Corvallis School Board Meeting (September 19th, 2024)

001e e e very good okay uh the September 19th 2024 meeting of the corval school board is called to order at 6:31 p.m. in the interest of public health and safety for all community members especially imuno compromised individuals and their families the Corvalis school board will continue to offer a virtual option for board member and District Personnel participation is it echoing it's echoing a little bit uh additionally public comment is available at some meetings both in person and virtually information about how to provide public comment is available on the corval school district website the board agenda and packet as well as the link to the district YouTube channel channel are available on the Schoolboard page on the district website public meetings are live streamed on the district's YouTube channel and a recording is posted to

002the same channel typically the day after the meeting today we have Sammy Chris shaa theres and me in attendance in person and Judah is excused and um without objection item seven is removed from the agenda okay and the next order of business is acknowledgement of lgbtqi 2s plus history month and um we're going to start over with Laura to kick us off corala school district 509j acknowledgement of lgbtq i2s plus History Month resolution number 211001 whereas the corala school district recognizes and pays tribute to the significant contributions made in our community by lesbian gay bisexual transgender queer intersex and two spirit people as well as people from the multitude of other gender and sexual identities lgbtqi 2s plus and whereas the corvala school district affirms the lgbtq i2s Plus students fam staff and community members

003should be valued for all aspects of their identities and whereas lgbtq i2s plus History Month grew out of the establishment of what was then called Gay and Lesbian history by Missouri high school teacher Rodney Wilson in and whereas National Coming Out day occurs each October 11th and whereas lgbtqi 2s plus History Month was first celebrated in school districts within the United States in 2012 and whereas lgbtq i2s plus history month has yet to be proclaimed nationally and sorry whereas lgbtq i2s plus history month has yet to be proclaimed nationally and whereas lgbtq i2s plus history is not part of standard educational curricula and whereas LGB TQ i2s plus History Month provides an opportunity to continue the district's growth in learning about the many contributions of lgbtq i2s plus people to the nation world and local

004community and whereas education is a necessary component for for creating a more Equitable and anti-racist Community nation and World whereas the corval school district has made a qu a commitment to equity and anti-racism and whereas the Corvalis school district has a responsibility to honor and respect the diverse histories of our community and whereas the Corvalis School District believes each and every student must be celebrated and appreciated for the distinct and vibrant contributions made by sharing cultures language ideas beliefs and values within a school Community therefore therefore let it be resolved that the Board of Education of Corvalis School District does hereby Proclaim October 2021 as well as each October annually as lgbtqi 2s plus History Month in the district and strongly encourages students families staff and community members to join in existing local celebrations and

005encourages all schools in the district to help highlight this month in grade appropriate ways as well as highlight the contributions of lgbtq2s plus peoples to the local community nation and Beyond both historically and in current times adopted by the board of directors of school districts number 509j Corvalis of Benson and l ly counties Oregon at its regular meeting 14th day of October 2021 thank you and um as a reminder for everyone that we reread these every year um since they are uh to be renewed annually and reaffirmed by the school district the next item on the agenda is the introduction of the 2024 to 25 student representatives and Ryan yeah I had the opportunity to um have dinner with and talk a little bit about the role um that our student Representatives play um as

006they participate in our Schoolboard meetings um as you all know our students are here um at one meeting per month typically it's our work session and then at the second half of the year when we get into budget uh times it's during our business meetings and they'll be coming forward and sharing um information about what's going on in their schools but also to be able to highlight um the perspective of students in the decisions that we're making which is really valuable we talked about some of the policies that have been um improved um over recent years based on input from students we talked about the dress code policy we talked about the policy related to um student Representatives on the school board we talked about um the perspective students brought last spring when we talked

007about cell phones um so again really appreciate you your willingness to be here we know how busy you all are so um as we've done in the past Dr Whitebear will let you know when it's 8:00 if you need to um go home and get homework done totally understand but we're glad to have you with us and you're all also welcome to stay beyond that 8 o'clock Mark um so I was just going to let students introduce themselves and what school they're at so Reed would you mind going first of course thank you um my name is Reed gold I am the ASB president at Corvalis School alongside my co-president Sophia Robel who could not attend tonight but will be here in the future um and it's just so great to be here thank you

008Eileen's our veteran I'm Eileen Lewis and I'm a senior at College Hill student representative um I do have a report if that's okay Eileen was the student who knew um from past experience that that's what we typically do so other students weren't expected to bring that but Eric and Eileen worked on it so we're going to give give Eileen the time to be able to give us a College Hill update okay this has been to quote several people on our staff the best start to a school year in recent memory at College Hill um I think that we're finally recovering from the school closures that were so tough for so many kids and we feel grounded and moving forward doing great things together a team of volunteers from Redemption Church provided a barbecue for our

009students the first Friday of the school year they provided a delicious lunch did all the setup and take down and showed our students that they are seen respected and cared for we are so grateful to live in a community that supports our students and our staff so well our first incentive field trip to the top of Mary's Peak is coming up next week all students who are caught up in assignments will get to hike to the top of the highest point in the Coastal Range these are great experiences for our students to see the beauty of our state and build connections with one another other incentive field trips this year will include Silver Creek Falls South Beach State Park Valley Rock Gym and the MU bowling alley among others we are excited this year to

010begin our first year of formal implementation of the essential skills of writing applied math speaking and career Readiness each of our graduates will demonstrate these skills in order to earn their diploma our students are capable and we are eager to support them in this thank you for your support thanks Eileen Laura so my name is Laura chin I and I'm from CV and I am a sophomore and I'm currently the only school boy rep from CV and at least for the first semester thank you hi hi I'm Claire Williams I am a junior at CHS and I am the student representative from CHS well again thank you all for being here and contributing and participating uh your voices are really important in the decisions that this board makes and so I'm really pleased that you're

011able to join us thanks you all for your introductions and being here this evening and in the future meetings and Ryan's right I will remind you around 8:00 that you're excuse welcome to stay but you also can go um so watch out for that um announcement to youall um the next item on the agenda is the Civic Campus Community task force and we have Steve Clark and Penny York the task force um co- Vice chairs good evening Madame chair Schoolboard members U my name is Steve Clark and for the last year I've been retired from the University I just want to make a distinction that I'm a Community member Coralis School District uh repres uh uh Community member and actually one of your uh Middle School basketball coaches Crescent Valley uh I'm joined today uh

012by former Corvalis uh City city council president uh Penny York uh along with Penny uh and former Coralis mayor um Julie Manning the three of us have chaired a community engagement task force around uh Concepts uh uh that have been considered by the city council to improve city hall and the Civic campus that borders Madison Avenue between 4th and 5ifth uh not only the city hall is located there but Madison Avenue building Municipal Court uh and other facilities of the city that are important to the community uh the council appointed uh the task force after nominations were made by the mayor to seek to evaluate within the community what are the goals and values of the Coralis Community for downtown and and how do they relate to City Hall if you will is there a

013relationship between those uh the operations administratively of of the city the facility and really the community we have uh discussed with community members over the last uh four to five months Concepts such as retaining uh the current city hall uh enlarging it by two to three times improving it uh or possibly removing it and building a new structure or removing it and placing that current city hall somewhere else and and provide for a new structure the task force uh was created after the city had engaged a third-party uh study of facilities owned by the city operated by the city throughout the community fire stations the the law enforcement facility on Fifth that is co-shared by uh the uh Sheriff's Office uh City Hall uh the parks facility which provide administrative and operational facility storage within

014Avery Park and and quite frankly probably similar what the school district did about six years ago you found that a lot of things were lacking and the the city attempted to prioritize what are those next steps uh that uh provide for moving forward uh several of us uh uh got involved um and said involve the public in a community uh like Coral That's essential but in a Time in America when traditional media traditional forms of communication play between uh Civic government or or School administrators and policy makers such as yourself have changed uh it is really important to have conversations and information flowing within the community and back to those that might be making decisions the community engagement task force is advisory we provide uh Our advice and recommendations to the city council and the

015mayor like the school board the city council will ultimately make a decision if it chooses to since last spring we've held numerous public sessions much like your own tonight uh We've conducted these uh both in person and online we've attempted to promote them as well as possible to engage the public at those meetings we've also conducted uh in Spanish and in English uh public opinion survey uh that individuals could choose to uh take and contribute to both quantitatively and qu qualitatively by responding to a series of questions and and their and their View and asking and offering uh additional comment at the end uh we had more than 960 people participate in that it's a self- selected group but in a community of Coral's size over the summer 960 people is a a very significant

016response uh we promoted this through a variety means including uh City water bills online promotions social media promotions to the media and at the meetings we held we've had uh close to 15 uh to 16 Community engagement sessions this is our last in terms of the process before we uh appear before the city council and while the quantitative research that we've been Gathering through uh these engagement sessions and the online survey uh closed on August 31st your input your questions will be shared with our uh task force it's a 10p person task force uh very diverse in representation of the Corvalis Community we we've heard a great deal and I'd like to share a few high level findings some of those you might have an interest in as as they relate to uh Corvalis schools

017you know in a community like Corvalis where not everyone is involved there's some confusion about 35 to 40% of of the public think the county courthouse is City Hall so we have some work to do in terms of providing orientation as to what's the county what's the city and who does what for whom we found that there's a high priority and I'm sure you've seen this as well the customer service among community members is a priority people want to be treated personally they want to be treated effectively and they want to be guided to the uh parties within uh City Hall City Administration that will serve them well transparency is a priority uh if you've been to a city council meeting I won't ask you to raise your hands they're not held at City Hall

018they're held in the second floor of the fire station um uh in downtown and for some that's a a lack of of awareness or or if you will even say transparency accessibility not just accessibility into a building and it's appearance is important but accessibility for staff throughout a very old building that was built more than 100 years ago as a church then remodel over time no surprise there's been a lot of input on fees taxes people discern that a water bill which includes the number of fees just not just water is a form of in their mind taxation we've gathered a lot of uh additional sense of input uh and some of this relates to a support for education we saw that in comments offered investment in our schools investment in in teachers as well

019so what's our next step uh over the next uh three weeks the task force will continue to evaluate uh the hundreds of findings that we have received from the public input we've gathered in the in the more than 15 uh Community engagement sessions we'll draft these findings and use them as a basis for a recommendation to the Council that'll be provided on October 21st in some respects that's not the end of the of the the trade so to speak the council has to take that in in hand and say what are we going to do with this do we proceed to consider how to improve um City Hall the Civic campus or engage in other activities in downtown the role of the task force while it concludes that it's charge of findings and recommendation uh

020for several of us it's very important that we close the door by informing the community as to what we heard what we recommended and allow City Hall and city council to take the next steps in terms of Engagement penny and I are available to answer any questions you might have any advice you'd like to provide uh we'll take note of your your time I know it's short on a on a busy uh board meeting but thank you for your opportunity to meet with you and thanks for the leadership and engagement you provide the community and thanks for letting me coach the seventh eighth grade now uh Crescent Valley future Raiders basketball team thank you thanks Steve um questions comments from the board oh Sammy so I have multiple questions but first of all deep gratitude

021for you uh SC uh personally for coaching the team and uh for uh Civic engagement and uh community service for the community the university and right now for the city um same goes to Penny and for the members of the committee uh really appreciate the hard work um one thing I want to caution is when well one thing I want to celebrate is engaging the community is crucial it's really important and also I want to caution from what is the recommendation and how does the recommendation sit with other priorities when it comes to the dollars so was there a dollar amount that was shared with the community uh was there uh possible ta taxes or fees or uh cuts to other services proposed and the survey it appears and I did download the survey from

022your packets from uh Tuesday and it does not appear it shows a uh the question about the need in reference to uh dollar amounts and I'm wondering how do you feel about that and what's the recommendation is going to be with the absence of that if if my impression is correct so you're you're right you saw what you saw you said what you saw and you saw that um uh the city council did a resolution forming our task force and it laid out our charge it did not include analyzing the financial aspects and the reason the council did that is they had uh several priority projects not in ranked order they they picked the top four and the Civic campus was one of them but there are several others and then there are others that

023are important but they're they're not in that top four and they haven't yet prioritized them they haven't been able to estimate costs because they weren't sure what kind of approach on the different projects the um the community would care about would um would like and one of the difficult ones to estimate the cost was the Civic campus Because what what's going to be done with the city hall and and how the approach to um expansion is going to occur uh will you know it's a huge factor and be able to estimate those costs so they're really holding the um the Reigns on looking at those priorities and um what might come first and along with that the city council has several options and ways to fund projects and so they'll look at those um different

024possible funding streams as well when they look at the at their top priorities again they didn't they didn't give that to us to do you won't be surprised to know that in our open-ended questions we received a lot of comments as Steve mentioned about about costs advice um strong advice uh but so we promised the council that we would give them the full data set we did some analysis on it some some sorting and theming as you and I have done um but but they get all of the raw data too so they will see all of that but we'll only likely be making a recommendation about the importance of looking into that further and and the comments that were received so very reasonable and we've had many people in the community say yeah but

025but we were really looking at what might the city um Civic campus look like what to do with with City Hall and another another element of that was how important did the community think it was for those services to remain downtown and one thing we found in in reviewing the data that we've received is that there was a very strong feeling that city services needed to stay in downtown uh so they're accessible but also so that they make them more vibrant downtown thank you is the recommendation going to be this is high priority or low priority is the recommendation ready that's we can probably hear it's PR preliminarily the recommendation is being prepared right now uh it'll be a set of findings uh it'll be uh published online in advance of the city council is

026for for of the packet uh members of the community can evaluate that and and and declare their uh favor or opposition to it uh but as as Penny said this is but a process this this step one's been taken evaluate facilities step two Gain a sense of the community's interest not only in just a Civic campus but in the downtown up against other priorities that that the the public was willing to offer on its own uh a balance of prudent taxation so the council is the elected body to evaluate these things and determine both the priority and the acceptance of those priority and the Order of how they are achieved as well as how do you pay for these things because nothing's for free so step three step four uh we think uh frankly that

027uh the public is interested in a vibrant from what we found a vibrant safe inclusive accessible downtown and that should include in many members of The public's U view that we received improved City facilities downtown add to it we um we did develop key findings from our from our data as Steve said uh We've we've started to or we're about to start drafting based the recommendation and the report and at our next meeting in a week and a half um which of course is a public meeting my guess is there will be a a draft in the packet or a draft um circulated at the meeting if we don't get if we don't make the the packet deadline so there will be information out about um um how that's how that's looking the council gets

028it and having sat on the council uh sometimes you take a recommendation and say that's great we love it sometimes you um tweak it sometimes the action taken doesn't look anything like the recommendation so thank you if I may en close we know you have a large agenda important agenda is that it's important to have this Outreach not only to community members but to uh elected uh officials who are representative other forms of government because we're balancing the Public's interest and the Public's ability to prioritize and and if you will pay so to let you know what we're doing is really important and how you might help shape those decisions in the future is also very important so please you know uh we'll continue to keep you informed we'd ask you as community members as

029Schoolboard members to be involved okay I'm gonna see if there's more questions too um theres has a question to um thank you I it sounds like you guys spent quite a lot of time um with the um the raw data and spent so my question is uh in looking at um like just at a very quick glance I see that like my code is like really over represented in the people who chose to respond um 60% of people from that zip code um I'm just curious if the data points to any um areas within our community Maybe by zip good maybe by demographic Maybe by whatever um you looked out that you feel like are not their perspectives may not be represented in uh the responses did you get a sense of maybe who we

030who have we not heard from yet we did we used Survey Monkey the um responses are not keyed to demographic so we can't go back and say um how what the representation was I will say that um we did work pretty hard and it was a very important issue for the council and the mayor to have a task force that was representative so that um all that so the Outreach we did in the Outreach plan um was developed by our task force was conducted mostly by the task force and our analysis of the data was conducted by the task force so um so I I can't you know we don't have cross tabs I can't answer those questions but but um having been involved in other Outreach um activities uh for the city I this

031was I would say more representative than we've been able to accomplish in the past great I appreciate that and the number I mean you're right 961 is a was a pretty good response for so um yeah well anyway thank you um zip codes are hard because I feel like the needs of Southtown part of 9733 are much different than downtown 97 33s and so it's hard to like even within the zip codes I feel I feel that with when you mentioned that Teresa was like his my zip code's on there too but I don't know if that's represented in the survey very much too um because of the needs um I have question but I'm you have a question right yeah go ahead oh well is there any other board members that have questions or

032comments though first oh go sha yeah go ahead is that okay sh okay thank you so much for coming and for sharing an update I really appreciate your attention to community engagement and involvement and also your ask for us to become involved so I have two two questions for you one different avenues for involvement that in making that ask you're looking for either from us or from community and then two we have our wonderful student Representatives tonight and I would be curious what your for them and hearing this presentation tonight what would be some of the takeaways you would hope that when they go back to their schools and share with other students here are some of the things that we heard about and learned what are some of the takeaways that you think might

033be most relevant for them to be thinking about in terms of how this could impact their lives or reasons to be talking about this let me mention one thing first we did do Outreach groups to um to CV CHS um OSU student leadership group and LBCC um Corvalis campus uh but I'll well you know like an election coming up in November every vote matters and so every opinion was reviewed uh we did it both quantitatively and we individually went through and qualitatively read every of the 370 responses offered and then did a statistical evaluation of those so when you have the chance get involved uh when you have the chance to share with a uh a fellow student it's it's worth the time uh and what's really important is that we let people like that

034students or people of any age know what happened afterwards it excuse me for saying this I'm in a school or it ain't good enough simply to do something you have to share it and so we will call upon ourselves to to do that and ask the city council after we provide our product to work and share new the community that they continue to engage and share the results of their act their actions and their considerations because in the absence of information a lot of bad things can happen like nothing I add asked about you asked about relevance and input opportunities and at this stage when you're doing a big process like this with a lot of different steps uh the ways you can get your opinion and your advocacy in change during the process and

035now it's going to be going to the city council so um this might be a great time to get to know your city counselor who that person is and email them you can go on the city website and and give your opinion and all of the documents about this are on the city uh the city website you could email one of us call one of us and we would hear you and pass that on or we would give you information about how you can contact your city counselor and the relevance um so how many of you have been um downtown in the last month okay that's a big deal um the library the shops the restaurants the uh police department the M Municipal Court Judge the mayor all of those things are are downtown next

036weekend is going to be Fall Festival because the OSU students are back and I think that's the biggest to me the biggest celebration of downtown if you go to um to fall festival please wander around and look at at the municipal buildings and think about how you might be affected by them that would be a great thing um to tell your City Counsel about we started our task force by having all of the members independently walk from the the river to OSU along Madison Avenue so they got first uh uh the um the setting was the buildings the place the people that were wandering by think about it think about how it might be better um I led the process for uh developing the uh Corvalis um Vision 2040 and we went went to OSU

037campus and asked students make comments about it and they they were busy going places they didn't want to tell us anything so I would just say tell us one thing that would make Corvalis better for OSU students and one student said it needs to be more fun so what would make downtown more fun or more productive for you or for your government and let us know opportunity for input that's best okay yeah there questions from the board or students you all have questions you can ask questions too okay um I had a question about um involve because downtown um there's has a there's a lot going on down there like businesses city government all the things and um my question was around if the local um homeless and houseless population was surveyed as well on

038the impacts of um some of these things because I know a lot of the push back on that part of the community has to do with the Aesthetics like what it looks like downtown and um people heavily criminalized for existing and things like that um Nationwide and so I was kind of wondering if they were involved with the survey at all start that one first of all I'm not answering the question directly first uh I wanted to say that we got a lot of comments in the um the open-ended question about safety and about um homeless sometimes those are the same issue from different sides sometimes they're different issues um we did an Outreach at V Moses and I believe some of their clients are are probably at least um vulnerable uh and we got

039responses through them and they're part of of that uh we also did one Outreach at the um at the Farmers Market and I you know I don't know the housing situation from the people I talked to but I would say that it's likely that a couple of people we talked to had been or you know were at least vulnerable in housing so some we didn't do a direct Outreach um unless you you know unless you count the um the population served by voses yeah which of course is not necessarily fully part of the situation a user Services quite a bit in the past so yeah if I may and and I I fully support what what penny said I think the um the importance of what we heard if you ever have the opportunity to

040review the survey results they're online if you'll see there are many issues of importance in the community as it relates to downtown that means there's going to have to be a lot of strategies they're going to have to be prioritized and to what extent Civic campus is part of of that will be determined by the community the council and I would think that given what we heard uh the issues associated with uh uh houselessness safety and the many sides of those issues uh have to be part of that overall strategy so we'll as a community I think have to take stock of those and and continue to address those in a prioritized way thank you yeah I was just thinking about how that's going to be complicated for city council to think about like you

041can't just like make an area look a certain way without addressing like the housing piece of it that's what I was asking and there's a lot of students in our district that are impacted by homelessness and houselessness including that area and so that's where um that's where that question was geared towards like how involved that part of the community that's often overlooked in these kind of decisions that impact places some of the only places they're finding shelter and so that's that was a framing it was like where that was coming from um but I know Ryan you had a question too well um as you may know I have um lots of thoughts about housing um in our community and the impact it's having on student enrollment and the opportunity for students to be able

042to attend schools in our community um it's a significant challenge um for families to find housing here I wondering if um if that came up in any of that survey and the survey results as well as um increased infastructure leading to Great more taxes allowing us to pay for some of these projects I'm just curious if that um if that through line was there I don't remember comments about it in the survey but we we touched on that subject in our task force discussion as we were reviewing the comment especially about uh as we were talking more broadly about downtown and the importance of of um diverse services including housing uh one of the things that we intend to do in the report is include some references from the 2020 vision statement and the 2040

043vision statement and um I know the 2040 vision statement specifically talks about housing downtown and the um the need for uh for Corvalis to ensure that all people who work here can live here and that there is housing available for people at all income levels that would be amazing any other oh you got another question Sammy okay and I I want to just share my gratitude for the time that you shared with us um are you looking for feedback from the school board yes so I've spoken with uh someone who's putting lots of time into services in downtown for the vulnerable population and they indicated for me that my phone call to them was the first Outreach they received and I would like to really emphasize how grateful I am for a building like that

044that might be a hub and that will bring Vitality for the community and this is my personal opinion and perspective I worry about the financial aspects the dollars and how it would inform I'm going to give you a rhetorical uh question here what is the priority that we made in 2018 when we passed the bond for the Schoolboard Chambers or the school district's offices like how much percentage did we spend from the bond and the answer is zero all the money went to the essential services for the children in the schools and not withstanding that there are some essential Ser there are many essential Services provided in the city hall and and the downtown area that's might be replaced by the Civic Center nevertheless uh in my conversation with community members since from 2018 to

045now they're really exhausted about the financial burden and they are holding us accountable for every dollar we spend and I really wonder what are we cutting in order to f fill some of those needs whether council chambers or service service areas with better and cleaner and safer buildings and if we do are we going to move the needle on corval not being the highest rent burden community in Oregon period where many in the in this room still struggle to make end meets and and stay in Calis so that's my feedback is a word of uh uh inquiry on how are we going to put this in the priority list and make sure our dollars are spent to the most effective way where affordability of housing to the points mentioned are are still top there we

046we'll share your feedback um with the task force and have the opportunity to include that feedback um qualitatively uh in our report I think you have the opportunity as a member of the community to testify before the the city council and provide for an orientation of what you feel are the Priority Services that are required and and uh how they are funded and when those funds are expended for what uh or what not um you know I've before coming to Coralis I was going to say before coming to the university I'll go ahead and say that I don't represent the university as a community member uh I've noted that there are lots of opportunities for governance Investments priority setting that this community has the opportunity in the future to uh evaluate and take if it

047chooses to and uh you did that um over the last two Bond measures and congratulate you for that I used to chair Bond measures in the tiger 12 in school district so you know to your point you prioritize by School District by neighborhood you you led by making choices for investment I have confidence that the council will consider this seriously and the comments that are provided Beyond those that are come that come out of our task force report and findings and yours at a council meeting I'm sure would be uh welcomed as well thank you appreciate it I'll put my city council hat on even though I haven't really worn it in quite a few years um but I kept putting it on during our task force meetings uh the services that are provided through

048City facilities are essential services to our community we provide safety to your water we provide safety to your buildings your streets um uh municipal court services law enforcement Services Building Services building permitting and just as as you um so I've been on your budget committee and I I've listened to you talk about the importance of of your of your faculty especially all your staff but certainly your teachers um the council also puts a high priority on being able to attract and retain strong competent Community minded um employees so having facilities that uh that somebody will say yes to an employment office offer is a good thing as well something that's coming up for me as I'm just listening to the conversation and reflecting on it is you know we continually are talking about budget and

049the importance and the worries Sammy I hear in your in your concerns too around worry of paying for one thing may take away from another and a lot of our emphasis and focus I know personally as well as as a board is is on education and Direct Services to students and over the last many years as we'll hear I know an update coming up here shortly the services that school districts are increasingly providing wraparound services for students and families as we think about where are the collaboration points where are those points where the city may be able to increase services or provide services that are so meaningful to students their families as well in the community that helps really make the most of leveraging resources across different Community entities across the school district across the

050city is potential for just increased collaboration increased looking at how do we really take the resources available um through funding whether it's coming from the community from the government well always from the community as it is um is an important opportunity and one for us to really seriously look at in terms of where are those leverage points where we can really make sure that resources are going to uplift the community and when when it comes to to collaboration on those kinds of of elements um we did or or Julie and Steve did um give a presentation to the County Board of Commissioners as we are to you and certainly with some of the services that you provide I know you're collaborating with the county and they're the provider of for example Mental Health Services when

051it comes to something like housing the city is is the relevant um uh body because uh we do building permits we do zoning which makes it easier or harder to build I'm pointing to Ryan because we've been working on some of those things together uh so I I appreciate those opportunities and it is when something like this happens that you can have an aha moment of wow this is something that we could leverage to to make a difference together so thank you for for mentioning that and it works collaboration works I met Penny and Julie 12 years 13 years ago when we were trying to deal with planning issues Transportation issues behavior issues involving the growth of the university and how to deal with those and a lot of efforts not all perfect uh have

052made a difference uh over the last several years across Lyn and bendon counties a group of us got together and and uh introduced further efforts around mental health as a priority and we're seeing the results of those you've been working on housing have each of you have have have have the business leaders in this community said that housing is the first priority that will provide the ability to appropriately tax and provide laughter in neighborhoods I haven't heard that you know we're becoming a community absent of laughter and play so it's time that all of us make affordable housing of choice a priority that'll benefit the school district that'll benit the community that'll certainly benefit the people who live here and those youngsters who have a chance to play and like I did as a middle

053school boy get in trouble occasionally so we'll collaborate with you um I'm this is I usually am like we over time but i' see Reed has a comment and theres did so I'll take their last couple comments really quick but hi um so I just wanted to comment I being a student I'm not intimately uh aware of like our budget and the status all that but I just I hear a lot of talk about prioritizing you know what do we want to spend limited funds on and we want to you know improve student livelihood student engagement for you know the least amount of money that we can afford to and so we have to choose what we want to prioritize but I think it's important in this situation to acknowledge the importance of the fact

054that education is not just in schools it's in what we do in our communities outside of the classroom and I think that through what we're suggesting here of sort of maintaining a sort of vibrancy in our local political governmental buildings and and our community as a whole can provide students with you know more of a welcoming pathway towards Civic engagement and just being instilling sort of a sense of pride in our younger Community which could encourage them to be more involved in local politics local government and eventually their school governments as well and if we can improve that sort of school spirit Community spirit I think that we see some serious improvements in the way that the Youth of Corvalis are sort of seeing our city and you know as well as our schools thank

055you you're right uh well I had one comment but now I'm a little bit embarrassed to have to follow a read because that was such a great comment so uh I'm GNA amend my comment to say that when you all turn 18 I'll step down and you guys can arm wrestle for my seat because you're obviously ready to do the this work that was that was really very well said um I I just wanted to say that I what excites me about what I'm seeing in this and I guess this is my this is my qualitative data you can throw into your report is that I don't I think we will miss a really big opportunity if we treat um discussions around the Civic campus as if it is separate from all of the other

056services that our city um is responsible for we need to be looking for the integration of those services and we need to be looking at how we do each of them um optimally for our entire Community for all that we are responsible to represent and I appreciate and I think many of of those who have spoken tonight have hinted at or even outrightly stated we can't we have to make sure that the way we do this does not Overlook the impact it will have on specific groups as we start to talk about space and as we start to talk about um you know the impact of renovating um or expanding our footprint downtown and what will happen to the people that that use that space other things and so I would um I would Advocate

057that we look at how we can collocate the critical Services of our city so that those community members who are the most vulnerable are able to be served in those spaces um when we have people making decisions about housing they there should be people that represent those who need housing nearby they should be across the hall they should be they should be in the same building it should be as we did with our schools when we remodeled and we created these wonderful collaboration spaces we should see collaboration at the heart of however we lay out these spaces um because renovating our Civic campus shouldn't mean that we are not also looking at housing at Water um and I think maybe some of our community members might be surprised to learn the amount of effort it

058takes to make sure that the delivery of our basic utilities is safe and accessible um so that is also um an issue of equity and it is an issue of um housing it is an issue of being able to thrive developmentally in our community so um I hope that that becomes a big part of the conversation and we're looking at those key voices and we're not asking them to find times to come together we're asking them to live across the hall from each other so that you can't talk about one without the others being able to be part of the conversation um so I think this is exciting and and I hope that's the direction that the council will consider taking um that these are all important and we need to look at how we're

059going to integrate and roll out so that we can move we can move these things forward I appreciate that and I really really strongly encourage each of you most of you to reach out and and make the comments that you made to us to your city counselor when they've heard it directly it makes a tremendous difference it always depends on when the meetings are right and so that's yeah and so there's I yes and yeah but um I will just say one more thing and then um do the thank you to you all is that um if there's a way to incorporate feedback in there around adding protections for the local homeless and houseless population downtown rather than enforcing more rules and regulations that um criminalize people and also um find them and to in

060an effort to not just keep like this image of like what is acceptable who's acceptable in a space I think it's going to be really important to have a space like this because everybody's part of the population and um it always concerns me when people's housing situations are coupled with Lawless lawlessness and criminality and things like that um because they're not always one in the same or even addiction and there's not conversations about housing being like one of the top ways to do harm reduction and things like that and address addiction and all those things and people are viewed in a certain type of way because there's an image that wants to be kept and I worry about the um because it does sound like a really nice facility and knowing where it's located and

061knowing who stays there in those areas of those folk feeling like they don't belong in our community too and so if there's a way to help people feel included by having some kind of protections of um around them downtown to that would probably go a long ways too and so to your point I would be happy to share that sometime as somebody too but um I did want to thank you um for your time tonight Penny and Steve and it's always good to see you both and um thanks for bringing your report and this we have not gone over this much for a long time so obviously we were excited to talk to you about it thank you we appreciate it very much take care thank you and the next item on the agenda is

062the um sustainability um update and that's uh Kathy hello thank you for having me so much tonight oh I don't think you're hello yes the red the red light's on thank you so much hello thank you for having me tonight I'm Kathy faser I'm the district sustainability specialist I have been in this position about a year and so I've provided you with my annual report on some of our progress and some of our goals for the next year next slide I'm going to just hit some of the highlights on these slides so in two or three different areas one area in is energy one of the things I've been working on this year is creating an EPA Energy Star portfolio manager database so we've always tracked our meter data but this is allowing us has

063to model the meter data and look for inefficiencies or leaks or you know whatever we can find in um natural gas electricity and water let's show the next Slide the next slide I know I don't expect you to read it but it's just two screenshots from my database short sort of showing you what um I'm looking at every month so this is shelin Middle School the energy star score is an 82 which is pretty good you're supposed to be above a 75 live for your building um you can see on the left the red and blue is natural gas and electricity so I'm sort of looking at those and then on the right the black line is our water data for shelin two big spikes are irrigation but that's sort of what we're looking for

064next slide please um we've got lots of things were're working on the waist stream so last year we actually it was the spring before last year we started composting in all of our um in all of our kitchens so any food that cannot be served um is composted in back in the back of the house and then we have most of our elementary schools composting in our um cafeterias some of our schools middle schools and high schools are more complicated so I'm going to work hard on the elementary schools and get those systems um smooth but some of our high schools College Hill and shelin both have voluntary composting so that really changes our was stream we have also put in a Grant application for with DEQ for a Pilot low waist cafeteria at shelin

065and that would be milk dispensing reusable silverware reusable trays reusable boats so that'll be pretty exciting if we get that we'll hear about that in December next slide please this is just Garfield kiddos um showing us how to compost in their cafeteria next slide uh every Elementary School sets up their own it works differently at different uh schools so that's Lincoln on the left and how they set up their compost line and then on the right is a waist audit that um I was able to help with at Mountain View at the Green Team talking to our students about what is our waist stream what can we do about it so we did waste audits at most of our schools last year next slide Transportation so we one of our goals was to get off

066um to create an annual Transportation survey so I was able to get one out in February it wasn't perfect um we will make improvements to that but some of what I was looking for was barriers um not necessarily the numbers of how many people are walking or biking or car pooling to school but what are the barriers to doing those things and then I've been researching the community and seeing what can we do to solve some of those problems and so I've with staff this August I shared out some information on get there Oregon which has a guaranteed ride home um it's a state it's a state organization has a guaranteed ride home if you came to school and you need to get home and you were on your bike or you on the bus

067and then it also has ways of setting up car pools so just getting some of this information out into the community is my goal with transportation and we will be working on that other avenues that we're going to be working on this year are some bike racks or bike rack improvements and safe routes to school next one this is um a walking um school bus from Garfield to the Boys and Girls Club um we were able to provide them with their beautiful matching ponchos and the wagons to carry their backpacks um so that they are able they don't have to wait for bus anymore and can just wander over no matter what the weather to the Boys and Girls Club and then the next three slides are sort of sharing some of the things I'm

068doing with students um this summer was a big school Garden summer for me I was able to match up some Master Gardeners with um Manda at Katherine Jones Harrison and we're working on doing those Partnerships at other school Gardens you can go to the next slide um summertime work in the garden makes a huge difference and having our community members who often walk right past our school Gardens every day um as partners will be an amazing thing we're working on trying to find Master Gardeners for some of our other school Gardens and so that especially I think it's really important to have them during the summer so that they're actually ready for August for the students to come back to so it's sort of a weird Garden in that it's quiet time in summer next

069slide so I'm I'm always looking for ways of getting students out in the community um CHS green team has traditionally attended Planet palooza and so they were there this year I was able to get a table I attended the Corvalis sustainability fair for the district and I have goals next year uh fingers crossed that I can get more of our student groups attending the corval sustainability fair so I'm in talks with Annette Mills on how to increase that I think the cross um cross seeding or pollination of our students at the fair their parents coming to see them our students be able to walk around the fair see what OSU is doing what's the sustainability Coalition doing that would be pretty exciting next slide I realized it's all um acronyms up there ssls are our

070school sustainability leaders those are staff members who run green teams and green teams are students who are involved in um sustainability topics and projects and edat there's a partnership between our green teams and the sustainability Coalition volunteer the action team this one is the education action team so those volunteers come in and assist the green teams and so that's also a good partnership and those are my highlights you have a relatively long report in your packet um and I would be glad to answer any questions thank you Kathy questions comments from the board or students Chris thank you for all that you're doing um to you and Kim I know I when I've been in the schools I see what's going on with at lunchtime and the waste um Recycling and all of that and

071um I guess it's more just a comment that I want to appreciate apprciate all that you're doing and I asked several of the custodians if this is more work for them and how do they feel about it and you know is it going okay for them and they all said it's going great like they don't mind it's not a lot of extra work um they really enjoy having students help them and i' I watched some of the kids get involved and and uh that was really exciting to see the kids take charge of all of that and so I just really appreciate that you're you know you're doing this but also that it's involving students and that they're learning about uh sustainability and that and that and they're not complaining they're appreciating that the people

072that are actually rolling up their sleeves and having to do the work and so I thought that was great thank you I think our campus stewards and custodians are amazing and I've really tried to push the green teams into saying if you want to project who does it impact you know talk to your campus Steward or talk to your principal or talk to the bus driver you know what what who do we need to involve so that's been kind of fun thank you thanks Chris the thanks um I really enjoyed reading um the highlights and looking at the Forward Thinking um that you're doing I have a question about so U this kind of relates to budget budgeting so when we um you know when when I'm thinking about like the kind of District that

073we want to have I'm always trying to think about what's the what is it actually cost us to have the district that we want and then you know we don't always have enough money for that right um and in our community we're really fortunate to have so many dedicated um community members that are willing to step in and help but I'm always thinking about what's the price tag to get the things that we consider to be essential done from your perspective cuz I'm looking at this list and going well some of these things are definitely we're needing volunteers to make them happen so what's your sense and you might not have an actual number right now that's okay but what's your sense um about the amount of um hours or work that is going into

074making this possible for us as a district that's coming from the kindness of our volunteers but unpaid contribution um to think about if we wanted to go to Salem and say to have a thriving District this is how much we need and this is how much our community is doing right now um that we would need to fill in if we didn't have them I'm curious your thought about that yeah I don't have a great answer to that yet um some of what I have found is that we're doing the right things um like you know building the data base we our electricians are watching you know our HVAC programming and our plumbers are watching for water Leakes um so we're doing many of the right things already some of it is getting it organized

075and telling the story of what we're doing um and of course volunteers we couldn't do it without you know the green teams are well supported by volunteers the gardens need volunteers we couldn't like you said we couldn't do a lot of what we do without it um but I also have found that those are the exciting like people are super excited to be involved in all of in the green teams it in the gardens so yeah I don't have a great answer that's okay um and then just as a follow-up to that question around involving community members with this um do we have a relationship with the um the green um building certification program at Lin Benton um for the students that are going through the sustainable um Sustainable Building um Management program that's interesting

076question I'm starting a partnership one of my lower performing schools in my database I don't this is the first time I've built the database so I could have made errors so I'm actually starting a partnership with the commercial building energy audit group that's an OSU Lane County or Lane Community so I know we're going to build that partnership and have some students help me analyze this one building and see have I made mistakes or what improvements can we make but I haven't reached out to Linden okay they have a pretty great program and they've added some new tracks and I think some of those students are even our own graduates from our district so that'd be pretty cool and then last thing can we get a video of The Walking School Bus like we we

077need to have that like for posterity we need it they're adorable so we need it I need to see it because it makes me happy I see them in my neighborhood um but also that's such a great and novel idea it would be really cool if we had something we could demonstrate um and cute little kid faces they compel people in a ways that our words do not so anyway plus they're stinking if you haven't seen them they're adorable watch like I want to hang out and see them go because they look so cute with their their um wag wagon yeah anyway for that thank you for doing that it really makes my heart very happy to see them out there um Eileen then Sammy is there any collaboration between the Green teams like for

078example from the high schools going to the elementary schools and helping out we've talked about that it's somewhat challenging with scheduling um I would love for that to happen so help me out at College Hill that would be great we we often we come up with ideas I also think that probably having as many green teams as possible presenting at the Coalition fair and you guys seeing each other will'll will sort of have that grow but yeah I would love to work with you on that Kathy thank you very much uh I can see very vividly that uh sustainability work is showing in our educational programs in our buildings and our work as students uh faculty and community and the partnership so I really want to thank you for fostering all of that and it

079takes a team and I appreciate you uplifting that team um and in the spirit of looking ahead I am really I have a question and probably double-edged a question offer so and the spirit looking ahead one of the prioritized work that you have is for 2425 under goal F2 strategy F21 and F22 is uh establishing a districtwide indoor environmental monitoring program and I was always curious that we have coming soon learn about indoor quality monitoring on the web page we're uh eagerly waiting for uh so I'm wondering what plans are there and part of my question is to offer that uh nsba National School Board Association in partnership with the national GL uh gr green initiative in uh program uh received a sizable uh grants from the EPA to invest in improving indoors qualities and

080help School District leaderships really Steward that work so I'm wondering if there are any opportunities or any share outs we can share that this is what we're intend to do and maybe we can bring in some resources or support for that yeah I was doing research this summer on if there are districts in the in Oregon that that have monit indoor air monitoring and I haven't found any we have obviously been careful for years with what cleaners we're using and you know things that we're doing within our buildings that could create pollutant problems we've been aware for years if you have leads for me I would love to have more of that yeah that'd be great keep in touch Sammy we'll do I'll pass it on any other questions or comments board members students um

081I had a question um I really like seeing the the composting going on and I'm wondering how um if you all are noticing students understanding consumption in a different kind of way by seeing the waste with the food um so I mean consumption on food but just in general that's um one of my biggest things when thinking about sustainability is that part like addressing like the overuse of things and the over serving of foods and stuff like that so I was kind of curious about that yeah we're always caught with food and the cafeteria we're always caught between um what the students will eat and what we can serve them federally um and then there's all usually always in the especially in the elementary school but also some of the middles and highs um a

082sharing table so things that are unopened un unbitten um you know whole fruit things that are packaged can be put on a table and shared out um it is pretty fascinating to be in the cafeteria and watch the sharing table um I'm sure that some of the students are aware of what's wasted uh I I don't know I it would be interesting for a green team to go out there and study you know ask their peers how do you feel about food waste after we've seen you know some of what's going into the cafeteria um bin versus schools like College Hill that take a lot of their compost to their chickens so you know there is our Community does a lot of different things with um how they're handling that food waste it's also dependent

083on your um kitchen manager they can make a lot of really great choices and they're very aware of what their students will eat and what they won't eat and and it it is different in every school what the population wants on the salad bar so yeah I I don't have a great answer for you on what the students are thinking but it is an interesting study to be watching and and learn learning from yeah I was just kind of wondering because you see more and more Consciousness around that and like even like using reusable and everything like that with students so I love hearing that in the works too so yeah so thanks for your work andk you um I don't think oh sorry Reed you have a question thanks for catching that right um

084I just had a comment sort of regarding that idea of like the student perspective on the food waste issue um and as far as if the green teams green clubs are you know sort of doing studies on that I know it is definitely on on the top of a lot of people's minds at CHS at the very least um a couple years ago in my SE sophomore or freshman year there was an effort to try and reduce the amount of wasted fruit because I think that in a lot of cases students will choose to reject the fruit that they're required to take by you know law so that can't really be avoided by us but um it used to be a lot worse I think kids are becoming more and more aware of it they're

085making an effort to either eat the fruit or find a friend who is interested in it I have regularly have a friend who's like oh I don't want this do you want this banana today um you know something like that so I think it's important to note like students are invested in it we're definitely interested we have a really successful green Club at least at CHS who made the effort to install compost bins all around the school you know not just one in the cafeteria that's big like having little compost bins outside of many classrooms because students you know get their lunches and then disperse and um so I would say that the general effort is is there students are conscious of the food waste and in some ways it's hard to avoid but I'm

086sure that they're interested in whatever you would be able to talk to them about ways to improve it I would encourage you to you might or might not be already in contact with CHS green Club but they're very invested in the issue and I'm sure they'd be happy to collaborate with you on that yeah thank you Reed it is a huge Club very active and I've been able to visit it a couple times last year um it's actually a highlight for me to be able to go to the green teams because there's a lot of amazing positive energy and I can't there's lots of things I can't change like I can't tell you to eat your banana and I can't tell you how to get to school but the passion of the students can change

087the hearts and minds of their peers and their parents and so that's some of my goals is to get the green teams to really think about what change they want to make this year thank you readings I remember a um presentation by students about Green Team a while like it was a while back huh yeah so it's cool to see the continued involvement U so thank you Kathy for your time this evening thank you have a good evening okay um so right now we're GNA take a moment um we have the Board needs to take a moment for an important announcement within um with under our youw as a board and so if you can just give us a moment hey Christof [Music] [Applause] this that was unexpected I thought maybe that was a little

088unexpected that's good so good evening everyone um my name is Christa parent and I'm the executive director of the Coalition of Oregon School administr Traders kosa and I'm here uh to share what you already know but have kept a secret from the rest of the world and now the state and the rest of the world will know um and I'm here to present the 2025 superintendent of the Year award to Ryan NS so just a couple of things I want to share about this award um first of all it was a stellar field of superintendence um this year we had 13 nominations for superintendent of the Year Ryan's close colleagues very pH nominal superintendence and it was a unanimous decision by the committee to select Ryan so that's one thing the other thing that I

089wanted you to know is that he will now be up for the national superintendent of the Year award yeah exactly and he has some pretty significant work to do over those five weeks because he has to do some writing samples there has to be a video produced which we're already starting on here today John you did a really good job too and then what happens is all 50 state winners go in front of a blue ribbon committee and they look at all the candidates and then they pick four finalists and they bring those four finalists to Washington DC where they put the four finalists through kind of a regiment of different interviews in front of different Blue Ribbon panels at the national Press Club and things like that and then on March 6 this year

090in New Orleans at our national conference they'll bring all state winners so he'll automatically be a part of this um and then the four finalist and then they announce the national superintendent of the year which is a surprise at that point as well and the person doesn't know until their name is called out and so we're hoping that that's part of our celebration as well but nonetheless there will be a reception in New Orleans in honor of Ryan's Oregon superintendent of the Year there will be a second reception where it's all the Northwest states um those five states have their superintendent of the year uh presented there as well and so he'll be a part of that and then he gets to give this back to me a number of times this year because there

091are four different events that happen in Oregon where the award gets presented again and he gets to give a speech and the first of those will be at the Oregon school boards convention in Portland in November and he'll get it presented there as well so I know you already know this about him and he is so well respected by his colleagues throughout the state he's a leader that other leaders look to um he's recently helped facilitate our funding work Group which has been looking at you know all the funding challenges that we have and trying to put together strategies and priorities headed up to the 2025 session and Ryan has led that group of about 70ish superintendents and leaders for the past five months that's just one example um but again you know here in

092the region he's done such a great job of being a leader of the leaders in this region um they are front and center their voice in this region is really strong because of the organization and inspiration really that Ryan's given all the other leaders here to make sure that they come forward and share their voice so I'm just so honored to be able to present this tonight I got to work with Ryan a little bit as he was working on his Doctorate and um have known him for quite some time now and I just can't think of somebody more worthy of this award than Ryan awesome now you can practice your speech so one thing you may not know about oh wait Ryan you need a mic your mic one thing you may not know

093about Christa is that Christa was the national superintendent of the year so so to receive it from you that means a lot to me um and your friendship and guidance um means a lot as well and you are perfect in the role so thank you for all you've done um and then to my family who totally surprised me my my dad was a police officer and my mom was a teacher and I was never going into public education because what happened at the grocery store was parent conferences everywhere you went but I still ended up in this in this world because it was um meant to be for me and so thank you for how you showed U me the importance of public service and um to my wife who um and my son who

094haven't seen me as much as I wish I could have been at home because I'm doing this work I appreciate you for that and to my sister as well thanks for being here and um yeah thanks to my school board I have been so lucky um in the N9 years that I've been in this job to havea um fantastic school board members who've really supported my work but have really had a heart for kids and making really um passionate decisions about what's best for them um it makes the job much easier um because we're aligned in our values and beliefs and that I think is one of the key things that has has created the success that I've been able to have because of the work you've all done to to support me so again

095thank you um for all of that and I uh look forward to um serving years to come thanks I'm um I'm so um excited to um have you as the superintendent of the year as our superintendent and thankful to work with you Ryan um and it was really fun trying to coordinate this without you having any idea so hopefully it was an actual surprise total surprise yes we did it and thank you for nominating him um up to the point where Sammy gave me a look right yeah so um we're gonna take a longer than five minute break so probably about 15 minute break to allow folk to congratulate Ryan I'm sure they want to take pictures with you especially your family and um probably some of your staff too and um we we have

096cake to share with you we we really planned this Ryan so so we have a celebration cake to share with him as well so had I known I would have worn a tie it it was a surprise so we couldn't we couldn't tip you off to there's c yeah there would have been cake tonight if people there's people here so yeah okay so if we can put the 15 break thing on the thank you e e e it only came with one okay so we're gonna go we're back on um thank you uh Community for um giving or understanding a extra long break so we can celebrate with Ryan um while his family was here and folk from Koso were here in community that wanted to celebrate with you so again congratulations thank you yes

097and thank you and um it is past eight so some of our student Representatives um I chatted with them over the break about they can head out um and so if other students need to leave at any point during the meeting I already talked to them about they can just head out when you need to or you can stay for the whole time um but the next item on the agenda is the student and family services update and I'm pass it over to Sabrina Sarah and Brian I'm not thrilled about having to follow cake that feels a little rough but congratulations maybe a little teary it's very exciting okay we're happy to have you here I've heard very clearly that it's not a mandatory bedtime that you're allowed to leave whenever you want so that's

098very exciting for you um and we brought around one of our magnets for each of you that we made this year um that you can take home with you we're going to talk about a whole host of things uh this evening but in a timely and concise way there we are this is your reminder that we're just people in the people business that was fourth grade pre contacts that's unfortunate but oh aren't those good pictures wait what grade is it all fourth grade no no mine's fourth grade what's yours I think I'm like second grade second grade what are you Sarah mine is kindergarten kindergarten that's very cute Byron you want to start us off there sure don't forget to turn your mics on the little red lights on when it's on you than you

099than all right so um Can is it on now okay perfect um so my name is Byron uh my pronouns are he him his and uh as we get started I think the thing that we were thinking about when we were thinking about this presentation that felt important to note at the very beginning is that we have this opportunity the three of us with lots of other people which we'll show you in a few minutes um to be in these positions where we get to be like the keepers of lots of people's stories and experiences and then we get to hear what's happened to people or what's going on in their lives and hold that and then we get to use that to allocate and shift resources to change systems to really make systems work

100for everyone and not just for a few people how they historically have and so as we go throughout this presentation I I think that's the thing that I always keep on top for me that feels important um that we have this opportunity to to hear lots of people's experiences and then we get to shift how our systems work to help them perfect thanks when I start first started sharing this picture it was a couple of years ago and um I I used it as my like Google meets picture and a couple of other places and it was in a moment where we were realizing as a department that it was important to start reminding people that were just people um in people business right working with people and I think there's kind of no better

101way to do that than to see the younger version of yourself that's just much more authentically who you are um I've seen that version of Byron um I know him and so I appreciate seeing that and thinking about um the importance of us as Leaders also just being people with our own stories and our own lives and um I think that's important as we do this kind of work so it's it's great it's a great start okay you are familiar with me and that's not me in the picture but that's one of our awesome great kids having an awesome great experience my sister and my son but he is sporting his Mountain View such um as you know I kind of hold this position over these big teams doing big work and we're going to

102spend a little bit of time today talking about what some of that work is and what some of those teams are okay Byron why don't you start us off yeah so again I'm Byron and I am a building principal and a special ed education coordinator um and then in our special ed education department we have three sped tosas those are teachers on special assignments um that support they are all assigned to different schools to support special education needs there um we have Alison Patrick in our department who is a data specialist and like the technical side of all of like the things that need to be done um and then our physical therapist Scar and then Logan our occupational therapists the addition of the three spe says was new to us last school year we're

103going into our second year of that and I think the only piece that I would say about that is what a tremendous support that has been to our special education department and I would say in some ways has brought that department into some of its healthiest space of people feeling like they have support people to turn to able to get support right away it's just been a pivotal change for us in our department okay um so we kind of have in the in our whole department at large in the house of student growth and experience which is my Harry Potter reference of the night um we have kind of the special education portion of this but then we also have these critical staff members who live right outside that world so Kila Lynn is our

104social worker on uh assignment at the district office so she does a ton of uh support for our counselors and social workers our mental health Team and then she really holds our Suicide Prevention and postvention work and you would have heard about that last year when we were were here and is a helpful reminder of the work she's done in our district but also in the community and and kind of keeping those teams moving and then she also provides a tremendous amount of support for us in crisis as we respond to kind of Crisis events in our schools and Community Martha Calderon is entering her second year with us as our mental health manager previously she worked in one of our schools Aaron wilmac is our tremendous Medicaid specialist sought after by all districts at

105State and County and Community levels um we do try to remember he is a free person and he is allowed to choose the job that he wants but we do beg him not to choose other ones um and then Sarah Divine who's right here who can introduce herself and what she does hi I'm Sarah and I work across our district with our family advocates and our health Navigators and so I'll be talking a little bit more about our program and giving some updates later um but we really focus on students who are navigating homelessness and poverty and thinking about how can we reduce barriers that are going on maybe at the family level so that students are able to come to school show up ready to learn um and really have equal access to education

106we have tons and tons and tons of team members out in our schools um our team members here at the district office were pretty small um comparatively to districts similar to our size um we have a a really pretty small team at the district level and um I'm proud to say that we have really robust teams at the school levels and that's awesome so when we think about our school teams I would want you to keep in mind that we have lots of certified staff and classified staff we have speech and language Pathologists school counselors and social workers we have dean of student positions which has been developed over the past couple of years we have mental health therapists family advocates and we even claim the nurses though technically they belong to Melissa but really

107the nurses are in this same business as the rest of that screen which is really serving students and families to make sure they can fully access their education I think it's important to call out a few former team members that we lost last year for different reasons um I think that's both important because these are critical staff members that have been a part of this work with us that you've met and talked to um but also it's important for us to keep in mind that these are positions that other than Bethany haven't been refilled and so as we think about our team these are positions that have been absorbed into the work that we have um many of you were familiar with Joe our mental health manager and he transitioned onto bigger and maybe better

108things he's working at OSU so I'll leave that up to you whether that's bigger and better just a different job um many of you are familiar we lost our beloved jod Mel who was a therapist that worked in our district last year to a tragic accident Bethany who's our data analyst for years moved on um but Allison is who stepped into to that position sha Bernard worked in our office and then helped us with getting Bridges started and now is uh helping us out at Laticia Carson but isn't based here with our team and then we made a strategic decision last year a painful decision to our mental health program and lost our mental health skills trainers so I think it's important because we want to kind of name those people in the space since

109I saw you last but also because I think it's important to remember that that's all work that's being absorbed then by team members who still work at the office okay this to me is one of the most important slides which is a reminder that with the work that we do um we're leaning consistently and heavily on our Community Partners and so it's important to us to list for you a number of those Partners who we work with day in and day out that help us do the things that we need to do to serve families and then we're going to talk a little bit about special education and that's your magnet we're really proud of our magnet can you tell okay we're going to start out by talking just a tiny bit about data so

110when you look at data the thing that I want you to be aware of is that historically the corvala school district has sat around that 10 to 11% range so what we're meaning is the percent of our student body that is receiving special education services the 10.5 we sat up for quite a while we bumped up to 11 we bumped down a little bit and in the past 18 months we've moved to 14% um that's a significant jump in the percent of our student body I think it's worthwhile knowing that we have neighbors who sit in the 18 to 22% range and I just think that that's worth knowing in the sense of like we have had a big move but in a lot of ways we aren't reflecting the uh lived reality of many

111of our neighboring districts and then the second piece to that is the piece that you know from Ryan which is that the state funding cap is at 11% and the work that Ryan has been doing is to help make that shift to 15% which would obviously benefit us and others in the state who have different numbers so that's a uh an advocacy data point for you all as we move into the session um 11% has been historically the number that school districts are able to have that double weight for beyond that um there is a a small increase but it's not significant and really across the state the average is about 15% now and so as we move into that this session that's one of the key things that we're going to be advocating around

112is increasing that um not just you have to increase the pie you can't just reallocate but we have to think about th those costs because we are working really hard to serve all of our students so when we're thinking about our resources and where a lot of our resources go right we um a lot of our funding goes through all of our schools right for the lrc model or the Learning Resource model um in in schools in classrooms and that more traditional special ed type of a model or intervention model that way but we also have specialized programming that is resource heavy um that serves a unique population of our students and so um my focus is mostly our tracks for specialized programming k12 and so we have our life skills programs we have two

113classrooms at Katherine Jones Harrison for K5 students one classroom at lus Pauling for 68 and then 912 at CHS is where we house that program as well we have a transition program wings um which is more of a work experience program and we have uh sites at CV and College Hill for wings the other track or pathway that we have for specialized programming is alternative Ed and this is where we've allocated more resources in the more recent years to meet the needs of students um and this is really a mental health and behavior types of programs and so for K5 house at Mountain View we have our social emotional growth classroom or the scg as we call it um and then we have Bridges 612 and that is at the former Western View location um

114we also have all of our Section 504 um which comes in at about 8% of our student population so those numbers remain lower than our IEP population yes Sammy I never asked this question and I feel too late to ask it but I'll ask it what qualifies a student to be a Section 504 I love this I was going to give you a pop quiz actually and say who can tell me what the difference is between a 504 and an IEP that's not a former sped director or a former principal in a building with lots of special education anyone anyone Lou so the IEP like the individualized education plan is through um an assessment on the students to see if they qualify for services under certain learning disabilities perhaps and then the other one is

115um for if they do not meet those qualifications through that those assessments but they can still qualify for other support I feel like that's a really good starting spot you get total credit for that okay I was like that's my like that was without looking anything El I think that was quality that wasn't bad at all all right I tried if I think about 504 and IEP what I think is actually worth knowing about that is um I idea covers IEP right so we're thinking about students who have a disability who need a certain set of services and accommodations so it's not just accommodations it's this idea that they also need specially designed instruction and you're right there's a kind of um intensive model model of doing evaluation an assessment to really look at what

116those needs are and build a very specific plan for a student that includes both instruction and services and accommodations a 504 is in some ways a a very different iteration of that that removes some of the instruction it is more broadly sweeping the entrance to that gate is much wider there's a lot more opportunity to access but what you're accessing is accommodations and potentially some related services like maybe you work with an OT or a PT that is more comprehensive in the 504 I think the other piece I would keep in mind about a 504 is you might qualify for the Civil Rights protections of a 504 but not need any accommodations or a plan so I might not actually need any support at school but I may have a medical disability that impacts me

117that says I have the right to access things and my civil rights are protected it's a great question I respect that question um um we have a a dynamic relationship with the medical providers in our community um where we're always kind of navigating 504s and IEPs um what that means is that sometimes doctors prescribe IEPs and 504s that's not super legal um but we're always trying to work with our medical providers and help them understand these processes what I do appreciate is that I consistantly see the medical professionals in our community sending people back to the school saying please go talk to your education providers ask questions get help and see what you can do and I always respect that I respect the prescription less but I do respect the push to engage with schools

118and our and our doctors are good about that in this community and I appreciate that um having an 8% population with 504 is actually pretty good um there are districts that are struggling with high levels of 504 and we're actually not in that range so that's encouraging to be honest all right hi um I'm going to take a couple minutes to give a few updates about our family support program um thank you so I'm going to start with a little bit of information about where we landed at the end of last year um and then talk about kind of where we are as we're starting this year and some things that are going really well so thinking about where we ended last year I won't read through them um but looking at our services that's

119really focused on the financial services that we were able to provide for families and I really just want to highlight that this was all because of our partnership with the Corvalis Public Schools Foundation they give us the budget to meet these family needs um and we continue to be fairly unique in the community being able to meet these needs quickly um being able to meet needs that aren't there aren't other resources in the community that are poised to to like do that in a either within the timely manner or just the type of need um so that is something that I think is really important we're seeing a lot still of of the basic like my power is about to be shut off my water's shut off um you know those kinds of needs we

120as you can see we did over 80 um rental payments and I consider all of those to be eviction prevention um that's what we're doing when we make those payments we have and that's all under $400 for those types of payments so thinking and that really shows to me just how little money sometimes it requires and just how most families budgets are and just one bill is setting them to the point where they're about to lose their housing and we're able to come in with $300 or $200 um and keep them housed um I also want to highlight our partnership with the Assistance League um so we did like close to 700 orders of Operation School Bell so clothing and shoes for students that's all through them that's an incredible partnership they also provide us

121laundry cards and hygiene items within all of our schools and we also were really fortunate last year to have a grant through ihn that allowed us to purchase um items for our food pantries um which now that we have advocates in all of our schools we have pantries in all of our schools that were culturally specific um so we were able we have our grocery gift cards but we also had pantries in each building just immediately accessible to folks that were stocked with foods that families wanted to eat so that was something that was really awesome I also wanted to share just where we ended up with our mcken vento so our homeless numbers for the year um I think a couple notable things things one is that just the overall number is a lot

122lower um than our year before where we ended around 380 so I have a couple ideas about that and they are speculation I will say that um one of my ideas is that I know forever I know that our identification we always can be doing better and we're always I know we're always under counting we're always thinking about ways to make sure that families who aren't as comfortable talking to us about things are still um you know starting to bridge those gaps and feeling more comfortable another thing that has been a topic of conversation already tonight and other times is that we have families who are homeless and just give up on finding housing here in Corvalis or in the area and they move to other states they move away far and they are no

123longer part of our community they are past the point where we can bust them in with mcken vento and that is something that we have seen I mean every year since I've been here but definitely in the last few years I would say more so um that families are just they are giving up um and then I think on a more hopeful note we have also we really have been leaning into eviction prevention and so we have families very much like who would be on those roles of mckin vento who don't ever get there because our team is able either through our own funds or through our Partnerships with other agencies which I'll talk about more in a minute we're able to actually just prevent that from happening at all so I like to think

124that that's part of it too that it isn't just you know kind of the more the heavier pieces but that we're we are doing better at knowing amilies ahead of time and noticing some of the things that are happening that maybe give us some concern and that we've built those strong Relationships by the time that a family is starting to lose their ability to pay rent that we're stepping in at those points all right so thinking about some things that are happening this year that are good um one really good thing um and this is brings up Aaron wac our wonderful Medicaid coordinator um he and I over this summer we're looking at the new Medicaid waiver that came through in Oregon and we applied for some of the capacity building grants and that has

125given us funds to bring two of our part-time staff up to almost full-time um so for this year so it's temporary but it really is mitigating some of the budget cuts that happened and that is going to be an incredible support for our families those halftime staff have taken a lot of extra families onto their case loads and it's been very hard just in this beginning of school um as they're trying to meet all these needs and kind of do the work at the level that they are accustomed to and that they know is really what we should be doing as a program and I've been saying like we know this money is coming um just hang on so we're very very happy um that we were awarded those funds we weren't awarded the full

126amount that we applied for but very close um we also within Benton County have a flexible housing subsid pool that has started um we were starting to work with them in the summer it's continued on and it will be be ongoing um this is another place where the foundation really helped us because as Sabrina presented about summer programs our Advocates had hours through the foundation to work over the summer and when this opportunity came up to begin housing families through this program our team was there and they were able to identify the families and work with them through the application process and really get those things going so that's this is a program that to be honest I've been waiting for since I started this job and since I've lived in this community um because

127what happens a lot here is that we have affordable housing that becomes available and families who get funding for housing and those two things never match so there's housing that comes but they don't have their head voucher they get their head voucher and there's no housing and the success rate for the HUD vouchers in our Three Counties has stayed at around 30% that's really low and people wait years to get those vouchers and then they get them and they can't use them and they remain homeless and so one of the things that this pool of money can do is that it gets people into the housing pays their deposits pays their rent for a while and then their HUD voucher can take over um as they as it becomes available so I think at this

128point we have five families who have been fully housed through that we have a lot more that are in the process and our Focus really has been on families who we know have a lot of barriers who would have have had a really hard time finding housing on their own and who we know likely would not be able to find permanent affordable housing and these are folks who again will they will stay in our community now they're in housing that is safe that is adequate and we are continuing to provide referrals to that program we're working really closely with them we will have a lot more families um benefiting from that and again just breaking that disconnect of you have one or you have the other but you don't have both and when you don't

129have both the system isn't really working very well so along with that we also have three the three developments that are listed here um that are new in the community you might have heard of them they all have below Market affordable housing um units and with some of them we actually have set aside units so for we can give direct referrals and people don't have to be on a wait list and they just go straight to the top and they get in for others maybe we're more working with the flexible housing subsidy pool or folks can just afford the rent on their own and we're just helping them with the application and you know getting them through that way we have sent a tremendous number of families through that and that's been really incredible I

130can't think of a time that we've had this level of support and it's amazing we need more I think total it's about 400 units or it will be when they're all done that's not enough but it's it's a lot compared to what we've had and absolutely when we think about the families we lose every year to other communities we're having less of that now and they are these are all in Corvalis they're staying in our schools um I think you know I've seen a lot of families just kind of be like what's the catcher you know is this real and because it really isn't something they're accustomed to and neither are we frankly um but it's been really awesome to see so we're very very grateful for those Partnerships and that's meant a lot for

131a lot of our most vulnerable families we've been prioritizing folks that are living on the street um or in tents and cars and you know maybe have a lot of rental barriers again to where they're going to have a really hard time just applying for apartments on their own and that's been an awesome thing to see and then the last piece with that um we are in the very kind of in process of beginning a partnership with odhs self-sufficiency where we're going to have some folks from their office co-located in some of our schools um and that is really coming from the the knowledge that the DHS office is not particularly accessible for folks um both because of where it is and sometimes it just feels really intimidating to you know kind of walk into

132that office if you haven't been there before and so we've been working with them to think about having some of their staff have office hours essentially in a couple of our schools where family advocates can sign people up to go and meet with them and they might just have a question about their benefits they might need to sign up for benefits they might need to talk to a family coach but for whatever reason that feels more comfortable than going into the office itself um and we're hoping that at least one of those staff that comes in will be bilingual in Spanish um to add to that accessibility and I think we fully understand that we don't exactly know what's needed there but we know that something's needed and we're in the place to just start

133figuring it out start having them come in kind of see like what are the requests that are coming in what are the needs um and then go from there and then when I think about successes really to me it kind of all centers around the community involvement piece and the ways that our team has been able to really in these last couple of years be out in the community and that has really been because of I think the additional capacity in our team and having more people so that we are just more visible we have we work a lot more with our Community Partners and I was trying to think about a way to capture that and there's lots of different ways but what I settled on was I went through my calendar for like

134three months and I just listed these are all the meetings in the community that I go to on a regular basis and that's the other list under Community involvement and I think you know I I'm the one that often is in that space but I'm bringing information from my team and then I'm also taking information back to my team so it's a collective effort of all of us and to me what this really means is when I think about families who are going through crisis their bandwith is a precious commodity and our ability to do a lot of the coordination around their basic needs and resources without necessarily having them have to be involved like every step of the way it really allows them it allows them to attend to all the other things that

135they have to attend to and so the more that we're in these Community spaces Social Service spaces the more we allow them to also just be able to like do all the other things that they have to do and we take some things off their plate and that's something that I feel like has been a really significant success for our program is the ability um yeah to like to be to be in community spaces we have community service providers now starting to think about our team refer to our team um understand that we're Partners in the work um and I'm really excited about that so really this is my go ahead and go back for a second Byron this is like the 90 seconds I get a year to publicly talk about Sarah Divine um

136it's her favorite 90 seconds of the year um so I appreciate that the team is you know in the buildings and doing those things but none of this exists without her presence in the community and I can't emphasize enough that what that list has meant to what's happening here so all of those relationships and all those Partnerships is because of the in like the amazing amount of hours that you are putting in in those spaces and now that's who people see in this community and what I see happening Beyond just all the good of that right the ways that Partnerships benefit school districts and grow that is that the thing that I think is that when you see that happen you think of about making that happen and that relationship with self-sufficiency is only because

137they're watching her do that with other spaces and going oh I guess we could be a part of something like that and so it is it's the trickle effect of somebody inserting themsel in the community showing up advocating being a partner that is not just benefiting us it's it's setting a model in this community of what that work can look like there's no way to capture how powerful that is and how significant that is beyond just the edges of what it means in a school district it means something in this whole Community when I think about last year there were a couple of times where Sarah was in conversations about people living down at the river and in camps and her energy in that made energy in the DHS system ignite and it wasn't happening

138for lots of reasons but her energy made things catch and move forward in a way that would not have moved forward in the same way way I it's significant what that means not just in this school and this little system it's a big deal it's worth noting less interesting we have a few more slides they're not nearly as interesting as Sarah Divine but we do have fabulous school counselors and social workers and they are interesting and I think it's good for us to remember that when we're talking about the supports we have in place in schools that we have these big things happening in all of these these different ways including we have school counselors and social workers in all of our schools which we take for granted and think of as just normal life

139but is actually still not normal life in lots of school districts and I emphasize that to say it is one of our key critical staff who show up in all of these different places right they have all these areas that they're impacting the entire school as well as in small groups as well as individual case management and all of that is what helps to make sure that people like family advocates actually know who to talk to and who to work with and they become these critical parts of our schools the shout out of course is to them and their work but also um to the district and board's commitment to maintain these positions that are so important in just the whole schools climate and the work we do both around seal but also like family

140advocacy work and resources same is true of our mental health program as you know we were um uh we had to make a decision to cut skills trainers last year which was a painful cut to our mental health program but we were also able to maintain our therapists and that means we continue to provide therapy in our schools and continue to look at how to support that program what I can also say is um as much as school districts like to talk about mental health it's actually still not happening in very many places and so the fact that this board and Ryan have continued to support that is significant um we met with Karen weiner recently to talk about our contract with ihn we're the only ones doing that in the state of Oregon no

141one else has a contract like that and she's meeting with our team to say I want to know how to go out and do that and then she's of course begging Ryan to do all the work with the superintendent and for good reason he won a prize now you get to do all those things yeah the last piece that I want to continue to draw your attention to is the work that um a lot of it that Melissa and I get to do together um and that is we've spent a lot of time building up our systems around student safety and behavior and really creating consistent systems that address these things as they happen um some of them are happening a lot a lot more than we would like um but what I'm amazed at

142is the work that we've done these past few years together has laid a groundwork that our schools are responding and really smart calm safe ways as things are happening and I'm really proud of that work um we also have done quite a bit of work not just around like the classic crisis response I mean Chris laid the groundwork for that for years of crisis response but we've actually really built teams in our schools that they now have le like building level crisis response plans written out and communication Maps written out for their buildings that they're filling out and sharing with their staff every year so that we really help teams feel a part of that in all of our schools and I think that's also really good work that our team has done yeah I

143mean we mostly just brought Sarah and then we did things around her um but we're happy to answer any questions thanks you all some incredible work happening in the district um and a lot of lives impacted for sure I'm I'm bet everybody has questions and our comments um I do want to note that we're supposed to beining the meeting right now so we're going to go ahead and extend the time so we can have I see Sammy looking at me like your meeting's going over just kidding um but it we're going to go ahead and go over was my point tonight because we have a couple more things and we would still like to um have questions answered you can blame Ryan he won an award it w we did have a we did have

144to sneak something in there without it being on the agenda so it's not really going over exactly yeah it's true it's not not yet okay had like 20 minutes of secret yeah we did stuff there I do have a question go for it um well this is like always one of my um most favorite updates to hear about um I have a question but before I ask my question I just wanted to also acknowledge how fortunate we are as a district that we have Chris on our board because before Chris joined the board Community if you don't know this a lot of this was uh the same kind of work she was doing for the district so we have a long history in this community of investing resources in this work and then moving those

145folks when they retire from that over to helping um advise the policy um on those processes so I just wanted to point that out in case people don't know it um and well no because she's working strike that com for you um I also wanted to um point out to the community if they don't know this that the work that um that you guys have presented this evening and particularly the work around family advocacy is unparalleled anywhere anywhere near us um the program that I work with we serve families from Eddyville to Cascadia and that's a lot of school districts if you count we have no school district um that even comes close to um to uh the amount of um effort energy and resources that this district is putting into family stability and um

146I think that we see that too in contributing to some really great outcom so I'm really proud of our district and um so just also wanted people to know that and my only question is just um really probably one for not right now but just to say I want to I would like to better understand this is the flexible housing program I wanted to I would like to better understand the criteria because housing is one of those areas where we have so much duplication of community effort um and partly it's because it's so complicated that um people do their piece but they don't necessarily understand the other pieces and so this is an area that I hear this name but I don't really understand the criteria I'm excited to hear that you have maybe units

147set aside but I don't know how you guys would decide how to move a family through that process and so um I would love to hear more about that and maybe not tonight since we're going over but this might be something for the poverty prevention task force to get a short presentation on uh because housing is a resource that is it's so costly for anybody to assist with um and to keep people stable and so if we could just maybe plan to have a conversation about that um that would be I think really helpful to the other folks that are working um with the same households I agree and I think um yeah bringing one of the folks they're still hiring for one of the positions so this has truly been especially when we were

148working over the summer we were like flying the plane and building it at the same time because this is new um but I think I think having someone come and they could talk about more you know go in depth and in terms of what the criteria are and how the referrals work I think they're starting to reach out to community like other Community Partners more broadly for it but also their capacity is just small right now and I also don't want to speak too much for them because it is a county program um but yes let's connect because I do agree that I think it would be a great group to have come into that space and I think what they're trying to do is really exciting and it's something again like I said that

149we haven't necessarily seen um and I think yeah seeing I think every agency right now is trying to figure out like with this new program how do we fit into it and we just happen to be the ones who as part of the pilot um got to start referring families before we all kind of knew exactly how it was working and so it was really everyone had a lot of grace and patience as we were trying to figure it out but yeah yeah other questions comments from the board Chris well first of all thank you thank you for all that you do I know in this room right now that we have in our dist from our district the mo the hardest working people in our district I mean Ryan and some of the people

150behind you but the three of you right there the ones I know that can't meet me for dinner because you're working all the time so I appreciate that and I know many times um we get asked what we can do what can we do to help you I know in the past Sarah we've always said like to help advocate for affordable housing but what else can we do to help you with advocating because it's still not public knowledge how many kids we have that are homeless and it's still not public knowledge about how many kids you know high school kids are living in their cars and so how can we help you Advocate to get this known that is going on in our community I think one of the things and and then I would

151love to hear what Sarah says I think one of the things that I have been thinking a lot about is um encouraging that people find an area of interest and the what I mean by that is when we think about kids and families navigating um houselessness if if housing isn't an area where you feel comfortable or knowledgeable um maybe you would be more comfortable thinking about how you might support um domestic violence agencies or maybe you could support one of the places that's really focused on sex trafficking and the trafficking of children out of areas that are more encampments or maybe you'd be interested in thinking about how to just make sure that kids and families are getting access to food I think one of the things that comes up for me is there's like

152advocacy work in the community but there are so many different agencies now that that navigate niche services for students and families that I think find something that fits the thing you care about and there will be a place to serve families in that way and that is my encouragement to community members more than anything is there's so much pick one and en jooy that that work and you will be helping kids and families sorry yeah absolutely I mean I think you know homelessness is not just an issue of housing um in our community obviously we have a tremendous need for housing and a Sabrina is saying there are so many issues that contribute that we're that we have our our feet in and we're working in like across all of those because we are trying

153to be really holistic with our approach um and I think you know and Chris you know it well because you were doing the work before I was and and knowing that truly there is still our community does not understand like the level of student like youth homelessness that we experience and it's one I mean it is a reason I've been really glad to be able to start being in more community spaces and with more providers of Social Services I think and it's but it still happens that when I show up and I share our numbers and I share our unaccompanied status and I share that unaccompanied doesn't just mean high schoolers that we have kindergarteners who are unaccompanied um that that is still news to people and so that is work that I am doing

154and I think that everyone can be doing to really look at like where does our district land with these things um and that has a direct result ultimately on what resources are in our community like two years ago in the summer I was in conversations about priority populations for some of the housing funding that's coming down now and families with children became one of those priority populations that's why like that's why we've been able to get some of these families housed quickly um so I think continuing that advocacy and almost like interrupting the narrative we have in Corvalis sometimes that these aren't things that happen in this community is really really important along with then as Sabrina was talking about understanding the the and even just like Child Care does anyone want to open an

155affordable daycare um right like we have lots and lots of issues that are contributing to family hardship including homelessness TR I have two comments and a question for you so first just so much gratitude for the work that you do for the work that your team does for the incredible collaborations that you've brought to this work too um both both in terms of just Community Partnership leveraging those resources as well as bringing in additional funding from the foundation from the CCO from ihn and others that shows not only their shared values around the importance of uplifting students children youth and their families as well as their trust in you to do this work and to do it really well in the community so thank you so much for all that you do it makes a

156huge tremendous difference um one other comment was just excitement around the partners ship with odhs in school we in my work life I help support the Oregon parenting education collaborative which is a Statewide Network for parenting education supports and we also partner with odhs in terms of expanding access to those programs and we have data from the last 13 years in looking at how are families being referred into programs such as parenting supports and F and other family supports and the number one referral source that we see across the board is friends and family and school tools and everything else fars so far so far down on the list in terms of social media Flyers television other kinds of Outreach digital media outreach nothing compares to the number of referrals that come through friends family

157and schools and that warm handoff is so critical and will open additional doors for families so thank you for taking those steps too and my question builds off of Chris's in terms of what can do and I'd just like to turn it around to to maintaining to supporting to promoting your well-being and the well-being of the teams that that you support and that you work with this is challenging work this is hard work Byron you opened with talking about being the keeper of stories you are not only the keeper of stories you're standing with students and families to help them shape their own stories and that comes with tremendous joy and celebration and heartbreaking Challenge and and just thinking about shrinking capacity on the team and all that you're still juggling and carrying while maintaining

158and growing so many of those programs what can we what can the district what can the community do to help affirm your work and also help ensure your care and well-being so that you can continue doing the work but also for yourselves I think the thing that I saw happen last spring um that made a big difference was the places is where Ryan and your work as a board put some boundaries around budget cuts so um I don't want to minimize particularly in our case the cuts of mental health skills trainers but the protection around our special education staff being able to maintain family advocates it wasn't at the exact same level doing that I think is what contributes to the mental health and the well-being of our professionals not just because obviously it communicates

159value and importance but it also it it literally is about capacity and so when we think about that shift from for us around special education from 11% to 14% we're talking about density of your school population and the lived experience of what it means to support that school population and I think the thing that contributes to our staff's well-being is knowing that they're seen as a really valuable player and maintaining a level of Staffing that allows them to do the work that they need to do to keep themselves and students and families served and safe um and I think you know doing that it was significant it was significant to our special education staff when Ryan said we're not cutting that um that's a big deal and I think that that probably more than anything

160says we see you we value you your work is really important and without it we actually cannot do this I think that says more than anything I don't know if you want to say something about that I the other thing so next month the found foundation will be coming and presenting and I think that the alignment between their values and the values of the board um is really um tight now but I think that ongoing relationship and work um is really important as because they um you know it's the community in a lot of ways that is supporting this work as well as a a credible team and that comes through the foundation so continuing to make sure that that's well understood and articulated I think makes a big difference yeah any other questions comments

161do you have your hand up Sammy good so um we came a long way and we have a long way ahead of us and taking stock at where we are is really crucial I think novelist Buck uh Pearl Buck says that the the the tests of civilizations strength is how they treat their weakest and maybe this quot is with Liberty but the idea is this is it this is what we're doing and how better we can do is how better we are uh as a community so really thank you for reflecting that I can hear it in your voice I can hear it in the work that you do I can hear it in how you pay attention to the numbers to the stories and what can we do better so want to share my

162gratitude for uh for you doing this meaningful work and for allowing us to be in the space of supporting you uh doing it uh one thing I'm I'm I'm hopeful for uh is how can we um increase access to Medicaid waivers or Medicaid reimbursements uh and also uh ihn contracts to be a standard or something that is easier to navigate so it might be complex uh Q&A for this setting but any one page or half a page or something does not take of your time but could allow us to create those uh advocacy pieces whether with legislators or decision makers or other organizations is going to be something that is uh that's going to help and I want to say thank you when Senator weiden said why not why we're not seeing anyone from school

163district tapping into Medicaid funds at all I was like actually Senator let me tell you about what caralis is doing and the next day they release a letter uh telling all the district that have done tap into at least a dollar of Medicaid and I think there're about 34 or a little bit more uh start of January and I'm sure there's more so I want to thank you for uh charting a path uh that's many are following yeah I think the it's actually not a pager the answer would be like the rest of the systems need to catch up to Aaron wiac like his understanding of what we could be doing is so amazing and he is limited by the systems outside of us he we I mean he's just right there ready to go

164and as soon as they like give us one more bite he just takes that and then they give us an and he takes that and but it really is the systems outside of us catching up to what he knows is possible and is able to do um and that's the lag for sure are are we still waiting on OA to release their updated rules or guidance um I believe so and we're also you know we're uh the short answer right is we're a complicated entity that's connected to an ESD right and so those relationships impact those kinds of funding structures yeah thank you yeah do you have a comment okay um I just want to start by saying thank you for all the work that you're doing Sarah it's a pleasure to meet you in

165person finally you uh for those who don't know Sarah and I have communicated a lot before because of uh Sophia and my volunteer work in a program supporting families who are struggling to access food um I just want to say I would really encourage any way that we can we really are doing an incredible job of this already um we do a really good job of not only connecting with professional organizations with adult experiences and how to support these families but getting students involved with providing support in the ways that we can um I say that in Coral we have a community of students who are really compassionate and and generally driven and wanting to get involved and so I would just say we're doing a great job already and anything that we can do

166to sort of increase our awareness not only of the issues that are going around and facing students at our schools but also if there's any way to just increase awareness to students of ways to truly get involved I mean it could be as simple as just putting it in the advisory slides that all high school students have to attend it could be just putting in announcements not just the fact that we are struggling with these issues but hey here's a here's a program at your school that is helping to fight these issues and that's going to gain such a huge pool of Youth volunteers and people who really want to take a swing at such a huge issue um it's a big problem but I think that with the amount of empathy in the Corvalis

167High School community and in the Crescent Valley Community we could really get some serious work done by students by volunteer groups as long as we are providing students who aren't already involved with the knowledge of not only the issue but some of the potential solutions that they can begin to contribute to so thank you guys and uh yeah absolutely um I have a lot of things I wrote down and uh my question about what we can do to support you already got asked um or to support you more so I will say that was like my main question so thanks for already answering that um Byron you talked about system shifts in the beginning and I've just seeing how much you all do here and also how much like you said there is left to

168do and even with the with the housing situation I don't actually it's not as complicated as like a path forward isn't as complicated I feel like as people make it sound like just do the right thing and quit putting up barriers for families getting housing or finding new barriers when there's a solution that's Prov prevent or presented I'm getting sleepy so my words are getting mixed up thank you for bearing with me but um and I was looking at when we put up the numbers on the mckin mckin vento um there's some of the dip in the number because students graduated too probably it's possible yeah I mean it also could just be declining enrollment you know okay oh it's a good combo I'm wondering about the oh sorry just the housing that came up

169in the other communities and pulled families yeah housing that came and pulled I'm wondering about the um the ratio if because you know how I am with numbers so like the number went down but is the ratio kind of the same in our student population since our student population went down I'm glad you asked that it's not um it has changed and it's changed a lot I always think of those really what what those ratios of the categories reflect is what's available in the community and we don't have as much shelter space and so our numbers were actually really the shelter numbers were way lower and are unsheltered so cars tents like those situations was much higher I've never seen it that High um I think the caveat always is that when we categorize in

170that way we're only counting the first situation that someone is in and often we have families that are bouncing maybe between all four like in a given year and we're only counting like that first one at the start of the year or when they come to our district um but we saw a much higher number and we still are seeing a much higher number of students who are living um in like tents in the encampments in their cars or RVs that don't have hookups and things like that and so that is part of why in the last couple years my involvement with the street Outreach has gotten more int I mean I've always worked with them but I'm doing more with them because they're seeing a lot more of our families um when they're doing

171their work and so knowing what's happening out in the you know out in those encampments and when the sweeps are happening and then how that kind of reverberates through those communities and that trauma um we're just seeing a lot more of that okay yeah um one of the things that you said Sabrina that I appreciated was about like finding ways to be involved if people are like I don't think that's my area but it is all so connected and I really appreciate you pointed that up just like some of the work I do um outside of everything El um my other things I was going to say everything else out of other things I do um is about education about like the way that historic trauma and like murder and missing indigenous people impacts even

172our own local communities and those overlaps and um it's just an area I'm just really passionate about about helping with the education piece of the wise and like how they're all interconnected and it's not something that people really think about um and even with the DV situations the domestic violence and how prevalent that is and there's just so much work to do even within our own communities that is really impacted and which is really good that we have mental health too in the schools and so that's where I like the solutions are also interconnected are the ways to address these um issues and when you're I think was that you Chris that's said yeah about addressing the um or with the educating the community um I'm wondering how much is out there like a lot

173of people don't like to think about young people as being homeless right and um as a former a lot of people know I was a former homeless young person before like a many years ago because that was I was young a long time ago now but um but so I I really personally have that experience and appreciate yall's work in that sense too but um the stereotypes about people who are homeless and houseless is really reliant on a very specific image that I mentioned earlier in our conversations and so when we think about young people as being homeless and houseless because they're not always the same thing um that that kind of breaks that stereotype and it makes people have to really think about it differently and so I appreciate that work that you are

174doing to help students and Community families feel seen as people and for helping people understand like that stereotypical image that they might have isn't really necessarily all there is to it um so I just wanted to say that to appreciate the work that you all are doing and we're like way over time so obviously we're really passionate about this conversation this is like 28 minutes over I have the timer in front of me I've been watching I was like wow we went way over because I've been listening so intently that I didn't um we're done with this combo but um I did want to go back to the other parts that you mentioned earlier about special education to and state funding and reemphasize how important that conversation is as well and I appreciate um that

175reminder Ryan about like we can be using these numbers um and would love to talk more later on when we're thinking about advocacy as a board or as board members and that kind of work with the state on the funding pieces to help support those students more because um obviously we don't have enough resources to meet the needs and I'm as we continue to see that number increase from 14 and it'll probably continue to go up yes it will it's going to it's going to be like the question is eventually going to be like is education how we've had it working and so we need to probably in the future that's um to be determined in the future obviously but for now we could at least work on advocating on the funding piece so um

176thank you all for your time and for staying all up all late with us to have this conversation after a long day at works that you all do thanks can I share a number with them yes so while we were sitting here I and thinking about the numbers that left I went back through the households that my program has worked with and we had 23 Corvalis households that got housing outside for a total of 39 Corvalis School District kids whose permanent housing didn't come through in Corvalis so the housing complexes in Lebanon and Albany that came online before our housing complexes over here there those housing locations pulled 39 kids out of our district that's just the ones I know about from our program so that's where some of them went that's where some of

177the numbers went right like our numbers went down for a good reason um but it's unfortunate we couldn't house those 39 kids in the community they were already in anyway that's just who I found in like 15 minutes while we were sitting here so who knows how many it really is that's a big number anyway thank you yeah thanks team thank you and um the next item on our agenda is our board Norms Ryan's going to meet us on the other front thanks Reed all right so for the board Norm document the two modifications that we made one was based on the feed back from Judah related to um Clarity around um the conversations that happened among board members and then at the um end of the document um participating in school events which was

178a idea that Chris brought up so we've um Incorporated both of those into this document nice any um any discussion from the board if there's no discussion I'm happy to hear a motion I move to adopt the 20242 board Norms as submitted second so moved it by shaa and second in by theres any further discussion okay as been moved by shaa and second by theres to adopt the 2024 to 25 board Norms as submitted um Sammy I Chris I shaa I thees I I vote I motion passes okay last one okay and the next one is the board and superintendent working agreement so the modification we made there was to bring back some language we'd had in the past related to um responses to emails and the uh the chain of events um is there

179any discussion there's no discussion somebody could make a motion I move to adopt the 2024 to 25 board and superintendent working agreements as submitted second been moved by shaa and seconded by Sammy any further discussion okay it's been moved by shaa and seconded by Sammy to adopt the 2024 4 to 25 board and superintendent working agreements as submitted Sammy I Chris I shaa I theres I and I vote I that motion passes that was quick wow we usually have stuff to say um thank you Ryan for um for presenting those to us and that was our last um item of business on the agenda so the meeting is adjourned at 9:16 p.m. have a good night y'all thank you