Selah School Board Meeting March 27, 2025

001All right. Thank you all for being here this evening. Um, we have a few district highlights uh that Superintendent McKay is going to let us know about, beginning with FCCLA and including winter athletics. All right. Hopefully you're aware that uh our FCCLA continues to uh amass some pretty impressive uh accomplishments. This is not new. If you followed LCCLA over the last number of years, it's been a very successful program and excellent for students. Uh 20 of our high school and middle school students uh made it to the state event. of those 2013 students are now going to be taking a trip all the way across the United States to Florida to complete to compete at the national level. So, uh, great for them, great for our school, great for our community, and the experience that

002those students will have on that trip will probably be something they'll remember for a lifetime. Uh, continuing with FCCLA, we we know that our one of our students is the state chapter president. We've known that for a while. He's just a fantastic young man and, you know, represents the high school and our community very well. He has now uh taken that up a level. He is one of 15 semi-finalists from across the nation that is being uh considered for the 2425 FCCLA member of the year award and that award is sponsored by the United States Army. So Parker uh Parker Casey is recognized as one of the top 15 and we'll see what happens when that that award is is presented. So from what we hear, the insiders believe he has a very good opportunity

003uh chance to to be placed as in that board. So we'll follow along. When we gathered uh together last month at the board meeting, we uh recognized uh students and teams who had already um competed in their state tournaments and just again incredible winter. But at that time um our basketball boys basketball team had not had the opportunity to compete at state and they uh they did what they needed to do. They got to the Sund Dome which was all in itself is a great accomplishment and they ended up getting a trophy out of it fifth place. So great season for them. Um if you were able to watch them and the game against Proser, it was the fifth time that they had played. Uh unfortunately uh both teams played I thought very well. Highly

004competitive game. Unfortunately, it got right down to the very end and the ball bounced Proser's way a few times and not ours and that decided it. But again, at all when when all said and done, I'm I'm sure that they will look those students will look back on that experience. One of the things I also thought was just incredible was the community support that was there um throughout the entire state tournament. But uh that proer game definitely uh as you looked on both sides of the stands there was a lot of very proud people of the young men on the court and and the entire community in high school as well. So those are very rewarding experiences. We also um we it's incredible to even think about uh the the academic accomplishments that go along

005with our um our students in in the athletic competition. But um our our boys and our girls basketball teams are being recognized as the top GPA for their respective division in two days the 2A division of all the 2A schools who participated. We had the highest grade point average in not only the boys team but the girls team as well. And that in itself is to have one is a huge accomplishment but to have two is a very very unusual accomplishment. And I'm going to take it a step further because we've now learned that our high school dance team has also been named academic state champions for the 2A. So to have three teams be recognized for that accomplishment is just simply incredible and and and more than likely is not going to happen again

006for a very very long time. Hopefully it does. Hopefully our kids uh that are participating in in athletics uh continue to be scholar athletes and represent our community not on in the competition but also in the classroom. So pretty pretty proud moment. One more thing that is not here that not on the list is that I always like like to to share uh some very positive things going on and today was another one of those. Today was our annual uh retiree reception. So any of the employees who have retired from the district, uh we contact them and invite me invite them to an hour and a half long time where they can just come together uh and talk and reminisce. And we had uh somewhere between 25 and 30 former employees come together today for

007an hour and a half and they just sat around and drank coffee and ate dessert and talked about um what was going on in their lives. and uh their experiences here as an as a retiree of the district. So very positive. Uh all of them as they walked out were so thankful for us organizing that because it it it helped them reconnect with people that they hadn't seen for maybe in a very long time. So very positive. So there are some highlights for you. Excellent. Thank you very much. Um we'll move on to the next item which is the district uh suggestions for and comments from the audience. District guidelines for public comment. Is there anyone in the audience would per like to make a comment this this afternoon? And nothing came in over the

008wire. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Uh we'll move on to item four, which are the meeting minutes. Um this is approval of regular meeting minutes for the February 27th and March 13th meeting of this year. Uh I will uh move that we approve the board minutes for those two meetings. Is there a second? Second it. And is there any comments or questions about those meeting minutes? All those in favor of approving the regular meeting minutes signify with an I. I. Opposed with a nay and abstensions. All right, we're moving on to the consent agenda. Um, and we will, as we've uh been doing for a while now, tackle all of these as a single um approval of the agenda. But uh we do have some notes. I think on the human resources action sheet.

009Chris, is there anything you want? Sure. Um, yeah, we uh, as you know, we still continue to see a small amount of attrition in the district. One of the highlights, uh, this month is that we did fill our open certificated nursing position for the district. It's important for us to keep our nursing staff. We have one resignation at the end of the school year and this uh, Crystal Graham will be replacing that nurse. So, we're excited about that. One that's not on here that we're excited about is Betty Lopez just hired a new uh SLP today and that is or yesterday maybe that was uh really good news because SLPs are hard to find speech and language pathologists. So um also I wanted to give you an update just where we're at with attrition right

010now at this point during the school year. Normally we see more resignations and retirements. This year not as many. So on the certificated side of things, we have two retirements uh to date and we have uh basically three resignations. So we're at five on the certificated side of things. Um we have also one administrative resignation as well, but um five on the teacher ranks. And then on the classified side of things, we have seven retirements. Um, one of those is before the first of the year, but I like to keep track of all of them during the school year. Resignations, we have 20 from the start of the school year, but if you just we really focus on after the first of the C, you know, in January. Since January, we have 18 resignations on

011the um on the classified side of things. So, actually we have 11, sorry, 20 since the beginning of the year, 11 since January. So total of uh 27 or 31 sorry or no confusing myself 20 sorry um 18 total uh since January. So that gives you that with resignations and retirements. Yeah, I got I have a vacation day tomorrow. So um if you'll recall in most years we're double that easy on our attrition. So this year, uh, slower numbers coming in and, um, we're getting the hires, our administrative staffing. They're all doing a great job getting some postings out. Some postings we're holding on. We want to see if there's any more attrition that happens, but and we're still finalizing staffing plans, so we don't want to go too quick on some of those postings.

012So, great. I I'll just uh quickly in case people didn't get to see it, note that two of the resignations or retirements I should say are um are uh big losses for the district, but uh great for those teachers. Angie Brown at SIS has been a longtime PE teacher up there is just outstanding educator. And then Mike Archer uh who goes back how many years has Mike taught? 40. 40 something. Does his wife have him beat on years teaching? I think he she might, but uh uh Mike has been teaching in the school district for a long time at CIA Middle School. Um and I I know those two buildings will very much miss those uh those instructors. Thank you for highlighting both of those. Those are big ones. And payroll goods and services. Um

013I don't have anything specific to highlight on the payroll goods and services this month. Great. And um if people haven't looked, there's a terrific list of outofstate overnight travel requests that we uh will be voting to approve or not approve. Um uh some of the highlights there are the uh um DECA international competition which is in Orlando. Dom Declare is taking four students I think from CILA to the nationals which is really great showing. There's a Skills USA conference, state conference in um SeaTac, Silverwood Field trip, which is a annual trip that the uh band takes, I think middle school band takes, starting at 4:00 a.m. or 5:00 a.m. or some horrible thing like that. And then the jazz fest to the University of Idaho with Mr. Madson. Um, are there um anything that we

014uh need to know about those or that we want to highlight other than those I've mentioned or any questions about those from the board? All right. And finally, um I'm not finally, second to last is an annual uh reduction uh a reduced education program resolution uh 20251. It's our first resolution of the year. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Um and this is an annual resolution that we have always done basically that um is more or less uh a legal requirement if there's some emergency that happens that we need to reduce our force. Uh is there anything you want to add to that, Chris or Kevin? I Well, I would like to just add quickly that yes, it has been a long-standing practice to have the board adopt a riff resolution every year because we want

015to make sure that we are in compliance with our labor contracts if we ever have to uh go out and hope we never do have to to implement a riff. And again, it is required by our labor contracts, our union contracts to get board approval before any of that happens. And as you know the the deadline for non-renewals for teachers is May 15. So we always bring it to the board in March March or April. So this year March and as uh Mr. Peter said the legal implications are that May 15th date that is an important date uh with contracts and so there are legal implications as well as collective bargaining in implications and this in a way is really protection for the school district about the whatif that could happen. And in this case,

016uh, this case regarding what happens at the legislative level, if there was significant reductions of funding, it would allow the district to to respond to that accordingly. Fortunately, we've been able to satisfy any reductions over the years through attrition. So, we haven't had to go this route, which is we're very thankful for because this gets very ugly um when you have to implement a full riff. Uh so we're excited that we're not in that position, but the legislative session is not over, but we're not anticipating any significant changes in our funding. So great. Any questions or comments about the resolution? The board. The final item on the consent agenda is a happy one. This is from uh Jared Iverson um who donated uh $780 to the district to allow um how many students were able

017to the state basketball tournament was it 100 uh which allowed a hundred students to get in um uh a ticket uh bought a 100 tickets for a hundred students so that they could attend the game um without having to pay which is just fantastic. So, thank you very much, Jared Iverson. And I I understand, Kevin, that the Iverson family generally uh was were generous hosts to the district or excuse me, the state tournament, the Sundome this year as well. Yeah, it's my understanding and uh we have one of the members obviously of the family right there, but uh that uh each team that attends the that qualifies for the state basketball tournament um rece in most years has a host assigned to them that helps support them, navigates the logistics of all that thing. Uh

018provides them meals and additional all kinds of additional things depending on what the host family is. and and uh the Iverson family of CIA was uh generous enough enough to not only support our high school students but two other high schools as well. And so uh we we thank them for for their uh generosity as I'm sure the other high schools do as well to make that experience even that much better. So thank you. Pass that on to your family as well. Yours is dead and I didn't have one. I would just like to mention too that the Iverson's did that last year at least as well maybe previous years too. So um and also they keep their money in CEO which we really appreciate as well. Bringing those guys in for lunch helps out

019local businesses. That's a lot of hamburgers at miners. They're they're just disappointed they can't go back to the brewery. Yeah. Right. That's right. All right. Uh terrific. Um uh let's see. I think now we uh I'll move that we approve the consent agenda. Is there a second? Great. Uh all or is there comments or questions on the consent agenda? All those in favor of approving the consent agenda signify with an I. I oppose with a nay. Abstensions. All right. We're moving on now uh slightly out of order so that um uh we can get uh Hunter and Jeff uh to another event this evening which is up at SIS I believe. Yes. CIS is putting on a family engagement night. I'm leading a few sessions up there starting at 5:30. So excellent. So we have

020a uh first uh Hunter is going to present uh a quarterly I believe data presentation um on uh testing and assessment. Yeah. So this time uh this is our second time looking at uh district-wide data. This is going to mainly be around most of the data you're going to see today is around I Ready. Uh I Ready we looked at in the fall was our baseline data along with SBA. This is going to be our middleofyear data. Um sort of the second assess second administration of I Ready for our schools that do it. I'll explain as we go along. uh it's first growth um by school and math and ELA uh and then dis disagregated by ba baseline placement kindergarten doesn't do a fall I ready because they're doing while kids so it'll just be

021their initial diagnostic it's taken around the same time and then I'll go into I already growth by grade level uh and then to make sure we have some high school data too just have some comparisons of our nth grade on track data compared to the state by both demographics in our district and then also by program in our Um so I already uses some specific uh terminology. I wanted to go over this first so you guys had a general understanding of when I use these phrases. Typical growth is what we would expect a student to make uh not expect but this is what students make uh on average across normed across school all schools that take I ready. So typical growth is what we want to see 100% by the end of year for for

022our students. Stretch growth is a is a ambitious goal for students, specifically students who are uh two or more grade levels behind. Uh if if they're two grade levels behind, two years of stretch growth gets them to grade level. If they're three or more, they need at least three years of stretch growth. Baseline placement is just where they started in the fall. And then progress towards annual typical growth. This is one year, it's a new metric that I don't think you guys have seen in the past. Uh but this is the median percent uh progress towards typical growth. and I'll explain this to you as as we look at the slides. Okay, so any questions on those um for district-wide data are I ready? So the top left uh bar chart bar that you see

023says 67%. This is the median. So of the 272 students who took I already the the middle student about the if you rank order them from least growth to most growth uh has made 67% growth for their for their annual annual growth which is good at halfway through the year uh annual growth would be about 50%. So this is showing that as a district our students are growing more than uh and other schools that that use this metric. the chart down below that has the multiple the multiple bars. Um this shows where those students fall. So this is hard to see from from from this far away. On the far right is the percentage of students who have made more than 100% of their uh annual typical growth. Uh that's that's our biggest bar as

024a district. So halfway through the year uh 38% of our students have already made uh what we would expect them to make the whole year. that is a highlight and a celebration. Uh the concerning part of this graph typically what I in ideal world we want this look like a cell phone uh uh like reception chart to have uh because on the far left is students have made less than 20% uh uh percent of growth for the year. This looks like a field goal post. We have students that are making growth uh lots of growth and we have students that are not making growth and not a lot in between. Typically what what we do see is it's pretty evenly even evenly distributed and I'll go into the schools data as well. On the far

025right side is district level growth by their baseline placement. So where students started at the beginning of the year and how much growth they have made based on their initial placement. Um you can see a celebration here is our students who were furthest behind have made the most growth. Uh which it would be concerning if our students were furthest behind were not making uh expected growth. would mean that they're falling further and further behind. So reading this this kind of stair steps up to uh mid or above grade level that is students who have already surpassed their grade level expectations. It's harder to show growth within a grade level. Um so this is this is another celebration as well. Uh this is kind of what we want to see in regards to to growth by

026baseline placement. Okay. The next few slides are going to be these exact same charts just by content and by school. So any questions on on what these three charts mean? Okay, I'm starting from young. We'll start younger and go older. Uh, we're starting uh, sorry, that was ELA and this is our math. The math, we have some room to grow. We're a little behind what we would typically want to see. We want to be about 50% halfway through the year. U, that field goal phenomenon on that lower chart is still showing up as well. Um, but on the right, our students who are making the most growth are the ones who are uh, far behind or approaching grade level. So this is uh reading and math. Now we'll go to the schools uh growth. So

027this is John Campbell's reading growth. Their median percentage of typical growth was 59%. They're our most evenly distributed uh distribution of progress towards annual growth. Um and then on the far right it show compared to baseline placement. SIS's reading growth. You can see difference 55% median. Um the distribution is showing that field goal post phenomenon again. And then baseline placement on the right. And then uh this is a big highlight. Our middle school reading growth. Uh the median percentage of growth is 106% halfway through the school year. Meaning that um more than half of our students have already made their typical growth. What we would expect to see. Huge celebration. Um concern again is that uh the two the two pillars. Kids are even making a ton of growth or they're not making any. There's

028not much in between. So that's something we're going to dive into uh further as well. But you can see on our right baseline placement uh we're seeing a lot of growth for our students that are further behind. Hunter, can I ask a quick question about the the shape of those graphs there? Is that I know that's not what we want it to be. Is that what it is at other districts? Is that typical for these assessments? Yes. But what's typical usually is the students who are not making growth are the students who are furthest behind. Um, so that's why this is somewhat uh concerning but also not as concerning I would say because uh our students who are already beyond grade level while they're not making as much uh growth as as our students who

029are further behind. Um they're still making growth overall just not at the faster faster rate. Um and so we're not as concerned as them falling behind because they're already at or above grade level. That makes sense. Um, I already when they present this, they present it as you would like it to see like a cell phone chart where it would be the smallest on the far left on the uh and it would be getting your your your percentages be getting bigger and bigger. Ideal world, everyone's making 100% growth uh for the whole school, the whole district. Um, yeah, the the other thing I think is remind ourselves is 50% is kind of our barometer for halfway through the year. Hunter, you combine the theory of the two ways of looking at it, the bottom left

030and right side. Yeah. You're saying in general that with that percentage 34 that would be kids that are below grade level. No. So, are you talking about the bottom left chart? Yeah. I mean, what makes up the 34%? 34% is regardless of where they started. Um, how much growth have they made towards their what we would expect to them for the year? Out of the right chart, what makes up that 34% that that no. Um, so what this is show, if we only looked at the chart on the bottom left, it would just tell you that you have students that are making a ton of growth and some students that are making hardly any growth at all. The chart on the right disagregates it by who's making that growth. So when I'm looking at this,

031the students who have met 100% the 52 52 the biggest bar right there the 52% have gone over 100%. If I look to the right it disagregates a little bit more to say I can make a pretty uh guess pretty uh predictive guess that that student probably started behind. Does that make sense? Uh and then I guess on the far right of that right uh graph is the percent um that have met their goal already because remember this the so three or more grade levels below 134% is the median. So that's the middle student uh of students that were three or grade levels below the middle student has already made 130% of of expected growth. On to the right of that it says 59% have already met uh 100% of their their goal. Guess just

032kind of trying to think out loud like we can diagnose which 34% that is lack of support on students that aren't getting that already behind or lack of support on higher end or lack of support on how okay now I understand your question a little better looking at this this one specifically it's our students that are at mid or above grade level and how I ready defines mid or above is you are beyond on standard. So it's our students who are achieving at a very high level. Um and this have shown that they've made uh zero like the median student has made 0% progress towards the growth. It also says 43% of those students have already met their typical goal. Right? So that 43% is above the median. So we have 43% of our students

033that were above grade level have met their goal. But the middle stu but the middle student and below uh in regards to rank order have not made much growth. Does that make sense? Does that explain a little better? Um again this is a new newer uh way of looking at it. When we presented I read before the chart on the right is a new I metric that we've been asking for because on the your question uh we had the typical growth distribution before the bottom left chart. We didn't know who the students were that were growing or not growing. We had our assumptions. This tells us Yeah. specifically where they started, who's making the most growth. So, a quick question just looking ahead also to the math because this holds true for both the math

034and the reading. Middle school looks like they're doing something that's working a little bit better than at the other two schools. Can we replicate that? Yeah. And one um one caveat to this I would say. So yes, uh I want to highlight some of the things they're doing is when you take this assessment uh is super important. There's a window I recommends nine weeks uh minimum of nine weeks before administrations of I Ready. CIS chose to take their assessment before winter break usually. Uh so the window is early December through uh very beginning of February. CIS um wanted to use it for their intervention purposes. They took it four to five weeks sooner than the other schools did, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when your your school year is only 10 months and

035you're taking a month and a half, it's it's 10% of the learning that hasn't happened. So, I would be interested to see uh at the very end of the year uh end of year assessments, who's made the most growth. So, that's my one explanation of why sis looks a little lower than t typical. This is the the highest growth we have seen at the middle school this uh in the years that I've been uh in the district. Um which is good because that has been usually the inverse. Um so uh math math is lower across the board. This is a phenomenon uh within across schools um that use I ready to math performs lower than than than reading does. Um again though JCP the median student is at 52% growth which is a little bit

036above what we would want. JCP again has the most even distribution of students that are making typical growth. This is at 39% and that's why I wanted to give that one caveat. They took it a month and a half earlier with a break you know that before before winter break. Um and then middle school at 54% for math. Again, that football dynamic coming football a field goal post um showing up. So, any other questions on the growth? Uh I'm going to jump into now Lince's. This is just two slides that show uh their diagnostics. So, this is basically their their baseline data because they don't take it in the fall. They they took it in in January. This is for reading. Uh if you can see the green is good. We want green. Uh there

037is no red in kinder because red means two uh two or more grade levels below. Kinder is the first grade level. So they um preschool level would be one grade level below. We have 50% of our students that are looking to be on track for reading halfway through the year. And this is achievement. This is not growth. Um and then math. Uh I can't quite read that and I don't have it memorized. It's uh 29% uh on grade level midway through the year. Yep. We want yellow to get smaller. We want the dark green to get as big as possible and and the light the brighter green to get bigger as well. uh which you you'll see are my next slides will be our uh achievement and growth more traditionally what you guys have seen

038in the past for I ready for our schools that take it uh three times this is the next few slides are fall to winter growth by school this is John Campbell for reading um the grade one is the first two first two lines the winter benchmark is the most recent one the middle of the year uh I'll read some of the data so you can see we have 34% at grade level at winter benchmark we started at 11. Um so this is you want your red to get smaller, yellow to get smaller, green to get bigger. Generally that is what's happening. Uh grade level two nu uh 19% were at grade level to start the year. We're now at 35%. So trending in the right direction and this is uh this assesses where we want

039students to be by the end of the year. We're expect uh grade level standards. So this is not uh within January we have 35% of students. This is pretty predictive of where they should be at the end end of the year. And so we really want those yellow and red to be smaller and smaller as we go along. This is growth by grade level. This uh on the left side is typical growth that we talked about already where we expect uh students to be. Uh so again above that 50 50% um growth percentage. Our to the right of that is stretch growth. So we've seen uh that the median stretch growth uh is 40% in grade 1, 42% in grade two. Again, that is an ambitious goal that we want students to attain. Uh and

040you can see that uh how many have already met their their their their growth goals uh to the right of that. Sis, same chart as John Campbell. They started at 34% on grade level in reading in third grade. They're now at 43%. uh 22% on grade level uh in the fall for fourth grade and now at 25%. And started at 19% in fifth grade and now at 29%. This is their growth again by both typical and stretch. And middle school um 27% started in the fall at sixth grade on grade level, 37% now. I'm not I'm not gonna read all the numbers to it. You guys can see them. Uh and then their growth. So really it's in seventh and eighth grade um where we're seeing the the most growth within our system. Um some

041of this work this year has really getting back to uh using I Ready for standards mastery as well and helping uh define uh skills for intervention for our students in middle school. that's something the middle school has really do into and making sure their assessments align. Uh so that that is my um hypothesis of why we've seen so much growth at at the middle school and at the elementaryaries usually we see a ton of growth. So um and we we we're still seeing above average growth for elementaryaries. So um I don't have a a definitive answer of why we've seen so much in the middle school and what to replicate other than the standards mastery work that they've done this year. So now that was reading uh math. So same thing. I'll fly through these

042uh and just let me know if I'm going too fast. Uh math we started at 5% on grade level and first we're now at 22%. Uh 10% in second grade now at 23%. and their growth data. This is CIS sis's uh growth from fall to winter in math their growth and then the middle schools. The last data piece is just two slides for uh high school. High school does not take I ready. It stops in eighth grade. Excuse me. Um, so the biggest predictor of academic success and high school success to towards graduation is uh has been founded if you're on track to graduate as a freshman. So the earlier we can intervene as students start high school. Uh, and this is more c academic um celebration because if you look on the left, this

043is our students. This comes from OSPI's website. uh percent of students that are on track to graduate in nth grade for all students is about 83%. Uh for the state the average is around 70%. So we're outperforming the state in almost every metric in almost every demographic. Um the ones where we uh where we don't have a bar, it's not that it's that low, it's just that we don't have reportable numbers because our our end size is too small. That means by the end of your freshman year, you have at least have a quarter of your credits and you've not failed more more than one class. Um, so you you've passed all your classes essentially and you are not at risk of of having to take remedial retake classes or credit retrieval classes. a lot

044of this work, why this is gone, we have a not freshman success, what's ninth grade success uh team that identifies students that are off might be uh off track coming into high school and also once they're in high school, they're looking at data and essentially assigns uh case managers to check in with students to work with students. They might also take uh additional classes, might help them with executive functioning to make organized so they're successful starting their high school career. This uh is the same type of data but just by program characteristic. This is really small to read from this far away but uh we're outperforming in almost every uh uh every program area compared to the state questions. How's it compared to where we were this time last year? uh which which the John

045let's say um the first two uh uh slides the the district level uh I ready district growth reading and district growth I didn't look school by school but compared to from last year to this year our growth is higher than it was last year um from a district level in regards to both math and reading or I read ready yeah especially at the middle school cy is lower than it was in the past but again they did take it uh quite a bit earlier. Any other questions? I think this kind of applies that probably loosely at least pressure to get our so how do you avoid how do we avoid that? Yeah, I think our our focus has been um what are the essential standards that kids when they leave a grade level, they have

046to know to be successful moving on. Um and that has been our focus for tier one. So in in each and every classroom, but also within our intervention systems um and those have our intervention systems have have grown um and aligned across the district more uh each year. And I think that is a reason why we're seeing more growth because we are teaching students what they what they actually need and not randomly. So we're using the data from these assessments to teach the skills that they're missing. Um the other thing about I Ready is there is no false positives. Uh so you can't fake a good score. It's a dynamic test. You can get um depressed scores if kids are like I I don't not taking this seriously. We don't put a lot of emphasis

047on the test and teaching to the test. We do put an emphasis on what are the skills and the standards that kids need to know um in every single classroom within grade levels. Great. Thank you very much, Hunter. Appreciate the information. I think we'll have another update on this maybe once we get the data at the end of the year. Yeah, end of end of your day. I'll do another report and we'll look from um I'll figure it out, but we might do fall, middle, and end of year to see the growth progression throughout the year. Yeah. Great. Thank you. All right. Our uh our next presentation is from Jeff Cochran. Jeff's going to tell us a little bit about um the uh school district's approach to artificial intelligence up here. So, um one of

048the things that I've been fortunate to be a part of is we have a committee that looks at AI. Um and it looks at AI from the perspective that it's not something we want to outlaw. it's here. Um, so we want our teachers and our students especially to know how to use AI appropriately. Um, and that really came about um, through this committee. We we looked at lots of district policy. Um, and the committee was comprised of people who uh people who were very into AI, who loved it, who were all about it, wanted to add it to their classes, wanted to use it in instruction, all the way to people who were uh more resistant, um, to put it nicely. Um, and and that was very intentional. We wanted people who would provide a

049wide variety of opinion and a wide variety of experience in the use of of AI as a tool um in the classroom. So, as a part of this committee, we we looked at lots of different policies um we made a recommendation um to Kevin um about what what policy we should enact from from the school board. And then really the meat of our work was to assess different tools and to look at what tools we would use as a district um that were appropriate um that could be used K12 um that could be used by students and staff um as well as that provided some supports um in the school system. So it wasn't just kind of the wild wild west um it was sort of a what we call a sandboxed environment. Um, so,

050uh, we we selected I'm going to go over what we selected here in a minute, but what we did then is we we brought this tool that we selected called Magic School. Um, we brought it to our district leadership team um, and our AI committee led some breakout sessions um to our district leadership team which is comprised of um, staff from across the district, administrators and teachers. um we did that PD and then our use exploded um on the teacher side. Um I'm going to show you some data around that. Um and then we also uh attended an AI conference to learn more about what other schools were doing. Um what were some of the uh barriers to implementation? what were some of the things, the noticings, the things we need to be aware of

051as we become um as we use AI more in our practice. So, what I'd like to do is show you a little bit about uh Magic School so you kind of get an idea of what what we're using. Um then I'll show you I'll show you some data associated with that. Um and then I'll kind of talk to you about next steps and answer any questions you might have. So, Magic School, it's this really uh it's a sandboxed environment that has tools built in um for teachers to use to help create content, to help create lesson plans to uh you can use it to create YouTube questions. So, questions based on a YouTube, you put the YouTube link in there and it'll generate you multiple choice questions for those. Um it can help you create

052assessments, things like that. It's all built into this one tool. So, that's something that our our committee really appreciated was, it's hard to see in here, but there's an image generator in here. There's um depth of knowledge question generators. There's a 504 plan generator. It's all built in here. Um all within the sandbox environment that that we um as administrators have access to. We can see kind of what's going on um and get a glimpse into the the data behind it. So, some of the reasons we chose Magic School, um, number one, a we're using AI really to to help save time. Um, it saves a a massive amount of planning time. If I need to know, hey, what are some uh questions on the Vietnam War? Typically, you know, teachers are going to look

053at a book or we have some curriculum. Most of our curriculum, especially in the history department, is now open resources. So, they're they're finding their own resources. they're building their own resources. Well, a tool like Magic School or Chat GPT or some of these other tools that are out there, they allow us to create those quickly. Um, and then of course the experts go through and they edit and they make sure that it's it's appropriate not only for the the student level, but the information is correct. Um, the nice thing about Magic School is it it gives us a a safe I keep using the word sandbox. What I mean by that is it's it's all our internal information. Um there's been a lot of concern out there with AI and uh Facebook AI and

054chat GBT using your data to train their other AI models. Magic school doesn't do that. Um it's written to their their acceptable use policy. They do not. It's all our our information. Um and then you know the third thing down there we what we have found as we have trained teachers to to use this tool is that it's it's easy it's simple um and it's it's pretty easy for students as well although we don't have as many teachers using it with students yet as as I would have probably anticipated at this point. Uh kind of went through all that stuff. So uh some data on on where we are. Uh Dan's seen this. He was at our last district leadership team meeting where we went over some of the some of these data points. But

055uh we had the PD with our district leadership team where we introduced this tool um in January. So you can see our use skyrocketed there. Um and then when I pulled this data we are about we're early in March. So that's why that that graph is a little bit lower but I would expect that that will uh continue to rise. Um, since we have a district license, we have teachers nearly every day asking, "Hey, can I get that full license because I'd like to use it more." Um, so we've kind of got this grassroots movement working where teachers are recruiting each other and saying, "Hey, I'm using this. Why don't you try it in this lesson?" Um, and then it's really growing in that in that way. And I think that's a really healthy way

056to grow this. It's not some top-down district-led initiative. It's a, hey colleague, here's a tool that I'm using that's making my job a little bit simpler. Okay, it's freeing up time where I can work more with kids, right? Let's try it. I'll show you how to do it. Um, so that's that's really the method we've taken with our professional development around this. Uh, this is just some data around what types of tools they're using. Um, it's mostly content generation right now. um questioning some planning tools. Um what I like to see is wonder if this little thing this community tools here. Um I am really interested in how we can use um AI for uh generating communications um with our community, with our parents, how can we do that more effectively? Because I think that's

057an area that schools are typically not really great at is that communication aspect. And I think AI can help with that because it frees up some of that time. It's not that we're not great communicators. It's that our time is spent with kids, right? We that's why we're here. We want we want to be in front of in front of students. So Jeff, I see on a couple slides back and you don't have to go there. One option is to create a class newsletter. Is that kind of what you have in mind? Yes, absolutely. Generating uh other things you can do. You can plug in all the student assignments and say, "Hey, generate a a letter for each student that's going to go home explaining my feedback." Click and then it you can get 30

058different responses to each student based on the feedback you've already typed in. So, it's your content, but now it's generating a letter that says, "Hey, you've done well. Your students done well in these areas." So, it's it's additional feedback that, you know, I as a parent would appreciate, right? Um, you know, we I just had my son's conference. I live in Ellensburg, so it was last week. Um, but it it's it's a one-time kind of conversation where I'm getting that data. You know, we got I Ready data. We looked at that. It's a one-time I when I was a teacher, I called it like sucker punch grading, right? You get it right at the end. You're like, "Oh, okay, cool. That's my grade." This, I think, can help us get that um midstream grade uh

059or mid-stream feedback that's actually more important and more impactful for learning. This is a massive graph, but really the the reason I put it on here is you can see these are the things that teachers are currently using it for. It's the the number one is YouTube video questions. So, they're plugging in a YouTube video link and then getting questions generated based on that. Lesson planning is number two, worksheet generation. We would like to see those things shift because we don't want to just have kids doing worksheets. We want them to be active with their learning. Um, and so that's something we talked a little bit about at at district leadership. Uh, next steps. So, uh, at our last district leadership team meeting, we we really looked at where is AI, where's the appropriate use?

060That's okay. uh where where is the appropriate use for AI uh being like green? You can use it no matter what. Where is yellow? Where is AI kind of used as an assistant? And then where is it red? You cannot use AI no matter what. Um the other thing we did is we had a a panel discussion with the people who went to the AI um conference and and Dan maybe you can share a little bit about that but what I took um from the AI I was unable to go at a grant grant meeting um so I didn't get to go to the conference but what I took from from the feedback we got from the panel discussion of the teachers who went and we had uh intermediate school to middle school to high

061school um and then Hunter The feedback that I got was that we're all sort of concerned, but we're feeling good about having this type of conversation about where is it appropriate? Where can we use this? Let's get out ahead of it. Because one of the students that presented at that conference, he said, "No matter what policy you have, we're going to use it. It's out there. It's going to be used and it's going to be used for an advantage. So, we better teach our students to use it, right? So that was some of the feedback that that and that's something that we believe too. We need to use AI appropriately um but use it to our advantage to to make things hopefully simpler. So uh next steps are we're we're getting this all typed out.

062We'll have a document that's kind of green. Here's here's where we recommend AI can be used. Here's yellow. Here's red. And then that will be something that we can have in our district handbook. um that shows here's kind of what we think about AI number one. Number two, um where it can be used, what we can use it for. I I'll just add uh thank you for letting me sit in on that and participate in that um discussion. As I mentioned at the event, um the our our school district is ahead of where the community college is in terms of having the the conversation amongst uh that isn't just at lunch. uh that's that's structured and I thought this yellow, green and red was really helpful. Um and it it's uh boy it's a challenge,

063right? I mean that artificial intelligence is everything at its opposite. So it has as much potential to be helpful as it is to have some damaging effects as well. Um so I'm I'm I think the district is doing a great job of I don't I don't know if I would ever say get out ahead of it because we're going to be always just a little bit behind it seems. Um but but moving forward and and making progress on uh setting some definitions and some some guidelines for instructors and obviously for students as well. Um and I I what I the other thing I found was among the panel and then among the more uh the sticky note session um there's a real wide perspective about uh what's appropriate, what isn't appropriate and and those of

064course there's early adopters and people that are hesitant, resistant uh to it. Um and I that all seems like that's normal um and expected. Uh, so I I think like you said, having these people that then can go into the buildings and talk it through even more and bring that information back is a a really strong approach. And there's a whole bunch more I want to say, but uh it's it's developing for sure. Seems like there can be some real similarities. Yeah. No, phones are not okay. find out then okay we can bring cell phones find out we got to get rid of them again you know and so there's going to be a lot of learning that AI is probably similar to that that we're really going to have some steps over the next

065you know four or five years in order to manage these things correctly yeah and I think with with any new tech you know when we brought one to one Chromebooks in or we're we're still learning oh my gosh well maybe that wasn't as appropriate to they're all going home and different things. It's right. It's being uh responsive to the demands of our classrooms and our teachers, right? I think that that's that's why I really appreciate the the district leadership team in that it's a really healthy group that offers a wide range of uh opinions on hey AI is cheating to hey AI is great and we should use it in everything, right? there's a a wide range and they all listen and respect each other. So, it's a really healthy conversation. Um, and you know,

066it's I I remember when smartphones came into the classroom, right? And it was like, hey, every kid's going to oh, used we used to say, well, you won't have a calculator in your pocket forever, right? And and well, now you do, right? And so it's adapting and and you know trying to figure out the best way forward, the best way to teach students and and have our teach our teachers to teach the students how to use it appropriately. I think eventually too this would be a good topic for community forum. Okay. Yeah. Because the same concept with stakeholders and parents and stuff. Some people Yeah, it's great. Some people it's a bad word. Your kid, you know, you can't cheat, you know. So next community forum I can't remember in May sometime but the top

067the main topic of that is is AI. I had a in my English 102 class at YVC that's the subject of our classes to talk about writing and artificial intelligence. And this last quarter I had um other faculty members from different disciplines come in and be a part of panels for uh five weeks in a row. And one of them was our business instructor Emily Holdm. Um and she said that a recent graduate from last year their very first job interview the person asked them how can you use artificial intelligence to help our company. And so there's a responsibility in some ways, as much as you know, we may want to drag our feet to to um to use that as a job skill, to use that as a as a learning tool um because

068it'll be expected of them when they graduate. Well, that was going to be my question. So, we're talking about what we're allowing, but what are we teaching? So, do we have do we have a course? Is this being implemented into one of the existing courses or a plan for that? There are state teaching students state outcomes for that that we're trying to get to. Yeah. So, uh, a AI is embedded into the new, uh, standards that are supposed to be out soon. We haven't seen um seen those in their full in their entirety yet. Um, but in my mind, the beauty of what we're hearing about those new new standards is they're embedded the the technology standards are embedded throughout in all different subject areas. So it used to be that like your digital media,

069digital citizenship is what it used to be called out as. It used to be it was in its own silo and you know back when I started teaching it was its own like its own class, right? It was like this is where you get your digital citizenship. Well now I mean we know when you're doing research in an in an English class or a history class, you need to know how to how to write how to value your sources, right? You need to know um I mean we talk about evaluating sources all the time, but you need to know how to use AI to maybe do a search. That's something we talked about um at district leadership, but those are embedded all throughout even in math. Um how can you use math to simplify, right?

070I mean, that's a skill, but then how do you assess that simplification to know that it's right? And I think, you know, in terms of higher order thinking, assessment, assessing something is a much higher order thinking than just recalling something. So, um, I appreciate that about the new standards. I haven't seen them yet. Um, but they're going to have to be embedded. And so, that'll be the next thing we do with district leadership team next year is really looking at the implementation of the of the new roll out of the standards that are that are coming out. Well, then that's that's tricky because I I I'm an English teacher and I know how to teach English. I I when I was trained to teach English, in my teacher training program at Heritage, but I wasn't

071necessarily trained to teach English with AI. And I don't I don't think we have that yet. No, that doesn't exist. Answer is that that's going to there's going to be some unevenness to Y that I think. Yeah. I I I don't know. Are are are teacher prep programs incorporating that into their curriculum? Not to my knowledge. Yeah. Yeah. It it's a missing link. I was just curious, Jeff, is there a flat fee for Magic School or do we pay per license? Uh, so we It's a flat fee. Um, we get like 250 teachers. $4,000, I think. Yeah. I guess for me, I mean, obviously it's not going away. Um on its most basic level, it's a very powerful search engine that has been programmed by people. Yeah. Right. It may be able to learn and

072adapt and whatnot. Um for me, if we want to be on the forefront of the educational value of AI, we would be teaching our kids how to create it eventually rather than just how to use it. Agreed. Yeah. And that's one of the things that that unfortunately I'm hearing this secondhand about the conference, but the students who presented, that's what they were presenting about was look, we're creating our own um you know, we're we're we're taking the core of chat GPT and we're adapting it to our needs and and and basically training that AI tool to work for us. And on a small level, I mean, I do that in my own work with in CTE, we have to write frameworks for every class. Those are like 60-page documents for every new class that we

073have to get approved. Well, I've I've made a framework builder. So, I type in the class and say, "Here are the 12 units." And it finds all the standards that would be associated with those units instead of myself having to go through and find them individually. Right. So, it's you're 100% right. you know, training and and you know, the AI jobs. When I go to South Central Workforce and they're talking about what what jobs are in demand in Washington State, AI is I I don't have the right percent in front of me, but it's like 30 to 40% of the in demand jobs in Washington state have the word AI somewhere in their job description. I just there there's a that um and yet Google says 25% of their coding is now done by AI.

074So it's you know we we were pushing coding and now it looks like coding may be outpaced by AI. So it um it it's it's almost as if that there's this great New York Times article uh where they talk about vibe coding or software for one, which is that you use AI to build an app for yourself, not necessarily that you're building AI, but you're using that and off of that you're plugging your own need into it. Um that may be where it's headed. I don't know. It's interesting you say the coding piece because that's a cl we're in the master scheduling for next year and that's a class that we're seeing shrink and I'm wondering if and it's been shrinking for two or three years now middle school and high school coding and I

075wonder if students were kind of the canary in the coal mine right and they were seeing oh my gosh well why do I do this I can just type into Google and it'll code it for me right so I I wonder if that's what was happening um we kind of thought it was a COVID related because students were in front of a computer all the time and then you know so we're seeing a sharp rise in our art. Um but anyway it's a yeah thank you Jeff. Appreciate it. And you're off to sis as well. I'm off to baseball practice. You're off to baseball practice. Hopefully it's not raining. All right. Thank you very much. Uh hopefully um we'll hear back about how the the community event goes and this may be something we want

076to come back to next year. Oh yeah, we're also this is a never forget the most important users in our environment and that's our students. And so we've got to do some work in regards to to our students what they know, what they don't know, what they need uh at the different levels. U we talk about what the third grader needs compared to somebody that's getting ready to graduate. There's a whole spectrum of learning that's got to go on there and and we need to know from uh from the most important people within the organization and that's our kids. All right, great. Uh we are now moving on to uh the administration portion of our agenda um intent to award uh John Campbell Primary School refrigerator project. And I'm reminding the board that we've kind

077of been hearing about this probably for since at least the start of the year, maybe even going back to last year. Um the expansion of um our offering to uh free lunch programs or our eligibility to offer free lunch program uh and breakfast to all students um results in uh a greater need for storage, cold storage. I guess definitely you want to fill us in on that? Yeah. Um, and you'll see in Lor's flyer report that she has in the packet that our our participation for breakfast and lunch has really skyrocketed over the last two years. This year we're seeing a little bit of a dip with some of the schools, but overall we're serving more meals. And um when we built John Campbell Elementary, put a central kitchen there, all the design work was

078uh done with the assumption of free and reduced applications and using the the quantity, you know, of meals that we were serving at that time. So although we have great storage space in that facility for the dry storage and cold storage, uh we do need this this walk-in refrigerating refrigeration freezer unit. Um and the this is being paid for out of the nutrition budget. We've with all she Lor's just done a tremendous job operating a program that's in the black every year. And so we have carryover funds that have built up that we need to utilize. Um, and so that the cost of this is coming out of her program. So that's that's kind of what's taken so long to get the the ball rolling on this because when anytime you're dealing with federal money,

079it there's a lot more hoops that you go through to make sure you're in compliance. So on just very quickly on March 6th, we open bids for this project. We have five we had five contractors submit bids. Um, we were happy to see uh 70 Construction, a local company here, uh, submit the low bid by was it,1 or 900? $900, but they were low compared to the next one. Anyway, we're very excited to work with them. Our architect um, is very impressed with them so far. They hadn't worked with them before. So um anyway, so we are recommending that the school board approve this intent to award the contract to 70 construction at the dollar amount listed there including tax. Uh the 331,000 against the uh estimate by the architect were about 60,000 to the

080good uh bids came in lower than what the projected cost. So we're really happy about that. But anyway, so we'd like to recommend the board approve the intent to award. And before you get get there, most of the work uh will take place during the summer. There will be some electrical needs to to shut the electrical systems off. Uh so all that will take place during the summer. Very unlikely you'll see any evidence. Maybe other than some 70 construction trucks around the site, but no substantial work is going to take place till summer. It'll be on the uh near the loading dock back kind of in the back of kind of out of sight, right? Um yeah, we are we are fortunate. I I'm very familiar with 70 construction on a professional and a personal

081matter. It didn't have anything to do with them getting the bid, thank goodness. But they are a really good company to work with. Uh they do a lot of school related work and so they understand schools and working in schools and uh so we're very fortunate to have them as a partner in this project. So, beginning the week of spring break is when they'll mobilize to the site, but as Kevin mentioned, the most of the work will be done in the summer. Are there any uh do we need to have a vote on this? Probably. All right. I'll move that we approve the uh intent to award John Campbell Primary School refrigeration project. Is there a second? Second. Uh are there any questions or comments about that? Okay. All those in favor signify with an

082I. I. All those opposed. Abstensions. Great. We'll move on to our student board representative report. And we have Claire. Claire, good to see you. Uh it's springtime, so it's very busy for our students and their activities, but we're very glad you're here. Way at the end of the table though, Claire, we Hi down there. Uh do you have anything you'd like to report? Yeah. So, um, excuse me. After our last meeting about the Viking Promise, it kind of like I was asking students around at Sea High School. I was like, "Hey, do you know what this is?" And, um, an overwhelming majority of students had not did not really were not familiar with the Viking Promise. So, um I kind of got to explain it a little and like show them and ask them like

083questions like, oh, like we have this current base and and um there's work being done right now to cut it down to these four areas. is and I was just kind of asking students about what they would like to see and um it was like along the lines of what we talked about at the last meeting just continuing that engaging and rigorous classwork and then just support for students um who need extra support and then more opportunities for those students who are already um achieving high academic levels of success. Um, so that's what most students did not know what it was, but um they were really um excited to like kind of learn about it and um so I think that if there is I know we talked a little bit about um ways to

084kind of like communicate that forward and um so maybe um if there's any way that we could hold like um as part of the community forum that that could be um part of like a topic. I think that would be a really great way for um not only like not necessarily students but like parents um to see that which I think would be really great. But that's just some um idea there. Thank you, Claire. I I think one of the things we talked about last time that was interesting is how does it fit with kind of what the building vision is or the the mottos or the slogans that the building because the high school has some ones that uh Colton feels very strongly about and how those mesh together may not be clear to

085the students but I think Colton has a pretty good idea of how it fits with the overall Viking promise. Um I I can I ask you a quick question about AI? I I was well Jeff had to get somewhere so I didn't want to stop and ask uh while he was finishing what what's your I'll talk about your perspective in particular on uh artificial intelligence either from a student perspective or how teachers are using it. Um, as a student, I really appreciate um, AI just because I feel like it saves me a lot of time when doing my schoolwork. And um, I don't use it in a way that it like takes away from um, my learning, but I do use it to like give me prompts to um, to find these certain research topics

086about this or um, what's a good title for this essay, things like that or um, citing sources. Um, and I think that students are either they're using it to um kind of level up their learning, then they're using it in helpful ways or they are using it to do their work for them. And most teachers are able to tell which they're using it for. You know, if you copy and paste from CAT TBT, a teacher knows that that is not um the students work. But also, I feel like your average student knows how to use AI a lot better than any teacher does. And um to the point earlier, uh to say no AI in school would just would just be ignorant because it's it's here to stay. It's not going away. Um and I

087think right now we just need to find ways for um teachers to communicate effectively how they want it used. And I think that teachers do need to be um trained on how to use it like themselves to help. I have a lot of teachers who do use it and I think it's really helpful. Like why would a teacher write 50 math problems um when they can have AI do it for them and then they can spend that time making videos for their students, you know? So I do think that it is a very powerful and beneficial tool when used in the right way. And I think we um you know that's like the million-dollar question is how do you narrow it down so that it's not being used incorrectly? and taking over learning so that

088students aren't able to um get that really immersive learning experience. Excellent. Thank you very much. I'm glad to get your perspective on that. I maybe that could be a student voice panel as well. I think that'd be really interesting to hear because it it even when you're trying to do it right, it can sometimes feel icky, right? And we can feel like, oh, what am I doing here? Should I be doing this? It's very hard to tell. So, I'd be interested to hear from a variety of students on that. Any questions or comments for Claire? Thank you very much, Claire, for your report. We'll move on now to the associate superintendent for district operations. This is Chris with a enrollment update. I'm going to be doing the enrollment. Giving Chris a break for a second,

089but um all right, so March enrollment count um we saw a little dip in enrollment this month. um about 18 almost 19 students FTEE um which looking back at last year we had a similar dip. This is the trimester change or yeah trimester change. So we see a little dip um this time of year but overall we're still only 10 under projection from what we had budgeted this year which considering when we're talking with our colleagues around the valley that that's not bad. We'll take that because they've seen a lot of decrease in enrollment specifically in the kinder kinder age. So, um 10 under projection right now. Um and we're hoping that that'll hold throughout the rest of the year. We usually see a little dip towards the end with especially with our secondary students,

090but um we're feeling pretty good about that going for the next three months. Jeeoff, I hate to interrupt you, but so actual dip in kindergarten or does that mean that they have less that showed up than they expected or that they're Yeah. Yeah. So, what they budgeted the actual kids that showed up was significantly less. Okay. Thank you. Yep. And that I mean like we've talked about that's the hardest grade to predict u because you don't know who's coming if they'll show up. Um some districts look at birth rates but still that's really hard to predict coming in. All right. And then the financial status update for February. February marks halfway through the school year. So we're 50% of the way done. Um, we've received 45% of our revenues and spent 48% of our aotted

091expenditures with an ending fund balance of just over 9 million in our general fund. And then for ASB, we have an ending fund balance of 576,000. Debt service, 668,000. Transportation vehicle fund, we have just under $500,000 in there. And yeah, and the bus purchase, we just issued that check this month, so that you'll see that come out um next month in the fund balance report. Yeah, we have one more bus coming. Um and then capital projects, we have just over $7.5 million in that fund. Any any questions on those reports? Thank you, Stephanie. All right. Um give you that, Kevin. Okay. So, next on our list is the annual asset preservation uh report, building condition report. So, this is a requirement by the state to have a full uh building condition assessment report done every

092six years and so in year one and then you do it every six years. So, we were up for ours this last year. NAC architecture actually conducted the building assessment um for all of our schools um as part of the study and survey. So it did get done. We as you you may or may not know the state requirement for any building project that includes state match that we access state match funds. That's uh a requirement for those buildings to be assessed. We go ahead and assess all of our buildings even though we we didn't access state match on CILA intermediate school. um that school was built got done right when I got here. So there was no state match on that one. So you can see in the report that John Campbell was in

093the excellent category 100% not uncommon with a brand new school well built and good infrastructure uh lints at 100% middle school 90% which is good rating. And then CILA is at 76.48 and the high school at 61.53. So those are both fair which we and lints actually 60.76 fair. So you can see the list of the building component areas that they look at and assess. Um but yeah so Frank has done this work to get the report submitted into ICOs and so we like to give it to the board every year. Great. Thank you Chris. Excuse me. Uh we now have three reports uh annual reports from speaking of Frank annual facilities report the um annual technology report from Greg Sugdan and the annual nutrition report from Lori Xanic. Uh and this year as well

094as last year we've asked them instead of coming and presenting slides and reading the slides to us that they present uh documentation of their report to us uh that we can look at and um ask any questions if we have any questions. And I'm I'm guessing Kevin, we can ask you questions or Chris if we have or Stephanie if we have questions about those. Uh after we've looked through those, does anybody have any questions about those three reports? And if you don't feel like you have them there or you hadn't had a chance to go through them, you could email directly each of any of the three of them to get more specifics on that or me too. You can email me. I'd just like to interject on this. Um, we feel truly blessed. I'll

095speak for all of us to have the quality of classified directors that we have in this district. It's it's just the longevity of the people says one thing, you know, says it all or a lot of it that they love what they do here. But just in the reports it doesn't I mean they've done a nice job outlining different components of their positions in the reports. But honestly, I work with these directors obviously a lot and we talk almost daily and some times of the year and and for sure every other month that we get together and then we get together with all the classified directors once a month with the with Kevin and Chad, myself and then all of the classified directors to just talk and go over things that could impact the others

096departments on what's going on. So it kind of gives everybody a a good sense of um what's happening in in the other departments and how they can support the effort if needed like Frank supporting the other uh departments with whether it's something with the fixing the equipment in the kitchens or whatever it is. But all three all four I'll just I know Stephanie doesn't have a report on here right now. She's one of our classified directors. All of them, I'll just say, are outstanding leaders in their departments. They take pride in what they do every day. And they're they're always looking to improve what they are providing for service with our for everyone they serve. And that's why we exist, right? We exist to serve everyone in the district to help move our district forward

097and to support student learning. And they all have that mindset every day. They're always thinking about, okay, how's this going to impact our students? Honestly, we have these conversations and it's just it warms my heart because that's why we're here, you know, and so I just want to say publicly to all of our classified directors, a big thank you for everything that they do every day and just always striving to be better than they were the day before. I'll second that, Chris. I've sat through a lot of presentations from specifically these three and uh we've made the decision obviously every other year to for kind of efficiency reasons to do a written report, but it's always enjoyable to have these guys in here because they're they're excitable. Greg maybe hides a little bit more than

098the other two, but they're very excited and happy at their jobs and they're ready to make presentations and answer any questions and stuff. And so that's been it's been a real joy to get to know these three people in particular. Um I did have one quick question um and uh maybe you could answer this. There have been some recent um cutbacks at the USDA in terms of uh funding uh local foods to school districts which I know our school district has been really smart to pick up on that and provide healthy food from local growers. Um that I understand the status of that will of those cuts will affect our program. What what what will happen going forward with that uh with that need opportunity I guess. So as the um at this point in

099time the state is going to maintain the infrastructure of the procurement side of it. They're not putting any money to it right now. The federal funding has been cut. Um, I believe there might be action at the Congress level to to change that. Kevin might know a little. I what I've read up on this is this uh has been kind of looked at from the legal perspective and the administration does have uh the ability to eliminate these funds. Now, obviously that could change. They could decide that when they start looking at uh all the things that have been reduced, maybe they decide that this is one that has a great benefit and can be put back and funded. But as of right now, the legal ease of this is would not be that one that

100would go to the courts to make a determination on. So we need to plan accordingly that we are not going to have these resources next year. We will have resources this year to continue the re this year but nothing for next year or the years after. And so our interest is to continue to connect with farmers. We've done it for a long time with uh apples and all kinds of uh local produce from farmers. We'd like to continue the farm-toschool concept in our district, but now it's at full cost. See, we we had full funding last or this current school year. Next year was going to be half the funding and then so it was going to be cut back. But we're still going to our efforts are to bring in uh support our local

101local farmers as much as we can. We're still waiting to hear on a grant that we applied for, a scales grant that would help us uh connect with uh Northwest Harvest and other uh entities, other school districts to help um provide transport of local farmed goods to our schools and so on and so forth. I won't get into all the details on that. We're likely not going to see the grant. The word is the scales grant's not going to be awarded, but we we haven't officially heard yet for CILA. So, um, Lori is very passionate about this as you can imagine. She her anxiety is very high about this and the the community eligibility per provision where all kids eat at no cost. I mean, all of those things are really unknown at this point.

102We they may make a decision that we have to go back to the free and reduced lunch application process and then all kids don't get to eat at no cost. They go through the application process. one thing that and I hope that doesn't happen because it's just providing access for kids is huge. We all know that we want to make sure all kids are have food to eat so they can learn well. Um we are building systems as we speak to help uh provide efficiencies and collecting those forms from families. Right now, we're looking at the the uh SNEB, what they're calling the SNEB form for the um the family income survey to provide better systems on our end to get those back from parents. We can use those same systems that we're creating now

103for a free and reduced application uh to try to get as many back as we can. As you know, poverty rates drive funding. They drive uh lap funding. um they're in the equation for for title one. And so it's it's an important thing for us and and Lori is very concerned. She's worked really hard to uh get things going in the school with breakfast after the bell. And breakfast after the bell is has been an initiative that was is a requirement of the community elig eligibility provision. So if that goes away then, you know, we have to re-evaluate what we're doing. But the breakfast after the bells really helped our numbers and helped all kids have access to meals where before they may have just walked by and not or shown up late and didn't

104have the opportunity for breakfast. So I think you'll still see remnants uh probably a lot of um connection to the work with farm to school next year. I I I don't think you'll see a visible change to that. Uh we may it may take a lot more on Lor's part to find products that are going to be available under that what used to be the uh farm-toschool program. But I think you'll still see the commitment of having the farmtoschool concept with this with the actual food we're providing to the students. How long we can do that economically and continue to be at a good place, I don't know. I I don't know. But the theory behind it, the belief behind farm to school supporting lo local farmers, that that's all a concept that I know

105Lori is all in on and so Chris and I and the district as a whole. So, we're going to continue to do the best we possibly can with that. And one last comment on that, one thing that the farm to school concept has driven our has given us more drive to provide even more scratch cooking for our kids. That's not going to change. Lor's passion is to continue to grow the scratch offerings for kids and it's amazing. All the taste testing she does in the buildings with kids is just really cool. Kids get to try them and then they're they're all of a sudden they're going to lunch and now they want it because they like it and it's good stuff. So great. Thank you for that uh update on those programs. Uh all right,

106we'll move on now to the superintendent report. Uh Kevin, uh your item 10. Thank you. uh parent conference week next week everyone. Uh all days are early release except for Wednesday. Um so you will see uh normal parent conference week. We haven't changed anything really from the past that we did in the fall. Following that week, traditionally uh in our school district following parent conference break uh week is spring break uh 4th through the 11th. Uh the next time that you will gather together is not the second to second Thursday of April. It's the third Thursday of April because of spring break. That will be April 17th, 7 o'clock in the morning at Robert Lint's Early Learning Center. Backtoback weeks. Yeah. You'll have uh study session and that study session um is the elementary school

107principal roundt. So they have principles of CIS, JCP and Robert Lintz there with presentations for you about how their buildings are going, the the good things, the successes and the challenges just as we have done in the past. Uh today is the 27th of March. The legislative session ends April 27th. So there is one month left. Uh the good both the House and the Senate have released their operating budgets. So it gives them a lot of time and next month will be to figure out how they get those two budgets comprised into one agreeable budget to both. Lots of stuff still out there. Lots of things I I don't even want to guess where it's going to end up. Uh there there is differences between the two budgets for sure. I think you probably seen

108media about uh the difference of philosophical beliefs in regards to the budgets from the Republicans and the Democrats. So there's a lot of things to go on in the next month and I will be following all of them. So keep you up to date as much as I possibly can. Uh this is the time that I think even more so uh that the the monthly WASA newsletter about the happenings Olympia may be even more important for you to to take a look at. And then I'll put our impact on what that means specific to CILA in regards to some of those. That's it for me. Thank you, Kevin. Uh, we're now on the um board communications. Does anyone have any board communications to share with us this week, this month? All right. Excellent. There's no

109need for an executive session uh at this meeting and so we will adjourn. Thank you everyone.