001um foreign the November 3rd meet 2022 meeting of the Corvallis School Board is called to order at 6 30 pm in the interest of public health and safety for all community members especially for 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 including this meeting 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 after the meeting
002I'm grateful that this technology makes it possible for more community members to view and participate in school board meetings given the flexibility provided by Oregon law tonight we have directors Baker Adams al-abderba Jones myself director finger McDonald and director Tommy present in person and director white bear is excused due to well we don't have anyone any of the board members online so we don't have to worry about connectivity limitations for board members so this evening the first item on our agenda is acknowledgment of Native American Heritage Month the board passed a resolution to acknowledge this one previously and we will read that resolution tonight um November is the month so it started you're on the first a couple days ago but it's an important recognition so this is the resolution Corvallis School District 509j acknowledgment
003of Native American Heritage Month resolution number 21-1003 whereas the Corvallis School District recognizes and pays tribute to the significant contributions made in our community by Native American people which includes Native Indians Alaskan natives and native Hawaiians as well as indigenous people from Canada Mexico Central America South America and the broader Pacific Islands and whereas the Corvallis School District affirms that Native American students families staff and community members should be valued for all aspects of their identities and whereas Native American Heritage Month grew out of efforts began by Dr Arthur C Parker of the Seneca Nations work with the Boy Scouts of America in adopting American Indian day in 1912 and foreign Sherman Coolidge of the Arapaho nation and then president of the Congress of the American Indian association first proclaimed American Indian day on September
00428 1915 then calling on the nation to observe this day and whereas red fox James of the Blackfoot Nation traveled across the country uh on Horseback to gain endorsements of 24 States governments to hold a day to honor Native American nationally before presenting it to the White House on December 14 1915 and whereas American Indian day was first declared May 1916 in the state of New York and whereas Native American awareness week was first proclaimed nationally in 1976 and whereas what was then called National American Indian Heritage Month was first proclaimed nationally in 1990. foreign poolia people have called the Corvallis area and Willamette Valley home since the time immemorial and whereas the confederated tribes of the Grand Ronde community of Oregon and the confederated tribes of Celeste Indians continue to maintain their ancestral and
005cultural connections to the Corvallis area and broader Willamette Valley and whereas there are countless cultural heritages represented by Native American peoples and whereas the state of Oregon has a documented history of anti-indigenous actions based on colonization which includes genocide forced removals deprivation broken treaties and the outlaw of Native American Cultural practices it has been misused as a tool of colonization in Oregon serving to sever Native American children from their families languages and cultural heritages through boarding residential schools beginning with Indian training school at Forest Grove which later moved and became the chemoa Indian School in Salem and whereas Native American Heritage Month provides an opportunity to continue continue the district's growth in learning about the many contributions of Native American people to the nation world and local community and whereas education is a necessary component
006for creating a more Equitable and anti-racious racist Community nation and 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 the distinct and vibrant contributions made by sharing cultures language ideas beliefs and values within a school community therefore let it be resolved by the Board of Education of the Corvallis School District does hereby Proclaim November 20 now 2021 2022 as well as each November annually as Native American Heritage Month in the district and strongly encourages students families staff and community members to join an existing local celebrations and encourages all students in the district to
007help highlight this month in great appropriate ways as well as highlight the contributions of Native American peoples to the local community nation and Beyond both historically and in current times adopted by the board of directors in school district number 509j Corvallis of Benton and Lynn counties Oregon at its regular meeting on the 21st day of October in 2021 signed by the board chair and Superintendent at the time so the next item on our agenda is action on matters discussed in executive session as you know we are not at Liberty to discuss anything that took place in executive session you received sample wording for the two options available to the board under separate cover if you plan to provide propose wording other than that provided please write out your Motion in its entirety before reading it
008aloud does anyone wish to make a motion Sammy Madam chair I moved to elect not to hold a hearing which would I moved to not hold a hearing on Mr Schaefer's complaint and instead defer to the findings of the assistant superintendents I second the motion the finding of the assistant superintendent is there any discussion about the motion so director Waker I vote I director Adams aye director Jones aye aye and I vote I passes unanimous so next we have board member reports does anyone have anything they wish to report Sammy well I have two reports uh Madam chair uh with the Committees and involvements with osba and SBA uh the first one is with the Constitution bylaws committee at nsba I was appointed to that committee for the unfulfilled term for the member that I
009filled their term and one of the things I'm really excited about with National School Board Association is that they're looking hard at uh the bylaws and the Constitution and one of the work that we have done and will be proposed for the general assembly for the school boards is an amendment for the bylaws and specifically with the purpose statement to make it more concise focus on the kids and supporting local school boards to do the work so I look forward to share more updates on that as we as it comes closer to that date also on osba last week I went to uh to uh meetings which were the final week of the legislative Roadshow in southern Oregon is D for Jackson Josephine Klamath counties and also Douglas County and the themes will be shared
010with the osba board and I'll be happy to report it as well with our board about what we learned one of the two important questions that were raised is how the kids are doing and how is the schools and almost consensus everybody is excited that the school is starting back to normal in their school districts and and their feeling of the sigh of relief that this is a more normal year than than the last two years the other prompt was related to board member training there's consensus that board member training is required across the states however there is really strong feelings about having that's mandated and how it is mandated I would reflect on our experience how we trained ourselves and how we chose what we want to be trained on I think it is
011a role model that's deserves to be shared so as we come closer to the legislative session I would encourage us to celebrate our experience and share it so rather than the legislator mandates how and what the training should be maybe adopt a flexible model similar to ours thank you anyone else anything to report no that will move on to our superintendent's report I just have a few things I wanted to highlight for the board and for the community the first is that at our next board meeting which is November 17th that will be our first opportunity to meet with principals to talk about their school Improvement plans over the last couple of years that's looked different due to covid and keeping social distancing in mind and So the plan is that we'll meet here each
012principal will have the opportunity to meet with you with another member of District leadership to have conversations about their school Improvement plan and so I'd encourage you before you come that evening to have a chance to review those plans they'll be on line the Friday prior and so again because some of you are new to the process and all of us haven't done it that way for a few years just going back to a process we've done in the past there has been years when we've come together and all elementary principals have shared one plan secondary Middle School sister to plant High School shared a plan but this year they're going to be looking at their own data having conversations about with you about what their plans are moving forward so just wanted people to
013have that context before you come into the meeting on the 17th so again more than anything that's a reminder also our communication audit I wanted to provide an update around that so over the last couple of days we've had a member of the team coming and having conversations with school board members community members parents students and also an opportunity for them to meet with I'm Kelly and myself to start to share some of the findings and themes that came up they'll be providing us with a report in the future and we'll be sharing that information with all of you again the intention was how can we better communicate what's happening in the district with our community what channels make the most sense what sorts of information are we providing that's reaching people in what areas
014can we improve upon also in terms of the survey results so we had over 900 um families complete a survey in this process over 300 staff and over 100 community members and so that information will also be embedded with those focus groups as recommendations come forward for us again to better communicate with students staff in the community so anyhow look for that and again thank you to Kelly for and her team for making it happen there was lots of course been happening the last couple of days again making sure that we were able to get the voices in the room on the similar note are important engagement sessions have been scheduled so as we talked about before those are to look at the board goals get feedback that will bring forward to you as you
015look at renewing reviewing revising the board goals that you currently have set and so some of the groups that will be met with are are diversity equity and inclusion Group which is made up of parents students and staff and I'll talk about that a little bit more later tonight our safe students our students advocating for equity and there are some pride students also included in that group our special education advisory committee on December 14th both in English and in Spanish and then we're going to have three Community forums we're going to have one on November 30th at Leticia Carson December 13th at our district office and then January 10th at Catherine Jones Harrison Elementary and so foreign to you both I know that I'm only working about 50 of the time so I'm sorry if
016there's people who can't hear me very well Jenna did you have a question okay go ahead so I just had a question about that you just rattled off a number of dates and times where can the community go to find out about sessions that might be open to folks to attend or are there sessions that are open for community members staff students to come and attend and how can they find out yeah so we'll be sharing that information with the community again that the dates we just finalized yesterday the First Community Forum would be November 30th and so we'll be sharing out information ahead of that yeah other questions okay um one other thing I well a couple other things sorry everybody I'm moving my head because I want to talk to everyone and when
017I do that I'm losing it all right we'll try it this way so recently our ad at a glance I'm going to look forward I'm sorry I really want to engage you but it's not working that way we can see you okay so I'll look at myself sorry about that so recently our district report cards by school came out those at a glance reports and there's a couple things I wanted to highlight in those um later on tonight I'm going to talk about our district Improvement plan in my report but a couple things that I that really stood out to me on the positive side one was the increase in ninth graders on track last year compared to the year before so again as we think about coming out of the pandemic and helping students
018to be successful our ninth graders earning six credits was a higher much higher than the year prior the other thing I thought was really important for us to recognize was the number of students going on to higher education so 81 percent of students from CV in 76 from CHS enrolled in a two-year or four-year college or university last this for this fall and I think that says a lot about students who had the challenges of going through the pandemic and needing to be resilient and needing to continue to pursue and higher education and I think those numbers are really tell a story that I don't want us to forget about as we continue to talk about data and the work that needs to happen as we come out of the pandemic because those are stories
019of students who have gone through that and continue to persevere and so I thought those were a couple of pieces is from that report that I wanted to make sure that you had a chance to be thinking about as we continue to think about our board goals where we go in the future I think that's an important story to tell another topic that I wanted to make sure that you were all aware of is that the student information system that we've been using for a number of years has come through our education Service District or ESD and next year we're going to be transitioning to Synergy a new a new student information system the reason that we're doing that is because the system that we've used with the ESD over a number of years has
020required ongoing support Synergy is a much larger student information system about half the state uses it and so we're going to be going through some transitions that we'll you'll start to see as you register students for school next year and staff will be receiving professional development and training around because it includes everything from our scheduling system to our Gradebook system to all of the student information that we hold on to so we can communicate with families so it's a pretty big shift for us and so I just want you to know about it early because there'll be things that I'll be sharing with you throughout the summer and into the fall related to that transition and again I just want it to be on your radar early two more topics one is um I looked
021at my at my phone today and I looked at the weather for next week and I saw what I hate to say was a snowflake so we are at that point of the Year where we have to start to talk about inclement weather and anticipate that so just as a reminder to the board and to the community we try to make those decisions as early as possible by 5 30 in the morning sometimes as I'm driving around at 5 30 I find that it starts to snow harder at 6 a.m or sometimes it stops at 6 a.m but we've had to make the decision by 5 30 because of our buses also keeping in mind that once we're in school we try to stay in school rather than have families come and pick up their
022kids midday or students Drive try to drive home midday so that's a consideration for us as well and the one of the things I'm always thinking about is students that are waiting for buses or high schoolers that are driving to school primarily the hilt out to Crescent Valley is the area that I drive as I'm trying to make a decision the decisions are never easy but I do the best I can and I just want people to know that those are the things we're anticipating in planning around the final piece is that for busing sometimes bus routes get modified to snow routes and we can communicate those things with families but again because it has been such a beautiful fall and everything changed this this week really I just want it to be on people
023to be thinking about that and preparing for that and then final thing is is I wanted to share a district hiring and that process we are in the process of reviewing as actions get posted work thorough way statistically and the reason why we're looking at the positions that are being posted is because we're thinking about the next biennium we're starting to think about what sorts of funding we'll have in the next two years as a school district dollars start to decline coming out of the pandemic see fewer kids more ninth graders leaving we also are thinking about how we make sure that we have the resources we need and so as we're being really thorough looking at our decisions elsewhere that where we could make transitions between buildings we're looking at the source of funding
024is it long-lasting is it short term and so we're making all of those decisions on Monday morning based on input from principals for the upcoming week and so again nothing that I think we need to worry about at this point in time but something I want people to be aware of because of the because of what we anticipate and also moving into a legislative session I want you to be aware of the concerns we have and the advocacy that we'll need to do as we think about the biennial any questions for me so um students do after they graduate and I know that that number only captures students who are enrolling in two-year and four-year schools do we have any way of tracking our students who are entering trade schools or the military or so
025students who have a plan and are moving forward with their lives in a positive way but aren't being captured in that the higher education number so the tools that we have are the Clearinghouse which gives us information about where students go and also if they stay on for another year we don't have as much information on those other groups of students that's available in a way that they're able to be tracked and give us that information over time so one of the things we always look at and I think a lot about with that question is are students that are constant Traders or students who have at least taken a half credit of a CTE course and the percentage of those students who graduated in four years so they're prepared for the industries that they're
026going into but in terms of the ability to track over time that's more more challenging for us oh thank you Ryan for the updates uh I want to just briefly touch on uh in 2021 uh one one campaign promise of mine was gone are the snow days so it's really unfortunate I could not hold that we haven't called one yet but it's coming so the question I have is related to the student information system I trust this is an operational issue and and we're going to a system that will provide a better uh services for what we need but two questions on my mind is our partnership with the ESD on registration have provided very fruitful and a really great role model on capturing race and ethnicity at the level that the community asks for
027so are we going to be able to capture that and the second question compliance with the gender identity requirements uh gender identity policy requirements that we have those are both pieces we're working with the ESD around to be able to anticipate and plan for and so that's a process that's in process right now in those conversations with with synergy so Ryan in one of the statistics you shared around high school or um continuing education rates you shared Corvallis high school and Crescent Valley high school and I know we have student reps tonight from three high schools and I'm just curious about for students at College Hill are going through the College Hill program are they reflected in their connecting schools is there a way in the future that we can also call out I know
028that that's always a continual The Challenge and a question around the College Hill identity and how important that is for students too yeah I appreciate you asking me that question so when we look at our data we're always including our College Hill students in their home High School the reason why we have done that historically has been that it maintains that connection students often walk both with College Hill and their home high school the next day it also maintains that responsibility for the home high schools around for students who've moved to or transitioned um other districts um of similar size that are near us have their own School Alternative High School and that doesn't really tell the whole story um that you're able to tell us if you're thinking about graduation rates for all students
029that are connected with that High School um but it's a great point that you're bringing thank you Ryan yeah so next we have our reports from our student Representatives so let me just start with we have the the Crescent Valley students first and then we'll just move along the table so okay that sounds great so I'm just going to talk about sports first and so right now the fall Sports Seasons are coming to an end while the winter ones are beginning to kick off and some highlights from our Ball Sports so volleyball is actually continuing to the quarterfinals of the state championship which is super cool as well as the girls soccer team and the boys cross country team got second in districts and are preparing to run this Saturday for state and the girls
030soccer team got first in districts and is planning to also run this Saturday for state and the boys soccer team ended their season this week and ranked 14th in the state okay so for our school report the first quarter is almost done and students are settling into clubs Sports and classwork seniors are working hard to finish college applications and pretty soon we're going to have cultural food day this month where students and families bring food from the culture and give it like everybody shares and everybody can try some and Powder Puff is going to start pretty soon which is class competition for flag football and cheerleading and this week's Tuesday we had Ryan Nas come to our core council meeting and the biggest discussion was Samantha's proposal for gender neutral bathrooms and we were just
031talking about which pair of bathrooms in the school should get converted first because you know we can do one thing at a time and it was between the one in the senior Hall and the one in the F building and we also talked about next year possibly making student IDs with hall passes so it's also easier for students to get to the gender neutral bathrooms and in general just it's easier to access the building because we have a weird campus and also restocking period products in the bathrooms as well as the gender neutral bathrooms that we have right now so yeah uh all right okay so um to start we'll talk about our dances at Corvallis high school we had our homecoming not too long ago and it was a big success um even though
032the football game didn't have the best result we had a really fun time at the dance we had more students participate than we expected and we're having a lot of increased freshman participation participation this year with dressing up for Spirit weeks and just attending events in general and then we are planning a winter formal on December 3rd I believe and it's going to be combined with CVS so we're working together with their leadership class and our sophomore class presidents are taking a big lead with that and creating a winter formal committee and they're just preparing it for us and we also have our flag football program some of you may know it is Powder Puff in the past but we have changed the name so it's a little bit less derogatory and we've also changed
033the rules um so it's a safer game and a more positive environment we almost weren't able to do it this year due to lots of reports on bullying and lots of injuries and practices have started this week and we're going to have our big day of games on November 11th next week um and then I'm going to pass it to Emily to finish our report okay talking about a few upcoming events um next week and the week following we have a fall Sports banquet on next or next Tuesday on November 9th which will honor all the fall sports teams um unfortunately our soccer team our boys soccer team got knocked out of their first round in the playoffs but they fought hard especially traveling all the way that they did and playing in the snow
034laughs um yeah and then the week following on November 18th we have a Red Cross blood drive which usually happens like twice a year but we're very excited in the leadership class is working hard on getting that done [Music] um to start off um all College Hill students who are caught up with their work are invited to participate in incentive field trips um so far this year we have taken students to Mary's Peak South Beach Silver Creek Falls and we will be bowling at OSU next week um it is so much fun to celebrate good work and to get kids out in nature to explore our beautiful country and to build space for kids to connect to play and to learn from one another for our construction program this is our second year in and
035year one students have mastered basic woodworking metal working and auto and drafting Concepts now near two they have built a new rap ramp in their classroom and are set to begin design and construction of their micro shelters that will be donated to the unity shelter to provide housing to people in our community who are in need it is exciting to see this group of students build community skills and hope for their futures um for Academy courses some highlights this year in book club and fultz is collaborating with Marie Lejeune I don't know how to pronounce her last name she's from Western Oregon University to find young adult fiction that is both challenging and high interest for our students together the group reads works that include characters from diverse backgrounds that are written by so many
036different types of authors and who celebrate the strength and wisdom for all sorts of people it is great to see kids themselves in literature to learn to love reading and to reflect on their own stories or stories of people who look and feel like themselves in history films students are exploring topics like the nature of Freedom the meeting of dignity and the power of Courage as a view historical films and wrestle with difficult conversations together just Mercy has been a favor and we highly recommend it if you have not seen the film this course is pretty inspirational and I really like it and I am in that class right now there's also um basketball and Frisbee and like soccer they're not actually like um Real Sports though like we don't play with different teams like
037CV or CHS but we still like play with um the community of College Hill um we have been challenged in our own new locations this year there um there's no internal doors or walls and it's proven to be difficult at times but our staff and students have shown themselves to to be resilient and devoted to a success we're a little bit worried about the urban farm kids who are still doing class outside but their classrooms should be ready soon we hopefully look forward to our new building in the fall but we're not sure if that is the case or not um it starts um in the beginning of school and ends at 1 30 on Wednesdays at College Hill we end school at 1 30. so it's a little different than normal school but um
038so just it's that from beginning to 1 30. it's really nice um it's like every two weeks I believe and it's for students who are caught up in their work I'm just trying to think about if there's a day that I can go along so I would I was trying to think about I was trying to plan around the time I mean more than welcome too I think that should be reserved for board members who are caught up on their work we should get to go thanks yeah I just want to thank them for the update and uh just touch on uh something that CHS shared and uh Lucy touched on briefly uh we hear about bullying a lot within our community and other communities so your voice around how we can address it systemically
039would be really appreciated and we do have policy that doesn't tolerate it and works toward eliminating it but your ideas would be very appreciated so please reach out to counselors teachers and and maybe look our policies and suggest if there is any ideas we can do to address it but thank you for sharing that and following on that I want and the students for finding a way to be able to have your event and have fun in a way that is inclusive and works for everyone and people can feel good people can feel good about so you know that's an example for all of us thank you the next item on our agenda is public comment so I will now open the public hearing testimony the complete guidelines for public comment are available in the
040registration table at the back of the gym on the board's website I will share a few important points now when it's your turn to speak please come forward and have a seat state your name and direct your comments to the board speakers may offer objective criticism to District Operations and programs but the board will not hear complaints concerning individual District personnel as a reminder you will have three minutes to make your comments you will the yellow light will turn on when you have 30 seconds left and the red light will turn on when your time is up following your comments the board will have three minutes to ask clarifying questions before you start your comment please state your name for the record and state whether you reside within the School District boundary okay all right
041okay all right um well I'm here tonight on behalf of all parents in our community uh and I wish to wish the board to acknowledge November as parents rights in Education Month you may ask why November well in November 2005 the ninth this circuit stole parents rights presiding over Oregon and nine other states the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals found in fields versus Palmdale School District that the Meyer Pierce right which is the right of parents to direct their upbringing of their children does not exist beyond the threshold of the school door the court stated we conclude that parents are possessed of no constitutional right to prevent the public schools from providing information on the subject of sexuality to their children in any form or manner they select these efforts compromise the in a inalienable
042rights of parents to raise their children with the value system they choose and are contrary to the spirit of the local public school district mandating that parents rights do exist um and I will read the procula proclamation now it says in recognition of the vital importance of Education excellence and meaningful collaboration between the school corvall school district and families we recognize November as parents rights in Education Month whereas we acknowledge parents are the child's first and foremost educator and have the primary responsibility for the education care and training of their children and whereas education is compromised of a range of activities by which families and communities teach Knowledge and Skills including ethical and behavioral norms and traditions and whereas fairness and equality must be afforded to all students and family in the school district and
043whereas Public Schools need cooperation and support of all parents and whereas the parent-child relationship shall be honored and supported by teachers counselors administrators and school board members therefore we re we declare November parents rights and Education Month affirming the constitutional right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children 2022 has been a year full of uncertainty and unprecedented changes in every aspect of life especially K-12 education parents and guardians of school-aged children need reassurance from you personally that their parent-child relationship is crucial to the child's success in school regarding disallowing unvaccinated parents from volunteering in the classroom your intention may have been to maintain the ORS laws and statutes set forth by ODE but the MS Clarke I'm sorry your time has expired okay um I'll just say we're asking a good
044faith that you would adopt this declaration um to just recognize that parents rights are important and I appreciate your time tonight that it couldn't be on the agenda tonight yes I got that thank you okay yeah um and maybe you could add it for next month as a discussion it needs to go thank you do we have questions yes we have the board members have questions so I have a couple quick questions uh thanks for coming and uh the first one is uh have you seen the email updates from the superintendents regarding uh allowing volunteers uh processing volunteers exemptions yeah yeah you know Becky's student or her child has lost two months without her being able to help in the classroom and that's a shame so thank you thank you for answering the questions the
045other question I have I'm just a little bit confused when you mentioned uh constitutional rights and I'm yes I'm curious uh where in the Constitution are Supreme Court's ruling that uh you're referring to uh yeah um talking about the FERPA laws the family planning the family laws that protect family rights so the ferpillars thank you so much thank you I think we have one and then I was just going to urge you to share your comments we saw your email that came came to the board okay but you have additional comments there go ahead and send those to the board because you weren't able to finish your comments I appreciate that thank you okay thank you oh again um first of all I want to let you know that I am very grateful that I
046will now be able to volunteer in My Children's Schools the recent change of allowing um Exempted volunteers was music to my ears so thank you um you are elected officials and part of your duty is representing all the community and not just people who you agree with this includes the parents of the children of the Corvallis School District I have felt for the most part in the dark and excluded since last October when the proposed mandates vaccine mandates for our children came out um I'd ask you all to notify the district parents about the mandates via email or um automated phone call and I was basically ignored so I felt that that was um not appropriate and then it continued last spring when I originally asked about exemptions or Volunteers in schools and was told
047there would be no consideration um we birth these children parents are our children's first teachers and deserve respect and the same inclusivity that you tell us is important for the children of the Corvallis school district and I can kind of see it here like there's administrators and there's the children but that where's the parent involvement um parents rights and education means we are part of the same team a unified front and looking out for the best interest of the children of this District it has felt like we are on opposite teams for too long we are all part of the same community and all want what is best for our children right now I'm asking you all to seriously reevaluate and reconsider the way that you have been doing things I believe that together we
048can do better thank you thank you any other questions my name is Sharon could the member State their name on whether they live in the district for the record Becky devices and thank you for sharing so um you mentioned the composition of the table and I questioned about where parents were I'm just curious do you do you have a suggestion of what it would look like for you or what you mean by the comment where are the parents maybe just having some parents on this team just an idea I we we do have a few parents but one way that you as a parent can serve of course is to come and be on the board which is it's an open seat right so um that's how that's how we all got here um and
049I think parents make fantastic board members and so if you have some interest in serving um I've thought about it yeah but there there will be an election soon and so pay attention to the when that comes out and then throw your hat in the ring and maybe come and join okay and that's for other parents too I mean if that's an if that's an interest or a way that you feel like you can serve the community and your children then that is a great way to do it okay thank you you know okay I think I think so the public closed yes it is off so the next um section of the meeting is public testimony on the student investment account annual report so I will now open the public hearing for testimony on
050the student investment account annual report the complete guidelines for public comment are available on the registration do we need to read this whole section again did you all just hear what I said about public comment um so we won't go through that again so here we have oh yeah uh thank you madam chair and all of the board members for the opportunity to comment this evening on the district's student investment account report my name is Sarah Lynch I'm a resident of Corvallis a graduate of Crescent Valley Hey Zoe hey Charlotte hey Shawna um and the mother of a child attending Corvallis Public Schools I'm also the volunteer parent chair of the district special education advisory committee or ciac it was heartening to see in the report the district's efforts to listen to students and families
051to inform Improvement and included in those efforts is the addition of the bilingual bicultural special education Navigators and the hiring of a bilingual special education teacher yet the report's description of how these changes came about is missing the most important voices in change agents that made this possible a group of Spanish-speaking mothers organized by a woman named Catalina Contreras collectively identified the cultural and linguistic barriers they face in special education and they identified the ways the district could break down the barriers this group of extraordinary women came to see act to Advocate to the board after they had encountered more barriers for their voices being heard by District staff what's missing in the report I want to speak into this space here this should not be a story about ciac and District administrators making these
052positions possible this is a story of the leadership of those mothers and Catalina their work elevating the needs of so many families like theirs and their refusal to take no for an answer so as you commit to being better listeners I hope you are also reflecting on how the voices of families on the margins have been ignored minimized managed talked over averaged out or in this case erased from the record and this question points toward a more more than a lack of technical channels to gather qualitative data but also the mindsets the behaviors and the cultural norms that prevent their voices from being heard I've been reflecting on how I contributed to the story being re-centered on ciac and the letter we submitted to the board last February and I'm also reflecting on why it
053took a letter from ciac written in my policy wonk voice with educational jargon and academic citations to make these issues visible and actionable by District leadership so ciac looks forward to being a partner in your work listening at the margins and we'll be a critical friend when you fall short on this commitment so here I am as a critical friend honoring the voices insights and wisdom of the Latina women who are leading this call for change and I hope you'll look to their wisdom as you continue to address the cultural linguistic and systemic barriers within special education thank you okay all right good evening everyone so my name is Denise Hughes taffen I live in covales I have two children who attend schools in Corvallis one at Linus Paulin and the other one at CHS
054thank you so um I am really appreciative of this opportunity to make comments here this evening so it was really good to read the student investment account report which really speaks of the accomplishments of the school district especially during these unprecedented times I was very excited to read of the intention of the district to slow down and listen my commence tonight addresses specifically what has been reported regarding the hiring of bilingual special education Navigators at the elementary level to read it it feels like this was such a smooth process that resulted in a powerful change what distresses me about this reporting are the voices that have been left out it is disappointing that in an effort to showcase the accomplishments of the school district that it was done in such a way that it erased
055voices there are stories Untold here the few lines in this report does not capture the people who are at the Forefront this is not fully my story to tell as I was only a witness and played a small part what I can however say is that there was a group of bipart parents from our Spanish-speaking Community who came up with this idea they approached the school district and received a lot of pushback but this did not stop them after trying to speak to several people at the school district level they then approached the special advisory committee together with seaac and some other bipart parents the district was again contacted after several conversations we later found out that the district was going to hire bilingual special education Navigators it was a very bumpy process there Still
056Remains many on answered questions and concerns as it relates to hiring these Navigators but that is not why I'm here tonight there is an African proverb that says that until Lions tell their stories Tales of hunting will glorify the hunter I'm here tonight to highlight that while the district partially responded that this work was done by our Spanish-speaking families facilitated by Catalina Contreras they dreamed and sought ways to have their dreams realized and persevered even when told no multiple times these voices should be included and celebrated any new questions thank you thank you very much are we done okay it's not working at all now oh scoot over here so hearing no further comments the public hearing is now closed so now we will have the student investment account in our report so the next
057item on our agenda is the presentation of the student investment account annual reports with Olivia are you does anyone have questions for Olivia hello so questions yes uh one of the things that are very valuable uh for the hearing is we get feedback from the community and I know you had maybe less than 60 seconds to gather a response whether you have a general General thoughts of what we heard from the hearing that you can share today are in the coming weeks if there's any feedback that we can learn from the themes that we heard through the hearing that just elaps if there if you would like to comment on that so themes from the public comment that is that what you're referring to right I first want to say that I do recognize that
058how this happened I sat in meetings with Sarah and I know the story behind and the story isn't in this writing in the 300 and 300 words or less that we had to put together and that is I I it's just not there and I know that and I hear that and it um it stings to know that and to realize that and I apologize eyes I think the outcome is what's also really important though too is that something changed in order to make sure that our families were by cultural bilingual have someone to help them to navigate the IEP process special education which is a mystery to even people with you know who are English you know first speakers and have you know all the education in the world's pets can still be incredibly
059complicated so I appreciate siac and the role that they play in making sure that our families have a place where they can go to ask questions and have advocacy and I am also very happy to have this these Navigators hired in order to help that process as well right now it's just Elementary but um it's a start foreign I would um also add that we are beginning to engage with the integrated guidance implementation that is that new initiative at the state level that includes the student investment account program and so um I think it's kind of tricky because this this report is based on last year and now we're sort of moving into this integrated guidance framework and we'll be sort of combining six different programs including the Sia Grant into that work and so
060we are doing that annual engagement and plan review and everything and so that work is actually going to be starting in the next couple of months and so I think the feedback and the comments we receive tonight can easily be incorporated into that process as well and there will be more opportunity for our community to engage in the development of our plan moving forward a much more comprehensive plan that will include the siaa account um but also include five other programs including our high school Success our CTE programming our early indicator for intervention systems everyday matters which is our focus on attendance um and there's another one but I can't think of it oh yeah the big one so just uh also share so when the when we're working on getting feedback around the board
061goals we've also included questions around the integrated guidance so when we're those dates that we shared and the groups that we're meeting with that's going to help you as you establish changes to your board goals but it will also help us as we put this information together for the Department of Education and the funding associated with it so I didn't share that earlier and I recognized that that was an important component so we're going to be getting feedback on both integrated guidance as well as board goals because we'll have that opportunity for the community engagement efforts so I have another question regarding to the Sia accounts how much of the funds were investing from the Sia accounts that could have been invested through full funding of idea individuals with disabilities uh education acts and and
062the second question is how much are we getting for idea and if we get 40 the full funding from the federal governments how much would that would be I don't know that those are figures that Olivia is going to be able to pull for later yes immediately sorry those are things that if you the board as in consensus wanted us to bring back and share we're happy to do that but I think that's a difficult question to answer on the Fly I'm very sorry I want to recognize that just want to say if there is a consensus by the board I would encourage us to highlight that congresswoman bonamichi is considering a bill that will force Congress to fully fund 40 percent of uh idea funds and I know we're intentional about the work and
063if we can do it through a the Sia accounts we should but also we need to highlight that we're spending money that should come from the federal governments and we're shortcomings so if the chair indulges maybe directing staff for that information I I think it's like um I think because advocacy for our school district is an important role that we play um being able to speak to what we could do if idea was fully funded would be helpful so if you can get us those numbers I would appreciate it so on this thread I have a couple questions here first one is considering the uncertainty of school funding in the upcoming legislative session what are the likely impacts on District mental health and special education programs and what are the impacts on students is really
064what I want to get at are you talking about if we were to propose a de-investing or I mean where you know where there's a lot of uncertainty about uh funding in this legislative cycle and looking forward to a couple by annia there's our people that are expressing a lot of concern about reduction in funding what does that mean for the school district and what is that more specifically what does that mean for our kids what will yeah just scratch the surface on having those conversations and haven't gotten that far yet the the pause in our hiring is kind of our first step in that just to slow those processes down um but we haven't had any in-depth uh discussions around um whether we would or would not continue Investments and and a lot of
065our newer established priorities we haven't had those conversations okay so I have a question about the the report so that's been shared with us is there opportunity to make changes to that report at this point in time or is this sharing with board sent off being posted and put up immediately are you talking about the responses to the questions the question responses agenda the the report is presented to the board not for the board to adopt it it's just an information item um the format of this report is a template that ode provides to school districts and so the only thing that in this report that is unique to us is just the response sections and we're also Limited in how many words we can use for each response sure and I think what I
066was trying to understand is just in looking at the cover letter that goes along with this the timing of the report being shared with the board before being submitted and put on the website is there still time in that window versus it's being shared just as sort of a matter of it's a this is being shared and then um we're required to submit um the board minutes and the report to Ode by November 30th that's an annual um deadline um and so the response is just uh as as it was written by District staff if the board wants to provide feedback on that that's great and we could use that moving forward okay and is that an appropriate comment to make now in terms of I mean not to open a but this seems like
067the the time just okay just in thinking about and carrying forward the public comment that came forward and acknowledging stories and voices that weren't named or told and in looking at the annual report the question of the response um there are a couple of different questions that really stood out to me from what I heard earlier around what changes in Behavior have you observed and I think that's in there than naming the relationship with ciac and I know you know forwarding is tight and wording is small and at the same time thinking about um how those involved could be named or then there are also questions let's see later on there were two others that stood out to me around as you think about what guided your choices and prioritization efforts a place potentially where
068other folks or stories could be named and then also the question before that around Sia implementation includes ongoing engagement with all students vocal students family staff and Community Partners have relationships with or between those groups changed and or been maintained throughout this Academic Year and I know in in working on reports like these how tight word counts are and thinking about how do we tell the real histories and the real struggles and challenges that come through that lead to real change happening that this is an opportunity yeah something I do want to clarify because it's not necessarily obvious is that this report is in reference to how we utilize our student investment account Grant it's not like a encompassing district-wide the responses were written and specific to this uh the clearly identified strategies and Investments
069that we use the grant funding on last year and so we're really reporting on the activities from last year right now which so that the feedback we're getting today is great as we move forward but this is really just more of like a summary and like hey here's an update on on what we were up to last year and with regards to this grant thank you for clarifying yeah that first question that has the conversation about The Navigators bilingual bicultural like that didn't happen last year that's happening this year okay and that question was um asking like what changes in Behavior have you observed related to the implementation of what you did last year so we were looking at last year and seeing Gap some holes and moving forward so that's the other piece of
070it too and one other thing is is that the minutes associated with this meeting are going to be included and so the public testimony that we've heard related to this a student investment account is also going to be included in that way as well okay and that's there is the like a word limit there it's sewer other than it's just the the minute says Kim takes them okay okay thank you yeah and thanks for clarifying it's helpful to to understand that content context right yeah so the thank you for all your work um so the next item on our agenda is the student achievement update from Ryan foreign on my side I can see half a slide and so it's making me think mine looks I'm gonna stop sharing and try again there we go
071ah I'm still doing two thirds which is going to be problematic as we have data to look at so I'm wondering if we take a couple of minutes to take a take a five minute break and then we'll come back together so we are in recess for five minutes and we'll be back foreign the next item on the agenda is a report on student achievement all right that's perfect so we can look at this email exactly so what we wanted to do tonight um was really sort of take you through the process that you're going to be going through with our building principles as they talk about the work around their school Improvement plan and so for us we wanted to share some areas of improvement that we're focusing on in the upcoming year related
072to District Improvement so we're going to share some information with you related to some data sets some next steps that we're taking as well as some of the components underneath sort of Investments that we're making as we come out of the pandemic and we think about student achievement all right so there's going to be three sections there's going to be where are we now where are we going and how do we want to get there so um going with the theme that we started the school year off with which was around space we've maintained that in our slide deck this year when you see the slides from our high school principals they will not see Rockets so just be anticipating that because they were not on board with the Rockets like we were so if
073you want to call that out feel free you can say Mr boring where are your Rockets where are the rocket ships Mr boring all right so who we are so this was a picture of CSD staff at our welcome back this year so as you can see there's uh nearly a thousand folks um all here working in the community in support of students so we take one of those every few years and we take them as an intentional decision to think about who we are and how we represent the school district we still May wear colors from our individual schools but we're one district and again the theme this year was around the love of public education and you can see I had a shirt that said that so again a great way to start
074off the year and Who We Are 6348 students so these numbers that you're going to see many of them for were from last spring as we report out a lot of it has to do with assessment data that we have and or have had and when that came to us so in terms of context one of the things I want you to remember is that this was the end of last year coming out of the pandemic still working through masks working through vaccine so some of that is also attributed to this at the same time I think it's important contextually to think about the fact that we're coming out of a once in a century pandemic and we have work to do we recognize that we acknowledge it and at the same time we're taking
075steps to try to address what we know to be best practice in supporting students as we come out of the pandemic all right so these and this is who our students are anything you would want to add on this one relating to our emerging bilingual students um I would say that um so nine percent of our students um have been identified as language Learners or emerging bilinguals we also have a larger population that you'll see later in the district um that are are called every Els which just means our emerging bilinguals and students that were formally identified as a margin bilinguals here is the racial makeup of our staff and students one of the things to note is that those are also self-identified and sometimes people have identified themselves in what more than one category
076and so the percentage adds up Beyond 100 but we felt it was representative and I like this graphic because it again highlights our desire to balance the students that we represent in our school district with the staff that we have and so for me I felt like this was a great way of representing that and so to Lee and Lori Corliss who put this all together for us tonight um just to kind of to have appreciation for the way that they think about data the way that they look at it and how it helps us to be better so we looked at a couple of things we're going to talk about how our students experience school and the way we often think about that at this point is with our youth truth data and so
077our students are taking those surveys in the spring to talk about their experiences and we're using that as we think about both the academics of our schools but all the also the relational piece and again we're looking at areas that we're working towards Improvement in growth on tonight so we're going to highlight some areas that will have identified as a district that we need to work on all right so the first one is around relationships and in you truth there's about five or six questions that fall into the category of relationships do you like the way that your teacher treats you when you need help does your teacher treat you with respect how many of your teachers are willing to give extra help on school work if you need it how many of your teachers
078believe that you can get a good grade if you try and when I'm up feeling upset stressed or having problems there's an adult from school who I can talk to about it and so those are the the questions that associate with relationship and here's a couple of quotes from our students do you want to go ahead and cover those sure foreign so the power that I see in youth truth is it gives us both quantitative and qualitative data so whenever um it it works through how would you rate on this so that we can really get a holistic quantitative data but we also ask um tell us what you're thinking and how you're feeling about this um so I I will translate the one on the left corner um so though the comment here says
079my teacher helps me in math and when I get it wrong she tells me what I did what I did wrong and helps me to get better in math but we just pulled out a couple of comments from every level because it really puts the heart into the data and why we're doing this so then again that's three through five last spring Middle School it's about 50 percent and again a couple of those quotes that um again are confidential quotes that are added um one of them that is uh really strong is if you want to come out to your family but don't know how or don't think they'll accept you you can talk to an adult at school about it and they'll encourage you and give you the confidence boost you need to tell
080your family or friends that you aren't straight and if no one accepts you they do and they may even talk to your parents or family about it and that they should be proud or happy for you or something so again these are words straight from students and and super powerful at the same time I just don't share my problems with anyone and so we know that there is work to do here and we're and one of the things we're talking about is how do we continue to build that those relationships with students and staff foreign at the high school it was about one-third had a rating of four or five it's on a one to five scale three being neutral um and then again a couple of quotes um try to actually get to know
081students and be vulnerable with them and ask questions care about students not just teach them I don't get cared enough at home and it's the same with a lot of teachers at the school and so that's a challenge for us as we think about moving forward and at the same time some ways my teachers care about me and helped me are by greeting me every day and asking how I am or what I have been doing recently they also always make sure I ask for help whenever I need it so again as we think about this and we think about our work moving forward that's an area that we know we're going to continue to focus on another area that we're focusing on is attendance so for us a regular attender is at 90 percent
082at this point um 65 percent of us our students are regular attenders and so we know that focusing on attendance and being present and encouraging attendance is work that we have to do as well again some some of the things that I would say that have happened through the pandemic are also some patterns that we have to work with families to to re-establish and so that's another area that we're focusing on anything you'd want to add on that that's great all right how are students doing and so now we're going to focus a little bit on student achievement data so this is um for ninth grade students receiving a full credit and math as ninth graders again for us that's a really good indicator of Student Success and we are at 81 percent for last
083year's ninth graders again thinking about kids coming into now their 10th grade year and how does that what does that mean for students moving forward we also look at it by student group students navigating poverty our emerging bilinguals students that were ever supported through bilingual services and students with disabilities so again an area that as we continue to work towards coming out of the pandemic an area that we're focusing on and again as we get further into the presentation we'll be sharing some of the steps that we're taking math Proficiency in third through fifth grade we combine third through fifth and with this one we are looking at s back from last fall or last spring so again coming out of the pandemic and the end of last year the reason we chose this is
084because we'll have a comparator in this s back results this spring and we'll be able to look at the progress that we've made there and then we also looked at English language arts proficiency through through fifth grade F and about half of our students at the standard there related to aspect good night what's that yeah sure okay um another piece that we wanted to look at um one of the things that we acknowledge is that s back it tells one story um it is pretty deaf to the fact that um a quarter what was two out of our eight elementary schools are all of our students are learning to read into languages and so we really wanted to also keep at the center that we have a number of students that are learning to read
085in Spanish and how is that going so we looked at reading proficiency using our star assessment that we give all of our students and we looked at our second graders so this is actually their reading proficiency and how they scored in the fall of this year and we were in intentional insane reading proficiency not English reading proficiency or Spanish reading proficiency so at second grade our dual language students are are primarily learning how to read in Spanish so they were assessed in Spanish and our English only schools were assessed in English and we combined that data together which was an important data set for us to combine oh sure you're not in my brain um so green green is proficient blue is on watch meaning that they are very close to meeting that proficiency level
086and we're keeping an eye on them yellow is considered intervention and red is considered urgent intervention all right and then we're following that up with where do we want to be so establishing some of those goals for for ourselves and as we think about that we also continue to think about our board goals and so um as we think about those we think about student achievement we think about health and wellness we think about Real World Learning facilities and Equitable systems and I think that this is again representative of the fact that we place Equity at the center of decision making and also recognize that student achievement is impacted in a positive way by addressing barriers just for students and barriers for families and so that's was important for us to highlight again going back
087to the work that you have continued to support over the last seven years since those board goals have been established foreign so again as we think about our academics all students will be strategic readers and deep deep thinking mathematicians and what that looks like to us again one of the things that we've looked at has been thinking about a five-year pattern so thinking about the fact that we're continuing to move out of the pandemic and if we want um to have 80 proficiency we need to think about that and what does that look like year over year and progress being made so for us as we think about third through fifth grade Proficiency in math we're seeing our goal for this spring is 50 which we know we have a ways to go by setting
088a goal there but we also know that that's progress if we're moving towards that those higher thresholds over time um Middle School one of the things that we're thinking a lot about at middle school is conceptual understanding and procedural fluency so again Beyond computation and being able to solve an algorithm to be able to deeper have a deeper understanding of mathematics and so we've developed some local performance assessments that help us to look at that and then at the high school we showed you that graph related to freshman one credit as freshmen we're looking at decreasing the gap between the proficient level for all students and our student groups so we're looking at it differently because we know with that group of students there's work to do to move us further to get all of
089our students on track also in English language arts we're thinking both about Oaks and continuing growth there but we're also thinking about that second grade proficiency um really it's about learning to read in second grade so having that fluency for second graders and we are have an investment there that we've been making and so we want to be able to attract that over time and then the engagement and connection piece that we talked about related primarily to attendance and youth truth so increasing that regular attendance rate this year as well as seeing higher relationship scores from youth Ruth at elementary middle and high and again those happen in the spring and so we're working towards that throughout the school year yeah all right so how are we going to get there so a couple of
090things that I want to highlight for us thanks Lee foreign S I want to highlight is the fact that this work has been underway so as we think about summer school as one example A lot of these measures happened last spring and so as you think about this school year having served nearly a thousand students in summer school was an intentional decision based on student need and invitation and so that was again one of those first steps that we've been able to take post pandemic to help to support students and increase student achievement Kinder Academy is another example of that the kindergarten Academy has been a bit of a challenge because of all the construction happening around our community if you hadn't noticed but it's also will allow us to have greater access over time
091so I see those as two broad interventions of support that we've been able to take since since the pandemic also principles are are spending a great deal of time with this data so we spent time in retreat at the end of July and in those meetings principles by grade level by level by team we're looking at the same data related to their individual school scores and coming up with specific plans for their schools and again that's what you're going to start to see at our next meeting in November as schools are starting to share their sip plans with you so one of the goals that I have had for this year is a greater assessment Literacy By our school leaders and that was the way that we spent the primarily spent our Retreat between that
092and our Equity policy those were the two things we really focused on um and again setting so those School setting goals revising their goals tracking their progress so that's one of those pieces that we focused on in math instruction one of the things that we've done this year is we've brought on a teacher on special assignment who's really focused on supporting um our our math work um Beyond again beyond the algorithm to have a deeper understanding of math and our elementary schools continue to work with the math consultant in a similar way so we are providing professional development as teachers and staff in the moment and in the classroom shared expectations about use of curriculum and so as we're doing learning walks we're looking for the bridges curriculum and math how's that being utilized how's
093number Corner working in our elementary schools there's um there's intentionality there um grade 6 through 10 work in the process of a math adoption again looking for materials that go deeper um Beyond solving a solving an algorithm under splitter understanding of what that means for me as a as a mathematician um again academic discourse and making sure that we're helping students to have ways to talk about math and ways to talk about that with peers and also our leadership team this year at each of our monthly meetings we're spending time with Limitless mind the book that you read over the summer so again thinking about systems and structures and how those influence and impact outcomes for kids and our Math teachers as well yep and reading one of the things that we've done is we've
094made an investment in having making sure that we have an additional adult adult and our K1 classrooms if you think about a district our size that's about a million dollar investment that we've made with those Federal relief dollars over the last year and this year to make sure that we have additional adults and additional supports in classrooms and I think that's a real key piece to the reading work that we have to do and it also accounts for that K2 that second grade tracking that we're doing around star um one of the other things around reading that's happening is we are spending time with um our curriculum program support folks so as an example with collaborative classroom over this week the one of the trainers has been working with our principals going through walk throughs
095in the past they've modeled lessons for our teachers and the same thing is going to be happening with Adelante which is our dual language language arts program again thinking about how to make sure that we're providing ongoing professional development to our teachers related to reading and reading support So as we as we recognize that we have challenges coming out of the pandemic I also want you to hear that we have plans and that we're making progress and that will have areas that we're focused on and working towards the same thing is true when we think about engagement so that was the other area that we had highlighted as a goal area um character strung at the middle school greater Fidelity there um High School the focus on attendance and making sure that if a student
096doesn't have a trusted adult how do we make that connection and help them to have that connection with an adult in their school and one other thing that I talked about earlier tonight or just briefly talked about um with our work around board goals and meeting with groups of community members one of the things that will have start next month is we're going to convene a group that has been focused on our Equity work one of the things that I've learned and I've recognized is that there are so many great things that are happening and there's folks that feel in some ways isolated that they're doing this work alone and so for us to bring together representatives from our executive team our Equity coordinator in marcian members of ciac who spoke tonight are tdac the
097theater group who's looking at equity in theater production and Equity tosa our mental health staff our families support a school principal a secondary safe student representative a DOI staff a board member a community members including NAACP and Casa Latinos unidos I think as we think about that as a collective impact model I think that there's value in that and so to me thinking about hearing all those voices and perspectives in one place and sharing out what work is happening will help us to feel and recognize the work that is happening and also for resources to be shared and understood in a different way and so that's another area that I think really focuses on the second goal around strategies of Engagement so those are some of the activities and actions that we're taking this year
098again recognizing there's work ahead of us and also understanding that we have the people we have the community support and so we just need to continue to move forward and do the right work so that is what I wanted to make sure that you had his chance to see and always the celebration and K-12 is the is the graduations that you've been able to be a part of and we have work to do to make sure all of our kids are there with smiling faces and feeling like they're prepared for the next stage of their lives so um I wanted we wanted to share that with you again appreciation to Melissa and the growth and experience team to Lee and Lori for putting these materials together for us and I want to open it up
099to questions but again I wanted us to be thinking about this in terms of a practice for all of us as we get ready to meet with our principals later this month again they will have a similar format they'll have a similar flow in the information that you have in front of you but ideally you'll have had time to think about it and to dig through it before those conversations happen so I recognize tonight I'm not giving you that same period of time that length to really think about this and delve into it but I also wanted to make sure to get it to you ahead of them okay okay well I was just worried that you know our student reps May at some point leave us and I'm really interested in hearing their comments
100or their questions or thoughts around you know seeing some of the data that you saw around students and their feelings about relationships at school or academics do you have thoughts about what's most needed yeah so actually at our safe meeting today we had one today um CV shuttlein and Franklin students got together and we actually talked about representation in our schools and especially in the staff and how um kind of at CV we don't um have a lot of stuff of color and so we as safe students don't always feel like we are represented within our staff and that kind of goes along with how some students might not have someone that they can talk to you about um problems and that one question on the youth Tour survey yeah um I would like to
101celebrate our new counselor I met him today and he is really cool he is black so it was really cool to talk to him and he is my counselor which is pretty cool um but I think uh keeping that in mind when you're hiring that hiring people of color is really it's really impactful for students and um it can be hard I'm sure to find people of color who are willing to reside in Corvallis since we are pretty white um but just keeping that in mind is kind of a comment that I had and then also I was hoping um Ryan maybe that we could I don't know if this is data that you have if you could give me a breakdown of CV like um because earlier in the slideshow you had uh like
102students to staff race percentage Yeah I was wondering if you had that for CV I don't have it in the slide down yeah we could definitely put that together for December December okay yeah um you want to go with your question okay so my question was about the math percentages about specifically about elementary so I was wondering if non-english speakers received any sort of help or specific help I guess speaking from experience when I moved here I was in the English language program and when we did the initial STAR testing like I was below average and everything and that doesn't reflect how I'm a student right now right so no Excel so it was and like when I was doing math I didn't receive any sort of extra help or like no teacher really focused
103with me it was more like self-learning and figuring that out on my own with my family who had also moved and we were struggling you know just as immigrants so um if they're getting any sort of accommodation if that's getting looked into because I think that really impacts students and there's a very big difference for yeah yeah that is that is so um with both star and smarter balanced um there are kind of guidelines around acceptable accommodations so I can speak a little bit to the accommodations that are um or designated supports available to language Learners specifically on S back a lot of it is centered around they have more supports for Native Spanish speakers and that I think comes from just the population so that that assessment actually can be presented as a side-by-side
104stacked assessment where there is Spanish language and there is English and so students can toggle back and forth and they can answer in either language so that is a designated support based on if if teachers determine that's something that would support a child then that would be the sport they would receive during that um and um there are some other accommodations but that's the one that I find most obviously benefiting our language learners yeah so I had another question about specifically the objective about math and specifically like the middle school and how you were going to look at the seventh grade population and like consider local performance assessment I was just unclear of exactly what that was is that mine I I can totally do this one um [Laughter] so local performance assessments it's just
105a term used that we um when we design assessments that we administer across a grade level or across a team and teachers have worked together to develop those assessments so um what there are a number of different things um but what they often look like rather than a number of problems it's actually a complex problem and there's a rubric that we use to score that to look at how at their conceptual understanding not only did they get the answer right so it's not it's not so much a long list of problems to do but it's representative problems of key learning in the grade level so if you know defining dividing fractions is I think a sixth grade standard that's a big standard well you know students could do a whole list of those or what
106we do is we ask them okay show us that you know how to do this and also so explain your thinking and what you're doing and and model this out and demonstrate with a picture of how this is what what you're doing and show us um write a problem that that you would represent this as a story problem and then we use a rubric to to score that mm-hmm okay I had one more question um about um just standardized testing and stars so I was wondering if students are getting practice or also assessments of other forms like other than standardized testing since it does it's a very specific sort of assessment and you know some students don't perform well in that sort of um assessment and also if before doing Oaks and stars if they're
107getting practice in that because if you maybe learn something in a certain way and then you get a test that maybe is not how you were learning maybe a student wouldn't perform as well in that so that's what I was wondering yeah so um I'll take the first half you take the second half um so that's a another great question um I recognize that the standardized assessments are not um the be-all end-all um I think that there's better ways that we assess and to to check on kids knowledge or students knowledge throughout a course um for us what we look at it as is helps us to see kind of broadly the whole District more so um once a year rather than all the things that are happening in the classroom with your teacher based
108on the test that you're taking even teachers coming together who've given the same test and talk about how it went for them as a teacher versus another teacher how their students have done on it so there's a lot of Assessments that happen outside of these but as we think about how information gets reported out about schools and school districts this is often the data that gets put in the paper in other places and so oftentimes we feel like we need to resp at and that narrative in the community while we also recognize that the most important assessments are the ones you're taking in classrooms with your teachers that help them to know what you need next as Learners this is for us more of a kind of after the fact kind of an assessment it
109doesn't do the same thing that you're talking about and I recognize that there's greater value in the ones you're talking about yeah I would I would reiterate the same thing I whenever we're talking with teachers we're telling them you know what don't take time to look at Smarter Balance look at this the assessments you're giving in the classroom because it's going to tell you about what to do next and where to go next and this is really about the power of of sbac comes from taking you know thousands of scores and putting them together to look at Trends but looking at individual student scores it's not that valuable students do have the opportunity to practice with star we actually use that assessment third through um well second through eighth grade and it's done actually in
110their classroom on their on their iPads or their Chromebooks um and um teachers have access to those resources throughout the year so they can use them a number of times we as a district have a couple of times where we say oh you have to give the assessment right here because we want to make sure everyone's taking it but they have access to that throughout the year and the practice assessments um for svac are online and available even at home you can take them just for fun yeah those were great questions yes I would like that I'd like to recognize the great questions that you asked they were pretty hard I could see these two sweating so way to go and we're done answering questions now I thought the highlight of my evening was going
111to be getting a teaching and learning report for my superintendent which I think is really cool because you don't see that very often um but I think the highlight and I think director Oliveto and myself are inconsensus that the highlight of our day and perhaps week was watching our students and staff nerd out on on assessment literacy it was just fabulous so thank you for that I yield back um yeah that was incredible and thank you because I think about like 90 that was um I just wanted to know when we get this information another another viewing of it if we will have the opportunity to see uh in your breakdown of who's in the green who's in the blue um if there will be an opportunity to disaggregate that by race and ethnicity okay
112typically that comes in my evaluation report good night and we had a lot of conversation about that and we were trying we know that that's an expectation that you have for of us and at the same time we were trying to be more broad as we think about District Improvement and at the same time I don't want it in any way to represent the fact that we don't think that looking at disaggregated disaggregated data is valuable and primary importance really they asked all the questions I thought of and even deeper uh it was phenomenal really when when you live it right so yeah you've lived it for 13 years um there's a level of depth of knowledge that comes from being a student in a K-12 system that has probably when they started that we
113were in the nclb and all the things that have changed over time um and they can also identify the fact that a high-stakes assessment and where that kind of Falls in their own learning so I think that they have value a valuable perspective that none of us have because that's been their experience right agreed 100 no doubt and and it's just they're the experts they are the experts and I look forward to co-presents with you uh in about a week about about this and maybe capture this this this moment and the questions that they had it's really a fundamental step in how we analyze the data and and move forward one thing uh real quick I want to highlight I don't know what the recommendations of the Senate bill will be about the standards and
114math and whether they're changing ninth grade algebra requirements which I think is important but one thing you highlighted really well here is the delineation between why we teach algebra or math there is two ways one way is we teach the kids about algorithms and we have they apply algorithms to solve problems and we thought they're good to go and what we're doing and what I'm hearing from the expectations we're developing all the way from third grade and above or throughout the process is that we teach them to develop or discover algorithms on daily basis in order to understand how to solve a problem and then solve it and that is also algebra so I just want to highlight that we need to navigate whatever changes might happen to us and not lose the essence of
115why algebra 9th grade was there originally as to teach how to solve a problem and how to develop an algorithm not necessarily teaching how to follow algorithms and I see I see that in what you're developing and what you're doing yeah that's ideally that's what we're going for for students to be able to solve an equation understand why they're using using the equation be able to describe the not just the purpose behind it but also explain problems in multiple ways that's when we think about learning math in a deep way those are the kinds of things we're thinking about you know we're still our goal is still that students are able to be successful in algebra in eighth grade so that's still the the focus for us I heard you um you mentioned ninth grade
116and I just want to make sure that for that's okay but just in our community and with the conversations we've had it really ideally we're trying to help students to be successful in algebra in eighth grade thanks unless so I'm it's just the one topic that didn't come up thank you for this lovely snapshot a nice broad overview nice Graphics really enjoyed all of it oh I have to put another plug in you know that the daisy diagram that is overused by everybody and use badly for once you guys we got it right thank you did you see the people turning heads and looking at each other going oh my God aha moment so amazing use of that with our with our goals it was like what a great way to represent that but that's
117not what I want to talk about um I really so two years ago with a hot mess last year was really hard we just saw an article in The Oregonian about s back um our community quietly had a conversation where we got a little hysterical about scores I'm not overly concerned about where our kids are at our kids are where they're supposed to be I'm more concerned about growth and so definitely need to be looking at data over time there was once upon a time this board tried to learn about what is it growth percentiles and it didn't really stick really well we don't have to do that but some way for us to Lee is taking the bait she's like she's like I'm going to teach it to you yes but I mean this
118board I mean I'm really interested in what does our growth look like over time and that's one thing looking at for quad Quadro that talks about achievement and growth and comparing student growth and student achievement and how those two things and where our students are in percentages in each one of those quadrants that would be really cool and that's been something that our principals have had access to because I agree with you it's all it's the the growth component and actually as I've been meeting with Prince Elementary principals and they've been setting their student learning and growth goals for the year for our evaluation between them and myself they've been having a lot of conversations around those growth percentages as well as those having met percentages yeah so yeah that's that's been um it's been
119another great tool nicely so awesome and I guess I'll editorialize and say I think at this point having been on the school board for almost 10 years I think s back Oaks back in the day it's just a cruel cruel device I'm much more interested in Star data for looking at a system I think it's a lot more useful and I would love it if we just did away from big long summative assessments that are just painful for kids so here's so here's the The Dilemma that comes with that that we grappled with so we recognized the amount of times students spend in assessment and so ideally we would have looked at fall and spring related to Star right we know that in Spring we have to give us back and in giving us back
120we know that there's less time to um to give star and so we if we're thinking about star we're thinking we're really thinking fall to fall other than second grade because they're not taking us back yet so that's why we're using that in this presentation but I but I don't think anyone would disagree with that assessment okay I was just editorializing I can't tell you I'm gonna follow it up on that yeah and the the assessment blew maybe we'll see some changes that would be really nice yeah I healed back I'm sorry now I think this is right at the sports alley and um I'm really grateful we have students who can ask really thoughtful great questions um so and one of their questions and we'll see this data for each school but every time
121we put up our data on staff diversity and student diversity I feel like we're kind of patting our well we're not really patting ourselves on the back but what we're seeing is a little false because it's weighted so heavily by the Dual language program whereas there's some students who see more diversity than others are you talking about Staffing yeah okay so I just whenever we present that I think yeah but that's not across our school district it's really some of that is only seen by a small number of students so I just think we need to really be careful as we look at those numbers to really think about what that represents in our classrooms I I agree and I also think that when we when we look at what's happening right now the students
122who need to see staff of color the most are seeing those staff of color in their building I think about students at Garfield and how important that is for them so trying to look at it from the other side yeah I mean I agree with that also but there are other students who don't see it at all um and the other thing we've talked a lot about we talked something about math but I was thinking about as I was reading um actually through the um student investment account report um I was thinking about the adoption we did of the language arts curriculum a couple years ago the collaborative classroom and I think one of the questions that I had at the time was does this have a component that's really looking at explicitly teaching how
123to decode language are we looking at phonomics and phenomes and really teaching children how to decode language and so as we're as I was hearing you talk about um in professional development that's happening with that I was wondering like how we're leveraging that really to boost those students who have either because they weren't in a classroom for a couple or a year and then had whatever disruptions happened last year missed some of that really explicit um teaching of reading or who were already students who had some challenges with reading and now are trying to catch up again yeah and so that's actually a piece that this week when I did a walk through with that team that they're talking about is word work that students continue to do through Elementary School some so some working
124around multi-syllabic words and um diphthongs and some of those pieces of um of reading and so they have they are working on the 345 component of that organizing some of the work that students have to do around phonemic awareness and phonics coming out of the pandemic so that's a piece that is being added to collaborative classroom in response to what's gone on foreign I will be quite after this but this is you know kind of a trial run for the kinds of conversations I I think you should look forward to in having with our principles during those sip dinners yeah all right okay so now we are moving on to our enrollment update foreign hi so there is a narrative report that's part of the agenda tonight there's a couple of charts in within it
125but I just wanted to go through some more detailed numbers with you um and so I'll go through these pretty quick and then if you have any questions along the way um just let me know so just looking at our overall enrollment this was included in the document that was in the board packet but you can see this is a snapshot of our enrollment over the last 10 years um this does exclude the Yes House alternative school that school closed a couple of years ago so we didn't really want to skew any of the numbers so this includes all of our district schools and Medi Creek Charter School and so you can see over the last 10-year period our enrollment hasn't changed that much it's only gone down by 0.7 percent but we've definitely seen
126a pretty significant decrease over the last five years in that our enrollments decreased by over seven percent so our preliminary head count as of October 1 of this year was 6 355 students the way this looks by Grace so that same 6 355 students you can see there's different colors of the bars in this chart and that's really just to call out the fact that um we have a handful of grades that have a class of more than 500 students and we also have a handful of grades that have a class of less than 500 students and it is very split in that our larger classes are all in our higher grades at this point in our small classes are all at our primary grades for the most part our kindergarten class of 396 the
127first class we've had below 400 in quite some time and you can see that we have like a large sixth grade class this year but we did we've talked about this a little bit a couple of years ago with lioness pollen and Pauline enrollment and our Middle School numbers in a couple of years our Middle School numbers will start to look quite a bit different um the the enrollment that we um projected and the enrollment that we actually recorded you can see the difference here so we projected to have 6439 students we actually had 6355 at the elementary level the numbers weren't off by very much we saw a pretty big change at sixth grade normally historically we've seen an uptick in our sixth grade class when we compare it to the prior years fifth
128grade class so we usually see upticks at sixth grade ninth grade and usually 12th grade in our district we have a lot of students that enter our system at those grade levels like they might be coming into our system it's great for the first time and maybe they were homeschooled before or they went to a private school and the same thing happens at high school as well so our sixth grade number is a little off and our 12th grade number is a little off we still saw increases in our 12th grade class just not as much as we normally would see so as we move forward in our enrollment projections when we look at our average cohort survival ratios what we're experiencing this year will start to impact our projections moving forward because we probably
129won't assume such a big increase at those entry points in our system um and so kind of diving deeper at our grade levels looking at our elementary numbers by grade looking at what that was 10 years ago five years ago and what it is this year so you can see obviously with our kindergarten that looks quite different and in fact that looks the same for all of our grade levels K5 um what I want to highlight is when we look at this same information foreign oh sorry I'm skipping through I thought I had one for secondary I don't see it what I would say is that that looks different for grades six through twelve ten years ago five years ago this year the numbers are are much more static we don't see fluctuations up and
130down like we do at K5 um I would say that we're we're seeing a big change and adjustment is at that K5 level at 6 through 12 it won't start to impact those levels for a couple more years um and again I think a lot of that will depend on look keeping track of our survival ratios over time because what we experienced usually was a little different so that'll probably start to play into some of our future numbers as well do you want to talk about birth rates as well yeah I mean I can tell you just knowing that when we project our kindergarten class class sizes we um we look at the birth rate statistics we look at them as a as a state number we look at county numbers we look at specific
131zip codes and everything over the next couple of years is is not an indicator of of any increase in kindergarten enrollments in fact it'll probably go down next year but maybe five years from now we might start to see that change again I think last year last calendar year was the first year in many years where the state actually had an increase in live births but for the five years prior to that it was a constant decrease and so we fully expect our kindergarten class next year to be like in the mid 300s and so again that K5 level is where we're really focusing our attention when it comes to enrollment because our secondary Theory projections don't necessarily indicate big changes in the next couple of years but at the K5 level it will have
132a significant impact especially when we look at school by school which is what I have up now um so it's kind of a weird so much larger but this is the numbers by school and I'll just go to this next oh here's projected versus actual by school so again it's different everywhere Bessie Coleman Elementary was the a school where we added a teacher or added an additional Staffing allocation in August because we anticipated those numbers looking different but you can see across the board you know these aren't huge numbers when we look at it by school though you can see um with some of our elementary schools they've changed dramatically compared to five years ago and ten years ago so [Music] um Catherine Jones Harrison and Mountain View Elementary have below 300 students now Mountain
133View is a little tricky because it fluctuates quite a bit but for some of our schools they're been in a pretty constant decline um and so you can see we like atoms isn't interesting 10 years ago at 354. five years ago at 442 and now they're at 384. so I think in some of our elementary schools they were really getting really big and really packed and really tight and so there's definitely some more breathing room in some of our elementary schools but the flip side of that is some of the numbers are pretty pretty low foreign take this with a grain of salt these are very high level numbers very high level calculations this is just looking at our total enrollment as of October one and the classroom FTE allocations that we provide to each
134School you could see again at the elementary level Bessie Coleman is a little bit higher they're projected their actual enrollment was higher than projected um but you can see it's pretty fairly static across the board we I did include Muddy Creek in this number their enrollment was also a little bit lower and then projected um and they just have a static six section class um so that one's pretty straightforward one of the narratives that sometimes goes with enrollment declining enrollment is coming out of the pandemic and more families leaving K-12 but one of the things that I think you can see is that the number coming in is the area that we're most concerned about in terms of shrinking and I think that has more to do from my perspective with the availability of affordable
135housing for families and I think we'll continue to see that for some quite some time yeah I mean the correlation is that the tax base in our area has increased the number of units have increased um and so there's no evidence for us to correlate increase in housing units to any sort of increase in enrollment I know in some other school districts they develop a calculation for that you know for every X number of housing units that are created they anticipate a certain number of students coming in so for us we don't even we don't even assume um an additional housing unit is going to produce a school-age student so does that suggest that that has more to do with the type of housing that we're building rather than because if I if I go
136up to so uh for example a good example is the banks School District small small community but with lots of housing growth and they're anticipating very rapid growth in students but they're producing homes that are aligned with that market their bedroom community in Portland I think you can look at our neighbor District Philomath and see what they've experienced in the last 10 years because they have had a lot of housing units added in that district and it would correlate to their increase in enrollment and it being right next to us you can also differentiate the the cost difference in a lot of families choosing to maybe just live five miles out of town because it is more affordable to to purchase a home I would say overall the market is so squashed right now that
137if there were affordable housing units that opened up in Corvallis it doesn't mean more students it just means people are going to be shifting between maybe a situation they're in into that um but the the rental market is one that doesn't allude to more students either so I think it's just a big squeeze and I think in our area that's nothing new but it's been exacerbated in the last couple of years I also think in the bank's example you're thinking about people who've moved out to Hillsboro and now are moving out to Banks so it's I think that's a different situation as well yeah the dynamic so uh on that note thank you really appreciate the the slides and if possible we can have them available at the packets that would be great I think
138it's just appalling in 2017 when we saw this going down I still remember vividly uh during a hearing about land you about development a person said our schools cannot accommodate the kids so we should not build more of the housing that was affordable housing developments I interjected then and I think we need to speak up right now as loud as possible we have great schools and high quality schools but they should be accessible for the for the children and the families that they want to live here and I would encourage us to really be more advocating for affordable housing and do everything we can with our city and county partners and local businesses as well to make sure people can stay here foreign I did ask how many students in our enrollment count were out
139of District students and the number is 254. so we have 254 students attending our schools that don't live in our District boundary vice versa 7 how many students do we have the number of how many students outside the district we don't have quite the the easiest access to that it's a lot easier for us to see what we're within our system it it would require quite a bit of time for us to to dig that up don't worry about it thanks so this is I mean it's disquieting data and what I'm really I always go back to what's going to be the impact on kiddos at what point does our declining enrollment start to reduce our funding such that it's pushing into programmatic impacts and so I guess at what point should it are you
140going to get are you going to get concerned because you're pretty stuck right now but it's like well I'd say um a lot of the allocations we provide to our schools are formulaic and so um if an elementary school if we're going to if we project that in elementary school we'll have less students next year than they what they currently have the first thing we look at is our class size targets and whether we're going to make any modifications to that number and then we just calculate how many classroom teachers that school will have and we'll have a lot of elementary schools next year they're going to have less classroom teachers than they have had in the past because of the declining moment I think what gives me more pauses when we have small schools
141schools that have less than 300 students um create an operational issue and that you know we kind of have what we call that basic school budget you know every school needs this this this and this but when the school gets really small it's it's much less efficient um caught you know it's more costly and so I think those are some of the more of the concerns that I have is that we sort of create like a baseline across the board for schools but when you're you're serving 250 students and we want to have like a full-time counselor a full-time you know it becomes not only does it become quite disproportionate between our schools but it's also you know pretty expensive so we'll probably start to look at ways that we can start to share Staffing
142among schools which we already do now but it might might require some shifting I'm not going to talk about boundaries or closing schools or anything like that well that's what was in my head and I wasn't going to say it out loud but I mean that's where my that's where I'm going where this conversation leads next and I don't think the Board needs to have that conversation now we're not there about five years from now I mean if the data stays the same we may be getting there I think I think all I should be on Mountain View over the next couple of years fluctuates a lot looks different every year most challenging Elementary School to predict enrollment for also in an area where there's a lot of growth so somewhat unpredictable in terms of
143what that will look like over the next five years I have to get my crystal ball out for that one question about it doesn't have to do with the long-term projections but we may you clarify this a little bit in your presentation can you because you said the numbers at like 11th and 12th grade didn't decrease but they were just lower than we expect they went up less than we expected them to I guess is the answer and you're at sixth grade that happened so those and there's were also places that you said we usually see students coming in and I was wondering you are are is are those students just not there or are students choosing to go somewhere else other than come to the Corvallis School District it could be all all of
144those things um and that's hard when I look at um our sixth graders this year at 531 our fifth graders last year were 5 35. so I'm sure there's movement in and out both ways but overall that that cohort didn't change much and historically we see it go up um last year's 11th grade class was 535 students this year's 571 it went up it just didn't go up as much as it normally has for us and so again they're just it will help us to to make better predictions in the future by including this year's actual results and our formulas okay thank you we're good thank you gives us a lot to think about um the next item on the agenda is Consolidated action as a reminder these the items under this portion of the
145agenda are for Action does anyone have a question about anything in Consolidated action does anyone wish to make a motion Madam chair yep I move that the board approved Consolidated action is there a second second it's been moved by Vince and seconded by trees that we approve the items in Consolidated action director Tommy aye director Jones aye director Al abduba aye Dr Adams aye director Baker aye and I have what I passes unanimously I might have a share yep just want to acknowledge if possible uh the applicants to the budget committee thanking them for applying and uh just to highlight the number of applicants more than the vacancies and so many qualified folks who haven't been appointed just because it's it's scarce so to encourage them to apply and uh the future and maybe run
146in the future for a school board as well and grateful for them to applying yes thank you um yeah I think that's the first time we've had more applicants than we had spots in a long time so that was really nice to see that engagement and interest yeah for a couple of years yeah for it's been several rounds where yeah um so we're moving on to Consolidated information as a reminder the items under this portion of the agenda are for discussion would anyone like to discuss an item in Consolidated information and I would like Melissa to explain policy j e c b and what what is that what does that wording mean I felt really dumb reading that I'm sorry maybe I was just tired jecb it's the one on transfer do you want me
147to do that now Sarah or did you want okay so I what we're asking for um in a change to the policy is to add for priority in non-resident transfers students who have attended a CSD School previously following a change of address so what happens is in our policy if a student is living in the Corvallis boundary and attending a Corvallis school if mid-year they move out of boundary they are allowed to remain with us until the end of the school year and finish their school year when they're out of boundary though then they have to apply for a non-resident transfer to come back and what we're asking is can we put them a priority underneath siblings so that they can get back into the school where they have been attending thank you very much
148thank you any other questions Sammy on a different uh item or an unlicensed Personnel information and with recognition that's we can't speak specifically about a specific Personnel I'm just wondering if uh Ryan and staff whether today or later on can give us a highlights of what can we do to maintain the retention or to yeah to maintain the retention of our EAS I see a huge turnover and I'm wondering if there is any insights about what we're doing and what could we do foreign we've just completed a collective bargaining agreement that increases wages for our classified staff so I think that that's an important piece in that conversation for us to have awesome thank you any other questions okay let's move on to board member comments does anyone have anything they'd like to share trees
149just wanted to give a thank you to the staff that worked so hard to get conferences off last week it was I had not done a middle school conference before so it was a little bit different style but I saw a lot of really engaged staff working really hard um connect with parents and I'm really appreciative of that and I I only obviously attended Linus Pauling but my sense is that having been through Garfield as well that um that that is a consistent experience that our staff work really hard to be able to talk about our children and know them know their names and be able to say specific things about how they're doing and I really appreciated the discussion this evening about assessment being able to link that to the conversations that I had
150with teachers at the conference it's very clear to me that the application of Assessments in the classroom is something that teachers are working really hard to find ways to do with our students in creative ways as well and so I can honestly say that retrospectively I enjoy the conference even more now um that I've been able to hear about um you know some of the thinking behind the assessment so it's really just an Inc um to our staff to keep doing what you're doing and to parents to make sure that they attend those things and reach out and ask their questions if they have them two comments uh one is on the upcoming sips dinner I'm sorry that I will be out of town for the first one and so I'm very disappointed because it
151is a very rewarding conversation um and it's a rare exercise among school districts to allow board members to have very deep and substantive conversations with with building administrators and it's a wonderful way for school board members to learn more about a how administrators think about their schools and just enrich their own understanding of how education gets deployed um I know that I have found them very very useful and they have helped me immensely so very high value experience so thank you for continuing to do that and allow that um the other thing I want to speak to you is over the last few meetings this board has had people um sharing their thoughts in Fairly grumpy tones and I'm just struck I'd maybe other board members experiences have been different but um I haven't heard
152from any of these people directly I mean we get emails but I just want to remind members of the community that every person on this board is available to you you worry your elected officials you can reach out to us and give us a phone call you can email us directly you can go get a cup of coffee with us and we're here for you and I would just ask that you do that before you come and growl at us in a public meeting so I'll yield back thank you um I just want to comment about the student investment account report um I'm glad that we got the full story Into the minutes because that will be included in the report and I think that's a story that needs to be acknowledged but outside of
153that I found even this little brief descriptions I found it very encouraging that what we were doing as a district was listening to stories and listening to the voices of our families and our students and our staff and then using those stories and very conscious efforts to understand the data to improve as a district and I just felt like that showed you know a real consciousness of the people that we're impacting every day in our district and a real deep desire to understand what's happening using things that we can measure and do that in a way we can understand so um very brief report but I totally appreciate the work that went into that I'm glad we have a way to tell the whole story um but there was a lot in that that I
154kind of felt good reading so thank you one other thing just so you know that we have a resource Kim reached out to osba to get the one pagers around get on board information about running for school board it's a back and front she has some of that are here so if you want to take a few of those with you to share with other people who may be interested in running for the board in the future we have those and we'll also have them available other places in our community so again just to encourage participation foreign so when we had our folks here um giving public comment about the student investment account I I just wanted to note that what I think I was really hearing from them um was that um there continues
155to be a group of voices that just feel like they have to work harder to get represented and I think there was some discouragement that even after all of that work that work didn't get recognized in our formal report and so I understand that for 300 words I mean I can't do anything in 300 words so um I totally get that that's hard um it gives me pause to say when we know that we have such a limited space have we thought about how we're making choices about what to include and have we considered how our biases might inform what Rises to the top when we have such a small space and so I I definitely want to be clear that I I don't think there is any intentional omission of anything I think you
156don't have very much space and there's a lot to tell um but I wonder about an opportunity for us to engage maybe even some members who worked on on that effort in our community to help us think about how we are selecting what stands out because I certainly know that I am more drawn to data I'm more drawn to stories that I can personally connect with and that's just that's my bias right like they make sense to me so I might I may focus on them more so um I just wanted to throw that out there I I didn't make it at the time because I wanted to keep us moving forward but I do want to end by making sure that we I think as a board we are acknowledging that we definitely heard
157our community on this and we definitely strive to be a board that elevates voices and if we didn't get that right as a district we need that feedback and so thank you for bringing it and now what we need is to figure out how we can do it differently in the future because hopefully we're going to continue to have narratives that are different than what's reflected in the leadership and in the individuals sitting up here so that's it thanks okay anything