001district mission is teach all reach all our district vision is urbandale will be a school district that brings learning to life for everyone our urbandale school board mission is to partner with stakeholders to teach all and reach all through governance of board policy and operating protocol urbandale is a national leader in character counts endeavoring at all times to promote and model principles of trustworthiness respect responsibility fairness caring and citizenship in conducting tonight's meeting we expect that all participants will act in a respectful manner consistent with these principles thanks so we'll call this meeting to order we'll have the roll call anderson yes may i have a motion to approve the agenda so move there guys okay and we are planning to move into the exam session so go ahead and read exam question um code
00221.9 a meeting of the governmental body to discuss strategy in matter relating to employment conditions of employing employees of the governmental body who are not covered by a collective bargaining agreement under chapter 20 is exempt from this child yes so at this point um all in favor of moving to the exempt section i i oppose saying sign okay so we'll be back momentarily we will vote on it yes intended to fill a building leadership need in one of our buildings and as such both of these contracts are in one motion there's no personnel decision at this time it's strictly contracts to have open positions spilled that accurate okay may i have a motion there guys remove to approve the contacts full second thank you hope you're welcome anderson no bowser yes need yes monkey yes
003say advisor yes motion carries thank you i might say personally this is a very difficult time and i thoroughly acknowledge that okay may i have let's see may i have someone bring forward the consent agenda items second okay do we have any clarifications questions i have some questions on the bills list yeah um just not knowing what the aio tuition first first semester was that was um we pay out to avm dcg and perry i just don't know what that is yeah those are open enrollment payments and they're typically made at the semester so that's half of the year the net we get way more than we pay out but that's what those are and they will show up again in june or july i think you asked about a special education one also and
004we pay that special education tuition as well for any open enrolled students okay and again they only show up at the semesters okay um i think the other issue with this question oh that's the next one okay so anything else okay all in favor of adopting the consent agenda say hi hi all right opposed same sign so it's unanimous i'll move to adjourn the transcendent agenda meeting one second all in favor aye hi opposing sign okay we are adjourned now we will move into the work session i want to thank all of you for for being here and we haven't always had people be very civil at the board meeting so i really do appreciate that okay we will call this uh work sessions to order they at 701 and we'll have a real call
005vote um anderson here browser here here me here thank you sure guys here uh by the way you guys are here for board for the gov hours there's a paper over here i'd love to have you fill out and pick one up you get extra half hour for it i'll report it to your government teacher move to approve the agenda second all in favor aye aye opposed and i'm still on the last meeting yes so it says we're moving to superintendent before yeah of course there's no action for foreign report is going to be presented by ryan williamson and this is the first reading of a new proposed policy that we're numbering 548 on transgender and students not conforming to gender role stereotypes first off good evening thank this body for allowing me to come
006in and present um this new policy before the board but before i do that i felt remiss if i wouldn't say happy birthday to my 15 year old daughter just something yes thank you with that being said again thank you for the opportunity to present um this new policy to the board our transgender and student non-conforming and gender stereotype um policy um this policy is really um meant to honor our students our non-conforming students um as well as our as well as our transgender students this is definitely not a policy that that i wrote alone this is a policy that has a lot of different voices nf voices such as uh thomas mays who's general counsel down at the department of education um this was shared with him and his office we've also reached out
007to jordan mix who's the director of education at iowa safe schools uh kerry weber and alders of cooney law firm dr kerry schleeter and i engaged in great conversations surrounding this policy um we also collected voices from our gsa at our middle school so i say that just just to let this part just let this body of folks know that we have a lot of voices uh that went into this policy as it is as as it is written excuse me um something i want to say again purpose we just wanted to make sure that we aligned our our our policy um to that of the iowa iowa code um which addresses which addresses transgender non-conforming students it's also a way to just to make sure that that our students uh we make sure that
008they are heard we make sure that they are seen and we make sure that they are honored uh in our school so that's kind of the purpose of this of this policy there are six tenants one up which i kind of want to address here um briefly i mean as you all all had access to the policy uh before there's just a couple of pieces that i want to make sure that i point out as we go through this and i'll make sure that we open it up for questions um here shortly um a couple of things again we wanted to make sure that there were some definitions again not to present any labels for for our students um just to make sure that we have some common language and some common understanding of our
009students and again wanted to make sure that we are aligning this policy with that of um code as well as our non-discrimination and anti-harassment and those bullying policies um we wanted to make sure uh that in tenant three which is our student privacy our names pronouns official schools again this is one that i think is going to be one we're going to have to continually have some conversations and engagements in um one again the purpose of this is not to not engage our parents not engage our staff etc but just to make sure that students recognize that they do have a voice and they don't lose um their their rights as students as they walk into our buildings that was something that uh thomas when mr mays and i had some dialogue back and forth
010he did reference specifically um that des moines versus tinker with students in their own civil rights et cetera so we want to make sure that that is pointed out in there um again our restroom and our locker room use um again making sure that this policy is aligned with our current idle code which says that students can use the restroom in which they identify with um identify and present i want to make sure that i point that out this isn't where a student can walk into our schools one day and say okay to use the female restroom i'm going to say that i identify as female students so again it's again how they identify um and how they also present um as well um again uh the last one being participation in physical physical education
011and sports activities this also aligns with both the iowa high school girls athletic union as well as our high school boys athletic association where their policy is written that students can again participate in the activities or sports in which they identify the dress code popsy that's getting we're just going to make sure that we don't um wrongfully enforce our stress code policy for our transgender or non-conforming students i know that there's a lot of questions right now not only in the media but also with our state legislature um we have senate file i believe it's 20 25 which is the bathroom bill which um if it is passed we will have to then come back and make and make amendments to this policy uh but through conversations with with leaders here we want to make
012sure we just want to go ahead and move forward and if we need to make adjustments that is something that we will do i recently read an article of a student as a current student athlete who is profoundly against transgenders being able to uh participate and again while we do recognize that while we do honor those voices um just though that this is a policy that that's going to honor are going to honor our students that will currently serve in our district so uh with that being said i will open it up for any questions or we can engage in any dialogue so ryan looking at this i think as i interpreted our policy would apply to any visiting teams visiting schools who would come here for competition etc that we would make accommodations a
013accord for this policy um as related to those students what then on the reverse of that what protections do we have in place for our students when we travel to another district that may not have a similar policy or something related to how do we have something identified so that we can make sure that they have the same experience when they're in another city two hours away that's a very good question and while our policy while we support our students here we can't guarantee that our policy then transitions to other school groups um so i would say that's going to have to be engaged in some other conversation with outside outside school districts um the policy itself in the state bible i would code is very clear sure and so if those school districts aren't
014honoring that and that's gonna definitely have to be some conversation and probably some phone calls that we made to make sure that our students feel safe in those spaces outside of our district um i know that's probably not the answer that you were looking for but it's probably the best provide one thing and there's you know for students that are visiting we will make sure this policy does make sure that spaces are provided for students whether they're coming in or or our current students um i wish i could guarantee that when we leave our walls it's not something i like that i can do but i but i do appreciate your thoughts surrounding them can you help me understand in in iowa code 216 or 216.9 it says this section does not prohibit an educational
015institution from maintaining separate toilet facilities locker rooms or living facilities for different sexes so long as the comparable facilities are provided so that is i mean i i read that and it says that we're allowed to have gender specific bathrooms which is true we we can't have gender-specific bathrooms however what it says is that we cannot prevent a student that identifies um as a different gender different than the gender that assigned at work we can't prevent them from using that restroom that they identify with now on the flip side of that coin this new policy ensures that all of our buildings have gender neutral restrooms as well so if we have a student we have a transgender student who still doesn't even feel comfortable going into that they still can use the gender neutral restroom
016but then our other students that may want to use the restroom which they identify and we can't deny them that access do we are all of our buildings do all of our buildings have gender neutral bathrooms do i mean are we in a good position right now with our current buildings that is something that's a conversation that we are having this policy will then ensure that every single building has a gender neutral restroom and students will have access to that okay are we looking at doing something similar to like at olmsted where you know all the bathrooms the doors are full you know so that or is it stop yeah i'm gonna grab my wallet because that's gonna take some construction as well so i'm gonna grab my money i'm gonna hold my money that's
017supposed to be a joke um is that has that been part of the conversation in full transparency no and it has not been part of the conversation i would anticipate as we start as our new building opens up definitely that's something that that should be addressed if it hasn't been already i think that that gender neutrality at homestead the way that it persists it basically lives up to this policy tenth pool um but again going in and redesigning you know restrooms and all of our buildings is definitely a conversation that we can and it also states here about single access bathroom use so i would assume that would be available for any student that just felt safer to go to a single access and have we engaged um i i guess what stuck out to
018me when i was reading this too as it was a lot of what i'm saying i'm if the bathroom locker room is is where i i feel like i have the most concern um have we talked to pe teachers of how they've handled things in the past how it has worked um when when they're encountered with this because i'm thinking of the protection of all students yeah of you know it would be intimidating going into it when if you identify and you're going in i want to protect those students as well as those that are not and i'm thinking most of my education background is in middle school and middle schoolers you know they like to find something they're not supposed to do and and bathrooms and locker rooms are have always been a place
019of trouble so how are we protecting those and realistically how are we you know because there's only so many pe teachers and there's kids out in the gym and there's kids in the locker room and so how are we monitoring that for everyone's safety reaching out to the middle schools buying a pin was to make sure that we captured those voices of our middle school students in gsa and then making sure that they feel comfortable and basically getting some information from them to ensure that not only are they comfortable but everyone around them is comfortable as well i think this is going to require some learning and some training for all of our staff on what to do and how and how to support all of our students again by ensuring that all of our
020all of our buildings have a gender neutral or a single use restroom and making sure that all students are aware that they do have access to that as well it's going to take some learning that's going to take some training and that's definitely something that we're going to have to spend some time um not only premiering that training but then providing that providing that training to all of our staff um but again there is some learning that's going to have to happen and also and equipping our teachers for putting tools in their toolbox on how to address some of these concerns because they're going to be folks who are not they're not going to be comfortable with this so it's going to take some more because by nature middle schoolers just they're all uncomfortable with
021themselves i mean like you know we've all been there so yeah there's a lot i would also point out for the people who are watching this and listening to the um explanation of the policy that if you go on our district website and you click click quick links and board policies it will take you to the location of this policy and you'll see that it's up for review so you can read that and you can go in and enter any comments that you might have that you would like the board to consider um at the second reading that's something that we will any comments that are made that might cause an edit or something would have to go back to our attorney but that's a location for us to provide input and that'll be our
022new process moving forward so i would encourage people who have an interest in helping this policy be exactly written the way that uh they feel appropriate to put their comments in there so then to clarify sorry if there's a second reading and then what's the next step after that the second reading would be the one that is is that the vote or is it the following one so there will be comments collected all through between the combine okay and then the second rule these items are all on the next agenda so we're not doing any action now right so then it will be second one in march february the 21st would be the second week in two weeks for a second reading and approval over that two weeks so you can comment on that in
023assembly okay okay we'll move on to dr dhaka's uh quarterly evaluation which a couple of you asked me whether you needed to um i'm just going to review the plan here um we've adopted the one that's been adopted by the state so there's 10 standards which is what you saw and at this point rosalie is updating with items and decisions and actions that are appropriate for each of those it's kind of helpful for you to review those because it turns into quite the volume the next meeting we'll have is uh like april beginning of april maybe it's at the end of march okay next time the quarter this one was pushed a little bit because we um we were going to do this at the last meeting but we pushed it out for two weeks
024so you'll get the third quarter updates and then the final one which will be in may and that'll be i will ask for a closed session because that will be your summative final opportunity and i did talk to a couple of you but i didn't talk to all of you so what we would typically do then is we kind of review and then we get together and we try to have a discussion and then i will try to write that up forward it to you and then it needs to be completed by may 15 by law so that's when you'll have responsibilities and i don't think you guys were on the first time what i had explained with doing this quarterly the beginning one there's not a lot of solid action it's a lot of
025listening and a lot of learning a lot of meeting but as you go through each of the quarters i'm trying to show you more action more actionable evidence for meeting each of those standards so that's why i keep it in assembly i'll update it in assembly probably a couple of weeks before you go to do the next review of it so that you have any idea i try to keep it updated really weekly on my own just so that i i every time i feel like i found a piece of evidence that helps demonstrate that standard then i put that under there so that you can see that and hopefully you are seeing the growth in there and seeing the things that i'm doing to meet the standards that the state gave this is a
026similar form to what we're using for our central office administrators and our building principles as well um it's it's fully aligned to the continuous improvement work that we're doing both these forms so i think that it fits nicely into what work is happening already in the district so at this point i i don't go over every single one but i would take any questions or comments that you would feel appropriate you can always share those at a later date as well well i think a big win was having the entire system addressed the sub shortage this last quarter so i wanted to give everybody some kudos on that one i know it wasn't easy so that's awesome and i also really appreciate the oversight of all the construction because i know that's that's a lot
027for all of you so as a new board member if i can just just to get some clarification since i was not involved in the at the beginning of this when roosevelt first came on but i'm looking at standard seven on page 25 and then 26. um for quarter two um review of the student dss district student services survey etc um help me understand if there's a mechanism in place for beyond just kind of the survey on employee engagement etc or more of a 360 review um i i just as we think about this as we go into the year-end review um you know i have a very narrow window right i gave a certain perspective of dr dhaka in terms of our engagement with the board with her personally and i just want to
028make sure that we we're collecting information from the administrative team from you know everybody also that when we sit down in may that we kind of have a full perspective of people that are working on a daily basis in terms of leadership style management style communication etc that we're making a fully formed decision i think you get you you can see through the employee engagement survey that was given in the fall that's a piece of data that i um i'm pretty proud to say is the highest for the superintendent in the last how many years it was given um it's a honeymoon period yeah i'm new and everybody at that point but i'm hoping to keep that score going nowhere but up um i think those are data pieces that i would provide to you
029so that you could see that i don't know as far as reaching out to staff other than through those already existing mechanisms if that's something that the board has done in the past i'm not i don't believe that it's part of the process but i suppose if that's something that the board felt important to do i would take direction from the board but and i had those data points that were in here you know i think are very positive and they're you know a good indication of the overall intent of where the district feels it's headed but at the same point you know i i'm not i want to make sure that it's reflective of of how you're doing and how the staff and everyone is feeling that that you're progressing so that we can
030identify this is where rosalie's doing really well and these are the opportunities for her to improve and i just i want to make sure that we're collecting that and that those survey points give us we have some mechanism to fully understand kind of to make sure that you know we're providing counsel and direction and guidance and giving you the tools that you need to succeed i do think that um there's a number of surveys and tools that are that we use um i don't and normally you have access to them through the documents i haven't seen them yet this year but i would hope that we as a group could go through some of those data points yes um and and there are a number of surveys so there's a studer survey there's gallup yes
031there's the district services one and you can get kind of a picture of how things are going because you have access to years of data and so um i do think it gives you a pretty objective perspective on that the trouble is it's in the documents and we probably need as a group to review how to get out that stuff because it's folder after full inside folders inside folders there's not much in there for this year and so but i i particularly plan to emphasize some of that data before we actually wrap this up um it's a continually evolving process for those people who've been on here for a while yeah sometimes it's been quite painful um i think we've got a more solid process than we have had but i do want you to
032keep noting things and bringing them up because it is continually evolving so that it's actually valuable for all of us um but you know bottom line is that's our job i mean that's one of our legal responsibilities so okay i would appreciate that the revisiting of how to get to all of that yes yeah yeah and i i'm going to continue to reiterate we need this year's data in there too yeah um you know in the past it's been once you get to it it's easy to understand but it's hard to get to so and julie's helped me to kind of re-label a couple folders in there that are specific to me so you don't have to navigate through yeah it doesn't look as nice that's been julie's life okay anything else again that's a
033continuing process if you have questions or input let me know um want to review the entry plan sure um let me pull up my so in oops one sorry i know i can turn around and look there but i guess i didn't powerpoint okay um so as as you know again this was something that we were going to report out in the last board meeting um but moving this forward um this this could be very long there's a much longer um presentation instantly that is more of a descriptive um detailed document what i what i've done is created a short powerpoint that i can highlight the pieces um the original entry plan is in there as well it's been on the website for the public to see is as in addition to the board um
034this was written to help with the transition from mr bass to myself moving into the district this was done from afar i was in wisconsin when i wrote this as i after i got hired and i started watching board meetings and looking at the different components and the specific goals you can see were related to the leadership of the district strategic planning safety the legal political landscapes finance and the community those are sort of the typical big buckets that most new superintendents or new to the district superintendents tend to take a look at to make sure that they're well versed in what's going on in the district so how did i gather this input i gathered it two different ways one is in person meetings i had over i believe my number was 75 in
035person meetings i had um some virtual meetings i had an online survey over 268 people answered the survey which i was really encouraged to see that kind of community involvement and there was there was a lot of detail in that there wasn't a lot of one-word answers there was a lot of really good information and that's what i've used to culminate into this report that i'm going to give you tonight the questions that i asked these were kind of the original questions but there were very organic conversations so some of these conversations went in a variety of directions depending on the individuals that i was talking to but i basically wanted to know what was the strength of the district where opportunities we could look at to improve if you could tell me to focus
036on one thing what would the one thing be that i should focus on this year is there anything else i should know and then who else do you think i should talk to that led to quite a few different meetings so i got some really good information not knowing in wisconsin who was who and kind of what was what that was really helpful to be able to expand the pool of people that i was talking to so again on the survey the strengths that were that came out of that survey was the staff overwhelmingly the staff is very well loved in this community the community itself and then the size of the community improvement areas were communication the board and i'll go into a little bit more about that and then equity and inclusion those
037were areas that were clear that we needed to take a look at from the meetings the same thing has come out um over 75 meetings and again the staff the community and the size of the district were areas that again were identified as the improvement which again was same on the survey the improvement from the meetings the system as a whole there's some clarity needed to be around who's who and who reports to who and who whose job it is to do xyz communication again and the eop program the eop program is our gifted program and that came up time and time again as something that they felt like was an area for improvement i do want to note that there were some comments that were specific to individual schools or to principals and i
038took those and i went to the principles of the schools and i shared that information with them so that they could directly deal with it i didn't count those in the overall because there wasn't enough to outweigh any one of these but i also didn't want them to get lost so we did direct those individual things to the buildings themselves where should the superintendent focus some areas that came up health and safety and then and you can imagine from last year there were quite a few comments to keep our kids in school there were comments for and against masks there were things that were all just built up around covid but the overall health and safety was one of the top focus that areas to focus on are academics being my being visible again equity
039inclusion listening to the staff and the board of directors from the meetings equity which we've covered up here um community again and then instruction which i put with the academics is an area that they believe i should focus on kind of some these i took some of these top ones that were noted on what else should i know there was a concern that i not put sports over academics students need to come first listening to parents keeping kids in school again mostly related to covet standing up for all students striving for excellence reconnecting the high school supporting staff basics of teaching and opportunities for our students so those were comments straight from those individual feedback so specific recommendations um so with equity inclusion you know that we've been engaged with um west wing went west
040wind am i getting tongue-tied to provide us with an equity audit we have that preliminarily back i think there's some work to do we're going to ask for a meeting with the the group so that we can go over some of the components of that before we bring it to the board so that we can make sure we fully understand the information that they're saying my recommendation would be once that is finalized is to form a committee to get together and make sure that the recommendations are reviewed and that we're staying in line with both the audit recommendations and the work that's currently happening within the district relative to our continuous improvement and to make sure we have a solid implementation plan to go with it with respect to communication that was one of the
041most important areas noted in the feedback that is encompasses more than just communication from the district office that's school to school that's school to parent that's school to student parent to school all different avenues of communication one thing that i personally have noticed is we do have a stellar communications manager in dena clare however i'm going to be bringing to you a proposal in the spring to provide additional assistance to dina who is just swamped with everything that has to be done with communications and i feel like if we could um provide her some assistance we could do a better job in communications we could tie more in close with our principles and help our principals stay on point with their communication within the building and across buildings so that i will bring more information
042that does meet the board policies we do have a number of board policies that outline the importance of communication so i will bring more detail of that in the spring but that's my first recommendation i also will be creating a student-based advisory council with high school students i'm going to be looking for mostly juniors a couple seniors because they will be graduating to start in march to meeting with me at least monthly so that they can help generate the agenda for us to have conversations around what is going on in the schools that they might feel unheard so i'm going to ask to also ask the middle school to provide some names of students that can start that in the eighth grade and then carry that on i found that in the last district i
043work in that was probably one of the most enjoyable meetings that we had in in the month even though it was late but our students really do have a lot to say and i think that we need to give them the opportunity to say it a second area for improvement was noted again as the elp and um meeting with staff and parents that is a common thread even even amongst our staff i have been in touch with aaa heartland aea and they're gifted and talented i'm going to get her position wrong but i'm going to say coordinator i'm not sure what her final position is ryan and i are actually going to meet um i believe this week or next week to discuss a full study and review of the urbandale elp program there's a
044rubric that has been created that's in line with best research practices and we're excited about being able to do that there'll also be a committee that i recommend we form that involves parents and i have a few that were meeting with me earlier that are still interested in serving on that to help identify based on that evaluation what should our program look like and how could they contribute to making that happen so that's going to be some work that's going to take it's going to take some time i'm not going to lie um there's a lot of philosophical differences when it comes to gifted and talented from when to test what tests to use how old should the kids be what do you do after you test you have to test so it's going to
045be pretty comprehensive but i'm excited about getting into that work so that is another area of recommendation um the organization as a whole was noted to need attention and there there's a couple different realms for that um it's not atypical many districts there's feedback that there's too many administrators at the district office there's feedback that there's not enough there's feedback that we don't know like i said before who does what so what i would like to do with that is to undergo an objective review of our organizational makeup looking at our organizational chart and aligning it with the job descriptions and responsibilities that people actually have to make sure that we are set up right to make sure that we are in a position where we have the right people in the right place to
046do the right jobs that one also is going to take a little bit of time but that's my recommendation to ensuring that everything is in line um for alternative programs or program additions we all know that urbandale is not going to raise their enrollment except for open enrollment where a landlocked district that doesn't have people moving in to the existing houses so it won't expand so what i would like to do is to be permitted to explore some alternative options building on the success that we already have of rolling green which is our year-round school and that has a large number of open enrolled students wanted to take a look at what what would happen what could happen what other special programs might we offer that will draw people to our district there's a lot
047involved in that to make sure that if we did bring in a lot of elementary open enrolled students can we fit them in our middle school can we fit them in our high school as they matriculate up so there's some studies that need to go on there we don't want to we want to enhance what we have we don't want to conflict with that and we want to build on the programs like rolling green that are already such a success the next one is the board of directors and um it's hard to report this one but i i want to be open and transparent the community was very um outspoken in the board of directors and some of the terminology i'm just going to read from what was told to me they're concerned about inappropriate
048use of personal politics and lack of focus on academics and instruction my recommendation would be that the superintendent and board of directors established their expectations and open lines of communication i feel like this work has already started happening and i feel like we have been able to communicate in a way that is an improvement over what i felt they were telling me at the time that this survey was given so what i would recommend is that we have a future board work session where we can have all of those conversations and answer any of those questions that might be out there so we can continue to build the relationship between the superintendent and the board and change the community's perception of what used to be happening to what is currently happening now the last area
049is my a notice that i did um something i've said over the last couple of days a few times i remember being interviewed a year ago a little over a year ago i remember the questions that i was asked and i feel like i'm living those questions every day and one of those was a very strong focus on continuous improvement in systems thinking the the evaluation that i provided for you is very closely related to the baldrige framework there was a crosswalk done thank you denise to show the alignment of the baldrige framework with the state's evaluation system and i really feel like the board invested a lot years ago and for a very important um worthwhile investment and i would like to i want to get back to committing to that work it's not
050about being a baldrige district and getting a pretty trophy it's about getting the feedback on the work that we say we're doing and if we're doing it that's wonderful we'll have evidence of that and we'll be able to show that if we're not doing it then we need to be able to take that feedback and identify what we need to do differently and be able to be more successful in reaching our goal so my my intent is to continue this because that systems thinking was a huge part of the questioning that i had um over that time and i believe that it's very important and i would like to continue being dedicated to the right work in in the right way so celebrations i would say again the ucsd staff is the biggest celebration that
051came up over and over almost every single individual meeting i had that first question staff is what came out and i think that's something to be very proud of with the staff that we have here in ucsd from every position that we have there was not a single mention of one particular department or one particular staff classification but it's all staff also the ucsd community and family support which is evidenced in more than just our bond referendums that were passed and supported our strong financial position mary beth's not here tonight but i have never worked in a district that had such a strong finance officer who has is working to build our capacity so that we understand the ins and outs of finance to help make decisions on our own that will keep our district
052in that fine position our student achievement data continues you saw in the last meeting it continues to exceed the state just today kristen i got to have a conversation about data and we're really excited about our preliminary report on our fast data our students are making progress they're growing and this is a good thing in the midst of a pandemic in in many areas we're almost pre-pandemic in some of our scores so we're really looking forward to continuing that and then the district commitment to excellence i think i said this before the district has recognized long before i came here some specific key positions that many districts that i've been in or worked for have cut this district has committed to that excellence and that work that is happening so for my just my final
053kind of words what i would say is that it is a pleasure that i have been welcomed here to the ucsd family i'm continually impressed by the dedication of our staff and our ongoing support of the community we're continuing to work through covid and other distracting issues and the staff and families are strong and i'm confident that we will be able to continue working through this to do whatever we can for the sake of our students so thank you for bringing me to the district and i just look forward to continued work so if there's any questions i went through that kind of fast i didn't want to keep you all night i have a question about um what uh what members of the equity committee are you thinking of are you thinking of uh
054committee of involving students as well staff members i haven't thought of individual people i've thought about people who are in positions that are aware of the continuous work that we've done and the strategic planning that we've done that can ensure that it stays aligned i think there's a place for all the above i think it's just important that we take that information and not go you know we stay lined with what we're trying to accomplish and that's that commitment to equity you have another question no i'm just thinking for anyone else i want to applaud you for your efforts on the student engagement and bringing them more along i i would encourage you and encourage us as a board to maybe take that a step further and consider what student representation on the board itself
055might look like so that we also can have the advantage and the benefit of having students more directly engaged with what we're doing so we can hear from them as well i think a student liaison on the board would be is islam overdue we've had those discussions in the past and i think that maybe this might be a first step right like to start that student voice committee and then maybe find somebody that really would um want to be part of the board i think you mentioned juniors and some seniors would there be a possibility of getting some younger students and as well middle school ninth century yeah there could be i think what what i was thinking of for this year since it's only going to be a couple of months is to get
056some juniors to build but certainly for next year and i want eighth grade i want a couple of eighth graders that can also learn that i've met with the student senate there's some incredible kids on the middle school senate that are interested in that whole governmental kind of so that might be you know you get them 8th grade and they build up and that might be where your board representatives come from in years years out so for sure i would just encourage not to just focus on student senate because there's a lot of really politically minded kids who aren't in student senate um because they're not really comparable and i just use them as an example because i know they're there i just those i've seen so we'll probably have a a large list that
057will have to have the schools help narrow down because it could be there's a lot of talented kids in our buildings yes so i'll just say that's a lot of work and then we've had other other issues that have come up so i thank you for going through the process and following through on things and welcome again thank you okay so now we'll move into the action items for next time that would be uh the olmstead floor that would be when you could burst into song mr simon [Laughter] is there any departure i don't think so now [Laughter] okay so uh nearing the completion of olmsted 95 complete um when we started looking at the finished product uh the second floor commons area art room maker space and the upstairs maker space those floors were
058designed to in the initial building to be a polished concrete floor i would say this before i say anything else that the people that made those that decision on that floor for the most part are not in the district anymore i if i'll just say this if i had been asked at that point that my opinion was on a polished concrete floor i would have said no strictly because i believe it has a institutional factory type look to it as opposed to the rest of the building which is beautiful um also the the polished concrete it's just not as you can see by the picture that is a sample area of uh of what that concrete would look like um it's not it's not going to turn out good there's a lot of flaws on
059the concrete and i think that uh you know the safety of it as well by the time you polish that concrete and then you get that concrete wet it becomes very slippery so i worry about especially in elementary schools where there's lots of spill lots of water um i worry about that aspect of it as well as well as the just the aesthetics of it with the rest of the filter um the cost of this would be paid out of so on the sheet that i uh turned in um our net cost is thirty one thousand dollars so we've got thirty three thousand dollars ish uh from the company that would have been doing the final finishing to the floor that they will not be paid that they're already aware that that they would give
060that up to put towards this cost so our out-of-pocket cost is 31 000. um we looked at just stole the floor strictly because they did some of the work at the high school with the other sample picture that i sent as part of the training room lock into the locker room that dr watson had done um my proposal would be that at all instead we would use that concrete epoxy or the epoxy finish and then we would also use uh the pastel colors that are a mix of the colors and old instead has a flake in that as opposed to the white and black plate on the blue that we would use more of those pastel colors they can provide any color that we that we like on those stores um someone said give the
061texture of like a garage floor where they not quite not quite like that but it's very similar it's got very good traction um the wear time on that floor is about 30 years before you would ever have to replace that as opposed to a polished concrete floor at some point and probably less than five years but at least for sure the next five years we would have to look at refinishing that concrete again or putting some sort of a sealer or something over the top of it the wear on it it's just not going to be good i believe your work too here is done thanks jim uh street smarts contract um neither of whom are here no this is one that mary beth asked me to um i think the the big difference is
062the term of the contract i think the other districts in the metro um she chose the term or they chose the term that we did to make sure that we matched up with them um our contract would be june 2022 through may of 2026 which is um four years because i believe it's an extension of one year but this is in line with everything that the other metro districts are doing so it's something that i know mary beth has worked hard to secure we've been with them a long time there was a recommendation of the high school to continue with the with the company yeah and if you read through it there is an uh an allowance for uh free and reduced kids and i'm not free and i would say if you do have
063questions that i can't answer which is highly likely um put that into the the document so that when the next board meeting we can be prepared to um answer but this is a pretty typical contract for this type of a service okay motion to a journey i knew that we adjourned the meeting you just sorry i didn't make the 45 minutes wrong