Selah School Board Meeting January 13, 2022

001okay we are now recording do you see a message that says that dan okay all right jeff all right good morning everyone we'll call our meeting to order this is our study session for the month of january our first meeting in 2022 good to see everybody hope everybody had a good holiday let's begin please with a flag salute again i pledge allegiance to the flag of the eyes of the united states of america to the republic which stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we have uh four board members with us in person today and dan is uh remote with us on welcome dan we're glad that you can join us this morning um and we've got a lot of items on the agenda so we'll get started um one

002that is very very important well let's start before we go there suggestions or comments from the audience would be next on the agenda so um just verified tierra that we didn't receive any we're good there okay and this would be the opportunity for anybody in the audience a remote or in person to make comments to the board so if there is anyone online with us today that's me and uh yeah okay i guess we are good there we'll move on then um for the audience that we do have uh probably gets three minutes if they're interested in addressing the board at this point in our agenda um so we would acknowledge that and accept that and listen to what anybody would bring to the boardroom so we'll move on then to a very uh important

003and significant event here and i'll turn it over to superintendent backlund to square in our newest board member yeah the november election brought us a new board member and an incumbent coming back so both jamie morford is an incumbent and you've all met now joe catrin so for those of you at home and watching we've got joe catrin who is a long time sealer resident and is joining our board officially starts today actually with his oath of office but he has been doing some orientation and did a tour with me yesterday went to the wazada conference in november uh he's ready to hit the ground running and we're happy to have him on the board so jamie and uh joe would you guys please stand and i'm going to do this the official uh oath

004of office which we have some things you need to sign that we need to turn in with the auditor's office please raise your right hands repeat after me i state your name do solemnly swear that will support the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of washington i will faithfully discharge the duties of director of seela school district number 119 yakima county state of washington to the best of my ability congratulations gentlemen you are sworn in all right there we'll make sure we get signatures on these from you uh prior to the meeting we'll get them into the auditor's office and it'll be official in fact actually if you want to take them and pass them down okay all right i would add my additional congratulations to jamie for the re-election

005and to joe for the election and uh welcome we're really excited to have you on the board and we're really happy that you're here so thank you welcome thank you very much along with that um this is the time of year where annually we elect officers of the board and so we'll move into that uh portion of it now it's a normal order of business on an annual basis and so we need to elect a president vice president and a wasda legislative representative uh w-i-a are we in between nope we're good we're good on that one all right so the way we do this is that we will open up nominations for each office separately separately and individually and then we'll take a roll call on each one each office and then we'll move to

006the next one so first office to begin with is president so i will call for nominations for president to serve during this next calendar year i'll nominate jeff hartwick all right thank you slow down with all the nominations there guys slow down with all the nominations right just process checked in you can hear us okay yes absolutely okay good thank you all right hearing no other nominations then nominations are now closed and we'll do a roll call um so we'll start um jamie with you um so vote for vote for jeff yes sarah yes joe yes dan yes and yes for me okay we'll move on to the next uh thank you by the way um for your confidence and um in me and i'll do my best to represent that work as i have

007in the past the second is vice president nominations are now open for the position of vice president and i will nominate jamie morford for vice president the other nominations okay uh we'll vote then uh with roll call so we'll start at the other end joe if you don't mind uh whether you would vote for jamie or not yes sarah yes dan yes jeff yes and jamie okay congratulations and then the last uh position is the wasta legislative representative which is an important role to represent sela school district when it comes to legislative uh actions and activity going on in olympia and um representing us in that regard so i would open the nominations then for wasda legislative rep is that kellyanne prior to this it was kellyanne's yeah we have a nomination for joe for

008that um any other nominations okay just to check to be sure joe would you accept the nomination yes okay so let's vote roll call um on voting for joe for the legislative representative uh jamie we'll start with you yes me is yes sarah yes dan yes and joe yes okay well i think that takes care of our nomination our elections for the 2022 calendar year uh congratulations to jamie and thank you joe for stepping up we appreciate that a lot and uh thank you everyone for your confidence in my position we'll work hard together and and have a great year so that would conclude the election portion of our agenda and we'll move on to the next which is the consent agenda we have a couple of out-of-state travel requests our student overnight trap field

009trip and a out-of-state travel request we've had a chance to look at both of those looks like ones to a football clinic with coach ditter and ryan stiltz and the other is an overnight field trip for casey benjamin and the deca students to um a leadership conference so paperwork's been in our packet we've had an opportunity to see those do we have any questions or discussion on any of those either of those okay um i would entertain a motion then that we accept that we adopt the two requests on the consent agenda i'll record well move that we adopt or accept both uh out-of-state requests on the consent agenda okay thanks jamie any comments discussion on either one of those any comments shane on your hand uh no they're pretty straightforward the only question i

010had was the uh deca um looks like it's eight students and one chaperone is that a that's a good ratio yeah i mean we try not to go above about above that number and it looks like asb is paying for that one asb office yes all right deca has a great program and i fully support it and i know that they do a good job in leadership deca and cte funds okay cte as well cte funds as well yeah okay i think the application identified asd as the main funding source and chris knows all the budget codes by heart so oh well we're happy that you do all right we have a motion on the table for these two travel requests let's vote all those in favor please indicate with an eye opposed thank you

011dan sorry opposed okay those are approved so now we'll move into uh the meat of our meeting today and that's our study session um for those in the audience um we have two meetings a month one is a business meeting which is a more common business activities and the second one is a study session of various topics that we select shane or cabinet or the board selects a topic and then we do a little deeper dive on a particular subject and so this is a study session on that one's the one that's held at 7 00 am the other business meeting is held at 4 30 p.m in the afternoon but this this is a study session and really it's a a nice mix of bringing the board together to just re-visit some of our

012board principles and some of our operating protocol that helps guide us in our in our operation so i'm going to let shane lead us through this and then we will have discussion throughout and now this is an opportunity for us to to adopt tweak change introduce new whatever um and so more of an informal sort of discussion and chain will facilitate us through each of these topics so shane turn it over to you all right good so you guys have a packet there that uh tr has prepared for you and actually the i believe it's the fourth document in your packet and dan can you see that on your screen there what we have shared yes i can thank you okay great so uh the first item so we have basically we have five items

013that we are going to go through today the board superintendent operating principles which is something we like to revisit annually and especially when we bring on a new board member we're going to talk about student board representatives which is something we've had for the last several years it's actually sort of waned during covid so we want to use this opportunity to sort of reevaluate that i think we all believe in the the purpose and the value of having student voice on the board but just in what capacity we want to talk a little bit about maybe some best practices there we're going to look at our board calendar which is kind of a living breathing uh sort of a picture of all of our meetings and topics and we want to see how that format

014works for you we're gonna i'm gonna offer some suggestions and see if there's a little conversation about that calendar itself it's it's a different format than what we've used in the past but i think it's a little bit more streamlined so we'll get to that one as well we're gonna talk a little bit about robert's rules of order which i know everybody is just chomping at the bit to discuss but it could be the top item right yeah so it's something that jeff brought forward after one of the wasda sessions that he went to in november and really the intent behind the discussion is not so much around adherence to robert's rules of order which is something we do it's about how to streamline because there are some ways that we can streamline some aspects

015of our agenda to potentially save some time throughout the meeting which is always valuable for us so we're going to talk about that and then finally jeff and i also spoke at the wazda conference about you know knowing that there is no state legislatively mandated evaluation model for superintendents in the state as you know there are for teachers i won't say as you know because you don't know there are there is one for teachers and for principals uh and so there are a couple of models but we have done sort of a variety of things over the years but with a new superintendent coming on board we thought that it might be an opportunity to just take a look at a couple of the different models that are out there also discuss what we've done

016in the past and see if there's something that we want to land on or that the board wants to land on so that we can sort of uh where you can sort of reset that commitment once the new superintendent starts so those are the topics we're going to talk about time permitting there's a couple other resources that you have in your packet that are not on the agenda but that i can talk to you about at the end of the meeting and then we'll see if there's anything else for the good v order oh for we don't have a packet oh well that's because they're right here said that i was starting to text here i was waiting until you were done they're right there that was joe's first test details well they're underneath the

017keyboard so yeah you'll see the about i think that's the fourth document and it's procedure 1620 the board superintendent roles and operating principles so the way that we've uh it's it's a two-page front and back document and really the way that we've done this in the past uh has been to um kind of take it section by section let everybody take a quick read of it and then offer any comments for that section and we if there's if everything looks good we can just say that still looks like it fits and then move on uh so we don't belabor any certain section of the uh or the policy or procedure here so if you would just take a minute to read our preamble there before we move into clarifying roles we just reviewed this last

018year right we redid this years ago with the most uh i don't know if we have a date on here we did it in 20 if we did in 20 yes it was in this building there you go jared yeah he did all right any thoughts or uh on the preamble the only thing that jumped out at me was the line at the bottom of the second paragraph says individual board members do not have the authority to direct the superintendent is that meant to say that an individual board member can't say shane you need to do this or we'd like you to do this correct it means that the the board acts as a body and so individual board members do not have the authority to to direct the superintendent without consent of the rest

019of the board okay yep ready to move on clarifying roles and this is just a nice table that really talks about the roles and responsibilities of each entity or each body the school board which governs the superintendent manages and just as a so so really the board in the hierarchy of the district sits above the superintendent and the superintendent sits above the rest of the district in terms of management of day-to-day operations and the staff within the district so it gives you some sort of words there like decides what and decides how requests information seeks and provides so it kind of clarifies each of those rules really this i i'll just speak for myself i think that this board does an exceptional job with that i know that that has been a challenge in talking

020to other superintendents from around the state at times uh it even led to one of a colleague of mine leaving their position recently that the school board got too much into the management side of things not the governing side of things so i think this table just does a nice job of illustrating the differences between the two roles well the way i view this is that and you know correct me if i'm not based by anybody but you know your your role or the superintendent's role is to execute to operate to manage to lead and you're the ceo if you will of the district and the board's not in i mean that's not the role of the board right should be to guide dirk and and suggest and create and approve as it says here

021i guess the the other the one thing that does come to mind for me is uh if the board governs and i've hung my hat on this from time to time but is there anything and maybe it comes up later but in the can can it be stated in here somehow that the board is a resource for the superintendent because in my mind the board is voted on by the public and to represent the public and that's a that's a fantastic and a powerful resource for a superintendent and so as an operating principle could that be part of the channels in which a superintendent sort of looks at and goes all right the board is there as a strong resource as a representative of the community i need to leverage and utilize that in my

022management leadership tasks i don't know thoughts from anybody and dan can you hear everything okay can you hear jeff okay yeah it's coming in very clearly thank you good i made a note there jeff and um we can if it doesn't come up somewhere through the the rest of the document we can look at maybe potentially putting something within the rules just thinking out loud is that truly a principle i mean if james got something his position does i think it's a can just to recognize and identify the board let's see if it plays out okay all right our next section is uh something that we uh on operating principles we've got a few sections under here for the first is equity statement and advocacy this component was actually added i believe in 2019 which

023also kind of coincides with this paper here and really the equity statement was something that the board wanted to put in as a filter and when i say filter i mean that having a lens that you're thinking through as decisions are being made and talking about the equity is about treating all students as the individuals they are not treating all kids the same that that's equality equity is giving every kid what they need to be successful um and then there are some questions for consideration there then move on to the second page that really again are sort of like a filter for how we make decisions and that's why this piece of paper is here also in our meetings just as a reminder that if we can answer these questions not not literally answer them

024but just as a as a filter and thought process as we make decisions um so again if you want to just kind of read through those questions these are fairly new i guess just over two years old now those still feel like they fit okay can you give us a quick description of improvement science approach again yeah so basically improvement science has the uh it's under number two it's letters a b and c and it's a it's an improvement model that we use in the district where the essence behind it is that you don't just solve problems without understanding the problem you're trying to solve but we often at education really everywhere have what i like to call solutionitis problem comes and we just jump in to try to solve it um because that's generally

025how a lot of us are built whereas an improvement science approach uh has you take a step back and think about what is the problem you're really trying to solve and also think about it from a user perspective again we sometimes as leaders try to solve problems for people that are on the front lines without really thinking about their user their user actually experienced with the problem um so that's the essence of it and then it's really about uh trying things in small approaches and in small batches to see if they work before scaling up for example one of the biggest mistakes i made in my superintendency was i think my first or second year where we rolled out a whole new grading program at the high school in a you know in a very

026short period of time had i been thinking at that time of improvement science approach i would have first thought what is the problem we're really trying to solve here and sometimes when you really dive into the problem you don't actually you find out that it might be something else there's a risk to the issue and not the actual face value thing you're looking at trying to solve but that that in that instance with the grading system uh being really clear about the problem trying it a small scale let's say just with freshmen and just in science right to see how it works and then you can work out the bugs i mean it's a common sense approach that often doesn't get used in in leadership across the board not just in education again because people

027see an issue and they want to dive in and solve it so this just approaches it gives you a more uh it's it's a framework but it's also a mindset so it's really trying to find a root cause you know instead of putting a band-aid on something let's get to the inner core okay so let's there's a second section there underneath the questions about the leadership team members are committed to there's just some bullets there that the board had developed and adapted over the years okay the leadership team includes the board the board and the superintendent we are the leadership team so in this case leadership team is the board and superintendent yep oh that uh bullet there about the second of the last bullet visiting each building at least once per school year you

028know sort of fell off that with fluid naturally personally i think it's a good principle to retain but i think it's worth putting on a table for making sure that we're all good with i think we're talking that we're going to do a school focus just for yeah we'll kind of talk about the school of focus concept uh when we get to the calendar itself but um there's two ways to to think about that i mean the school focus is a great way to do a more of a formal visit to a school where the board meeting is actually held at that school and that school has the opportunity to share some of their strengths and areas of growth and the things that they're working on but then there's also the more informal way of

029uh visits where which i think most of you all of you have done in the past is sitting down with a principal right and having a discussion uh just trying to get in each building in a more personal manner once per year i mean so thinking about the we have really six major buildings and just throughout the year that was that was a commitment that we had made a couple years ago and again yeah you're right the copa did derail that but um i do know that the speaking from just my experience with the principles that they as long as they have a heads up what you've all done they enjoy having board members come in and sharing what they're doing in that more intimate setting walking through the school with you that kind of

030thing it doesn't have to be a long thing you know it could be half hour to an hour right but it's just a it's a visit that's a little bit more intentional and personal i think it's a desire by all of us personally if not you know organizationally that you know we have that connection um with the principles in the buildings themselves you know that it's great to do the work that we do in the boardroom but you know having that additional relationship and connection with the district for joe's benefit the procedure on that then shane clarify for us i mean we kind of know the principles well enough where i would feel comfortable just reaching directly out to mark for example however is there a protocol that would suggest that we would arrange that

031through the superintendent first so we we talked about that as a body a couple of years ago and i think what we came to a conclusion that you you do and as as joe gets to know principles i'm fine helping him arrange those visits right you are welcome to make those visits on your own i just ask that you copy me in any correspondence so if you shoot marca an email saying hey i'd love to come visit the next couple weeks what your calendar look like just to keep me loop and that way i also it's it's not an accountability piece but then i know that you guys are getting in the building it's just a way to keep me in the loop thinking ahead for a new superintendent what would be your recommendation along

032those lines if we wanted to continue the practice but we now have a new leader i i think you're going to have to defer to the new leader some superintendents are going to have a different style again based on their experience whether they're new if they're new to the role uh 100 percent then uh i think that there'd be some more guidance you could offer if they're an experienced superintendent they may have a way that they have operated with boards before about how communication channels work and so i would just recommend having that discussion with the new superintendent at that time the new superintendent may want to go with you to the visit correct right i see you guys enough yeah no i i actually do enjoy going but there are times that the just

033that one-on-one conversation is really valuable especially if you want to talk about the superintendent good thanks okay let's move into school board meetings and this uh we uh i think this has been a few years ago now and this is also in policy um the first are just some aspects of of what you're committed to which again um i'll give you a second to read those so one of the things i think that we sort of got away from especially during the pandemic when a lot of our study sessions were actually focused on school operations and not so much learning focused items um is that including a wrap-up you know meeting for the following month study session just as a as a preamble to what's happening the next month right just and that's another uh

034component of the board annual calendar that we want to put together so we do know what what is coming in terms of study sessions they've been a little bit more fluid the last couple of years knowing that we needed to maybe pivot a study session topic to have a discussion around reopening of schools or that type of thing right so there haven't been really as learning focused as they had been prior to the pandemic but looking forward that's something to get back to yeah i think on necessity we've used a few of those meetings to kind of fight fires yeah fight some fires right and and really honestly this year too the couple those meetings coming up this year will be dedicated to uh the superintendent search process and so um and we'll look at

035the calendar a little bit again like i said later but um yeah i mean it is it is also a good opportunity um you know to have some thought about what your topics are but as jamie said if there's something that's coming up that's pressing that the board needs to discuss it's also a place to go ahead and say let's take the time to do that here rather than take the topic that we were going to discuss so okay we're comfortable with that let's move into decision making take a second to read through that or the other types of meetings described are they on our website still yeah and they're also within our policy you'll see the sort of the improvement science approach come back through in this okay go ahead let's go to uh

036judgment and trust i think that the uh the last bullet there um recognizing that each of us may approach problems and challenges in a different manner this does not make the other another's approach wrong just different i think that's an important component i think that's one of the main reasons we have boards is to offer that different perspective yeah okay we have a couple more sections here they're they're important ones so communication before you go there yeah um here forgive me but one of the things that i learned from day one that always stuck with me was that when a board is in a decision-making mode and there's discussion a vote or decision is made as a board then if an individual board member doesn't agree or doesn't the way they think it should be

037going but it was voted on another way at the end once that vote is taken all board members get behind it and so i don't know that it's spelled out that way but in general that's kind of the way it's within the decision making component supporting the conclusion of the team the second to last bullet in the section before that okay so yeah i'm just elaborating i guess on that yeah yep worth expanding on a little bit in my mind because that seems to be an important part of operating as a board that works together is understanding that we don't always get exactly the way we thought it ought to go personally and i don't think this board has really been not on the same page very often but in the event that it does

038happen that once a decision is made then we all get behind it correct communication i'll give you a little bit of a background that utilizing the 24-hour rule is something that we uh have an expectation of our administrative team for so really um and with the with the way that text messaging works in open public meetings the only reason we should be using text messages is to prompt for to check an email right uh just that and that's a lot of times what i'll do with you is just say hey there's an important email i need you to take a look at so that way it's all in the record as part of the book popular records act it's within our our system our email system but we all know that email can become white

039noise i get hundreds of emails a day and so i'm sure that you all get a lot of emails too so i think that's just pointing to the idea that if there is something essential that i will let you know that so that you can say okay i'll go to my email and check because it's easy sometimes with two weeks in between board meetings to not have things be top of mind which is 100 percent understandable being volunteers on a school board but again it's just i will prompt you if it's really just informational i'm not going to prompt you if it's something that i really need you to see then i will prompt you and i can go both directions correct yeah check email or can we have a quick phone call or something

040like that okay appropriate handling of concerns complaints this is our last section here i think that the the board our board in general does a really good job with this piece um one of the things i would just for joe's benefit being a new board member i'm sure even from day one after the election he already started getting correspondence from people about wanting him to fix things or do things right and i and we we hold firm to our chain of command of the district not because we want to get people to run around because because we have a belief in the people that are doing their job to solve the problems at their level so and jeff and i have talked about this we've had instances just recently and so if a patron comes

041to you with an issue about something at a school it's fine to do one of two things i mean you can let me know but and then i can help direct that person or you are personally just as is able to say well if this is something that's happening at john campbell i would recommend you call principal scribner if you need that information on how to get a hold of her you can contact superintendent and superintendent's assistant and then get contact information if they have a problem with a teacher specifically encourage them to set up a time with that teacher and have that discussion i mean we really we really really pride ourselves on trying to solve those problems at the lowest level before they elevate and i always say that when parents call me

042and tierra actually does an exceptional job of filtering those things and saying have you talked to this person yet and if they haven't then kindly direct them to that place and it's not again that we're giving them the run around and then we tell them also you know it's that their concern is valid and that if you don't get the answer you're looking for then you move up the chain of command but just starting at the lowest level is really the key aspect of of handling complaints and concerns i think it is okay too even within that because you will get your fair share of those joe is you can say if you don't get the results you want or if you don't get the response you need follow up with me and then i'll

043tell you what the next step is right there you go yeah be a problem solver at our level it's not to actually help facilitate the chain of command and stuff is pretty effective yeah a good example was a friend of mine who was a superintendent had a board member come on and said that their neighbor had indicated that the salad dressing at the middle school did not taste good and so they wanted the superintendent they wanted this board member to fix that problem right now right so and the superintendent did try to fix it and then it caused actually a little bit of a rift in the organization of what's he doing he doesn't understand what this is where we ordered this is why we ordered and all that kind of stuff right so it

044is getting to that lowest level that's a kind of a funny example but it's a true one what's inherent in our just in our character though if someone calls you with a question or you know complain to do what you can to help and so to you know be able to back off a moment and just say listen you know maybe the best way to go here is contact the school or give them guidance as to what channel to follow so did you happen to so that's the last section here did anybody happen to see uh so jeff you talked about uh the superintendent utilizing the board is a resource do you think that is there a place you might see that that fit in any of these subsections i could see it fit in

045somewhere in the communication section [Music] that's good [Music] making section yeah yeah let me um addressing the community issues that they which sectional board members any issues that you may hear of anecdotally while in community you send it that address of the idea of a single board as a resource i think yeah whatever the group wants to do okay that's something we can we'll have a note in our minutes too um a little bit of that not that we can't uh memorialize it somewhere but it kind of does go without saying i think i do utilize you as resource and i i think but bringing a new superintendent it's important to say that yeah well i i'd support what you just said you do and that's that's one of the things that keeps coming back

046to my mind is it is an opportunity for our superintendent for intended new or experienced to leverage the perspective the input the connections that the board has because it just needs doesn't need to be said it's just understood that's a principle or a channel that a board can provide for a superintendent this procedure will be in the in our on our website the only thing that i any question is certain wording like on judgment and trust under the first bullet pointer and leadership team members are committed to trusting that the intentions of others are positive i think in a great working situation like we have that's pretty easy to do i think as superintendent turns over eventually school board turns over you know is is always trusting when you trust until you can't trust it

047anymore so where's that kind of disclaimer at what if there is a board member that comes in here without positive intentions you know how do you get yourself out of that saying we trusted it almost sounds like blind trust kind of a thought i mean we're in a good situation right now but if this procedure stays in longer than we're here and for some reason that changes for some reason and i think that the the way that i look at that trusting might be um i i i like to use the word assume in fact i thought about that for the longest time i actually had a supposed note on my one of my monitors that said assume the best intent right so when someone's calling or someone's emailing or someone has an issue that

048might be the 15th thing you've dealt with that day it's still assuming that this person's intent is good even if the tone might not be or whatnot that there's an intention behind what they're trying to say right and so think think if you use that lens first then you're not reacting in such a way that might be defensive i thought about that changing that word assuming i like that and then i think to jamie the next the last bullet on the back of the last page it talks about recognizing that each of us has a different approach problems and challenges in a different manner it doesn't make anybody wrong it's just different right okay good we have a couple updates to that um dan any thoughts that's i was just gonna say i don't i

049was gonna say have the expectation that people are acting impossible but assume assume gets to it fewer syllables so i like that and i like the review of all these and i i nod my head along that we're doing well on on most of these bullet points so and we're we're tested uh on a lot of these uh in the last two years yes definitely for sure okay uh next item on our agenda is student representatives to the board so you i gave you a pac excuse me a packet here this is not something i want to go through today this is just in general some uh hanover research is a company that lost the washington association of school administrators actually contracts with that does studies throughout the country and then provides summaries of those

050studies as part of the organization we get those these research briefs and this one happened to come out in august of 2021. yep it's got it's the green colored one in there and so um it does give you um there are strategies and what not in here for making the that experience a good one for both student and board but i just want to first have an open discussion and see what we kind of feel like as a team here and again i think this is also something to bring forward to the new superintendent but just as a way of a little bit of background uh for joe and everyone's benefit um that has not been here more than 10 12 years we started with the student representatives to the board uh when i was

051executive director of teaching and learning i believe our first year was 2009. so it's a long-standing practice uh we're one of the first two or three districts in the valley to to adopt such a concept uh it's not a new concept obviously but just the way that we approached it at that time was to have two student representatives uh that would do two-year terms and we started out with a junior and a senior the first year and so then the senior rolled off the junior rolled up we brought on another junior so you always have one student that's overlapping from one year to the next so what we did not clearly define when we put this uh in play you know 13 14 years ago was the actual role of the students uh on the

052board the student representatives um i think what it served uh during its time that we've had it to this date is just been a nice piece to have students in the boardroom uh it's also served to hear student perspective through reports we've had some of the uh student reps over the years that are much more involved than others right i mean we've had some that really make comments on policy or things that we're doing and are not shy or scared to speak up um knowing that the student themselves is not an actual part of the voting body it's not allowed actually through law to be part of the voting body it acts in an advisory capacity although we've never really formalized that in any way over the years and so i think we've had our

053share of really outstanding people that have young people that have been on our board but also i think that we could give them more guidance and it's if it's something that we want to continue um from my personal perspective although i'm leaving i think it is something that's valuable but i also believe that um we can be a little bit more structured in the approach in how we utilize those students so with that little background i just want to open it up for some dialogue around your thoughts on if with our experience to date and within the ideas or suggestions you have and we'll have tierra capture those in the minutes since i've been on the board we've had two different types of student reps yeah early on we had gentlemen that very engaged uh

054like policy procedure he was in the weeds and then the rest of them they've almost been just a quick report with what's up at the high school no it's not it's not near as engaging homecoming this week you know and they've done a great job and they've you know given us some perspective you know especially as we're going through covey and some return to school and stuff but those are two starkly different situations if we want to create it for the student experience and give them some responsibility maybe this trip to olympia or you know whatever the case is i think we work that way from the student side of it or if this is just truly for the board and the public to have someone come in and say what's going on at the

055high school or the middle school that can almost be a rotating seat where that becomes monthly a high school student shows up and kind of says what's going on versus one person committed to us for nine months so i think those are the two decisions we're making are we making this an experience for the student that they can actually get some you know even within the structure of the meeting and their uh private rule of orders and their learning you know how that kind of stuff working are we doing it for the student or are we doing it for the school board and for the public two different items i would i would just chime in and say i would agree gaming and other things that you know we go to this loza conference every

056year and there's always a section in there with student reps and recognizing the student reps that are at the was the conference so we've not even come close to thinking about inviting a student rep to go to that conference so there's some districts out there that are really putting some you know they're bringing their student reps in and they've defined and created a an expectation and a process to where they're really involved at a bigger higher level and i think we use so to your point additional things that we can do to help develop a sense of ownership a contribution to the board one session last time i attended a couple years ago their student reps actually were it goes all the way back to their application process and what's required in order to be

057a student rep and an expectation if you did do this would be that you'll find a cause or some sort of issue within the district and you'll do you know it'll be a student-based sort of thing and then the student rep then would take that on as sort of a research assignment and that they would pursue it may be a personal interest of theirs it could be something as simple as a variety at the lunch lunch offerings or it could be transportation who knows but the student then would take that topic whatever it is and that they would go and research it they would talk to administrators or teachers and students and community and whoever they would need to in order to develop this position paper if you will and then they would bring it

058back to the board later on in the school year and they present that and if i remember right there was one example where the student did such a great job of researching and flushing out an issue and got to the root cause of something that the board actually took some action and superintendent said man we never thought about it that way and all of a sudden now you got a new new way of doing something and that was brought by a student so i do think there's opportunity for us to have student reps on the board that maybe would have a little bigger role from their perspective i think it's the commitment from the student the student has to have some responsibility you know they don't want you can't see dwindling attendance as the year

059goes on student reps and it's because you know first they're just anxious and nervous to be here so it's kind of fun school update but then that's kind of all they're doing within the scope of the meeting so it kind of comes a little bit do i need to be here should i do this am i wasting their time wasting my time you know what's going on here there has to be something that kind of makes them feel part of it and i'd love them to be part of it but to find that little situation that that combines those two worlds would be the key and like they solved the problem first you know out there and then first get the student and say now figure it out i mean you know one way could

060maybe enter into providing a little bit more value for the student rep in terms of participation would be to set it up so that a student rep could provide an advisory vote before we vote on initiatives or topics um to where you know they're not an official vote but we before we take a vote we would turn to a student rep and say you know we just had this discussion about xyz whatever it is before we vote how do you feel about that and get that perspective and how would you vote and just as an advisory vote i think some districts are doing that now just to help involve and include the student rep in the room instead of them just listening to all everything a chance to provide some input to us or maybe

061the student rep could help select the monthly spotlight you know that's a meeting with the superintendent ahead of time the superintendent says a few ideas he or she has and then it's a student's job to actually go and see see what the superintendent's ideas were and then they pick from that for the spotlight and they're introducing it and it gives them something that they brought to the meeting everything like that sarah you're gonna say something yeah i was thinking if we back up a step here and maybe we take this to leadership at the high school i like that board and see what i don't know if that's michelle mccartney or if there's another there's an advisory thor's council is an advisory panel made up about 24 really diverse groups where we kind of get

062a feel for what we're if we work directly with the school and the students so we can sit here and discuss what we would want from them or what we what we think they might want from us but it might be better to like i said step back and it's a user-centered approach right there oh thanks yeah that's what i was thinking um because if there's really not interest then right we want to pursue it right now or yeah maybe they just have a different idea a better way to approach it i think it would be beneficial to both groups if we you know if we collaborated with them before making that decision i agree i think that i think they're a key thing is to clearly establish the what what the role looks like

063right and then have a good selection process for that and the expectations the roles yeah they have of us and that we would have that it's clear yeah well it might be worth one idea is to actually see if i can't get mr monty maybe we can get a representative group from thor's council it's a big team but one of two things one to come to a board meeting or two have a couple of board members go to a thor's council meeting you know without with two that says it's not a quorum and just to have a dialogue with the with the group of kids sort of about what you're talking about sarah and if we do a school of focus too we could make sure that those kids are invited yeah one of the

064things that yeah i agree and one of the things that i've always jamie alluded to a little bit it's very high school centered right i mean it seems to be that because the the student board reps are from the high school it becomes all about the high school and jamie's idea and concept around you know what what if they were the ones that are actually seeking out you know with support what are some good things happening in the schools and then bringing that forward i mean that just kind of gives it does give them a little responsibility uh but also highlights accomplishes highlighting other things that are not just high school based yeah we could actually put that on the big calendar yeah student rep line on there all right in the month of november

065your report you know your reporter would be on what's going on at the middle school you know and that gives them plenty of time to i also check it out we could also invite them when we do our building visits invite them along with us i like that or they could do their own monthly building visit too i mean i'm one-on-one with the principal i mean that's a big growth thing for them they have to set the meeting cc and maybe a board member or the superintendent but they they set up a business meeting in essence they have to make the appointment go visit you know work around yeah i agree i just think there will be different levels of comfort oh yeah yeah sure i i like there's some good ideas yeah go ahead

066i'm just going to suggest maybe out of this meeting we maybe maybe form a little subcommittee somebody that would be willing to take this on as a project and work with you shane and just sort of push some of this out that'd be great yeah i didn't think we would solve it today i thought we'd start the conversation something we want to have in place by the end of the year so that we can move forward i think is everybody in agreement that student reps are an important piece of the of the board and i think that that's fine um i'm happy to work with a person or two on this uh to kind of flesh it out a little bit more and and work with uh colton to get an audience with some high

067school students to actually and maybe it's because i think that um just going in and asking them what they think we might get some blank stares i think we might have to provide a little context to what a school board does and as he's about right and then also come to them with some ideas and then see what they think about those ideas and see if that what they have to add and or adjust to those things so maybe we can prepare a little bit of a just uh you know i'm not i don't want to do a long presentation but you know giving them a quick overview and what we have done with the board student reps to this point and what with some ideas we have and then seek some input from them

068i'd help with that i'd be on that committee yeah great maybe we can that's where to leave it today is i think everybody's in agreement that we think that student rep is a valuable thing and so if we could give it up to you to get with shane and maybe kind of develop these ideas a little bit more and then let us know where we can help or if you want our involvement yeah that sounds good and tiara uh what we'll do out of today is with the minutes we'll pull out kind of some of our action items from the minutes that we have so that'll be an action item for today i'll send you some um documents i got from riverview that that one of the laws to just for context if you'd like

069yeah and you might um you know prior to us re convening about this topic just take a look at this research brief it's it's a fairly you know it has a couple case studies in it um and so it just kind of gives you some ideas of what other districts around the country do with them uh it might be helpful in this in our final preparations on how we land on what we want to do okay yeah thank you jamie for stepping up right now let's talk about the board calendar um i'm gonna send these down to you and dan i'll put it up here there i actually have an extra one of these if you wanted because oh my god i'm gonna pass these down if you try to put this on eight and

070a half by eleven the font becomes really small i thought it was for a 15 year old guys well i like this also because i've you know uh i put this up in my office and now actually that we've got this as a google doc which is what you see here you know it's it's more uh live and interactive right so i'll just give a quick history on this um joe and other folks the uh you know we have some pieces that uh that we must do each year as a board in terms of taking action on certain items uh throughout the year uh examples would what might be like uh approving the title one plan or the title one policy so that's something that happens in february or uh the cte plan any of

071those things that are those are policy reviews there's annual resolutions that have to happen we adopt the budget always in july cancellation of old warrants chris has put some of those things on here those are things that we have to do this does help build agendas you know as we move through the year um but really the other piece that this i think it i think it was kellyanne that uh brought this idea to us uh a few years ago about trying to capture it where everything is in one place um three of us in that set in that session oh so kellyanne does not just get credit um so anyway the uh the the old one format we had the colors were kind of all over the place this one we tried to align

072the colors by by the by what the topic would be so you can see that what they are down the left-hand side there and we did actually a couple of years ago add the um school visits on here you know we got started a little bit late this year but again that was just so there was some sort of uh rotation on those visits so that everybody wasn't hitting the high school at the same time or hitting one building so i guess the uh there's a couple questions here today uh first do the topics fit what the board would like to see in terms of having a snapshot of the year and then and or are there other other things you'd like to see on here not too much more because the page is going

073to run out mike my quick reaction is uh more information on the teaching and learning uh aspect i think uh i don't want to over tax uh having alicia come in but i think that might be an interesting um category to fill in more from july to december yeah and i think um as i and she does agree too and this was i actually sat down with her in december and we looked at uh the year moving forward but you know we in the 22-23 calendar there will be a more robust teaching and learning section but yeah i agree dan well to that end i think that's a great point dan the order of these topics you know teaching and learning is third from the bottom and it's maybe it's a sublimable identification of priority

074but we should move that up i think well you don't want to get your red colors too close together yeah yeah say was that shane you and i talked about it yesterday we're going to talk in a little bit about superintendent evaluations i'd like to suggest that we plug that into this calendar somewhere so that we continue to we have that as a visual yeah i agree and i don't know which category it would go in well we can we can create a category for that the board or wasda events was also one that we you know we added it doesn't have a lot to it i think one of the things that this some members of this board that were involved maybe four or five years ago um had a uh and again this

075just kind of gets lost in sometimes the whirlwind of life but had the idea of connecting more with other boards um i think that was something a few years ago that jeff had talked about even getting to a neighboring school board meeting in a neighboring community just to see how the how it's run right i mean it and so that was the intention behind board slash wazda events was is there something that the board um wants to do you that again outside of these just mazda events the only thing we have on here is is candidate filing um but any again that's not something we have to decide or or put right now but that was the intention around having that band on this calendar you almost wonder what's board notification right above it are

076those two almost you know we'll see legislative update as a board event in a way if you can blend those two yeah i mean the uh word notification is kind of a catch-all you know but we could maybe figure out how to incorporate some of those things in another way one of the things that and jamie brought it up earlier that um i wanted to talk about when we got to this piece too was about our study sessions so we did we the way that we've sort of incorporated leadership and really school-based uh um sharing uh strengths and weaknesses so that the board really has an understanding of what's going on in schools we've done it a couple of ways we we've had board principle round table discussions where it's an open dialogue set behind

077a certain frame set of questions that each school comes in and answers those questions and we go question by question each school shares and everybody's here and that that was i thought productive it was good we've also done the school of focus visits where the actual entire study session is dedicated to that school and the principal or the administrative team and staff sharing about what's happening in their building at their building where we hold the meeting so i've received feedback on both principals like both they do really like uh having you come to their building and share i mean it is something that is uh it gives them an opportunity to both brag a little bit but also to maybe get the board's ear on support that they might need right coming moving forward so

078the logistical dilemma with that which is not a huge one but it's just uh it's really just a preference of the board would be knowing that we have if you think about the kindergarten early learning center the first second grade building sis middle school high school and then the alternative programs being entities so we have six entities right if you look at our study sessions we have one in september and october we do not have them in november or december and then we have january february march april and may so we really have seven spots while school is in session to have those schools of focus uh which would then would take six of the seven study sessions off the table really just those those become your study sessions which again that might be okay

079right i mean and it might be that if there's something that needs to happen and and that needs to be talked about that it's tagged on to that school of focus because the school of focus meetings generally we haven't done those for more than an hour right that we try to keep those because well we do those in the morning and really if you if we do them at 7 00 a.m uh high school school starting at 7 55 right and so i mean that doesn't mean the admin team can't stay and still interact with the board but any staff that's there we invite staff to be a part of the audience we invite staff to be a part of the presentations um but we really don't go too much longer than an hour so

080one idea could be to really to do a school of focus uh and you know pencil them out starting in october uh giving people the year to start because really the september september one is so early it might be like the second week of school right but if we start with october and put october january february march april and may as the six school focus sessions and then think about is there a secondary topic that wants to be studied at those it might not have anything to do with that school that's fine but you're there you're in that location you've got this chance to hear and interact with that staff but then if there's something the board wants to study more deeply either related or not we can just do it at that second hour

081what about technology issues in terms of uh for streaming and that kind of yeah i mean we've spent a lot of time and money and effort to we have a place available yep we have uh good question and then the other thing i i did like the i love visiting schools i think that was fun when we were doing the little focus it's a different perspective when you have all five or six principles in the same room because then you i think it's easier for me anyway and i would assume maybe some of the other board members when you ask a single question and you hear how it affects each school a little bit differently and how each age puts you in that perspective where you're thinking i think a little more holistically than when

082you are just with one school and you've got the middle schoolers in mind you know it's kind of fun to listen to how jennifer would answer a question versus how cold it would answer a question [Music] and feed off each other a little bit you meet with them i'm sure on a cabinet level or a leadership level all together at times i'm sure the principal grew up always yeah i imagine that you know conversation kind of one comment generates a thought by another person and you know then you start playing off each other there's a value i think there's value to that well what about but i also see the value of going to the building and being in the building and that additional connection and the personal touch to it principal getting a chance

083to showcase their building a little bit and recognize some of their staff i mean we never get to really get to see or interact with staff outside of the principal for the most part yeah and it's still an open public meeting and people are still invited to come and if we can't stream it we can't stream it currently well and i don't know how long this was gonna last and so a couple caveats this we're kind of making a recommendation for next year right i mean because uh we're too late in the year to do a school focus and we do have we because of that we've set up a couple of the board principal roundtables set up two of them this year so we're going to have our first one in february and so

084we're really thinking about next year currently the open public meetings act is amended for the pandemic to require streaming you don't have to be in person you have to stream so uh to jamie's point yeah i mean it would be difficult to do we could i mean we're not gonna have this setup i mean we can still stream it's just gonna be we can still stream from our lower yeah but they are open public meetings and so i think that you know but i don't think just because we don't have this set up in the schools that we should i think it's important to get into the buildings because of because if we were to go to the individual buildings it does take up our study session slots and so what if there was a

085rotation every other year it was in the buildings where it showcased the individual building and then in the opposite year it was a round table and just because you don't get that much turnover in people right i mean sometimes you do but you're gonna have that anyway so if you rotated that then you would maybe be leveraging the benefits of both formats yeah actually i was thinking the same thing um i was just wondering if turnover is inevitable but you know in terms of the the school itself and 90 of the staff it's going to be the same so i hear you saying like uh 2122 we do the round table discussion 22 23 let's do school of focus 23 24 we go back to roundtable is that kind of yeah yeah that's sort of

086yeah at least maybe there's a way to about it for now yeah serious processing yeah because the smoke coming out years really if we did that that school would have four board members in throughout the course of the year they might not want to just focus yeah it's probably a lot of work for them setting up the rooms and yeah i can appreciate that they might even though we treat it as semi-informal when we go in they have prepared it's work to prepare if we're with them for an hour they probably have at least an hour or two behind this pair for that meeting so yeah that's a good point well dan do you have any perspective on that i do and i i was uh agreeing with sarah that being in the schools seems

087really important to me so i my my recommendation would be to have a september uh round table with the principals and a july roundtable with the principal so the start of the year at the end of the year and then have the school of focus be in those six months that you mentioned uh starting in october um and excluding uh the december uh meeting in november as well but i i don't have a problem with rotating either i just i really liked being in the schools and i liked the fact that it made it easy for teachers to come and access that meeting and when we're at the administrative building they have to they have to go back and get to their classrooms in time and i think it's a little harder to get input

088from teachers in those in those circumstances does your mic die i'm going to give them chris okay so do we want to we don't have to necessarily make a decision today but i think there's a sentiment that we want to make sure that we're getting back into schools right for sure there's a couple different concepts that are out there there's a rotational concept there's dan's concept of doing the round tables to book in the year with the visits happening in the in the middle of the year and the you know they're one of the things that i've tried to now no matter how much i say this still doesn't always ring true because i tell i tell the principals when you're preparing for the board to come in yes there's prep work in terms of

089getting people together but i also say that we we don't want a dog and pony show we want you to be real with us we want you to take the work that you're doing right now and share it with us um and just be uh be transparent and so um inevitably they still take it seriously and they they put a little bit more time in and they sometimes try to one-up each other which is it's still okay i mean but knowing that like we want a real snapshot the other thing is you know as we do these buildings are at different points in the year right i mean if we start our visits in october that's going to be much different than a visit in may to a school right so you're going to get

090a perspective at each time of the year which is going to be different right i mean beginning of the year you're looking at what the year is going to look like the end you're looking back so i mean i i don't think it's we've tried to set up our the way that they uh do school improvement planning and that kind of thing so that it is job embedded in real time and it's not something that it's a an accountability check box which that's how to be honest when i was a principal and sealer that's how the visits were with the board back then it was just you checked the box we did it and we it was it was a dog and pony show and that was when i became superintendent something that i wanted

091to change i wanted to be authentic um so again i i think we can accomplish either either way let's leave it the way for this year the two round tables that you've already got plugged in here which would include learning kindergarten john campbell and juan and then sis dinner and middle school i thought we'd do uh basically the elementary okay five together and then six twelve together which include alternative um that we just did that that was an idea just to uh because sometimes getting through topics with all the buildings gets a little lengthy but there's still it you don't get both perspectives but again we'll have them at two different times in the year is that okay for this year i think if if we build on the 2223 calendar with the schools of

092focus uh that'll be next year right and then we can or you as a board can decide at that point in 23 24 did we were those visits good do we just keep doing that or do we want to go back to a rotation the next year of so that's the decisions have to be made today because we kind of already have a 22-23 plan of schools of focus all right so let's take one step at a time and do the round table like you've suggested i like that that plan at least we have the we have some sort of event with them this year it's not on site technology capabilities and given the year that it is and where we are on the calendar um that makes sense to me and then set our

093sights on next year with the first line of choice to be on site in the individual schools if we can figure it out and on top of that commit to make our individual stuff school visits yeah i like that right yeah yep yep that's assumed all right everybody sounds good dan you're good thumbs up thumbs up all right okay why don't we uh can let's take let's take five uh we're about an hour and a half in so let's take five minutes let's break and uh you guys just turn your mics off and anybody watching taking five well yeah let's we can go into recess for five minutes go for a five minute recess and be back in five thank you jamie working i think uh i was starving when we got caught this morning

094so uh do you want to take a few minutes to talk about that before moving into our next topic about the yeah um i know you don't have are you having fun yesterday oh good it's in your with your stuff oh look at that so i i know that the consultants went through the calendar with you and i sent it to dan last night that that search calendar uh so a couple things that we need to um we are yeah we've been live we just weren't on audio so um a couple things that we need to do so january 20th that's a focus group report to the board and that was a special meeting because they want to get the brochure done so that's going to be a zoom and it'll be 15 to 20

095minutes so we just need to decide upon because we need to actually still make it a open public meeting um yeah and you're at are you out of town i am but i can definitely meet yeah virtually it's like 15 minutes right it's it's uh it's just a it's a check-in point so eastern time so do you have a let's look at what do you know what you have is that that's thursday thursday i can make time for you guys so whatever time we want to have that public and they said it's it's really uh they're open too i mean they let me know mark and let me know i say whatever time you guys want to do on the 20th so it's really up to you guys so you're in the east coast for

096vacation or business for business so we can work i can work around yours yeah he's pretty sad he's playing sarah too i mean you guys are i mean you'd be working professionally that day so whatever works okay for your schedules i can make work i can find it i'm saying so sarah it's a conference so i can step away when whenever it works best for you what do we think did we do it earlier in the day and i'm thinking about dan and the time difference how many time zones are going to be across between joe and dan well what if we i mean i'm for you buddy what if we did it around at noon noon seemed to work i mean that's kind of lunch time it's gonna be three o'clock for you it's

097nine o'clock for him but that's still dan stays up until 9 15. so it's perfect uh but it might it might work out um i mean we could go at 10 a.m too or you guys tell me i'll just put 10 that gets dan and seven one us a ten okay dan yeah sounds great first time i've ever had a scheduled meeting in three time zones with the board perfect you have a meeting at 10 already you do you sure well is is 11 better for you ends good okay i will let them know um and then the other piece was so mark told jeff yesterday so those final interviews uh the 12th 13th and 14th so just so you're aware he's going to kind of give i don't know if he told you but

098you know those are full day interviews for the candidates board doesn't have to be there all day but the three evenings they like to do a dinner with the candidate and their spouse and then uh then the board interviews that person after dinner okay so they will do their whole day which is running the gamut of meeting everybody throughout the district or doesn't have to be a part of that at all in the evening there'll be a dinner with the board the spouse will then leave and then it'll just be the board and that candidate for an interview a final interview the dinners are on on camp on site here at the school catered in or yeah yeah yep we'll figure out meals as we get closer but one of the things i wasn't unclear

099on that that i thought was one way jeff heard is another is the 14th which is after your final interview um my understanding was it was at that point that uh you had an executive session and you made your selection following the third interview well and mark told me yesterday that the 15th was a 20-minute meeting and an official roll call but to your point if you decide the night before why wouldn't we just do it right then yeah i guess the only thing that i can think of uh which again i can clarify because we've got a few months here but is contract negotiations um which might happen with the candidate right i mean you you offer if you offer the job but the person on the 14th um you're not going to do

100contract negotiations that night but he told me that when they before excuse me before they walk into the final interview that prior to that that they're provided a copy of the contract and so they have that going into the interview well that's note down well that yeah that's counter to what as me as a superintendent would want because i want to negotiate with the board i don't right i mean there's there's going to be a little bit of negotiation there that if i'm being handed a contract and there's no negotiation we need clarification there yeah that is that's counter to what i understood and really they might be providing you some it's still your process right i mean they're they're laying one out but you could say well we want to do this well in

101the 22nd right there saying offer is to be pre-negotiated yeah yeah that's after the after the work the final selection right so i don't know how they pre-negotiate a contract with all three people you know what i mean i don't know i yeah okay i didn't challenge it i was just trying to i i'm meeting with him here in a little while so i'll clarify both of those things and i'll i'll update this appropriately and then i'll get back to you guys well shane we're grateful to have you involved with this because yeah it's in some cases the outgoing superintendent isn't even no halfway thinking about being engaged let alone as involved as you are yeah well especially if you're firing that person they're definitely not or if they're going to another district there's some

102type of conflict of interest but i happen to not be and i'm living here so so it works out well and i'm happy to be part of the process okay i'll get those clarified and get back to you uh a little housekeeping there's one signature you missed on this the episode signed top and bottom piece on that i guess before we leave that then um just to put it out there that on that april 12 13 14 then we'd like to have as many board members as can attend and be part of those three days yeah and and to that point um if you're involved in one you're involved in all great um so there's kind of two pieces where i mean like we said going into this it's going to be an anomaly year

103there's going to be a little bit more asked of the school board in this year because of just this process right because you really have the the 28th and 29th are the two evenings of the preliminary interviews and then those are shorter interviews to then decide on who the finalists will be so again it it's helpful to be involved in all of those pieces because then um you can give the input needed and depending on how many finalists we semi-finalists we choose 28th and 29th might be exactly right yeah i'd like to do three per day could potentially do four can't do five so if we right six semifinalists it'll be two nights if we go five it'll be two nights yep i mean you could even do uh if you were four you could

104do like a you could start at four even if you wanted to right i mean the candidates will be here regardless you could do a four to six take a break and then anyway we can work that out my understanding is that if it's a one of the applicants is from out of state or has to travel significantly that the uh first interview is on their their nickel but then if they are called back for the final interview that that's on the district 52 correct right yep we have to fly somebody here from wisconsin yeah okay so next topic of discussion i uh queued it up a little bit when we were talking about what the topics were for today but superintendent evaluation so uh the way our policy reads i looked at this last

105night again it's that there's a mid-year check-in and then a final evaluation and so we've been a little bit especially during the pandemic a little bit delinquent in that we did a pseudo mid year last year but it's again there's no legislation that requires it but there is in terms of the process but there are some best practices out there and um i think jeff do you want to talk a little bit about just your thoughts on the evaluation before i talk about the frameworks yeah absolutely um and to start shane i want to just publicly apologize to you for you know drifting from that process over the last couple years you've been more than tolerant patients as uh we wavered on that and i feel this is me just personally that you know we

106we've not done what we should have done on your behalf on the superintendent's behalf and so appreciate your your bandwidth on that and your understanding um although i do think on the positive side we did accomplish it this last year um with a somewhat informal format but i think was still a valuable one in my opinion it was and so um i my objective or thoughts today would be to get a renewed commitment by the board that we need to get back into that process and a commitment to continue or divert to to bring it back to our process and that's why we want to put it on our calendar and talk about formats or exactly you know what that might look like going forward not to minimize the importance of the evaluation with an

107experienced trusted uh solid performance that we've enjoyed from shane but as we enter um you know into a relationship with a new leader i think it's important more important than ever that we have that in place when they come on board and so the idea of a review twice a year is the ideal and so something along the lines of february and then june i believe are the two months that we ought to consider um even though there's no legislation or any rule behind it it seems like that's the common yeah the policy just talks about um the period of time right the february and and end of year calls it but i like february do make sense right so and then but then the process itself or the document or how you do it

108is not mandated whatsoever so anyway that's the hope today is that everybody would endorse the idea of making that part of our formal procedure not only for board responsibility but also for the benefit of our support i would like at some point during this discussion shane for you to provide us with you know your thoughts what what's valuable to you as a superintendent in the event and in that process what do you look to get out of it personally and professionally it might help guide us we'll offer offer some thoughts now because as we look at a couple different formats and ideas that might help with the decision-making process so i i do think that i appreciate what i try to do with with the leaders in this district with their evaluation is i try

109to make it very job embedded meaning that i i'm very much not a person who's into just doing things for compliance sake or just for dog and pony like i said earlier and also i don't want them to take time outside of the important work that they have to do to put together something that's not really [Music] important to them and meaningful to them right and is again job embedded so whatever process we use or you use uh i think it should um mirror the work that they're doing right and and not be like okay i'm focusing on these things here but i have to provide some evaluation criteria on something that we're not really even focusing on right now as a district or it's not as essential right now so being job embedded is

110um important i think as one piece the second piece is um i think that there there should be two points in time like jeff indicated the february and june but i also think that there's a benefit for having something at the beginning of the year to really be clear about what the expectations are for the year i i think that i would recommend and i think this is not too on this is not uncommon at all i would recommend that the new superintendent comes in provides you or you work together with that person to create an entry plan it's like a 100-day entry plan that's there's templates for that it's pretty standard in really a lot of different industries for coming into as in a new executive role it's something that 10 years ago i

111did not i did it a little bit but i was in the district already so it was it was i mean we i just kind of picked the ball up rather than having to come in and since we don't have any internal candidates right we know that the person is going to be coming from outside the district so from that perspective i think that as a superintendent i'd want a little bit of guidance and also something that's like they may have some ideas themselves but you might have some ideas too of what's important for these first three months on the job right if you are to do that then i think that that should be tied to the evaluation right if these are the things that they want to accomplish in their first hundred days

112then however you are able to document or capture that in an evaluation should be really should be tied to that and so that lends itself to a couple different ways to go about it so wazda does have two different uh frameworks that they offer again since nothing's mandated they offer these we've also then done a more informal which was generally what we've done this district is uh here's our sort of work plan for the year the things that we want to focus on and then there's a mid-year update and feedback and then of end-of-year update and feedback right so that's it's it's very much tailored to the work plan for the year and i think that there is some benefit to that because it is there's no format for it but there's a benefit to

113having that flexibility to be just very focused on what the district is uh yeah there's there's a sample work plan right there that we put together yours yeah 2020. yeah yep yep so that's an example when i created 20 right before the pandemic right so and then it has the things that we as a district we're going to be focusing on and trying to accomplish that year the other side of that coin is a more uh standardized approach to evaluation with um there is some benefit to that as well the benefit to that is one for the board to be able to have very clear parameters of what you're evaluating right sometimes a work plan it can be a little bit nebulous without really some clear ideas of what the outcomes are going to be

114and then how you provide feedback for those outcomes whereas a standardized approach those are pretty well laid out for you the drawbacks to a standardized approach is it may not be completely tailored to the work you're doing right does that make sense so i there's there's pros and cons to both i think you can use a hybrid approach which is sort of what i'm thinking of advocating a little bit more for i'm going to pass out to you the first this is the first um sample this this one that you're going to get right now is the washington state standards-based superintendent framework and it's something that was developed in conjunction with wazda and the washington association of school administrators and you'll see that what it has it has six standards to it and then it

115has themes for each it has has standards and themes and then it gives you actually a rubric for what what it might look like if it was done effectively all the way from unsatisfactory all the way to distinguished and so just so you know that unsatisfactory basic proficient and distinguished language it mirrors exactly what principles and teachers have to do in legislation so really when they created this framework while it's not mandated legislatively it was the intention of it was trying to mirror something for superintendent so similar to what others were doing i will also say that with those frameworks that we use for teachers and principals you don't evaluate all of these things every year um most years it's it's actually i was wrong jeff and i said this it's every six years you

116do what's called a comprehensive evaluation actually your first two years you do a comprehensive and then you go on a rotation where you do six years of focused evaluation which is where you actually select in this case it'd be a strand to to focus on and that's what the board would provide feedback on um since it's not legislatively mandated i would never and if even as as a new principal comes to this district i still work with them even though i evaluate them on all the criteria i still ask them to focus on a couple specific ones there's one about building culture within your building i that's what i i really focus on that um we still gather some evidence from the rest of it but if i had the choice legislatively the comprehensive evaluation

117is just it's too much it really honestly is too much to get from anybody and make it meaningful with a job embedded a thought process going on right so if you look at this you know you look at the strands um the standards i mean this is one way to go about it you could say well what's what's the standard here that we might feel as a board that we really like to see our new superintendent do within their first year or you could do that collectively with that person and then take one of those and that's what you evaluate on and literally what you can do with this is what what i do with principles is we take the rubric and we go through and we highlight things um in the in the categories

118you know and then we say we look at kind of the preponderance of the evidence and we collectively come up with what we feel is a good rating and i'll tell you that every single time they are way harder on themselves than i am on them right i'm giving the feedback but they're like oh boy i'm basic here i'm basically and i say well what about this what about that oh yeah i guess you know so it's it's a good conversation but um at the end it's it's my job to make the final determination on what is it are they proficient here are they basic distinguish whatever that looks like but we do it collaboratively right so um there is some benefit to again having something that you can really look at and be clear

119on what the criteria is for those things again the drawback it may not exactly fit what you're doing in the district clarification then a comprehensive would be all of it all standards whereas a focus would be selection of one or maybe two of the standards on a given year yep and you're um you suggested earlier the with a new person that consider a comprehensive year and one and two yeah but i mean i i with a caveat i guess with the legislation works with teachers and principals they're required to do that i don't think that i personally wouldn't advocate for anybody to have a comprehensive evaluation really unless they're in an area really unless they're in a an improvement status or a plan of improvement because look they're not cutting it so we need more

120information here to really make a good decision so we we do that we do have staff that we say look by october of each year we have to determine whether or not we're moving them from a focus to a comprehensive evaluation based on performance um but 95 percent of people get more benefit out of being really intentionally focused on one area and so since there is not um any legislative mandate on how many things you evaluate of a superintendent just that you do it i wouldn't advocate for a full i maybe your first two years you do a little bit more of entry planning and that kind of thing but i wouldn't advocate for a full evaluation i'm going to give you a second format that is uh less standards based just has just um

121different strategic planning goals so these are more like goals that the superintendent would have for the year and then you'll see the middle column is ideas for how you'd monitor that and then the third is an idea for the board response on the topic right so you can see the topics there um on the on the left side ensuring equity and then what the expectations that are given to the superintendent under insurance equity continue programs services and partnerships recognize and remedy any issues and again these documents are available on the wazda website i can get you links to those because they provide a lot of examples here but again there's a lot here but you could streamline this down to just some specific things that you wanted to have evaluated and again um one other

122thing i will say is that boards are very different in how they operate across the state with evaluation uh i've mentored five different superintendents uh three of them it's been very collaborative and how they've decided what the evaluation criteria would look like two of them the board because they were new to their positions said here's your evaluation criteria for the year um and so this is what we need to see evidence on right they they just kind of said we we want to see the evidence on this and then the other three were more like let's collaboratively come up with what we think i like the collaborative approach personally however again it might depend on whether or not the person that you hire has experience if they have experience i would say and successful experience

123i would say that you could do a more streamlined approach whereas if they're brand brand new to a superintendency you might want to look for a little bit more out of what you are going to ask them to give you evidence of so i've done a lot of talking let's uh let's just kind of open it up to see what your thoughts are on the different the different models shane before you go there there's this last last one that um last format that we sort of yeah which is that more uh fell into because we were searching for something a little less formal slash rigorous right um and so we developed this format that was basically more of an open dialogue sort of approach by identifying some areas that we were interested in hearing and

124the idea behind this one was that okay these are some areas that we'd like to hear from you about and the idea was that shane filled out his thoughts on it in these categories first and then provided those to us and then we had an opportunity to respond and add to it and you know ask additional questions and so forth dan for your benefit the this is a one-pager and the areas are district leadership community leadership vision academic performance operations character and then there's a final reflections in growth areas for growth thank you shane yeah and dan um i know you don't have it in front of you but this is the format that we used on this last evaluation that um shane completed for us and dan i neglected to share the ones i

125passed around i have them here for you this is the the standards-based one that talks about here's your your standard up here these are the themes and then this is your rubric here so there are six different standards and i can actually share this link with you dan that'd be great yeah this is yeah so this is shane's this is a printout of you know what shane filled out from that from this outline that we just handed out and then i had a copy also that was my comments and then everybody else had an opportunity to sort of add to that and then that became our discussion at the executive session exactly so it's a much more informal approach but it kind of addressed some key categories that we felt were important to know about

126not tied necessarily to standards framework or or anything like more formal that these others so jeff at the end of that version of it is there a thumbs up i mean part of this evaluation i assume is build a file you know we're happy we're happy we're happy to have issues if a superintendent never had fired or let go so how do you start that portion of it i mean you know how do you see flaws and then and potential for here's what you need to improve on if you don't you know there's still there's still an element of just regular employment here besides some of the categories that we meet here yeah i guess i don't know the answer to your question i i can provide a little context on that i think that

127the so there's two ways to approach that i think the the final um the final evaluation should include any areas of growth for the board that from the board right and and i think that from there that's going to be something you're going to monitor in the second year right and so you're if you're not seeing that growth then again that's addressed and if it's not to a place where you think it needs to be then you you would not renew the contract right and that's one telltale sign of that there could be some you're not fired yet but we're not going to renew you we're not going to roll your contract right because we're we're going to wait to see how things go before we roll your contract again so another approach to that

128is with the standard approach you actually have um you actually have the terms unsatisfactory basic proficient and distinguished and so the way it works with principals and teachers you know you can only live in basics so long right i mean like if you're basic two out of three years then you there's a potential for you to have to be moved into a plan of improvement or if you're unsatisfactory that's automatically gets you into a plan so the the standardized approach gives you an actual rating that you can come up with at the end based on like again preponderance of the evidence you look at it and say well he's got mostly basics here a couple proficients overall this is a basic evaluation the other way again is just the more anecdotal that it obviously puts

129in the document what the areas of concern or growth might need to be that you can then utilize from one year to the next to see if there was growth just for my personal clarity and maybe that for others if we were to adopt the standard space the washington standards-based approach do we as a district determine our own threshold or retaining or renewing a contract say if we have out of the six standards the superintendent must maintain i don't know four out of six as a minimum or something like that is that uh yeah i mean district adopt their own way to use that use that data yeah and honestly um there is nothing that is again mandated on that that'd be a local decision uh i i do know that from just you know

130knowing 80 of the superintendents from around the state that uh there are superintendents who have received exceptional evaluations and then still the board parts ways with them right just not a good fit or whatever it might be right um so there is the the evaluation can be a tool in it should be a feedback tool right first and foremost a feedback tool it can be a tool in aiding in future employment it doesn't have to be i mean it doesn't there's nothing tied to evaluation like there is with with teachers and principals like if you are getting flawless evaluations the only reason i could fire you is for cause like if you like for moral issues or what i mean like evaluatively it's something that such it's actually honestly a challenge for for principles and

131whatnot because uh if you have an employee that you're having issues with yet their evaluation does not reflect that whatsoever then you know that because sometimes they'll take really courageous conversations sometimes to have those those that that feedback that might be hard to give but at the same time um that doesn't necessarily happen with the superintendent it it's if you have it clearly laid out it's nice because it's a there's a clear target for what you're going for but it doesn't have to be there so as a superintendent if there's evaluation in a certain area or category or topic or standard whatever and it's evidence from a superintendent's standpoint is such that supports the standard but the board says sees it differently and says listen maybe we're out of the loop here but we don't

132see that i mean i mean is that a valid dialogue to have at that point to where the board could say in our mind this looks like an area of growth to us whereas the superintendent would go shoot i thought i was hitting home runs here right yeah that definitely can happen and i think that there's uh well that's there's two things on that one um there should be i guess another drawback and potentially benefit of the standards-based framework is having a really a shared understanding of what proficient looks like right i mean i think one of the things that we require all new uh teachers to do and all the new administrators to do is they go through day long and for administrators it's a three day long training on really learning the rubric

133what our look fors within that rubric and how do you interpret what proficient is right you've got these boxes here that tell you what proficient is but we should as as a board and superintendent team uh really be clear that we know what those what that means what does proficient look like builds a commitment to the vision and mission so engages both internal and external stakeholders and regular discussions of the district's vision build shared understanding and commitment to the vision okay what what my regular discussions look like right i mean you might want to look at some of the you get into the weeds a little bit and that's sometimes how these things can get a little bit dicey with using a standards-based approach because but it is really important to have a common understanding

134of what the rubric what the definitions in the rubric are so that you don't get to a place where you're not in that position the second thing i would say is there if you're going to use a standards-based approach and this might not be bad is that there should be more regular checks right there shouldn't be we shouldn't get to february and there's a big misunderstanding about the progress to that point because that can be done through individual meetings with the president right i mean that you can act as this board spokesman on just like the check-ins right uh but then more formally at the february and june but uh you know that's it's almost like a portfolio of work over the year we tell principals when they evaluate teachers there should be no surprises

135you shouldn't be getting to the end of the year and the teacher just finds out that i'm basic in that category what it's you know because there's been multiple conversations over the year and there's been an understanding of where they're at and what they need to do to grow so i mean and and i'll be honest that that could be a challenge with boards and superintendents only because taking that much time i mean uh principals have access to teachers daily and also they differentiate their support with teachers based on where they're at you know in terms of need a teacher that has a lot of need for performance a principal might be in that teacher's classroom or meeting with that teacher weekly in fact we've got that set up in the district now whereas a

136veteran teacher who's doing really well they might just do their check-ins right so again you know it differentiates but it is more of a challenge to provide that feedback if you don't do it more consistently i would think that the periodic check-in would also sort of build the case or build the information leading up to that more formal mid-year and year-end review i mean uh check-in conversation is certainly going to be part of the record if you will moving into that those two more official milestones what i think i hear you say shane is that while the wazda standards based approach is naturally the most formal approach to it it does lend itself to some more structured evaluation tools than the other yeah and so using that as a place to start but then creating

137that hybrid that you referred to that would leverage the positives of the standard base yet allow us to cater and personalize the evaluation to the needs of the district might be the ideal approach the best approach yeah and i think yeah and again i think that especially coming in there's a little bit of a nuance to this process because uh whoever you hire it could vary just a little bit there may be a brand new person and you say okay i'm looking at their background i think they're we hired them we think they're going to be great but i think it's important for this person to really establish equity and cultural responsiveness based on what i mean you might and again you could do a hybrid like we really want you to focus on the

138standard and then these things that are outside of the standard right i mean see again there's no right or wrong way to do it you might it might be something you do with an initial meeting with the superintendent in july i think but having an idea kind of of what you want to do and i think to your point jeff the more fluid approach is what i recommend but if it's a person that you maybe want to see a little bit more standardized on one area because they're brand new and you this is an area you think is important you can do a hybrid i think this situation we'd want a little more standardized if it was shane for example was going to be our superintendent for and didn't really do anything all year the

139evaluation be like what's going on man i mean we didn't make any improvement in any of these areas the new superintendent comes in they might not do anything that shows up on a dashboard anywhere but they took that year to learn the system learn the people to it's a different process for this new person than it would be for shane if we were in the exact same spot beginning end of the year with shane man you know you've had the time to be here why didn't we make any improvements in this the new superintendent we still need to keep moving forward yet some of their time is going to be spent getting to know cabinet getting to know administrators getting to know people making relationships that shane doesn't have to would not have had to

140worry about so it's a little bit different in my view i would expect that that would be the first year of a new superintendent yeah to stabilize and understand yeah i think the first year evaluation in theory should look different the northwest leadership probably has a job description you know that's going to be provided you know maybe some of the evaluation is truly in regards to that basic terminology in the job description you know communication skills how do you treat people you know all this kind of stuff versus we kind of get that box checked in the first year the second year becomes more of the detailed situations than small ish good dialogue good perspective all the way around yeah back to the beginning we've our attempt here is to put this process back on

141the table and back on the docket the details is what we've been talking about for a while yes in my mind it should be something that is measurable appropriate to district initiatives and goals and focus yet is measurable and can be evaluated on a rubric because that's where educators live common to them and so it would behoove us to create an evaluation that would basically score it based on the rubric we've not done that with you because of you know the trust that we had in you but i think it may be the right thing to do at this point going forward any other thoughts dan i i want to focus on one of the things shane said which is some large part for me depends on the level of experience of the superintendent we

142bring in i think once we know that we'll we'll know whether uh a more informal process is appropriate and i and the other thing i think is is important is that it be done in dialogue which is something shane mentioned as well even if we're using the standards based i think having a dialogue to ask which areas they want to focus on in particular would be helpful good good points dan and uh you know as the new superintendent comes on board um depending on whether or not i know them or not or i may i'm happy to help in the process in any way i can if you want me to as we get close to that you know being a liaison or helping support some of that work since you guys are not on

143the ground every day but i can do that a little bit for you as well get some feedback from them on what they've done in the past what they'd like to see and just share that with you will you have your esd hat at that point at that point eventually yeah i'll be supporting the superintendents a lot next year so will there be a cost to the district for them well i'll bill you i'll be still under contract okay good uh i neglected i skipped a bullet point it was the robert's rules of order and so jeff is going in the wrong order in the agenda against the robert true porter if you talk to the certified parliamentarian john r berg who's the gentleman that i listened to that probably would be a violation do

144you want to uh jeff at the the packets that i gave you uh the first page of that packet which now is probably buried in your piles somewhere but it says parliamentary procedures was the conference november 2021 at the top of it uh that's what here if you don't have one handy um so jeff if you want if you want to start with just your the background of what brought you to this topic today and then share anything you want to share so the background on this is um like we all do when we go to this conference you search for a topic that might be interesting and or valuable to the district and um as the chair i was sort of interested in some robert's rules of order and you know thinking we were

145doing the right thing and we did pretty good there um i went to the session well what i didn't know is that this gentleman is a very formal knowledgeable and i don't mean this disrespectfully but an ex-military guy and so he has a very structured presentation for all of us in the room and was quite candid about many things that he talked about and it was all to the letter of the roberts rules of order procedures on the do's and the don'ts and so the caveat that he started with that i think we should all know here is that while there's these processes and rules behind robert's rules of order there's also some flexibility and so an entity such as a school board which he referred to as a committee or small boards category versus

146a board of a you know a large uh fortune 500 company um that there's a little bit of leeway in terms of of some of it so that all being said uh he did provide us with um some ideas for school boards that i thought might be worth at least a chat i'll say at the outset that as i thought about what he said and what i got out of the session we do a pretty good job of following the rules um and so again i'm still looking for that paper that you referred to shane so i think i have mike there it is dan i think it's the same as this but i think i retyped it do you want a copy here yeah if you have another one i've got an extra one

147right here mine's here somewhere i just can't find it so uh let's just kind of go through some of these um the first question was do we have bylaws in our policies i have seen this yesterday we do not and not not that we have to it was just a question that john put out there um but we did find out that in our policy uh 1400 i think he said shane that we do have it stated in our policies that we do follow robert's rules of orders with our meetings so that's that's good there but so the takeaways is that the board chair should have and use the book robert's rules of orders order in brief i took him to his word and i ordered the darn thing so here it is i've read

148it covered a cover um in my sleep three times already um which is not true but i am going to read through some of this because if we do get a challenge you know it's nice to have this document so um we have that now the board does not need a motion to approve minutes the thought from mr berg was that the chair can i can approve it or the chair can approve it unless there are corrections the whole thinking behind this is that if a item is on the agenda by virtue of it being on the agenda and second of all the very fact that we called a meeting to order means there's a quorum that it's assumed that some of the things on this agenda don't need emotion don't need a lot of

149discussion unless there's questions and that you can just approve them and so we go through a lot of formal i entertain a motion we make a motion we have a further discussion but the takeaway was on a lot of these we don't necessarily need some of that by robert's rules of order that doesn't mean we don't continue with what we're doing but the opportunity would be to say because it's on the agenda it's obvious that there's going to be a vote i don't need a motion at that point let's have some discussion and you take a vote no motion part makes sense for some stuff on the agenda but why would the chair just approve the minutes that would almost be working singular instead of as the board at that point i mean i think

150that should still he's probably correct but i think that'd still be something i think it's a quick vote you know if sarah got something in the minutes that care accidentally put in there otherwise that puts all the pressure up to the chair board to find every single detail yeah unless the board unless the chair just said listen before we approve these are there any thoughts or questions about it um any corrections by anybody any additions on any of it would these minutes be from the previous meetings though yeah right so i mean we're all there for those meetings assume that we were all there and and to have read them ahead of time i guess is another assumption right i mean you read the minutes ahead of time and then you're fine with them you're

151not going to bring up any points to say that well this needs to this needs a correction and the minutes are in the consent agenda i believe well no we do those several they're separate they're a separate deal yeah so the philosophy would be by them being on the agenda each of us have had a chance to review beforehand correct where do they actually get approved at then you just make a statement that you've decided to approve the minutes if there's no discussion i believe the line of thinking along that those lines would be the fact that it's on the agenda we've had a chance to look at it and the board chair is the spokesperson for the board at that point unless somebody on the board brings up a correction or a question for

152discussion that they're approved um can i actually speak up in this because you guys haven't gotten the opportunity to see board box yet but i have been doing some training on it and the new system is actually going to require us to put in who made the motion and who made the second for every vote that we take um so if i guess if we want to make a decision about what this looks like maybe that's something that you want to know the system defaults to that just because that's this system was developed what's interesting is you know i've been a part of a lot of boards and i've never seen some of these things right i'm not doubting this guy but it's just i've been a part of a lot of boards so and

153also the system that they developed has these things embedded in it already you know that was developed for municipalities and school districts so it doesn't let you make it error correct but anyway again and please understand i'm not advocating that we change really necessarily it's more of a it was interesting to me that there are some of these shortcuts that we could take if we choose to i don't think it means you have to and i'm not trying to you know make a power play here or anything it's just a matter of if there's some shortcuts or some things that we can do that we don't need to do then that saves us time then fine i think we should stay with where we are yeah jeff wants to be the minute's master it doesn't

154take that much more time right right an emotion any other discussion all in favor yeah okay um minutes do not have to show that a quorum was present um because if there wasn't a quorum the meeting wouldn't have been called to begin with that one makes sense um again i think we're required so it'll continue to say who was present we are required to put which board members were present at each meeting it doesn't specifically have to say that there's a quorum that it does have to say who's there going forward here does that include remote attendance right now the way that i include dan is i just put that dan was present if you would like me to specify that specifically i can um when we've been remote only the meeting location says zoom

155when we've been in person and live streaming it doesn't indicate anything about zoom it just says that we are in the district office board room or wherever else we've been yeah that seems reasonable there's probably going to be times where other board members are going out to be joining remotely and i think as long as we're all in discussion together whether it be on the room or yeah okay um next one is you don't need a second on a motion i don't remember what the expansion of that discussion or that point was again he was moving pretty fast in a lot of these and it was a pretty matter of fact about some of them no explanation needed in some ways so um i think again we just we it doesn't take any more time

156we get a we get a motion and somebody seconds it and we move on but i think by the letter of the rules we according to my notes and i should look it up in my book we don't need a second when a point is perfectly clear emotion is not required i don't know that i like that one because then that puts the onus on me to decide whether it's perfectly clear so um i think again the idea is that you know if it's pretty obvious what's going on in our discussion then we can just move to the motion and get on with it well one of the things i would say too sorry the system's going to make us do some of this stuff right yeah the uh and there are some things that

157require emotion even though like robert's rules of orders might not like there are some things that do like there are certain resolutions that require a motion a first or second and sometimes a roll call though right so it's there are i guess that's another i didn't think about that to now another sort of caveat to keeping things the same at least for the time being so we don't have to delineate does this one do do we have to do a normal motion with this one or not you know what i mean because there are some based on just like the bond refinancing thing we had there's a very specific laid out and statute about how we have to approach that right so again by not having to look up does this one require it or

158not and just doing it we blank it at all if it's a resolution we just yeah and i'll just chime in a little bit again with board docs we will actually be adding part of what's included in board docs is what the recommended motion is for each agenda item so um it'll actually stay in there and you'll be able to view what the recommended motion from staff is and shane doordocs is a application that's used by boards from all industries and companies private and mostly municipalities and districts it's mostly government agencies but yet and so are we assuming then that the rules that they've written into that app are following robert's rules of order and that i mean they're putting requirements in their app but are they really yeah they um part of the fear

159did most of the training but one of the things i did say that so they do tailor it by state so they they must do some research if they tailor it by state and they're they're over over a hundred and something districts in our state uses it already so they are the industry standard for school boards here we've had people ask us before you move some items to the consent agenda recently and once it's on the consent agenda we are just supposed to approve the consent agenda unless there's an item we're going to discuss and if there's an item we're going to discuss we actually have to move it out of the consent agenda into the middle of the administration yeah i think that would be something we've we need you know i guess it

160will save time but we also need to follow that a little bit more if we have a consent agenda and it's an item that it's in there and we're going to pass it within the consent agenda we just need to approve it as is without discussion if i'm not mistaken the consent agenda line item should take a shorter amount of time than we've been taking on it and and so uh gone through a pack of batteries today so a consent agenda item any board member has the authority to say i'd like to pull that off of the consent agenda or i'd like to suggest we table that or create that its own no table postpone no table yeah don't table but um yeah i guess we would uh just a little bit of we're probably

161gonna want to do a little research on that because that's i mean we have a standing practice of asking chris about some of the things that are you know cost pieces right we have a standing practice of asking about human resources action specific we have a standard practice of asking about field trips that are in the consent agenda so you know i think we want to be clear on that procedure before we make any decisions because we'd be pulling all those things out of consent every meeting pretty much right unless the board was okay with just approving as is um so i guess that's something if the board wants to have conversation we'll need to make sure that it's clear that we do have to pull those out and then we figure out a place

162to put them otherwise you know i think maybe this is an example of where you know small boards have some leeway flexibility within the formal rules personally i kind of like the little highlights of inside the consent agenda and unless there's something procedurally wrong well i i think that the one area that we might uh again i think we do have leeway uh this kind of a mix of what jamie's saying is you know there might be we started putting policies policy revisions in the consent agenda um and we typically you know paul if there's a if there's a pretty tear and i kind of decide if if there's a lot there's a huge change to a policy that is substantive that is going to make a difference on things we're going to put that

163in an action item anyway and not put it in consent generally we try to put in consent things that are very minor changes that are not substantive that don't need us to take time to make a motion on it and pass it but i guess to that point you know if there is a policy that we thought was let's put a consent but a board member says i'd like to have some discussion on that can we move that policy into action into the administration section today i think maybe that's where we could utilize the a poll from the consent and then keep the uh the minor dialogue around just the the budgetary issues and field trips within the discussion yeah i think that that's fine you want to make that delineation okay that's easy i

164mean we can again we'll just if it's non-substantive change we'll put it in but if there's something you want to talk about we'll just say hey we get the consent can we take policy 2713 and put it into action so we can have some discussion about it later okay so whoever the chair will have to remember that i mean well tierra will also remind us she's she's good at it well but it would only be pulled out of there if somebody on the board right but if it's on there you know how much we open up for discussion nil you know compared to where it is right right now if it's on the consent agenda we're discussing it a little bit if we're going to move to this philosophy that we're kind of saying we

165reviewed it we're good with it no discussion needed great graduation right yeah and and tierra can actually with board docs especially make real-time modifications to the agenda so if she's going to move an item from one section to the other that's pretty easy to do isn't it correct and i am reading right now um it does look like we're allow your board members are allowed to ask questions of items that are on the consent agenda without having them totally pulled off it would be essentially if you have a concern about something being voted on and you want to have an in-depth discussion that's where you'd need to pull it off the consent agenda and move it to another section of the agenda um but you're allowed to get questions answered there no problem that makes

166good sense yeah that does kind of what we're talking about the discussion got a little deeper or more robust than a just a quick clarification question yes and typically the way that would work is somebody would need to move to have that item removed from the consent agenda and put into another location and that would be part of the minutes that some you know sarah moved to have this field trip discussed as part of the um administration agenda the field trip is a good example we had that question today you know where's the funds coming from i think that's a quick good quick clarification question where yeah right not like i do not question is and we should move it down to the administrative item right yep yeah good example jimmy yep sounds good okay

167sierra you're quick on that good okay so we'll take through these pretty quick here now no such thing as tabling emotion we've not ever done that but anyway this is semantics i guess his term was postponed indefinitely so i'm not too worried about that one um takes two-thirds of a vote to close a debate if it goes too long the chair is supposed to be monitoring that and if it gets to be too too much somebody can call for a closing of the debate and it takes two-thirds so if there's five on the board he says it's three it's actually four no because it's three point three three three so it's actually four i don't we never got there or so um next one is a motion is not required to approve resolution we already

168talked about that we're just going to stay the course board members and oh this one's a good one board members and others at the table should be addressed by their position and last name not by their first name boards are a legislative body so it should be superintendent backlund and director michael and and i went okay whatever yeah i've actually been to other board meetings and i've never seen that happen i do see uh sometimes addressing um when the audience addresses they do it but dialogue i've seen it be pretty informal but i mean again it's a preference thing right you gotta understand i mean this guy is squeaky clean when he gets out of bed so you know um when a board member joins the board no topics that require multiple meetings so this

169is an interesting one if you have a new board member joe no topics that require multiple meetings like a new policy where it takes two meetings to approve technically we could not and we did not introduce a new policy in december when joe wasn't here required to ask him to vote on it in january when he is here yep which makes sense to me makes sense yeah oh that was you i don't know did we know that one before i never i didn't know that but it makes sense um and then if moving a meeting from one venue or format to another like in person to online the meeting is moved to a recess to be resumed next time at whatever new time i did know that one you didn't know that prepared for it

170once that's a recess not an episode so we would say we're going to recess this meeting and we will recess at this time and move to a remote setting it could be resumed at 6 45 pm or whatever right you just you go into recess not adjournment anyway i thought it was interesting um i think at the end of the day i'm happy that we live in sila and not at some high corporate facilities somewhere where you have to follow some of the more fun yeah and um i appreciate his knowledge and intensity on it and i'll i will read through some of the book just because it's sort of interesting to me but yeah at the end of the day we do pretty good we follow a pretty strong format and we've got our

171president robert's rules expert in the corner over here miss tiara will keep us in line there you go that's it for that so that's actually the last thing on the agenda um good timing have a 10 o'clock meeting today yeah um i had asked if you had a chance to do any kind of a handout on our district position i do and i've got that to give it's actually in your packets oh it is there yeah there are two handouts in your packets that i'll just um briefly just for your to take with you uh jeff had indicated there there are two hot topics that aren't as hot right now but they were hot in the summer around uh the the ccdei which is a cultural competency diversity equity inclusion uh bill that was passed

172last year and and a lot of misinformation about critical race theory so one side of it has just what we deemed like we called it a little elevator speech to just here this is what we're doing this was shared kind of in an open public meeting back in the i think it was in june but uh for everybody's benefit and joe's too just if this is still an issue here is some background information for you the other side is a little bit more relevant because we're actually having our community forum next week on conference of sex ed health education and again um this is these are the facts here that uh to go along to dispel any rumors you might be hearing about what's happening in schools around conference education as you can see that

173there are not that many actual changes to what we're already doing um and and so there are benefits here i mean there's some beneficial information here and there's some if you are interested actually there's on our website today there'll be a link to uh we're doing the that this one virtually so it's next wednesday at 5 30 is a community virtual forum on comprehensive sex health education so if you're interested in uh either watching it afterwards we'll record it or watching it you can do that again this is just background information the other the other go ahead just related to that i know that um mark had a parent's monday did you hear how that went i did not because i was yeah i was out of the district on monday but i can yeah

174yeah no i don't know that's a good question though and the other thing is open public meeting act uh this is just some nice tips and tools that uh tara put together that she highlighted some things just again we won't go over these right now i just want you to have them as a reference as um good reminders i know that everybody has to go through opma training every so often but just nice to have reminders so yep good appreciate that um kind of on a related note is there any sort of update you can provide to us in terms of kovid and where we are with that uh yeah i think you saw my email that i sent out yesterday it's all staff i have a parent email set to go out here around

175noon today um the the issue is uh obviously omicron and what we have in terms of case counts in our county uh if you saw the two weeks fan prior leading up to christmas there were 91 total cases for school-age kids in yakima county and 400 and plus for the entire county and then as of the two weeks after christmas it was spiked to almost 900 kids cases and over 4 600 cases total so it was a ten-fold increase in that two-period two-week period of time and we are feeling it obviously staffing is the biggest issue that we have and we're very lucky that people are not sick in terms of just having a lot of symptoms but we're a lot of people that are infected and so we're being preemptive in just planning for

176the possibility that if we are unable to have a sufficient staff to run the district that we can move to a remote model for a short period of time we don't want to do that our philosophy is we want to do whatever we can to stay in school we met with our principals on tuesday night they're willing to do whatever it takes i mean we're already we already have principals uh coach instructional coaches a lot of covering classes right now we met with the union last night talked about adding kids to classes when i teach when a teacher's gone we can't find a sub which actually works fairly well my daughter for example this week she teaches fourth grade in spokane she's had 11 kids in her class out of 19 the past three days

177right so you're not talking about large numbers of kids and if you have to combine a couple classes those are all things we were working out at the union last night so we have a lot of contingencies in place to try to avoid a remote move but just knowing that we don't want to get caught flat-footed and don't want to have those plans in place we're hopeful that their plans that we're creating that we don't have to use but just as an example yakima sent out last night they have three elementary schools that are going remote today they're going looks like they're going to go all remote for the entire district next week um and so they're the in mount adams did uh yesterday as well and that was a bus driver shortage and so

178that's you know there are caveats this as well i mean it it could be teachers uh or it could be bus drivers it could be would wipe out a nutrition you know one of the things that we're the abatement crew that's working on the demolition of the new with the old john campbell uh the entire abatement crew got covered the whole crew so they're out this week so it's going to push out a bateman a week so they're letting us know they're going to try to catch up but so the entire abatement crews out so again if we get an entire kitchen crew route the entire bus garage out whatever it just we need to have a contingency plan in place to be able to go remote so that we can continue operation could it

179also be that the county comes in and says our numbers are too high in our district and says yes the county so the the state is not going to come in at all they've made that clear that governor nor the state is going to make any decisions about school which is good and bad i mean it's good because you know people like local control but at the same time you know you're uh pitting districts almost against each other yakima is closed right now right three their elementary schools are in remote and next week they're all gonna be remote our plan is to not be unless we have to so um it is a little bit challenging that way uh but um the two ways that you can shut down are local based on staff and

180local based on health jurisdiction so at this point uh we feel like the spike is not quite here yet we're looking at potentially about a week away from that the east coast had just started to go down and we're behind them a little bit so we're gonna do what we can it doesn't quite feel like deja vu but it's close two years ago yep two years ago i i just want to uh chime in quickly and say thank you to those teachers who are covering classrooms um on their on their teacher prep time or during their lunch times uh that that's obviously not sustainable but it's it's really appreciated and uh uh i i'm i'm thankful for those teachers who are who are pulling those extra ships yeah yeah and we've we worked on a

181compensation model for that that's part of the we were talking about with the association last night and so yeah i mean uh compensation is one thing but just having that time in your day is important as well right just being able to decompress and get your things together for your next classes is important as well and so we do appreciate and really that's that goes across the board dan we've got uh perez that um the middle school and high school offered their peras to the elementary schools where it's a little bit more needed so lee grahams yesterday's at the kindergarten building called the middle school and said hey i've got i'm short five today can you send me a couple of your peras and so a great collaborative effort but uh people are all over

182the district are stepping up so if anybody has a cdl license we could get you out there driving bus too because that's that's the one we're really concerned about right is uh getting our our kids here yeah i should have followed through with my cdl training could be an exception and the board have the authority to make an acceptance i don't think to law well thank you for the update shane we'll cross our fingers that we can maintain our in-person learning but look to you and others in the district to guide us and make sure that we're safe and that we do the right thing for safety of our children and staff for sure all right anything else oh that's it good timing dan thank you okay yes dan thank you very much for joining

183um have a great rest of your day oh 7 p.m though um yeah well there's nothing else i'll just make a comment that next meeting is our business meeting to be held january 27th at 4 30 correct um unless something changes we'll be right back here in person correct good dialogue good discussion today welcome joe congratulations jamie and uh with that this meeting is adjourned thank you we'll see you dan thanks