Corvallis School Board Meeting (March 23, 2023)

001okay foreign no ice cubes don't flush them turn on the March 23 2023 meeting of the Corvallis School Board is called to order at 6 33 PM in the interest of public health and safety for all community members especially immunocompromised individuals and their families the Corvallis school board will continue to offer a virtual option for board member and District Personnel participation additionally public comment is available at some meetings both in person and virtually information about how to provide public comment is available on the Corvallis School District website the board agenda and packet as well as the link to the district YouTube channel are available on the school board page on the district website public meetings are live streamed on the district's YouTube channel and a recording is posted to the same channel typically the day

002after the meeting tonight we have directors Baker director L abdruba myself director finger McDonald director Adams our representative representative from Corvallis high school with Charlotte Patel Crescent Valley high school isn't that what I said tonight sorry and director Jones here in person and we have director Tommy participating remotely and director white bear is excused the first item on our agenda this evening is reading of our resolution number 220204 acknowledgment of women's History Month Corvallis school district 509-j acknowledgments of women's History Month resolution number 22-0204 whereas the Corvallis School District recognizes and pays tributes to the significant contributions made in our community by all people who identify as women and girls which includes trans women and girls and whereas the Corvallis school districts affirms what students that students families staff and community members should be valued

003for all aspects of for their identities whereas women's History Month grew out of a local efforts in Santa Rosa California began by the education task force of the Sonoma County Commission on the status of women by establishing women's history week in 1978 for the Sonoma school district and community and whereas International women's day has occurred globally since 1911 in an effort to celebrate the social economic cultural and political achievements of women and whereas women historically have been denied rights to vote own property and serve in political offices and other leadership positions until the 20th century and whereas trans women's identities have historically been criminalized and continue to be targeted by violence and whereas National Women's history week was first proclaimed the week of March 8 1980 and whereas women's history month has been proclaimed nationally

004since 1995 and whereas women have contributed to the history and Collective future of Corvallis in Benton County Oregon and whereas women's History Month provides an opportunity to continue the district's growth in learning about the many contributions of all women in to the nation the world and our local community and oh whereas education is a necessary component for creating a more Equitable and anti-racist Community Nation world and whereas the Corvallis school district has made a commitment to equity and anti-racism and whereas the Corvallis school district has a responsibility to honor and respect the diverse histories of our community and whereas the Corvallis School District believes each and every student must be celebrated and appreciated for this distinct and vibrant contribution made by sharing cultures language ideas beliefs and values within a school community again just kidding

005therefore it's working let it be resolved by the Board of Education of the Corvallis School District does hereby Proclaim March 2022 as well as each March annually as women's History Month in the district and strongly encourages students families staff and community members to join an existing local celebrations and encourage all schools in the district to help highlight this month in great appropriate ways as well as highlight the contributions of all women to the local community nation and Beyond historically and in current times adopted by the board of directors the school district 509-j Corvallis of Benton and Lynn counties Oregon at its regular meeting this 24th day February 2022. thank you all so the set the next item on our agenda is the report on our board goal listening sessions with Heidi East McGowan one more

006time it's really great to be with you here this evening and to share with you the the results of the eight community and Community engagement sessions that I facilitated and partnered with the district leadership and your chair Sarah in planning and organizing and then facilitating and I'm here to share with you so I'm excited to do that with you see so in our approach to the eight Community engagement sessions we approach this process to prioritize building continued relationships between the school district and the school board and with with students families staff and community members and Community stakeholders all while centering the district's vision and core beliefs in in for equity in the Corvallis schools that was our philosophy and our approach as we came together and designed and then facilitated we had 209 participants who

007attended and engaged in these eight sessions so let me go ahead and share with you a little bit about the the groups we met with the demographics and then I'll share with you briefly the methodology the data analysis that was done and then the themes I'll walk through each of the themes and share with you one or two of the direct comments that came from some of the participants just to give you a little bit of context and meaning I'll go through it all because that's in your report but I will share with you just a little bit around that so you can see on the screen here that the eight sessions we met with some some specific groups the the district diversity equity and inclusion committee the students advocating for Equity the safe group

008we met with special education advisory committee one in Spanish and one in English the casa Latinas unidos and NAACP in Spanish and then three open Community forums two in the evening and one in over the lunch hour and you'll see in the demographics just a snapshot here of of of of who attended is um first of all we we handed out an anonymous survey that at the beginning of each session and invited people to fill it out briefly it was a very short survey and hand it to us during the during the time we had 198 completed participants could select more than one response option for affiliation and for race so you'll see here under affiliation the majority identified either as a parent or a family member of a student under race the majority identified

009as white 52 percent and under gender majority identified as female 63.7 percent and under ethnicity the majority identified as non-hispanic and with 28.8 identifying as Hispanic the methodology that we used is that each engagement session lasted approximately an hour and a half with specific consistent questions that we asked the same of each of the groups and we used broad open-ended questions that focused on three content areas positives and strengths barriers and challenges and board goals and recommendations and participants were provided with the complete list of these questions before and during the the sessions and we also shared with them your current board goals so they could understand what those are and what some of those strategies are all of the materials we offered in Spanish and English and the participants were organized in small groups

010and to promote an environment that would Foster conversations so that we could truly hear from each person as best as we could in those in those settings final notes were taken during the engagement session so we had note takers in each small group for the purpose of documenting the content and then those responses from all of the eight sessions were systematically analyzed for common themes thematic analysis was used to identify and organize emerging patterns and I'm going to try to uh Channel my colleague and partner who supported this work with me her name is Kim Kim Rogers she has a deep background in research and data analysis and as a professor at Oregon state in the in the College of Kinesiology she couldn't be here tonight so I'm going to see what I can do

011here this is her skill set her strength she she and I used this process that's called interpretive phenomenological analysis had to practice that one that's not a common term what that really is is it's a qualitative methodology that seeks to explore the detail that participants are sharing about their lived experiences about about the meaning of their experience and how they make sense of their experiences it's it's a great way to to explore the complexity the process and the novelty of the participants lived experiences within the Corvallis school district and how it relates to the existing School Board goals so the criteria for the themes that were selected out of a lot of data as you can imagine that came from all of these questions and from the eight sessions really were two primary criteria one

012was frequency did we hear it more than once did we hear it several times and across across several sessions the second was the ensuring that the collective voices of the groups is represented in making sure it's represented in the themes so meaning that the groups that participated in the sessions for example the latinx community youth of color families of students with disabilities members from the general community the dedi community members with and within each of those groups most often were staff students families parents parents and community members so it may mean that well it does it does mean that every end of individual Voice or comment is represented here or or recorded in this particular theme or emerged as a theme um it's because we didn't hear it several times we just didn't hear it

013several times so areas such as supporting sustainability for for our environment within this within the school may have surfaced or or seeking a specific building Improvement may have surfaced but it didn't emerge into one of the themes so I just want to acknowledge that I also want to appreciate those who shared their their recommendation suggestions concerns and positives we really really appreciate and value those voices that attended okay so this report it's it's an initial analysis and a presentation of findings from those 209 people that engaged so I'll go ahead and walk through the common themes here so we will let me first share with you some of the themes that emerged around the positives and strengths so we asked the question what's one thing about the community that makes it a great place to

014raise children or to grow up in and this was really fun to start off with because we heard so many positive things from community members about why why Corvallis and why this community is really a wonderful place to live and to raise your children so the themes we heard were safety it's a safe Community my child feels safe the environment feels safe the fact that this is a college town and we have Oregon State University here was highlighted it provides a world that is bigger than Corvallis for for our children our students it brings resources and opportunities and diversity including International and cultural experiences the location of Corvallis it's beautiful it's peaceful it's quiet I always tell all my friends it's a 10 minute 15 minute jump across from one end to the other end

015of town it's great we have lots of green open spaces and we are close to the mountains and we're close to the ocean there's caring Connection in our community we are a welcoming community that cares about each other and we have resources and there's appreciation for those resources acknowledged like our public our Public Library like Parks and Rec like the like our boys and girls club like I'm our Multicultural Center like impact in Special Olympics so that for all students in special education to participate positives and strengths in the Corvallis School District were also very strongly highlighted when we asked what what participants valued about this school district and what the school district is doing well we heard student and Community engagement the the district values input and involvement from parents holding the listening session

016we heard that over and over again we really appreciate holding these listening sessions do more of them please we heard respecting students um and recognizing that they have knowledge and something to share and we really want to make sure our students are full and and that they are currently heard and have feel like they have a sense of belonging and then also I acknowledge that our superintendent is accessible and available quality teachers loud and clear we have dedicated excellent caring teachers that are the glue that hold us together and we're able to attract and retain great teachers student support there's a commitment to the Dual language program promotion of Social and emotional learning and growth mindset we have mental health services facility Improvement was also highlighted as with a lot of gratitude that the improvements

017to the facilities and the buildings is really appreciated that the district LED this and our community supported it and then commitment to Dei to diversity education equity and inclusion inclusion in particular the safe and pride groups sponsored by the district and equity in the classroom is is taught and that they are reflected in the goals and the policy of the board so let's turn our attention to barriers and challenges what challenges and barriers prevent students staff and families from having a successful experience we heard and I actually let me acknowledge these are not ranked in any order so that maybe they're said one through five that's not a ranking but um we heard we did hear under this category that diversity and cultural competence is a challenge and a barrier such as lack of diversity

018in the classroom within the staff in our in the district and it was acknowledged we need to find ways to reach out to families of colors and directly heard sometimes there's a quote sometimes we are blind to families of color we heard challenges and barriers under that emerged as a theme under special education the schools need more staff and Educators that have experience working with children with with students with special needs caseloads are too big systems to support students during transitions from one level to another was highlighted um actually frequently throughout this this report you'll see under a theme of academics academic expectations and standards are not high enough we want them higher specifically related to math and math detracting noting that the programs that there may be there was a note also that and

019concern that some programs have been canceled such as robiotics or there was a perception that a program some programs have been canceled behavioral issues emerged as a challenge and a barrier in one of the themes where extremely disruptive students in class creates a barrier for students access to learning and that staff and behavioral staff are overwhelmed and bowling was acknowledged also as a barrier under behavioral issues or Challenge and then basic needs another barrier and challenge is housing food insecure insecurity and families navigating poverty struggle with barriers and challenges that prevent them from having a successful experience in the district then we asked what challenges and barriers prevent students and staff and families from accessing families or from accessing programs or resources and we heard Transportation transportation to and from school transportation after school to

020get to practice whether it's swim practice or whatever and or you can't stay for help after school because you have no way to get home we heard knowledge and this was an interesting theme that we had a hard time finding a word for but essentially knowledge about resources and programs that exist what is it we don't know what they are we heard that if information's that information is not getting you to parents if students aren't aware of the resources parents won't know what they are there was just this general not knowing what resources are available and if students don't know there may not be anyone reaching out to ask them what they need what what they might need another barrier was language limited language or such as if it's not in the student's first language

021there's a barrier to communication or and lack and then that leads to lack of knowledge about programs we also heard immigrant and international families are not familiar with the K-12 system in the U.S and so there's just a lot of barriers in trying to understand and access programs and resources Financial Resources was another barrier where we heard that only some families and students can access tutoring to accelerate specifically in math and that we heard now only students with money can advance families and students that have to work so students who are working families who are working we also heard that it's they have a very hard time connecting to resources they need probably for time communication was the last one here um some information is just not communicated so people so individuals may not know

022how to access those programs or how to prepare early for example one example called out was that um not knowing that I need that a as a family I need to prepare early in middle school with my student in order for them to take higher level courses in the high school so just not knowing some simple things like that to prepare okay how are we doing here supports supports we asked the question what can the school district do to better support students and prepare them for the challenges and opportunities they will face in the future so these were some really recommendations and suggestions diversity and cultural competence was one lack of diversity in the classroom within the staff or in Corvallis um it was was suggested as a strategy or something the district could try

023to work on and be intentional about there's a need to see accommodate and find ways to reach families of color actually pardon me oh that was some of these themes are crossing over yep secondly special education the um just want to make sure I've got that correct foreign pardon me here I think I've already I have already touched on nails my notes got a little bit confused here my my apologies okay thanks thank you I'll go ahead and read through these because I think that um I think that we have we have yes we have touched these build Partnerships there we are okay how to better support and prepare students for challenges and opportunities they'll face in the future here we go build Partnerships here's your recommendations stronger connection between staff families to support the

024plans of the student Partnerships between the schools the community and Oregon State those are untapped resources so build those connections stronger academic excellence recommend challenging every student as they uh at their level that they need to be and there was a note just don't take away the hard things so continue the challenge teach life skills such as personal finances interviewing skills Stress Management taxes good eating habits cross-cultural experiences for the students and their families and then we also heard College and Career Readiness support teaching students about different Pathways for their future given that not everyone's going to go to college and then transitions we heard a lot about transitions in a lot of of the community engagement sessions but I will we'll also call that out we heard that specifically from our groups with families

025with disabilities we heard the recommendation to have a transition program from elementary to middle school middle school to high school high school to career and after and we also heard for students with disabilities there's a need for a thorough and a thoughtful transition plan specifically okay and then we asked folks the participants when you reflect on the board's five goals which of these are important to continue to prioritize is anything missing what goals would the would you like to see the district prioritize to prepare students for their futures we heard Equitable systems under that goal specifically add disability to the Equitable systems goals and there was a note around missing student identity under the strategy under the health and wellness student student safety needs to be included more resources and support for emotional learning mental

026health food security bullying and harassment and a real world learning we heard more more cultural learning missing financial and computer media and literacy skills under the academic achievement there was a note that only reading and math are highlighted what about other subjects and the recommendation to set High benchmarks and then lastly implementation and evaluation this was brought up I would say probably more than conversation around the specific goals implementation and evaluation how will we know for meeting the goals so there were a lot of questions around more specificity under the implementation the strategies and an evaluation accompanied with it or design or designated outcomes defined outcomes articulated and then lastly we included a specific question in alignment with the district's goals around and centering Equity are what recommendations participants had for advancing equity in the

027district we heard these these five themes student involvement include students in their version of success increased student voice and their include more understanding of student perspectives students so that students feel included and like they belong we heard more resources and support particularly for that for children with disabilities to be included in that specific goal to prioritize by POC Affinity mentors to pardon me to buy to prioritize bypoc Affinity spaces like safe that's already already supported and LBGTQ and half staff represented representing LBGTQ students to connect kids with people internships coaches mentors and there was a question can the district help families with with barriers such as transportation child care or other barriers acknowledged thirdly communication keep asking for feedback and experiences like this finding ways to hear staff on the front lines and overall making

028sure people feel safe and secure sharing what they see as inequities in our district teachers and staff support staff training to help all types of children and to support training on implicit bias and learning strategies to mitigate it and then of course recruiting and retraining retaining diverse staff and lastly around curriculum implementing Equity into the curriculum from a young age including studies at middle and including including ethnic studies at middle and high school as a social studies option that's a lot good so I just would love to to hear your Reflections if invite you if you have any Reflections or questions that I might be able to answer or expand on from what I've shared with you tonight thank you and I just just want to make sure everybody keeps in mind that so the

029the goal of tonight is to get this information um Kristen miles is also listening in and so she has the sense as well when we come back together on May 4th we'll be using that work session to work to develop um another re iteration of our board goals at least we will be working towards that I don't know that we will accomplish and complete that that night but I as you're listening and asking questions just be considering how um what information do you feel like you still need or would be valuable to you as an individual board member as we come back to this work in May so I just want to set up that context as you delve into the questions you have I won initiative anyway um first I want to express immense

030appreciation for this effort both for District staff and the team that operationalized this went out and and got this information this is immensely um helpful for us as a board and just so I get to do a little bit of qualitative research and the work that I do I know how meticulous you have to be in doing it so thank you so much uh for for doing this work and bringing this report for for our board um really love all the learning this is this is really going to help us Orient ourselves my question is and you touched on this at the beginning of your report my concern is about small voices that are not going to be heard these are high level themes but there are some groups in here like our American Indian

031Community there's poor respondents probably there's themes there that didn't lift out there are small voices that are important that need to be heard is there a way to slice this data by demographics or and the other dimension I I pulled out and we didn't ask it in the survey is by special education or disability um is there a way to identify who are those who are those student groups that we need to pay close attention to and can we lift their stories out of this that is such a great question thank you for asking it because the demographic survey that data was Anonymous we don't have specific attachment to each individual that commented yes I know and um the way that we could slice that data is specific is the there was intention that we

032would hear from specific groups and we shared those groups at the beginning plop to them real quick um you know hearing from the two groups specifically special education advisory committee one in English one in Spanish we do have that sliced we have that because all of it's recorded per group per date not individual of course but the the small group conversations that were recorded um no no takers recorded them um the safe group um the the casa Latinos you need us and NAACP group so we could we can certainly share that um we have all that raw data that um is there I'll say and since it's already coded hopefully it wouldn't be too hard to lift that out I'll have to check with Kim she did some great coding I did we both did

033some separate analysis and then we come together and discuss themes we go back and and she's the researcher who does the coding so I would be I'd be happy to ask her and follow up with you I looked at the superintendent do we want to do that yeah do we feel that that do you feel that that would be important because I know I'm curious I'm just one board member here voicing this concern I don't know if there's broad agreement so I just want to go with the same flow that Vince started deep appreciation for you the staff and the community uh it's it's a really important activity that we engage in and deeper our gratitude for everybody participated it makes the job uh easier and also a challenge that's worthy that we need to

034reflect the values of the community and from the report looks like we're in the right direction but we need to get it right all the way from the level of high level goals and vision to the details of the goals and I think this activity is getting us there and I want to lean on the question mark that's been elevated and I did a little bit of uh research on Grounded Theory back then when I applied one tool and a challenge with grounded Theory and uh driven analysis where you build up themes uh and uh is is very helpful you see the patterns and you can Elevate those codes as they emerge but when you have uh unique voices that are not necessarily a pattern in the whole Community but they might be important uh

035voices they might not emerge through the tool and I'm I'm curious and I want to really support Vince's approach if we had Affinity groups specific meetings maybe having specific uh not necessarily full-blown reports but specific uh themes on uh do do the themes from those individual Affinity groups support the overall or are there more emerging themes that we haven't that did not emerge all the way to the top sure sure sure so so what I was suggests is two things one is thinking about as you're developing your board goals what level of detail are you looking for we wanted to make sure that you un recognized the work we did to try to bring in community to the conversation and then also recognizing that there's additional scope with that and so I would think about

036that as we think about other things that have cost parameters and so I'd want to get old board the importance of that before we would move forward with that I'm at this oh there we go it's like it thinks I'm Sarah or something right doesn't isn't yours always the one that doesn't work every week um so uh I think that this is a really great um idea I also think this was something that we needed to ask for before they did this um because they likely would have organized a little differently if they knew we were going to come back and say we want you to link these four people because they represent a specific group we're interested in so I I do have a little bit of concern about asking how much a digging

037back has to happen um and I don't feel like I have a clear I don't know if you know the answer to that right now like that might be something you you guys need to go back and consider but I I feel like um I just want to be I I think it would be better if we are aware um that uh the data might not be set up to make that readily available to us um so my first thought is note to self we this board we know the things we want to know so the next time we do something like this we should make that list and say we're going to be expecting that we can look at it in this way I also think it's very possible though that if you got

038if you held separate sessions and am I understanding that right you probably have some summative Notes From The Sessions um like you bet with a particular you said you have the safe group right right so there's probably notes from that from the note takers yes so then and then they were integrated in uh when you coded so those weren't coded separately and then is that so I would need to check with Kim okay she or she organized okay all in certain themes and sub themes uh and I did my own separate organization which is not what and then we compared notes rather yeah okay I also send Mike I'll just my point is depending on how they set this up this could be a really big undertaking and I don't think I would feel great

039about saying please go back and do that um maybe they set themselves up in a way where it won't be but my guess is that's not the case and this could be a some significant rework well and I I was not at the safe meeting I was not at the Casa Latino sunitos NAACP meeting I was at the seaac meeting and I can see the themes that I heard in that meeting in this report pretty loud and clear so you know from from that meeting in that specific group I feel like those voices are very much heard in this report and I think you know we need to remember that we're looking for high level themes not weeds because that's our job so I think my thought is that we ask if it's possible to

040see the sort of high level if there are any high level themes that were consistent in those groups that we know those but it would we do have a data issue because we're sort of data mining after the fact but I think if it's possible to see broader themes that are consistent in the specific groups we looked at that would be great but you know if it means reworking all the data again we don't want to go down that road yeah Heidi and Kim both know how much you all like data so they knew that going into this and we talked about it earlier this week so yeah there's no surprises in that yeah right so I think one thing I'm reflecting on as I digested the reports presentation and our discussion today uh is

041one of the next steps I believe as we do the debriefing is the ability for us to map the report to the framework that I believe osba has a one pager about around what's the role of the board and how you map the goals to strategies to action plans and I see Vince not in his head uh he knows exactly the documents we're talking about I think this is a good opportunity for us to revisit that framework because some information we might change a word might change a full goal some information might inform the reordering of the strategies or introducing new strategies or eliminating strategies and some of it might influence the metrics and benchmarks how we're going to measure the work some of it might inform how we communicates about all of that with

042the community if we believe we're doing it but we're not communicating it or sharing it the way that the community is expecting it and some of it frankly might be operational and we should be okay by just setting the expectation and that's it we accomplish or if we stick to the goals or maybe revise the goals some of the notes that's our operational will be taken care of throughout the institution if that makes sense so that's a step that I'm reflecting on as we engage in this process and digester reports is how can we map that whether we should do it on our own or it should be part of a report or it should be just a framework that we look at as we deliberate next time uh Sammy touched on one of my

043one of my other questions here and and continuing on your line line of comment how also will we prioritize this information um and particularly with an eye of how you know certain actions will impact student outcomes because that's our core mission so since making of the data you know getting it organized in a way that we can process it get it into in the various aspects of our strategic documents but then prioritizing what's most important first well and I feel like that gives us some work to do as we get ready for the May 4th meeting with Kristen that we each sort of individually look at the priorities look at you know sort of start thinking about it on our own so when we come together with Kristen we're not starting from scratch on that

044well I'm wondering for that prioritization we do have some education experts on our board but not all of us are and I'm wondering if we need staff alongside to support us in helping us make sense of that because you're the education professionals hi everyone Shawna go ahead oh okay can you hear me okay all right thank you hi hi so I just wanted to First just comment and share my gratitude for you Heidi Kim everybody else who's involved in the listening sessions this was just such a really a significant undertaking in the community and have a lot of gratitude for the community for showing up both in the listing sessions as well as in all the other ways that the community reached out to share through email through to share through private conversations or small

045group conversations and other ways to really have your voices heard and uplifted in the space and I'm just really grateful to be doing this learning together one of the learnings that that I'm reminded of in seeing all of this information is that we know we know there are places for growth in this District always and what I'm continually reminded of in hearing these voices and seeing all this information is that we don't have to go that alone and we really shouldn't so this is just really a celebration of of hearing from the community and thinking about what is our role in really making sure that we're listening deeply and carrying that forward in every way possible um Vince to your point I really love the idea of I know staff and educators are over taxed

046and overstretched and looking at how could we really meaningfully bring them into the conversation so that what is developed into goals trickles out into practice as well in really meaningful ways I think that's very critical and Heidi I had a question for you around educator and staff needs we did hear a couple of things come through in terms of Trends related to needs for support around certain trainings or certain professional development over the last couple of months and and Beyond we've heard just how incredibly burned out many staff members are how overstretched or stressed they are and questions and comments coming up about their own well-being and their role and I'm just curious if anything came up that maybe didn't rise to the level of significant Trends as we see in the report that might

047point to staff or educator needs yeah I'm trying to reflect back on some of the areas we heard and there were some comments made there were some feedback made in the open Community sessions in particular where we had more staff attend some of the open Community sessions around around burnout postcovid um yeah I say that sort of postcovid still yeah as we're all coming out of covid um I don't recall seeing specific areas or recommendations in that and and Shauna that may be an area to Warrant another you know to Warrant some additional feedback specifically given that um or having a specific group where you listen to staff specifically around that area thanks Heidi yeah I'm gonna stop screen sharing so we can I just want to say thank you to both you and Kim

048for walking alongside Us in this process um this was the first time we had an opportunity to work together and I really enjoyed it and I'm sure that in the future we'll have opportunities to do this sort of work again um and I just again I one of the things that you may not know about Heidi is Heidi it lives in Corvallis and has been a part of the community for a long time and so um it's been fun for me to be able to watch as Heidi's been engaging with her community around what happens in our school district and it's just been um I'm just so happy that we were connected and have this opportunity to work with one another so thanks a lot I really appreciate it yeah I feel the same thank

049you Ryan this was a pleasure to support the school I graduated the district I graduated from many moons ago my kids graduated from and um and just our community as a whole thank you so much Ryan this was a pleasure happy to support you however I can as you continue to navigate digest all of this information thank you so great yeah so I want to also express my gratitude it was attending the listening sessions was it felt like um it felt like one of those things that you were okay this was the right thing to do yeah because there was sort of the hunger and I think the response we got um about around communication and the eagerness to have opportunities to talk to the school district um so I really appreciate your your ability

050to facilitate that kind of thing and I also want to express my appreciation to all our note takers and our Caterers and our child care providers and all the other people who made these events happen because um you know having people there to do things like provide child care made it an easier lift for people to come in the evening and and share this with us so thank you to you and thank you to everyone who made this happen okay all right thank you all okay so the next item on our agenda is the mckinney-vento family Advocate Mental Health Systems of care presentation with Sabrina Joe tequila Sarah Martha and Judy Jody sorry it's a long title for a presentation and it's a lot of people we'll pass around I don't know if you remember

051but the last time we were here was about summer programs and it was the incident of the great back of the head incident let's just remember that the camera got a little off here we are uh we're happy to be here it's nice to see you most of you um we're gonna walk through a presentation and most of you received a report from us and this is not that so um I want to be clear about that um we'll take a second to introduce ourselves so you know everybody who's here um but what we're up to today is um we're going to talk a little bit about the work in the student services department by really just talking about some key projects and key things that we're either working on or wanted to share with

052you a little bit separate from what you would have maybe seen in the actual report so we'll take a quick second everybody's gonna have a chance to talk but I think it's a courtesy to know who's up here as we get started Kila you get to start okay good evening my name is Keela Lynn and I am an LCSW here at the Corbell School District buenas noches good evening my name is Martha Calderon I am the mental health clinical supervisor or Cosa as well pretty hi I'm Joe like I'm the district's mental health program manager it's good to see you all again hello everybody my name is Jody meal I am the Corvallis School District of drug and alcohol um use some misuse response specialist Sabrina student services hi I'm Sarah Devine I am Our

053Family Outreach supervisor McKinney van to liaison and Sean Bernard special education coordinator our Point Clicker for you to start here which is just a reminder of your goal that kind of anchors our work I like to think that the work that we're up to supports all of the goals that you have and I think that that's true when we think about the ways that values we have around care for students and families in the same way that we think about our work with racial equity and other areas of serving marginalized communities is in every goal and everything that we're up to and I appreciate that it's a kind of explicitly called out in our health and wellness goal and so it seemed important to start there and remember that your focus on that work now

054a number of years ago helped to build and develop the work that this team is up to and doing the work for all of the time that supports this goal that you have I forget that you have a screen behind us and I seriously is like the president's walking in I'm not even sure what's happening but whatever it is behind me is very exciting turns out it's just our slides okay I appreciate that really important before we start to talk about the projects and the work to acknowledge that the team of people that hold this work is really extensive and does a tireless amount of service in our buildings um I was talking tequila yesterday and she made a cheeky joke which means I'm going to call it out now um and she asked me

055how's the week going and I said um it's been a rough week we we've had some deaths in the community we've had some significant kind of violent incidents happen in our community that impacts our students and our families and I was saying listing for Kila the list and she said well maybe you could just show up and list that list for the school board so that they understand what people are up to in our buildings and I kind of appreciated that because it is just true when we think about the staff that hold our buildings up we're talking about school counselors and social workers and mental health staff and family advocates but what else is on that list there is also our health Navigators and our dean of students and our physical therapists and occupational

056therapists right and special education teachers and ell teachers and all of these staff that hold just extensive amounts of support work for students and families and staff day in and day out and when we think about what's happening in our community there's lots of people who are navigating really complicated and difficult and sometimes very sad situations and this staff that are in our buildings are the ones bearing that in day in and day out and so it did seem worth kind of calling out the work that our teams are up to I think in particular when we think about this group we think especially about our school counselors and social workers who are teaching in classrooms working with students working with families doing a lot of on-demand grief response and support a lot of intervention

057support when we think about suicide intervention and Kela will talk about that work here a little bit but just staff that are holding that as they are also teaching in classes I think about our family advocates and health Navigators who are navigating a pretty complicated set of issues in our community right now around housing and access to resources Sarah we'll talk a little bit about some of that and we think about our mental health staff who are helping our staff and students and families in a time of pretty significant dysregulation access school and be present and be a part of what's going on so it just seems worth the call out this is not readable um that's I blame Sean for that mostly I intended to click on the link which was like a lot

058bigger and he put it on the page but I guess what this gives you is not the specific people which maybe they appreciate for the three people watching on YouTube but it is a good visual that the team of people in our buildings that is holding support work is extensive and full of just amazing amazing people on the ground doing the work day in and day out I think the last piece I would name in terms of teams is just the amount of support we have with our community connections I think Joe and I were just remarking recently that our Partnerships within the community seem like they grow every year just more and more um and I think this year in particular as the community is in this great transition from what kovid was to

059what covet is now we see just some amazing Partnerships that have developed in our community that also support the work that's happening in our buildings and that feels really noteworthy I think something that I would highlight as well is a lot of times when folks are here to present to you they talk a lot about what's happening in our school buildings and I think the team of people you see in this list really represents how our systems permeate our community they're not just what students do when they show up they're what students lives at home are like helping students and their families with housing which I know has been a topic of conversation here with food security with mental health care with coordinating their own health care with dealing with the loss and transition of

060loved ones and so those issues really talk about how embedded our schools are in the fabric of Corvallis and the surrounding area so we're gonna walk through just a couple of areas that we thought would be important for you to hear from us about um there's some time at the end for questions if we talk quickly we've given Joe one slide and really it's Martha's and so I feel like the odds are totally in our favor um but they are first so I guess that will that'll help us the class just right here I'll pay very close attention to the clock technically there's two slides I just need to be clear um this one's a bit of a review I I think I just wanted to make sure to say for you all um you

061know your mental health program continues to be the first school district owned and operated mental health program in the state I say the first because there's other districts that are now moving towards building this um following our lead which is pretty remarkable we continue to have therapists and skills trainers in our schools and we have interns working in school social workers and mental health staff in different buildings as well and that focus is really addressing how do we continue to grow and build a Workforce of continuing Mental Health and Social Service work into the future and go to the next one thanks um one part I did want to highlight here is you know this year especially um but really one of the focuses of the mental health program has been addressing racial Equity um

062this program was founded to increase access specifically to students of color and their families the lgbtq plus community and students experiencing multi-generational poverty this year our team has done an exceptional amount of training and work with Martha as well as mercy and Cuchi Rivero in terms of our own Equity work the intersection of how mental health and Race come together is a huge topic it's been a topic in our state in terms of diversifying the mental health Workforce but it's also just an issue in terms of how do we look at the intersection of traditional traumas that students experience as well as the trauma of of racial aggression and racial violence and how those things intersect we continue to have a pretty highly diverse staff team especially when you look outside to the rest of

063the mental health Workforce and we continue to really work to support and retain them which is a primary goal this year for me and for Martha as we look to just keep our team healthy and strong and able to serve people I'm now going to turn it over to Martha who actually brought a letter and I'm just going to let you introduce that thank you good evening I believe you may have a copy of it you may have the English version however I'm going to bring some diversity to the table and read it to you all in Spanish specifically because I want to honor the few Latinos that are in here so okay so here we go this is actually from a parent and while you all received many informations on the data the data

064doesn't speak to the heart and the support that we've been able to provide right for some of these families this is particularly from one of our parents her name is Romi Striker some of you may know her as she attends some of the meetings in Delta and other parent meetings that we've been able to hold so here we go starts off with gracias gracias gracias again corresponda hola Sola quieres Familia pasado um services anos historia soltera Pandora [Music] foreign de Pais udad Hermosa effective differente is locales Madre Mundo perfume encontria algen Hispano foreign pasado Una pandemia and Serranos is social Los Hermanas comments is preguntas constantes is mama culpa Etc and dos Mundos de casa es con principles evalores hispanos yes etc qualifications corner Escuela persona foreign concentro pero yo dondeos La Cultura Graces like

065a psychologist but that's the way they say that Mexico it's actually a therapist just wanted to make sure it's clarified um now I lost my piece sorry about that all right adios Tiempo this is Studios relaciones contos companeros maestros de la casa is asacado qualifications a main contrada is ondria Mas tiene sir is Etc is in master person Etc see that the personal IM encantaria increases gracias grupos de la thank you thanks thanks hi everyone I chose so I you know we're at in our second year with a broader team across the district with family advocates and so I was really thinking a lot about how that has changed our work and some of the things that look different from when I first started this job and it was essentially just me and one other

066person and when the piece that I really landed on was looking at how we support with housing and evictions and how different it feels now than how it used to be and so as you can see here um I pulled our team in February around how many families they had supported and what that looked like and it was at that time over 37 direct interventions that prevented an eviction for that family and I put some examples here you can read of the ways that that support looks since we don't just intervene or support in one way so you know we use our own funds we know funds in the community we help connect there we might just get creative and help someone find new housing so that they don't have a period of homelessness when

067an eviction is coming and when we believe that an eviction might be unlawful we can connect them to those legal resources to fight an eviction and we have done that successfully and I was just thinking um again about how how it looked when we had you know no staff presence in schools that felt the same way and so often the ways that families would come onto my caseload would be when the kid disappeared from school and we didn't know where they were we didn't know what was happening it wasn't necessarily a family situation that was known or like held within the school and I would do a lot of work in the school would do a lot of work and eventually we would find them and they were someplace else and they'd had this crisis

068they'd had this eviction but the student had missed a lot of school they had gone through tremendous stress and that was the first time I worked with them and that's also a really challenging time to try to build rapport when they're in the middle of this crisis and don't necessarily have that existing trust there's fear around are you going to be calling you know Child Protective Services because we're homeless is the school going to judge me how is that going to feel and that was a challenging time to find out and of course it also did not give us an opportunity to prevent that eviction if we could have you know leveraged some resources and so we it was a lot of putting out fires was really how it felt and again it meant a

069lot of ruptures it meant a lot of a lot of Miss time and so I think about with the presence that we have in schools currently how different it is when we know these families long before a big crisis happens and our staff are connecting with them and noticing maybe some changes that tip them off that something might be going on or when the eviction is coming the families already have that trust with our team and so they're able to have that conversation where we can explore you know different options ahead of time to hopefully prevent it from happening at all but we also know that we can't prevent every eviction and we don't and we do continue to have families experience that but even when that happens I was reflecting on the differences when

070we have this team and this existing relationship between the advocate and the family so for example we when we know an eviction is happening we can make sure that they have as many resources as possible during that time that we're helping them plan for that next step as much as possible we track them so we don't lose we don't lose track of where this family is which means we have transportation set up from the first night that they are going to be in a new location and that student does not miss any school so at the very least they have that continuity even when the rest of their lives might be going through a lot of chaos and Trauma we're able to connect with the school and let them know what's going on if the

071family is okay with that and put in as many supports and extra things that we can at the building like maybe they need to shower at the school in the morning maybe we need to get them a hot spot because they're going to be somewhere without electricity and that way they at least can connect for their homework or you know whatever the pieces are and all of that those layers of support are happening in a way that I just never saw before and I was trying to think in the last two years if I could remember a time where the first time our team knew of a family and crisis was during that kind of really intense crisis and I actually couldn't think of one like these were families that we knew already that we

072were already supporting and already working with and that has really changed the ability for families to stay connected it to school during that time and to trust that the school can hold that and that those supports will still be there and then at the very least again within that school Community there is still stability even if all of the rest of those things are really hard and really unsure and so that was just that was kind of a piece I wanted to highlight around just the benefits of the relational work that our team does that just feels different in these last couple of years that's really phenomenal and I also just wanted to give an update to the numbers that you had in your report since that was from a little while ago that we

073pulled that and it just shows I think the reality of how it's always changing I don't remember exactly what the report listed as our mckinney-vento numbers but we are up to over 340 students as of today I pulled it just this afternoon so that just shows that the work is always growing I think one of the pieces that comes to mind for me as well when I think about um having family advocates and and health Navigators and a few of our schools as well um having become the norm is the communication within the building right our ability to build relationships but also within the community and I was remembering an incident that occurred a while back where we were supporting a family and in the course of an afternoon we were able to get in

074touch with people at DHS we were able to get in touch with people at cardva we were able to call Lorena shout out to Lorena Reynolds where we called her office and basically demanded to talk to her and ask for legal advice in the minute and she talked to us and gave us legal advice in the minute and just thinking about the community sees the work that's happening is a part of what they are a part of and the more that I see that happening the more that I see our community showing up as partners in those situations and it's not uncommon now where we're supporting families and we're working with three four five different agencies I can think of one this week or Jackson Street Youth Shelter showed up and was on the scene

075as quickly as we were and partnered with us through the entire event and I just think the more that that is happening the more that families see the school less is the only place but just as a place they can turn to to help us make all of these connections and that feels pretty significant mm-hmm she's moving this is least trade places because there's three people who want to see what I look like am I on oh I am just making sure hi I'm gonna take a deep breath in I don't know if you're there yet or not but wow I just listened to all this and um got to sit at the end and look down and know um that we work in hard beautiful and I'm going to move to that in this

076conversation too I'm really excited to talk to you about and I know I should come in very solemn because it's a hard topic but we're really doing good things when it comes to Suicide Prevention intervention and postvention in our district I want to acknowledge right off the get-go that if you don't know about 988 the federal government has put that access samsa has put that access number out for us and we should all be able to partake in that I don't have enough I don't have except for one but I will make sure that your next board meeting because I've just asked for us to get them reprinted that we have 988 cards that win in all our lanyards at the beginning of the year when we taught QPR so know that that access is

077out there it's a crisis number for you to utilize if you were having a crisis event or if you're working with someone in your community in your personal home with your neighbors to be able to call and use as a warm line or a hotline like help me walk through this I don't know what else to say or where else to go and they will help support that and backtrack to you to be able to get community numbers for that there was my PR notice 988 should give us a little a promise for that the next slide this is the river of interventions that the Corvallis school district has for suicide prevention intervention and post-vention information I'm going to quickly walk through but you're welcome to ask me your hauler in a different capacity like

078can you give me more information or I want to look at that curriculum or what more that means at the very top of the river you're seeing three different icons that talk about prevention activities that are happening within our buildings specifically sources of strength just because it happened last week brought all three of our high schools together to have an event GG Sims oversees that in our district to have an event with our student body sources of strength specifically talks about if you have hope health and strength within yourself and you're able to recognize that for yourself in your peer groups that you're able to hold to that even within a crisis this situation was specifically when we talk about suicide there's always an ambivalence even if I'm thinking about a hard moment or a

079hard event or my life ending that we can reach into what our strengths happen to be and involved past that you see QPR I'm going to talk a little about about that in my next slide and if I backtrack of them that the Corvallis school district and the Corvallis Community has a partnership it's called the Corvallis Community Suicide Prevention task force there is about 30 of us and community members that get together any youth serving agency and actually we've written it in our conversation that it's 24 and Below because we want Oregon State and Oregon State's partnership I'll talk about that in a few minutes also but if you think about our youth serving agencies in the community Jackson Street Youth Center being one of them if we thought about the juvenile department or Old

080Mill how are we partnering to make sure our in interactions are messaging our prevention are in line with each other and that we're resource sharing with each other we're right now having conversations about mental health awareness May month we're also talking about the walk out of Darkness that Oregon state is having they'll talk to you about that in a minute um you save as another training that our um our social workers counselors and mental health therapists are going through because we know that they're the first line of access when we think about suicidal ideations and actually having an intervention happening in the moment for our youth we have care coordination mousse with both of our County agencies if someone does happen to land in their Arena that we may be able to with the parent

081permission be able to hear about that information the next morning or that evening so the next morning we could do some wrap around support within the building we have mental health as you know services within our district and within our community and lastly we have a postvention connect training and post-vention conversations and learnings for us you'll hear a little bit more about that at the end of the presentation when we think specifically about the QPR training I'm going to give a nod to Chris Hawkins who is in our audience she started QPR in our district it's been at least five years that we have been doing QPR training that's question persuade refer if any of you want that kind of training or if you want that as a school board itself I would be more

082than happy to make sure that that happens for you it's an hour and a half training you treat yourself as if you were doing QPR the same parallel process that you would be doing CPR to someone in a physical crisis QPR for someone in a mental health crisis this year we have had 700 of our Corvallis School District staff train we try to reach Universal of what that looks like because we know the more we say the word suicide the more we start to demystify that the more we have the opportunity that you your neighbors our students our colleagues have an opportunity to have a listening ear to when someone is distressed and to be able to get help we hope that you could start that conversation because of QPR and even if you can't

083our training this really clarifying someone who can't and that we start as the out of the darkness walk says bringing Suicide Prevention out of the darkness I don't know how you grew up in your family system but in my family system it was taboo and it actually was a sin to talk about so we know through education and information we can change the opportunity for how someone leans into that of the training 97 9 I would hate to be wrong in this statistic 99.7 of our staff feel that they could apply QPR because of their skill set and if you go to the next slide I really want you to hear not only the qualitative but the quantitative information we asked the question for the last several years if you've had QPR in the past

084from us have you utilized it you have one of our staff saying yes I've been more bold in asking the question to those who have warning sides then I refer to a school counselor or someone else saying I have directly used QPR with a co-worker or someone else saying yes a family member thank you for providing the training and the next slide points out to you that of those people that got trained with us 206 people wrote a qualitative story where's my coding people about how they utilized it since having the training in our District 206 stories showed up this year they talked about how they utilized it with our school staff with colleagues with a friend they utilized it as a parent as a partner as a trusted adult as a family member as

085a coach as a neighbor and the list went on the last quote I'm reading you is I have used the training to ask students if they are hurting and in one instance if they're feeling suicidal this training has emboldened me to ask some difficult questions Applause to us for doing this and normalizing the conversation and Kentucky next slide if you will we also have youth safe training as I told you that the mental health therapists the school counselors in the school social worker 73 of us at this point in time have done this targeted evidence-based program we are the first line of Leaning into a student who might be struggling with their own suicidal ideation when we look at where we're at right at the very moment and as we move forward when we look

086at intervention and postvention postvention is the specific word that you use after a death by someone of suicide we are right in the midst of revising our suicidal ideation form we've had a variety of different staff and clinicians be able to look at that form and figure out what best serves us at this point in time we have a UFO Grant participation in prevention work specifically at the Corvallis high school they noted the work that Corvallis high school was doing and sources of strength reached out to us we're providing research information as they are providing us funding we're in collaboration with State leads and the Corvallis School District to initiate best practices and procedures we are in collaboration with Oregon State University please take the opportunity you could scan it with your phone I know

087that's called something but you know I'm QR QR code I wasn't I knew I wasn't hip enough to remember it should be called the QPR QR cutie code up there that Oregon State University is having a walk out of Darkness it's on September 15th and that um it's on the 15th and I apologize and yeah this is wrong this is last year's and this is wrong so I apologize I'll make sure you get the right one walk is on April 15th we have a Corvallis School District team we would love that you show up um I would back back and say the people who are on our task force and the people who will show up to this event some of which have lived experience have lived experiences very close to home personal and recognizing

088we get the opportunity to be side by side with people significantly affected and that might be a truth in your story in your life know that it's again it's one of those hard Beautiful Moments and I encourage you to show up we will be there um and come and walk beside us more to come about post-vention work we're in the midst of that um there's some trainings out there about postvention as I talked about with connect there's a post-vention training I'm involved with it's post-vention through a liberated lens there's a lot of different ways to make postvention um we never we we don't ever want to pick it up we never want to get that notebook out we never want to have to walk those steps and we also know that the best prevention work

089out there is to have a strong postvention plan and be ready and prepared for it if the event occurs thank you for your time hello everybody um just listening right I'm just taking everything in I work with these people every day I'm still very very lucky I'm a part of this team um everything that's been stated already about collaboration I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about just integrated treatment um when I think about that integrated treatments uh the student and family where they're receiving the one consistent integrated message about treatment and Recovery um when I think as you can see on the slide um the research really shows us adolescence with substance use disorders also have a high rate of co-occurring mental illnesses um that looks like student who has a substance

090use disorder Also may have major depression anxiety those pieces are I often tell families holding hands walking down the street together having a really awful time together um oh my goodness sorry it takes me right I have to take a deep breath and we think about the numbers um what happens with those pieces is when families and students are searching for services oftentimes they'll go to Specialists who say mental health here's your mental health specialist here's your drug and alcohol specialist and if there's ongoing medical needs here's your medical professional which is a wonderful thing until they all start working together but they're not working together because they're not talking and when they're not talking and communicating three different messages four different messages five different messages are getting shared and families become frustrated they become

091anxious they become so many many different emotions go through that and really no work gets done because who do I listen to Because who's the expert and one of the pieces with integrated care is that everyone deserves to have maybe not one person but one person to support the guide who knows maybe isn't an expert on everything that can hold the stories and can provide the support that's needed so when I think about that those 60 of The Adolescents experiencing drug and alcohol and mental health somebody to hold that story and to create a system of recovery and that's part of my role um and I love it and I think to myself that together with early detection the integrated treatment can improve outcomes the quality of life when I think about just reading those

092bullet points that increasing chance for Success treatment and recovery for both of the disorders the reduced and just like the discontinued substance use the medication interactions to reduce that fewer arrests the housing stability just the quality of life that improved qual quality of life for me hits home every single time um so it's always when I think about the pleasure of working not just with this group but Community Advocates and Community Services where a family's voice and choice can truly be heard that is very very something that's amazing when something's very special one of the things that I think is worth um re-mentioning right is um we started back we started with your board goal right and we think about um what are we up to in this in this portion of our kind of

093student growth and experience department and I think it's remembering that um the numbers that are moving the least in our data are our marginalized communities and and so what we are spending all of our time up to as well as our colleagues over here um is thinking about how do we move the dial for students who are navigating multiple intersections of multiple marginal marginalized demographic and what what are we doing to better support them in our community so one piece of that pie is a a partnership and a conversation that's been initiated this year between us and DHS about how do we better educate and invite members of this community into being foster care providers the statistic on this slide there's a number that I think are quite noteworthy but the one I'd actually want

094you to start with is the last one which is over the last three years Benton County has lost 31 percent of their General resource homes and the statistic above that which is that 65 of our children experiencing resource care needs are having to receive that by leaving Benton County and when we know one of the things that we know that is most impactful for students is removal from their Community the removal from their resources connections and stability and so one of the things that we're thinking about and talking about right now is in support of our students who are navigating complex situations in our school district who are showing a significantly lower rate of academic progress how do we support keeping them in our community plugged in with resources and connected to the schools that

095they know and have relationships in and one of the ways to do that is to increase the rate of foster care providers in our community so we are working with DHS on some conversations about how to start doing some better kind of information providing information to our families and our staff who are often some of the front people to step forward to be foster care homes and start to talk about and demystifying that process of becoming a foster care provider how you can be a part of that system and then thinking about how do we better provide homes that match culturally and racially responsive needs the top graphs give you the story that is really true about foster care Across the Nation we know that and thinking about how do we best serve our students

096how do we keep them connected and one of those ways is actually to beef up our foster care system usually when you hear us here talking about foster care we talk about the things that we do which is more like what we're getting audited on thanks Amy Leeson shout out to her and all her amazing work which is like how do we do Transportation how do we make sure people have resources and all of that is happening and I can tell you about all of that but the thing that really needs to be talked about and looked at is how do we increase the rate of foster care provide in a community where there are a number of people who are interested have thought about or or want to be a part of this that

097could be providing homes to our children and that is something that we are working on with DHS this year foreign and so the really the last piece to this is um really thinking about the intersectionality uh that goes on and for me in the the role that I'm at special education which has been talked about earlier today um and continues to be an element of complex needs the work that is done throughout this entire team and the student the staff members that are in the building to do this really supports our students in special education as well and so without the transportation and making sure that the evictions aren't occurring or reducing the amount of time that a student is out of school really gives us the time to support and provide the interventions needed

098for students it also supports us with our Section 504 students are receiving Services through Section 504 and what I think that the the district is actually doing really well at this point in time is just by having these as a Universal Design to support all students that are students that are marginalized are actually benefiting from it as well as those that aren't and so I spout udl frequently when we think about academics and behavior but I think the framework that's being created with the student growth and experience really continues to exude the same philosophy and benefit for our students we were real close we were really close [Laughter] all right thank you I want to really share my appreciation I forgot the uh the TV show that I used to watch is it's that with

099the characters different colors and they get together and they solve problems uh you know what I'm talking about not at all but I love the idea all right whatever it is it's basically when you it takes a village uh and it takes a village to really create a system that works and each one of you have shared an aspect of what makes the whole child uh successful and you have represented that and I know behind each one of you is a team a full Matrix that barely can be read on a projector because of the amount of people who are doing this work I want to just note it on the record you're doing phenomenal work you're saving lives you're keeping kids in schools you're getting them you're giving them hope and from the bottom

100of my heart thank you you're you're truly doing uh phenomenal work that's is is uh is hard to find in many other places and we know in our community some people are still struggling to find that help yeah yeah so thank you from the bottom of my heart and uh I have two comments one is a suggestion for the board whether it's as part of the retreat next year and as mindful of your time as possible we want to understand and go through all the work you do how it connects also be able to navigate it the same way that you helped us uh communicate about mental health program to communicate then to integration of all the work that you do and how to communicate that with the parents community members uh and also with

101the legislator another layer is so many questions I have about how we fund this how we can leverage some State funding how measure 10 applies or doesn't apply and why doesn't it apply and all these questions that I think will be very helpful for us when we sit down with our legislators and they tell us you got this you get the same dollars that you got last year we should tell them no this is the work we do and we have to continue it and we need to make sure our arguments is so coherent so I really want to suggest and I want to be mindful of our agenda for the year as soon as we could to have those pieces uh deliberated and shared on will be really great yeah that makes a lot

102of sense thank you now to my question could you go back to the slide and I'm gonna pick and choose one yes yes only one just the slide where you had the data on foster care and you had two statistics back to back and I saw if I asked myself about the last statistic why uh why people are going out of uh why foster kids are going out of the accounting the answers in the second statistic which is uh we have over the last uh over the last three years we lost 31 percent of our general resource homes the next question I have is why why are we losing this is It's legislative is its resources uh is it going to be only sold by partnership with DHS or is there something that we could

103help with yeah I think that's a great question I think um you know it's a tricky question for us to answer and I try to be careful here because it's not our data it's dhs's data and I I respect that they are partnering with us as I've kind of pushed on them to say like let's do this together um but I think what I hear from them that is resonant is everyone was impacted by the pandemic everyone was impacted by uncertainty and in that time what what we know from anyone is what do you pull back to like you pull back to what feels safe and doable and I have no judgment on that that is just a truth um and so it makes a lot of sense to me that in a time of

104tumultuousness in our communities that things like providing a resource home which has a lot of unknowns to it becomes something that feels more risky I think that their experience is also in Benton County is our demographic is kind of funky so we have a lot of college students that's not really who we're turning to to be resource homes nor do I recommend that we do and thinking about who where are our resource homes what we know so far right now is our most dominant resource on homes our families in our school communities with staff or families that are connected to staff in our schools that's who's actually providing foster care right now and that was a little bit why we started to talk about what does it look like to educate our staff and families

105better because that's who's showing up is staff members and families that are connected to school staff and they're housing multiple kids because we only have a certain amount of families and so what we're seeing is families that are providing resource in our community are providing it to three four five six kids in the foster care system in an attempt to keep them within our community thank you yeah okay there we go um I just want to know if we can can we get that QPR training scheduled and is that something we can do can we do it during a board meeting or do we have to schedule another uh-huh okay yeah we could do it we could do it at the retreat yeah we could go that way too do you have any trainings planned

106okay try to make I still don't oh there it is we try to make those close sessions okay in the thought at this point in time so you have a partnership to be able to lean on with each other as as I leave the training so if things come up for you as as the next week or that you have phone call phone numbers that you can call each other and say hey this has come up for me and okay um not that people don't broadcast that in communities but at this point in time that's what we're doing that makes sense you could do it as a group you could also holler at me and say I have a work group that we would love to train you could say okay I have a youth

107group that we have staff who do the youth group that I like to train our QPR trainers we have several of them in the district but we have but and we have several of them on the task force um to myself and another trainer had trained people at Old Mill because they wanted to be trained there so we within the task force are specifically reaching out and saying okay as long as you have a closed group we're in so I just want to say I think we should be trained and so can you assess the feasibility of us doing that as a group and then report back so that if as a group that doesn't seem possible we can seek other ways to get that done and then I'll just throw down the challenge that

108when we start next fall we should have a whole Board of people who have gone through this training because it's good for us but also because it's good for us to know what our staff are are learning what how they're being guided to support our youth and each other not just our youth in the community so um always that was my first question and then my second question was there's a lot of information I have like a hundred thousand questions I'm not going to ask any of them right now I'm gonna like buy you pizza and ask you all of them later but my question that I do have right now is she's like okay I beat this one okay but my question right now is what do you need from us as a board

109how do we make it very clear the ways as a board that we support the work that you guys are doing what do you need us to message where do you need us to be to support what your this effort I think Sammy touched on a little bit of when I think about turning two directions if I think about turning in I think about that grid of Staff who are just laboring intensely um when I think about the work that our family advocates and our school counselors and social workers and mental health staff are holding it's just enormous it's enormous I mean when I think about this week alone we have people who have family members that have died they are supporting kids in grief while also doing forecasting and scheduling and supporting assessments and

110running their groups right it's an enormous job on the ground and if I think about your role in that I think your appreciation recognition and acknowledgment of the labor of those staff means a lot that is the thing I think of turning in when I think about turning out I think of exactly what Sami said how do we best articulate what this is what's happening how does it connect to student achievement as well as student wellness and Equity how do we talk about that and how do we talk about the funding structures that support that and why that's a part of what we're up to that feels equally as important if I think about both directions mm-hmm this is a profoundly humbling presentation thank you so much as I was listening to you I'm the

111old guy in the room I realized um right not a yes I don't want to admit into it definitely looking right in the room and I think I think back to when I was on the board in 2013 when it first came on we didn't have conversations like this I mean we talked about you know mental health we had the youth mental health Coalition and you know we had had a rash of suicides around that time um but I really really appreciate the coherence I'm seeing tonight which I think is unprecedented even in recent years it's just something happened over the pandemic you guys did something and this is for me as a board member this is the first time I've seen I'm gonna quote you Sabrina multiple intersecting challenges that our children are facing

112finally clear to me as a board member so thank you for that my question is not for you it's actually for the superintendent as we address goal four and thank you for putting it up because I think about the work this report that you've shared with us this work that your team is doing and our goal for does in no way well I mean it vaguely relates to the work that you're doing but it certainly is does not reflect um the focus that this Board needs to have to adequately support the work that you're doing supporting children so my question for you Ryan is when we address goal four may we please have these humans in the room with us to really inform Us in doing that work because that whole goal needs to be

113taken apart and put back together in a way that really reflects where we need to be and where we need to be going yeah I think that that's actually something that I came away with from the presentation that Heidi shared and one of the things that I had written down was about development of goals together with staff um and so I I could see um the benefit in that I can see the same thing around teaching and learning related to um the academic component so I can see so in some ways it feels like as we start to establish if those are the goal areas we're going to maintain then we would need to have time allocated for each area to work with staff to you know when we did it together in Retreat a

114long time ago we broke out by table group and we talked about each individual goal but the loss in that was that there were a couple of people engaged in each one of the goal areas and dealt I'm delving into that and so I think as we think about the structure of it I think that's something that Sarah and I will need to continue to work on because I see the the benefit in that with just about every one of our goal there is right now I know my time doing this work is running out and God I would love to be part of those conversations but my advocation for this board would be to go slow and take the time with people like these folks rather and get those goals right because they are

115so crucially important in focusing our attention so even though I'd love to be there [Music] Shauna do you have anything who's still there thanks for checking Sarah I'm still here I've been listening in and I'm just really grateful for this work and many of my comments would Echo those that have already been shared so I I really appreciate you checking in um I haven't taken this specific QPR training but I've taken similar and just to Echo what the um incredible staff who have been sharing have shared I think for myself even in this past year have used those skills multiple times to have conversations with folks whether it's been literally folks I've I've met at grocery stores or students or family members I think that this is I appreciated you asking Therese about us participating

116in trainings both to be in solidarity with staff offering that support as well as having those skills ourselves in the community so I'm definitely looking forward to following up I just really appreciate the incredible work that's happening to really meet students and their families holistically as well as think about how we do that as a community toward support and and elevating the role of resource families as well so thank you thank you yeah hello yes okay um hearing all of this is just obviously super impactful I our mental health therapist at CV yolin I love her um and I think um I love hearing what you're having staff what you're having staff trained in and I love hearing like all of the support coming from kind of like above but I think my question for

117you is what can fellow students do to help and is there programs that we can invest into so I kind of better help our peers because I think a lot of times students and peers are maybe the first people to hear it yeah yeah please go on that I have something I want to say go um you have the Sam Club students advocating for mental health at Crescent Valley high school and you've had the opportunity for two amazing young leaders Cece and Charlie I'm going to give shout out now they're going to have to watch because I brought their names up um they have created and facilitate a student mental health advocacy Coalition with and want to continue that at Crescent Valley I don't know what grade you are oh and they need leadership they

118need leadership for next year they um have the opportunity to put a resolution within their the leadership team within Crescent Valley High School to have a lead beat of mental health advisory to be within leadership as they leave this school Community to make sure that that is as important as other student leads Cece and Charlie both belong to the Corvallis Community Suicide Prevention task force and you also have sources of strength within your building and the excellent opportunity to be there first prevention I didn't talk about that we have um some holes that we're working on fixing and I had opportunities to be in some of the classrooms and the high schools talking about are you learning the skill set that we just talked about now QPR is a skill set that only QPR trainers

119can give and because of that it's a narrow Focus but there are other programs with other acronyms one's called signs of suicide that we're looking at bringing into the high schools that the middle schools have started that opportunity so that thought of like who are students going to talk to first it's not going to be me I am way too outside their age demographic to be able to hear and hold and so getting you prepared for those conversations is really that's our push not to say that you haven't had it in health class but specifically giving to our staff specific curriculum so they're not digging through different means of ways to get that information out to you yeah thank you Charlotte I would add the other project that we've been working on in construction with

120our school counseling teams and mental health staff has been partnering with youth era they're a peer mental health agency that works Statewide to uplift and educate youth in mental health Outreach and the goal of this partnership is to build the foundations of peer Wellness training for our students to be able to equip students not only with the the core skills of things like QPR and and being able to support each other but really building the foundations for students who are looking to enter the field of Social Service or mental health and training them to not only go on to do that but actually to join us in some some work that they would do while students and so that is a new project that we've been working on the foundations of this year but our

121hope is in the next couple of school years that we would be able to put that in place so thank you so much great question it was on a second ago thank you um Vince was talking about our goal and that goal number four has always felt inadequate and I think when we wrote it we had no idea what we wanted it to be and now you know rather than us setting the goal and you all meeting it you all have taken off and built something that now we need to make that our goal so and I mean I haven't been on the board for as long as Vince but this work has just grown and changed and developed in ways that are so amazing and you you know we think about the lives we're

122saving and the families we're saving and the you know those students who've been left behind historically and this is what's going to reach them um and I'm seeing families in like apparent Social Media Group that I'm on and you know a parent will you know post something about my family is in crisis what are the resources and people will jump in with go to your school there are amazing resources at your school so that's becoming something that's there and you know I get pushback sometimes from community members that were investing so much in this work but really it's not helping other places and we have families and kids where we are so you know they're not going to learn if they're in crisis so um this is just such amazingly and important work and you

123know I echo my colleagues desire to really use your knowledge as we set goals going forward and um you know I feel like we should be like yelling from the you know hilltops like this is the amazing work that our district is doing because I think it's really important for people to hear so thank you I have to speak sorry um I wanted to go back to what Sam had asked about the possible funding and I will say yes please anything because retention as we know is really hard in this level of work because of true burnout and we're starting to see it so when I hear my colleagues say just a recognition just a little bit more boost really goes a long ways to knowing that they're just not doing production work that they're

124intentionally coming in and giving it all and even in spite of even the burnt out and the tiredness there's still constant conversation and movement of how we can bring in elements of trainings for our parents in English and in Spanish and mental health so in spite of all of that heaviness they're still looking at how do we reach the masses how do we educate how do we lean in how do we bring in right and I again any funding I'm a good lobbyist let me know I'll help you seriously we're all social workers here so many of us can go and help lobby with y'all so Sean I can hear why we're going to take a do you want five or ten minutes okay we're gonna take a 10 minute break so we will return

125at 8 41. foreign question and the next item on our agenda is the report on our Communications audit with Kelly losey trying to avoid the paper shuffling hi Kelly losey I'm the communications coordinator for the district and I've been asked to come talk with you tonight about our Communications audit and the results the timing is excellent as Heidi just provided the results of the board listening sessions and I think you might hear some common themes so I'm gonna share my screen and get this out of course I got to be able to get to a say I want to I need I need no it's not going to work that way let me do this there we go okay I don't see it yet though all I see is my face oh good great so

126yeah we um we have this really interesting and important data to share with you I'm looking forward to talking about it and I'm gonna go a little bit into what I'm going to talk about tonight so a little bit of information about why we conducted a Communications audit what some of our goals were as a Communications Department and as a district what some of the goals of the national school public relations Association are which is the group that we worked with for our audit a little bit about our process some of our findings and then some of inspira's proposed actions and recommendations and then what some of our next steps are so the first thing is why an audit so it's really important to establish a baseline an audit hasn't been conducted of the district's

127Communications program before so this gave us some baseline information to start with I also have been in the position just about two years and so with new leadership it's really important to spend time listening and thinking about what things should look like and then being able to determine areas of strength and then areas of potential growth um it's important for strategic planning to be informed by input so we wanted to have that information to help us do strategic planning really importantly to be able to evaluate effectiveness of strategies not just reach so not necessarily the number of people that we reached with our information but how effective were we at reaching them with that information covid has changed communication the expectation is much higher of the level of information that people need the level information

128that people want and so we know that some level of that may not be maintainable but what we do want to be able to be responsive to is people's need to know more and understand more so I'm able to be able to do that we have to be able to do effective communication and then perception so no matter how well we think we're reaching people if people perceive that they're not being reached and they're not getting the information that they need we actually aren't reaching them so it's really important for us to take that into consideration so again there's some goals for our Communications Department and then we also have some goals from the national school public relations Association so obviously like I said we want to assess the effectiveness of our strategies we really

129wanted to gather direct family staff and Community input we needed help to determine areas of priority to ensure that our workload is manageable and efficient and then we really want to ensure that our communication efforts are two-way and then for nspra um they really wanted to understand current perceptions about the image of the district in schools they wanted to hear from some of the same audiences that we did to think about branding engagement crisis Communications and then also thinking about staffing needs so again our process included working with them and our overall strategy was really to think about how to communicate strategically really how to build trust and then how to Foster positive relationships and again those are so crucial to Communications and their effectiveness okay so our process included kind of two components so

130the first was some quantitative information so we participated in the scope survey and as part of that survey we looked at communication preferences perceptions ideas when we spoke to staff and families and community members we worked with and spread to determine kind of Target population numbers that we wanted to try and reach to help us have kind of good margins of error in our data and we wanted to be able to inform our process as we moved into our focus group so that information from that Baseline survey was really important and because I know a couple people are going to ask we did not collect demographic information as part of our survey collection and what I'll say is that's part of inspira's process and the other piece that I think is important is that we

131really felt it was important to get information from staff in terms of the building that they worked in or the department that they worked in and same with our families we wanted to know what schools their students were in and so that had the possibility to really provide identifiable information and so it was really important us to provide an anonymous opportunity for feedback so while we didn't collect that information we did have some information available in multiple languages so it gave us a little bit of a sense of kind of how we were reaching those populations um and then we had our our one of our qualitative Elements which was our materials review and so you'll notice looking at some of these materials they're very specific to the Communications Department uh some are specific to

132other departments and then some are actually just more broadly like the school board and so um these all really speak to that perception that I spoke of earlier so if you talk to families or staff they don't often see the communications as separate so they might not identify this is a board of communication or this is a Communications Department communication they see them as one and so it's really important for us to look kind of more holistically at all of those materials as we're assessing the effectiveness and then we also conducted 10 focus groups so we worked with nspra to determine uh which groups we wanted to identify and speak to they had some recommendations but we certainly had some flexibility to make some adjustments in those and then the methods of identifying those participants

133varied by group so for example one of them was our office managers and so that's a pretty defined group some of our other groups that included parents or groups of staff that were larger than we could accommodate in a focus group we worked with staff to kind of identify what we thought made the most sense who we could reach out to who they might have spoken to that had really good perspective and we were really clear that we weren't just looking for people that had positive things to say we really wanted genuine feedback from everyone because with it being Baseline we don't know where to start if we don't know what the actual perception is and then we also there were a couple of interviews so Ryan participated in an interview I participated in an

134interview and then my communications team also participated in an interview so the results this is the important part so we had 907 families participate in our survey and so they identified a couple of things that they felt really well informed about so they said they felt very informed during crisis and serious incidents they felt informed about student progress and learning they identified relying on information from emails report cards and actually from their student directly and then they also identified some areas that needed some enhanced awareness so that would include areas like District Finance goals plans leadership decisions successes and achievements and then you know there were some questions about from their building and then some questions about from the district and so specifically from the district they identified really wanting to have more input and

135an opinions seeing seeing their opinions is more valued and then where to direct questions and concerns at the district level so I wanted to include a couple of data points so this is an example of one of the series of questions that was asked it was asking about please rate how informed you feel you are in the following areas and so there were questions about students progress extracurricular programs student conduct and discipline again those District goals and plans PTA PTO crisis just any kind of thing that we could sense out and so just so you know this is on a scale of one being not informed uh two somewhat informed three informed four very five highly so we're on a scale of one to five so I think it's important to note when we see

136numbers in the threes that's still identifying as feeling informed but it does give us a sense of the areas you know like we mentioned the crisis piece was you know significantly higher than some others and then giving us a better sense of the areas that people felt that they weren't necessarily informed in so among our staff we had 325 staff participate in the survey and they identified having good Clarity around teaching and learning that staff really felt prepared to perform their job they had less satisfaction in terms of transparency and feeling like their input and opinion was valued and again that was specifically at the district level their preference was for information to be received by email and they identified as having a low Reliance on social media local news and information from the Board

137of Education they also said they needed enhanced Communications around finances again leadership decisions District goals and plans and one piece of information that's one of kind of my most exciting findings in all this was how to be an ambassador so we had several staff who identified really wanting to be that champion and help us share these messages around our district but they just didn't have them in their hands or have the ability to share that information so I always think it's more challenging to convince people that you're part of our district and we want you to be an ambassador and be part of how we communicate out the purpose of what we're doing so the fact that we already have staff that say that and we just simply need to get them to tools to

138do it to me is kind of an exciting quick win that we can have an opportunity with and so again here's another piece of data so this is asking about how much they agree with the following statements about Communications and this is looking at schools or departments that they work in and then District administration so the district office and so um I think it's really good to note that among kind of their department or their school the feelings were high so this is again on that same one to five scale so strongly disagree disagree neutral agree and five being strongly agree so the fact that they have a significant amount of trust and reliability of the information coming from their building is really positive it's also interesting to me to note some of the areas

139where they're actually pretty close it's not a significant difference between the two and then there are some areas where there's more of a difference and so again I think this speaks to that importance of that ambassadorship piece that we're helping get the right tools and the right information in everyone's hands so that they can help talk about the work and Champion the work and it's also just good to know you know where where we need to to do some improvements so that's certainly one area and then we have our community results from this survey so we had 102 community members participate in this survey they identified relying on the district calendar friends and family or the district website ticket information they identified that they prefer to get information from the newsletter uh hint hint you

140can sign up for that on our district website and they identified enhanced awareness interests around again goals plans finances facilities leadership decisions the piece again about input and opinion and involvement feeling valued and then transparency of communication so our last data point for our community survey so please indicate how much you agree with the following statements and this is on that strongly disagree as one or yes strong disagree is one strongly agree is five so being able to determine where and how they could direct a complaint question or concern Communications are easy to understand so you can see in this where those direct responses came from that I said were kind of our areas of potential growth and then our areas where we were doing you know a pretty good job so the next slide

141talks about overall perceptions and so what this means is we took all of the information from the survey and then we took all the information from the focus groups and then the Auditors put that together and our overall report that combined all of the information and so they're looking at all of the data it was collected to kind of come to these overall perceptions and again these are kind of broken out by group again so you know participants in pretty much every focus group cited the district's work and Equity as a strength but they definitely identified wanting to better understand how that work positively impacts our students the community support of the district was mentioned and almost all of the focus groups as well when asked to name three words that describe the district so

142caring and inclusive were two of the top words that came up and then focus groups really mentioned quite a bit about the lack of focus or Clear Vision for the district and most of them identified being unaware that the board was working on improving and changing the goals so again this is really timely to be talking about this work and then looking at the overall reactions and responses for families so anybody that's in here that has kiddos no there's lots of information and you get lots of messages and they definitely identified they get a lot that aren't relevant to their family for example they might get information about sports or different activities that their students don't participate in so that leads them to not look at all the messages thoroughly and that it's pretty overwhelming

143especially if you have students in multiple schools at multiple levels it gets really hard to sort through all that information and to be able to figure out what a crucial The crucial information is that you need to know and what to do with it really helpful to us parent square is a really great communication tool that we use that unfortunately had to roll out in the middle of the pandemic and so our beautiful education campaign that was planned to be rolled out with families and staff about what this tool is and how how it works didn't happen because we had to do it over practically overnight and so what we found out from this survey that's already informing a lot is that a lot of families didn't associate the information that they got as coming

144from parent Square they Associated it as I got an email I got a text message I got this automated phone call they didn't actually understand that it was coming from parent Square so when we say watch for this information through parent Square it's a disconnect so that's something that we want to go back and really work strongly on because I think it's an amazing tool that has some great capabilities for us families identified feeling the least informed about decisions District goals plans finances we talked about that a little bit already and then this was the piece that came up around there they felt there was a greater focus on Equity than attendance or academic rigor and because of that they felt unsure if they could trust their students grades test scores or the rigor of

145their curriculum so work to be done there and then in terms of some key findings from staff again back to that ambassadorship piece staff really want to have more information at their fingertips when they get calls or get contacted about things and because we know that there's a lot of trust in our staff we really need to give them that opportunity to have that information even while we're building trust and kind of relationship among the district to community members or staff or families we need to lean on the relationships that exists and that are trusted the staff really need Communications to be more proactive and then reactive and that's something that we work really hard on and having templates or having information available so that we're not scrambling and trying to put things together when

146something happens staff identified that they didn't feel like they were being asked for input and then when they were it wasn't used and so they really want to feel more included in the decision-making process and part of that is just I think us doing a good job of articulating how that's being considered in decision making processes and then again staff really wanted better training on how to be better and more effective communicators and then a really important piece about morale that was identified through this was that they really would like to see our district leaders in the building more and so for them what that helped with was or would help with is developing a relationship and having that rapport with somebody so that when questions come up or there's confusing information that they have

147that connection and can contact that person or reach out and just better understand how decisions are made so that that was a really good piece of insight so the recommendations so I just listed out these and I'm just going to give a couple of different examples of what this might look like all of them are detailed out on the full report that would take up way too much time but the first would be enhance the Strategic value of the communications plan with measurable objectives so examples of that are something I already mentioned that you know the communications department will be developing a five-year strategic Communications plan and our plan is to align it with the board's new five-year goals so I think that will help us really kind of fine tune what we're doing and

148help us support the work of the board as well and then strategies again should increase stakeholder understanding and engagement not just focusing on reach so for us that's looking at our evaluative measures and how we're evaluating the effectiveness of the work that we're doing and then developing and implementing strategies to keep staff members informed and engaged so really Gathering staff input on decisions and being clear when decisions are made and those are communicated how that input was taken into account so saying we considered you know this Factor we considered not doing anything you know ultimately we had to come to this decision because considering all of these factors this was the best decision that positively impacted the most staff or students or whatever that looked like so sometimes it's more about us just being clear

149that we've considered those factors and articulating how we did it and then again building on staff's trusted relationships with families so a lot of times when there's District level communication we tend to send that out from the district but could we be more strategic or thoughtful about messages that could actually come from Individual buildings to families that don't have to come from us you know maybe based on the content of the message that actually is a better Communicator for it so those are just things we need to consider and then thinking about providing communication support and training to staff so defining Communications roles for departments so that we can help support everyone to be part of this work you know we're a really a two and a half person department and so um having everything

150rely on us to have timely and accurate communication go out probably isn't going to help us really move move things much and so I think it's important for us and for our workload but I also think it's important for people to feel bought in and to feel part of a thing so we need to look at what that looks like and then again build up staff's ability to serve as advisors and ambassadors and what does that look like standardizing parent and family communication processes so this was a really great quote families want Communications to be brief easy to access and easy to determine what they need to know that was a direct quote from somebody on one of our surveys so I think that's really a great description of what we need to look at

151doing and then exploring what it could look like to have a common framework for family Communications in all of the settings you know I think our buildings are each kind of little individual communities and that autonomy is really important and so I I don't want this to come at the you know at the source of that but I also want to think about what we could do so that things look similar and so that people know where to expect Communications and how and what that might look like that could be really helpful and then creating a oh sorry I did say that enhance so enhanced strategies to strengthen the engagement of families and community members so one of the recommendations was to develop a district-wide visibility plan um and what that kind of means is

152like take the district to the public people wantedly wanted an opportunity that wasn't coming to a meeting to be able to engage in Converse and have conversations and provide feedback it's similar to things that Heidi talked about earlier and then a key Communicator key communicators Network so this is really external partners and pulling together diverse opinion leaders in the community and really having them serve as a sounding board or a kind of a testing ground for things we're thinking about and then also having them also be key communicators outwards so if we have important messages or information or initiatives that we're trying to share out they can help us share that information out and again building on those existing trusting relationships and then the last recommendation was around increasing the usefulness and value of the

153district's website and social media so one of the recommendations was to add a video Welcome message from superintendent Noss on our District home page and then really ensure that all of our websites so our district website our school websites are welcoming that they're easy to navigate that they're accurate they're engaging and that things are kept up to date a lot of people identified going there to try and find information first and then searching it out in other ways so the more that we can do to make that a reliable consistent source of information the better so next steps so I mentioned that we had done some immediate things to kind of put in place some of these recommendations that we heard so we've already shared the audit results with families and staff and community members

154and then we have created a actual page on our Communications Department website to have all of this information I think both to make it accessible but also to hold us accountable to being transparent about our process and the findings and the things that we're going to do to address the things that came up um we pretty instantly kind of developed a different format for some of our messages so now at the top of all of our messages that go to family and staff as much as possible we have a little section that says what you need to know and it's a couple of bullet points and if you don't read any further than that you can know that that's the information and then there's a little bit more information at the bottom of the message

155so that for people that want more context or need more context they can get it if they don't want to or don't need it they can read that top piece and be done with the message so we've gotten some some positive feedback on that already and then you know when we develop talking points about different things we're doing that piece about considerations here's what we've considered in this decision here's a consideration that we didn't actually end up having the ability to do because of these reasons so those are a couple things that we've already just started to do because they were easy to grab pretty instantly after we got that feedback and then as I mentioned we're building our five-year strategic Communications plan we're going to start doing that here shortly and probably over the

156summer and then my hope is to return back to groups that we've been talking to and sharing this information with to share what that Communications plan looks like and really be clear about how the feedback that they provided really gave us the framework for that plan because everyone that's done a survey and then not known what happened with the results knows how it feels to be asked for your feedback and then have it not folded in so I just want to be really clear that we really value and appreciate the feedback that we got from everyone and our plan is to demonstrate that by being clear about how our strategies address those things that we heard identified and with that I'm happy to take any questions or observations anything um well okay is that working

157yeah okay um so uh thank you I know that that was a really big undertaking to engage so many different groups um and I guess my just my first thought or initial feedback is I'm I'm a little bit surprised at the number of times that the groups interpretation of things seems to not align up with each other like one group saying oh the equity work is really great and then another group saying we think the equity work might be taking away from academic rigor And So It causes me to just wonder about the the different ways that these different kind of groups or you know categories of people in our community interact with the school district and then what the school district represents or the meaning that the school district has for those groups that

158would lead to sometimes some pretty distinct different ideas or feelings about things that Maybe I don't know it seemed like I would expect that there would be maybe a little bit more um consistency there so a couple of those times kind of surprised me um also I'm totally one of those parents who said I just do not like parent Square but I want to like parent Square because conceptually I like it but I totally felt with those people who answered that because I'm pretty sure I checked that too that's it thank you I I know we're giving you a lot of information tonight and at some point it feels like there's so much information coming at you this evening I recognize that because this is a a weighty a waiting night um in terms of

159content but what I want us to think about and take away is that I think there's there's things about the two reports um one with the communications and the other with the community engagement sessions where there's overlap and I think that there's an opportunity to address some of the things that came up around Communications straight away as we're working on revising these board goals so I just see that while it's a lot I see so many connections between the two things that I I hope that as we think again are thinking about our board goals that we're also thinking about this Communications audit and how some of those things play out yeah I've kind of Gone full circle I was when I originally read this I was like wow we need a whole Communications goal

160it's going to be gold six Communications and then I'm like well wait no Communications is cross Kenny you can't be an individual goal and I'm just like totally at Sea with the whole thing but I completely agree that there's a lot of inner intersections here one thing that really stood out to me is the impact of a heart lack of really intentional communication and not a surprise I mean certainly the board has struggled with having an outwardly facing or engaging the community and we don't we don't really have a brand I mean we really don't and we have these multiple perceptions of what the Corvallis school district is and that doesn't always align with our own perceptions of ourselves and the type of work that we're trying to do and so I just really appreciate

161this tremendous undertaking that you've done and I think it's going to be really really valuable I'm I'm being selfish now I'm I'm wondering now where does the board fit in all of this you don't have to answer that question tonight but as over the coming months you know what role do we play in that I mean I think one answer I would have is it's in the work that we do after this and as we look to align these two pieces because my feeling is if if I do my job correctly my department does our job correctly we should help be able to elevate the work that you all are doing and so I think the more we can look at both of those pieces as I develop my communications plan and as the board

162develops their goals they will only strengthen and build off of each other it's like it's you know almost like two gears that weren't on the same alignment are now in the same alignment and we have this opportunity so I think there's a lot of really exciting work to be done right no it was very exciting report thank you yeah thank you so thank you uh I really appreciate being part of the audit uh during the uh work group with Therese and really learned a lot from the process hearing from community members giving feedback about it and then when you're reported back saying thank you for closing the loop and telling us about communicating with us what what the audits is so we're walking the walk through that and you showed that we're doing immediate actions

163uh one thing I I just want to highlight is this communication audit will help us provide consistency and good systems for communication and on just emphasize what you just said about celebrating the work we do and highlighting the challenges that we navigate so the community knows about them uh the way that we know about them I think that's uh that's success and they know about the issues that their student their children navigate the same way that they're School building knows about it that's that's the dream uh one thing I think I'm not sure maybe that we have full reports have captured um and I'm sure you are capturing already number one is the big picture always having the big picture in context and it's so important uh sometimes an incident might happen or a news

164article might happen and you do a phenomenal job in providing uh the community and the reporters with a narrative but then you know how till the fun game goes we need to keep our consistency on telling people here's the big picture of what we're doing about uh the system involved with an incident or events uh whether National local or state or something that's District specific I think that's going to be really critical and uh is how are we capturing this big picture and how all the findings of the audits are going to be aligned with it uh the second thing that I think is going to be important and I know we do it the inter-jurisdictional coordination and communication under the hood of the community Asian machine there is this communication that we do with

165the county with the city uh with the law enforcements with health care providers and Social Services providers and that kind of coordination that we do is parts of the success of our Communications plans so I'm not sure if you're going to capture it in the Strategic plan or as it implicits my my leaning is it should be captured one way or the other yeah so one thing that we have in our region and I don't know across the state is we have a public information officers Network and so across Lynn and Benton counties we have a whole group of folks who do my job but for fire departments or do my job at the county and our group has a lot of camaraderie and we do training opportunities and the group really supports each other

166and it's for example someone people that I know I can lean on if we needed extra support or help beyond the capacity of our staff all you have to do is ask these folks to help and be part of the work so yeah I agree that it's important to not just know that we're doing that but to capture that and to be clear about the value of those Partnerships because all this work is too much for just any one person or any one group thanks a village thank you thanks thank you for this work Kelly um it sort of struck me as we were looking at your your numbers that it's clear especially with families that the sort of communication that they absorb and they trust is the communication from what's closest to them I

167mean the communication about their student and their school and then the district is farther away and you know I know as a parent I get so much email and I read the subject line and if it doesn't look like it's going to impact me right now I it goes away and I have the luxury of knowing what's happening at you know a higher level in the district and a lot of other people don't so it just feels like we have that closeness to the schools that um could help us and it's you know I agree with what Teresa also where I think because of the you know the number of emails and things that people are getting they're picking and choosing their information and so you end up with people getting very different pictures of

168what our district is doing and how that's impacting their kids so I think you know those are all things that I've have experienced as a parent and I'm really excited that we can sort of firm that up somehow so that everybody can really better understand the really amazing work that is happening yeah so thanks yeah again it goes back to that we're not just measuring we sent out a message to you know a thousand staff we're actually seeing you know did did the message get communicated as intended and if it didn't then we need to take a step back and figure out why it didn't and it's really our responsibility to try and understand how to do that more effectively and the only way we're going to know is if we get them put from

169staff and if families tell us this is how I need information and if the community says I don't have any idea what's happening those are pieces that can really help us just tighten that up so that you know it can have effective Communications that's the whole point because as we think about the work that Heidi did with us it was interesting in the listening sessions listening because there were times when somebody would say something and I'd want to say no but but you know I was just there to listen and so it was clear and even some of those discussions where communication or perception had been there were holes there yeah that were leading to you know frustration and barriers so well and again thinking back to that comment about covid how much information overwhelm

170existed during covid and I I don't think that feeling has left people yet I think people are still in information overload a lot and as much as they want to and try to get the accurate information it's pretty hard to Wade through sometimes so that's on us to help with that yeah well thank you for tackling this I think I can do nothing but strengthen our work and I think as has also been said figuring out how this fits into our goals is going to be really interesting exciting so thank you yeah thank you okay moving along the next item on our agenda is our school calendar revisions for the 23-24 year Nikki okay hi I'm hoping that you already read through um what was submitted for the calendar revision so last year it was

171the first year that I worked with Amy Leeson to create two years worth of school calendars and it seems like it should be a fairly easy straightforward thing to like just count days but when you go into factoring student days teacher work days holidays conferences snow days and all that it's actually pretty complicated and so next year will be the first year that a calendar that Amy and I created would go into place and I felt like there were some things that happened this year and things that we experienced that made me reach out to um my colleagues and say I think maybe we could make some slight revisions so next year's calendar is a little bit better um so I just want to be really clear there's only two there's only two days that

172get swapped really we make um I gotta I gotta find that part so our proposal is to 220 was a snow makeup day or non-school day 220 was a non-school day and we want to make 2-1 a non-school day and make 220 a school day so those are the only changes today is that students actually attend are the 2-1 and 220 changes the reason for the change is making 2-1 a non-school day would put two days back to back February 1st and 2nd for the transition from the mid-year point so from first semester to second semester the other reason is that 220 has historically been when we do this Regional College and Career Fair at the LaSalle Center at Oregon State we actually already had it reserved and we have Community Partners that are really

173excited to have the event happen again and there's a predictability around that um so that was another reason to um to consider that change so those are the only changes again to the day students attend the other changes that are proposed are just changes to the purpose of the day and that is to add in additional snow days so not too long ago President's Day February 19th was a snow makeup day so that is part of this proposal so it would be a non-school day but we would use it for snow makeup if we had several snow makeup days say in December or January and then the other part of The Proposal is also to create flexibility April 17th through 19th it says to make them a snow day they're currently conference days they will

174stay conference days but we would like to add snowflakes so we have a little bit more flexibility for the use of those days so those are the changes that are proposed I hope that explains it probably a picture would have been better this time of night but I I have a hand-drawn one on my office up in my office but not here so does anyone either want to make a motion or have discussion yeah so just want to be on the record we're making a change that's more than at least 11 day 11 months ahead of time correct yes yes that is correct I just want to capture that on YouTube last minute that's being said I want to acknowledge that some people may have made their decisions and and my understanding were doing the

175best that we can to provide predictability uh and flexibility for our parents students and staff so really thank you for doing it and I'm in support supportive of it and if there's no uh questions I'll go for a motion um so Madam chair I moved to I do no I don't Madam chair I moved to adopt the revised 2023-24 school calendar as submitted second second so it's been moved by Vince and seconded by Trace that we adopt the revised to any 324 school calendar as it's been permitted is there any more discussion nope director Baker how do you vote I vote I director aye director Adams aye director Jones aye director Tommy I am I vote I passes unanimously we have a revised calendar all right thank you I will work with the Communications Department

176to get the updated calendar out and available to families as soon as we can thank you so much for doing the work to figure out how to get a snow day later in the year hopefully we won't need it but thank you so much for making it happen okay so the next item on the agenda is the um public hearing thank you Nikki um the public hearing for Testimony regarding the integrated guidance application do we have any public comment this evening now so we'll open the hearing we have no testimony so the public hearing is now closed so now we move on to our presentation about the integrated guidance applications this is like old school school board meeting right now because it's like 9 30. so this is awesome and we're gonna do a big

177presentation and expect you to pay attention unfortunately because of scheduling changes we had earlier we're going to have some long meetings coming up so my record is been demolished I don't know how to do this I'm going to learn how to do this again what am I sharing I don't even know okay I do but I okay so share screen where's your presentation at it's on my it's on my it's right it's in there should I separate it out like okay okay now I'll do it there it is and then start the show and probably go to the first slide don't get too excited you're watching it in reverse it's 9 30. everybody all right here we go um I'd like to uh welcome the um powerful group I have sitting here with me tonight

178we are going to talk to you about the integrated application integrated guidance application that is due to the state so that we can get the money that we need to do all of the things that we have heard about tonight the um I love I mean I it's hard to go last because Nikki goes to bed at eight but beyond that I like the idea of going last because you're going to see connections between what you heard in Sabrina and her team's presentation and how we're we're um we're funding that through this application process so with that here's what we're going to be doing tonight we're going to talk to you about what integrated guidance is because some people don't know what it is and it's okay because it's a lot we're going to share

179with you how we engage the community and identified needs for tonight for our plan and we're going to then present our plan to you the big giant plan is in the board packet but we're going to give you some highlights and we'll be here to answer your questions and then we hope at the end you will approve our application so that we can submit it to the state these are the six programs that have been integrated in order to make a the process for applying for funds that much easier the three programs that we are going to be focused on are high school Success the student investment account and early indicator and intervention systems we do receive funds for CTE Career Technical Ed but it comes through our High School Success funding am I right

180it comes through uh so our Career and Technical education funding is Perkins it's it's Federal but it kind of funnels through the state and then we have a regional coordinator so there's across our area somebody at Dale Moon helps us to manage those funds I'm mentioning it because you're going to see a lot of of conversation and um needs assessment around CTE but it's not one of the three areas that you saw in the budget document that Olivia prepared High School Success remember is about improving graduation rates and also College and Career Readiness Sia is about mental health behavioral needs increasing academic achievement and then the early indicator in intervention system which maybe is not as well known is data collection and Analysis this is a this helps us to to do Dropout prevention as

181well but through programs and people so who's sitting up here in front of you tonight let's do some introductions Lee would you start us off I'm Lee Santi Lee thank you I'm actually the assessment and growth coordinator but that's okay oh yeah that's okay you do a lot of things Amy Leeson Elementary coordinator Nikki McFarland High School coordinator Melissa harder assistant superintendent finance and operations we were also heavily supported as well by our friend marciane Rivero cucci who is at home our friend Kim J back there and um also Ryan okay all right to talk to you a little bit about the planning process and tonight's presentation we're just this is directed from kind of like what we have to share with you so we're trying to be as clear and explicit as possible we're

182going to talk about throughout the whole planning process how we use the an equity lens what engagement looked like and our plan and what that development of that plan looked like so um I think the important thing I want you to take away from this slide is that um it's yes we used Equity lens for this process but this isn't just something for this specific thing this lens this um piece of paper in some cases a piece of cardboard in other places a table tent this is all over our district it's in posters every meeting I facilitate this is either on the table or one of the slides this is how we one of the ways that we Center equity in all of our decision making recently we've added the district's Equity lens questions to

183the compass and if you've been through Beyond diversity the rest of it should look fairly familiar and making sure that we are continuing to internalize this work having this present in front of us at all times is really just something that is important to us so even though it was required as part of this process it actually is just part of the work that we do anyway okay and then I'm going to talk to you about Community engagement so the last bullet there is one you're familiar with we attended and looked at the the feedback from the community and that is some of the information and data that we use to inform our plan um and then I independently also um well not independently I was I was with teachers and I was with other

184administrators we had CTE teacher listening sessions where we listened to what are the strengths of our program programs weaknesses opportunities and threats to get ideas about how we should spend our high school Success funding in the next biennium and then we also have some really great data um that's publicly available about our CTE participation so I can look at programs and look at areas where we have underrepresented students and then I looked at who was taking classes and did listening sessions was what we would call non-traditional CTE student participants so for example that would be girls in engineering they don't show up a lot in our engineering program at Crescent Valley high school and so I brought students together and listened to them about what they see as the strengths of the program what they

185would like to see changed um and and what they would like to see improved and they had lots of great ideas to share that helped to shape the plan so through that Community engagement and also needs assessment which is not really reflected in this slideshow but we did look at our data and that data you've seen before in the district Improvement plan presentation so we use that data we use the information that Nikki gathered in her sessions and remember we also like glommed on to the community engagement sessions for you so that we could listen to some of the answers to questions that we were going to face and in that we um these are needs that we identified I don't want to go through each one but I think what you're going to see

186here is first you're going to see connections to this current School Board goals you um they'll come they kind of stick out to you also connections to the district Improvement plan and then connections to the first presentation from the other part of our student growth and experience Department that presented tonight with talking about maintaining our mental health program social emotional learning and so forth so a lot of connections there but these were the needs that popped up to us as we identified them through Community engagement from the needs we moved into priorities and again you're going to see some things that seem familiar to you so Amy do you want to talk a little bit about these sure I think Melissa said it and these shouldn't feel unfamiliar and hopefully listening tonight to all of

187the feedback we've heard that these priorities align with what we're hearing and what our um priorities for our department academic achievement those are goals that you have seen before and they continue to be priorities for us health and wellness and areas that that stand out again tonight um and then Equitable systems so those three general areas and then you'll see how our plan evolves around all of those three areas yeah I think I would just add going back then sorry yeah when I when I was looking through all the data for the priorities it felt like really a laundry list and I was like how do I make sense of this and then I thought oh yeah we actually we have we have sense already in our system so it was it was nice to

188see the alignment and not make it feel like this out of control list I'm next okay so um and then there were also many things identified in the listening sessions that I did related to Real World Learning um and so one of the things that our students said already exist but that we could continue to strengthen our Career and Technical education program so they said continuing to support our schools with teachers that come from industry um and I heard from from students in that non-traditional listening session I did I once you know teachers that look like me um or are like me I I sometimes you know I heard from some students I feel like I'm the only female in the class um and that includes my instructor so they also said we have great

189equipment we need to continue invest in that and make sure that we're using um the same type of equipment that's out in the field and in the workplace and um and then they also said there's like we need to continue to improve those facilities so those are some things that that they see as um areas for us to continue to focus on we need to be more connected to College and Career earlier that this year you saw and heard about the youth truth data and College and Career Readiness is something that continues to be an area for growth for us and it's something the students said we need to do better this year I feel like there are a lot of Partnerships and more connections being made and in part because of the listening sessions

190and that shows up in our plan and then we need to involve families more and and helping them to understand how our Pathways starting in the seventh grade connect all the way to post-secondary and then Outdoor Learning also showed up and you're still on yeah I'm still on oh my goodness okay okay so strategies sorry so um one of the things that that came up consistently and I don't just want to read but um so I should I'm going to try and avoid you can read our strategies here I talked already about facilities something that came up for me outside of CTE was gender inclusive bathrooms at our high school we have students particularly coming from sheldalen where you've seen those new bathrooms that are saying when are we getting those at the high school

191so you'll see in our plan that's something that we're going to begin design work on in the next biennium we actually met with Architects yesterday to start getting ready for that so that's exciting um we're also looking at facilities Improvement of our culinary space that's a space at Crescent Valley that wasn't touched it still looks like a home at classroom from whenever that building was built and that's really exciting work too to start thinking about having a space that looks like the space that they have at LBCC for example um they talked a lot about discontinuing to support our teachers I think we hear that from our community in conversations related to behavior we also hear it in conversations related to what students are learning and social emotional learning came up again and again College

192and Career Readiness these are these are things that we have been focusing on and it's nice to hear from our or to to put together a plan um where we'll be doing this this work okay so the key Investments that are outlined in our plan um many of these um are not new Investments necessarily they're Investments we've been making with those funds in previous years but there are some expanded efforts and some new areas that we're looking at including gender inclusive bathrooms which Nikki just talked about and then Middle School alternative Pathways so all the other Investments you see presented here are kind of the the big the big dollar items that we've outlined in our plan and those two are newer to the plan the other ones are really more of just maintaining those

193Investments we've been making um and ensuring that you know we kind of have that balance between what we're seeing and the needs assessment and making sure that our investments kind of align across the board with those needs the detailed planning and budget template was also included in your board packet tonight it's a it's a very technical document and a template that the Department of Education provided for us so all school districts are using that same template but there's a lot of detailed information in there about every single investment and details in terms of like the number of FTE and the type of Staffing and the cost for both next year and the following year of the biennium so we know what we want we know we've heard from our community we've assessed our needs we

194know what our priorities are we've decided how we're going to get there we've matched spending to that and this is what we hope to achieve which again should be very familiar to you um these are academic achievement goals or outcomes that we're hoping for these are in our district Improvement plan and they're also attached to board goals So reading algebra and making sure that our kids are graduating and then what just happened did you do that to me that is a crazy okay we're not done yet on outcomes I touched the button twice go ahead Nikki or not Nikki oh it's me again still um these are Equity what time is it oh and then these uh outcomes are related to the other parts of our board goals which are obviously Equity Real World Learning

195and health and wellness now I'm gonna touch the button and something wild is going to happen over there yes the fancy assessment and growth coordinator is now going to talk to you about longitudinal performance growth targets cool like that um so um the the real piece here is around um you all are seeing the details of the plan of what we plan to do um we will be coming back to you once that plan's submitted um because there's an additional piece here around longitudinal performance growth targets lpgts that really we're going back to that idea of okay we have this plan we're going to start implementing this plan and we've got two questions is it working and are we doing what we said we were going to do so our targets are going to help

196us to gauge that and and and move us forward so we wanted you all to know that this is coming your way because as soon as we submit this plan we're going to be working with Ode to develop these targets and then we are going to come back to you with these targets um so so the real important thing to keep in mind is we will be looking at five different areas um Regular attender third grade reading ninth grade on track grad rate and five-year completer rate is it it was there oh oh we see there's another yes sorry there's another it's all like Snap there third like are you so impressed I could do this at 9 45 at night you um and we will will be will be writing targets both a baseline

197Target which is kind of like where we think we're going um a stretch Target with if everything really goes well that's where we want to get to and also a gla a gap closing Target to make sure that we are disaggregating our data and looking at how um different groups of students are performing on these measures you already did that I did that we were talking about is this a repetitive slide but it also talks about how we're to collect what data we're collecting so I didn't know if you want to talk about that yeah well I I the the other thing that we want to take note of is and and we've talked about this um when we talked about our Improvement plans that we have our achievement data we also have experienced data

198and we can't separate the two um we cannot we cannot have successful student achievement without successful student experience we can't have successful student experience without successful achievement so um those five measures are are very much centered around student achievement but we are also looking at other measures around their sense of connection Real World Learning and and trying to connect those two of both the student achievement and student experience for success okay the um this is the next step for this process we are um our application is due on March 31st ode is going to review our application and then a group called a qalp is going to review ode's review of our application and then quality assurance and learning panel and um this is supposed to be we're also going to be coming back to

199you with our longitudinal growth performance targets and to talk to you more about where we're headed with that and those are goals that we're supposed to be working with ode also it's like a it's a collaboration and um since Lee knows so much they've already tapped her to help with some of the training in our ESD so that's how good we are any questions [Laughter] so thank you uh first of all since there's an action I'm gonna say I'm gonna support this thank you I'm looking forward to uh voting for it and I think you captured really well the community needs or the assessment needs all the way through uh the whole thread uh to how are you going to measure success uh however I have seen you identify a middle school critical metric only

200ones if we go back to the slide of the uh kefir performance of regular attender uh in conversations across the state that's what I'm hearing is one of the key performance indicators that we can really capture for the success in middle school is that correct um we don't have any other middle school so you're asking what other Middle School indicators are are in this yes yes that's one and two if there is one that could be summative of the other indicators what would that be if that makes sense I'm not going to talk about data but provide a little bit more detail about where Middle School shows up so um what I have heard from our students and our families is that there's not a through connection from middle school to high school and post-secondary

201and so that lack of connection right now between middle and high school where in high school a lot of I was saying that real world learning really happens in CTE we want to make more explicit connection and make learning relevant in the middle school so that it connects to high school and they see that through path we know that what gets kids to school is when learning is rigorous and when learning is relevant and when they have meaningful relationships right so you see relationships show up for sure K-12 and I think the rigor and the relevancy really show up when there's that through Pathway to where I'm going post-secondary and so one of the things we need to work on is making those connections in this plan and then the other is involving the families

202like I mentioned before the other thing that you saw um mentioned as one line item that has come to the board as a community concern is related to an alternative pathway also for Middle School the work that um you know and the conversations Kim and I have done related to that are also about making sure those are very clearly connected to Career Pathways or our career clusters that are connected to our programs at the high schools wonderful thank you so much anyone else so I have talked to many districts and the boards and heard about them getting their teams providing this report so it was really interesting and fun to watch you guys deliver this report um I'm really curious not as much fun as putting it together oh I bet and that's and so

203this is my question you know this is this was novel this is new this year in what ways was this better and what did you learn and in what ways was this structure a hindrance for you it seemed a little repetitive okay I love the community engagement part being able to hear from our community about what it is that is important to them in school and having the opportunity to join in on what was happening with the board that was very important for us the idea of pushing us to do these conversations that Nikki's had with CTE non-traditional students as well as the CTE staff and the and I don't know if you got into the the report very much in the Border Port but the um that led to a presentation on mitigating bias

204and forecasting for our students in high school like they're like there's real things that are coming out of it I think that's what I would like to celebrate there were 17 pages of questions at 250 words or 500 words per question and that was a lot of work so that is at least where Ryan said Melissa you're going to be great just use your resources it'll be okay so that's where what he was very helpful for sure is like it's going to be good but it's a lot it was a lot it was a lot of time that Nikki and I especially did outside of work hours because there was no way to do our job and to do this application in the same eight hours 12 hours really that we do every day not

205today today doesn't count yeah yeah so that was that was a challenge thank you I would also mention that for for board members who've been on the board for a while you'll remember several years ago we sort of unveiled you know a multi-year strategic financial plan that is very similar to this work and so this work isn't new to our district and how we are looking at okay what are our goals what our internet outcomes what are we what are the levers we're going to utilize to to make those things happen like the work itself wasn't new to us and I'm sure for a lot of districts in the state it was like a lot of new work so it wasn't really the work that was new but it required a lot of time to

206kind of take what we're already kind of doing but we needed to now do it in a very structured way that was um basically like everyone's doing it this way so now we kind of took all of this and had to kind of filter it through that system it's a virginity okay thanks I think just one last thing I would add like Melissa I think the community engagement event was my favorite part of the process but what I'm curious about and we don't know yet moving forward is about the flexibility so even in this year as we have seen needs arise for our students like needs for Recovery of credit over the summer at high school for example I'm not sure yet if that's not built into our plan how flexible will be to say

207this is what we're seeing as a need in our system and here's here's something where maybe we can we can shift funding so I'm just curious about that in this process about whether they will allow the flexibility yeah because right now with high school Success if I want to do a variance to my budget based on a need I I schedule a meeting with them and I have to walk through my line item budget changes can I ask for that feedback in writing and maybe we can share it with ode that would be worth sharing yeah thank you for indulging my question [Music] Sean aren't you good I'm good thank you Madam chair I moved to approve the corvall school district integrated guidance application for submission to Oregon Department of Education I'll second Ed by

208Therese that we approve the Corvallis School District integrated guidance application for submission to Ode director Baker how do you vote aye director I can't aye director Adams aye director Jones aye director Tommy I and I wrote I what passes unanimously and we are adjourned good night everyone