused on racial equity which is an important piece because we identified that as a essential area. Our kids identified that and articulated that. Well, this year um we did something that no other high school in our area has done. Um and uh we hosted a student voice summit for six different high schools. We had 150 kids we put on. Hunter and I have been working in collaboration on this project for two years. Um and really what happened is three years ago had a few kids at Force Council speak up and said they felt

100the racial divide in our school. They felt like there are racial comments being said all the time. They felt like there was this this and this. And they it wasn't me saying a word. It was kids put me on blast. What are you going to do, Mr. Monty? Right. So then we we focused okay is it bigger than that? Well it it was it was about belonging and it was about value. It was about like our kids feeling safe, seen and heard in our building. So as a thorus council the last two years we then began to focus and identified what is that you guys want out of this. And our third thing that they really wanted to do is they wanted to host and this was three years ago as kids. They wanted to

101host a student voice summit where they could share their experiences and then we could learn from other schools. And uh it went off seamlessly. It was awesome. It was u March 18th. Um our kids planned it. Um our kids we had student panels where they shared their experiences. They went to other panels. We had a keynote speaker. Um and we had like I said 150 kids from West Valley to Davis to Proer to Gran View uh to Wapto and us all come together. So, this is something that our kids um we debrief actually Dan got to be there today at Thors Council where we began to debrief and really reflect on the the the time and the experience and it'll be something that we hope to continue to do at a bigger scale uh next

102year with our kids taking the lead in the valley on what does it mean to create um racially equitable environments in schools and how do we continue to uh create belonging for for all kids but really recognizing those marginalized groups and make sure they have opportunity. So, I'm super proud of our kids. I'm super proud of um the staff that was involved in that. Um and it was cool to see that come to fruition um because it's been like a three-year project. So they they collected evidence from um uh participants there and one of the big things the takeaway was we need to do this every year and thank you CILA for for doing this. And from the CELA students, what I noticed was they saw Grand View and Davis as being schools that are

103really making some progress on this these issues in particular being intentional about it. So there's things that we're learning from those schools by bringing them and inviting behind those. It's huge. Yeah, it was a really cool experience and that's what we hope to grow and hopefully uh we'll get more schools involved next year. And our goal is to get at the Yakamak Convention Center and have a full day and breakout sessions and and really make it about um creating an environment where as a as a community and as a as a region that we're we're focused on learning from each other and providing these experiences for our kids. That's all I got. Sorry I went over a little bit. 100 took a lot of my time. Thank you guys. We have a minute for questions.

104You have Okay. Questions, comments from students. Speaking of student voice, students with that because it's getting to the end of the year like kind of like 23 days left. But there's just like it's just hard to keep getting that especially when classes are starting to like almost wind down but they're still going. And I think kids really abuse the um boot camp. they realize that they can just slack off the entire year. They don't have to do anything and at the end of the year they can just use boot camp to their advantage. And I feel as though like sometimes that might be taken away from kids who really do need boot camp, kids who really do struggle. Um, and I think boot camp is honestly such a really great idea, especially for those who

105are really struggling in class. I just feel that it could be abused by students who don't really care about their school and like, oh, I just don't have to do anything for the entire year and take two weeks and we'll get a break up. I just think that's something that could be looked into a little bit more and kind of just like understood and evaluated. So Charlie, on that note, uh they don't just get to go to boot camp. Their teacher has to recommend them for boot camp now. And so that process, exactly what you said, by the teacher having to recommend them. The teachers are recognizing the kids that maybe exactly they're not eligible for boot camp, so they need to go take that full class all over again. Um and so that's really

106helped us to cut down on that. Not perfect, right? But again, we're getting the right kids there now because initially we didn't do that. It's like a Oh, that's exactly you were 100% right. I think the shift to 21st century skills is going to help that too, right? So, if you're just not doing it, you're just not doing any work. That's going to give that like and we're grading you on that. You're not putting any effort in um tied to a 21st century skill. That's that's going to be another thing. Say, "No, this isn't the going to boot camp isn't appropriate for you." Right? that's not the that's not the content. You're not struggling with learning it. You're just not even trying. Right? So, that'll give a little bit more clear clarity around that. I

107think our 21st century skill focus that we're going to begin to embark on the next couple years is really going to hopefully stimulate help with students. Yeah, I'm really excited especially for upcoming students because we've definitely struggled with like critical thinking and problem solving. Like that's seen in pretty much all of my classes. Um, and I think it's going to make us more college ready because I know throughout high school I haven't felt very ready for college and I've kind of struggled with like the thought of like going to college like um I know that some students also aren't happy with like our grading scale and stuff and that they don't feel ready for college because of how our grading scale is. Um, but I think if we're really starting to implement um these 21st

108century skills, I think it'll really help with um being college ready. Self-direction, accountability, I saw those as go ahead or anything. Yeah. Um I feel that there's kind of like this notion out here that like school is easier now or that like um especially in CIA, I feel like a lot of people are like, "Oh, students aren't earning their grades." You know, we have we have great um passing rates. Um you know, we have a lot of validictorians and um like as a student at Seight, it's hard because when people say, "Oh, you don't earn like your grades and stuff. You don't earn your 4.0." And I think the reason why students are having so much success in that is because there is so much support. You know, we have advisory four days a week.

109Um there's in my advisor there's about 19 kids and every single week my advisory teacher pulls aside every single one of the students and it's like I know that you can do better than this. Why aren't my advisor pulls me aside and says these grades these aren't going to help you? I know your goals and I know where you need to be and how are we going to get these up? But I know as a student that I can go to any one of my teachers and I can be like, you know, um I'm not understanding this concept. Can you explain it to me? Or this isn't up to my standard. What can I do to um better this? So um I like I want people to know that um that the grading skill isn't

110easier. I think there's just so much so many different levels of support for our like our highly capable students and our students who are underperforming that um maybe I guess school is easier now because there's so much support for students and um and also students are seeking out that support and um but I don't think that means that students aren't earning or that our grading scale is often I think sometimes talk about highly capable and like what's our budget towards highly capable or not do enough towards highly capable and I think it's a lot of times parents are thinking about the old term highly capable of like you have an advanced math class you have an advanced English class where now the highly capable student has this ability to make this decision for college of

111classroom for CTE you know that doesn't necessarily get budgeted towards the term highly capable we spend a lot of time and resources look at the opportunities that I think most of the ladies on the board here have traveled you know through FBA through some of these other things and maybe that's not categorized in not highly capable, but that's doing those opportunities, you know, allowing for those opportunities that the students that want to grasp that can get to. So, that has always kind of been a weird thing in my opinion is what's considered highly capable and every once a parent that comes in that's not happy that we're spending highly capable, but those opportunities for those type of students want to be there are there. Holden, sometimes I think you should take a minute to reflect

112on where you were six years ago and you know I think it was priority one the walkthroughs and stuff what would have happened if you would have done those walkthroughs six years ago you know so that is a great compliment to you and where you could got to with this energy and where you've got the culture of the staff and stuff so great job on that because now that that's a productive part of the operation there is a big big deal there the you know when back when I was in school my kids hate it when I say stuff like that but I think I heard one student ever in our class swear from the teacher you know back in the day you know it just didn't happen and when it happened everyone's like oh

113you know I mean I hear that story yeah it wasn't me and you know where we're at now so the kind of the common challenge that you have parents and how do you so how do we get the message out on some of this stuff I mean I think I read an article I I didn't read an article, but I think it was in the Midwest that just now it's going through that whole kitty litter thing where they have kitty litters in their bathrooms, you know, that's completely bald. The parents leave that side of it so quick and so readily and so we easily so and this is not something we right now, but how do we get some of the accurate information out to parents start getting a little bit of buy in on

114our side? You know, we're doing the right things. aren't doing the right thing when we're doing these, you know, if they're getting punishment, you know, whatever. How do we get that out to the the parents and a little more, you know, social media rep? I mean, it's it's hard and it's just something to kind of think about, but get the parents to know that we are on their side, but you need to let us with your kids and kind of have the reigns to do so. It it's a challenge. I mean, I do every year we have an incoming sixth grade parent night. And that's one of the things I'm like, some of you might not like this comment, but you know what? You want to post something on social media. We're not going to

115read it and we're not going to care about it. You know, you want to come down, you want the real truth or the honest truth, come come meet with me, schedule a meeting, sit down with me and have a conversation about it. Um because nine times out of 10, you don't have the right, you don't have the facts. Um and even so often, I'm not going to meet with Mark. I'm just going to post, right? Because it's so much easier to hide behind a screen. And and even some of our parents that you all know very well are they'll lamb base me out on something and I'll pick up the phone. Hey, why don't you come down? Let's let's sit down and have a conversation about, oh yeah, I'm I'm okay. I'm good. You know,

116or they do and it's a total different conversation, right? So, it's just easy for them to hide behind a screen and post stuff out there. And it's but it is it makes us think about how can we be more proactive ongoing throughout the year. Um you know, we've done different things where we've had, you know, I've sat down at the coffee shop. Hey, come sit down and meet with me. But then you get, you know, you get a platform where it's a Greg session and they're not really talking about the issues. I mean, even Kevin's round tables trying to get some of those things. Well, you get you'll get the same people that have come and just they're the complainers. So, it's it's an ongoing issue that we've talked about. How do we get families

117engaged in a more in a more positive because Colton used the word scrutiny. Education is being scrutinized all the time. Um, and so it is it is something on our radar like how do we how do we work proactively, not reactively when stuff happens because yeah, we know parents aren't always going to agree with with something but it's a simple conversation to have with parents like disagree with what's actually happening but sometimes they're disagreeing with false narrative. Exactly. Exactly. So I think the proactive side of that is contin kids make it so that kids if kids are having a positive experience much more supportive right you're not positive experience for every kid but I think as it is looking at how do we continue to provide positive experience for kids and how do we continue

118to be kids where they're at um because I'll tell you most parents 99% of parents want to be advocates for their kids a lot of them just don't know how to be right and and there there's so much brokenness and so much trauma so much other stuff going on and we get to be that it's easy to focus on us, right? And so, um, I think it's just continuing to provide kids great opportunities, continue to develop relationships with kids and really focus on the lens of it's the kids and then hopefully begin to like share those, you know, share. I think what's happened is more parents are supported, parents that aren't supportive are becoming more and more combative. I can that's the that's like so it isn't like that's the challenge is I say I

119would say 95% of our parents have been awesome and they see what we're trying to do. It's the 5% have now become so combative and so challenging to work with that they occupy you you know what I mean? So it's just a different and you're going to get that in society. I understand it's it's a whole new ball game. Yeah. And it's it's interesting because there's been I don't know how many times I count kind of quantified it, but kids I'll meet with kids and a parent and a parent just going off on me and just combative and everything. The kid will come back to me whether it's later in the day or the next morning and just say, "Mr. Charlotte, I am so sorry. I I I was so embarrassed." A middle school kid,

120I'm sorry that that happened. Okay, don't take it personal. You You and I are here together all day long. Your parent doesn't know. you know, I don't go into details, but it's like the kids recognize that. Um because it's really about the kid and and you know, we we're not out to get your kid. You know, come come to school, come join us for a day, walk around, see what's going on here. Um and so that's where we're trying to it just be more intentional with that type of of invitation. But, you know, parents, we're we get it. We're not you know, we understand, but um it is a challenge and it is something that we we recognize because we we seem to regularly. Go back to Kevin's comment. It's like you don't get to

121walk into your doctor. I need to see my doctor right now. And the parents do that. I mean, they're just I need the principal right now. Like, you know, Anya, of course, love my love our office assistants, but they're just like, well, sorry, but you know, let me look at his calendar. When can we schedule you a meeting? No, I need them right now. Well, I'm sorry. They're not available. So, it's sometimes that demand is we get it. They're frustrated at something. may not be at us. But one of the issues that didn't come up a lot in your comments was something that we've talked about um in previous years, which is school safety. Um how do you feel that and I see behavior issues, but I just think generally about the envelope of the

122school. How how do you feel about how school safety is going this year or is there progress being made? Do you feel like that still needs to be an area where we need to focus on? Well, I can speak for I mean I think safety is always going to be something we focus on. We focus on we'll have a snippet at every stop. It's a three four minute just to update on that. But I think we've done more with our crisis planning teams and our uh crisis teams to just to make sure that we're doing drills that are actually drills that could potentially be a situation. Not just to do a drill, just to do a drill. I I just went to see that John Camel Elementary. I just forgot about this. And the day

123before they were there, they had a blue vest drill and I came wearing a blue vest the next day. So everybody's like, who is this guy, right? there. Yeah. Um, you know, I think I think our we go back to the data. I mean, I think our kids are feeling pretty safe here at school. I mean, there's always going to be some issues. Um, we haven't had as many of the threats we've had in the past and social media threats and things like that. So, we kind of seen that kind of dwind. I thought that too and I wanted to highlight that is I don't know or luck, but uh it seems like it's better this year than it has been and maybe even better last year than it was the year before. So, I

124think there's been some improvement on that. Yeah. I mean obviously safety's in our building especially being 40 year old building that exits. So when you think about like just keeping our kids safe and then the other challenge or keeping our kids there and and our doors locked all the different things that we're re do um and then we also have unique we have wing tech we have uh running start kits we have kids coming and going so it it's always a challenge. One of the things we do with our engagement teams, we have TAs that go check our doors every period and send the emails to all of us. So they're telling us like doors are open, we're check. So we have people monitoring it constantly. Our engagement team is constant. Like you'll see adults

125in the hallway all the time. Um so I think presence and I think proximity is a great uh proactive way to help with safety. Um, and I also think that, you know, the different responses, we do think something might not be safe. Um, we're responding immediately and taking it seriously. I think we're gotten really good at that because of some of the situations we've been through in years past, but this year it's been, but it's been a we've had a few little incidents, but our our number of fiscal altercations is like like it's way down. We've had a couple that have been concerning, but we respond. We handle this. We're always gonna have some element of feeling safe. Social media is is everything that we dealt with that's been unsafe at some point in time

126has started her in social media. Well, and that that made me think about the screen time in social media. I mean, I I like the pouches. I I personally have read some studies and reports that those can be effective. Maybe you have different data, but um that also to me seems like a way to handle um when you have a lockdown that uh the parents get the information from the school. Y uh and so that we're the first to communicate with them and we're always quick to communicate with them, but obviously we're never going to be as quick as every kid with their phone out. So, um I think there's kind of a a a connection between uh putting the phones away and being able to communicate with parents and from the school's point of

127view. Yeah. Yeah. That's the biggest rub we get from parents that complain about our cell phone calls, which often happens. I need to get a hold of my kid. I said 90% of the time you get false information from your kid. That's right. That is not anywhere. Then and then you get more heightened and elevated because information the kid oh this kid said that then it goes down the line. So that's why we're like no. let you know on parents we when we know what the right information is ask other comments or questions I was just going to com I don't have a lot of time but regarding the climate surveys with the students so year to year like I know we see that data do the students see it or would it just be

128like the council or your star or star team star team uh so really I mean exactly a question but did Do the students as a whole see that and recognize like the I don't know if we give them that information then maybe they can help convey to you what they need to feel safe if they recognize that oh it's not just me there's this group there's a bigger a larger group that doesn't feel safe and they they see the whole of the numbers is that something that we share with students we share with our dors So like a small sub kids. But you know the other thing we do a lot of is then we'll take that and the interviews. So we'll take like a 100 kids we did this we've done this three times

129this year like 100 kids and be with them one on one and ask them specific questions like that. So then you get a sample size and the survey they're anonymous. So the 100 empathy interviews you do are just pig and kid nothing to do with we really randomize it. Yeah. Literally randomize 25 per grade level. um every person takes a different 25 those 25 per grade level gather information we report it in common document that it's another yeah that's good to know I was curious like how are we what are we how are we getting better we see the data and it looks like it's getting a little bit better a little bit better but how is that happening and how can we work that yeah we did a little twist this year so yes

130our star team right now is only group of kids a season but then we took our two areas there we took sense of belonging and relationships and saf safety combined them and our BL our building leadership team developed a lesson around our kids really know what sense of belonging means. They developed a whole lesson to teach sense of belonging. We had some activities that went with it. Same thing with our our relationships and safety and then we replaced a character strong lesson in advisory with a sense of belonging one week and a and a safety and relationship the next week. Um our we were planning to do it right before we were going to give the survey but the survey wasn't ready at that point. So now we're like oh man that was that was

131before spring break. So then our goal is because we shared that just that those two PI datas with our whole school in advisory. So why why are we doing this? Here's the reason why do we understand what this means. Um but the full scale I guess that was more what my question is the kids understand why we're doing it what it means. Right. So we just we picked a small portion of it that we wanted to really target on and and create a couple lessons around and show them back just that data. I theory around part of the reason we don't bring it bring the results back to the whole body is because then we're just giving you aggregate data like it's so and then you kind of have the same results like what we

132do with the whole student body is uh input on what the data said. The the improvement though we made was now we do have in both middle school and high school those those student teams are giving more specific whether they're randomized or not um give feedback on like what action to take. I think if we were to survey the whole school again, okay, what action should we take? It's going to be really broad again, right? So maybe more specific. I do like though that in particular maybe the high schools need to do that, but explain what right they don't what does the sense of belonging mean? They probably do need to you guys feel like you guys know about half and half. Uh I don't know if you like you guys obviously and stuff don't

1338:30 on the dot. I'll any other comments? Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I I've just come away with two thoughts. One is I'm inspired by your leadership in our school district. I'm inspired by your comments today as well, but um and and impressed by theity of the challenges that face as a school district, especially um with the number of students that you're that you're serving every day and the challenges you have. And the second thing that I think when I come away from this is I wish everyone knew uh how much effort and how much success we're having in our schools. And so I think what you're saying about is there's some way we can do a better job of telling people our story um that that that would that would help uh even more.

134And I know I know there's a lot of effort that goes into it, but I I I just come away feeling like, God, I wish everyone could get into the school for 10 minutes or I wish everyone could could um um feel the passion and inspiration that I felt today. But thank you very much. Thank you. Sorry. Mark took a little longer. We I really could keep going. That's great. But we we do have to stop. Uh meeting is ajourned. Thank you. Get up.