001e e e okay the January 16th it's echoing hold on I don't know where it's ech goinging from let's see is it better now okay just a moment I know we just don't want feedback for anybody watching online it's really rough um so the January 16th 2025 meeting of the corval school board is called to order at 6:30 p.m. in the interest of public health and safety for all community members especially imun compromised individuals and their families the corval school board will continue to offer a virtual option for board member and District Personnel participation additionally public comment is available at some meetings both in person and virtually information about providing public comment is available on the Corvalis School District website the board packet and agenda as well as the link to the district YouTube channel
002are available on the school board page on the district website public meetings are live streamed on the district's YouTube channel and a recording is posted to the same channel typically the day after the meeting tonight we have uh director Wong director Hawkins co-vice chair tomin director larent and myself and attendance in person director alra is in attendance virtually and co-ce chair Jones is excused and the first item on the agenda is the acknowledgement of Black History Month and we're going to um go take turns reading that Proclamation corval School District 509j resolution number 21-21 acknowledgement of Black History Month whereas the corval school District recognizes and pays tribute to the significant contributions made in our community by black and African-American people and whereas in 1926 Black History Month grew out of the establishment of was
003of what was then called negro history week by Carter G Woodson and the association for the study of African-American life and history and whereas Black History Month was proclaimed nationally in 17 excuse me 1976 and has been celebrated annually ever since and whereas this nation was built upon the stolen labor of African peoples and whereas the descendants of African people forcefully removed from their homes and now live in diaspora and where the state of Oregon has a documented history of anti-blackness and whereas inequality and Injustice still linger in our cities states and Country and it is the responsibility of citizens to advance the American notion of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all and whereas our diverse culture enriches and broadens the American Experience of which black and African-American heritage heritage is an
004inseparable part as it weaves throughout our country's history profoundly influencing every aspect of our lives and whereas education is a necessary component for creating more a more Equitable and anti-racist Community nation and world and whereas the Cala school district has made a commitment to equity and anti-racism and whereas the Cala school district has responsibility to honor and respect the diverse history histories histories of our community therefore let it be resolved by the Board of Education of the corval school district to hereby Proclaim February 2021 as well as each February annually as Black History Month in the district and strongly encourages family families staff and community members to join an existing local celebration ations and encourage all schools in the district to help highlight this month in great appropriate ways as well as highlight the contributions
005of black and African-American peoples to the local community nation and Beyond both historically and in current times adopted this day February 18th 2021 thanks everyone for taking a moment for us to restate our commitment as a district to um honoring Black History Month and encouraging folk to find ways to be involved with any activities uh the next item on the agenda is board member recognition and I think this is for you R yeah so a couple things in um recognition of the hours you volunteer um as you serve on the Cal school board and all you do to support our students and Community there we have a couple of ways of recognizing you tonight the first one is through the foundation so from Angela um and the caral public schools Foundation there are cookies in
006front of you for you to enjoy enjoy there are also cookies over there um for at some point we'll take a break and um have a chance to have some more um and anything you would like want to add Angela to that recognition uh to our board members yeah sorry about that I know it was impromptu the one on the right we'd just like to express our gratitude for your commitment and dedication to our students we're so fortunate in our community to have such a strong school board and we appreciate your partnership and just your commitment to um improving the educational opportunities for all our students so this is just a a small token so thank you thank you this was very thoughtful of you and the foundation yeah thank you and then also tonight
007James Murray is here um with along with two of our students um and I'm just going to turn it over to James for introductions um hello everyone my name is James Murray I'm the campus steart at Crescent Valley I am also the uh theater director for the after school program at Crescent Valley uh if you didn't know um the Crescent Valley program is new this we're in our third year um the very first audition I held there we had three people come uh and this last audition we had just under 40 so the program is growing really well um and the kids are doing an awesome job one of the really fun things we do as part of our program is we compete in the organ thespian regionals um so that is a um acting
008singing competition where students from all over Oregon um compete to uh perform at the state thespian festival and if they get to go to state thespian festival for their um for their pieces then they have an opportunity to uh compete at a national level um and so two of the students here today are uh a couple of our contestants and I will go ahead and let them introduce themselves and then they will perform their pieces hello I am Jaden Wong some of you might be familiar with me and today I'll be performing two monologues one from FAL where I'll be portraying the role of mopes and second from Puffs while I would be portraying the role of Mr vdi poor son of Earth how couldest thou thus alone have led thy life beet of me
009I for a time at least have worked thy cure thy fany rickets plague thee not at all had I not been so had thou sure walked thyself off this Earth L ball why here two Caverns Rocky Hollow slinking sest thou as TN owl a blinking why suck from Soden moss and dripping Stone towed like Thy nourishment alone a fine way this thy time to fill a blessing drawn from Supernatural fountains in night and due to lie upon the mountains all Heaven and Earth and Rapture penetrating thyself to godhood hotly inflating to grow With Ur and forth through Earth's dark marrow to compress the six days work within thy bosom narrow to taste I know not what in hoty power thine own estatic life on all things shower thine Earthly self behind thee cast and the
010lofty Instinct thus At Last I dare and say how to pluck the final flower I'm going to ask an uncomfortable question I ask for an honest response where are my shoes I've been back three years and three years barefooted no one as are for me a pair of sneakers loung lovers wing tips at first I thought oh maybe this the fashion but quickly found out no that's not it one year later my my little piggies are still out for all to see it's become about the principle of the matter I'm the dark lord surely someone would offer me a pair of shoes or at least ask if I'm comfortable but now we're in the woods we spent a whole evening Outdoors my feet are wet I've stepped on several pointy rocks I may need a
011tetn shot so no I am not comfortable so where are my I what the megaphone is still on I I'm just having a day aren't I thank [Applause] you hello my name is Marie Wells and I will be singing as long as he needs me from Oliver [Music] as as [Music] he oh yes he does need me in spite of what you see I'm sure that he [Music] who else would love still when they've been used so ill he knows I all will as as he needs me I miss him so much when he is gone but when he's near I [Music] don't the way the love I have to hide the hell I've got my pride as long as he he needs me he doesn't say the things he he acts the way he
012thinks he but still the same all play this game is way as long as he needs I know where I must be I'll cling on [Music] steadfastly as long as he needs me as long as life is long I'll love him right wrong and somehow all be strong as long as he needs me if you are lonely then you will know when someone needs you you love them so why won't betray his trust though people say I must I've got to stay true just as long as he need man y thank you um that was Marie and Jaden uh great job you too and thank you so much for having us tonight thank you for coming that was fantastic absolutely fantastic and um to all of you um I know that I can't um say
013appreciate enough without having students come and present and share what they're up to in our schools and that's always the highlight of uh recognize of recognizing your work so thanks for all you do and thanks again well um thanks you all I'm always like I cannot remember lines like that and so yeah I'm always super duper impressed with people who can remember songs to sing and lines to repeat and um inact and everything so appreciate yall spending time and Angela thank you too for joining in the recognition too from the foundation and thanks Ryan for working in partnership with us um okay I'm like it's hard to just um next on the agenda is student representative can I say ask one more thing okay so um so do you want to talk so I I've
014had a chance to see puffs um and almost main last spring so um what's what's on the horizon um so we've got our spring show coming up um that show is called eight minutes left um if you saw almost main it's a vignette piece where it's an overarching story but there's lots of little stories that happen within it with a through line and so eight minutes left is a little bit more dreary um it's about that the world has eight minutes left before it ends and so it's about um these small vignette stories about what people are doing with their last eight minutes some of them are very funny um some of them are horribly sad um and I'm excited to let the kids um uh give their range uh some stretch uh Maria is
015actually one of our student directors um we'll have I think I have five student directors right now and so it's going to kind of be uh I'm going to let them hold the a little bit and be there to guide them and Coach them and but this one's kind of all there so um if you get a chance you should come out it's in May it's going to be great thanks again okay all right thank you um okay we have the student representative reports I don't know who would like to go first okay so this month students leadership has planned several activities in celebration of the end of the first semester including the talent show which is January 22nd so next Wednesday and then the winter formal which is January 25th this time is actually
016um CV and CHS is combined so and then there's the coin for cancer where students are dropping money into the box of a list of teachers and the three teachers with the most coins will be pied at the assembly and then next semester with more core council members joining the leadership class we're excited to finally bring our own ideas as well as ideas we got from the leadership conference into work for example we're planning a flash mob dance to boost school spirit and to do that we like to get each class to create its own choreography and perform it during the next assembly um one piece of athletic update is the upcoming swim meet rball on January 18th which is this Wednesday I mean this Saturday it is one of the most important meets of
017the season and there will be tons of competitive schools from across the state part participating it will be at the elban community pool and both Caz high schools will be there so it would be awesome if we could if you could show up and support us yeah so um who is going to if you were to make a prediction who do you think will receive the pies um um that is very hard I don't have the list of teachers on the top of a mind but I think there's Mr McDonald's which is our PE teacher he has a pretty high chance and um um I don't know it's kind of hard that's okay Scott Scott should know he's he's on top of mind good things are happening at College Hill we continue to run at
018full capacity with a waiting list of students at both CHS and CV we're working hard to help some students get over the graduation finish line so we can open up more spots for students who need the support that our program offers some great things happening at College Hill that we would like to highlight uh one we have a new class beginning second semester called experimental design this will be a science class taught as a partnership between Kate Baron and David Hubert David is an instructor at OSU in this class students will develop hypothesis and design scientific experiments to test their hypotheses using fruit flies we are so excited to see our students performing college level science work and developing their skills as curious informed citizens our math 105 cohort is in full swing we have
019a team of College Hill students who are taking this math math class at LBCC as a group this term they work together during fourth block to build study skills and support one another we know they have the math jobs we just want to be certain that they have the school skills to ensure their success in college this was set up by Constantine and Jeff as a pilot project and all signs point to a successful outcome so we can continue this work in the future Mr skillings in the construction program is writing a grant to help our students get certified as home weatherization contractors it is our hope that our students will be able to help low-income folks in our community analyze their homes for efficiency and then help them get up to code to help
020them save money and to be more responsible with energy resources this will also help our students be more employable in the future we hope that we are selected by the organ Department of energy to receive one of these grants the urban farm students are working on building their culinary skills they have developed a map to take them on a road trip throughout the country and have identified stops along the way in each of these stops they will study the geography and Cuisine of the area and then prepare food from the area this is delicious informative and fun this concludes our board report thank you can I say one thing um so several years ago David Hubert came um as a CHS student um for our welcome back rally um you may have remembered that he
021um didn't graduate at the time but um continued on with his education and now um has a PHD and works at OSU um and so that those experiences coming back and working with students at College Hill is awesome and I'm sure it um suits him well and um it was great to have him share his story with staff a couple of years ago um and also continuing to make those connections with our kids so that's that's super awesome right thanks to you all sounds like some great stuff happening um the next item on the agenda is the Muddy Creek Charter School annual report and I know we have Sarah with us this evening red excellent thank you for having me and um good to see you again I have a presentation I'm going to try
022to share on the zoom yeah and some pretty pictures to show you too okay things are happening okay excellent flourish um so I I welcome the opportunity to share with you some of the exciting updates from Muddy Creek Charter School for anyone who is not aware we are a charter school that is sponsored by the corvala school district um the location of inal school was a uh a rural school out in sort of in the odd Crossroads of fouth and and caralis Etc out there Monroe and um evolved to become a charter school that is focused on um community and on experiential learning uh primarily through place-based and and Project based work we have a population of 108 as of this morning and uh a staff of 18 I'm grateful to be back as the
023executive director uh it's my second year and I think just having an executive director for more than one year in a row has been really great for morale and and for continuity um I'm really excited this year to extend what we started last year it was really um it was kind of a fire hose drinking situation last year a lot of learning for me and a lot of uh Improvement for the school and for our staff um catching up and to be able to pick up where we left off this fall has been really amazing um it's like going on Fast Forward I want to give updates in five areas and so these are our categories and I'll speak a little bit more about each one um number one's the fastest because you already know
024about it um we renewed our contract this August Muddy Creek wins the better late than never award and uh thank you for that thank you for your faith and your investment in us I think that in addition to we provide our community um we're grateful to provide an alternative learning setting for some of of the Corvalis students who um maybe don't aren't feeling as successful in their neighborhood school so we we can provide that for you and um because of our location I think it's really interesting that we have um quite quite a few corval School District families but we also have families from palth and Monroe and um Lebanon and Albany and even a couple from Salem so it's it's a kind of a cross population academic Excellence was one of our focuses for
025last year uh it continues to be this year we saw a great deal of growth um which I'm going to show you in a second but I just wanted to review the areas that we are uh honing in on um primarily these are the same as last year with the exception of adopting a new curricula in literacy and in math um that's helping um I think it's helping our teaching staff really stay on track with uh the the progression of learning it's teaching them even more about how to teach our students and uh they're they're really doing a a great job of teaching with Fidelity and bringing consistency to the to the lessons um and I'm hoping we're going to see that from grade to grade as well um so for the big reveal I
026don't know if you saw this before before but um our out of glance scores were I amazing and surprising U we expected growth but we did not expect 30% growth in ela 19% growth in math and 30% in uh science oh sorry 33% in ela um I don't all I can say is that the teachers are really committed to this it was our goal from the beginning we knew it was something that we needed to improve um particularly in the area of science because that is sort of our wheelhouse and um for it to go from a 91% down to a 19% and then I think last year's was uh 24ish um 60 feels a lot more comfortable and Ela was a fantastic uh win for us as well we really implemented an aggressive literacy
027program last year we're we're trying very hard to maintain that for literacy this year we are a little bit short staff this year because of budget cuts as well so we're down two and a half um classroom AIDS and we're feeling it but we're we're doing our best uh the other thing that we're going to focus on more this year we didn't we focused on it but not as heavily as Ela was math um and we piloted a new math curriculum we adopted Big Ideas Math um for all grades and it has been fantastic the teaching staff loved Bridges but they really had a hard time with the with the prep burden of it and and they are enjoying teaching Big Ideas Math um because it is a lot less prep and hopefully we'll see
028that 55% increase even more here's some examples of student work just a little fun flavor um the third grade I was really proud of this year they to this they took on a project for a food drive in December well started in November but um kind of I don't know culminated in a in a huge event in December and our third grade teacher really took it on as a fantastic challenge she um had the kids do all of the planning um all of the research all the promotion uh they wrote all the emails they did the announcements they collected all the food they had incentivized the student body with a spirit week and so as the kids met these Milestones they earned another day on their spirit week and they could wear socks or whatever
029they were do and um and then at the end of it I I just wandered into her room randomly one day and she was in there sorting the food um according to recommended nutrition levels and deliciousness like this would be this would make a great meal if somebody came to the food bank and they got all of these Foods they'd have a fantastic Christmas dinner or whatever it was fantastic so and then of course they took a field trip and dropped it all off and we'll see another picture of them um sorting food at the food uh Pantry the South cor Val food B um I'm trying to think of this was another one this lower uh leand Corner our art teacher is um really incredible and creative and and takes the kids out sometimes
030on a field trip in our own space and this was a picture of them um she took the classes in turn out to our garden and did observational art and uh that's it was actually with the kids they loved it so much and I got to sit with them too and it was amazing to hear their conversations and the level of detail with which they were observing their environment and then teaching one another how to use the different medium media that were available I oh okay policies and systems this has been another area of focus for us in the last 12 months um we had very old policies and procedures like very very old very out ofd and and uh so we took it on to adopt an entire new core of policies we worked
031with osba and we adopted them just two months ago so we're excited to bring uh a clean slate we did not keep any of ours we started over from scratch which and and it just it feels like um it feels like our transparency level is going to be so much better we really yeah I I'm excited to see it and I know the board is relieved to to be through that process because it was quite quite a process um we're also focusing on safety um in terms of standard response protocol and our actual facility we did not have a perimeter fence and it seems like it had been some time um since the last uh any any kind of SRP drills or um evacuations uh practice so we worked on the last year and we're
032continuing that this year um we just want to make sure that our facility and our staff and our students are as safe as we can possibly keep them another exciting Edition this year has been our Jedi committee uh sometimes Dei we are doing Jedi we're trying to become Jedi Masters Justice Equity diversity and inclusion uh we were meeting regularly to really look at some of the systemic obstacles that exist in within our uh our school and our structures so that's been been a really important I think addition and um actually tomorrow we have um a marcian coming out to do our first uh training which is fantastic very generous we are also focused again on our place-based and project-based educational opportunities it it really has taken a little bit of time for our our staff
033and our community to spin up on the idea of place and Project based work and for people who've never done it before it can be really scary to take that classroom work and trust your kids and take them out into the world and try to do something cool and new because there's definitely going to be failure points there's definitely going to be problems it's it's a little less controlled than in the classroom it might be more public and so developing our courage and support in one another to create these learning opportunities which is our actual um Charter promise has been fun but we can always grow here's some examples of some recent work um in the lower left hand corner we have our fifth graders going on salmon watch so they had a comprehensive study
034of uh salmon and their uh migratory patterns and all of their um life cycles so they went out in uh into the Alie River and tried to find some while M whilst migrating um uh we have an all School field trip you see in the center every year we go all of us hike to the top of Mary's Peak and that sets Our intention for the year everything you can see from the top of Mary's Peak is what we consider our place in place-based education um and all the families get to come as well which is wonderful it helps us develop our community we had our first craft fair and many many years craft day uh we had lots of community members come and teach our kids some some fun creative skills right around the
035uh winter holiday this was the third grade class at the food bank in the upper right they got to sort and we organize and learn about our community uh we collaborated with ashb uh on a GaGa ball tournament this is the second annual GaGa ball tournament and uh those are our those are our participants we brought in a couple of ringers uh from I think it was from line I don't know if they the line is Pauling um but a couple of our sixth graders who graduated we brought them back in because we didn't have a big enough team it's okay they cheated in their own way one of our families next door uh has a farm and uh was teaching uh collaborating with fifth grade class again Fifth and first grade to talk about
036harvesting apples in Oregon um industry and they brought in a ton of apples and an apple press and then they taught the entire School how to press apples for cider and then we all had a cider party so that's here in the lower corner and then this in the upper leftand corner this is one of my favorites because this just recently happened um it was identified by students that when they fell off the bars it was far too hery and they wanted more of a cushion so we did the research and figured out that we didn't have quite enough bark chips and so these same students uh on their recess they are digging a hole and they ordered the bark chips and here we are we're solving problems on a micro level one thing that
037surprised me when I joined Muddy Creek was um the level of collaboration and how it weaves itself into almost everything we do and um because I personally and professionally believe that uh we are better together I have really leaned in and we find that the more we are working together the stronger our result is and that comes in the form of adopting collaborative problem solving which this school had not um almost the entire staff is trained now and they are practicing it daily um we had a a few of us went to the summer the summer like uh boot camp which was great um we're doing our place based and Project based work and instead of just keeping it into our little safe environment like that great example on the playground with the kids digg
038in the hole that's wonderful ful for us at solving our problem but Place based and Project based work is meant to help your community it's meant to be um learned locally and applied globally and so um really trying to dig into our courage and and figure out how we can help more than just ourselves and then of course our continued collaboration with U corval school district it's been wonderful to be included in um principal meetings for myself and our counselor goes to the counselor meetings Center our Dean goes to the dean meetings and our PE teacher and mtss coordinator um they all have Community with corval school district which has been an incredibly meaningful gift that you can give us because it is sort of isolating down there in muddy creekville and to know that
039we are all part of uh this project called Growing Kids it's been pretty amazing and there they are thank you very much I'd be happy to answer questions if you have any thanks Sarah I'm sure folk have perhaps questions or comments and can you keep an eye for Sammy thanks questions comments good um I have a couple questions about how um us as College Hill students could help um we're always looking for uh places where we can uh volunteer or um help out other schools uh really just contribute to our community and so if there's anything that we can do for you or if you'd like to talk I would be more than willing to thank you so much yes we do have a quite a laundry list of projects we could use help with
040feel free to ask uh me or Eileen and we can forward it to Eric or you can set up a meeting with Eric and I'm sure he would be more than happy to help thank you so much Sarah for this wonderful presentation it's great to hear just the growth that's continuing to happen at muddy creek and really appreciate your leadership there as well as the collaborative approach that you bring um I'd love to hear just a little bit about some of the ways that you engage families at Muddy Creek yeah absolutely um we have a very strong PTO um and that's been kind of um the Cornerstone for how we are um how I'm how I'm delegating my Outreach so we started off with just having newsletters and pick up and drop off conversations and
041then um quickly realize that we need to have an more of an ongoing conversation with our families um so one of the philosophies that we also bring is that you really need to have several positive touch points before you have any kind of negative touch point with the family so um we just have as as an ongoing effort to find moments where things are positively happening something the child did that was adorable or or maybe something that they overcame that day and just um using right now we're using clast Dojo or email or phone calls to just connect with families and say I just noticed this thing today and it was really magical or I I noticed your your child helping another child and that really embodies what we do here um we do have
042like uh you know the ordinary kind of whatever piece of paper you have at every school that says your kid did something awesome today and I noticed it um ours are called shout outs um so we are are continuously making those positive connections with families and then when something comes up that maybe feels less positive or maybe more tricky um then we have those relationships we do have like a monthly newsletter and we have lots of forums for Community um engagement like movie nights are the big hit right now and everybody kind of turns out for the movie night and I'm popping the popcorn and there's some sort of food and and half the community is you know watching Lilo and Stitch or whatever it is um the kids are playing the parents are connecting
043and I've heard many parents say that that's a really valuable um moment for them because they're because we aren't in the same geographic region many of the families just they're not in a neighborhood they're all over corbalis and fth so like having these moments where they can connect with each other is is really helpful we try to do that once a month I would just go ahead and ask it because I think we try to do like a couple questions a piece ah a time yeah all right I'll be quick then so you've had some amazing gains this last year too that you pointed out and I know Muddy Creek has some really special qualities of having lower ratios being really place-based um very experiential learning in your approach are there lessons learned that you
044think it would be helpful to share with other programs or for for other elementary schools and programs in terms of things that stood out as being especially helpful in leading toward those gains thank you for asking that yes I think um I think the the one thing that really works well and it's worked well for me as a teacher and I think it's working well in our community is to make sure that the school is worth it for the kids too and in every time we ask them for something to do for us like a math problem or getting up in front of the class and being brave and saying something you know whether it's right or wrong whatever we're asking them we try to give them something that will be of equal value to
045them and if that is taking the lesson outside or um having an extra field trip that month or something it's something that keeps them connected to school because sometimes reading is hard and math is too much some days so keeping them wanting to come back is I think what makes makes the difference and all that experiential is what seems to connect well for the kids at our school thank you Other Board member questions comments you have one Ry okay um can you talk a little bit about the process you went through in um policy adoption because I think that's I I know that that's typically a lot of work um and in some ways it's a big transition for people to think about processes in that way yes so I there was at least a
046couple of years before I got there like did I not really don't I don't really know about um but by the what time I got there um the board had philosophically decided we need new policies these aren't serving us well um and I think it was primarily in the area of like complaints um and there just wasn't a clear path for like family feedback um and I think that was really true um but they asked me to connect with osba we agreed on the cost um that we were willing to take on the cost to do this because I think at some point there was some talk about them just like going through the policies and rewriting them themselves but then we did a little bit of Reality Checking and realiz you know we looked
047at your policies and we looked at a couple of other districts like there's no we're not no way there's no way we're doing that in a way that's going to be helpful um so uh they S as a representative from osba and uh kind of a blanket policy package it was like here's what is the boiler plate for pretty much every thing in here will work for everybody and then I think that was something like 700 pages and then I printed it out and put in my little pink binder and every couple of days i' go through a few chapters or a few hundred pages and I would just um read it and then the what happens is you have choices whether you want to say if it's um if this policy is a will
048do like a must