March 25, 2021 School Board Meeting

001good evening i'd like to call this thursday march 25th meeting of the tacoma school district board of directors to order would you please rise for a flagship under god indivisible with justice for all yes good evening president cobb here vice president here director feeding here director leon here director is it's been moved and seconded all those in favor of adopting the agenda say aye aye any opposed motion is adopted item number five recognition of staff students and community 5.1 recognition of gold star community partner award to ranco's pharmacy liz ranco's is amanda or dan is liz here madam president if we may can we just uh either wait to see if liz shows up or we can reschedule this yeah we'll move on to item number six and come back to it if he's here

002our number six superintendents report 6.1 covered 19 updates update tom i think we have the other presentation that we're going to go for all right good evening ladies and gentlemen so tonight is march 25th and this is our regular scheduled code update i just want to remind a few folks that these are the safety precautions that we continue to follow which include our department of health guides and a reminder for all of us to continue to mask our family app for attestation and opportunities and please we're just continually reminding folks as community transmission is still alive with us to stay home if you don't feel well and then check with your school's information on any dates and cohort that's as you have questions so here's our current status currently we have pre-k currently in cohorts

003kindergarteners grades one and two four days a week and then we are now with grades three four five six seven nine and twelve excuse me nine and twelve are all in cohorts not in grade eight yet and here's what's coming next this coming monday march 29th our 8th graders will join us on campus 10th graders and 11th graders who will all be joining us two days a week just want to remind some folks of some other updates we continue to explore covet testing opportunities and vaccinations we have a number of qualified vaccination staff clinics and we've been working with our community partners as well to offer them opportunities uh we have voluntary staff coveted testing available some spring activities for all of us to remind uh t.o over it t-o-l registration for the 2021 and

0042022 year is continuing and we've had a great initial turnout for that high school sports season registration and they're actually getting into gear to start our graduation planning continues forward and we're expecting some further guidance for the facility at the tacoma dome in mid-april and so we are continuing to work with the tacoma dome and the state department on that grades three through 12 remaining cohorts some grade levels may need to offer an additional opportunity on campus to meet the 30 percent requirement so we're currently working with the state in some of our grade levels to make sure that students who choose have access for on-site opportunities and then we're working in collaboration with our different staff members to get ideas on what should that look like for those students that choose to access that

005as folks may know the governor made a decision today an announcement to offer for those school districts that choose to to move to a three foot versus six foot that guidance is is not as just as simple as three feet to six feet and so the department of health put out some guidance today i believe it was around 20 pages this just happened this afternoon so we have not had a chance to digest that and i'll remind the board of directors that this is a local decision it does not mean that we have to move to department uh or excuse me to three feet we can maintain six feet but by the summer time it's my understanding from reading a little bit we have to start summer or fall so next fall we can plan

006that that would be three feet uh in classroom spaces and like i said it's a little more nuanced than just a simple three feet or six feet there are certain spaces that need to remain six feet there's uh community transmission rates that may drive that secondary versus elementary so we'll come back to you with further information before we make any final recommendations we are planning for both in-person and remote learning opportunities this summer and then also fall jump start activities and that is our quick report tonight thank you for the report any questions or comments from the board no i think dr garcia and in terms of like trying to understand the new guidance like i imagine in a similar way that with the department of labor like there's just going to be a lot

007of nuances in trying to understand and um be able to operationalize the new guidance yes and like i said we have not had a chance to fully digest what the state department's but then the pierce county health department also has an opportunity to provide guidance on top of that and so we certainly will not be implementing anything in the next day or so we'll need some time and then we will be bringing that back to you and seeing there's all kinds of different implications that we would need to examine what are our current agreements if there's any implications of those current agreements um this just the general feeling of the community what does that mean what would it mean for implementation timelines uh what is the remaining time left in school i'll remind folks we

008are of another week before we have spring break and we're in that final push so there's all kinds of implications that we'll have to look at and examine thank you i have a couple of um questions that i don't think you have concrete answers to but i just want to throw them out there at this stage related to graduation planning i assume that you still have lots to figure out but given that more people are getting vaccinated these days and transmission rates are what they are currently i'd guess that right now we'd know the minimum number of family members that students would be able to have at graduation but do you have a sense of where that might land like do you expect that students might be able to invite two people four people or

009is that all is it all just too soon to tell it's all too soon to tell and then to add a complexity of that in mid-april the state is supposed to examine what phase each county is in and so um it will also depend if uh if we stay with the tacoma dome that has different restrictions because it is an indoor venue uh versus an outdoor venue um well we have gotten some guidance to start with that graduates don't count in that total number so that's some good news uh that we are able to do that but there is a lot of information still to digest and we really have to wait till that mid april to see um if pierce county stays in the same phase that it's in or if it moves backwards

010or if there's a new phase four that's accelerated and so there's a lot of information so what's most important is is that we are planning a in person graduation we are going to work to safely allow as many family and friend members to attend as possible within that guidance okay and then separately i know that freshmen or for ninth grade students came back to school in the last week can you tell us a bit about any of the orientation activities that happen for ninth grade students just examples i know at various school to school but how are the freshmen or ninth graders kind of onboarded into school what did that look like if i may i might put our student reps on the the dice come on if you have any specific examples i think

011it's probably let the experts speak right thanks um so i came back as a senior um on monday and then on thursday the ninth graders joined the seniors and um at least at my school we set out about two hours in the morning so that seniors and ninth graders could have time to talk and like take them around campus and make sure that because we have mentor group we wanted to bond with them before we graduated and left and so it also gave them more time with their teachers to kind of get to know them so i think that schools are definitely trying their best to get ninth graders acquainted with being in person in high school um and from what i've seen a lot of ninth graders are talking with each other and like

012have gotten a lot closer than i remember being with other ninth graders when i was a freshman and i think it's because they've been in such a weird place for so long and so i think that having that time with seniors and having that time with themselves just as a 9th grade class has really helped thanks jasmine um yeah i'll echo a lot of what she said um specifically at wilson what i saw was we were encouraged to wear um like wilson gear our senior shirts so that they could identify us and ask us for help in the hallways and i saw that happening i saw a couple examples you know where's this classroom it's probably a little bit easier to navigate wilson's campus than sam's but um yeah so i just a lot of

013help from people going around and uh i think that a lot of the ninth graders were able to settle in easier than usual i think because of that so yeah and thanks some i know schools have done videos and opportunities and then they've had activities that even in the online setting uh where there's whole glass time of trying to prepare students for what does that mean on campus and then orientations also with students that have come on for sports and now we're having some club activities and stuff as well thank you that's really helpful to hear just the experience between the seniors and the ninth graders anecdotally i was talking to a woman whose daughter as a kindergartner in tacoma and she was just saying how her daughter in particular felt so much more prepared

014to support her student who's a new kindergartner because they had the time at home where it was fully online where the parent could see the interaction between student and teacher and kind of help coach their student and then it was the two days in person and then stair stepping into the four days so even though we had to institute that model because we were responding to a crisis well that kind of stair step structure i don't know that everybody had this experience i'm sure that everyone did not but the stair step that they experienced plus this interaction between ninth and twelfth graders as we talked earlier about not all of this is bad there it just seems like there are nuggets that are emerging that it'd be interesting to see if we can explore implementing

015or learning more about down the road in addition like talking to the head start policy council they talked about those tablets and devices not being not as useful i don't remember if this came up in our board meeting but that helping to facilitate the family engagement because the tablets were a communication tool so as we keep moving forward we just don't want to lose sight of potential positive things that have come out of this so that's when we when we talk about jump start activities that's a lot of what schools are examining of what can we learn and how can we do things upfront online and then really maximize that in person time as well sorry my last question about covet is not as more financial in nature do you all have a sense of

016when we'll know um what the financial implications of the s or three or the la most recent recovery bill what the implications are financially for tacoma so we have a an understanding of predict or what the predicted money that would flow to tacoma is what we do not know is is what are the uh implications for the state budget when that is identified so it's a little bit premature for us to say well here's the money because some of that money may come with obligations at the state level and may be used to backfill other opportunities at the state level so we're still not quite there yet with a solid number okay thank you any other comments or questions seeing none thank you for the update do we have our community partner or not okay

017thank you we'll move on to item number 6.2 and that is the capital projects update thank you just wanted to provide the public an update with our existing capital projects as well as our upcoming capital projects in addition we'll have a high level overview of our community inclusion goals just wanted to introduce morris aldridge our executive director of planning and construction thank you thank you good evening everyone as we go through this part of what we want to try and do again as chris was saying is make sure that the projects that we've got currently ongoing and then some of those that are coming up fairly soon this year we want to make sure that our board and our community was aware of where we stood at this particular point so we'll start out at

018downing elementary which of course the board of members we've approved that the gmp to move forward to that project we've got the groundbreaking coming up on that on april 2nd and we actually i think hopefully by tomorrow afternoon we'll actually close on the purchase of that building it's i know the superintendent has done a lot of signing over the last few days and trying to get that done uh but we're moving out there you can see there we've got some community outreach dates so that we can introduce the community to the project team and what we try and do on all of our major projects like this is make sure that folks that live in those areas understand the truck routes and the way the construction folks will be coming in and going out of

019the site because it's always going to be disruptive but we want to make sure that we're consistent everyone knows which way those trucks are so that they can also contact us if someone is not where they're supposed to be so it'll cover every aspect of how they interact in with the community there skyline elementary of course we've got that groundbreaking tomorrow um construction on that will begin april 1st a community outreach meeting for that is on april 13th and again the same basic thing that we'll be doing there with with downing as well hunt middle school if you've had a chance to drive past that site we're we're at 60 completion a lot of interior paint work has already already been done they're starting to work on that exterior but of course the rain has

020slowed some of that down uh especially in the fields on the back side of it if you're if you if you go to popeye's at all you'll notice one time there was a lake behind the school there was so much water that was sitting up there they just actually started this week on drilling in fusion wells so we're actually with infusion wells we're actually drilling down into the ground so that that water gets treated above ground and then actually goes down into the soil and then percolates out into the sound the first campus that we've actually done that way it keeps us from having to store large volumes of water on site because with the site like that i think they estimate that like 40 to 50 million gallons of water fall on the site

021so we want to make sure that we're being good stewards as well as we move forward with this uh so you can see more drainage upgrades we're also working on some some of the street improvements we're coordinating with the city on uh it's not basalt i can't think of the name of the street right now where they're going to do half of it and we're going to have over by the apartment complex so we're working with them on that uh you can see there from a mechanical standpoint electrical most of those things are complete as well and of course that campus will open this fall we've been working with the new administrative team they've been in that building a couple of different times as we look at the various things that are going to make

022sure that that's a smooth transition moving into that facility boston elementary school we of course the board approved us hiring henself phelps and blrb to do that replacement campus we will move the faucet students and staff to mckinley and this will be the first time we'll actually have them on that swing site for two years we're trying to avoid moving students during the middle of the school year academically it's just not a good sound policy to move them it can be done it's it's disruptive from a teaching standpoint someone actually had to change classrooms while i was teaching high school science it's always disruptive when you move even more disruptive when you're changing buildings so we're going to try and make sure that's eliminated as you can see we'll make sure the students will have

023transportation will be provided for all students that would like it and then the demolition of that building would actually start in the fall so we can get that site cleared and gives us enough time to make sure we've got a a good smooth transition there i'm also happy to say that tacoma public schools is the first district in the state of washington that is received the agency certification for design build design build is an alternative delivery method which typically you well by law you have to actually go to the state's project review committee every time in order to get approval because of our success in design build we do have the option to go and ask for agency certification we went in january and we are approved for that we're the only public school in

024there only two other schools in the state of washington and that is uw and washington state and in doing design builds we've seen in in a lot of our projects we talked about cost savings but we talk about cost certainty and if you'll notice that on bose elementary school we've had zero change orders that project will close out fairly soon with zero change orders so far on hunt we've had zero change orders and that occurs because we're able to actually work with the contractor contractor and architect are working together so our price certainty is better up front than it is anywhere else along the way and in fact if you look at bose we did not have the artificial turf as part of that contract and actually thanks to coven we were able to do

025that because were able to get rid of the building sooner which meant we were able to save some fees on the back end so we were able to put that in because of actually because of coba dang team so when you start looking at it it's a win-win i think both for our students and staff and for our taxpayers as well we're also right now we're going out and this is this has already been been published looking at our first group of schools for our safety and security rfp we'll be coming back to the board in about roughly 90 days with the recommendation of who we move forward with there the schools are grouped based on the plan that our safety and security department has we then we will take that first group and get

026those done and then start working on the next and one of the things i would like to say is that we don't we we're not doing all of them at one time because we still have to manage and oversee these projects and the last thing we want to do is have 57 things going on around the city and not making sure that they're done correctly so the the the listing that's there was done again by our safety and security in a way that he believes that is it's the most prudent way for us to move forward when we're looking at those schools so uh the intrusion detection that we're currently have will be updated across the district access control intercom system vestibules and our cctv all of those systems will be upgraded in our older

027buildings and in our neural buildings of course there will be maybe some minor things that may occur when it comes to vestibules we've also got this bundle that's on our agenda for tonight for later approval we've got looking at we've got lincoln high school on the upper field where we're looking at adding baseball softball and tennis courts up there if you have been on those facilities you realize well today it's a swamp where they're trying to practice baseball and softball if you're down in the lincoln bowl you realize that there are some things there that need to be improved i can't tell you that that we're actually going to be able to touch everything on the bowl that needs to depending on how our dollars go but we've got significant dollars there at mason middle

028school replacing the well actually replacing the turf there and then fixing their running track which is a cinder track right now and is actually too short but it will it will actually be a competition track by the time we're done uh replacing the tennis courts at browns point that we took out at stadium high school for stadium high school i should say uh baseball and softball because they do not also do not have a baseball softball field those fields will be placed at stanley and when we do that at stanley we're also going to improve the elementary playground area to make sure that they have some play area that's just outside of the field that that area is large enough for us to be able to do that so they'll have an artificial turf area

029for them to play on and when they have to spill over they can also go out onto those spills as well and then at geodrone putting in artificial turf there and putting in an all-weather track at that particular site and then over at madison and mcarver this is like a head start upgrade is what we've got in the in those two buildings mccarver primary i'm sorry um both of the both of these buildings if you've been in the know that we've got some work that needs to be done uh on madison in particular we're gonna paint the exterior fix the roof fix the round building so that we've got a good roof area there improve that playground remove the portables on the back side of that so that that's open to the community so they

030can use that playground area you may not realize with those elementary students in those neighborhoods actually go to school at jenny reed which is significant when you start looking at where if they want to play after school it's it's a long way from where they live so this actually will work in helping them as well because we are going to put both playground systems there as if it were a regular elementary school not just the head start center and at mccarver working in the classrooms and doing some work there as well as going into that gym on our heating and cooling and ventilation side one of the things i want to make sure that that that we assure you is that we are up to code and up to standard on everything that is required

031we are however looking at the recommendations that have come down from various groups to see where we can improve so we're actually hired an outside consultant to see how much can we do with the dollars we've got to make sure we're improving in every area we can and investing in the community part of what this board passed in 2016 was the inclusion plan to try and increase the dollars that we're spending one within tacoma 2 within our minority and women-owned business community and you can see there with what we've done on both hunt bose bernie and grant is that we have exceeded those goals in every area but one and that is right now is on the women-owned side and we're currently working with the city and other groups to try and find and help

032develop those programs as we go but if you look at for instance under the minority business participation uh at hunt right now we're still only at 14.7 percent we're at 29 uh on bows 15 at bernie 25 grant but what i really want to focus on is when you start looking at what we've spent locally 93 at hunt 82 percent at bose we're at 48 at bernie and 87 percent at grant so on average we're well above 60 we want to continue not only with our major capital projects in doing that but also in some of our smaller projects so our team right now when we go out and we're looking for vendors we first look in tacoma then we go into pierce county and then we go outside of that if we don't and

033in case there are some specialties that are always going to be outside because they're not headquartered in pierce county but our goal as we told the taxpayers when we went out is to engage as many contractors within pierce county and within tacoma in particular as often as we possibly can that's where we thank the voters there any questions thank you questions from the board i i just want to say um thank you so much morris to you and the whole team and i think it's so impressive when we keep hearing about the design build model and and how it really has changed the way we have monitored and the fiduciary responsibility we have over those bond funds and i really appreciate the hard work your team's done to continue to keep that um you know

034really so we know what we're what we're spending it on and we're keeping within our our budget and and also great work on all the schools that are i've been going by some of them and seeing what's been going on and um it's exciting for the communities to see their community schools being attended to so thank you thank you thank you director keating did you have questions um just i had one question about stadium and um and thank you for answering that that's going to the ball fields are going to be on stanley and it makes me think about traffic and considerations for traffic in that area because if i remember right stanley like you can't access stanley on sprague it's a residential residential street there so just curious about what considerations have been made

035for just the traffic pattern since it's in a residential area part of what we have to do is as we plan these projects is working with the city and they they really tell us what we have to do when we're putting when we're actually changing what's happening on the site so over at stanley in particular we know that we're going to have to improve parking so we'll add additional parking to that site as we look at the those side streets that come off we'll have to improve at least one of those possibly two one for sure and that's the one that would be on the north side that one we will have to improve the one on the south side we've got some minor things we'll have to do there uh there's still we're still

036in conversation with them if we'll have to actually add a pedestrian light going across 19th if i'm not mistaken right there because if you think about where that um i can't i'm sorry i can't remember the name of the street i didn't see it i know yeah but so we've got some crossing and things that are there so we're working with them and there's a i'd say there's very good possibility that we're gonna have to put something in there but as far as the street in front of stanley there hasn't been anything proposed by the city as far as what they've recommended that we do but we try and we i shouldn't say tracks we have to we do everything that the city tells us we need to do in order to work on those

037traffic patterns thank you and my just other follow-up to that as i get to serve on the traffic and safety committee and so i've seen some of these conversations specifically the partnership with the city around the new construction and it's been really impressive to see how um you know like this just like a um the collaboration and intention between you know the city party the city and the district is just really impressive so thank you any other questions director leon i think the community is real thankful for specifically also the safety and security upgrades that you're making um have made throughout the schools you've mentioned the phase one schools that are on the list some schools already have full security in place and then uh you just tell it's phase one uh the beginning and

038then how many phases are there two and three what's what's been three and three at the most uh if it all depends on how fast this can go and what that turnover is um and another reason we're doing a design build because because these are existing facilities you've actually got to go ahead and do some investigation into those buildings to see where you can put doors where you may need to take down walls so that we're actually changing that those those those flows so some are are very easy and i would hate to put give you a timeline right now until we actually get the team in place and they've had a chance to go in and look at those facilities so it's uh unable to give a timeline for when a rough time item

039for when all the schools might have the the basic we're hoping no more than two and a half years okay thank you well it's just a follow-up on that question about safety and security when we were having conversations about upgrades that were needed across the district one of the things that the board put forward is that we really didn't we want schools to be safe and secure but we don't want them to be hardened and to feel like maximum security institutions so is the model that you have at grant an example like that what grant feels like in the grant entry the model that we will likely be implementing across yeah that that model if you look at that look at grant look at bose look at bernie all of those it's again it's where

040you're you're invited in but you can only go to a certain point until someone opens the door for you uh because we don't want folks walking in and believing that they're in a box and they can't really see what's going on someone's watching them we want them to feel welcome with everything that we do so we do that not only with our vestibule and making sure that but they can see people and people folks can see them but we're we're putting our even our our cameras strategically so you don't think you're being watched every second of the day you know we're making sure that yes we're checking out your cars in the parking lot making sure those areas are safe looking at our entrances but you're not going to see a camera you know every

041every 20 every 25 30 feet going down the hallway for instance we want to make sure our students and staff still have their privacy but we're also looking at just really doing our base safety needs for those folks thank you any other comments just real quickly madam president in regards to the inclusion goals it's it's important for us to we didn't develop those goals in isolation we worked with a number of partners uh the trades mr mark martinez members of the community grover johnson in the city of tacoma so as folks are seeing those um they're pretty unprecedented and we were not able to find a public school system that set inclusion goals and so morris alicia laver the team there's quite a few extensive folks from purchasing have done a number of outreach to

042help us but i just want to make sure that folks understand that we weren't doing that in isolation we were doing that in partnership learning from sound transit and a variety of other agencies that have tried to do this work too so it's uh it's definitely a spotlight and i hope that the community sees that we're wanting to invest back into the community thanks i appreciate you pointing that out um i think we get so used to the partnerships and the way that we work that wouldn't always call things out that aren't typical so i think that's a really good point speaking of that as you were moving through the slides and just noting the places where improvements were going to be it stood out to me like the soda that soda has different locations

043but one of the locations of soda ted brown and i just remember being a kid getting my little clarinet from ted brown and i have that association but just the reference to soda ted brown has signaled that there's a partnership with ted brown of some kind and so i just call it out here because it occurred to me but it's so subtle in like everything that we're doing like we talk about partnerships and we see a lot of them but it just really is neat to see that be embedded even in your previous updates about the improvements that will be um happening and the partnerships between the boys and girls club and their facilities and ours so thank you for like leaning into that and even in our building and construction department too so appreciate

044your presentation thank you um moving on to item number seven members of the public wishing to address the board no alternate protocols we've been implementing several different protocols as we've moved through different meeting modes but the school board members encourage public participation your civil input is appreciated board members will not respond to comments directly during the meeting and this but the superintendent or her designee will follow up with you if need be after the meeting instead of speaking at a meeting you may also send an email to the board at board tacoma.k12.wa.us we have two options for you to participate in public comment one is in person and i think we have a few speakers here tonight then you can also send written comment that we will attach to the board agendas so superintendent santorno

045will you please call the speakers each speaker will have up to three minutes to speak and you should get a warning when you have one minute left i will first speaker is tom pearson regarding the superintendent replacement process well thank you president cobb members of the school board i'm tom pearson i'm president ceo for the tacoma pierce county chamber and i just wanted to take us back and so i'm speaking on behalf of the superintendent hiring process and i want to take us back 10 years ago 10 years ago when businesses came to us and said where should we play our business of course we always said tacoma tacoma's place do business but where do we want to put our schools we didn't always say it was tacoma if we could move forward now with

046the leadership of our superintendent carlos centorno now we say and we know the work that you've done work the leadership's done this is the place to put your students this is a place you want to locate your residence and this is a place you want to do business and it's because of leadership the direction that this body board leadership everybody's worked behind so hard in the past 10 years during her leadership and we are nationally recognized i mean the president was talking about some of the partnerships that we just inherently know about and we work so well together those are the things that we all do together here in tacoma and for the tacoma public schools without the schools it's really the heartbeat and with a weak heart with so many medical i know but

047with weak heart it doesn't work our community doesn't work and so what i would say is that we want to continue the leadership the direction that we're going if we want to talk about strategic plan with kovid some other things that's a separate path but i would encourage you to move forward with hiring your deputy dr garcia um josh garcia i've known known josh for probably about 20 years through not this district but through another district and i can tell you leadership matters and and leadership matters for our community at this time and and in this facility in our schools and so i can't speak more highly for one individual than josh josh is a true leader brings people together he's focused on moving forward and and i trust josh you know completely in terms

048of the work that he's done here and has and its continuation of carla's work moving us forward moving tacoma forward moving our community forward so thank you for your time and i just 100 percent support josh and moving forward with the appointment of the deputy thank you second speaker excuse me holly banford hunt regarding superintendent hiring process hi everybody i'm holly bamford hunt director of bamford foundation and community volunteer on boards of organizations who partner with tacoma schools in support of our children's community and youth and i want to thank the board and first just want to extend my sincere gratitude and admiration for superintendent santorno's leadership and i i do know and i'm glad as a community we have we will have more time to fully celebrate and thank um you for your commitment

049to students over the course of this upcoming year before your retirement i'm addressing the board today as dr leon has asked community members for feedback on the internal superintendent succession plan and just wanted to share a few from my perspective leadership transitions can be a healthy opportunity to reflect back on learnings a moment to consider the present which holds unique challenges to the district and all of its students and families and a look to what the future holds for our community in my capacity as a community volunteer i just want to share how grateful i've been to work alongside dr garcia superintendent santorno and the tacoma public schools team for about 10 years i'm grateful for dr garcia for his thought partnership and leadership over the years since i've had an opportunity to work with

050him on numerous community projects system coordination efforts and specifically with his contributions to the building of the graduate tacoma movement and foundation for tacoma students it's been inspiring to see the growth of systems that he has helped to establish such as data systems for accountability aligned with the district's goals which support a laser focus on using data to just support decision making with an equity lens i also have had an opportunity to work with dr garcia on bringing the whole child initiative focus to tacoma and all children in tacoma schools and whole child partnerships to support adults in the ways that they work with our children and youth i recognize as well his commitment to access for children of all ages to before and after school sports arts and social emotional all sorts of learning

051opportunities and how important that is for access and commitment to community partnerships so in closing i ask of our board and school's leadership team first to also want to appreciate dr garcia for his extremely hard work each and every day and using one of his words relentless relentless commitment to children and i want to thank the leadership team to and ask you to continue to build on the strengths of the systems and commitments that have been developed into the future including commitment to the equity policy and continuing to develop ways to engage students families and communities in um supporting each and every student thanks i think i went over is that thank you and i'm not was the time that three minutes or was that two okay times two okay you were good oh well

052good thank you that's what i did thank you aaron johnson regarding superintendent search good evening president kyle the members of the board thanks for this opportunity my name is farin johnson i'm the director of strategic initiatives leading the newly launched out-of-school time intermediary with green trike and as we all here know tacoma is a very relational city which is why the search for superintendent should not be a national search i entered into the tacoma public school space in 2010 just as the whole child initiative was getting at sea legs about what kind of movement it was going to be for children and youth and the adults who served them and how elo and the out of school time plays in this movement over the last 12 years we have been able to lift high quality

053direct service elo after school programs in eight middle schools almost 22 elementary schools and have grown our elo provider pool to over 50 providers from grassroots midsize and big box youth development organizations to support youth with fun and engaging programs that aim to ignite spark and build meaningful relationships with adults i share this because it takes time for collaboration and partnerships to seed in a community it takes time to begin to understand the language of a community and to listen and learn what it needs it has taken at least 12 years to get to the space and we have crazy goals to expand even more we need someone in the space that will continue to advocate for community and schools to partner together josh has been that fanner of this flame a supporter of not

054only me personally and as a youth advocate but as but to other youth development system leaders to do this work which is our superpower to support children and youth now we may not always agree on everything josh knows that but we agree 100 about what we want when it comes to the best outcomes for our students and that won't happen without community partnership and collaboration and i don't want to to lose our muscle memory and all of the work that josh has fanned and put to make sure that our partners feel included in this whole child work so we need someone like josh to lead this space so that we can work and continue to build and grow and not be forgotten in the elo space thank you next speaker is tanya durant regarding replacing

055superintendent santorno good evening thank you president cobb and members of the board uh my name is tanya duran i'm the ex executive director of green trike i work with baron and i would like to start my remarks by thanking uh superintendent santorno i remember when carla first came to town we met and i asked her what tacoma public school's plan was with early learning and she was very honest at that time there was no plan and look how far we've come so thank you so much and it has been a delight uh i've been at green trike for 24 years it has been a delight to watch to have watched what's happened uh in the partnership with josh and carla they put partnership first you know they're they're both famous for saying we only have

056the kids one third of the day the community has them the other two thirds of the day and they bring community in they they let us in they open the doors they let us uh we come in and we partner and um they lead with innovation creativity building community um it's a baton pass in my mind i agree with farron we've made so much progress that it feels like a natural you know this is a long long relay that we're in and the idea of carla handing that baton to josh knowing that they've worked together to build this amazing foundation so that we can you know continue to work together in partnership for the the betterment of our children you know um and i know that josh has a lot that he's going to want

057to do to make it his own and that's exciting too when i think of josh i think about uh strategic impatience and using that strategic impatience in a way to bring us along for this collective vision right of making this the best place tacoma should be the best place to experience childhood and it takes all of us it takes the school district it takes green trike it takes the hospitals it takes all of us and so i would urge and have a lot of gratitude to the board to enable that that very graceful baton pass to josh thank you so much sean sylvia is next regarding the superintendent hiring process madam president directors i'm sean silvia the executive director of metroparks tacoma and on behalf of the board of park commissioners um i'm here to

058express our appreciation and gratitude to superintendent santardo for the nine years of her leadership as well as to the board and for your partnership with metro parks and the commitment to really join uh jointly serving this community you know when we've worked on many projects together and i remember the time that carla leaned over to me when we were doing the brown breaking of at the zoo for sammy and she said can you believe that we're actually doing this and let me remind you that we built a school inside of a zoo that has access for the public inside of a park a 700 acre park on city land like that doesn't happen and so what's great about this i could tell carla that i can't believe it however what i can say is i

059know why we do it and we do these things to make children's lives better and this is good government it's hard work but we leverage public dollars and we increase access to public spaces so that people can have better lives and we focus on children i thought of a few projects when i was coming up here and it was from the course of jason lee and thrive and keeping kids children's mind and bodies moving so we bring them from jason lee into people's center i started thinking about the mckinney-vento extended learning centers that we were having students have safe places to learn during covid and this was over at both people center and star center and then we worked on over the years whole child this is the after school clubs and extended learning and

060the work that we did with sports leagues at all 37 elementary schools and again this partnership it keeps there's a theme and we're listening to the other speakers that are coming in about how this is the secret sauce of tacoma and basically this is dr garcia who brought us together and said you guys need to figure this out and we all came in and we did after school programming for all so with we haven't built some amazing partnerships over the years and trust doesn't happen overnight it's built on years of coming together and working together so again i thank you i'm proud of our legacy the work that we all have done dr garcia you are a cornerstone of the work we are fortunate to have you in this community and i look forward to

061the next chapter thank you tafana irvin regarding the superintendent of choice good evening president copp and the board of directors i'm tifana irvine executive director of the foundation for tacoma students and i'd like to start with the josh ism that we at foundation for tacoma students are critical friends of tacoma public schools and of the work that has happened over the years i've been with the foundation for almost six years and part of my job is to travel nationally to learn from assess and really get a deeper understanding of urban serving communities and districts across the country and i got to tell you of all the partnerships that i've visited and all the um partnerships like ours that i've talked to one of the things that continuously comes up is the transition of leadership that

062really sets a community back i think it was farin who talked about it took 12 years to get to this place i got to tell you sometimes the surface level work really does take 12 15 or 20 years because you're unsure about how you want to embark on a new direction an innovative direction as you all talked about today with school buildings or with security or with the way in which you engage your students and the leadership between both carla and josh over the last decade almost has been really unprecedented and what i would encourage us to think about specifically in the context of this recovery of covid in the context of reimagining schools for our children and our youth is the continuity of leadership that josh already brings to tacoma public schools he knows

063the leadership of this district he knows the buildings he knows this community i too agree that we don't always as a community and the district see eye to eye but that is part of the process right like you have to be able to go through the discomfort and the back and forth and the questioning of why we are arriving in this place in order to get to true um a true vision of a place where every child succeeds in school career and life and on behalf of my board of directors and my staff i've got to tell you we have heard several questions around the process and we are backing the decision or hopefully or endorsing a decision for tacoma public schools board of directors to move forward with dr garcia as the next superintendent

064for tacoma public schools i got to tell you that when you think about what a recovery will look like in the next couple of years particularly with relief dollars particularly with the expansion of transient students you want someone who knows the work and not someone who's learning the work because it's going to take so long for us to get to that next phase so with that i just want to definitely send my endorsement for mr garcia i think the world of his strategic visioning and certainly give all of my gratitude to superintendent santorno and looking forward to celebrating her for the next year so thank uh you shannon ergon regarding new superintendent good evening shannon ergoon and i'm the president of tacoma education association and while i've listened to some very respected community leaders share

065their thoughts on this process i have a differing opinion and i feel like i speak for many of my members as you stepped into cab this evening i hope you reflected on your job as elected officials chosen by the community to govern our district one of your primary responsibilities is to ensure that management positions are filled through a robust process that builds trust respect and faith in you and your ability to govern as stewards of public education in tacoma you have volunteered to put the time and effort in to make the decisions based on thorough examination of issues concerns and options in the 10 days since superintendent santorno formally submitted her intent to retire do you honestly feel that you have gauged the interests of the community families students and employees do you honestly believe

066that you have taken the time to give full consideration to the options available do you honestly believe that selecting the first candidate considered without exp exploring more thoroughly those out there that you have done what you were elected to do as an elected leader myself in my own organization i do know the challenges you face and the pressure you're feeling i do know that you will never make every constituent happy however it is your job to take time to deliberate explore and listen so that you are meeting the needs of constituents as much as possible you have taken some bold decisions this year and i honor the courage it took to do that i am personally disappointed that it appears that you are not demonstrating this level of courage in this decision i've been impressed

067with the rapidity with which the vaccination clinics were organized i was full of hope with the process used in renaming wilson and the consideration for jason lee truly this board has governed in a way that has shown the ability to oversee a management effectively i want to be clear i am not opposed to our deputy superintendent taking the new role necessarily however i do not support just promoting without deliberate and robust consideration of others i truly hope you will slow down and conduct an application process that provides the opportunity to weigh the options and make a selection based on detailed information and then on a separate note our educators have handled every change that has come at them nimbly and with grace this year i truly hope that this new distancing guidance does not create

068additional change before the end of the school year we are now finding our feet in the hybrid learning process and turn learning to do it well let's support staff families and students by not expecting even more of them next speaker is mark mcgaffery regarding plans for property at 1117 east division lane the golf property mark mccaffrey mcgaffey um we have one written comment that has submitted and is attached to the agenda and that is sally perkins regarding the tps superintendent thank you thank you to everyone who submitted public comment tonight and who showed up to speak thank you item number eight consent agenda is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda i move to adopt the consent agenda is there a second a second it's been moved and seconded any comments or questions about

069items on the consent agenda seeing none just for the community or anyone who might be watching there are several items on this agenda and these are relatively routine items that we adopt at each business meeting the board has had time to review these in advance but we take action on these regular items all at once so all those in favor of adopting items on the consent agenda say aye aye any opposed the motion is adopted item number nine policy matters there are none tonight item number 10 financial report a quarterly presentation on the financial health of the district will be made during regular board meetings on a quarterly basis the next quarterly report is planned for may 2021 financial statements can be found on the district website at www.tacomaschools.org item number 11 curriculum and instruction

070there are no curriculum instruction matters tonight item number 12 12.1 approval of associated earth services inc aesi services not to exceed 400 000 for the hunt middle school replacement project the chief operating officer recommends that the board of directors approve associated earth sciences incorporated supplemental geotechnical consulting services at hunt middle school the total value of this purchase order should not exceed four hundred thousand is there a motion to adopt item number twelve point i motioned to adopt sarah second it's been moved and seconded any questions or comments about the item seeing none all those in favor of adopting 12.1 say aye aye in the opposed the motion is adopted item number 12.2 approval of the application for fiscal year 2021 head start cola grant grant number 10 ch0190 and nfs waiver the deputy superintendent on

071behalf of the assistant superintendent of teaching and learning recommends that the board of directors approve submission for the fy 2021 head start cola grant application number 10ch01190 in the amount of seventy eight thousand two hundred eighty dollars and the nfs waiver in the amount of nineteen thousand five hundred and seventy dollars and if awarded approve expenditure of funds according to the accepted guidelines funding source department of health and human services office of head start thank you is there a motion to adopt item number 12.2 i move to adopt this item 12.2 see a second second it's been moved and seconded any questions or comments i have one question can you tell me what drives the cola rate for head start where does that come from in the same way that ipd drives increases for state

072funded or staff where's the rate come from all right it is shared with us but i believe it is the same as the state is it comparable that's what i was trying to get at is it comparable or the same it is not a local decision to decide that rate so it comes from the federal government or and ultimately the state okay thank you um all those in favor of adopting 12.2 say aye all right any opposed motion is adopted item number 12.3 approval to contract with hansel phelps construction company for the pre-construction design build services for foster elementary school the chief operating officer recommends that the board of directors approve the agreement which states the pre-construction services for the falsehood elementary school replacement project and authorized the superintendent or destiny to sign said agreement

073an amount of one million five hundred and forty nine thousand three hundred and seventy nine dollars excluding sales tax thank you is there a motion to adopt item 12.3 a motion to adopt is there a second second it's been moved and seconded any questions or comments seeing none all those in favor of adopting item 12.3 say i i any opposed the motion is adopted item 12.4 approval to negotiate an award design build alternative method contract with course mode construction for synthetic field track and tennis a court bundle the chief operating officer recommends that the board of directors approve the superintendent to negotiate and award a contract to correspond construction for the design build alternative method for the synthetic field track and tennis court bundle for multiple school sites thank you is there a motion to

074adopt island 12.4 i moved to adopt motion item 12.4 is there a second second it's been moved and seconded any questions from the board seeing none all those in favor of adopting 12.4 say aye aye any opposed the motion is adopted and i appreciate the lincoln bathrooms as the former lincoln student yeah i need a little work um before moving on to item number 13 other business we're going to go back up to our community partner recognition i think we're ready for that so recognition of staff students and community 5.1 recognition of gold star community partner award to ranco's pharmacy liz rankos thank you madam board president board of directors this is my first in-person meeting i was down wondering where everybody was on zoom and you guys are up here so i apologize but

075happy to see your mass faces today it's good to see everyone um i'm amanda scott thomas the director of the community partnership office for tacoma public schools and i'm here today to award the community partner award the gold star community partner award for the month of march as you well know tacoma public schools divine's partnership as a relationship between students families school the school district and the greater tacoma community we've heard that a lot tonight partners are committed to supporting student academic success in the success of the whole child partners work with and invest in the education of our children and youth whose future in turn will affect the quality of life in the entire tacoma community when it comes to partnership we know tps recognizes that schools cannot do it alone and in recognition

076of an investment of time talent and resources for tps students families and staff the gold partner community partner award signifies honor and thanks to a community member who has made a difference by going far to do what's best for kids tonight we are going to be honoring uh of the renkos pharmacy liz wrinkles it's a family-owned local pharmacy independent it's in the stadium district there's been three generations that have served this community for over 85 years when seeking vaccines for tacoma public school staff rankles was the first to answer the call specifically liz wrinkles liz rankles has continually sought opportunities for vaccination of tps staff and has been in constant communication on ways in which the pharmacy could support us she has been an advocate for tps staff and incorporated tps into her weekly plannings

077for vaccine the pharmacy has opened its doors to our staff to be vaccinated in the pharmacy and provided large vaccine events at stadium high school wrankles has extended the opportunity for vaccinations to 450 tps staff thus far and the number is continually growing liz rankles has consistently gone above and beyond the call of duty to support tacoma public schools her partnership has helped decrease the barriers to vaccination faced by tps staff which in turn helps our educators feel more confident to return to work in the classroom liz let us know earlier this morning that she wasn't going to be able to be here because pharmacy duties call but in her absence i do want to give her an applause for for her work and we will be sure to get her gold star award to

078her thank you thank you i think this is such a timely and deserved recognition um i haven't met liz personally but i do want to just i've been in the pharmacy before but i just want to thank her for committing to being our partner in this effort and appreciate the effort that her and her team have gone into to make this happen for members of our staff any other comments from the board saying none like please pass on our appreciation thank you okay moving on to item number i can scroll down back to it item number 13 election of superintendent under rcw 28a 400.010 i just want to read by way of background on this item rcw 28a 400.010 provides that the board of directors shall elect a superintendent who shall have such qualifications as

079the local school board alone shall determine following notice of retirement of superintendent santorno the board met an executive session to begin succession planning and to evaluate the qualifications of deputy superintendent garcia for the role of superintendent the president of the board of directors recommends that the board elect joshua j garcia as superintendent of tacoma public schools and enter into contract negotiations is there a motion to adopt item 13.1 i move that we adopt item 13.1 it's been moved is there a second a second thank you i just want to offer a couple of comments um on this item the speaker some of the speakers during public comment made me think that there's so much i want to say but i'm going to try to be succinct and not say all the things that i want

080to say i served on this board now um my sixth year and so in that time i've had an opportunity to see the leadership team between superintendent santorno and deputy superintendent garcia in many ways i think it's a privilege to serve in this role and i do know that hiring a superintendent is one of our top priorities and i also have the privilege to have worked my entire career in education i've not i was not blessed with the skills and talents to be in the classroom but i always think of my whole life is about working on behalf of kids i'm not the person to work with kids i can be a mentor i used to tell rob jones with called success foundation please just give me the student who only needs information i can't

081handle like the students who need more like i'm just not good at it i'm a role follower and that's not my skill set so i give honor to all classroom teachers but like you said my work though my passion has always been working to ensure that students have access to high quality education because that's what i got in tacoma and i got it in ways that almost feel by chance i went to ginny reed at the time when it was a magnet school so we had the young astronauts program i got to be young astronauts after school and baker we had natural helpers and these are things that once i got to high school i realized weren't at every school so in my time on the board i've seen the level of partnerships and the

082level of commitment that this leadership team and thought that this leadership team puts into creating opportunities in a district like ours that doesn't always have those opportunities we are not a wealthy district on average we're not a district where there are long-standing structures that exist to create opportunities for youth and so we have to build them we have to think them up and we have to want them for our kids and i've seen in this leadership team um that that is the vision and the want that they have for our students so um now sticking to my notes um as we all know superintendent san torno has announced her plan to retire at the end of the 2021-22 school year and for us we appreciate for me i appreciate that advanced notice because i believe

083that in order to provide for a smooth transition of leadership we need time to kind of deliberately plan and act around that in recent conversations with the superintendent and as she stated in her letter notifying us of her retirement it's clear that she has some significant goals that she wants to accomplish in the next 14 months in the district and by kind of its nature the deputy superintendent's position doesn't always stand out in the spotlight so i can understand how some people in our community don't know like some of what i described us getting to see we get to see the way that this partnership happens in reality and how close and how collaborative it has been we get to see the leadership team and the kind of the culture of leadership that they've built

084across the district and in general i believe that our whole community has benefited from the approach that they've taken to designing systems that get help support and facilitate and enable the outcomes that we're seeing the graduation rate for example in the consistent year-over-year increases that we've seen in it just as one example didn't come about by chance and doesn't come about solely by the work of people it's definitely fueled by the work of people but we need to establish the goal we need to monitor the goal we need to figure out what the partnerships we need to put in place are in order to get to that goal so generally i believe that the consistent vision that we've had over the course of the last 10 years has helped contribute to that year-over-year increase in

085positive outcomes that we've seen and i personally believe fully that dr garcia is the right person to continue to refine improve and implement that vision moving forward so just as one last story that to me is evidence of this partnership and why i'm so confident in the potential of josh's leadership my first graduation is when i became aware of the matching silver tennis shoes that superintendent santorno and deputy superintendent garcia and come out special for graduation that that to me was like i want to be in that club i want to be close enough partners to with them and so excited about just that celebratory moment that i'm in the matching tennis shoe club so i know it seems like a trivial story but to me it just is evidence of you have to collaborate

086around that you have to talk about what are we gonna how are we gonna celebrate this together every year so i just appreciate examples like that across the board i appreciate the leadership team that i've seen i appreciate the thoughtfulness that goes into the work that you do and i'm excited for what the future will bring so before i open it up to comments from board members i'm just want to invite superintendent santorno to speak to this motion too and so i'm going to start where i always do and that's that i'm just grateful to have the opportunity to work in tacoma it has been a dream job and i appreciate that what's important is that the board members have been so steadfast you guys have been committed to policy committed to strategic planning and

087committed to accountability and that makes a difference i'm grateful for the team i work with and i'm proud of what we've accomplished but we have work to do and that's what this transition's about i'm confident that we are on the right direct trajectory to eliminate gaps and to accomplish our goals your goals your strategic goals by sticking to our plan and improving our actions for nine years i've worked with the best partner collaborator friend and work husband on the planet um he is innovative relentless caring advocate whose first question in every conversation is how can i help the kids this is a good time to start a transition after we you know as we're coming through this uh this coveted piece and as president cobb said the best organizations to ensure stability and continued success

088engage in succession planning i don't know if the community knows that dr josh garcia gets offers for jobs from all over the country all the time and he has stayed committed to staying in tacoma and to be to our district our educators and our students i think it's important to say that a transition is a different animal it's about the tug and pull of going to the next stage and teaching and learning will trend josh and i'll transition departments and work plans during this time we'll take he'll take on new work throughout the year and i'll be assisting there's not a deputy superintendent there's two of us working together ebbing and flowing as the job needs to get this final work done before i transition the job to him it's a fluid process i love

089this quote from what it says about harvard ideally harvard education school says the formal transition process becomes begins 9 to 12 months in advance of the expected transition date while there is no one-size-fits-all approach harvard recommends that the incoming and outgoing ceo build a plan together and review it with the board we've seen this happen in various ways across the state and nation i transitioned with doc with dr art jarvis for six months metro parks sean sylvia was just here he did the similar approach with the ceo transition districts that have hired within have the ability to sustain the trajectory that we're on i want that for us and you could not make any better decision for a new superintendent thank you are there comments from the board i'll start with vice president bondbright thank

090you um yeah absolutely i i want to say um i really appreciate everything you just said uh superintendent and also president cobb and like you you know i i come out of an early learning background early field a policy policy person and i so i'm not necessarily the one in the classroom although thank you for the for the teachers they're they're they are amazing our teachers are fantastic and all of our staff are um but that's not what i do and and so i'm a policy wonk who understands what i see high quality policy work and i've been in this field a long time and um so for the past 10 years it's clear to me that the tacoma school schools has been on a positive trajectory for student success and academic achievement and as

091a board member also it's important to know that we're also financial the financial stewardship that is so strong in this in tacoma public schools and um and i we heard tonight from the construction uh about the construction of the buildings and you see how how um how strategically we have implemented the bond measure and and worked with communities and so it you know the job of superintendent isn't singular in any way um it is it is a huge uh responsibility over a large budget and a great different diversity of staff and 11 unions and 11 or 12 unions and all sorts of work that takes a a very sharp mind and a strategic thinker and obviously superintendent santorno was definitely that and i would say that that josh garcia is as well as we've heard

092from many of our key community leaders this evening who articulately expressed why a national search is not a good idea for tacoma in our partnership focused city where we have a secret sauce of working together and leading leading by example um and and that's another thing that we learned tonight which many of us knew but some may not have is that that tacoma public schools is actually a lighthouse district for other districts in our state and across the nation uh they they seeking to learn how they could do better in many ways and examples are you know how did we get the increased graduation rates over eight years um to go from 55 percent to 89.9 percent um you know and increasing academic rigor bringing equity of access to advanced placement and other academic programs

093to students who had never had only dreamed of it or never even known they could now it's an expectation and you have to opt out those are the kinds of things that dr garcia brought to brought with him to this to the table we've also in tacoma public schools has expanded the career and technical opportunities in new and innovative and creative ways that have given pathways to students who who may not want to go on to college but have other opportunities and our school system has really thought that through and done it in in unique and um exemplary ways um also using data in innovative ways and developing and serving the whole child in supports at school and at home and you know these are just you know this very small list of the things

094that the superintendent centorno and deputy superintendent garcia have worked on but we have become a model of excellence and um under the team leadership and i say team leadership because you just heard the superintendent say it that they have since day one when they became worked together been a team the team leadership of superintendent santoner and deputy superintendent garcia dr garcia is strategic and intentional with his leadership and decisions all of which are laser focused on what's best for the students um and that really to me speaks speaks volumes um and i we we received you know some mail not you know or inordinate amount of mail on this topic um but i was moved by um the multiple letters that we got from from staff um that were and the quotes were just um

095incredible and i've got a few and i know others want to speak but i'm just going to just going to read a couple because they're really they're really i think spot on um and we just talked about his ultimate goal quote his ultimate goal is to increase access improved quality the quality of experience and equitable accelerated opportunities to fuel growth and the success of students and staff at all levels and positions families and the community of tacoma that he passionately serves so this is from someone who works not directly for josh but in the system um he also another quote is assessing strengths as a means of delivering change on a continuum of improvement and innovation and that totally speaks to josh's approach to how to address uh problems uh he's a natural motivator whose

096words of encouragement are inspiring and uplifting another one is not only does dr garcia do great things he also inspires greatness from others and i you know i find that one particularly compelling because when i came on this board as a newbie uh in november of 2019 uh you know k-12 world is a little complicated and um dr garcia just said no problem just you know call any time and he just you know was every time i'd call with what i thought was a silly question he passed you know come he just sat down and calmly explained things to me and it's just you know he's just got that style he doesn't shy away from taking on difficult tasks and he deals with people on a level of dignity and respect um and just a

097couple one more or two more he's a leader who knows that this work doesn't get all get done by one person he is collaborative a team builder and a good listener he knows when to lead from the front and when to push from behind and prop others up leadership is speaking the truth and pointing towards hope dr garcia has proven again and again that he speaks the truth listens to learn asks for feedback and continues to provide opportunities for learning and growth and i'll just i'll do one more josh put students first i have seen josh continue to push the thing and push to think outside the box and put kids in the forefront of decisions he is strategic and intentional with his leadership and decisions that impact student learning and everything impacts student learning

098thank you director leon do you have any comments i do i'm going to listen to the other members first if possible should feel free to go ahead okay okay sure so uh i think we've heard some excellent discussion around the assistant superintendent and the work he's done um you know some of the quotes that were made relentless keeping muscle memory innovative creativity the strategic impatience kids first comes up a lot um we approach our voices our community tonight of course um and then through email voicemails that we've gotten a significant majority really have spoken very fairly of dr garcia's qualifications leadership the ability to listen actively uh really just the general body of work that he's done not just here but his previous work so i do believe he would be an exceptional superintendent for

099tacoma i do still feel uncomfortable not having had any type of search to look at any other candidates at all in this process i or none of the board have ever chosen the superintendent in the past i believe really our district has been improving in really all aspects and i think the trajectory is positive and going in the right direction um the search would have allowed for some discussion possibly around the future trajectory if not that it needed to change but visions around what was ways to improve in the district we have new realities and how we really could approach equity you know the pandemic itself we're still in the middle of post-pandemic education what that could look like um so i think we've been making really large strides um can we do more you

100know effectively or more efficiently more work efficiently i hope i think we can we can improve on what we've already done it's good work but we can have a real significant you know family uh staff student you know and partner conversation uh around um the trajectory uh i believe everybody believes it's it's going in the right direction we've heard from many partners in that way um and that what this could look like could be determined by the assistant superintendent and superintendent as they potentially do this transition so if you take the form of extensive student staff community forums ideally as a selection process is ongoing but then the very least possibly soon after it's finished um we did hear from one um staff group we've heard many many amazing amazing recounts of the work that

101he's done from a lot of administrators in our in our system i didn't i didn't get very many pretty much feedback from other staff or teachers we heard from the teachers union president today you heard those comments today so i think it's a that's a big uh component of our uh of our education the biggest right is the the teacher component so i think we should consider that in our you know deliberation here so really i think many community members have expressed also to me through the voicemails and then and the emails the need for what they feel like is more transparency and possibly slowing down in the process so i think that we have a year year and a half in this process so i hope that we can express that transparency and show

102everybody that that their voice counts if they have new ideas that they want to take the district so i think that is just passion for kids and always thinking about investing in kids and kids first has shown through in many of the comments tonight and many of the letters really just uh amazing letters we've gotten from administrators too so thank you director kitty uh i wrote up my thoughts so i can be succinct um not only is dr garcia highly qualified he is also strongly positioned to advance our partnership priority benchmark at a time that is especially important as we work to assess and address the covid recovery effort our local state and federal partnerships are crucial components to our future successes it has been through these partnerships that josh has helped lead the responses

103planning assessing needs and impact this crisis has had over the past year we have faced unimaginable challenges collectively as a board and individually we have had countless hard complex conversations with superintendent santorno and dr garcia the pace has been relentless to say the least there is a significant difference between reactive versus responsive on numerous occasions i have greatly appreciated josh josh's skill at responsive leadership being able to slow down to assess situations holistically takes discipline and a clear vision some would call it your why time and time again josh has helped me shift from being reactive to being responsive the pressure and expectations of these roles are indescribable at the heart of every conversation i have had with dr garcia is what's best for students we do not know the full long-term ramifications or depths

104of the impacts this pandemic has and continues to have on our students staff and community there's no superintendent or deputy superintendent in this country who has experienced a global pandemic before now no one we are all living through this event together what is best for kids is stability we are still in the process of supporting getting kids back into classrooms for the first time in over a year with the significant and repeated changes we have all been navigating it is more important than ever that we maintain strong proven exceptional leadership josh has demonstrated to me consistently and persistently that he has the skills knowledge and capacity to effectively lead our district consistency is paramount right now thank you dr strozer turn my mic on can you guys hear me we can hear you all right

105so uh one of the main reasons that our district has been so successful in recent years is due to the consistency of leadership this is what our students need right now more than ever superintendent santorno has done an amazing job and i'm quite confident that she'll tell you herself that she's received quality high-level assistance and vision from josh garcia to help chart the way forward let's not forget 11 years ago 11 short years ago this district was labeled what a dropout factor and i don't think you can just lose that title without being intentional in your efforts to turn things around so let's look at where we are right now and let's look at where we were i'd also like to echo the fact that uh we ain't broken so we're not looking for anyone

106to come in here and fix something we are however looking for someone who can chart the path forward with knowledge and lived experience of this district and this community and an understanding of what it takes to not only move the needle but push the needle i strongly believe that over the last nine what ten years uh josh has established himself as someone who can do just that one of the things that i've heard uh is that this is a perfect opportunity to go in a different direction i don't agree change for the sake of change does not automatically equate to progress every superintendent in this country is faced with the exact same challenge right now how to right the ship how to balance the ship post coping 19 and best serve students all of the

107pandemic leadership experience is being gained right now i think we're in a great position we don't have a deputy superintendent who only puts on a nice suit goes and sits up in his office with a speed on his desk sip coffee all day we have someone who is on the ground front lines doing the work that's best for the students the students of our district we have someone with experience that is more than qualified to take the next step somebody who is and has been committed to this district people don't get the nod to move up or be promoted for just doing their jobs well they get the move uh they get the the the nod or the move up because of their potential to do more i say all that passionately and i mean

108every single thing that i said but on one final note i do want folks to know that i heard i heard and i saw your emails saw your comments concerns both positive and negative taking them into account but i am extremely confident in whatever decision that we move going forward thank you [Music] thank you any other comments from the board seeing none i think we'll move to a roll call vote agenda item 13.1 election of superintendent under rcw 28a 400.010 president cobb i vice president bombright i director keating aye director leon olive stain the superintendent is elected for with one abstention thank you [Music] yep i want to invite um deputy superintendent garcia to say a few words thank you madam president if i may like to change my view here um i wrote a

109couple uh different comments based on wherever you would go and there is some consistency wherever you go i'll still be first and foremost i appreciate the comments tonight i think you heard honesty and i think you heard respect even if it was about a different process or even if it was about a partnership this work is never easy i love talking about tacoma with the caveat that i don't like talking about myself i love this city i love our community partners i love our staff even on days that we don't all love each other or like each other we still love each other and i know that doesn't sound right but it's true i love our families and i love our students i make mistakes but i never quit and i'll never quit on our

110kids and i'll never quit on our community so together is better students staff community board of directors thank you i'm humbled and honored to be a part of the next step in our shared journey although this action item had to have one individual's name it was an action item for team tacoma tonight you recognize together is better it was an acknowledgement that the tacoma schools and our community who many do label as broken is not broken but rather it's accelerating and it's excelling with more work to do we have not arrived tonight is a commitment to the belief together is better your action was an acknowledgement that staff at all levels our community partners our community as a whole have been relentlessly working to support the whole child and that you plan to continue that

111dream tonight you sent a message that you want us to work together not as individuals to address complex and nuanced challenges through our relationships partnerships and hard work i thank you because for the last nine years i've dedicated my life to being one of those commitment pieces to that togetherness tonight i give you my commitment to the work even though it's tough when there is no single one right answer tonight i want you to know that i will work to support the whole child through partnership at all levels from the boardroom to the living room finally most importantly i'd like to thank a few people i'd like to thank you the board and our previous board members who set us on this journey you have relentlessly volunteered your time your money your lives to serving

112in our shared vision i recognize that and that is not lost on me i would like to thank all of our staff for anyone that thinks that one person is doing any of this work alone we are mistaken the secret sauce is all of us together we could never have made it this far without your relentless effort staff and we will continue forward in a manner with all of us working together i would like to thank all of our whole child partners tacoma is like no other city and you heard tonight that partnerships are not easy no meaningful relationship is easy your commitment and trust is why this community is special i'd like to thank our families because i recognize as someone who has a family that our families are doing the hard work every

113day we are committed to working with you and doing better this one's gonna be hard i'd like to thank carla a true hero that has led with strategy grace and compassion i've learned from her and i will work relentlessly to keep her dream to support every student every day alive in all of us i'd like to thank my family for supporting me sacrificing our time together but never our love this work is tough it is lonely sometimes and unfortunately we see the hate in the world way too often i want to thank my wife who has never left me alone with grace she has always known that each one of the children is one of ours to you too and all of your colleagues i want to tell you follow your dreams your destiny it

114will never be easy or perfect but make no mistake each of you is worth it tonight you have a whole city working on your behalf because tonight together it's better thank you thank you thank you um as the agenda item alluded to the next steps in this process will be to begin contract negotiation so that item will be coming back to another business meeting in the future i think that in that item it'll be more explicit about timeline for this transition be able to provide i think at that point a little bit more detail about like superintendent santora alluded to kind of the roles and responsibilities that the two will have over the course of this transition and i think i want to reiterate too that we all read as director strozer said we all

115read and like take into consideration the feedback that we get from whoever sends it sometimes people don't even live in tacoma but we read those messages we take that input too so i think collectively we have talked about this before throughout the year we've had a lot of transition and change and challenges to address over the course of the last couple of years and we need to get better at creating structures for listening and taking in feedback we've gotten better this year as a board with our email communication and have built a system for us to manage that better but we need to keep getting better and i think through this transition we're committed to figuring out a way to take in feedback of about the continued implementation of the vision moving forward so stay

116tuned for more to come and we'll just keep doing this together thank you everyone moving on to item number 15 board comments and reports sorry i i'm skipping over things thank you and number 14 report to the board demonstration of compass student application mr zeke edmond is going to join us tonight tonight you're going to see a demonstration of an innovative uh project that started a number of years in partnership with the stewart foundation and it's called the compass student application thank you zeke plugs in i'll give you a little bit of background zeke has been our fearless leader of both the data the dart team but also previously one of our fantastic principals and zeke has taken a concept and brought it to reality with this idea that students have many gifts and if

117we can give them a platform to demonstrate that they can show how wonderful they really are so with that zeke can you hear me we can hear you perfect uh president cobb board superintendent santorno do we call it superintendent garcia no good i wasn't ready for that all right so back to kids um we did start with this idea uh we knew that uh we as adults have a ton of tools you have a ton of tools you have them in your phone and your computer things that tell you your bank accounts your car tells you where to go your thermostat probably talks to you when you don't want it to teachers have a ton of tools we know that during covid we've had to stand up a lot of tools but we still don't

118have something in kids hands that tell them the things that we have as adults how are you doing where are you at where are you in this journey what does it look like today what do you want to do tomorrow who are you connecting with what do you need when you're in crisis and could we get that into an application space purely based on a success mindset so in comes compass we have been working on this for a couple years we have had multiple partners we have sat with student groups at different middle schools and asked them what they would want to see if we could tell them anything about their journey in school their creativity is unbelievable so of course they had things like i want a video game joystick and a brain and

119if i'm having too much tech time my joystick gets bigger and bigger bigger and if i'm doing my academic stuff my brain should be getting bigger and bigger and bigger they can visualize these things jason lee gumball machines and the size of the gumball was how well i was doing in math and reading and science and clubs and activities but we also saw kids in the reality we saw truman they drew a tree and they had different branches and it represented different subjects and it was a group of girls and science was the smallest branch right so when you sit down and you ask them they just tell you oh i'm not a scientist they're sixth graders they don't know i'm not sure i was really like potty trained by sixth grade like i had

120no business making decisions about something that big at that age so how do we fill them in so in compass i'm going to kind of walk you through here when a student lands they get an opening kind of tile just like any app it's like welcome here's what you're about to experience recognizes you by name when you log in it's going to give you a chance to check out your grades and see your grades at different levels and connect with your teachers it's going to give you space to move in and i'll explain a little more of how that partnership came about we talked about badges we worked with university of washington actually as a gamification department that was a wild experience to sit with that group and just talk about what is extrinsic and

121intrinsic and what does this look like for kids and how do you give recognition for work uh and effort and then goal setting and we did quite a bit of looking into what does it take to really set meaningful goals and how do we explore this experience from kindergarten all the way through so when we get to the homepage first thing is students sees right now we're live for middle schoolers we go live for high schoolers after spring break in the fall we'll have a third through fifth grade version and then we'll start looking at how small can we go for our little kids with much more visuals and less language and we think that's achievable so they see their gpa it's an unofficial capture for the week but kind of gives them a rudder

122to see where they're at in progress we use some social media language around streaks so i see how many days i've been attending in a row my overall attendance percentage and then on this homepage i'll see my most recent mood in i've got a couple goals set cooking dinner for parents improving my grades we have an interest section how do we find out what our kids like how do we find out on a one-to-one level how do we find out on a larger school level and then as the kid continues to scroll down their homepage they'll start to see badges they've earned i added my first goal so oops i got a badge for that i had an attendance streak i made it five days in a row so i get a badge for that

123these are little pieces but they add up over time i've been on time to school we have a lot of kids that might have great attendance for the day but can't always get there on time how do we start recognizing that and then we have our i ready assessment so this kid is a level gold so they've earned that badge so let's kind of cruise through when they get in the grades again they see their gpa every feature they get into gives them kind of a walk through just a slight overview welcome this is about grades we have different video links explanations we'll start bringing in more student voice so they can hear from others about why grades do matter they actually start to see their data so we talked earlier about all this information

124we have as adults how do we get it into the student's hands so the student can see their gpa here in green they see their school's gpa from semester one to two and they see the district average for that same grade level so having worked uh on several different parts of town and tacoma as a principal as a teacher uh to have comes you know not i think i have highest grades in the school great great today right what is your journey where are you going what does that look like when we stack you up in this city when you start competing for scholarships or move forward so we want to give kids that opportunity to see that perspective when they come in they see their overall grade when they click in they have the

125opportunity to connect an email with teacher to see each assignment broken down so now you get into that piece where we have kids that are given opportunities to retest giving kids opportunities to see how they're performing as a trend where am i in my participation or my homework or my assessments so we're trying to leverage the space where kids can really engage uh have this conversation with teachers with peers reach out for supports and then moods so now uh when we talk about moods we had a partnership with leah cooper she's one of the founders for this zones of regulation when we really started using this in tacoma in the beginning we had the four zones and we had four to five moods per zone and when we sat down and had a chance to

126start meeting with her it just flourished so now it was like look i've got like 10 per zone and i've been playing with some language that's more teen appropriate versus small kid appropriate and so where do you want to go with this and it was like yes please we'll take all of the above and let's make it fit for tacoma so we sat through mood by mood with our whole child department and kind of customize what this would look like for tacoma so we give again that overview of what zones look like and then we get into the space where kids can come in and move in so we have our blue zone uh and you can see we've used emojis and leveraged some short language and a kid can come in and pick if

127they're in a blue if they're in a green chill right you can see some of this teen language relaxed proud focused happy and the yellow zone and what you'll see here is a small little tag that will show up a couple different places so we know in some zones when kids are moving in they're having a rough day and depending on what they have for resources around them this could be a situation where kid is solo right and so now i'm in a position where i'm mad or frustrated or terrified and maybe this has been going for a couple days and so we've put in as a bank of resources for hotlines right places they can call we know a lot of our kids at school have that adult hopefully they can reach out to

128but if they don't maybe this is another opportunity so mental health and suicide crisis hotlines there's several pieces we've put in here for students and we just continue to build out as we know different students will have different needs so it's an opportunity for us to connect and again we started with middle and high school kids so we know they're a little older when we look at elementary we'll look for a different set of resources for them so let's walk through um i guess typically when people are presenting they're probably nervous but i really like this kind of stuff so i'm pretty happy right now i can confirm my mood and then when i move in it actually gives me a tip so we've got anywhere from 10 to 14 tips per mood so now

129i could be the kid that's maybe in class and i'm having a rough day i go to mood in that i'm furious i confirm it and now i get a tip and the tips are time stamps so we know when the kids are in school so we have a different recommendation when you're sitting in class because we're not going to tell you to just go out and shoot hoops that may or may not go very well but it may be ultimately what you need and these are coaching things we can provide but we also know when you're home that you might be able to go out and go for a walk or right sit down and pet the pet or something like that right so we provide different contacts for tips depending on when we

130know they where they are in their day the kid can like or dislike the tip if it doesn't work for them and that gives us some data back as we make different recommendations next time they're in that space and then again the data piece kids are able to see how are my moods kind of stacking up over time when was i frustrated excited nervous things like that what tips that i enjoy and so they can see that trend badges this comes into that recognition piece again we give a little intro welcome this is kind of the overview of badges we have them for academics for assessments for attendance and then in-app applications and we have room to do this in a custom way uh as well so if jadrone is a middle years program for

131ib we can do ib badges for them and foss we can do stem and pbl we can have the bobcat way there's plenty of opportunity for us to kind of custom build these for tacoma partnerships after school programs eventually be able to build a lot more of these layers in kids can go through and kind of preview the different badges that are available if they see one that kind of strikes their interest and click on it it will expand out and give a little explanation as to what the badge is and then if it's something that they're interested in they can set a goal and so one of the next sections that i was going to go to is goal setting i can get through it through multiple pieces i get a rough grade i

132have the option to go set a goal work on that grade having a bad day i can set a goal right and so we want to leverage this piece and what we found when we're researching goals is it's pretty cut and dry like uh new year's resolutions right like i'm gonna be swimsuit beach ready by summer and then june hits and it's like well i didn't cut out dairy queen so it didn't happen right we don't have those milestones layered in and so how do we get kids to start thinking that way if i want to make the track team i can't wait till the first day of practice or tryouts what am i doing ahead of time how am i getting myself a pair of shoes i'm gonna start by walking i'm gonna work

133my way up and so kids come in and they don't naturally have those cues so we have these pop-up boxes that kind of give them some sentence starters some pieces to think about to title their goal to think through what is your why to prompt them to go a little deeper than just kind of a superficial layer and so we have found that folks that are able to dive into some of these layers build some milestones add some pieces have a better chance of reaching their goals part of that goal piece is in the progress so if you've read anything about motivation right it's the stickers on the refrigerator it's the reminders on the dashboard it's things that help you see where you're going in that goal piece and so this dashboard helps monitor so

134in order to improve grades this student has set a couple milestones in their milestones they can kind of see their progress the flags little one and two means they're behind on one of their milestones so it gives them that reminder to kind of re-establish where they're going and then they can also see goals they've completed in this case student wanted to run a 530 mile which i don't even know if i could go on a bike so uh right kids are out there working and doing their thing and showing their progress interest started as kind of an idea we are curious how do we find ways to see what kids are interested in and in relationship to all the crazy things that are going on in the world and so we came up with some

135categories some buckets we have academics careers entertainment hobbies activities culture and travel which of course we haven't all been able to travel a lot so let's pick on that so when it pops up we get a photo we get a rating scale in the career section we give explanations and the coaches did a great job of trying to find pictures that represent our student body so as you can imagine as far as free photos out there is actually really difficult to find lots of photos of women and students right in positions of power and students of color and write these different roles and so we want kids to be able to go in there and see themselves in the space and be able to read that and think through is this something that interests me

136and then do i love it do i like it is it something i want to learn about i don't know i don't like yesterday last week i was talking to middle school counselors they do a lot of like career day college stuff so i'm like you could come in here and see what are the popular things that your kids are interested in those would be the guest speakers you would try to reach out for that's what your student body is communicating to you so of course i'd love to go to italy why not and as i click through them it tells me it just kind of keeps populating each one i do that for all of them and then there's a dashboard that'll show me how that expands attendance students see their attendance this particular

137student has high attendance awesome so they don't have a whole lot on their calendar but if it did have missing days or tardies or things like that it would show a color code pattern we try to keep that language in front of them why attendance is important what it leads to for grades and gpa graduation things like that but we want kids to be able to take some ownership in that space and then on the data side and yes as a little bit of a data nut this has been a fun build out so how do we help students see where they're at so this is the interest piece in a radar or web graph and they can see the academics careers cultures entertainment athletics right and they can see as they start clicking in

138what they love more or like more or don't know and that'll take shape and help them see the things that interest them the most and which way they kind of lean they can see it overall stacked they can see their goals and their timelines so here's the timelines for the students for cooking dinner for parents over spring break improving their grades by end of semester uh they can see their badge counts the stern students earn quite a few badges which is awesome but they also have a pretty good balance they have them in academics a couple for assessment quite a few for attendance and a little bit of in-app usage they see their moods overall and kind of trend over time and then we go back to those bigger data points around their attendance how

139they see themselves across the district and their gpa other than that that is what we've built to date we have a whole other list of features we'll kind of continue to build over time the stuart foundation is really the group that helped us kick that off one of the cool pieces about that group if you guys remember the carnation evaporated milk cans the stewart foundation started with in kent washington with an entrepreneur who started that whole process 100 and some years ago so they've kept a lot of their work here in washington california kind of west coast so they've been a great partner we've had all kinds of uh processes through this journey um our cio ed gracia i've probably driven him crazy i'm surprised his hair looks as good as it does but he's

140been a champ first we were going to do some of this with microsoft then it was a different vendor then we can build it in house and then zeke said and so uh but we've arrived and so it's been fantastic uh my guy back there ryan howland from project management uh he has hair like mine because i have pretty much driven him crazy through this uh as well and so uh it's been fantastic to get this in the kids hands thank you for the presentation before opening up for comments or questions from the board i want to defer to our student board members see if you have any reactions i know this wasn't a tool that was available to you but as you listen to the presentation if you have any thoughts or reactions i'd

141love to hear them we'd love to hear them and i can also wait but go ahead nathan yeah this this whole thing seems amazing i mean i'm i'm surprised by everything it's it's great i i'm only disappointed that i can't use it more as a senior yeah so i wrote a little a few notes while you were giving your presentation so i appreciate the whole mood section i thought that was really an interesting idea it was uh innovative almost i hadn't seen something like that before so you know being in the tips especially uh you know giving people actions to do i think to based on the mood i thought that was really amazing especially you said there's so many tips like 10 to 14 per mood and there's an amazing amount of moods too

142so yeah that was really interesting also the ease of access to resources especially like the hotlines i appreciated that so that's another great point about it um yeah and i mean it's just there's there's so much to it it's crazy this is yeah i'm amazed i'll say that thank you yeah i'm also very impressed i also really liked the tips for the moods i had never seen that before um and as well as like the hotlines i think that's really important um to include and i think it'll help keep a lot of people like on track and be able to organize things um i guess my one concern would be like if it was required to use because i know that sometimes like finding out how to like navigate things again and if you're really

143busy with homework sometimes if you have to set goals it can feel like extra homework but other than that i think that it reminds me a little bit of duolingo which i've had to use in school before so i think that having to navigate it won't be too much of a problem because students are very used to um like apps like this so i think that's really helpful thank you comments from members of the board anyone director bond bright yeah thanks zeke i thought one word that comes to mind is cool i really it's just really awesome um of course i'm it's way beyond me so um but i i did want to actually piggyback on something jasmine um was asking or was saying that i actually had a question about how it interfaces or

144relates to the other access systems that we have in place around grades and um test scores and those kinds of things because i i was thinking exactly the same thing like is this an either or can they do this can they track their homework on this instead of i can't remember what the name of the other one that we use is schoology okay so schoology versus and so you know there it's it's double the work if you have to do it twice and so i was trying to think that through so jasmine thank you for articulating it so we're working to right now we're pulling the grades piece out of our e-school system but we are in the process of looking pulling that from schoology so it's a perfect match and the app actually sits

145in schoology so the students would see it as one of their resources while they're in that space so again i missed an assignment or i'm behind what do i need to do to set myself as a reminder the next feature we're adding is a planner it'll piggyback what's in schoology as teachers populate it but also gives the student that opportunity to go in and set a different reminder so it's like okay i know next thursday is this quiz i know i need tuesday to start on it right um so we're trying to leverage current platform of schoology as well as in essence enhanced so it's not a required you better do both it's going back to my earlier statement here's the tools you have to help you be successful so a student could go in

146and use just this tool the compass tool and never have to bother with the other one but if they didn't want to use this tool they could find their their stuff on zoology correct that's cool school is here that's all right we'll get you there it is a zoo any other questions or comments i mean sorry from vice president bomb break okay director leon i think it's our presentation so um yeah grades um you talked about how to check all those sometimes grades can be overwhelming uh people are just focused on the grade um it really doesn't tell everything about the students so i appreciate there's a lot of other things there that can give kids an idea of how they're doing what community can do better is there a way that teachers can give

147ratings or feedback on like kids knowledge base or interactivity i know that comes into grade sometimes it's just interaction in class as opposed to like just the scores that come separate or is that just kind of part of the grade so so the teacher could say this kid is really pretty bright and maybe they had just a bad couple of weeks doing some assignments or something like that so they don't get down on themselves too much is that this so there's a couple pieces there we in a standards driven instruction model we don't see as much around the participation showing up in the grade book now recognizing the students giving that feedback is certainly critical we know that offering schools that custom badge space is part of that so you know i've heard at different

148schools there in fact uh librarians today uh stadium was asking some questions you know we have ap courses so we know we've offered rigor opportunities for kids how do we recognize them for that effort so it might not be tuesday at 10 o'clock they receive that piece but their effort over time shows up and then i think the other is one of the features we're looking at is the connections piece so kind of a kids page so i show you there's like a resource page here's an academic for other academic and then what's the kids page how do we connect you with uh the after school programs the other opportunities the clubs around town the there's so many different interest levels so when i think of the student you're describing where yeah crushing these tests

149is not my jam but my teacher recognizes other pieces and my teacher can help me through this space connect with places that all excel we also were very intentional about trying to give success criteria that was already negotiated with the idea that kids needed a safe place to see the gifts that they really are without somebody saying you know you're not there right they need a safe place to say i can go get this badge on my own i can i can improve my success on my own with resources but i can set my own goals in there so we wanted to create a safe space for them to to not have too much adult comment on what their goals their successes are with the idea that if we give them the data the knowledge

150they're going to accelerate at a far greater rate thanks um what about you you mentioned the support section kids can reach out to teachers and other kids so they reach out to other kids around like getting just simple examples getting help on homework or what club is going on can i join that club and from teachers same thing up on homework or right could it be anything well yeah how we help you find a mentor if that's a need you have for some ongoing support that's the connections piece that you know having been a principal at middle school with after school programs one of the things that we really had to work on was bringing our partners in during the regular staff time so the staff even knew what was available from flag football the

151homework club the choir and you know there's partnerships are amazing but it takes an extra layer of communication how can we fold that into here so now every teacher doesn't have to be an expert on every single thing going on um so we see tutoring clubs we've really through avid especially but even in our high schools with ap courses uh talking with justina johnson our director how do we help kids build their that study group right we did it in college because we had to the reality set it but we have to teach that skill and kids i mean i've seen sixth graders pull it off right but it's something we have to create that space for okay and the mood part about the i think that's maybe one of the most powerful parts here

152is giving them the ability to interact get cues make changes to their movement they're positive you mentioned the part about there are links to uh to create you know it wasn't you use the word crisis line or hotlines can be used some kids aren't going to use those so if there's too many blue zones or red zones anger zones is there something that alerts a staff an adult member in the staff at the school to go maybe check in on that kid it's like a pattern or just continue right so we spent a lot of time on that piece and there's no clear i mean we've met with school psychologists we've met with the smart center at uw which is the medical and academic and trying to figure out is there is there a calibration

153for that we should be looking for is there an obligation that we have from that how do we make the data available to staff that supervise the kids so there is a dashboard that counselors teachers have that have that student on their roster assigned to them the administrators and so they can monitor some of that peace and one of the spaces we came to is kids are going to be all over the place and at different times and there's not an obligation that we're watching this saturday night at one o'clock for a kid to move in or anything of that nature this is as dr garcia described it's their space to do their thing but there are ways for us to see that we've had some conversations on the data side of do we need

154to trigger a piece and what would that look like and the discovery is the same as it would be in school so if we noticed the kid was having a rough day and we interacted with them we would immediately set them up with supports they needed and this is that same kind of discovery piece when we come across it we immediately react to it but we don't have something that pings you right away based on a metric i would probably advocate that that would be useful i mean if you could tell probably a lot of the kids who can tell and teachers will be able to see that but if there's a pattern you know no one's really modern this in the middle of the night right so we're not saying enough of a pattern

155of a week two weeks three weeks go by where things are just worse for of course that would be a powerful thing to help some kids certainly thanks dr keating um i'm so excited zeke this is so cool uh i think it was like two years ago when there was the stewart documentary when we were we you were walking us around stuart and telling me all this all about this idea you had in like it was so hard to conceptualize it and plus you talk a mile a minute and so like you have to really work to keep up and i just i'm like so excited and impressed to see this in its full form from where you know when you first told me about it it's so incredible um one question i also i

156mean the mood pieces others have also said super powerful but and um i'm curious about because one of the things that i through elo programming that i've done with elementary school students really focused on that there are multiple emotions that can happen at the same time and helping kids connect that right it's not just a singular emotion it's not just i am sad right like you know you can be nervous excited and scared right and and and so i'm curious and this may make somebody el you make somebody else's hair go grayer or i don't know what but i'm just curious about like that educational pieces you are looking to develop the younger interface helping our younger students also explore the complexities that emotions aren't you don't you know that a lot of emotions can

157emotions can feed each other so just be super curious about you know not right now but just in seeing an evolution of using the mood piece as a way to help students become more emotionally intelligent at young age younger ages so um but this was amazing so i'll stop there hello thank you director strozer thanks for the presentation i i'm liking what i'm saying i can see my kid um kind of messing around with this so that's that's pretty cool i will ask though what can you speak to the student rollout plan like is this something that's just going to pop up for them to see and then they're asking what this is or they're going to get some guidance on it so all the above we actually um when we started digging into this

158we found districts that had some pieces they had a mood piece or they had a grade and a goal piece or they had a badge piece but we didn't find anybody that had all of them and we did find is in austin in san jose canada we talked to a group in australia a lot of them did kind of a viral start san jose for example they literally just put it on their public page and they said nothing and then at the end of week two there were like 1800 kids and theirs was just for high school students right and it was just the badges and the grades right so we thought during our pilot we we experimented a little of each a couple teachers here it is we're not going to say a whole

159lot a couple others we're going to come in we're going to model it and go through and we definitely saw an engagement difference in that so our first goal is to just get it in get it running and live uh which we're able to pull off this week we've been meeting with uh counselors and librarians and different groups over the last couple weeks and kind of modeling for them we built out a website and our hub for them to access uh with little videos even a student trailer video so it's got kids in there i apologize it's my kids but the only ones i could get near during covid so i have three of them in tacoma so they walk through kind of using it and then there's an overview that more technical welcome this

160is where you start in so we've tried to provide teachers easy resources kid-friendly language we're currently working on a space where they can model it so in their base camp app they'd be able to go in and say all right class today we're working on a goal setting i'm going to walk you through lockstep but we're not driving that next thursday at two o'clock everybody in seventh grade needs to be doing this lesson on compass it's really just a resource we wanted to put in kids hands and support that process so i've had a couple teachers email already all right i was in here i was doing this piece what about can we it's like absolutely including that student feedback piece um so it's great to hear from our two students today but we'll be

161going back out so we've been picking on stewart and jason lee and truman uh we'll kind of work our way around schools their voices is key any other questions i just have two just following up on this piece about the rollout i'm just thinking about recent launches of apps in the world and like clubhouse this big one like and you thought what is this thing because invitations were going around do students have the opportunity to invite others to join is there any way to build that capability and one of the features so like i said we've got our kind of half dozen we're in now we've got another i think probably seven or eight that we're still going to continue to work on over the next couple years but one has been that notification so

162we know for so many kids their support is not that direct staff person it's their coach it's uh their auntie grant right like whoever that is and so how do we help them push that out you know and again it's success driven so if you had a 0.4 gpa and you got to a 0.9 and you made a 0.5 jump i'm giving you a badge like you went up like we're just going to start there you were low on assessment you went up i'm going to get you a badge and so how do they send that out to those supports that they have that and that can include their teacher we heard a lot of students talking about last year's teacher right like i had this teacher last year and she got on me and

163i you know i turned the corner so how do i now show her this is where i'm at this is what i'm doing right and that was really powerful to hear from kids so we know we need to build that mechanism in yeah thank you i'm following up too on director leon's question about intervening related to the mood trends one of the things that we heard i think several of us heard in our listening sessions long time ago before covet last march with students especially middle school students was that when i'm having a bad day i just need to take a break or like to just have a place to go so in lieu of like having a metric that we can pull from some other validated resource about when is the right time is

164there an intermediate opportunity to build something in that based on a student's mood lets them ask for you know like ask for time or ask like the the tips are great and it points to the direction of things that they can do but if as some of the students consistently said i just need to be able to like go to a quiet place for a second is that is there any kind of signaling to a teacher to a counselor that the students can do from the system so part of it is uh and i'll go to director keating it's part of that education piece right so we know especially in our elementaries we're seeing uh really clear explicit sel instruction our middle schools are getting better at that piece we saw a lot this year

165even with our virtual realities and so how do we help the kid with that voice so certainly we could look at putting in a digital mechanism but there's a lot of power and me being 12 and being able to approach an adult and this is where i'm at this is how i'm feeling this is my need and i'm still going to come back and do my fractions because of course that's why i woke up this morning right i said whatever so part of it is that experience but we certainly could look at does this directly signal you know without a disruptive piece right yeah and i think from the experience in the conversations it seemed that some of the schools had a mechanism like built into their culture into the school environment like kids knew

166that they could go ask so whereas in others it's like it was the sense that they still needed it so regardless of what the technology does or doesn't enable i i think that the school has to support that practice too but i was just curious about like the two-way if there's two-way communication my last question is about um the first backing up this is great i got it went right into my questions but this is great my last question is about the data and what students see i just wonder what the kind of behavioral science research says about whether seeing your own place in your own grades compared to your peers if that's motivating or if it's can be [Music] the opposite of motivated in some cases and if there is research around that i'm

167wondering if that varies depending on like culture or gender identity like how does that motivate or potentially um not inhibit students kind of thinking about their own abilities and their own sense of efficacy and all that stuff what what's the research say about it so for me that homework started oh my gosh 16 years ago as an elementary principal i was at faucet i will take full credit my first year i managed to drive us into the tank and so we were getting the notice from the state like you better pick it up and that was one of my curiosities is what does that look like so i had a chance to go and just start asking questions um i had met even with pediatricians and psychologists uh i was reading and i couldn't find

168anything that said no they shouldn't see their data i also couldn't find anything that said absolutely they'll flourish it'll be amazing and so i just started slow dosing it out with kids and i was creating these you know this is back in good old mail merge days these crazy documents with like you read this many words correct on your dibbles and if you can get this far by january or june and kids were setting their goals teachers were facilitating those conversations and kids took on to it i've had kids in my office with if you're actually going to e-school it'll tell you how you rank so we have a couple hundred kids per grade level at a typical middle school and i'd have you know uh kiddo in there who's like 2 12 out of

169220 on the list and even that kid would be like oof that's bad i gotta do something about that right so even my kids at the lowest end of the scale the kids that i'd sit down with and say you're a low level one on this test and we're gonna take this test again in three four months and you've got multiple opportunities to get smarter to challenge yourself what do you want to do and so i've seen these kids writing goals around this um and i've tried to continue to stay abreast of what that looks like our conversations at the smart center were the same thing we've got education folks medical folks around the table and it's like we don't have anything that says no but we definitely have seen places where it's been successful

170so that's the space we're going to play in i think the other thing none of this is supposed to be a perfect uh isolated piece right so schools and school staff are working through their cap plans grade level teams they're working with kids to improve their pieces this is designed to say you know as a student you have the ability to own your own data as well and to not keep them from there but president cop you're hitting on an important point is we've got to surround kids with the adults to help them get there there are some tips right that we're going to continue to build out around so if you do have low grades what are there what are the learning strategies so justina and zika what are the highly yield learning strategies

171how do we teach kids on their own through schoology how to take notes how to use a graphic organizer so really practical strategies that they can then own to say i can improve this um but this is a part of a bigger suite of information and supports for kids not the only one because i think then it's really dangerous if we're not having conversations with kids about some of the topics that you've had so counselors are also having conversations there is schools that are all of our elementaries are doing explicit curriculum around sel i think you've already brought up with so what is secondary explicit curriculum look like you've brought in the idea that every school needs a social emotional learning plan so that's another tool in the suite to say how are we looking

172at kids but the premise here is that in a lot of that work we had left the student out and we needed to bring something where the student was in to say i'm really the captain of my own ship uh give me the knowledge give me the tips and what we're finding even in the coveted world is some kids are going faster and how do we use this as one more piece yeah i appreciate that context i think i'm just asking my mind thinks in terms of research and research questions and with this data too i'm just curious and i recognize this is like a research question like the intersection or the interaction between students moods and seeing these these data like if on a day or a consistent set of three days the student

173is like sad anxious and something else and then they see that they're performing below average for students in their school and in the district what does that do kind of to mindset and motivation so i think all this is great but just in rolling out new things i think it's um just good to probe on these things so that you don't embed potentially negative additions into the system and that you leverage kind of the things that do really work so i'm just asking i'm curious about it and hope maybe we can continue to wrap kind of exploration around those dynamics into the roll out of the system even in our pilot the student feedback piece has been dynamite kids are just going to tell you right so even as we're sitting reading it's like all

174right take a big gulp and here we go and so we've heard feedback pieces around this is my favorite part i would never use this part right and so then how do we dig into that what's missing is it a tweak is it a total revamp so we'll continue that as well thank you and not making this mandatory right that this is not it was never designed to be a a classroom assignment and if you're not doing it so much this was designed to be a tool to help kids perform better inside the classroom and outside the classroom so this is not a mandatory piece and we're not positioning it to be that way thank you and i just don't on one note i really the part i forgot to mention i really like the

175interest piece as well as well as the mood but i think the interest piece is where the a lot of kids are going to shine i mean they might not have had ex been exposed to travel or they might not have been exposed to something else and going to the library or you know looking online is different this is you know it's it's a they can go on a personal journey through this app and be interested in something and then get tips and information on how to actually operationalize that desire so i really i really think that could be so powerful so well done yeah thank you any other comments thanks for the presentation i have to say when um dr garcia first told me about it all in the term badge all i kept

176seeing was girl scout badges in my mind so it's nice to see the system come to life those are good badges so in ways that we're going to keep on working to incorporate girl scout patches good all right moving on to number 15 board comments and reports i'll start with our student board members miss pearson any report tonight mr asman any report great so i i wanted to give some feedback on just like the how the going back to school and person process has been going thank you um and so i i went back last monday and so far i'm i've really enjoyed being back in school i think that um first of all it's safe which is the best part and it's also efficient getting in you know checking in on the family app

177and having them see it so everything's great there and it's just great like being able to talk to my teachers in person and talk to you know my my peers and i guess just learning in person it feels it feels better i think in my opinion and i hope other people feel that way too so i i think it's i feel more engaged i think in class which is uh great so yeah that's how i've been feeling about that um let's see oh also yeah and like the whole mental health aspect of it i think is a lot of people are feeling better overall so far just for the first you know couple days of of it i think people are already enjoying being back in school too and it's helping kind of their overall

178state so yeah um and then just kind of check in on sports too which i like to give the first season i think ended well and second season's already great too everything's pretty much the same there so you know safety um and just kind of how information is being given out to people it's a little confusing on some you know like uh i think the location was changed for the upcoming track meet a couple times so there's a little bit of confusion there but you know that's a minor problem so it's okay and then also i just want to thank dr garcia for his words earlier um they were yeah that was great all right thank you miss pearson and you report no pressure just want to make sure we just don't want to skip

179over you uh yeah so i also went back to school um and this week has been like all four grades at my high school um and so that's been really refreshing because it was kind of weird to be honest when it was just seniors because i was in a class with like two other people and we're like we don't really know what to do but it was also nice to just catch up with teachers and yeah i agree with nathan it's been easier to communicate with teachers i was in my ap calculus class and i am calculus is not typically my strong suit but it was really hard to get one-on-one time with teachers and ask those questions but today while i was taking like a test i was able to call over my teacher

180and be like hey does this work look right and that was just really reassuring and kind of refreshing as well and on a more restorative justice point we have a restorative justice club at my school with a lot of teachers and students and they put together a microaggression lesson which i think is really important because now that people are back in school there's more interactions between students that you know can't can't always be monitored by teachers like when you're in a virtual breakout room or in the chat and so i think it's really important to have students not only readjust to being in the classroom but also just readjust to the school culture and learning how to like respect everyone and so i think that's been a really important piece as well thank you um

181comments and reports from the board i'll start with vice president bondbrake okay well this has gone long so i will be super brief um just to say that last meeting the next day we were going to have our jmac the joint municipal action committee meeting um about the visioning project that we're doing within our community and it was a two-hour workshop and it was fantastic there was a lot of participation and engagement of the elected officials that were there and the executives of each of the the agencies that were involved and um we came out of it with a visual capture someone drew pictures of the discussion and then i don't know if you've ever seen that there was sort of a graphic capture of the minutes if you will of the conversation and um

182so that was very powerful and we're about to step in this the next step of the project which is we're doing us um what's called a rainforest scorecard on to evaluate our innovation and um scale and also the the ability for our community to work together uh on the three major issues which are jedi which is justice equity um diversity and inclusion uh is one and then the other the next one is um public health and safety and the last one is building community wealth and those are the three tracks that we're taking through this whole jmac project over the next six months and so we're about to go assess our of the community's ability and innovations um capacity to move the needle on these three topics and so that's going to be discussed at

183the april 9th meeting so i will give you an update at that point but just to let you know that there's it's exciting it's engaging and it's really stimulating to know that all the partnerships we talked about tonight that tps is involved in they're only getting stronger through this work so thank you thank you director leon any report tonight um so i was able to visit jason and truman middle schools last week a really exciting visit just seeing kids and teachers interact um the sixth graders when they were there there was so much excitement from the kids they were being safe they were really thoughtful in their comments about how much they missed school really i mean it was one kid who was like yeah out of like 20 some kids that i talked to

184so i thought that was pretty good you know excitement would be back in school i really um teach them around kid morale was very high it seemed like i wanted to talk to teachers individually not just with the principles about my side although i do appreciate suzarling mr um style were a great host during that visit so miss jackson um miss badwell about schools and to see the layout of what would happen in the cambodia sick and how to be isolated uh it's been very thoughtfully so implemented there at both those schools and as i'm i'm sure it's been in other schools too uh hvac we talked about hvac and air exchanges those are all appropriate for for both the schools and really everywhere at this point there's some of the schools that are using

185windows but of course air transfers are really important the music's a program you know is still going and people have been doing it of course remotely but we still need to get some ppe for wind instruments i think hopefully those are coming in soon i heard they were on their way uh otherwise so they can actually start to maybe perform together in spaces that are that are safe so i think the arts are really something that's you know taking a hit there's a lot of things happen like we're excited to get that back and going um other things uh truman also feel the morale was extremely high miss lee in science miss lewis language arts thank you for letting me visit your classes also safe streets i'll just mention i'm on the board there there's

186an auction may 9th if anybody gets an invite please may 19th excuse me no 19th yes 1-12 please uh try to come you'll be a few of you may get invites from me and then i was uh there's a school physical fair that we're doing with my residents and my faculty lincoln and mount tahoma april 8 in the afternoon and then there was an exciting uh lincoln football game uh last game that was uh against lakes i was there helping out the injuries and i'll just give it a quick turn turn around basically it was they had to drive they were down by seven they had to drive 95 yards or three minutes they did that scored and then it was go for two to win the game and they did it so good job

187lincoln thank you director keaney um i'll keep it short um so i don't have like any real mazda updates or anything um but last night so for a little bit of context about five it's been more than five years ago i started as a lgbtq advocate youth and family advocate i started working with just a couple school counselors on you know who wanted to learn how to create more safe inclusive spaces specifically even more at the elementary school level and over time it has evolved into an entire team of counselors tacoma public schools counselors from elementary middle and high school and last night um we and we've presented um as a community i participate as a community partner um with them and we've presented at wazda we've presented at the oh i don't know the

188acronyms but the school counselor national or state conference whatever that is sorry team if i'm screwing that up but last night um because of one of these presentations our team was invited to present to the ups um masters teaching and masters masters in counseling programs last night to students and faculty um and of course over zoom and it was really dynamic and of course doing any kind of training over zoom is weird it's just everything is kind of weird over zoom but i just like it was really inspiring and i just am continuing like as a community partner in this in that specific work i have no doubt that i could never be a part of that team again and they would excel with just um with integrity and and with students safety at the

189core front student and staff i want to include lgbtq staff as well and it was just really inspiring to be with working with them again because the last time we did it i think was june any kind of training just because of covid and we received some feedback from the um faculty around what the students said and you know faculty and students said that the training was formidable inspiring authentic and dedicated professionals and that the students were electrified and i just am so proud because when i talk to people in other districts and across the country and other families count like this kind of intentional work is equity work is not being done to this level and our school our school counselors i know i talk about them almost every single time we're on a

190diet but they are doing such life-saving incredible work and i'm so proud of this lgbtq plc team that laura director whole child laura allen is helping lead so i just want to give them just the highest accolades for their effort thank you dr strozer no thank you um i just uh between now and our previous um last meeting i had the opportunity to sit with members of the foundation for tacoma students board superintendent santorum was also on that call so it's just always good to hear about the continued good work that the foundation is planning for and trying to lead we have a really strong partner in that organization and as they continue to mature and to find their way as an organization it's been interesting to hear the conversation between members about continuing to

191implement the vision and figuring out ways to be sustainable in the community so i think we just have great partnership as i've said but also leadership in that organization in addition i went to the head start policy council meeting that's always my favorite it's just nice to hear um families and parents of like our early learners in action and working on moving the program and policy structure forward i always try to bring back just feedback from the group there isn't a ton i think to share from this previous meeting but in general i think they appreciate having more of an open dialogue between us and the board and the opportunity for them to come and present so just hope to keep that moving forward um i think that's it for me tonight so i'll move

192on to item number 16. announcement of future board meetings thursday april 1st we'll meet for our regular business meeting at 6 00 pm thursday april 15th will meet at 6 pm for a study session thursday april 22nd will meet at 6 pm for our regular business meeting any other comments or questions from the board seeing none with that we are adjourned [Music] you