001Okay. Uh oh. Echo. >> Are we ready? No. test. No test. No. >> Hello. test. Hello. Echo. Hello. Did it work? >> Yes. >> Okay, cool. >> Okay. >> Um All righty. We got the sound um fixed. So, the August 13, 2025 meeting of the Corval School Board is now called to order at 9:12 a.m. To support the health and safety of all community members, particularly those who are immuno compromised and their families, the board continues to offer a virtual participation option for board members and district staff. Public comment is available at select meetings both in person and virtually. Details on how to provide public comment are available on the Corval school district website. Today's agenda, board packet, and a link to the district's YouTube channel can be found on the schoolboard page of the
002website. All public meetings are livereamed on YouTube and recordings are typically posted the following day, following day. Today, we have all board members in attendance in person. And the first item on the agenda, I'm going to hand it over to Ryan for um welcome and superintendent update. >> Good morning, everybody, and thank you for being here. Um, I wanted to just sort of lay out the intentions for the day. Um, but before we do that, I think it would be great if we could go around and do introductions. We have a new student representative joining us this morning. So, um, Lauren, would you mind starting us and then we'll just work our way around. >> Good morning, everyone. I'm Lauren Wolf. I am the director of finance. >> Good morning. I'm Byron Beth, director of
003student growth and experience. Good morning. I'm Kim Patton. I'm the director of operations. >> I'm Judah Largeant. I use hehim pronouns and I'm a school board member. >> Hi, I'm Chris Hawkins. I'm a school board member. >> Sammy Albra, school board member. >> Shauna Tomy, she her and school board member and co-vice chair of the school board. >> Lui Whitebear. I go by Lou. I she her pronouns and I'm the chair of the school board. I'm Ryan US and I'm the superintendent. And again, thank you for all for being here this morning. I use he him. >> I am Bernie Wong. I'm a member of school board. >> Theres Jones. I use she her pronouns. I am a school board member and co-vice chair. >> I'm Ya Akavanari and I'm a school um student representative.
004totally fine. >> And then say what school you're from. >> Um, I'm from CHS Corvalis High School. >> Welcome. I I'm Melissa Harter. I'm the assistant superintendent and I use she her pronouns. >> Hi, I'm Kim Nelson and I'm school board secretary. So, um, as we begin our retreat, um, I was thinking back to the retreat retreats we've done over the years and, um, it's always sort of a different formation of who's in this who's in the room based on the, um, area that we're focused on. Um, some years, as an example, when we were doing our board goals, we had a large contingent of community members, staff members, um, and board members. Um today our focus is really around facilities and um our facilities moving forward. So we have a smaller team um including
005Melissa um Lauren, Byron, Kim, and myself to be able to provide you with information. Um as we go through the day um we're going to spend the majority of the time this morning focused on our long-range facilities plan um and the culmination of that which Kim will share. And then this afternoon, we'll spend more time talking about where do we go from here in terms of our number of schools and our facilities um with some goals for you to provide me with some feedback and information in order for me to move forward um and bring additional information to you in the future. So that's really the plan for today. Um because we are in a retreat, we'll be here all day. Um we also sometimes with the retreat we've done it with just owls um
006for able for people to be able to view today because we're going to be involved in so much discussion. We felt like it was better to do the full AV setup. There will be one point in time when we will be doing a gallery walk and looking at some information and data. So that will be harder for folks at home to go back and watch later or if they're watching live. Um but again for the majority of time we'll be sitting here together. Um we will have a break for lunch at 11:45. Um you all know where the restrooms are. We have coffee and um water available and some snacks thanks to a couple of our board members. Um but with that again I just want to thank you for spending the day with us
007engaged in um some thinking and learning and some um opportunities for us to take away your insights so we can continue to move forward. So that's the plan for this morning. Um, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Kim, who's going to be sharing um, actually leading the majority of the morning around our long-range facilities planning. Okay, Kim, are you gonna share a PowerPoint? Well, I'll just I'll I'll fill the fill the time with just ad living here is that um so our long-range facilities master or planning committee came together in April and spent time together considerable amount of time together through June. And since their last meeting in June, I've been working on finalizing that report and and working on presentation for you. So, u Kim, you can go ahead and go
008to the next slide. So, I want to start by just talking about planning for facilities. I've been in the district since 1998 and so I've been involved in all of this planning that you see on the screen. So in 2002, the district created a new facilities plan and a new facilities plan led to a bond sale. We did bond work. In 2008, we just updated the plan. So you're going to see a little bit of a cycle going here. In 2014, we did a conditions assessment that led an innovation team which looked at educational delivery. 2018, we made a new plan and we passed a bond. So here we are in 2025. Okay, we did all of our bond construction and we're going to just be doing an update to that plan. It's not a
009full involved process where we're looking to be able to sell a bond because we're not in that place where our facilities are in pretty good condition. So, you do a big plan, you do an update to the plan, you do a big plan, you do an update to the plan, and that's where we're at here today. Kim, next slide. I felt like it was important to remind you of what we did in our facilities bond work. Uh so the 2002 facilities bond really focused in on seismic upgrades. That was the focus. In 2002 we built a new Corvalis high school, a new Linus polling. We did significant seismic improvements at Lincoln, some educational improvements at CV, and then a whole list of deferred maintenance that happened in that bond program. And in 2018, our bond
010program really um was focused on elementaryaries. So in that bond, we built Lincoln and Bessie Coleman at their existing sites. We replaced modular classrooms with permanent additions to our buildings, renovated every elementary school, modernized CTE spaces, and again deferred maintenance that needed to happen. What I want to say about this is that really this bond program was different. The facilities planning was different and that came from the board. The board said don't just build buildings to build buildings. Think about what the educational impacts are and that was that innovation team that was created. And I would say we we did all of it different. We involved our community, parents, teachers in the design process. We made all values guided decision making. Um, and so we I believe we came out with a much better end
011product in this and really innovative spaces that have led to changes in in instructional delivery. That's evident in our schools. So all that said, here we are for long-range facilities planning. I wanted to just give you a little highlight that it was an eight member committee. Remember, we're doing an update. We had some representative from the business community. We had city of Corvalis, Benton County. We had three community members. And it was important to me that we have some people from our last facilities improvement planning process who uh represented on that committee. The committee charge was just to update the previous plan. Um, we met five times and we met on different topics each time and included in that meeting structure was a community input session on May 28th where we shared the data that
012we had been reviewing. Okay. So, at our first meeting, we really just focused in on enrollment and growth. And um something that I think is important about this is that we we did hire Flow Analytics to do a study for us. And the next slide is really going to show you um a culmination of our enrollment over time. And I'm going to walk you through this because I really think it's important for us to see this. You're going to see that um it also includes when schools were built and closed over time. So that's what I'm going to walk you through. We incorporated as a district in 1957 and we had 10 elementary schools, one middle school and one high school. Um between 1957 and 1971 we see this huge spike in enrollment. And and
013during that time we built Katherine Jones Harrison Adams Western Middle School which is no longer here. We built Sheldon and Crescent Valley High School. So that growth required us to do a huge construction push. And then what happened before we even opened CV, the enrollment started to drop. And so in 1975, we'd been experiencing a five-year decline. Washington and Roosevelt elementary schools closed, followed by Franklin and Dixie in the early 80s. We reopened Franklin in 1995. And at that time, it was a center for alternative learning. And Franklin School as we know it now. I think it was a K5 then. And then after another seven-year decline in 2002, that's the that next process that we talk about, Fair Play and Harding were consolidated into our other elementary schools. Western View and Highland were consolidated
014here on this campus called Westland. Uh, enrollment continued to decline and we eventually closed Inavale, which had been created into a K8 through the consolidation process in 2002. And as you can see now, we're continuing to decline. So this is to me is a really slide that shows we see enrollment go up, we see enrollment go down, we build schools, we have to consider closing schools. And it's all in reaction to that enrollment. So, um, Kim, I think I created this where you have to actually give me a tap to get the key messages, but um, enrollment key messages from the committee during that meeting were that enrollment declined by,00 students over the last 10 years with some factors being affordable housing, the pandemic and birth rates, the student growth rate. So, when we we
015actually reviewed the the information about the city growth, and you're going to get an opportunity to look more into that data when we do our gallery walk, but the finding there was that student growth rate data showed that single family homes attract families with students at a greater rate than multifamily housing. And I'm just going to point back to we heard from the city about putting in multifamily housing. There's just not a lot of room for single h homes right now or planned single family homes in our community. And so that is going to impact the growth of students. The this is going to bring up specific questions for everybody. I'm sure the interdist transfer I'm sorry, go ahead, Kim. Interdistrict transfer rates are high in our district and it's by design due to specialty
016programs and our our uh transfer policy. So it requires us to continue looking at the data from that 30,000 foot level really by grade level, not by individual schools because it's hard to predict based on where students live. So, lots this brings up lots of questions, these key messages. And again, we're going to be able to um review the data. If you have questions right now, I'm going to encourage you to take notes and then we'll we'll be able to discuss it later. Facility conditions and capacity. So, um this we did hire architect firms to come in and do a facility condition assessment. It's part of the OD requirements. Um, OD does require us to do the long-range planning every seven to 10 years and there are specific things that we have to accomplish in
017that process. We looked at the condition of our facilities. We looked at our available land. We looked at um historical uh registry impacts. And so I'm going to give you um some high level Kim if you want to go to the next slide. So through the assessment process, we looked at all of those things and there is a facility condition index that's assigned to each building. Facility condition index is the cost of repairs divided by the cost of replacement and it gives you this number. And so as you can see um our schools are all in the green or yellow zone. when you get to 30 or 3 point 30% is when they say to think about replacement and we are nowhere close to that. I think this is very evident in the work that
018we've done on our buildings. We have buildings that are in good shape which is very different from the last time we did a big bond program back in 2002. Our buildings were not in good shape. They are at this point. Um I want to point out replacement costs. So Bessie Coleman replacement cost is 54 million and when we built Bessie Coleman we spent 39 million. So one of the things that our committee really pointed out is that we have taken we we spent the money at the right time. Inflation is intense and that we should be proud of that work. So >> can you say that again? >> Replacement cost is 54 million for Bessie Coleman. Right now >> we spent 39 million >> and it was just built correct a couple years ago. So
019if we were not in that good condition, we would be really hurting to find money to spend to replace these buildings. Kim, the next slide. Our key messages from our committee are that bond dollars were spent well and that the two schools that scored the lowest received the least amount of upgrades in the bond. And so you can see the money we spent really made impact. And then we're celebrating the completion of bond work and that it was completed within bond funds because replacement costs have increased significantly. That was very evident to to the committee. So the third part of facilities planning is looking at capacity. And so I'm going to tell you that we spent multiple meetings on this one. This one was a little bit trickier for the committee. So Kim, go ahead
020and go to the next slide. We had to make some assumptions going into the work. First of all, how many students per classroom? So as a leadership we made the decision to use elementary max classroom is 27, middle school max 29 and high school 31. And then I want to talk to you about utilization rates or factors. So the Association for Learning Environments, refer referred as A4LE, is a organization that architects really lean on for um educational design and they recommend a utilization rate at elementary of 90 to 100%. We chose 90%. So what does that mean? So when we calculate our maximum capacity, building capacity at a building, we know that from year to year, you might see blips of of higher enrollment or lower enrollment. We leave that 90% utilization factor to accommodate
021that. And so at the middle and high school, we are using 75 and 85. And that really plays into they are on a different kind of schedule. They rotate every period and so many options. it's hard to fully maximize enrollment in each of those classes. So, you plan for those um utilization factors. So, when you look at the numbers, you'll see that we have applied those utilization factors. Kim, the next thing that we really needed to think about was educational programming. As a facilities director, I know to be true, you can't put a full classroom in every classroom because there needs to be space to accommodate the needs of students on a daily basis. So, we worked with our student growth and experience department to develop standardized programming for each grade level and we did
022it by building and we did it by district-wide programming. We I mentioned be earlier um specialty programs. Districtwide programming is really that specialty programs that we talked about. But I want to walk you through this because I think it's important to understand in the numbers that we're going to look at in a bit. So at an elementary school, the classrooms that we don't calculate into building capacity is the art room, a flex room, which is a a room that we set aside for the principal to use however they think they need it to best support the students that school year, the music room, and the gym. So those spaces don't get calculated into building capacity. At middle school, it's a few more rooms. As you can imagine, it's a bigger school. So, they take one
023classroom for an alternative learning space, one computer lab, one learning re, or I'm sorry, two learning resource centers. So, that's supporting students on IEPs and 504s. Student support services, they need three classrooms. That is sped. Did I get that right? Okay. And then in our middle schools, for whatever reason, didn't have a specific staff dining room uh designed into them. And so a staff support services is really a staff staff dining room or lounge. At the high schools, we do one alternative learning space, one computer lab, three learning resource centers, and three classrooms, and then one support staff lounge for staff. I want to point out that these are what our principles and student growth and experience staff predicted. we needed if our buildings were fully occupied, so full capacity so that we could plan
024accordingly. Now, district-wide programming, I I think um just refreshing about um specialty programs at the elementary level, we have life skills and we are planning for two classrooms and that's assuming full capacity in our buildings. So, two classrooms district-wide, one classroom for a social emotional growth program and four classrooms for inclusive prek. So, currently those four classrooms are filled by Kicko Head Start and we want to to prioritize that. We'd love it if we could prioritize it district-wide, but we would not like to see us reduce that because it's supporting our prek families with um early childhood services. At the middle school level, life skills program is two classrooms and English language development needs to have two additional classrooms dedicated. At the high school level, our life skills program is three classrooms. That's for our
0259 through 12 students. Wings is our ages 18 to 21 and they need three classrooms districtwide and English language development one classroom. And the reason one instead of two English language development is because we see students graduating out of that program and so there's fewer students at the high school level. This is a big spreadsheet that's hard to read and we've we are going to look at it closer. I've got it on the board and we're when we do our gallery walk you'll be able to dive in a little bit closer. Um so the total facility condition index that's the that's the condition of our buildings. That's just how we presented it to the committee. But um it we have calculated building capacity which is the elementary school. We we took every classroom that looked
026like the size of a classroom that is the number of classrooms total. We subtracted those building level programming needs and then we calculated it by the number of students per classroom. So if it looked like a classroom and it's the square footage of a classroom, it's calculated in if that makes sense. And so, and then I'm going to walk you into that next column. Spaces dedicated district level program. At the elementary level, we talked about seven classrooms. That was life skills, um, social emotional growth, and what was the last one? I'm forgetting. Anyway, there was another one. Seven classrooms multiplied by 27 students. So, we subtract that out from our district-wide enrollment capacity. So the reason we do that is could be at those programs could be at any school. They don't have to be.
027Our social emotional growth this year is at Mountain View. Wouldn't have to be at Mountain View. Life skills wouldn't have to be at KJH. I'm not saying we're going to move any of those programs, but for the purpose of capacity, we have an enrollment capacity at elementary level of 3,233 students. This year, I'm sorry, in 2425, we had 2,300 students. So, we were at 72% capacity in in the 2425 school year, and this year we're at I think it says 69%. Um, and I can walk you through the rest. I think it's going to be easier when you're at the at the board to just look at all of that, but we are really underutilizing our buildings is what this demonstrates. We have room, tons of room. Um, so let's let's move on to the
028committee recommendations. This actually I just want to say that the committee when they saw these numbers felt a little sick to their stomach. They were like, whoa. When you look at it like this and you see how much room we have, it just was very evident that there's something needed to be done. And they expressed that multiple times through the process. So now we'll we'll talk about committee recommendations. Um there were I'm going to tell you there was a lot of key messages through that building capacity planning and they were they built on each other. So I did not give you the individual key messages from all of those meetings because they culminated in our recommendations. So I just want to name that that there were key messages from each of those meetings. Um so
029on in our meeting in June there was a facilitated process. We looked at the feedback from the the uh community input and as you can imagine a lot of that community input was around our next steps not around this recommendation. I do want you to know that the committee did see that feedback and and considered it in their conclusions but I'm going to walk you through their six I call them conclusions because not all of them are actionoriented but are the conclusions of the committee. So conclusion number one, the committee concluded that the enrollment decline over the next 10 years will result in underutilization of our facilities. According to projections in the school year 2829, our buildings will be at 59% utilization at elementary school, 86% utilization at middle school, and 61% utilization at high
030school level with utilization district-wide 65% of enrollment capacity. that last 65% that like that hit for the committee. Okay. Conclusion number two. The district's facilities are in good condition as represented by the facilities condition index summary. All buildings were considered good or fair. The district continue should continue to maintain all buildings to ensure safe learning environments for all. Okay. Number three, Corvalis School District buildings and properties are important assets for the district and should be retained to ensure flexibility for future enrollment fluctuations and maintain the district's investment in the land and the 2018 facility improvement bond. They felt like they did not want us to sell these buildings because the hope is we see enrollment go back up over time. and we've spent a lot of money on our buildings. Number four, the district should
031continue to engage with the community to shape next steps for facilities and education in the Corvalis school district, building trust and transparency. This this was um a lot in result response to our community input session where we realized we really want our community involved in this and that next steps are going to be really important. So Kim the district should continue to work the city with the city of Corvales to collaborate on housing and community growth. This goes back to meeting number one and meeting number five where we heard feedback from the community. Number six, the district should review intradist boundaries to support enrollment trends, specialized programs, and to ensure that resources are distributed equitably between district schools. So, that was months worth of work wrapped up into a very few slides and a lot
032of information that I just shared with you. I do just want to say thank you to the long range facilities planning committee. This wasn't an easy process for them in the midst of all of the community unrest around budget around the fears of consolidation and closure and to keep their f work focused on facilities was not easy as you can imagine. And they took this work very seriously. They kept all of our values in mind when in mind we went back to our equity look fors every meeting keeping focused on what we're really talking about. That that was those three topics enrollment and demographics of our community, facility condition, and capacity of our buildings. And so with that, I think that I have we've done pretty good on time. >> Yes. And so I we
033made it through the recommendations and the slides. The next step um is that we're going to do a gallery walk. And Kim, actually, I had one more slide. Um, we're going to go around the room and we're going to give you time to really look at more of the data that the committee looked at. Um, we're going to have staff at those strategic areas. Lauren's going to be here for the enrollment and demographics, so she can answer any questions that you have about that. I'll be at the the facility condition and the building capacity area. And I think Melissa and Byron are going to be at the programming which is at at the at the back bulletin board. And with that, um, we want to keep board members in less less than three people. So,
034because we will not have sound on, so we're not going to have a quorum during that time and we will be not be discussing board business during that time. Um, and I have some questions for you to consider as you're making your way around. So, when you review the data, what surprises you and what wonderings do you have? What did it confirm for you? And then considering the committee's recommendations, what are your thoughts on balancing facility use with enrollment trends? And from this gallery walk, what do you see as possibilities or next steps for students of Corvalis? When we we're going to take Okay, I'm going to leave it to Kim or Ryan to tell us how long we're going to take, but when we are done with that gallery walk, we have time set
035aside for board discussion. So, >> and um we'll leave one mic on just to comply with our public meeting laws. And um I just wanted to remind anybody viewing that it will be hard to hear anything that's um also part of why we will not be more than three board members in one spot. Are there I would say is there any clarifying questions about this the PowerPoint or the presentation before we go into the gallery walk? Um, >> can we can we leave a picture of the board and leave the slides up? >> Yeah, because we have to have >> Okay. >> recording what we're doing. So, we need to Yeah, that would work. >> Did you have a question, Sammy? >> Yeah, just a clarifying question as uh you shared your gratitude to the
036comm for the committee. Uh my understanding is the committee of the of the superintendent and uh I was honored to shadow one of the meetings and listen in uh could you uplift uh the experiences walks of life of those uh committee members uh maybe also if they're just employees of the district or or community members have they been involved in previous bonds levies and and other work so uh folks understand uh the community input we got through the committee work. >> Definitely. I am happy to do that. Um, we had a business member who is also a parent in our community. Um, this business business member served on our bond oversight committee as well as um has just been engaged in a lot of ways. Ran, do you want to add anything? >> Just the
037last um iteration of the long range facilities planning. >> Correct. Was also participated in that. Uh we had a parent who's fairly new to the district, had been here for a couple years and had no experience with the long-range facilities planning. We had another parent who uh does work in the district in a different capacity, not in facilities, and she had middle school and high school students who had been through our long-term community member. We had um the the deputy director of parks and wreck who was involved in facilities planning last time around. Also, we had um a representative from public works at Benton County. We had um a community member who is a recent retiree of the facilities department who was also a project management on the bond program, which was a really good
038ad to the that group. Um I'm missing somebody. Oh, we had a previous board member on the group who is also a community member and a parent whose students have gone through the system. Who did I miss, Ryan? >> I think beyond that just um district staff who participated as well. >> Yes. >> So on the facility side um we had support, we also had support on the student growth and experience side um and those and then Yeah. So those those as departments as well. >> We did intentionally um ensure that we had more committee members in the room than we did staff. So I did want to point that out that we were really intentional about who was in the space. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> I had one question about the slides
039um so I don't forget. Are we going to see an updated um slide the districtwide capacity one after the enrollment numbers are finalized? because it had projected. It's the one that's over here, but there's it's blank, right? >> Yes, we can we can do that. Yeah. >> Okay. >> We won't have updated enrollment numbers until um the November 13th meeting, I think, is when we switched it to um but I could probably give them I'll give them to Ryan before then. I won't be here for the month of um October. >> Okay. Yeah, that's um that was my only question because it's helpful as we're thinking, but yeah. Thanks. Are we ready to >> do the gallery walk then? >> Okay. So, maybe we can Can we leave that back mic on since it's in
040the back of the room? Or actually, Lauren, since it's in the middle and then um we'll just leave that one on the whole time. Thank you, >> Teresa. >> Oh, you have a question, Teresa. I'm sorry. >> No, it's okay. Just um on our schedule, we're showing a break before the gallery walk. Do we want to take that? We're a half hour ahead. So, I think we're going to do the break after the gall we'll do the gallery walk break and then we'll do the discussion. >> That sounds good. >> Yeah. >> So, with that, um we'll go ahead and do the gallery walk till um 10:15. So, it gives everyone half an hour to um look at the slides and um develop their questions. Again, thinking about those three areas. Um what was were
041some surprises in the data? Um, what were your um those are the um sorry I I had different questions in my head than I see in front of my face. >> No, that's totally fine. >> Kim, I'm started late. >> Okay. So to go to So >> Okay, sounds good. So, we're going to go till 10:30 for that. And again, the questions are up there. When we review the data, what surprises you and what wonderings do you have? What did it confirm for you considering the committee's recommendations? What are your thoughts on balancing facilities use with enrollment trends? And then finally, from this gallery walk, what do you see as POS possible or next steps for the students of Calis? I'm wondering with bullet number two if people need um a print out of the
042committee's recommendations because we just went through them in the slide form. They're on the wall. Okay. Thank you. >> The committee's key messages are on the wall of the recommendations. >> That's okay. I'd be happy to print those out. >> Kim is going to print those out. And so we have 45 minutes for this part. >> Yes, you do. You want to turn off the slide. Tell from the overall. Okay. So, as we look forward, This demonstrates that we really overall capacity really is So I guess my question is perspective. I would say that tools to make sure to say what is the best That would be encourage was I was just saying isn't that exciting. something that we should geographical area. And so I think that's a factor. So right now I think I
043would say I There's four versus three grades. They're bigger campuses. I would als What I'm trying to figure out could actually and then exploies live disperse those I think that works. Yes. That's policy. So if a family >> I mean seriously is it by time I would say we have several schools that are less than one of the students drive that area no matter what you do. And so that It has different target for each school where students live that number and Then you start geographic looking. So there's some strange little But yes, I mean itself >> but it might but it I would say that's not how we look at it. walking distance as far as I'm concerned. It's a lot of hardtolog. my property value down here. So, replace her chair. >> Okay.
044>> Set it in the doorway and drive back. I feel like this So, I also want to look at So this is something That doesn't necessarily mean That's like that's the program. Our students change. We'll have built facility and so that will give us but we still have to think about the fact that we have not That's excit. This is the outcome of what it is that you saw. Thank you. What are the things we want to do? And so we're going to do this process convers. I mean, that is It sounds pretty How are we sustained? One of our elementary students. >> There's so much integrated That's right. >> I don't know. I don't know. So I started >> probably Oh, really? I took a picture. >> This is about it. But you're right
045enough. It's not that strange to end up >> blue. We were driving. And so if you look capacity of 657. We did this year wasn't this year. It was a couple years ago. for this year. >> Oh, I thought I thought What will be different? This is basically And then we want to What's the opportunity? Look at it as a whole. understand. And you may It's >> a little I think that would be a very good decision. So people who work in buildings What's the reason we're taking So I just want to know when I say They end up They're not necessarily Correct. detailed at Yeah, I'm glad you're by not What would supposed. building their was designed. So all the walls are so >> so when we say Just use book to teacher. teaching
046and all of a sudden staring at the other >> protect back. That is Yeah. Governor Oh, it's capacity. >> I know. It's probably less capacity cafeteria. thing about doing that for college is that building >> the problem. How you finding your goal? I've already >> there's almost no service available for children up So they do it. So after after hours, >> you could have We're not talking level. that's clean and place. It shoots up just a nice young person. Thank you. >> Did you get And you just >> Yeah. Start teaching my class in a few weeks. children are at the end about one thing they could change. One of the systems to empower children. And then >> time interact with children in whatever system that they work in. instead of going >> delinquency children.
047>> Very interesting. >> Okay. Um, thanks everyone for your um, time on the gallery walk. We're going to go ahead and do our 15 minute break now. Okay, we're back. Um, thanks for the break everyone and I hope everyone had a adequate time to go around and um, for the gallery walk. I know I learned a lot. So, I'm going to hand it over to Ryan for the discussion part. >> Yeah. So, [Music] so we wanted to go ahead and have a chance um now that you've had the opportunity to think about those questions and to look at the the data presented um on the walls to go back into those three questions and have some discussion as a as a whole group. Um, you can start anywhere you'd like, but we just wanted to
048be able to make sure that we had a time to think about and b time to explore the information and then bring you back together to be able to to talk through it. Does anybody want to go first or that >> uh first of all thank you for really the good effort presenting the information in a way easy to understand. My first thought is I really see strong alignment between what we see uh here in terms of data and analysis and also the recommendations of the long range facilities planning. So I want to highlight really how you can see the connection between each recommendation and the data across different uh tables and and posters that we have revised today. I think before we talk about like some of the noticings of the data, I think
049it's important to say that no matter what we do with the schools, if this town is not welcoming for families or infrastructurally built for families, we're going to have a we're feel like we're going to continue to have a hard time um with enrollment. And by that I mean like places to buy kids shoes and underwear and socks and clothes and all the things that are needed for families are not in this town. And I think that's something that the city really needs to be in better partnership with the school district and understanding those needs and how families like people with children um are not represented in some of the business decisions made in this town. And um I feel very strongly about that as somebody who has been looking at this data over time
050and also as a parent and of children that live in Corvalis. So, um, I appreciate all this hard work and I think that we do have some conversations that lie ahead and I just really wanted to start with that part and acknowledging there's work to do beyond what's on these pages and I have great appreciation for the compiling of all the data and um, one of the things I was noticing on the forecast and the capacity pieces is some of the overlaps of um where we see that bubble that we had talked about when I first started on the board in and when that was going to hit the middle schools and then be over capacity. You can see it on the capacity summary. You can see where they're a little bit over capacity um
051at Linus polling in particular. And then um also seen on the forecast those numbers have shifted. And so I appreciate seeing the stabilization of um elementary age students projected over time because I think the conversation has been like the continual decline is districtwide. But at the elementary school it's showing some stabilization at least like a little dips up and down but it's not um as extreme as some of the other areas. And I think that's really helpful when we think about the middle and high school levels too and the elementaryaries of course but that was a long comment but and thanks for um for the space to say the precursor to the comment related to today. Um, I did want to Chris and I had a conversation like looking at the data how especially the
052numbers of like multif family housing that goes into getting one student into the district versus single family versus income restrictive, you know, making sure that the housing that we're really strongly supporting isn't designed for college students who are just here just to go to school. um and let you know unless they they have families and how where we've seen even um the the income restricted multif family housing go up that the elementary schools that are associated with that housing have very pretty stable numbers um coming in from this year and last year and projected growth. So that to say that that does make a big difference to our schools in the limited areas where we've seen that happen that we have seen the the growth and um that it's not you know just to kind
053of talk about the elephant in the room. It's not easy to say we're thinking about combining schools and closing schools. Um but the numbers don't lie. are significantly under underutilizing space and with the budget concerns. Just a conversation that just has to be had So, um it would be hard if you're not in the room to really appreciate uh the detail um that well I I don't know. I guess maybe these were on these all these were they all on the slides? Did every Okay. So, yeah. So, if you're not in the room, it's hard to appreciate the level of detail that um that has been presented on these lovely wall posters that you all cannot see very clearly. But it is uh what I'm appreciating is the uh that we're talking about a question
054of enrollment, but we're looking at this from a lot of different pieces. We're looking at school level uh enrollment. We're looking at um um boundaries. We're looking at where are where is change happening in our community versus where our schools are located and there are a lot of moving parts that have been broken out and represented in in great level of detail. I really appreciate that. Um, I guess to kind of um a reflection that I that I landed on that kind of builds off of Lou's comment about our community struggling to be a welcoming space for older for families is that um this is also a challenging community for people to um a housing market for people to leave and free up those houses that are in our um schools. Right. So, I have
055a I've got an incoming freshman. So, in not that many years, four, which is crazy to me, but in four years I will not have a school-aged child anymore. But I live in a I live in a across the street from an elementary school. And I'm going to become one of those families that's occupying a a space, a house in a neighborhood that is conveniently positioned to support a child participating in school. I can't afford to move out of my house. There is nowhere for me to go to free up that space, a starter home for someone else to move into because um I also can't afford to go anywhere else. And so we we have a lot of challenges on the housing level. Not just that we don't have enough affordable housing. We don't
056not just that we don't have enough housing for families. We also don't have places for people that would happily give up their single family residences to go where they can afford to land. And so I'm kind of stuck in my house um for the time being. I don't necessarily love that. I don't think I'm alone. I talk to my neighbors and similarly they say, "Gosh, where would we where where could we go?" um we kind of have to stay in this space now because we can't afford to leave it. So, we have a lot of dynamics and and I'm highlighting that not it's not a um it's to say that there's no generation in our community that is going to be untouched by the housing burden that is in Corvalis. It's every generation. And so
057I as we go forward with this conversation, I'm aware that it'd be easy for us to pit generations against each other. Well, we we've got all these people that are holding up all of the property or we've got people that can't afford to leave. Uh we've got all these people that won't move in or they can't afford and there's nowhere for them to go. And so I I see this problem, this challenge is something that's going to affect many generations living in our community. And it's going to require participation from those generations to think about what are we going to do? how are we going to solve this so that our community is welcoming for uh the people that are here and create space for new people to come in? And so, um I don't
058know. I just looking at the maps, it's like it's hard. There's nowhere for there's no place in my neighborhood to build houses. Like we're this is it, right? Unless we knock down things. We can't we can't get any more um dense in in in my little pocket of Corvalis. And so the only way kids are going to move into my district is if those of us that no longer have kids can find a way to leave it. And that's just not feasible right now. So I want us to think about this multigenerationally um in terms of how are we going to make this a thriving community for people to come and then we want to build a community people want to stay in, but then they're staying can't also create a barrier for more people
059to come. And I think we heard some really interesting stuff in our presentation from the housing planning um the was that last spring I think they came and talked to us about the history of the of the boundaries um the zoning rules in Corvalis and I know they've been making a lot of progress but I think this is this is what I'll end my comment with this. This is a problem that's been 60 years in the making and it's not going to get undone with a single action by city council. It's not going to get undone with one housing complex. Um it's not going to get undone with a dozen of us saying we'll move so other people can live in our in our neighborhood school districts. Um because it took us 60 years to
060get here. And so it's going to take a long time and a lot of voices to get to a place where we have a different reality. Um and this is one piece in that conversation. But it this didn't happen overnight. And I I just want to make sure that the folks who are looking to us for a solution or looking to the school district leadership for a solution understand that we can't undo in a single um realignment what has been more than five decades of policy that has not promoted a place where people can come and live here and we can grow. Anyway, that's it. Thank you. >> Thanks. Really quick, I just wanted to point out like even when people are like downsizing and their living situations and places go up for rent usually,
061um the rental rates right now are around $1,000 a bedroom in town, if not more in some areas. And a lot of that is the overuse of student dollars basically and um capitalizing on that. And I think that's really unfortunate for families because a a single income family that has multiple children that could be in that house can't afford it to rent it. And so that's just the reality. And um as a renter, I watch those prices all the time. And so I think that even for people that do choose to vacate and downsize, it's still an issue. Um, and it's I agree it does take time, but it in some cases that's a that was a quick decision on how fast to raise rents in town. And so that didn't take generations. That took
062one year. I've seen it happen personally. So, um, I just wanted to say that real quick. Go ahead, Britney. Yeah, I as a relatively new resident of uh Corvallis, I I it really struck me when I took uh took a look at how the neighborhoods and and so on, the neighborhood hubs uh constructed. And I think with every challenge comes opportunity. And I think the truth on what we consider a um a neighborhood, a hub, um uh commuting distances and so on um really has changed significantly. Has changed in the fh five years I've been here. And um I think the last time we looked at uh neighborhoods and and boundaries and so on was 1994. Was that something? Uh uh >> 2019. Okay. So, so it's still a few years out and I think
063we have an opportunity now to really identify who we are, what what we as a community has become, what we considered um uh commutable distances, what we considered um you know with new bike lanes and and other transportation uh um uh means you know just being uh developed that we can really have a time to look at holistically um the numbers, programs and everything else. This is really uh to me it's a challenge but it is a great opportunity to realign a lot of our thoughts, a lot of our paradigms. Um, first I just really wanted to make sure that we state today the thoroughess that your committee your your work and the all the work that was put into this. Um, and also when I was looking at who was part of the LRFP
064committee, um, it just seemed very inclusive and that that represented a lot of different groups in our community. And so I I appreciate all the data that's been presented to us and I feel like it's been done in a very thorough way and we've gotten lots of information. I was a little surprised and I really think that it needs to be reiterated on the summary capac on the capacity summary over there about the middle school numbers um with the UFI and um because when we looked at it, it looked like the middle school numbers were really like capacity was quite full and there was nothing really a lot of options around that. But then when you explained it a little bit more, it it I mean I just it was that was a lot of
065information that was really helpful. And so I think that that information needs to be reiterated to the public about that. And then um well that was that's actually that's it for now that I want to state, but I just appreciate how thorough everything was presented to us today. Lots of good information, well thought out. So since um we weren't all able to hear that conversation about the middle school component want to explain the what you were discussing or >> the bubble you know that whole thing. >> So when we were looking at the um building capacity summary uh the 2425 numbers our our enrollment bubble were eight eighth graders last year. So they're included in that number and so we see that number drop in future years and the capacity goes down. I also pointed
066out that middle school utilization factor is 85% which is um I'm sorry utilization at the middle school is 75% which is lower than the utilization rate used at the high schools. And so it that leaves more free space in the middle schools than at the high schools as we think about um supporting students at different um points in their academic advancement. Um is that was that what you're talking about? Okay. >> And Kim, can you explain too because we had a short conversation. And I was going to ask this after Chris anyways since you're unmuted now already about um why the numbers don't are higher at the high school. Like I noticed that the trend was like >> they shrunk in the middle school but then they expanded in the high school. Can you explain
067that a little bit too? >> Yeah. So at the middle school we have three grades. At the high schools we have four grades. And we also I'm trying to think what I told you about that. I'm sorry. That >> private schools going into the high schools because they only go up to eighth grade, right? Yeah. >> Right. >> Yeah. So, I appreciated you pointing that out. >> Yes. >> That's that that is something that we have seen in our projections moving um year-over-year is that we do see a um increase in from 8th grade to 9th grade um as as students roll up. And then again, this is um as we've talked about and have alluded to that larger group of students, we now have all that larger group of students is our incoming nth
068grade class. And so when we get to um enrollment numbers um we typically see those numbers um after about 10 days of school is when we get our first real firm numbers because by then students have enrolled elsewhere or we've had records request and so that's about the time when we or or students haven't shown up so we take them off our books. Um, so that's really when we start to see our actuals for this upcoming school year. And so when we share that information with you, you'll again see how that um 8th grade class is smaller than it um had been the year previous. >> Another reminder that I want to make is that College Hill students are enrolled at their home high school. So you're seeing those numbers with College Hill students included.
069And so it was asked of me to get capacity for College Hill in the occupiable space for students and I can provide that as an update to the board. >> Thanks Kim. Go. >> All right. Well, thank you so much for presenting all of this information, for having such thoughtful community conversations, for organizing it in such an easy to understand way for all of us to go through as well. That's been so helpful to see. And something that really stood out to me was having the go the board and district goals on the back wall was that these are relatively new goals and the last set of goals had a fifth goal around facilities planning. And so I was sort of hit with this a little bit of irony in terms of this was one
070goal that we actually removed in this round of goals was that long-range facilities planning because there wasn't a bond at the time. And here we are now actually very deeply engaged in the importance of long-range facilities planning in order to hold up and uphold those remaining goals. And we haven't really brought, you know, this is all couched within a budget conversation and a much larger budget conversation that's been coming out, especially over the last year with and and years leading up to this of looking at how does the district best meet budget shortfalls in education. And I know over the past two years it's been really hard on the schools and students and the community and all of us too in recognizing that the kinds of cuts that were being made to just to keep
071up with where educational funding gaps were has come from reducing the numbers of classrooms, from reducing music and arts programs, from reducing library, from um consolidating in other ways that really impact or have the potential to impact student experience. even while the district has really tried to preserve that as well as possible. And it seems that we're really getting to a point and I know Lauren with your really thoughtful budget presentations last year it was pretty clear that we were getting to a point where we can't continue to do that and preserve a really meaningful or enhance student experience especially in the way that the community continues to ask for. So that really stood out to me in terms of the numbers and just seeing where things are and recognizing and realizing that we really
072are at a point where we as Judah said have to have these conversations and have to look at what's feasible. Um I think the wonderings that I'm coming away with and I know that this isn't a meeting for those numbers today is really understanding what are different models the consolidation could look like. Would that to what degree would that help with meeting the budget where it is? And at the same time, what are then the opportunities with consolidation with looking at savings to be able to just balance a budget? What opportunities does that come with to really look back at those goals and think about what does a really excellent learning experience look like? And if consolidation is happening, does that actually open up opportunities to leverage students being together in different ways, educators being
073together in different ways, enhancing programs that have had to trim now for years, hoping to, you know, knowing that that may not always be the case of continuing not to trim, but looking at what are the opportunities that open up. So those are some of the things that that are coming up for me. I noticed that too, Shauna, on the goal. I was thinking about that. I was like the irony that of that and I was like, would it make sense to add a one-year goal or would it make more sense to have the decisions around this conversation informed by the goals that we have in place and it just be embedded in the work as part of it instead of the separate thing. And so that's kind of so I appreciate you pointing that
074out though because I was wondering about that too. And Sammy, I seen you had your hand up. Yes, if nobody else. So, thank you. Actually, I want to use this as a good segue that we were laser focused as uh most of our board meetings on the long range facility plan and facilities goals because of the bond work and now it is integrated in everything we do. And it was not on my bingo card to quote Shakespeare in a board meeting, but on the facade of uh one of the building city buildings somewhere in the country, there was a quote uh by Shakespeare which is what what is the city but the people and I think that's really good grounding question for us as we navigate the decisions we want to make which is our
075work for the people specifically the kids current and future. And in the context that we're operating in as staff, school board members with our dual dual role number one royal number one stewards of the institution and its facilities and its current kids and also the advocates for the welfare of the community and future citizens uh and community members including uh the kids of the future. And I believe that will include our role in advocacy, our role in building partnerships, our role in really pushing hard on a change in our trajectory because the the graphs that I'm seeing and that's my colleagues highlighted. We've seen really strong trends and I believe in my view this is a another pivotal point from 1968 we saw a huge decline. I don't know what happened there. My dad was
076about a couple years a old uh 1994 I was in first grade and at both points there was a start of a very sharp drop. Uh the sharp drop that we're witnessing right now started somewhere around um just before the the uh.com bubble burst around the 2000s and continues to drop and now it's dropping sharply and we have this pivotal point where we need to really balance between our dual roles make very critical decisions with what we have control over for the next not year but probably what will impact the next 60 years. Uh how we approach our decisions are going to be very critical. how we balance between uh the second answering the second question which is what are our thoughts between balancing facility use and enrollment trends and not losing our focus on
077the larger picture that we have some influence over probably not much of control which is are we going to be welcoming to immigrants who might bring in children to the community just like how Dearbornne Michigan and Gresham uh Oregon have done uh can we be more welcoming for kids uh and their families in how our community operates. Can we be welcoming in our zoning in a way that's responsive to what we're learning in the school district? And I want us to advocate for the findings of staff to be shared with our partners. So that's one context we need to share with community members uh as part of our responsibility and make those difficult decisions that we have control over. So, just wanted to really put some context of how I want to operate as we
078move forward and prepare for uh what's next. >> Go ahead. >> Just a quick question. I think Kim, this probably comes back to you. So, right now, I know we're focused on student enrollment and really those impacts related to facilities. Is there information also on other facilities owned by the district as part that's being used as part of this conversation? Just thinking about well the building that we're in for instance or um I know Osborne has been talked about for various reasons we don't need to bring that into today but just thinking about but as we're thinking about both student impact, family impact, financial impact. I'm just wondering if that at some point should be part of the conversation too in terms of the broad scope of facilities across the district versus if we're really
079limiting our our scope to just um school buildings where students are present. >> We only did facility condition assessment on buildings that were occupied by our students. We have just to make sure everyone knows that we do own um really there's three buildings that aren't student occupied. the district office being one of them. And and so I've already heard about that from our facilities committee. They thought that we've got to be careful not to forget this building. Um the Inavail is owned by us, occupied by Muddy Creek Charter School. We did offer them the facility condition assessment, but they did not take us up on it. And then the third building is Dixie School which is out on Poria Road and we have a long-term lease with um Lindbet and Lincoln ESD and they provide
080early childhood services out of that building and they did not um choose to do a facility condition assessment either. >> Thank you. >> Is Fair Play not owned by us anymore? >> Fair Play is not owned by the district. Waldorf purchased that more than 10 years ago. Probably 15 years ago. >> That predates me. >> It does not predate me, but yes, it was sold. Both of those leases, I should point out, they are responsible for all of the maintenance except the utilities up to the building. And at Dixie, we maintain the public drinking water program. We have about another minute and 20 seconds left for discussion. If anybody has any last minute questions or comments about the gallery walk, I I just want to say thank you again. And I really appreciate all the
081work that everybody put into this. I did have a question about can we put this on the web page? >> The pictures of like the are they all up there? >> I believe that they are all up there from when we did our community gallery walk. We put all of these posters up on the district website. >> Okay. So the public has a way to look at them if they're listening to this pretty easily. Thank you so much. >> Okay, Ryan. This um in some ways concludes the work of the long range facilities planning committee um by presenting the information to you um both in the charts and graphs um as well as their recommendations um and conclusions. Um so we're going to transition now from that component of the day to thinking about where
082do we go from here. And so what we've are fortunate to have is Kim who has who was a employee in CSD the last time we went through the consolidation process. And so we've asked her to provide her insights um from that process um as we think about it in terms of lessons learned and ideas for us moving forward. So, I'm going to keep Kim um in the hot seat more or less, but she's going to continue to lead um for the next 15 minutes or so just to again share her um experiences with all of us. >> Before you start, Kim, can you um pass along deep appreciation to the committee for their work? >> I will do that. I was making notes on the comments that you made and I will follow up
083with them. >> Thank you. >> About that. Yes. >> Yes, please. So this is the slide that I want us to focus on as you hear my story. So I began working in the district in 1998. And so I've been through this before. We've closed schools. And so closing schools is probably one of those memories in my career that was the hardest time. I was not leading the conversation. I was the record keeper. So, imagine me in the back of the room taking all the notes and the process was about the building conditions and they were making decisions on how to close schools. And I watched community members. So, we had parents, we had teachers, we had people from the community all in this room and they were fighting each other. They were defending their
084programs at their schools. Their school was the most important. they could not see the bigger picture and it was personal and it was raw and it was hard and so we met every week for it seemed like a whole year. It wasn't a whole year but it was every week coming together and people just hating each other over this and it was divisive. There were hurt feelings. Those feelings lingered for a very long time and they still show up today from time to time. And so at that time we closed three buildings. We closed Fair Play um why am I drawing a blank? We closed yes it is Fair Play Harding and um Highland View and it was it was really difficult. Um but I also want you to remember know about a membering remembering
085I have is that students they bounced back quickly. It was the students they we made the decisions and then students started looking forward. They were ready to learn about their new school. They were ready to become part of something bigger. They were ready to bring their identity from their old school into the new school. And those programs that transferred, they grew and they became something better. adults mourned and kids were excited. Um, and we're facing a similar situation right here. And when I reflect back about my career, I think about that 2002 closing schools, 2002, we had a bond and what we learned from that and how our board were leaders in that. We did the bond differently. We said, you said to me, to me, I mean, I felt it directly to me and
086I took it really personally is that we aren't doing this about buildings. We're doing this about education because that's what we are. We're here to educate. We're not about our buildings. We're not about the feelings about a building. We're about how we are educating students. And so, our community already knows we're in declining enrollment. They know something's coming. This isn't a secret. We've heard it. We've heard them spinning out and what that means. And I want you to know that I see this really as an opportunity for this school board to lead differently than we did in 2002. We led differently with the facilities bond and you get an opportunity to really shape what this is going to look like, how this is going to move forward. And um we're stewards of the public education,
087but we're we're stewards of people, these students, these staff. We need to hold them. We need to care for them through this process. And we can do that with intent and we can do that with strong leadership where we focus on what can happen, not what we're doing to people because there are real opportunities here to do something better for kids and to do something better for our buildings. I heard reference that we don't have a goal around facilities. I'm the director of operations. I don't see this as a facilities goal. I see this as a goal as to what we can do for kids and how we're going to keep that moving. And really over the years, I mean, I've been in this district since 98. I don't want to work in any other
088district because I'm proud to work for Corvalis School District because we do things differently. I know it. I've experienced it and I know that we can really set this up for opportunity and for you to be guiding that work for us. So, I just wanted you to know I feel like that is who you are as a board. I have felt it. I have worked it. And I know that this can be something that we can get through with holding people, understanding, caring. We can do this in a way that can be a positive outcome for everyone. We're going to have feelings. Adults are going to have a hard time with it and we can do good work through this. Any questions? >> Yeah. Kim, um, since you were there last time, what was the
089strategic communication plan like, uh, to the community and if we had any lessons learned from that and what we need to do better this time around. >> So, um, again, I wasn't leading it. So, the strategic communication, I I'm not sure I'm really qualified or equipped right now to talk about that, but I would tell you that from my learnings talking to other school districts, that the strategic communication really needs to be about frequent communication, transparency, and finding out how people want to receive information and give information. And so that's something as an exec team we've been talking about is we need to be looking at our community, our staff, our parents, how do they want to be updated and how do they want to give feedback. And so things that we're thinking about and
090definitely taking lessons learned from not just consolidation and closure. We've done lots of work with gathering feedback and communicating over the last decades, couple decades. And so we can look back lessons learned on boundary planning. we can look at lessons learned from our bond program. I would tell you that our bond program focused on feedback and that we have a better program for or a better outcome for it. So, sorry that I didn't have direct about that process, but >> no, it's just um I guess um sort of a follow-up question to that. What was the communication drum beat like um to the community given a lot of technology has changed since then? Right. That was a lot harder. We were publishing minutes from the meeting and they were brutal minutes. I have to tell
091you, more verbatim minutes than I've ever seen at any other I don't want to do that. I won't be the record keeper, thank goodness. Um, but we did those weekly and we sent them out to staff and to parents. We have so many more communication routes these days that it's going to be a lot easier now to do that. So I started working in the district in and was at the receiving school Adams where Harding um kids moved to most of them moved to Adams. I would say my biggest memory is a very upset parents losing the hub of their neighborhood, right? I mean, we all know that our schools are the hub and so I think that was the biggest loss was that hub and that community that sense. Um, you are very right
092with the fact about the kids. Um, you know, it was a little shocking at first, but there was a lot of work put into um how the schools were like how Adam school was going to receive staff and kids. Um there are a few things that I would do a little different now after learning from that experience, but um the school Adam school kids were very welcoming and there was very intentional activities that we did to make sure that the kids that moved over from Harding were welcomed and they did a great job both sides. So, you're very you're very right about that. But I think the that community loss was probably one of the biggest things I remember parents upset about. So, I think that's we have to consider. Um, and the communication piece,
093which you know, that was before social media was a big thing. So, I think that will help itself. I wanted to say thank you for sharing your experience and you too, Chris, since you were both like in that. And um I wrote down your quote that adults mourned and kids celebrated because I think that needs to be remembered about how we frame conversations and um and the excitement that can come with changes and changes are generally hard for a lot of people and um so I just really wanted to appreciate you sharing your story and helping ground the decisions we're making in a very authentic way and too. Anyone else? >> Okay, go ahead, Ryan. So, Kim, one of the things that you mentioned was the um the bond this this time and then the
094last time and that those two things were different, but I don't know if you kind of described what was different about those two things because it sounded like in your what you shared that some of those things that happened in this last um bond process are things that we should be thinking about in terms of communication and community engagement. Yeah. So when I reflect back to the 2002 bond versus 2018, the difference that I see is values-based decisionmaking. And so when we went into 2018 bond planning and actually passed the bond, the very first thing we did was do design guidance principles that involved our community on what they wanted out of our bond program. How should we make decisions? What's our criteria? And so through our bond program um in doing feedback with our
095team really the difference in Corvalis is that lots of school districts do value statements. We used it every time we were making hard decisions those design guidance principles came out. How does it apply? What would the impact be? And we made those decisions based on values. And that's not the easy way to do work especially facilities work. It's not the fastest and it might not be the cheapest, but it definitely um guided the work. And those design guidance principles wouldn't have happened if before the bond we hadn't done the innovation team. And that directly came from the school board that said, "Think about educational delivery." And so the innovation team studied that. They gave feedback and that guided the the bond program. The bond that we actually passed was the innovation team guidance. And so
096I um intentionally put our equity lens questions on the back wall because I think that this board has leaned into that as well. Your board goals came from community feedback. Your community has told you what they want and those board goals can be guiding lights or guiding principles into the decisions that we make. And so I believe that that is the difference that I I want to re reflect on or ask you to reflect on is that um as our community expects engagement, we've done engagement. We've started that. We were in that process, right? We're working that. And so I think that we need to really keep that at the forefront. And that's what was different is values-based decision making. And I think this is a really good opportunity to use that model. Thank you.
097>> Any other last ones? We have two minutes left. Go ahead. >> I really appreciate the conversation came and and from your experience as well as from others. Chris, yours too. And um that mention of those questions because I know folks right now can't see what those questions say, but just to read out a couple of them. Who does this decision affect positively? who does this decision affect negatively and no decisions, you know, as we come to more concrete movement toward whatever the next phase is, no decision is going to be entirely positive or negative for for anyone. And so really understanding what is the impact on community, what are the worries and concerns of community. Chris, the example you shared about losing a community hub for instance, making sure to bring families in both
098for our own understanding of what are the real impacts they expect or are worried about and staff as well. You know, consolidation will come with staffing changes and potentially staffing layoffs that hurt and are hard and impact people and really valued community members. Um, so I think the more we can understand what those deep impacts are while we're also looking at the positive and the opportunities, the better able we are as a district to be able to acknowledge them and to be able to meet them in any ways that we can. So >> if I could add one thing is that by making those value values-based decisions throughout the bond program, it kept us all aligned. There was never a time when we did something that the board was like, why would you do that?
099we were all on the same page. That alignment is critical and when we do values-based decisions, it keeps us in that alignment. >> I was just going to read the rest of the equity lens questions that way since you read a couple of them that way people know what they are. I'll just sort them in order. It says, "How does this decision align with the district's mission and vision? Who does this decision affect positively? Who does this decision affect negatively? How might this decision ignore or worsen existing disparities? What are the unintended consequences of this decision? How will these how will those being affected by the decision be included in the process? What other possibilities were explored? And how will this decision slashoutcome be sustainable? I think it's really important that people hear what that
100is because I think sometimes people have a preconceived idea of what the word equity means and if we say equity lens and so I wanted it to be really clear what those questions are for everybody. Yeah. Okay. Thanks Kim again for sharing. Um and at this time we are going to take our lunch break. So we will be on our lunch break. Thank you. We are reconvening at um in 45 minutes. connecting. >> Does it work? >> Wow. Okay. And we are back. Um did you want to introduce what's happening? So, um, as we come back together, we're going to turn it over to Byron. Byron has been one of the things that, um, Kim alluded to earlier was about when we went through the bond program last time, um, the there was an innovation
101team that talked about educational delivery. And so as we think about where we are right now and where we're headed, it felt important to make sure that that was an key consideration in our work moving forward. So Byron's going to take a little bit of time to um talk about where we are and um the vision for where where we're headed with regards to educational um innovation. All right, hear me? Okay, perfect. So, um, our things are going to be kind of interactive throughout, uh, as we talk about things. And before we get going on some things, I shifted a little a little bit of because learning that like do you ever get used to that? >> No. Okay. Um >> I can't >> um Kim started to talk about that was acknowledged as well
102that I just wanted to bring into the space because um it's important to me as a human that we acknowledge these pieces is we looked at a lot of data and talked about things and I heard that talked about but not yet. There's also a lot of emotions behind the data and I don't think that's and emotions can be positive with or not have the best of emotions on some things um around grief or the or that feeling of loss from things and so um so what I'm going to talk about will also invoke like emotion um and it could be lots of different ways and that's kind of the way in our department we think things a lot about is we think about we behind those things and how and how that impacts us
103as humans as as individuals. So, just wanted to say that and then pivoted to be a little more engaging to start. >> I think your mic needs to get swapped out cuz you're going >> Yeah, here is Laurens probably. There you go. >> How about now? Yes. >> Better. Okay. So, you have some tools with you that we're going to use. So, you'll need your dry erase marker and your dry erase board. Um, and you have that tissue there, not for tears, but to um use as an eraser if that's a helpful thing for you. So, a pop quiz here. And once you have an answer, you can hold it up and show if you have your answer here. This is about public education. Okay. It's okay. Um, yeah. How many K12 students are in
104public education in the United States? How many United States? >> Didn't see that before. >> Hey. >> Okay. So the best estimates we have are from 2223 so a couple years ago. This comes from the center for educational statistics and about 49.6 million. Um >> is this correct? >> This is just Yeah, that could be um Yeah. So about 50 million 12 students attend in public education in that estimate across the United States. Okay, next question. How many students are in K12 public education in Oregon? >> Question to the decimal. >> Sure. >> All right. Do you got an idea? Nah, we're declining. >> We're closer on this one. Uh, yeah. So, this is this is from 2022 as well, and it was 581,849. >> I'm sorry, my statistics are updated as of last year.
1055445,000. >> So, go with Sammies. So, that's that is Oregon. Okay. So now your next question. Are you ready? How many students are in K12 public education in Benton County? I'm going to write down >> so I'm I'm curious about this number. Um, and so it's it feels big to me and there might be something wrong with this data, but I pulled it from LBL, but it said just for Benton County from LBL and it says 37,000 students. >> I Yeah, >> North Albany, too. >> And charter. It includes charter schools. Yep. because no it's less than 20% of the total population of Benton County which is around 80,000 >> that's not important to you. >> So I'm that's the end that's the end of the pop quiz here on on the public ed numbers.
106There's no more I was going to ask about Corvalis but I I feel like you should know that possibly. Um do you want to do it? No. >> Okay. It's on the answer is on the wall. Yeah. Um >> stretch. >> Yeah. As of today. >> Yeah. >> No, Lauren probably does. Um >> so part of that is just framing around this around public education. That is a lot of kids. That's a lot of students. And um for me as a leader which I'll talk about um who I am a little bit and also talk about my public education beliefs and um and that is our shared humanity is what I believe in and that's a lot of students both in our country state and in our county give or take 20,000 or so um
107that are really I think all interconnected in lots of ways in their experience in public education. So, um, a little bit about me and the lens that I bring. We're going to talk today about shaping the future of learning. Um, and Kim really set us up talking about thinking ahead into this like innovative way to think about our learning in schools and how that intersects with consolidation and what opportunities that brings. Um, so for me, when I think about public education, I bring um some different lenses to me that I have with me all the time. So, my name is Byron. I am a single dad. I have a six-year-old. He just turned seven last week. So, a seven-year-old and a 5-year-old who both live in Calales. That is actually my son in that picture
108that Kelly put in there on um playing with Legos in his classroom. So, my daughter will be a kindergartener and Hudson, my son, will be a second grader. Um so, I bring that lens with me. I'm a member of the PTA. I'm a member of our community. Um I'm gay. I've been part of our community for a long time. I've been a teacher and I kind of always am like a teacher at heart. Um, as you might notice in some of the things that we'll do. Um, so those are just some of the few intersections and lenses I bring when I think about my experience in public education. I also grew up in Lynn County and went to a nearby school district and graduated from there. So, I have that experience and lens that I
109use too. um my foundation in thinking about public ed and has been rooted all the way back through my family and like the generations of my family when I think about about that and their experiences. And um this summer as I've started in this new role, I've been asking folks what they believe like about public education and also to if they had like an artifact with them. Um, I think behind me are some really awesome people and we actually started our work together this year where they all brought something from their past, a picture, an artifact, a memory, something that that resonated with them about why they believe and what they believe about public education and people's experiences and the thing they brought is fascinating. And there's so much we can learn from each other
110from that. And there's so much from the history of that that we can learn from and honor and so much that we can learn from and look at differently. Now, I'm going to pass this around because it's always fascinating to me. This is my artifact. I've had it with me ever since I've been a teacher. Chris knows this cuz she's seen it when we work together at a school. Um, this is my grandpa's report card um from 1935. This is the last grade he attended in 8th grade. Um, and this is what he was graded on. Um, and it just reminds me of some of the stuff we still do in the same way and some of the stuff we don't. Um, and it's just interesting me for for me to think about that. Um,
111I'm pass around if you want to take a look. It's a kind of a cool thing. So, so next slide maybe. All right. So that's a little bit about public e education and parts of what it means to me not wholly because there's a lot more to share there. And so what I'm hoping we can do in a discussion and conversation just a little bit here to frame our work or in our conversation today. Um you have a note card and to just take a few minutes to jot down if the note card works for you or a dry erase might work better for you or a laptop whatever is the best way for you to record your thinking. um what does public education mean to you? And then in a couple minutes, we'll kind
112of come back together and share out some of those things. That's been a couple minutes. Do folks need a little more time. Okay. So, then we're going to turn just to the person next to you. And so, I think there's like Chris and Judah, Sammy and Shauna if you go that way and have a couple minutes to share together. And then we're going to after that in your partner share out some takeaways you heard from your partner or yourself talk up. So, if you can come to a good stopping spot with your conversation there and then would any groups like to share out some key points or highlights um with what you talked about in your in your experiences or beliefs? Because there's nothing worse than waiting for someone to volunteer to go first, right?
113When you're the teacher and you just wait. >> I love silence and I can sit and wait for a long time. So, thank you for volunteering. Um well, we both had themes um that kind of dealt with uh ideas around um um public school as a place where people become engaged in um their world and their communities through they learn citizenship skills. Um they learn um about um just their own personal growth and creates opportunities. Um, we talked about it as a shared, like I use the term a shared investment, but that public education builds, it helps us build things for for later. Um, um, pathways into things like relationships and new experiences, things that we might carry with us um the for the rest of our lives. and um a portal of sorts into
114um ways of experiencing cultures um individual um ways of of um lived experiences and ways of thinking that we would not get to on our own. Did I miss anything? Okay. May I share your first statement? I don't know how to say that big word. >> Egalitarian. >> Ealitarian. I just thought that was so well said. Access to guided exploration of oneself, community, and the world. I thought that just kind of really was a great way to talk about public education. Ya and I might be, I don't know, 40 years apart, but we had we had a great um I I think what we both shared was pretty similar and had a lot to do with students and what they um what they deserve in that educational experience. So, I thought that was a really
115cool thing for us to come together on. So semi started his with access accessible castles of hope and I think across ours we had themes of um growth, hope, holistic learning both academically as well as behavior social and that community setting and the importance of preparing students not for their present as well as for their futures. Thank you. >> That's really awesome. >> Um, we had a lot of similarities in what we talked about um talking about that um schools are a place that we um learn about other folks in ways that doesn't happen in other places in society. Um and we talked about that it's a place where somebody called it um civics but I think um it's also like where you start to learn about democracy um it's a place where students acquire
116skills um and as you think about the number 50 million that skills for the majority of the folks that live in uh live here um and um work here and participate here and then also that it's an evolving system that it's continually changing. Um there are things that stay the same but in a lot of ways things are always changing um in our schools. And then Lou also um we had those again these were a lot of similarities but then adding the aspect of safety that um happens in our schools and also um recognizing that that's schools now that has not always been the case with schools and that has not always been the case for um students um attending schools in our country. Thank you. Is there anyone else that wanted to share something
117that didn't get to share something that they wanted to share? >> Well, that it um one part that how I worded it was it's a place where it's somewhere where kids can imagine what life may look like in the future. So like bringing in imagination to it and um being a place of curiosity, growth, and support. So that's how I like wrapped all of the things together basically even though I wrote it on my own. >> Yeah. Thank you. And thank you everyone for sharing. Um Chris, you want to say something? Okay. >> I think people forget too that public a education is a space for kids to come sometimes to just get basic needs, you know, to be fed and to get some kind of interaction, positive interaction with people. Thank you. Um, >>
118one more thing though, Bernie said it's a right and I left that off our list, but it's super important and that's where our conversation started is that public education is a right. >> Just wanted to acknowledge one more one more thing. Um since a lot of our answers focused on students and student experience there also wanted to acknowledge the many educators who are there as learners in that space too sharing and then just to add to what you shared Chris about education public education being such a tremendous resource and community hub for families as well. >> Thank you. Um I appreciate you sharing just that little bit um of that and your belief there. um and 50 million students, right, have that experience. And as we start to talk about the innovation team and moving
119towards that work together, there are so many experiences, lived experiences and intersectionalities of our lenses that we bring that influence how we interface with public education. And at the same time, we had like a lot of hopefilled pieces, we also know that public education hasn't always been built for everyone. Um and so that's part of the innovation team's work is to thinking about what can be done differently as we move on um into the future. So for that next slide. So why now? Why are we starting this innovation work now? Um because there's different things kind of converging simultaneously for us that can make this type of work possible. Um, we know that there's changing needs for students, um, and the needs that they need coming into our public schools. We know about workforce needs
120changing. Um, a group of us were just at a conference and we just heard like the new poll of like the, you know, the skills you need in the workforce. Um, and and then we're also starting conversations about consolidation. And while there are many different avenues of that and emotions behind consolidation, sometimes changes like this can make new things possible that we once thought weren't possible before. And sometimes when we think about public education and where it hasn't worked for all or where hasn't worked for some folks, when we are actually looking at consolidating can have us take a hard look at what has historically been created to not serve certain groups of people and maybe shift that in this process of consolidation to create systems and structures that begin to serve more um than
121maybe how some of our public education institutions have intentionally been designed to exclude in the past. Um so another little activity you can do this again on whatever way with the tools you have is the easiest for you to write on. Um and so the this one is try to write down to a one sentence that I'm going to hopefully ask if you feel comfortable each of you sharing out. um is so thinking about the future and moving ahead what um is a sentence that represents your hope for the future in for education in Corvalis. So um one sentence on the hope for the future of learning here in Corvalis that you have that's a big thing for a sentence. I know it's Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And we'll take like a couple minutes to try
122to do that. It's real hard because you have to prioritize. Yeah. Um a sentence um that represents your hope for the future of education in Corvalis. My hope for the future of education in Corvalis is is one way you could start that. So about another minute or so. All right. So, as you feel ready and comfortable, it'd be great to hear everyone if you are okay with that. Um, or if not totally okay to opt out, but what is your hope for the future of education in Corvalis? Sure, that's great. >> Oregon leader in preparing happy, healthy, engaged graduates who are adaptable for a changing cultural landscape. So, mine's a very general statement, but there's a lot of why. I want you to think of the word why after I've read this. I hope that
123every kid and staff member in Corvalis will want to come to school every day and will want to stay all day. Full disclosure, I'm using the same answer for the last question as this one as well. Um my hope for the public education in Corvalis is that it's becomes to be accessible castles of hope for every child to find the best opportunities to learn and grow, dream and succeed, be free of the constraints of the past, empowered by the opportunities of the future. I went with a very long sentence. Schools where students, families, and staff feel holistically supported with strong social, emotional, academic learning opportunities along with a diverse menu of offerings such as arts and CTE that help students be well-rounded, caring community members achieve their goals, prepare for their futures, and thrive. I
124also wrote an academic length sentence. >> I know one sad. >> Um, I hope that young people feel like they belong in Corvalis schools and leave with tools and skills that will help them with their future path in life, whatever that may be. >> That's funny. >> Did you hear the same thing? Um, students leave with the skills and tools to be successful in the path they choose. [Music] >> I did not want to go on the road. >> If I was a teacher, I'd be wondering >> some resource sharing between those two. I hope the future of education in Corllis is innovative, holistic, equitable, relevant, engaging, and prepares the next generations of leaders with critical thinking skills and understanding of the world beyond our borders. uh schools that create and maintain diverse and dynamic
125learning so that every student can expand their sense of the possibility for their future selves with resources and support to thrive in their personal development. Um, my hope for the future of education in Corbalis is that along the way we are able to develop strong critical thinking skills. I went with the Chris Hawkins model and said, um, welcome all learners to our spaces and provide them the things they need to learn and grow. >> Thank you. um lots of hopes on what we are, you know, visioning for looking ahead um into the future. At the same time, we know in our community, as it is with any communities, there are concerns about public education and there's concerns about our educational programming. Um I know I've heard lots of those concerns and I would guess um
126you've also heard lots of those concerns. And so if you are thinking about the top kind of two or three concerns you've heard from our community ask you as our next thing here um to write those down about our educational programming. So what if you narrow down to the top two or three things you hear it could be a category. It could be a subject. It could be a program. What are the top two or three things you hear from our community about their concerns around our educational programming here in Corvalis? And then we're going to share those next. And I didn't say, but you have different tools to use. And I saw lots of people chose different tools that works well for them to record that. All right, we can go around again. We
127can do it a different way. Whoever, whatever way you feel comfortable doing is great to share these out. >> I'll go first and then we can start in the middle and then we can go that way. Um so I just wrote a couple of things that I've heard a lot like a repeated couple comments and of concerns and one is that um CSD is or it's not rigorous enough the education and then the other one is that CSD has lost their focus on education are the two things I hear quite often um with the disclaimer that I may not think All right, I just wrote down a couple of words just for things that have have come up pretty often from from family outreach or community outreach or question. Um, one was around math, math
128curriculum questions and then the arts broadly, music, theater, um, and broader arts too. So three things come to mind and really fresh from conversations I had past few months year. Uh the first one is struggle around what equitable resource allocation means into our programming and our uh prioritization uh between giving every child what they need period or giving every child what they need based on prioritization. pri based on uh what's more priority than the other um with the limited resource situation we're living in. I think that's a big struggle I I I have in the conversations. The second one is the right balance. It was mentioned the right balance between simple specific outcomes um reading arithmetic etc or holistic outcomes that's actually contribute to those specific ones for many of our students for the majority
129of our students uh understanding the right balance between what's this school district's mission is uh is it just laser focus on three outcomes or holistic focus that's actually also support those specific things the third one is the challenge between what the children want and what the children's future necessates and need what they actually need and also what the parents want and what they think their children need which in many situations is very aligned in many situations it's involves a conversation around what am I missing about my children's future that's I'm not seeing. I think that's a really important conversation that we're all growing into understanding. Yes, I'll turn that on. I'll repeat myself. Not all kids feel welcome or heard. And the second one is uh kind of what Lou mentioned about rigor and especially
130in the area of math. >> I apparently cheated off to Dr. after off Dr. Tomminy u the math readiness concerns and arts and libraries cuts. Mine were the same. Number one, math dtracking and the second was the arts. Um, I haven't been around long enough to hear complaints, but this happened at my school where there was an emergency budget cut and a lot of teachers got fired. And then my second one was also behind in mathematics. uh changes in music, art, library services, um perceived lack of rigor, particularly in math. And um I captured this one as kind of an the sense that we're lowering the bar of expectations in pursuit of equity. >> Pretty much the same. Um what I've been hearing is the lack of enrichment opportunity especially arts and music. Um lack
131of focus on STEM. Um rigor uh that includes mathematics of course and then lack of equity. Thank you. So there's some definitely alignment in what you've heard. Um, and so there's hopes and there's also real concerns from our community. And our community has lots of hopes as well. And so our envisioning for the future is to think about what if we could bring those things together. What if those things could be on the table for us to look at what the future of Carllis could look like and have real discussions with with our community, with teachers, with staff about these concerns and these hopes based on our experiences in public education and what would that future look like? So, we have a little vignette exercise here of of keeping business as usual. And that could
132be thinking about consolidation or closure in a typical way maybe um and what outcomes could be if we kept business as usual. Um or if we could take this opportunity and look at what future ready could look like for these hopes and future of learning in Corvalis and what that could look like. So, I have these vignettes and then we have these two questions on this next slide that we're going to discuss after we read them. So, we'll take just a couple minutes to read this and let you reflect and think about it and then we'll come together again and talk in your partners again about these questions, too. So, when you're ready, um, kind of turn into your partner that you already worked with once about public education, and you have a couple of
133those questions to think about, and then when we're done with this, again, we'll share out a couple insights that your you and your partner had about this conversation. So, start to come to an okay stopping spot. I know we could talk at length about this, but just if you can come to a good stopping spot, we'll come back together There. I was letting him finish his finish his thought there. Um, what are some insights that your partner and you had or talked about in this? So, a couple of things that came out were just the attention to really individualized and differentiated learning for students um in a way that allowed for crossgrade mentorship, partnership, collaboration, and then also that deep connection to real world learning and activities. was similar with the um to connecting to
134the world and with the project and they said it reminded me of um College Hills butterfly project that second one um and also that it's not from a deficit viewpoint and it's looking at strengths and collaboration and some and um really drawing that out of the student. Um and then we kind of talked about in the context of um CSD um or at least Corvalis in the community like understanding what growth and success can look like beyond test scores could help move something like that forward because some of that is like how do you quantify that in the same way? And so um helping move beyond just one way of viewing what success in education looks like could be one thing. And we also chatted a little bit about like missed opportunities with OSU and
135um instead of it being like the River Health Project with a nonprofit, could it have been like with researchers at OSU who are doing like internationally known research, right? And how that can um lead to curiosities with young people too. Not that nonprofits are bad. I'm just saying like there's the we talked about those kind of missed opportunities that could that exist in our communities, that divide that's been there for so long. how as a community maybe we can move past that to get to something like that in that second one too with the resources right there. >> I think uh what we talked about the similar stuff we're excited about this second vignette um the students are treated as individuals and their needs are met they're and their people and in the program to
136help them get to where they want to go. Um, I think uh uh one of the things that that excited me quite a bit is that you know I always believe in hands-on training like when you apply your knowledge to something relevant you learn more out of it than just sitting in a classroom reading a book and so on. I really uh am excited about that. Uh but one thing that we did come up with is that this is very resource intensive. just uh I think uh Theres was talking about how much time it would take for a teacher to give individual responses to each student and and that is a a big task and also I think we need to build very strong community partnerships to make this happen even in mentorship in in
137in companies or organization needing to facilitate some of these projects and everything else. >> Well, I got very excited. I have quite the list going here about what we could do. Um, but as mentioned before, and we both talked about this, the, you know, it does require a lot more time, time for teachers to prep and to work together, um, to consolidate. And then um just little things like tech services. We have an amazing technology program, but for this and the way it's looking here, you would need 247, you might need 247 tech services. Um you'd have to do a lot of training on projectbased learning. And what would that look like at all levels? Starting at the elementary level, which is possible, been done. um scheduling changes which we know are a nightmare with
138having to do that. Um and as Bernie mentioned and we talked about community connection, a lot of that and more of the CT type models is that it >> I think it's it's still kind of hard for us to to dream it. We've just been through a very hard um cycle. And it it kind of reminds me recently a friend posed a question to a group. What would you do if you suddenly had a lot of money? And I picked get a soft pretzel machine. And my friend picked the the library from Beauty and the Beast. Um and I was like, mine was not that good. Uh, it is still like, oh, we're we're picturing what it what it could be like, but it's still hard for me to to make that connection, especially having
139gone through such a hard season. I also in reading this was thinking about just time intensive for for educators, the resources, the capacity, the funding it would take to do this and also step back and thought about where are spaces where things like this are already happening that we can learn from. So thinking that we do have glimpses of some of the programs happening at College Hill in terms of really experiential learning opportunities and not that it's limited to College Hill but other places or I know several of us toured the summer school program that had really more of a a learning block model rather than a minute-by-minut scheduled time. And students loved being there. The students who were there and actively coming said we love being here. We wish school was like this all
140the time. And it was just these little tiny things that were different sometimes too of just it's okay if I'm not here right at this minute and teachers are here to greet me and I feel really safe here and we're being fed breakfast in a way that's just a lot more casual and easier to access. Um so it just had me also thinking about where are there spaces where this is already happening successfully and oftentimes when we hear those stories what we also hear from the educators are this feels joyful and this is why I teach and so thinking about summer school for instance of that's a time for educators when often it's please go take a break because you're burning out by March April because this is so intense and this field requires so
141much emotional labor and to hear from the summer school teachers who said some who said you know usually I I thought I would need a break but this refills me for the rest of the year to be here in this way just has me wondering and asking that question of where are where is this already happening in some form in our district and what could we learn from that rather than thinking totally outside of the box of oh we can't do anything without a lot of resources maybe we can >> I want to build on this because this is really critical which is uplift the examples that already exist and test every assumption. We can't rely on assumptions of the past to create a future that's better. We need to test those assumptions and say
142is it true we have to keep doing business as usual. uh do we need to configure things differently where our educators feel supported to innovate and create a system that's empowering like this and for us on the board to build that confidence and trust in that and I'll give a very good anecdotal uh case here third grade reading it's very important metric for us to hold our superintendent accountable on what if I tell you maybe third grade level reading might be a little bit lower if the students are going to be bilingual at fourth grade level with two languages that they can read very well. That's one question that's opened my mind. Sometimes we need to be very critical in even the metrics that we rely on and how we measure them for in order
143for us to have a future that's different than the past. >> Yeah, thank you. Go to our next slide. So, we could talk about this extensively um and that was my point. Um because Ryan asked me to talk about innovation team and what we're going to be doing and I thought you needed to experience it to know because it's hard to explain what we'll be doing and so that that you know that sequence of things we just did is like what our innovation team will start to do and discuss and grapple with talking about the concerns they hear putting that on the table discussing them. What could it look like differently? what would the educators need to make that happen? What community partnerships at OSU, what could we connect with? And so that little mini
144thing is what we're going to start embarking on for like the next two years as an innovation team here in Corvalis. Um I think Harvey Milk has like a quote that something around like you can't hope alone doesn't help, right? And so we have lots of hopes and our innovation team is one of the hows we can start to make some of those hopes a reality. um for the future of learning in Corvalis. And so our innovation team um will be sending out our invites to folks in the next week or so who applied to be on that. And we'll have about 32 educators across all of our schools, both certified and classified from all different levels of experience and expertise. All different experiences, lived experiences and identities and intersectionalities are coming together to talk
145about collectively our experiences, our hopes and where we see we can increase like look at new innovative models and programs and increase engagement and rigor and find that joy in education. Um, and we're going to do that in like kind of four ways of like looking at our trends, engaging with community regularly and often both in affinity spaces and outside of affinity spaces, advancing equity and inclusion. And that starts with the grounding equity to know and do work together to examine how schools have historically been built not to serve groups of people and knowing that as a base to work to change. Um, and then aligning all that work with our board goals. Um so taking those concerns we hear having them back to talk about to see what we can do in a new
146and innovative way. And in that the process of consolidation and looking at different models um different programming ways allows this team to help advise that way. And so the hope is when we know recommendations and a recommendation we might be looking at this team can start to engage our community to engage all of their schools and their educators on within this recommendation a model for consolidation. What can we make possible? What does consolidation make possible for the students for learning here in Corvalis? Um, is there a different way we look at our libraries and our music programs and our arts programs in a different model where we have different levels of access? Um, because our resources, we know what those are. Um, but when we shift the structures with how we use those resources, we
147can start to look at these different ways of doing that. Um, I'm excited because I believe in our shared humanity and that we have like a collective wealth of expertise in our community and in our rooms and with our educators that we can share just in this little bit in this space. I could start to hear the synergy popping and happening about our beliefs and how we could do this. And I could start to feel excitement and hesitation and all of those things that come with that. Um, and so this is kind of that preview of the excellent work that Kim has done with long range facilities starting to inform where we can be as an innovation team to start to rumble with the concepts of public education in Corvalis and what is our Corvalis
148promise for the future of of our kiddos here. So next slide as we wrap up. So, as we think about innovation, you've talked about ideas and I'm just interested to hear that we can take this and Lauren's taking some notes that we can use into our planning is from your perspective right now just after first take and we'll keep coming back to these types of things, but what is an innovation that we should accelerate? You talked about things already happening. What are some things we should think about accelerating and what's a risk or a barrier that we also have to be thinking about to address in that? So, I'll give you just like another minute or so to think about those and then we'll share out and then wrap And then when you feel like
149you're ready, we can just kind of popcorn. We can do both at the same time. Um, and we'll record those and then close. So my answer to both is the same kind of uh the innovation we should accelerate is leveraging of the leveraging of technology in supporting staff addressing the needs of our students social and emotional and I will highlight AI will be a technology that we might be aware of but not sure uh we're leveraging in a way that's responsible and ethical and catching up with what it can do and what it cannot do and do it right. And I think that's the answer to one risk or barrier we must address. Uh how can we embrace AI and technology in an ethical and responsible way in supporting our kids? I don't want us
150to be like that TV commentator in 1994 saying what is internet anyway? Uh it's going to be part of our students lives uh part of their career and understanding how it can help us innovate uh operationally but also educationally. So I'll go um to accelerate you know number one combining subjects into different types of learning um slash like projectbased learning and the barrier to address is the ideas of the limits of rigor that maybe because students are combining you know, art and science that it therefore must not be rigorous. >> I'll go next because mine's kind of related. I copied Judah a little bit. Just kidding. Um, and I put applied learning as how I framed it. And I said um capacity of teachers as the some of the barriers and also um an affinity
151towards standardized testing as measures of success. Um so I think those are a couple things and um yeah >> I think I'm also thinking on the same lines. Um I I call it more holistic education right integrating math, science, arts, music. uh all into the the learning um in a day and um I think some one risk or barrier is resources time but also teachers are going to have to have more um require more training more competencies and so on and then the other part is uh that different families and and and parents may have different expectations of that outcome and I think we need to figure that out in addition to the standardized testing type uh outcomes. >> One thing I was thinking about in terms of a risk or or barrier just in
152terms of process, you shared that invitations are going out very soon for the team which is really exciting to hear. And I'm just wondering since this is coming in parallel with a consolidation process that once models for consolidation or a model for consolidation comes forward who may be needed on that team may not be represented based on what comes forward. So I think just thinking toward flexibility or hope for some flexibility or if things start moving and folks say I didn't realize that's what it was. I'd really like to be involved that there's some flexible or flexibility in being able to shift makeup of the team to really make sure to meet the needs as things change or as new information comes in. Um again my answer is always going to be a little different
153and that is to accelerate I think you've got to accelerate the passion that you've heard today and the passion that you hear with within teach you know amongst teachers that um are using those kind of innovative ways of teaching and the barrier of course time and money but also the underlying really piece of all this is the consolidation and that with that's going to come a lot of passion that's might try to derail some of this other things that you're talking about >> and going back uh in terms of processes and so on I would hope whatever we we decide to um accelerate or whatever innovation we we want to focus on we take the time to I guess am my last career, you know, war game it or or assimilate it a and to
154make sure that it works in different scenarios, whether it's consolidation, whether just try out different options to make sure we have the right answers before we roll row it out. Uh because what's regional intensive is actually the wrong thing. uh knowing what it's going to do and the team um is a two-year a two-year team with that in mind with a third year of monitoring and implementation. So, we've had kind of designed it that way to to slow that pace. Next slide. So, what questions do you have for me about the innovation team um and our work that's going to start here? Is there room for community members? >> Yeah. And so I think the team the way that uh I usually guide a team is that the team comes together and works together and
155makes decisions as a collective group um on some of those pieces. The way I envision some of that happening is a lot of inward planning, then outward working with community, then inward, and then outward and back and forth or bringing in community groups at times where we want to hear from this group in our community about this topic. And so, so yes, in lots of different capacities and ways. >> Could you share a little bit more? uh I don't want to ask an archaic question what are their lines of reporting and who uh delivers reports to who but walk us through the why and the how you envision this innovation team working with different departments schools and I would love to hear if you can highlight uh how the equity lens might be embraced by
156a team of x number of people uplifting voices or experiences that's might be usually are typically not uplifted. >> Yeah, it kind of happens in phases um with like a the first phase is a lot of like education, information gathering um and then communicating back out what those pieces are that we've learned um or and getting feedback on things. And so um I'll talk to I think just like real quick because I think we're really out of time. Um, but it it is like like we could say we want to think about this type of a model for math and we've researched and we've visited these schools. We've talked to these other schools. We've looked at this. We've done this piece in this group. Now let's go out and get feedback to this group or
157let's come back and um present this to all of our staffs and get feedback and then come back together. And so it's like making plans and ultimately report back to Ryan and our student growth and experience department here who's like helping lead that work is like then with this recommendation where do we go from this and so this is a team that looks at this and makes these recommendations on what this future could look like in all these specific areas or programming and then and then we decide if that recommendation is what we want to do then you make an implementation plan and then work to implement that with learning and PD and all those pieces that would happen. So brief, but that's what it is. Yeah. >> If folks have more questions, I'm sure
158you're welcome. Do you have a short question? >> Go ahead. >> You can if you have a >> maybe just ask it real quick. >> Will there be board members involved in your team? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, that was a quick question. Yeah. Um, but if you have if you think of more questions, I'm sure you can reach out to Byron, too. Um, thanks Byron for that. And we're going to take a um short five minute break. Okay, we are back and um next item is uh with Brian and Kim. >> I'm ready. >> All right. So we um for the next hour going to spend time together talking about um uh proposed timelines um a little bit more about how we work on our communication pathways with our um community and how we
159move forward um in terms of consolidation. Um, again, these as we move through this, we're going to be um interested in the um ideas and suggestions you have, but we needed to have a starting place. And so, this is the starting place for us to um build from. So, a couple of things that really come to mind as we start to have this conversation. The first one is around stewardship. So, we care for what we have built and want to ensure it's sustainable for the next generation. So as we think about that, we're not thinking about um 50 years down the road, but we're thinking about students who are coming into our system now and will be leaving in in 13 years. So in a sort of a generation that way, thinking about the things
160that we have that we've been able to do well, we want to think about how do we hold on to those things um in the midst of consolidation. Um also about the opportunities that our students have. So again, every student deserves a strong academic experience um and the best resources we can provide. And one of the reasons we're having this conversation is because what we've heard has been that as we continue to have fewer students in each one of our schools, it starts to dilute um some of the opportunities that we're able to provide. And so as we think about this process and where we need to head, we're trying to think about how do we consolidate resources in a way that they provide more opportunities to our students. And then finally around community um
161and we're we know that we're stronger when we work together. Um what you'll see is a number of opportunities for community engagement in this process. Um and the decision is about all of us, not any one school. And one of one of the things that I'm going to want to get from you near the end of this conversation today is your um view on what sort of um proposal you want me to bring forward. And so we're going to have some conversation about that as well. So one of the things we spent a little bit of time looking at over the summer is what do we know about um consolidation processes and what are some of the aspects of that that are important for us as me as a leader, you as my um bosses,
162but also community members and electeds. What are the things that we need to be thinking about as we move through this process? Yeah. >> Can you for um people because I don't know if we ever actually said what consolidation means and so if folk are watching this they might be like what are we talking about before we jump into the rest of it I think that might be helpful. >> Yeah. So consolidation is the concept of um having less schools open and consolidating the services that we provide into fewer buildings supporting our students. >> Thank you. I think that'll help people understand this next part. >> Sammy has a question too. I have a question because on the graph sometimes it's called consolidation, sometimes it's called a closure. >> What's the difference? >> Yes. >>
163Um I think that they are um often used interchangeably. Um, and I think as I think about it, um, I think that closure, as I've as I think about my the way I use the language, closure to me is more absolute about a specific building being closed. Consolidation is more about how we reign the resources and services we're providing in such a way that we're able to meet the needs of our students. So, I've been so as I've been saying it, I've been saying consolidation primarily because I'm thinking about the way that we adjust um and reallocate our resources. Awesome. >> And consolidation can lead to closure, I think, is part of it, too. And that was already a decided thing on the graphs is how I read the graph earlier. >> Yeah. Okay. Thanks,
164Ryan, for taking that brief moment. >> No, I appreciate it because it actually fits right in to where I'm headed. Um, we've just kind of been in sync today. Um so districts that districts that have been su successful in navigating closure um were um frequent made frequent clear communication. So, thank you for helping me to do that better. Uh, but at the same time acknowledging the emotional toll and that's one of the things that Byron um did as his preset work with us is to think about the emotional component of what this means. Also, as we know, but it's always important that we remember that it's important to avoid using technical jargon um because in schools we have a lot of acronyms and a lot of educational language that we tend to use and we
165need to be thinking about that as we're having these communic um conversations with our community. Districts that started conversations early tended to be more successful. That didn't mean that the process had to be extensive, but the um the community was aware of the problem. And I do think that is something that we have spent a lot of time over the last um year talking about with our community. And so I feel like our community has a sense that that's not sure what, but that some sort of change is coming. And then finally, um, thinking about what what Byron talked about is not just about the consolidation or a closure, but thinking about, um, opportunities to create, um, better educational environments for students. And so, one of the things that we're going to continue to share
166with you are as we go through this process, how do we make sure that we are not just making a um, a hard decision and and doing like full stop. We're making a hard decision and then we're moving forward. And we're moving forward keeping in mind who our students are and what sorts of opportunities we're hoping for them to have. Some of the excitement you shared earlier as we started to talk about innovation that those conversations um need to be um parallel to one another. So, um, because you still have your whiteboards, I'm going to have you take a moment and just write down, and you've done you've actually done this part of an activity for us before. Um, one or two groups that you um are connected to or feel like you are could
167be even a part of, but that you are um interfacing with on a regular basis in our community. Where do you where do you find those connections with folks um who live in the community of Crealis? And just choose, you don't have to make an extensive list. Just choose one or two that you feel like they understand me, I understand them. When we come together, we are able to um lean on one another, but also share with one another and and help each other to be educated on a topic like where we're headed with with consolidation. All right. Now that you have those written down, um, next to them, um, write down how you think the con the conversation around consolidation with that group of people. What would be the emotion related to that that
168conversation? And in that group, you're probably imagining one person or maybe two people that are also part of that group. You might be thinking about a whole um congregation or um group that you um interact with. But just thinking about what are some of those emotions that would come with a conversation that you would have related to consolidation? Now, now we're going to shift to approach. So, because these conversations will most likely happen, you've identified people that you tend to interact with. You probably have that they probably ask you questions. um as you spend time together um what I want you to think about is the the approach to that conversation that you'll have um so what tone would you use what facts or details would resonate most what fears or hopes do you need
169to acknowledge and what is the um end emotional state you are hoping for. So thinking again about those conversations as we move through the next several months. Um, you don't have to answer all of all four of those questions, but um, just to think through a few of them. the tone you'd use, the facts and details that would be important, fears and hopes you do you need to acknowledge as we talked about before. And then the emotional state you were hoping for All right. So, what I'm going to have you do is I'm going to have you pair up again and just have to have the opportunity to have a conversation with with a a colleague or neighbor. So, um a and Melissa, I'm going to put you together. >> Oh, okay. Got it. Then
170I'm going to have you three pair um do a triad. Sammy, um Shauna, and Lou, and then Chris and Judah. And I'm gonna give you I'm only gonna give you about six minutes to have that conversation, but I want you to have a chance to share and gain some ideas from one another. All right, go ahead and sum up the the last sentence. I hope that conversation was helpful for each of you again as you start to think about moving into some of these conversations um with community. So, one of the other things we did over the summer is we spent I several of us spent time talking to other districts or superintendents who had gone through a consolidation process and some so what were some of their key learnings um or considerations that we
171needed to account for. Um so one of them that I first and foremost was board alignment. One superintendent that I spoke to said, I shared with my board that you need to stay together so you keep our community together. And I think that that um really doesn't mean that you always agree um or have similar thoughts about what we or should do, but that you continue to uphold those working agreements that you have um and a and what could become a challenging situation or a challenging time and how important that you all being strong board members alongside one another is really vital to the to where we're headed. Um, one of the things that, um, was shared with us was about building um, positive new school communities. Um, and you've sort of heard that theme
172today. As we're thinking about innovation, as we're thinking about how do we move forward, um, that we will continue um, to progress and we need to be thinking about how we do that and continue to share the um, positive experiences of students in our schools through this process and beyond. also that decisions were timely um for so limiting how long folks are in the gray um so that we're able to get the information out a decision can be made because then we're able to move forward until that decision is made we are we're sort of um in this place of unknown um and that also causes folks a lot of anxiety so to make a timely decision um again focus on academic improvement we um hear the critiques from our community and we know that
173we have areas that we need to continue to improve it improve in and this is an opportunity for us to to continue to move move in that direction. Thinking about the support for our students and our staff in this process. Um one of my colleagues um their board made a decision late one evening and the next day um the staff were coming to school hearing about the decision related to their school um because the meeting went late into the night. um the the that superintendent shared with me, I wish I would have had folks at the school the next day. I wish I would have had a care room set up. I wish I would have had a couple subs in the building just in case somebody needed a break. So, thinking about those aspects.
174Um if we have reductions that come from this, how do we help folks um to find um future employment and how do we share some of those things with our community so that we know we all um have a vested interest in the support of our students and staff as we move through this process. So again, that community awareness piece and just by walking around and listening, it sounds like you're hearing a lot of questions from community already. Again, identifying that this is already something that people are aware of and are anticipating. They just don't know what it is at this point in time. Any questions about any of those themes that I heard? Um, when you're talking about board alignment, um, one thing that I think is really helpful for me is just the
175knowledge and knowing the facts. Um, and so how what is the plan to keep us all aligned and informed of what's going on? So I understand board is going to be involved in for example Byron's innovative team but it's not going to be all of us obviously. So how is that? >> Can I can I hold that till the next slide? >> Yes. Can I ask my two other questions? >> Of course. >> Um when it comes to uh shoot I forgot my question on it. when it comes to um social support on this um you know it I guess are we going to look back on lessons learned a little bit more about like talking to kids and talking to staff more about what worked and what didn't work when we did close some
176of the schools because there were some little things that we could have done >> that would have made a big difference in how kids felt part of a school that they were coming into. So, are we going to do that? Oh, and then my other question is timeline on decision- making. I'm sure you're probably going to share that, but >> that's on the next slide, too. >> You know, you're welcome. >> Um, I have thought a lot about reaching out to folks um who've who um were here during that transition. You know, Kim's a great example of that. You're another great example of that, but I know that there's other folks, too. Um, and again, this is a process that um is iterative and if people have suggestions and ideas, um, I'm open to those.
177Um, so I'm not like putting it back in everybody else's lap. I have I have plans to talk to some folks, but if there's things that you are thinking, Chris, that were like these were the three things that had we done different as kids transition from Harding to Adams, that that I would I would want to know those. All right, we're going to go to the next slide. So, here's a timeline, a proposed timeline for this process. Um and it includes three main components. It includes um board meetings that are coming between now and the middle of November. It includes superintendent chats. So for those who don't know, I have done a superintendent chat monthly um over the last several years. During COVID, they happened more frequently and that's when I started those. Um, and
178so I'm planning to have frequent superintendent chats um, during this period of time so staff can ask me questions directly. Um, sometimes I've done those in a more formal fashion and sometimes I've done them in a somewhat informal fashion. Um, but that's going to be important piece of this too. And then also some open meetings for the public to come and provide um, ideas and suggestions as well. Um, so those are the kind of the and then also the back to school day, another opportunity for staff. But basically what we have is um as of September 11th is a the a board meeting and what I'm going to ask you in a little bit is about what sorts of proposals you want me to bring forward because my goal would be to bring forward a
179proposal at the September 11th board meeting or proposals um the following day to do a superintendent chat. So staff um having a board meeting Thursday night. Um we would do that on Friday, do a public listening session the week of September 15th. It says September 15th, but it would be that week. Um another superintendent's chat with staff followed by a board meeting on September 25th that would have public testimony, a listening session again open the week of September 29th. Um the soups chat again with staff on September 30th, a listening section the week of October 6th, a board meeting on October 16th which again has public testimony and then during the board meetings of October 30th deliberation and action November 13th. So that is my proposed timeline. Um it does a couple of things. It
180allows us multiple area opportunities for multiple staff and community members to give us input um in terms of what they see as the um the strengths of the proposal or proposals, the weaknesses of this proposal or proposals or other ideas. It also allows um our staff members to do that and it also allows the board to hear um public testimony both in board meetings and also in email which um tends to be um more frequent honestly than the public testimony that we receive Sammy. So thank you very much. I really like to see that. I liked seeing this because it includes transparency within the institution and outside. Um, one thing with major decisions we've heard a lot from the community is they want us to make the decision in a very thoughtful way as a
181board. And I'm wondering from a structural point of view if there is a final recommendation October 30th that would qualify as a first read and November 13th that would qualify as a second read. Nevertheless, probably that final recommendation will be either one or a combination or modification of what we would be hearing on September 11. Is that correct? >> Um there is in terms of policy, there is not a specific policy related to school consolidation and closure. Um the I do believe that the board should take action um on on the decision. um that's in a slide in a little while. You could consider it as a first and second read. I've just my only concern with that is um how does that allow enough um enough time because then basically you're more or less
182finalizing semiinalizing the decision on October 30th. That's that's the li that's the limitation of that >> of that pathway. >> Yeah. And and really the the I think the sentiments behind first and second not necessarily it's something in our um in our bylaws or our policies but the the sentiment behind it is public testimony can follow a possible decision. uh it's not an obligation of this board, but it's uh it's a really an important thing I I would suspect the community wants to do is we're going to hear lots of public testimony leading to the recommendation, but perhaps hopefully we are we will be listening. We are listening and we will be listening to the public testimony forming that recommendation that's uh uh the right thing to do for the for the community and also
183that's based on the community feedback. But after we have that recommendation on one final check-in and I'm assuming on November 13th we already received the recommendation and we should have public comment section during that period. Correct? >> Yeah, it would come in the packet. Yeah, the recommendation would come in the packet. >> Okay. >> October 30th. So October 30th, we have a recommendation and potentially a public comment during that day where people will be able to comment and then on 13th, November 13th, they still can comment after. Correct. >> So um can we hold this discussion just for a little while? No, you're you're totally fine. I just I think what the other thing that I'm we're going to talk about in just a little bit is about the number of proposals that the board
184wants me to bring forward and I think that that has a impact on that flow. >> Um and so I' I'd like to return to that if that's okay. >> Absolutely. >> Yeah. I think we can we can add public comment to our meetings too, right? If um >> yeah, we'd have we we would have it at all the >> Yeah. And so I don't think that I'm not worried about the public not having an opportunity to comment our way in. I think we have so many opportunities. I really appreciate I was going to add I appreciate how everything is structured where it's in between board meetings so we're hearing it at board meetings and in the communities because we know not everybody likes coming to the board meetings and so I feel like we
185have a lot of community input um where that was not like the final recommendation obviously we're going to hear comments on too and I agree with Ryan we get more email comments than people coming to meetings as well And so I would encourage people to do whatever is best for them um as far as providing feedback. >> One other thing I want to note about this timeline. Um while November 13 um may seem like a short period of time, we will have a significant amount of work to do in preparation for the upcoming school year. And so we need a decision um earlier in order to for all those other pieces to come into come into place >> and that's before the school improvement plan meetings too. So that having this figured out would help
186that, right? >> Okay. >> All right. So, everybody take a take a a sigh or a breath or whatever you need to do. Um, I'm going to bring us back to on this slide. It's going to be um an opportunity for you to uh use your tissue one more time for another another free ride, but it's it's about what does consolidation make possible. So going back to that conversation you are having with that friend or colleague or group of folks, what is something that consolidation has the potential to make possible? [Music] All right. Well, I appreciate how thoughtful everyone's being. Um, giving you the time to again think through some of these pieces that will be coming up for you is really important. Um so uh for the next slide um it's just again reiterating
187the timelines and for this one really what I want you to envision is that innovation team. So the decisions that you that are made by the board will inform the work of the innovation team. And so depending on what um what you all decide to do, the innovation will take that information once they've done some brainstorming and identifying um paths forward to take what you have decided and use that as they work towards promising practices in innovation and as they address the questions and concerns that have been raised by the community that you've shared back with them. So again, thinking about this as a two-year process is really important because that means that they will be working throughout the upcoming school year. As we make changes in our schools, they would continue on through that
188next school year as well. Um so as people put in applications, they understood that it was a longer term commitment um as they uh apply to be members of that innovation team. All right. So, here's um a question that I um need your um your perspective and um direction for me as the superintendent. Um so, on September 11th at the board meeting, I will be bringing forward a proposal or several proposals for you to consider. That's where I asked Sammy to sort of hold on those last couple of meetings because if it's one proposal, um then it will probably be more um have more dialogue and iterations than two proposals potentially. But that's kind of why I I wanted to sort of wait on that. Um, so one of the things that I've thought about
189in relations to one or two proposals is going back to those those equity lens questions. Um, and thinking about those equity lens questions um, again in regards to do I bring one proposal forward for you your consideration. That in no way means that that is the decision. It means it's a starting point and a proposal or do I bring forward multiple proposals for you to hear? Again, not meaning that that is the only way of doing it and it has to be proposal one or proposal two. It just puts more proposals on the table for the a starting point. I just want to make be really clear about that. What I'm bringing to you is not a final decision in any way. It is a starting point for consideration at at that meeting. Did you
190have a question, Judah? >> No. >> Okay. Sorry, I I saw your hand and I All good. All right. So, as I as I looked at those um those questions, those equity lens questions, some of them I felt um may fit better under a single proposal and some of them I felt might fit fit better under um multiple proposals. And so, I'm just going to kind of walk through my thinking and then I want to open up discussion because one of the my goals for today is that I have a sense leaving this meeting what I'm bringing back to you. So for the first question, how does the decision align with the district's mission and vision? In a lot of ways, this is a a collaborative group of FE people in a community that is
191engaged um in the work that we do. And so with regards to that question, I really felt like it was probably more around having a couple proposals come forward around who does this decision affect positively. I think that in that area I thought more about a single proposal because for a couple of reasons. One is just being trauma informed and recognizing that um the communities, the schools that we start to discuss, there will be more emotion around the potential closure of a school as we throw out more proposals, more schools go through that to mold. It doesn't mean that they wouldn't be considered enough as the proposals change over time, but as a starting point, that is a concern that I that I have around who does this decision affect negatively. Again, I think that
192a single proposal probably fits better there. Um because in a lot of cases those two proposals will um alienate comm community has the potential to alienate alienate school communities that are in proposal one versus proposal two. Another consideration around number four. How might this ignore or worsen existing dis um disparities? I didn't feel like that necessarily was a single proposal or two proposals. I I sort of put that in the kind of the in intermediate neutral category. What are the unintended consequences of this decision? Um I think that one I could see both sides in terms of one proposal. Um people would believe that we've already made a decision. We we sometimes hear that as a critique from our community. Um on the other side, um we could see families leave schools um in the
193middle of the year or early on because they're making an anticipation that that my school will will be closing. And so that will have an impact on um transitions, kids who move into the community during the school year. So for that one, I said that really both proposals um I I could see um in terms of unintended consequences. How will those affected by decisions be included in the process? I put that one as neutral and I only put that as neutral because we have created a number of spaces for people to come together and provide feed input. um there are may be cases where people are not able to attend um and so there are some limitations to um the opportunity for people to get public input but I don't think that proposal one or
194proposal two changes that necessarily um what other possibilities were explored um again I felt like that one was somewhat neutral because we're exploring multiple possibilities right now. And then the final one is how will this decision outcome be sustainable and that one I put under um one proposal as well. And the reason why I put it there is because we are making a decision right now about school consolidation and we also know that there's the possibility that um in a in a number of years we're going to need to look at um our high schools in particular. That's not necessarily the thing that we need to do right now because we understand where their attendance numbers are and that they wouldn't all um fit in one school, but at some point a board is going
195to need to make a decision similar to this and it unless things change in our community. And if that's the case, um it will definitely be a situation where I think a single proposal would be the best um option rather than um this unnecessary competition between our two comprehensive high schools. So th those were my initial thoughts as I went through those equity lens questions and tried to um come to you not with a a proposal on the number of proposals but a opportunity to hear some of the thinking um that I've been doing around what you're going to ask of me and the impact that has on our communities. And I apologize if you already answered this, but when you talk to other superintendents who have already done this, did they give a recommendation
196of how many proposals? >> For the most part, um the the superintendents I've talked to have talked more about getting it done um in a short period of time. not necessarily the whole conversation but the decision done in a short period of time more than the number of proposals that that that came to them. Um and in many of those cases there it was sort of an obvious decision um either in terms of attendance or in terms of building um conditions. So we're in a little bit of a different situation that way. Um Ryan, as a trained planner, I know in in the Navy, we always when we do what we call a course of action uh decision, we usually bring up three courses of action. And some of the questions that you put up
197there, it falls into an area where we call staff estimates. So basically the staff would work out all of these. But the the purpose of that is it helps the decision maker compare and contrast the different courses of action. For us when you bring in a single course of action we it's really hard to to analyze it in the vacuum uh with that's the only choice. But when we are able to see it done uh in different courses of action, we can put value on something like for example uh um in the equity lens if uh one course of action says uh uh this decision affects another group um uh uh one group um uh negatively and then the other course of action we see it affects another group differently. So in that contrast we
198can figure out well what are our values what how does it align to our uh broader strategic vision broader uh board goals and everything else. So, so I would advocate for more, but a lot of this work should be done ahead of time when it comes to so the staff uh I mean so the board could ask the questions about specific outcomes that the staff came up with on how these uh plans are going to going to affect that. And um and I think uh time is probably better used in in reviewing that than coming than to just analyze as a group um um whether it fits, you know, the equity lens or not. >> So that that's just my two cents. >> So what I hear you saying is that um if it was
199between a single or two proposals, you'd want two proposals. >> I would like three actually. >> Yeah. The the third one would probably be a throwaway, but it it again to help to help us to analyze the baseline. >> So so so and and in the Navy >> when I did this, >> this is exactly what we did. Yeah. >> COA one, COA 2, and the third. And one of them is a throwaway, >> but it helps illustrate and compare and contrast what, you know, what we're looking at specifically. I have the opposite standpoint. Um, I don't believe it's positive or beneficial like thinking about this not in the closed context of that type of decision-making, but in the open context of the entire community is listening to us and not creating unnecessary divisiveness in
200this community and also I am deeply persuaded by being traumainformed about what we're talking about to say that I'm advocating for a single proposal um for those reasons and that also aligns with a communication principle about uncertainty that the less uncertain an individual or group is, the more likely they are to communicate and to be focusing on communication in that individual line of communication and reducing uncertainty with the community so that we understand from them specifically what they'd like to be seeing in that type of transition and getting as much input as possible on how to make that overall extremely difficult transition as positive as we can. Um that's my two cents. Can Can you see why I've been um going back and forth in my head over this for quite some time? >> So,
201I'm feeling torn with a lot of the same thoughts. You know, Bernie, when you were speaking, I thought this makes a lot of sense in terms of also thinking about the community will have questions regardless of the number of proposals of did you consider this, did you consider that? And so being able to regardless of the number of proposals answer questions well around this is why this wasn't considered or this is why this was instead and hearing you too Judah that's something that I really worry about with multiple proposals is if there's a pitting of one community against another or this proposal proposes closing the school or changing the school in this way and then it turns into this battle between schools versus saying okay we have one that's been really thought through well but
202is looking for how to enhance, how to change, what are things that haven't been thought of. Um, how do we move forward as a community with this proposal versus battling out between schools? So, I do worry about that as well from a community perspective. And I'm just curious too, Ryan, you may not have this answer right now, but thinking about what what the data also bear out and what the budget numbers bear out. You know, ultimately, do they end up bearing out that there's three really feasible proposals that could make a huge difference and lead to these opportunities for consolidation that are potentially challenging but very positive versus the numbers really bear out? here's one new model and approach that really stands out above others in terms of feasibility in terms of numbers in terms
203of um both demographic numbers as well as budget numbers. So there's there's a part of me that also says some of this has to be guided by budget and what's feasible because we could come up with ideas just looking at numbers and say consolidate in these ways but then when the numbers actually bear out if one model doesn't actually save money and one does that also ultimately will determine where things go. So all that to say I I I hear you. I'm leaning toward um Judah's push just in terms of having a model but that the community could respond to with due diligence to be able to say here are all the things that have been explored to get there. Um but wanting to bring the community together versus worried about some division. So this
204may seem odd but I would be advocating to one or three no pun intended. So the reason is well no matter what you propose no matter of the number of what you propose I think it's important to have the criteria that you're basing your preferred option whether it's one or three or what two and why you're having a recommended option because we want to hear from the community and we want to have alignment with the community and we cannot have that if we don't share with them clearly why the superintendent is recommending one option over any option or three options and preferring one option over the others. So I think the criteria and the evaluation is going to be really critical and important and to Bernie's point about the the baseline it might be that
205the third option is doing nothing and kicking the can down to next year or four years from now and it's important for us to elevate. What does that mean? What are we going to sacrifice if we do that? that might be a decision the board will hear from people and we need to share what's the cost of that and why that option may fail in the criteria that you will share with us. So I think that's where I would recommend either one or three even if the third option is not consolidating at this year. >> Can I jump in real quick? I just want to clarify it's not prop proposing three options for the board to decide. there is going to be a recommendation from you of which of these uh uh uh uh courses
206of action um that you prefer and you explain it but it helps us to understand the the totality of your thought process by look by by being able to look at uh your the stuff that's driving your decision. Can I can I ask a clarifying question then Bernie? Would that mean when if Brian comes on September 11th and says I have one proposal but let me tell you why here are that I considered two proposals I considered three but the reason I landed on one was because is does that meet your need? Yeah, I think you you basically said we've considered these three options, right? and we arrived, we recommend you adopt this one because blah blah blah blah. And then you can reach out to the other uh courses of action and then you
207saying well this is superior to the other ones because this meets this is better in this category, this is better in this category or or whatever. And that's basically is what because for us when you come for me I guess when you come to me with one decision to make as far as I'm concerned you already made that decision. You're not giving us an opportunity to make to to analyze your decision-m process. This helps and it helps in transparency. It helps in explaining um your thought process behind it. So, so I think actually you are saying um one proposal with the background knowledge to understand how that proposal was the one brought to be brought forward. >> Absolutely. That that that's why I'm I'm saying because no no matter what even like in the Navy
208process we always recommend one >> to the boss but the boss gets to see three. >> Yeah. Got it. >> So that would be in the September 11th meeting, right? Okay. because I was concerned about having um too many options for the community for everybody already covered why. Um I do like Sammy's idea of that third option being nothing. >> Um because I think that's important to say like this is what would happen to staffing in two years like if nothing changed. Um so that way that because that's our baseline right now that we're considering. all the conversations are based on the baseline we have now. And so I think that that would be helpful to include um and knowing that we obviously that's not going to be something possible without a tremendous loss of
209staff across the school and support. But that's does that make sense what I'm saying? >> It does. And we and we have much of that information based on our um budget over at the years that um chart that we shared with you last spring. >> Yeah. because we so we already have it. So, it would be just helpful to enter it into this iteration of the conversation. And it's um I think that would be pretty easy just to add that in of the rationale. Not to say that it wasn't taken seriously, but just as the baseline comparison, >> I think is really um I would rather use that one than the the throwaway term, Bernie, just because or people I know I know what you're saying. I just understand like how that might land for
210folk and but like if it's our baseline >> yeah that that scenario is usually just baseline if we do nothing and and and the whole purpose of of planning is to do something. So so that inaction is not an action. >> Yeah. >> But you you do want to present that because um sometimes inaction is actionable. Inaction is action because you're making a decision to defer it to another >> correct >> set of folk potentially. Yeah. So that's okay. Thank you. >> Oh, I did want to say Ryan, I appreciate um the thought process that you explained to us. That really helped me in thinking about this too where you were saying like how it aligned with the um equity lens and stuff. So thanks for walking us through that. >> Sure. I hate being
211last because now I've heard everybody and I'm really um I like what everybody said and I appreciate it. And I'm glad you clarified, Bernie, because that makes more sense than hearing where we're going to if we hear more than one option, you're going to just have a whole lot of people upset. And um so I like that what you were saying and coming with one is kind of where I was going. But um yeah, so I that's kind of where I'm headed. And I know this is kind of also off a little bit, but in the end when it comes down to after making that final decision, I don't know how to do this, but if I'm a school that's going to close, I want to know first before everybody else as a staff, as
212a student. And I don't know if that's possible, but that would be really hard for me to hear that my school's closing and everybody heard that at the same time because there's going to be a a lot like I'm even getting emotional thinking about it because I've lived through this and it is such an emotional state for people, kids, parents, staff like this is it's going to be hard. And you know, I love that we started with Byron and and his innovative thinking and all of that because that's very exciting and there's a lot of passion under that. But in the long run, there's going to be people that this is going to be really hard. And I think bringing one proposal so that we're not upsetting everyone because it is traumatizing. And um and
213when that decision's close, I don't like I you know, I know there's lots of things that have to happen, but I would want to know first. >> So, a couple things about that. Um, one is that the proposal that I'm going to bring you on September 11th will be scrutinized, investigated, um, new iterations of it will come forward from the community. That is all fine. Um, because the proposal I bring forward may not be the best proposal. And so I want to make sure that like I' I said that earlier, but I just kind of want to reme remind people even though I'm going to say we thought of A, B, and C and this is the one I'm bringing forward, that one I'm bringing forward has the potential not to be the final decal
214the final decision of the board. Um, so what I can say understanding that I'm bringing one for proposal forward is back to Sammy's question about the first and second read. And I think bringing forward a proposal that people can then um either coales around or um change iteratively um would allow us to bring that forward for a first and second read. And in that case that board packet goes out on a Friday and I can be in touch with that school community or school communities um as that information goes out. That's that's the best I can do recognizing that it's going to be a motion and approval by the board during an evening meeting. >> Sure. The other thing and you kind of said this but I also think I know that when you are
215looking at this that you are going to be very thorough with your team of looking at all the possibilities and why you're looking at this. And I think it's just critical that all those reasons are are communicated. >> You know, like as Kim said, early it was pretty easy because we closed a school because it wasn't safe for kids to be in and we're not there. And um so it's I think it I know your thoroughess and I know your team is very you know really looking at the whole picture and I think that is what needs to be communicated so that people really understand it's not just based on they're going to come up with all kinds of ideas what it's based on and I want to be really clear to everyone all the
216reasons. Okay, >> Ryan. Um, do you have the direction you need or do we need to take action? >> No, I have the direction I need. I feel like I have um a general um feeling that everybody is hoping that I can bring forward a proposal, but explain um a couple of other um examples or other proposals that were um taken into consideration and why those weren't the ones the one that was brought forward to all of you. >> I think I have one more slide maybe. I just wanted to make sure everybody was >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, this is again just sort of the reminder that um this will um trying to create transparency in the framework making sure that people understand when those meetings are going to happen and that the
217at the end of the day the board will take action um in November um in preparation for the upcoming school year allowing us time to prepare for that. Thank you. this is going to be um challenging and at the same time um I'm optimistic about what that can look like as we move forward um for our students in terms of the resources that they need um in the system that we're continuing to further develop. >> Thanks, Ryan. Okay. Um everybody probably needs to take a breath again. Um it's hard to just like roll into the next agenda item. I was like geez. Um but we just have one more item on the agenda or two actually, but the next item on the agenda is consolidated action. As a reminder, the items under this portion of
218the agenda are for action. Does anyone have a question about anything in consolidated action? Does anyone wish to make a motion? >> Chair, I move to approve consolidated action as presented. Second. >> It's been moved by Sammy and seconded by Judah. Is there any final discussion? Okay. Has been moved by Sammy and seconded by Judah to adopt the consolidated action items as submitted. Um Judah >> I >> Chris >> I Sammy >> I >> Shauna >> I >> Bernie >> I >> and I vote I motion passes um and with that there's no further business and the meeting is adjourned at 2:47 p.m. Thanks everyone.