Corvallis School Board Meeting (November 18, 2021)

001the corval school board special meeting for november 18 2021 is called to order at 6 32 the the meeting is called to order and the first ottoman the agenda is the pledge of allegiance if you're willing and able please join me for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to deploy the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all roll call is taken and board members vince adams tina baker shawna tommeny cerese jones are are joining us through audio and video uh director luhoy white bear will be joining us shortly as well for audio video and uh chair aladropo is joining from the board room uh by chair sarah finger mcdowell mcdonald is excused uh as a note oregon law

002allows public meetings to be held entirely online 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 hold its meetings online public comments is available for at some of the our meetings uh information about how to provide public comments is available on the corvallis school district website additionally the board's public meetings are live streamed on the district youtube channel and recorded the recording is posted to the same channel typically the day after the meeting i am grateful that this technology makes it possible for more community members to view and or participate in school board meetings given the flexibility by oregon law i would note as we navigate that through the pandemic and with technology challenges some board members and

003participants will be participating without the video on at some times or all the time uh however they will be uh participating through uh audio uh all the time so with that we will transition to and i would note uh director movie white bear uh has joined us and with that we will move to the next item of the agenda schools improvements plans uh annually the corvallis school board hosts uh two sessions for the school improvements plans and we're very excited to have the first session for this year with the elementary uh schools group including franklin so welcome and ryan yeah so i think you um you covered it this is the second year that we've done a joint presentation by our elementary principals and our elementary coordinator this year we also have lee santi who

004will be joining us in her role so providing information around data and that's been a really great addition to the team because it's allowed the principles to have access to data in a way that has been challenging in the past and so that's been a great addition to the team so tonight they'll be providing you with information uh related to their school improvement plan collectively which again is a move away from those individual schools making individual decisions to sort of a collective vision of the district and with that i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to the team all right i'm going to kick us off and i think we should have a presentation so whoever is starting that we're gonna get started perfect we will not go back to normal normal never

005was our pre-corona existence was not normal other than that we normalized greed inequity exhaustion depletion extraction disconnection confusion rage hoarding hate and lack we should not long to return my friends we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment one that fits all humanity and nature tonight um it was important for us to start with this to remind ourselves and you that we work better in a collective and that we are continually fighting against a get back to normal and working pretty intensely on keeping equity at the center of what we do and um and i hope tonight through the presentation you'll see that and um understand that that this is still a key value for all of us we have our team ready i think to introduce themselves my name is amy

006gleason i am elementary teaching and learning coordinator and i am happy to be here tonight okay and i am craig carlo principal at franklin school beth martin principal at catherine jones harrison elementary nancy davila williams principal at garfield elementary school peter henning principal at adams elementary school aaron hale principal at lincoln tracy fisher principal at bessie coleman elementary byron beathard's principal at mountain v elementary and corvallis online elementary and eric will be joining us momentarily he was double booked for the beginning of our session tonight and he will be here anytime and he is a principal at leticia carson and with that i think we're ready for the next slide lee oh and lee you can introduce yourself as we can slide how about that thanks hi i'm lee santee um and i am coming

007today as the research assessment and growth coordinator with the district and um i just wanted to begin by giving an overview of our schools as a whole and then we'll kind of hone in on on where we hope to focus our goals and our improvement um so across the district um we have um 2 483 students at the elementary level qualify for free or reduced lunch um 12 percent of those students are um active ell students and 10 of those students um uh are receiving services through an individual education plan um i will just make a quick note that probably that free and reduced lunch number may not be very accurate because um this year we have that wonderful opportunity to offer lunch to any student who needs it so our numbers may not be

008so accurate in terms of families pulling out platforms if you can go to the next slide um and this is just really a breakdown of what our schools look like um through racial demographics um as a whole um at the elementary level um we have um let's see one percent of our students um identify um as native american indigenous uh five percent of our students as asian one percent of our students as black uh 19 of our elementary students as hispanic or latinx um nine percent of our students identify as a uh multi-racial one percent identifies pacific islander and 64 of um of our students at the elementary level identify as white okay so now we're going to dive into where we want to focus right you can go the next slide it's it was

009important as we were planning this to to remind the board and public watching these next two slides that when we are thinking about our initiatives and thinking about the work we do we come back to where the board has guided us and where the district vision is and so just a reminder that the core beliefs that we that we strive for and that we work with and that we utilize when we're planning the work that we do are are still important to us relationships building a community of trust that our inclusive learning environments are culturally relevant that we utilize real world and experiential learning and it's meaningful and applied that we keep community connections as much as possible to support our learning and that we continue to be adaptable and these are key evidence from

010the board next slide and then tonight you're going to hear about four main goal areas and they are aligned with the four four of the board goals that you have set and so i think again just that reminder that the board your your role in setting that setting our work is really critical and we wanted to remind you that that that's the work that we're doing and you'll have some some evidence of that tonight so you'll hear some goals in one goal um in each of these four areas all right lee next slide or no i think it's me one more time so um yeah you can go to the next slide briefly i'm just going to give you an uh a big picture here's our goals so you can just think about it and

011then we'll get into detail about each of these four goals so first um you can click again the first yeah it should yeah students um what we want to see this year is that our students are understanding what they're learning click again that they're able to be themselves at school in the classroom and with their friends that they have um learning experiences that are helpful and connected to their life outside of school and finally that they know an adult from the school that they can talk to especially when they're feeling upset so we're going to talk to you a little bit about how we came up with those what metrics we are looking at but i wanted that to set the stage all right next slide so before we jump into um details on those

012goals i just wanted to give an overview because many of you know that whenever we talk about school improvement plans we dive deep into data that we have um and i just wanted to give a little bit of background on that um as we started this process of course the first thing that came up was oh my gosh we're in the middle of a pandemic we don't have any data um luckily this kind of was a reset for us and what you're gonna see today is we talked about what we value and what's important to us and the thing that we're going to use to measure these goals is actually student voice it's um it's student experience and so last spring we had the opportunity to survey all of our elementary school students with our

013youth truth survey and and get some incredible data back around how students are experiencing our schools uh before we jump into that i'm just going to explain you're going to see um a number of different types of data um some of this data will be presented in terms of a percentile and the idea with that being that um think of that that 100 scale so if something is at the 50th percentile um if there were 100 students measured 49 of them would be lower than that 50th percentile and 49 of them would be above that 50th percentile um we also will be talking about percent positive um because we ask students questions about how they experience school and we recorded um the percent of students that responded positively to those questions so that's what we're

014talking about when we say percent positive um what what we're really doing here is um you'll see on these next slides things that say both goals and measure and um we just wanted to take a minute to say what amy just talked about those are our goals our goals are what we are working for to improve our schools and to make that student experience more positive we're using that youth truth data as the measure um to see how that's going and see how that's progressing the goal is not to improve youth truth that is our measure that we're using and we're we're making a hypothesis that we're going to improve these things and we're going to see an improvement in use through data but we're doing this the goal is to do this to improve

015student experience um i will say we have never set goals before around you through so um we were using the data that we had we also have a wealth of information around um what typical youth truth schools um respond how how their schools respond over a thousand schools are in this this group of data so we have a really large data set um but we also acknowledge we've never set goals this way before so we're going into this optimistic and we're hoping that we're going to learn a lot along the way um you can go to the next all right so um we're gonna move into the four different goal areas and and all of these goal areas follow the same format um and so we start with um a celebration in that goal area

016and then we move into an area that we identified as an area for growth and then from there we'll move into the specific goal and talk about the strategy so our first goal area is academic achievement and we have a celebration here to talk about so when asked the question in the youth truth survey and we're looking specifically at third fourth and fifth grade students across the district when you make a mistake does your teacher help you correct it uh our schools here in corvallis fell in the 57th percentile overall on on that measure so we as compared to to schools across the state in oregon and you can see the plot below so we found that a celebration to to build off of and it drives us towards our focus area uh for our

017goal and the next question next slide please so we chose to focus in for academic achievement as an area for growth with the question does your teacher explain things in a way you can understand we know that if we want an honest answer we can ask our students and so as we look at this data we recognize significant gaps and uh some areas for focus across ethnic ethnic groups that we need to focus on so you can see on the right hand side is the percent positive for the question so for white students 61 percent said that yes very often my teacher explains things in ways that we can understand and so we're going to hone in from there yeah so i think given that students responded this way when asked about how teachers uh

018explain things in a way they can understand helped us identify our goal for this area so next slide oh it's one of the ones that comes up yeah um so to start you can see that we started with this measure of 53 positive of that says that their teacher my teacher asked if i understand what i'm learning um so that's the specific question that we're looking at here and so this was in may 2021 when we had that 53 the 53 positive yes um for some comparison our district in february of 2019 um that same question we had a 56 percent um positive uh like a set there and so that shows that we actually had a decrease from 2019 in there um to 2021 when we asked again last year um the typical youth

019truth school was 66 um and a typical oregon school was 62 and so we set our goal here um to be more in line with where or other oregon schools are um in this area specific strategies that we identified to work on this goal include providing teachers feedback on how all students are or aren't able to demonstrate learning in providing teachers feedback on the use of formative assessment specifically tracking progress and adjusting instruction and so when we talk about these goals and and the more slides to come and in this goal like lee said we started with the student voice and student experience at the center and then you can see our strategies move out to teacher practice and that teacher practice gets influenced and we talk about administrator practice that influences the teacher practice

020that then in turn influences the student experience and we can measure that by gaining student voice from the youth through survey next slide so our next area is the area of equitable systems and one celebration is the student response to the question do adults in your school respect people from different backgrounds people with different skin colors boys and girls people from different countries the data shows our district in the 83rd percentile compared to other oregon districts and then below that you can see it broken down by grade level next slide we identified an opportunity for growth related to the following question can you be yourself with other students on this slide the student responses are color coded and disaggregated by race and given that we know the research about learning says students learn best when

021they can bring their full self to the classroom and are learning in an accepted respectful space we took this information as critically important so our goal on equitable systems is centering the student experience next slide so when asked can you be yourself only 60 of students felt like they could be themselves with other students our last survey had 61 percent of students so there was a there was minimal drop a typical oregon school was which is what we set out our spring goal to be so some strategies we're focusing on are providing um teachers feedback on the use of equitable systems in the classroom supported by the implementation of our social emotional curriculum caring school communities and our district racial equity lessons in addition to general classroom strategies that promote inclusivity okay so this next

022area is in real world learning our celebration is i get time outside isn't that where we're healthy right now so excited and as we pondered this area we thought about the context when our students were asked this question and after being kind of holed up in spaces at home and then being able to come to school in person and spend a lot of time outdoors we were excited about that opportunity and just analyze on where students were when they came back in the spring i remembered students just being totally enamored by the process of the construction at our site and across the um district union there are lots of construction opportunities and then also just being able to connect with the land and place um for folks to have a space to go to with

023their friends peers um and just seeing their eyes light up and so we're excited um to move forward with that and just build on that strength and that student voice that uh firms the the value of being outside next slide so we identified an area for growth here um does what you learn during class help you outside of school and so when we're looking at this you can see the gray area that percent positive is relatively small kind of across the board um and when we think about this we're really thinking of it through the lens of culturally relevant teaching and that term relevancy really stands out to us there and and students having identity in what they're learning and then finding meaning in that um and so that is i think um as we've

024looked at this we have lots of questions and lots of curiosities of um where this is going to lead us and how we can use this to guide the the work that we're doing um and you know when when i look at this data i tend to think past but i also try to put myself in the present of what this means right now i just kind of want to share maybe an example of how i'm thinking about this or how the conversations we're having as a team is um real world learning where fifth graders have participated in salmon watch last year they're participating in that program again this year that's a real world learning experience that's project-based learning it's hands-on it has that piece of relevancy this year students have had the opportunity to

025do a field trip so they've been out there they've been hands-on they've been with the scientists they've seen that the salmon spawning they've had the the stations that they go to and in that um being out there with the students hearing um the identities and the potential they're seeing in themselves for oh my gosh i can be a scientist or this is my first time being at a river and so just hearing that self-talk and excitement um is a curiosity i think that we all have if what does that impact have um and at the same time i know when i think of blind spots with that or still questioning is what perspectives and what identities are missing in that experience because what we did not do was talking about the indigenous perspective on the

026land that we were at at that time um the the missed opportunity we we had this year already is a spot for us to reflect on and talk about how can we improve upon that and so as i look at the data from the past i'm also applying that right now and thinking about that as we are moving forward in this and thinking about land and space and voice all all mixed in with our own experiences but then what the experiences our students are having i'm going to the next slide so currently um 34 of students feel that what they learn in class can help them outside of school um and so when we move forward and we look at a goal of to increase that up to about 40 percent um the ways that

027we're looking at doing that is providing teachers feedback um about making it meaningful making it relevant beyond that task and activity i think the example i just gave you the way that we can provide that feedback is having conversations with teachers like i just shared with you being able to be vulnerable be be honest and be objective in that space of being able to provide that feedback next slide hey good evening board i was uh this is eric beasley i was just presenting to some pre-service professionals at pacific university so i apologize for being late and i appreciate the opportunity to be here with you guys tonight um health and wellness obviously the um our students our students returning to in-person learning is our highest priority and the intentional focus on on health and wellness

028is is critical um this first this first slide um looks at a celebration um do you do you like attending your class and so as we see that we've had some gains from 2019 even to through the pandemic year of 2020 and um so i think i know when i talked to kids last spring they were so excited to be back and yet when i looked at the third fourth and fifth i wonder if we did the survey with fifth grade the week they you know that they didn't we didn't get to go to outdoor school i don't know exactly what led to their data being a little a little lower but um some of those transition years um uh but health and wellness continues to be a really really important topic for us and

029um and and and obviously when we when we know we're not talking just about you know health protocols we're talking about you know the social emotional well-being of of our kids and our staff so we're going to jump to next slide and uh turn over to my colleague craig great to see eric and i'm so a key indicator for healthy mental well-being is having strategies to feel better as we all know and looking at the information led us to wonder if students don't have a strategy do they have someone at school to help them out to work on strategies develop those skill sets to navigate what we know is is part of being healthy stress anxiety pressure disappointment celebrations and what we found out in the next slide if we go to the next line

030where we landed on our goal is our current state is 54 percent of our students indicated that when i'm feeling upset there is an adult at the school i can talk to our goal our measure towards our goal is um in the youth truth coming up this plane we'd like to have at least 59 percent of our students respond that when they're feeling upset at school they know there's an adult that they can talk to an adult and better yet a menu of an adult to connect all students with a trusted adult focus on the identity um that they do not have a trusted adult at school we know that if every student feels that where that measure is going to increase all of our teachers utilize a social emotional learning program called caring school

031community that includes starts and ends the day with caring connection a welcoming that all of you are important and that's a closing circle and lessons that that build community and that collective feeling that was referred to earlier we continue to teach social justice lessons that prioritize our vision for a welcoming and inclusive classroom for all students this is where many of our goals cross over that you've heard previously our work on equity directly impacts the health and wellness of our students and that in fact is a foundation for academic achievement hi craig and i want to also add in terms of strategies all of our counselors have been teaching lessons in the classrooms and in small groups that focus on strategies to stay regulated that's something that we think is is a really important that

032we don't just wait to identify students although we have screeners that we're using to identify students for groups but you know teaching in all class all of our kids can benefit from from strategies to to calm themselves such as walking and breathing and all of our students we know have unfinished learning not only with academics but in our social emotional development so we've been increasingly training and integrating our amazing classified staff and i'm i'm really proud of this i just have to say how our elementary team has utilized inclusion assistance in the classroom and we really appreciate the district philosophy on that that's allowed us to not just have break space in the classrooms but with our kids being able to have more caring adults that they can take that walking break um and and

033really have that healing center trauma-informed person you know as teachers are teaching um just having another person that can make that connection so that's been a really a really great thing and an important strategy for us and then i'll finish by saying um we continue to recognize students who need even more support and more intensive support in building these skill sets and as you the board know we have supported that through an increase in the school counseling program and also through our mental health therapists and skills trainers at each elementary site to support those students all right last slide thanks craig and eric and the whole team so just um a kind of recap you heard the data and just a reminder here are our four areas that we're focusing on this year understanding are

034students really understanding what they're learning our students being able to be themselves at school um that they are able to have learning experiences that connect their life to outside of school and that they have an adult that they can talk to especially if they're upset so those are our just goal areas and that's it for our presentation and we are now ready to answer questions thank you team thank you uh i just want to say as as i see the last bullet points in the slides and reflects on the mission of this school uh it's beyond just the reading and writing and it's about being their authentic their being their authentic self uh being able to have deeper understanding of uh uh what they learn and being able to connect with uh the learning into

035the outside world and be part of a community so that's exactly what these four points uh are accomplishing is uh just beyond uh the transcript beyond the grade which is very deeply appreciated thank you team for the presentation board members do we have any uh questions and as a reminder use the virtual raise hand so we can call on you vince so forgive me i'm not going to speak well because i'm still processing what you've presented and so um one i want to say thank you so much um i've been waiting for what a year and a half as a board member to get grounded and get a sense of where we're at with our kids and so thank you so much um and no surprises i mean there were the data there weren't a

036lot of surprises in the data what is immensely surprising and so exciting about this presentation is this approach of essentially using a meta-analysis because in the absence of of student achievement data you have chosen to use student experience as a way as a meta-analysis for to get at student performance which is brilliant it is you know and now i'm thinking as a board member i'm like how do i govern that no one's done that before how do i how do we hold that accountable and it's just a wonderful and exciting um change and development that this team has created and i'm wondering if it you know it'll be very interesting to see how this plays out and what we learn over this year and thank you so much and i'm i'm wondering if this is

037you know because i think about our our team our district we have we have some of the best educators in the state maybe nation and we have you know very good education systems and yet we still struggle with reaching the very end of the distribution of our students and achieving that 100 success that we're all striving for and i'm wondering if this is this approach is such a departure and it's really addressing the thing that we haven't been tracking because we've been caught in that in the system that was created by no child left behind where we're all focused on student achievement student achievement and that's what we're held accountable to and you've broken that system by saying no we're not going to we don't have the data we can't we can't hold ourselves accountable

038to that so we're going to hold ourselves accountable to student achieve our student experience and it's just refreshing and exciting and i can't wait to follow your lead so thank you so much thanks vince thanks next up is therese thanks sammy thanks everyone it's always really exciting to hear uh the innovation and creativity that you guys are applying to uh our um elementary school um learners uh my question is if you could just if you could share a little bit more about the formation of the social justice curriculum that you referenced um is it a is it a set curriculum do you have people in the district who are collaborating to create those um assignments um how is that working um in terms of of creation and implementation well terese after this presentation we melissa

039and i and nikki and marcian are going to present on just that so i will say that hold on because later tonight in the meeting we will have a little bit more in depth and it would be a big miss if i didn't highlight nancy who has been amazing in in leading that work at our elementary level really um continuing through becoming a principal and still leading um primarily teachers of color but really strong equity-minded folks in developing lessons and and helping all of us along and it's it's a lot of nancy's leadership so you will hear more tonight and those specific things will get answered but i'm gonna wait until we we get into that presentation if that's okay oh yeah that's fine i'll save all the hard questions for that so thank you

040series and for those who are watching uh and that's expected to be in an hour and a half about that with that i'm not committing ourselves but approximately an hour and a half from now uh tina and then lou and then shawna tina hi everyone i just wanted to say thank you for all your hard work and also preparing this presentation for us tonight is very informative one question pops out to me is for the health and wellness goal what how are you reaching out to students and how you're identifying identifying students who need the extra connection with um safe adults or some extra connection for some regulation um especially specifically for the small groups that principal beasley was speaking about could you elaborate on how you identify these students and how do you identify

041the quiet students who are doing okay academically but really are holding everything in before they actually have some type of um a crisis how we identifying these before we have some type of major crisis going thanks tina thanks for that question because since i did the help you want me to make around that you can start and i if i have something to add i'll add it yeah i think that i'll say historically schools have used uh outdated systems such as referrals to identify kids who need and and that's that's not what we're up to we um we we have used some screeners in the past we have a new one we're using called desa this year that we're excited to use to help us uh screen students and so teachers actually take a minute

042and do a survey about each student and that helps us kind of you know look at that um during the when kids were at home and learning we started a model like we're meeting regularly or weekly with our our teacher teams called inclusion plcs where they were along with the classifieds identifying students from the the classes they were seeing those needs from so um we've been doing it kind of in a qualitative way with our through through collaboration with our teacher teams and then we're excited also to bring that an instrument into that um this year um it's been a few years since we've done that so i think i want to add kind of one thing to that too i think um we've had a focus on care and connection and what it means

043to build a authentic relationship with a family and with a student um and through that focus we also use that knowledge gain from those relationship building instances to then have conversations within an sst process which is a student support team process within our schools and so students who may typically be quieter or have needs that don't surface maybe through other types of ways when we really take the time to build a deep relationship with a student or a family we can learn more about their experience and then we can also then hold that story and use that story and that experience to talk about the types of supports we need within our system of sst to then i build the types of supports that would engage and support that student and family and may i

044add just one more thing amy if that's okay i would connect it back to the caring school community theme of morning circle and closing time and being very conscious of who is there and what's going on in a personal connection with each student in their background and i would also point to the increase the purposeful and targeted increase in our school counseling programs and the mental health and skills trainers who get embedded across the school environment so they're out during break times at lunchtime connecting with students in the classroom uh in the hallways and that makes a multi-layered approach to trying to identify those students awesome thank you uh next up is lou and then shauna and vince's your hands up from before all right ben lou hi everyone sorry i'm i'm having like some

045significant internet issues today so um i'm gonna try with my camera if you can't hear me please let me know but um one one thing that i think gets asked a lot is like how do we know that students where they're at and i'm kind of wondering how that where they're at it can be reflected in the data you presented like i have an idea of what i think it means but um and i may you may have already said this so if you did say we already said that because it might have been one of the times when my internet went out so um but yeah so lou are you thinking like academically like where are they with reading where are they with with yeah and i think um what vince kind of alluded

046to and what our thinking and the research base that we're following is basically those four goals that we set out are key indicators to when those things are in place our kids are able better able to learn and academics will increase and so using that as this foundation of these need to be in place because when kids are in in that sort of when they're known in school when they have a relationship when we are intentionally connecting and doing culturally relevant instruction they're better able to improve academics and so i think um it likely said we haven't done this before but that is our intent and that is our hope and our um plan of providing a lot of teacher feedback and just being in classrooms a lot this year and seeing what's going on

047and there will be times where you guys get some academic data this year don't worry about that we will lease here and as soon as we have some we will also be sharing that so thanks amy i think that's just really helpful to re-emphasize that part too because i think it's um when things change a little bit like how um learning is measured and seeing the connection between positive impacts to increase learning sometimes it's hard to wrap your head around for folk and i really appreciate what you all are doing i think that what you presented so far already shows some pretty solid growth and i mean that's amazing because it's like you wouldn't expect that that fast right but it shows how just changing a little bit can make a big impact and um

048so thank you all for all the work you're doing thanks sammy and thank you everyone i just wanted to express my gratitude for all that you're doing it's you know amazing driving through town and driving by school i take my daughter to school in the morning and seeing construction sites that are up while all of you educators and staff are navigating that along with welcoming families and children and really helping them walk through the doors feeling safe accepted part of a community through everything else that you're juggling on top of that and so much of that work is unseen and so just wanted to share gratitude for everything that you do every day to really uphold our families and our community so thank you i'm excited to hear about your attention to student experience and

049to really elevate student voice at these times and to look at okay what data do we have what can we understand as we move forward and looking at these goals and also really appreciated your attention to the intertwined nature of the four goals that you've selected that each one can't exist without out the other and each one upholds the others and so i really appreciated hearing that as well my question for you is i'm curious if given that we continue to find ourselves and feel like we're living in such uncertain times with the continuation of the pandemic with just the net nature of education in general are there ways that you are engaging continuing to engage student voice family voice educator voice along the way toward fine tuning those goals toward making sure that folks

050are on the same page or that the goals even still meet the need a few months from now as things are continually shifting are there some ways that you are staying staying attuned to those different voices to make sure they're helping to shape where things are headed i would say and then anybody can add on there's probably a variety of ways that those are happening this year um will be a first for a few schools that will have a safe group at the elementary level that hasn't happened in the past and so i would say thinking about equitable systems and and listening to students that that's a way we'll continue with our youth truth i think if you if you look at the strategies that we chose um and that that line that if a

051principal does this and a teacher does this then the students will benefit really being intentional when we go into classrooms about looking for these areas and so when when ryan's out walking around with with tracy they can be looking for one of those things or if i'm with byron and we're walking into a classroom keeping these strategies top of mind is is another way and then i would also say most of our schools if not all of them have have an equity team that also has some input from an outside member and so just being intentional and listening utilizing the protocol and our compass and our multiple perspectives as part of what we should be doing all the time so i'm i'm hopeful that that is just kind of part of how we operate and

052we won't we don't want to let it slide and then i guess i would say if if if priority shift we'll we'll revisit that thanks amy thank you we'll go with the second round of questions and we'll start with vince and then i'll go after this so my my senses are coming back to me and so i'm reminded that you know one of the key things that a board needs to do particularly when district is taking on a new initiative is to take a a stance of informed oversight um and so that usually takes the form in board education now i understand that it is all hands on deck right now so my under normal circumstances i would be saying oh we need to have work sessions and we need to have educators come into

053the boardroom i'm not going to make that request what i'm going to say is you know are there articles or a book or two that you can offer us so we can educate ourselves and because i have a feeling that you know you educators you're doing your work but you're out ahead of us a little bit and so you know we're in a situation where we're your students right now as you do this work and so we have some learning to do so if you can give us some some reading to do i know for myself i very much appreciate that thanks i would be happy to share some of our last spring to now book recommendations and things that we've been referencing a lot i i also will would like to add just a

054few years ago when our district was focused on zoretta hammond's work around culturally responsive teaching in the brain just the foundation of preparing for rigor and the importance of relationships and just how again achievement is tied to that basis of relationships and culturally responsive teaching is all around listening to students voices and community we mentioned our caring school community um they're they're so great when you reach out to them and their their website um ccc you know they're a non-profit uh along with bridges they're that blog so if you're you know particularly interested in how i just love that that you know and you know our standards are our main focus the particular materials that we've selected and you guys have worked on are are really really amazing professionals that um you know that we've

055been able to pull resources from and and so those those resources also i just highly recommend checking out and i think the only follow-up i would say is don't don't walk away with an assumption that we're not being warm demanders and and keeping curriculum and instruction top of mind because we believe that that can continue to happen alongside the social emotional growth we know our kiddos need so um both things are are front and center in our minds i think amy to to reinforce that not only do we believe that they can but that they will when we are hitting on our the goals we've highlighted with you that our reading data our math data will improve our traditional measures around behavior so to sean us question about will we be checking in we will

056be following all those measures all year as we always do and looking at them through a different lens and reading books is awesome and um and i think like there there's like a lot like backing behind like what we've talked about through a lot of text and a lot of different research but that to me personally doesn't mean anything unless i have what create time and space to have conversations with lots of different folks um to hear about what their real experience is and pairing that with the readings that we do um is what has helped me as a leader show up in a way that i need to show up for students and families in our school i'm just going to add on to what byron was sharing too is this team has really

057talked a lot about slowing down um and centering children and those sound really simple and they're really complex to do that in a highly adult centered system if we let ourselves fall into that and so our conversations we've flipped this kind of narrative on how we're discussing children and so you're hearing tonight a a experience based on a child's school experience that's helping guide us to do our work so what that looks like now is we're not showing you a bunch of star data to then talk about what we're doing to help kids we're hearing from the kids experience and what that looks like in an academic setting is we're seeing really strong relationships with adults in the classroom that are sitting down and doing one-on-one assessments with kids and depending on that to help

058guide what that instructional practice is for children instead of leaning on a pretty quick assessment which is relevant and has meaning but it's not going to be what determines that child's trajectory in their educational experience it is really child-centered and and that's tying into trying to have students find that identity be able to show up at school feel seen and heard and supported and have confidence and so that's going to take time it's going to take time for us to understand are we doing that well are we doing that right but we're hearing from the kids to guide us and that that's taken us to be able to pause question ourselves question um our practices have those harder conversations and so that stands out to me when i'm hearing byron um speak and then also

059thinking about resources that we have it is it's being in there with the kids it is that slowing down peace that kind of stands out to me right now that's wonderful anyone else all right i have a couple of questions uh the first one you're you're moving the needle and we saw it by the numbers and we're seeing that you're continuing to move the needle uh and we have a commitment to do that with some tangible strategies uh and by may 2022 uh we'll have a check in and we'll see how we're doing now i want to ask you something that i'm interested in uh which is uh the student success act or the students investments accounts uh these are some monies that were committed to us and we hope that will continue to be

060available for us so they don't reduce the general fund uh and force us to uh put the money and from the student success act there so what i want to hear probably from one or two or three uh anecdotal examples saying the student success act or the students investment account help me with this situation whether it is the staffing or student experience i want to hear maybe a few uh anecdotes to see like we're pushing the needle through those investments and how we're doing that and that could be from the past or from our plans for this year so so for me the most obvious um place where that's showing up right now is in the increase in counseling and mental health supports that are happening in our elementary schools um that's probably the one

061that you'll hear the most about um from this from this group because i think that's the most tangible example of what you're seeing in our in our elementary schools i would say the other one ryan that um is a a little bit of a focus on sips and reading intervention along with a counselor in mental health so and anything you guys want to expand on that i would just add that like when i mentioned we mentioned inclusion assistance in the health and wellness a lot of traditional districts or models will you know say okay there's these kids that struggle in each of these classes so we're just going to pull them out and do a group here by actually putting inclusion assistance like all the kinder classes or whatever we're able to provide more but

062there's a cost to that right and so that those are people that can support you know our language learners kids you know navigating you know disabilities and support groups and so but also through relational so instead of being a silo to be more non-categorical with that inclusionary support has been i think a really powerful investment in in doing it differently and more relationally so that's something that for me i i really appreciate um sometimes maybe in past years you might get into the first month of school and go gosh this kindergarten class really needs more help because there's been just you know you know some needs there and we started this year which is already you know putting that support in there and it was just really nice to have have that um you know

063continue so that's what shows up for me i would just add on to what amy said about the sips program um and having the um support that that has provided i think of teams and alignment when it comes to that and also the individualized instruction that provides students and so i've seen um just that common language common way of talking about kids the strength of the um the training for all the adults in the building to be able to do that and so just seeing that i think is already kind of impacted the academic reading growth in kids this year already when i just think um specifically about the impact of having a full-time counselor in our building what that's looked like for us is our counselor has already been able to do bullying prevention

064units with our entire school and is on her second round of full school so every student is seeing her helping them transition to a new building which we're very excited to be able to do but doing social stories around that and making sure that students understand that they're still with their teacher and their class and just in an exciting new space and then that's in addition to her group counseling and individual counseling that she's able to do with folks i would add on same at garfield it's been really great to have our counselor full time and being able to go into the classrooms and teach lessons in addition to being responsive to incidents that come up in the school and going in to classrooms to address um anything around incidents and create social stories around

065things that happen in the moment uh and and able to go in there in spanish and english and relate to the students um culturally um it's just been really great to have her there and recently she gave a presentation at our staff meeting just about all of her services to remind staff that this is available and um and you know what does that look like at different tiers so um so not only is she providing those services for students but she's also providing that pd for staff awesome thank you well uh my second question i know vince has a question we have four minutes so i'll ask you this question uh let's do a popcorn uh something you're really looking forward to this year in your building and your school i'll go we're having monthly

066school-wide meetings outside and it's just a really joyous time to all be together we just got started on the golden awards and so getting going on assemblies and getting kids excited about the school and helping to um just celebrate one another on just living up to the expectations and celebrating one another when we when we're successful with them oh sorry aaron go ahead you go eric you go all right i was just gonna say we we um have been so excited about the partnership with uh um the latisha carson legacy project with osu extension oregon black pioneers and oregon black farmers and just they've been coming to speak to our kids to help our kids really be proud and learn about the amazing story of latisha carson with our new name and so that's just

067been been phenomenal and and just had no idea how many really great partnerships there were going to be through that that process so thank you for your work to give us that opportunity we're excited to be in a new building in just all of the real world learning opportunities and that include like um collecting data for each room to see how how the temperature is i mean simple things like that um looking at the growth opportunities that growth mindset so our theme for the year is um growth uh always growing right and just thinking about um the the new and embracing is exciting the flexible seating and the collaboration spaces it's wonderful so we're looking forward to sharing that space with others i can echo that at bessie coleman we're really excited about moving into

068our new space and um i just see the opportunities for inclusion with being in that new space with the collaboration spaces and different places where we can come together in that building i'm excited to kind of based on what's a little bit tricky said with inclusion about our systems for inclusion and our integration of supporting all students within their classroom settings and the work that we're doing on that i'm excited about i think um for me there's two things that stand out is just continuing to be with kids um the joy that that has come through that is daily and it's continuous and it's i mean you just feel it um and it's kind of life-giving and so just continuing to have that um i am looking forward to and then just echoing what eric

069shared um we some staff and i were able to meet with catherine jones harrison's niece today and um we're able to learn how excited she is about the the name change and um we're gonna meet with her next week hopefully um and that she has i think she's already planning the ceremony and wants to be in person and on site and to celebrate with us um to do that and so just that is um also i would say life-giving for us um in this moment so we'll keep you in the loop about where that's leading um but that's also really exciting that's wonderful to hear if i can share really quickly from franklin i'm really excited and amy referenced this earlier we have our safe group that just this week went up and did a

070vertical connection alignment with safe students from corvallis high school and crescent valley high school and they came back and they were on fire they had a hundred ideas uh of activities they wanted to do reaching down in our k5 classrooms and connecting with our equity leadership team at franklin and it was really exciting anyone else shawna oh sorry shanna no that's okay i didn't want to interrupt the what folks are looking forward to but i just wanted to leave the question on the table which doesn't have to be answered today could be sent out over email but just the question of how can we as a board continue to support you or better support you in your work we'd love to hear and i think that we are all ears all the time and i'll

071give that some minutes if you want to speak and share it i would say that the number of times this fall i have heard our team intentionally feel confident and feel thankful to have the board that we have right now to know that we can the work we started you know pre-pandemic and through all of last year we can continue and that um we have support from you feels like it's like i can't almost describe it in words it's it's really powerful so thank you thank you we got your back because you got the best for our kids thank you [Music] all right with that uh i want to really appreciate everything has been said and shared today uh really thankful for this hard work that you do and the mindful analysis of qualitative quantitative

072data and the full experience of developing a whole child i really appreciate all what you do your true heroes uh and heroines in uh our community uh thanks for all what you do and unless there is something ryan and amy you want to add no i think this is a a great um opportunity to hear directly from our team thank you all right thanks a lot and feel free to stick around but you are released uh i know you have a long day tomorrow so uh thank you and have a good night and for those who are watching we will be doing this one more time with our primary group uh in the next meeting right yeah our middle schools and high schools middle schools and high schools uh in the next meeting and with

073that's now we're going to transition to the bond reports uh and the first item on the agenda is bond program updates uh do we have a presentation or just reference to the reports reference to the report tonight all right so board members uh we've been presented with a report from uh our bond program team uh if you have any questions uh feel free to go ahead and welcome kim and dale all right we have one question from vince so i have a couple here um dale and kim thank uh thanks for the report i i always i i just love this report and the information it shares with the community so again just thank you for the report but um i'm concerned about you know the deepening of the supply chain issues that that we're

074seeing a global shortage of shipping containers i'm just curious um based on the research that you've done how long how long do you think it's going to last what are the real impacts i mean i don't have a good sense of you know how how much of our of our construction materials are shipped in the country i i don't have a good sense of that so and i know you've talked about this before before but i think you know taking a longer view i think dale i can't hear you don't have you i'll take a step and dale can give us a thumbs up or a thumbs down if he agrees so um what we're seeing right now is um really about specialty items so um glass roll-up doors specialized door frames um mechanical units

075so for example our boilers for katherine jones harrison and um latisha carson took longer than we expected we are seeing some uh still continuing to see uh delivery timelines go from eight weeks to 20 weeks easily and so we're really focusing in on how to make procurements early and how long do we think that that's going to happen i think that that is really a difficult question for us to answer i know i've heard dale describe it as a crystal ball we have no way to predict um how long that's going to do but we are working towards um our last set of bids for the bond project and so knowing that that we're going to be awarding our gmps between now and hopefully before by early january we are looking at how to do

076early procurements and just order ahead so for example we've already placed orders for all of our audio visual equipment to get through the remainder of the projects and we're just trying to be proactive and make sure that we've got those things the the good news is is that we've been able to make alternate plans that don't impact critical path for us and so it was inconvenient of latisha carson and catherine jones harrison but we made it through with temp alternate options the temporary heat solutions and it takes a lot of creative thinking and we've been putting our brains together working really hard with our contractors our designers looking at alternate options when something's going to be taking a long time to get here but we we're anticipating to plan for it through the end of

077the program because i honestly think it'll last that long so that's really comforting to hear uh that approach of ordering early because um with supply constrained um and demand constant or increasing depending on on the situation we can see price escalation and if we purchase early you're locking into the lower price hopefully so yeah thank you for that discussion that's really helpful yeah i do yeah go ahead i was just going to say that i would point out also that you know when we did the we thought about bidding out adams last school year and when we were doing that wood prices were through the roof wood prices have dropped so there's a little bit of this you know looking at the market anticipating what we think may or may not happen and um using

078our best professional judgment to decide when the early procurements are are warranted so we actually are in benefit by having our atoms good now instead of back then so dale is my audio back yes hey well done kim that's really all i wanted to add you did it was perfect [Music] i'm not seeing other questions so am i free to continue absolutely go ahead please um [Music] so you made mention of pricing at franklin and i don't have it in front of me here let's see if i can get it in front of me um do we feel like it's in alignment with what was already budgeted with the with the bond so i'm of course i'm all about risk risk mitigation and and cost overruns so that's where my head is always at so

079that's that's where that question is coming from is that as you're looking at pricing for franklin is it coming in where you're expecting it i would say it's coming in consistent with the other two projects that you're approving tonight it is over our targets but it is um also within kind of what i've been hoping happens to the remaining reserves i was looking at the reserve percentage or proportion if you will from what we're asking for tonight versus how much i mean how many millions of dollars of projects are left and tonight you're approving about a third of the remaining project dollars and we're asking for about 600 000 of reserves so using that logic we might be asking for 1.3 million to approve the final three projects and if we spend all of that

080we would still have um you know in the you know the 2.5 million range if i'm doing that right on the top of my head so we're feeling um pretty good because there are other projects that still have to close out and these projects that we're starting are all remodels and remodels come with risk you know things that you just didn't anticipate and couldn't anticipate so i i feel like we're headed down the right path and um we'll know more as as things of all the franklin numbers um are so so new it's not it's not wise to get very specific yet fortis received them last week and they need to have time to interview the subcontractors and really analyze the bids that they received so great thank you for that i mean my my

081concern there is it's an old old building and so there could be definitely surprises there but i mean you have been consistent you know when you've come for reserve dollars it's those requests have always been modest and and there haven't been surprises so i'm not expecting a surprise i'm just you know curious yeah yeah so um we looked at with our bond oversight committee on monday night and in that meeting with them we shared um the same sense that we're feeling um more confident and comfortable with where we're at at this stage of the game and so i think that's just the message that we should share with you as well well and that's kind of how i'm feeling i'm feeling more more confident as we're getting closer to the end and so i'm just

082confirming that i should be feeling that confidence so it's good to hear you say that i've saved my most important question for the last this is serious um i've had uh requests from other elected officials and and i told them that i would ask when might we be able to get a tour of lincoln elementary school it's people the i think people are getting restless [Laughter] we've been working on that as a bond leadership team and we are working on getting a tour date out in december early december so we're working on finalizing the date but we're working on on that and anticipate doing that after hours when students are gone and doing it with covent safety precautions yeah i i would recommend reaching out to members of city council and the county commission okay

083thank you awesome um i do have a question uh related to page three uh the risk calculation really i appreciate it uh i i i've learned one way or the other be aware of the reds uh so a few reports the red people will ask lots of questions but this is really great transparency and i appreciate that but also i'll push back with the way that you're representing the risk associated with projection the way i see it that you're doing red yellow green based on a temporal assessment like where are we in the timeline and i uh honestly i'm not gonna agree with that because uh in that sense uh all of these projects were read at the beginning of the bond right uh and i i would like maybe uh your assessments right now

084for those threads which ones are dark red and not so dark red in terms of the certainty uh of completion maybe you talked about that a little bit yeah through your answer and maybe hoping that we can i don't know how you want to code it but really highlight that those two differences uh where we are in terms of uh uh projection of completion uh uh did we bid it or contracted yet and also the certainty of being able to deliver under that budget i'll take a i'll take first shot kim if you if that's okay um so the the red green and yellow structure was established primarily whether they've whether they've bid or not or if they're under construction or if or if they're almost done and the risk is gone so for example

085this data is you know the last reporting cycle which i think was september 30 in this case so the the numbers that you see here the red at atoms we would probably drop that to yellow for next month assuming you folks approve the contract same with um with sheldon which was already yellow we had left sheldon at yellow because we had told ourselves that we were we were going to scale the project as necessary to to achieve the budget so that's what occurred um in the case of adams um it you know all of the obligations from the other schools that we used to call jaws were basically creating the similar school experience for all three of those schools um so i believe that the the coloring is fairly accurate um in that way so

086then in terms of being able to complete the projects as planned um i i am pretty confident we have evaluated our forecasting for all the remaining projects based on kind of our history on the earlier projects in terms of unforeseen conditions in the old schools particularly um i think it was you sammy that had asked about the old school and the risk thereof um so um i am i am confident that we're going to get through this thing with the the monies that we have available all of these projects that you're in fact the two you're approving tonight and the remaining three all have what we call owner's contingency built into those budgets and so that is a number that's established based on what we think the risk is to cover things like unforeseen conditions

087it's entirely possible to burn through those but that's that is why i'm feeling comfortable with the remaining bond reserve amount and that we don't want to you know release all those funds at this early time so i'm not sure if that helped and i'd be willing to throw something into that is that um if i was listening to your question sammy about really where is the biggest risk and i would and i'm going to say this with the caveat that i have no doubt that we'll be able to be able to um complete all of our bond promises within available funds but when i think about the projects with the most risk it is um hurting with it being a historic building and the reason i say that is not so much about the work

088that we have to do but that we're finalizing all of our phasing plans for that and we're working through all the technical details it's a very technically complicated project to be able to upgrade all the mechanical electrical um heating systems plumbing in the timeline that we have to do it and so focusing on uh portions of the building finishing those moving into those portions you know lots of moves lots of coordination and how to make that happen and then the risk with mountain view is that it's a lot of site work and so there's a lot happening to the parking lots to the sidewalks all of that and so um that can can be challenging at times however it's nothing that we can't overcome with nothing that we won't be able to to complete but

089those two projects i think um are the ones that i would give more risk to real good thank you any other questions right so going back to vince's request we have put together a video that we'll be sharing very soon which will give you a real sense of what the lincoln looks like as well so it will be something that we'll put out prior to the tour so again giving people a sense of what the what the spaces look like with kids in the room in the building yeah oh darn we did it after hours because we're again trying to maintain well maybe this spring you know let's yeah um and then uh lastly i would say um kim identified a couple of projects for this on this um just kind of keeping in mind

090the number of projects we have going this summer is the most we've had of any summer and so there's also just to know that there'll be a lot of um a lot of work and will really be limited in the capacity of our team because they're going to be so busy so just know that that's also a consideration as we think about the way they're utilizing their time awesome thank you uh with that thank you for the updates and the reports as always uh comprehensive detailed and exciting very exciting exciting to read and also with that we have two requests uh board if you have either questions or a motion chair would entertain a motion regarding adams elementary school and you have a warning in your packets uh since i moved to authorized staff to

091execute a guarantee guaranteed maximum price amendment with fortis construction for the addition and renovation at adams elementary for fourteen million two hundred and eighty five thousand five hundred and seventy three dollars and approved the allocation of bond reserves in the amount of three hundred and forty eight thousand nine hundred and seventeen dollars adams and adama excuse me adams elementary to fully fund the project second second oh sure it's been moved by vince and seconded by therese i will now entertain a final discussion is there a discussion on demotion uh it's not so much a discussion i just want to say um i always i appreciate the opportunity to attend the bond oversight meetings and i just want to say um you know i always think well the board brings really challenging questions to these guys

092um but they uh we really don't um we don't really compare to the challenging things that come out of the bond oversight group in terms of the things that they ask um people to think about so we are we are definitely committed um we definitely bring really great points um but by the time they get to us folks they've already been over the coals so um it's like probably this isn't nearly as hard for them as we might think it is because they've already gone around in the ring so thanks to the committee and to you guys in your presentation for preparing so well responding to what the committee raised and uh in general just again really great work thank you any further discussion this argument director jones really really said what i had to

093say which is uh just that the way that this project the spontane project is built out there are so many lines of accountability that it it makes being on the school board very very easy and so i it's we're at a point where we're past the halfway point and you know i just feel very confident i'm always i there are never surprises and so i'm just really want to express appreciation and just making our jobs so much even so easy and working so hard to earn our trust and earn the community's trust so um i'm looking forward to voting for the motion further discussion cnn the board is entering to a vote on the motion to authorize staff to execute a guaranteed maximum price amendment with foreign construction for the addition and renovation at adams

094elementary for 14 million and 285 and 573 dollars and approved the allocation of bond reserves in the amount of 348 thousand and 917 dollars for adam adams elementary to fully fund the project uh with that director adams hi director tommeny hi director jones hi probably here right there hi dr baker hi uh finger mcdonald is excused and the chair votes i the motion passes with six votes to none all right the chair would entertain a motion regarding to sheldon middle school package b guaranteed maximum price and bond reserve allocation director adams may please the chair i moved to authorize the staff to execute guaranteed maximum price amendment with the greeting builders llc for the sheldolon middle school renovation package b in the amount of 3 million hundred and thirty seven thousand one hundred and eighty

095one dollars and a bond reserve allocation in the amount of two hundred and fifty eight thousand two hundred eighty two dollars to fully fund the project do i hear a second i'll second okay all right i'll now entertain a motion it's been said mood by vince and second by shauna is there any discussion events so i have i have a question on the action and um it's really uh i was i was a little disappointed to see that we're we had to remove the the bike parking and solar panel work to you know to make the project go i understand that there you know sometimes there are trade-offs my question is if there are excess bond reserves at the end of the project can we revisit these deliverables is that a possibility even yes we

096have the designs in hand and so if we choose to spend that money at the end of the bond program we absolutely could go back and put it back in however we are looking for a different path towards installing an educational solar array that might be more cost effective so that we because we are committed to having a solar array at every school campus great yeah so that was really just i wanted to express interest and then i guess maybe a follow-up question to that is if there are projects that have been set aside to make overall projects go or portions of projects that have been set aside what is the process uh that will enter into for choosing which ones to take up and and which ones don't so we've been keeping a running

097log of projects that could be considered for additional work at the end of the bond program and our bond management plan says that the school board will approve any additional projects that are funded by bond funds and so at the end of the when we determine its time which will probably be before we're complete with all construction but we will engage in a process with the school board where staff will probably likely make recommendations but give opportunity for the school board to give feedback and approval okay wonderful thank you let's just bring you back to the clipboards uh in the meeting room back in well i don't know was it early 2018 yeah not before yeah when we were talking about which projects we should go forward with so like where we are right now

098it's just amazing to see where we are that was a fun night it was very fun night multiple nights the final stage the final stage yes all right without any further discussion all right on the motion the board will enter into a vote it's been moved by director adams and second by uh director tommeny to authorize staff to execute a guaranteed maximum prize amendment with the gerding builders llc for the shelderlin middle school renovation package b in the amount of 3737 and 100 181 181 dollars and a bond reserve allocation in the amount of 258 and 282 dollars to fully fund the products co-vice chair a white bear hi director jones aye director tommeny hi and uh by share uh finger mcdonald is excused uh director baker aye and archer adams aye and the chair

099votes i and with six to none the motion passes wonderful well thanks bond team really appreciate all of your work and leadership and uh have a wonderful rest of your evening thank you now the board will transition to an education update regarding vaccine progress and as a reminder uh there is a report for the board that was presented uh in the packet and there is no action expected tonight uh ryan yeah so um primarily i just wanted to open this up for questions from board members but i did have a couple of updates since the report has um has been put out um in your packet on friday and so one of the things i wanted to highlight is in conversation with um the team that was at linus pauling with meeting with our primarily

100families from guatemala um there was an opportunity to learn more about the vex vaccination process from dr gabriel ledger from samaritan we also had a health navigator there and our interpreter and so other things that happened there was connecting families with ipass and also with parent square so there was a number of opportunities at night for families to come together and get some additional information um which was really valuable one of the one of the other things that's happened since um we met last in this report came out is we had two clinics we had one at garfield and we had one at lincoln um and over those two uh clinics we had 210 um five to eleven-year-olds received their first vaccination um which was a really good number for us all of the opportunities

101all of the spaces were filled so that's good news because we were working to get the news out to the community and we really focused and had some prioritization and scheduling for our families that are racially linguistically diverse and families navigating poverty so we worked really hard to make sure that those families had priority in those um in those slots we're also continuing to communicate to our families in the community how important it is to reach out to their their pediatrician or their providers office to schedule appointments we're also continuing to work with families that contact us to connect them with our health navigators to connect them then for with their provider or ensure that they have access to a provider so that's work that's still underway um one of the other things that i

102again i get the opportunity to meet with benton county and get updates from them and one of the updates i got from them on the 17th of this month so just a couple of days ago was that um 20 of the 5 to 11 year olds in benton county have already seen received a first vaccination so that's over a thousand kids in benton county that already have had their first shot so that's a really great number for us and again keeping in mind that our goal is to keep our schools open and keep kids in school this process getting students vaccinated is really important and we continue to play a key role in making that a reality for our kids and our families so we're excited by those numbers and then finally just so you

103know you may have read this today but in the oregonian there was an article today that um from um basically saying it was an interview with colt gill and one of the things that we're expecting to see happen is the test to stay concept or roll out of tests to stay even potentially by the end of november which um means that the state has received a lot of tests that would allow if there was an exposure to do a test um as soon as people find out there was an exposure in a second test within seven days and with that um with that testing it would potentially allow students to stay in school rather than quarantine so again that's news hot off the press um today um something that i've i kind of had a

104sense what's coming the last two weeks but i just wanted to update you on that as well so while our strategy continues to be to encourage and do our part to get our kids vaccinated that's another way another measure that will help to keep kids in school because at the end of the day that's our fundamental goal in this work so um that was the update i wanted to provide in addition to the report that i shared with you and i'm happy to answer any questions you may have and if i'm ryan i'll add a few updates as well uh i had the pleasure uh to sit on the uh weekly or bi-weekly updates uh for the vaccine i'm not sure it's called task force yeah group and it's a task force of collective of

105school district personnel and leaders and uh folks who work in the public health department and other stakeholders as well and they're working really great in delivering on the recommendations that the board uh approved for ryan to move forward with uh vaccine access and education and outreach uh including uh reaching to uh equity groups also i was really uh honored to be volunteering in these two clinics that ryan mentioned and i did volunteer in many including razor stadium where there's thousands coming in and out but i can't tell you how much more excited and really special i felt about those two clinics uh folks there told me that uh sometimes some of the uh families really had a long time thinking about going in and now they were there uh so it was really great uh

106kids were excited uh and uh they we had teddy bears which i've never heard of happening before uh this was really special to see the kids go out with teddy bear and a smile on their face and of course families being relieved i wish i can share with you more personal stories of course for obvious reasons i can't but some of them are really heartwarming to know how much uh those vaccines are relieving families from an anxiety reconnecting families uh uh and and and giving them hope uh it's truly a ca i'm not being a hyperbole here to say this is truly a public health miracle of uh our lifetime uh that's maybe we never witnessed uh unless someone witnessed how polio uh vaccines transpired so really thank you for the hard work for prioritizing

107the kids who really need it most and to see the success firsthand it was an honor so really appreciate the work and uh look forward for more kids getting the job uh all right with that will open up for any questions or comments from the board all right lou um i won't make it very long i was just gonna add in that it's great to see that the cases are staying low too so i just wanted to again appreciate all the measures the weekly testing that's happening um the students using mask i've seen the tent go up um over at lincoln for more outdoor seating especially now that it's starting to rain and i just think that the district is doing such a good job in helping keep students in school that's exciting to hear

108about the tests to stay too because i know that's been an area of concern from some community members um and um just the other positive impacts i was looking at my notes so sorry the other positive impacts that you mentioned ryan i don't think that um we were necessarily had that in mind but getting parents signed up for like the ipas or families i should say and um and the other things that were have in the parent square that's awesome because that'll just help increase the communication with families and beyond just the vaccination um rates staying low and getting other updates as well um i'm really excited to hear about that one of the i think that the trend um that you provided in the rep in the report is really promising especially with the

109number you just gave us for the younger group and so um i guess the question around it is um what is is your thought that the trend is going to continue to grow as far as vaccination rates continuing to go up because it seems like unvaccinated um what the map seems like it's pretty low for district kids our district students that are not vaccinated which correlates with like other vaccines because this is a high vaccination rate school district to begin with and so do you expect it to continue to rise at this point so sorry my bad i unmuted myself um on page three of this report um there is a the graphic that you're talking about that has the quick uptick and then it starts to uh level off that blue um marking or

110this grade marking is something that peter the epidemiologist from the county put together so we can look at what we would anticipate the trend being without intervention versus the trend being with intervention and so we're going to continue to watch that as the weeks progress and we continue our work and so that's that's a really important uh data point for us to continue to watch so there's an expectation that it will continue to rise and at the same time we think it would be pretty flat without some ongoing um public engagement and intervention thanks ryan i um i wanted to ask that in case folk hadn't seen that page to understand the importance of these measures that are being taken and the steps and partnering with community and being really intentional too i think that's

111helping with show that growth projection on there so thank you for explaining that for folk any other questions or comments uh ryan a question um what do you expect from the board at the time at this time um i don't have an expectation of the board at this time um my plan is to continue to come back and provide additional updates and reports to you um on the work that's underway um i'm not making any requests for uh action at this time i think we have a good plan in place to continue um we are also um again with the goal of keeping kids in school um we're also finding that we're doing fewer um coping responses and quarantines um which is also a positive move or a positive outcome of where we're at right

112now and so at this point i would just advise that we continue the process that we're taking undertaking right now thank you and i i would assume from the board the agreement and consensus that uh yes let's keep marching on with what we're doing because it's uh it's working and it's working very effectively uh thank you any other questions or comments all right just uh another deep appreciation for uh all stakeholders in the community who are helping us uh seeing them in the vaccine clinic it's a well-oiled machine you can't really tell who's working for the school districts who's working for oha and who's working for the public health department who's volunteering everybody is uh doing their part to really help the kids and the families get their questions answered and access the vaccine and

113even the testing as well on the site uh i'm very very grateful for uh this to be happening in our community and helping kids stay safe thank you ryan and please echo our gratitude for all stakeholders and staff i will all right seen uh there's no further uh questions or comments uh we will transition now to the next item of the agenda equity curriculum updates and we have melissa marcian and nikki and amy joining us as a reminder for the board uh this is uh an item agenda that does not require an action uh i want to uh just reiterate some of the values that the board stand by we are standing by anti-racist uh uh values uh and also commitment to equity and uh that's in our operations and curriculum and we're here to

114listen from staff uh about uh what we're doing in that regard uh with that ryan yeah and so with that i'm actually just going to turn it straight over to melissa and the team that i've worked to put this presentation together again i'm glad that um we had our colleague nancy davila williams with us at the beginning to recognize the work that she's um done with regards to these lessons as well but again it's an opportunity just to provide information to the board um and if there's an opportunity at the end for questions that the board members may have again it's really the intention here is uh dialogue thank you i would just like to start by saying if this is the perfect night for this presentation especially after listening to our elementary principal colleagues

115i don't know that they couldn't uh could have said it any better than we're going to say it tonight and that is the um the commitment to racial equity and the commitment to helping students to see that and learn that in the classroom impacts all areas that we're working on as far as growth um including academic achievement of course their mental health and wellness and obviously our equitable system so um thanks for bringing us here on this night because i think you're going to see some great connections so um the the team is here we're all assembled and we're here to talk to you tonight um and share the work that our staff have created um in the area of racial equity lessons we um will also hear student voice throughout the presentation and um

116how the lessons are connected to um not only oregon department of ed standards but also other um other areas that we've researched in order to bring this um in front of our kids we're also going to talk about what still needs to happen um because this continues to be a work in progress and um and we're excited about that so next slide the first thing that i want to say is that um we did start this work and before the racial educational equity policy was um created but i'm really happy that you did that because as you said before with the elementary principles what can you do um to support the principles i think amy said it very well we feel your support all the time and to be able to connect the work that

117we're doing with the racial equity lessons directly back to policy work that this board has done in the last couple of years it just feels very it's very comforting for us and it feels like we're grounded in in what is right um and and doing the right thing with our with our kids in the classroom so the first policy or the racial um educational equity policy um which is false to jvb our um our most recent one i wanted to um channel marcian riverokuchi who always tells us about the power of the spoken word um so i would like to read to you um the uh how you have directed your intention and belief when it comes to racial educational equity racial educational equity promotes the real possibility of racial equity of educational results for

118each student and between diverse groups of students racial equity strategies are intentional systemic and applied across all district operations with an emphasis on teaching and learning processes we acknowledge that current and historical systems and structures have perpetuated racial inequities in health safety nutrition housing and environmental as well as academic outcomes rather than perpetuate racism we must take responsibility to dismantle it so in setting that intention we um our staff have moved forward in the creation of these racial equity lessons additionally the policy jvb speaks to our commitment to racial equity and um our commitment to racial equity sorry something popped up on my screen freaked me out a little bit um and those are listed in the policy um in the first section um numbers four five and six we're preparing all students to graduate

119and succeed in a diverse local national and global community we're de-centering the dominant narrative that stereotype people of color and we're honoring the culture language existing knowledge and live experiences that students bring to the classroom and using it to inform our teaching practice and finally the how the how are these racial equity lessons and we're excited to present those to you in just a moment if we go to the next slide the other policy that we um have kind of cemented all of our work in is the all students belong soon to be all every student belongs i will be doing that work here in a in about a month um but the all students belong policy and um in that policy uh it is stated here at the top that all students are entitled

120to a high quality educational experience free from discrimination or harassment based on perceived race color and religion gender identity gender expression sexual orientation disability or national origin and finally our next slide we also are guided in this work by the core values that were um set by the uh the board um a few years ago and specifically with these core values our focus is on inclusive learning environments that are culturally relevant and relationships that build a community of trust so with that foundation we're going to give you you've got to see some youth truth data earlier and you're about to see some more next slide right good evening everyone nice to see you um i am going to share with you some of the youth truth data which i know you also saw um earlier

121this evening and so some of the data that um i think we use behind the why of this work and what's actually happening in the classroom in our support of both of the policies and our core values is um this statement here from youth truth about students self-reporting on whether they can be their selves around other students at the school so what you see on this slide is the data disaggregated by race and i think what is important to pay attention to is the the pink and green portions on the right side because that is reflective of the percent positive and so what you can see there is that we have some groups of students who feel more strongly that they can be their selves um at their school and this is for high school

122students i think we can go to the next slide we're going to go through this data at high middle and low um and so and low elementary sorry i'm a bit distracted because my husband seemed to forget that i um was in a school board meeting and he's traveling and i just put my six-year-old to bed so that's just my reality right now is like i'm like go to bed then my husband's calling to see how things are going um back to this um so for middle school students again it's the same question about i can usually be myself around other students at this school and again those pink and green sections represent the positive responses by students disaggregated by race next one amy the next slide is elementary if you want to speak to

123that one i think this is the slide we already saw i mean it's basically that same information can you be yourself with others and um yeah and you can look at it there for a second before we go in there's some positive on the right all right next slide i think yeah so i think um the data that we were just looking at as well as is a reason for doing the racial equity lessons but i think what's important here is that the racial the racial equity lessons are supplemental to things that are already happening in the classroom and that our equity work is not this thing that we we put all learning aside and now we do equity and then we go back to kind of our regular academic programming is that i think

124over the past several years as we have adopted curriculum we've really used an equity lens in selection of materials so throughout a student's learning experience k-12 they're interacting with materials that support our equity work and so on this slide i think if you just if you push probably the next button you're going to see some of those curricula um k-12 that yeah i don't know have that equity um perspective embedded into the materials yeah so caring skills community and um great body shop our caring schools community you heard that mentioned earlier today and that is our kind of morning circle gathering afternoon closure and then social skills lessons throughout the week and then the great body shop is our health curriculum and i think like nikki said that this is this is all supplemental to

125those those materials and yeah nikki others knew zella um as you know was our social studies curriculum that was adopted um and i think the reason i know the reason we went with those materials is that they offered multiple perspectives so that is for social studies grades 6 through 12. um studysync which is our middle school english language arts curriculum that was adopted a few years ago um i guess several years ago now is really reflective of offering like counter stories and multiple perspectives through both their novel and short story and excerpt um units that were or i guess lessons that are within the units and then the last one is character strong which is the social emotional learning curricula that is also used at the middle school i think what comes out in that

126curricula is the teaching of empathy and i think a big part of empathy is understanding others perspectives you know to help get students to that place where they're not going to judgment and being more inclusive and community oriented i think next slide yes uh so the lessons for racial equity and as one of the things that we wanted to share tonight is that and hopefully you're seeing a trend and a thread throughout all our the elementary principles presentation and ours is that we really want our students all our students to really feel valued and to thrive and to have a sense of belonging in their classrooms and so we want to make sure that we create spaces of belonging and caring and that are culturally responsive and are culturally affirming for all our students so

127the lessons for racial equity is another way that we are striving that goal and so we've created these lessons for racial equity and again i have to say that we have some amazing dedicated teachers that have come together to put these lessons together based on their expertise based on their lived experiences based on the stories that they've heard in the community and have created lessons that are really engaging and rigorous for our students and they are tied like both nikki and amy and melissa have stated they're tied to other things that we're doing um including the k-12 social studies standards and that are integrated with ethnic study standards and they're also inspired by two other areas which is the learning for justice social studies or social justice domains as well as a book by tiffany

128jewell which is which is called this book is anti-racist and so one of the areas that we have focused on this year and last year as well is the areas of identity and you heard that earlier today in the elementary principles presentation diversity justice and action so there are lessons that are associated with those topics next slide and if you could just slap or click the button just a couple more times and you'll see uh some some more language come up so what you're going to see here are some examples of the three to fifth grade third grade to fifth grade grade level outcomes and these are the outcomes as teachers are teaching these lessons earlier somebody said a counselor is even teaching these lessons these are the outcomes that we expect for students to

129learn as they engage in these lessons and so if you can click a couple more times you'll see four outcomes that students are expected to learn in these lessons and i pulled kind of the phrases that stand out to me from these outcomes and they are i can talk about my family i treat each person with respect i get to know people as individuals and i treat others how i like to be treated and i remember that as being the golden rule right so you can see here that the grade level outcomes are really tied to all the other things that we're trying to do in terms of keeping students at the center keeping student experience at the center keeping students perspectives and identities at the center and we're just very thankful that we have

130this opportunity to do that and for our students to experience this and these lessons um are created as a supplemental materials like nikki and amy have said and you know there's been times where folks have said you know can we look at the lessons and we actually don't share the lessons because we feel that they are best um understood in context right and so um we are again just very thankful for our dedicated teachers in in engaging in these lessons and creating spaces of dialogue in their classrooms where students can learn not only about themselves a little bit further but also learn about the community in which they are learning in and next slide okay i think you can again just advance one because we have the the text that comes in we'll stop there

131so what amy and i are going to do is we will talk about those four areas of identity diversity justice and action um by looking at the integrated ethnic studies and social studies standards i think a really good way to to take a look at what where where we're going is to look at the standards in the high school level to start and then we're going to back up and take a look at kindergarten standards and just to take just a quick timeout just to explain that the k-12 social studies integrated standards we're talking about are oregon department of ed standards so you can find these on the ode website um and these are integrated ethnic studies and social studies so um this is this is coming from our department event and and what nikki

132and amy are about to show you is just kind of that through line from kindergarten to high school about what we're doing to help kids um in these four domains wonderful thank you melissa and so on the screen already you can see where we are aiming to get our high school students is in the area of identity is examining the development of identity including concepts of race ethnicity gender sexual orientation orientation and religion and then a second piece of that kind of that more critical thinking is the significance of identity and the distribution and accumulation of social political and economic power so that's where we want our high schoolers to get um and and these standards again from ode kind of are telling us this is where we need our oregon graduates to be and

133now let amy talk about kindergarten yeah and so you can um click again and then when we think about how we get our kiddos there it takes lots of years and in kindergarten we start talking about identity and develop an understanding of one's own identity groups including but not limited to race gender family ethnicity culture religion and ability and so when we're able to do this in kindergarten we are hopeful that in high school we see the other outcome and i think having these these standards are helpful and supportive and our kids in our society we've been so programmed to not talk about some of these things that it actually really does take us starting to talk about them in kindergarten and it you'll see through all of these four next four slides that it

134it's done at a developmentally appropriate way and that's that's the work of our dedicated teachers coming up with with lessons that support these these and many more standards so i think you can go to the next one now all right thanks and then we'll progress through this one in the same way perfect thank you so much and so for high school you can see that we're getting again into that critical thinking around diversity so identifying and analyzing that's that critical thinking word the nature of structural and systemic oppression on people right and it identifies several groups of people lgbtq and those experiencing disability ethnic and religious groups as well as other traditionally marginalized groups so that is where we are aiming for students to be able to engage in reading writing discussions about the nature

135of oppression that stems from from diversity but we of course have to back up to where amy is going to talk about how do we even start talking about diversity with our five and six year olds yeah i think so in kindergarten what that looks like is our ability to um make connections and finding similar similarities and differences and including talking about race and ethnicity culture ability and gender so again these things we have we're ready and and our kids are ready to talk about them starting in kindergarten next slide thank you so much and again here are the high school standards in the area of justice and so you can see we will be we are asking students to analyze and explain the historic and contemporary examples of social and political conflicts and compromises

136including the actions of traditionally marginalized individuals and groups you can talk about kinder justice in kindergarten identify possible solutions to injustices that demonstrate fairness and empathy and last we'll talk about action um and i just think what the reason we thought this was important to share and is as amy said is that the standards are written in a way that are developmentally appropriate so you can see again there is this big gradation whether we're talking about identity diversity justice or action there are standards that are aligned with where students should be developmentally so in the area of action we are going to engage students in analyzing and evaluating methods for challenging resisting and changing society to promote equity justice and equality um i think the work that i know you've heard about that marciana is

137doing and our teachers with the safe group that is just another layer of this right so we have lessons in this this is also embedded i think into our curricula the new zela curricula has a lot around action um for students in these areas and then the other um standard in that area is about identifying and critiquing implicit bias institutional racism racial supremacy and privilege and intersectionality and identity and influence we are getting into some pretty complex topics that i think adults are still really learning about but this is where we want to get our corvallis graduates and again these come from the ethnic um studies and social studies integrated standards from oregon department of education all right and um in kindergarten our kiddos are totally capable of action and uh um it takes real

138intentional work to help them engage in respectful dialogue and like you said earlier our curriculums are super good at helping teachers guide this and then we also have the additional lessons all right so when i think about who we're doing this for we're doing this for our students we're doing this because we're keeping our students at the center this is part of our values as a district this is part of our values as a community and so we wanted to end this presentation with student voice because this is why we're while we're all here and so in the next couple of slides you're going to hear and see the the words from our students and why these lessons and why this work is so important to them so this first quote speaks to the importance

139of creating spaces for students to have dialogue and to be able to critically think about their world in their their fast changing world and as you heard earlier today creating caring and caring and vulnerable and affirming classroom spaces so our students are ready they are more than ready they are ready for us to speak about race in their classrooms and they're just waiting for us to catch up so in the next couple of slides you'll see more they're more of their beautiful words so here's another quote by a student that the lessons lay the foundation for students to be able to talk about race and racism in an age-appropriate way the lessons give students advice on how to deal with things that they see on the internet about race and identity so we'd like to

140end with a beautiful video from one of our amazing safe students our safe leaders one of our safe leaders and in this video you're going to hear charlotte talk about the impact of these lessons on her family you're going to hear her talk about the importance of the sense of belonging which is something that you've heard throughout the evening you're going to have are you going to hear about the feeling of acceptance and most importantly her call to us as educators and leaders of this community that these are the necessary skills that she wants and that her her friends and her students that go to her school want these are the skills that they want as they leave our educational system so here's charlotte [Music] okay we're gonna we're gonna make it happen i promise

141there we go i'm charlotte i'm here to read you a letter that i wrote about the importance of teaching about equity in our schools here we go hello my name is charlotte i'm a proud member of the safe team as a team we believe that every student should be given what they need in order to excel in school we also believe that in order for students of every color every culture hello i'm charlotte i'm here to read you a letter that i wrote about the importance of teaching about equity in our schools here we go hello my name is charlotte i'm a proud member of the safe team as a team we believe that every student should be given what they need in order to excel in school we also believe that in order for

142students of every color every culture to thrive we have to create an environment where racism and stereotypes are nowhere to be found we have to teach all of our students no matter their grade that is not acceptable to criticize their peers based on what they look like or believe in now this may seem like an impossible task but it really isn't we just have to change the way we think and see things we need to see the world through the eyes of our black students we need to see the through the eyes of our muslim students we need to step into the shoes of every student who may have felt like they didn't belong we already see the elementary schools doing this over just the first few months of school they have taught lessons and

143gone through slideshows with students varying from 5 to 11 years old it is quite amazing i've i have been sitting in on meetings with these equity ambassadors and i'm amazed at how far we can go in just a couple months now this really didn't hit me until one day during school my sister came up to me let me tell you about my sister my she was a doctor from ethiopia and is african-american she's a fourth grader and has been one of the few african-americans in her in her school since kindergarten she's always felt like she didn't belong she would often hide the fact that she was adopted because it made her feel like she didn't even belong in our family but in but the other day she came up to me and showed me this

144project she had been working on about her identity and every beautiful part of her was there it was breathtaking at how fast teaching acceptance and identity has made her feel like she belongs she wasn't ashamed of any part of herself the importance of these lessons in teaching students are immense you can never know when a simple act of talking about this topic will change a student's life having this in our schools will not only change the lives of students it will make them want to come to school and all in all makes students feel better about being their true selves i think we can all agree we want all of our students to do well in school and also have the necessary skills to move on in life once they graduate so let's do that

145let's give each and every student the opportunity to thrive and excel all you have to do is teach about race identity and equity and soon you'll start seeing positive results create lessons or tweak the curriculum so that every every perspective is accounted for it's like everyone says there's no better time than present today is the day for change thank you hello i'm charlotte i'm here today i could totally listen to it one more time i mean listen to the students listen to the kids they're telling us what's important and what they need and they see the impact so that was super powerful and i really appreciate marciani bringing that video to us yes you're welcome thank you amazing go charlotte um i think what we have left on the slideshow and you don't have to

146put it back up it's really fine um on the slideshow it's just kind of what's coming next for us um in terms of racial equity lessons as we um start to see that rolling out um into the secondary schools and then we were going to take questions so i'll um let nikki and marcia talk a little bit about what's coming yeah so i think for us the multi-layered uh in terms of next steps um we have some amazing equity tosas and safe coaches that we are just i think stanley earlier said talked about just we have just an amazing educational staff and so we have uh some amazing staff that are very dedicated passionate about this work who have come together to create these amazing lessons and so we continue to align come together almost

147like a professional learning community and come together and align these lessons kindergarten through 12th grade because we want to have you know thinking again from the perspective of a student who's going through our system you know going through elementary then going to middle then high we want to make sure that our students have a very well articulated experience in terms of the lessons for racial equity so we met with the team about a month ago we're going to come back together and just continue um connecting learning from one another and just building a sense of community and trust amongst all of us and then we also continue um and again this is also tied to our board goals around equity leadership development and equity leadership development really takes on many different forms from how do

148we engage staff in these types of conversations during profession or during staff meetings for example how can we continue to provide professional development um dedicated to equity and so just making sure that we're intentional about this work and realizing that this we're not going to do this in one meeting but it's going to take ongoing care ongoing practice and ongoing conversations and dialogue so kind of next steps in my mind is continuing to do that alignment and continuing to provide staff with professional development so nikki is there anything else you would want to add no i think you did an excellent job summarizing thank you mercianne you're welcome so does anyone have questions that they'd like to ask sorry sammy that's probably what you're supposed to say right that's all right you got it right

149and as we're waiting for people to raise their hands i'm going to start by sharing the gratitude and uh the line the song song line that has been ringing in my head right now is louis armstrong uh they will learn much more than i'll ever know uh it's this promise of education but truly what we're doing here is uh students uh we're gonna are gonna be more racially just and uh advocates for a better world than we ever strive for and i think that's that's that's a great mission to be in so thank you for uh doing that work my my question maybe mercy and you hinted too and i want to maybe have a little bit of a vignoral forecast up uh for a concern i i heard or requests i heard from actually

150safe students who wrote to the board very recently uh encouraging us to make sure all staff are trained and equipped not only the equity toasters and safe coaches uh the students highlighted how powerful it was and uh wanted us to do it k through 12 which i understand now we're going that direction we have safe students in elementary but also the student was advocating can we have every uh staff and teacher being equipped with that uh is that vision possible and when are we gonna get there oh that's a great question sami and uh like they say in spanish step by step um for us um you know we started our um training of our staff um when we accelerated our racial equity work back in 2017 with the training of the courageous conversations about

151race protocol and i know you all remember that and you've all participated in that and so we continue that continues to be our mission that continues to be our focus is to provide our staff with professional development but it has to be differentiated for us because especially last year when we were all behind a screen we had to be very creative about how we were training our staff and one example that i wanted to share with you is we didn't in the elementary i can speak very clearly about the elementary we didn't just put these lessons in front of teachers and say okay ready go teach we really took some time to front load um the lessons by highlighting the importance of our building principles leading this work at their schools so i'll never forget

152back in the fall of last year our building principals actually modeled um the lessons of identity with their staff and then fast forward a couple of months we had an all staff that included all um ias so inclusion assistants anybody that works in this in the schools we invited them for to four district-wide zoom professional development opportunities where we engaged in in teaching of not only the lessons but of the why and connected it to our vision as a district and so that's just one example of how the training and i when i think of training i think of um i think it's more than that it's around shifting mindsets encouraging folks to understand why we're doing this work um the importance of this work to to our educational um growth as a system and

153so um the way i also see the trainings or the i guess the the the growth in our staff is finding really unique opportunities for um for for engaging in these conversations so for example during staff meetings the use of the protocol during the staff meetings when whenever we're having levels meetings with building principles we're always grounding our staff around that work whenever we're um opening up a session with staff we're always we're just always trying to really integrate it so it becomes a fabric of our district and i'm really proud of that and so i don't know if i answered your question but i guess it's really it's really multi-dimensional and we will continue and we are continuing to provide professional development for our staff in this area thank you marcianne you're welcome vince

154and then liv so sammy you took him took my question but i i have i have other questions but i i want to go back i want to go back in time to when i got on the sport in 2013 and it really just underscores how one the role of the board its first role is to set expectations for what education will look like in our district and when i stepped on this board centering children and equitable outcomes was already well established that was the expectation of that board it was the culture that i stepped in as a brand new board member and that was already part of the the district culture so this is not uh something that has just sprung fully formed from the brow of our staff you know last year this

155is something that that has been evolving and has been consistently growing over time and so i just want to really appreciate that and how actualizing that is to see how it you know advance and develop this this has become you know i'm reflecting on my own experience and and i just really wish that i had educators or that the teachers that i had and the educational leaders that i had when i was growing up in a small town in oregon taught me these things because when i left home and went off i ended up going in the navy fully integrated organization but highly racialized and i was taught to be colorblind but the you know the reality was is the world isn't colorblind and the navy wasn't colorblind for me and it was really hard

156for me to navigate that because i was i did not have racialized consciousness um and i have you know it wasn't really until i started you know working with the with the corvell school district where i really started doing the deep work and having that realization and understanding my role as a white male in the work that needs to get done and so i lost a lot of time and i reflect on the experience of my own children and how their consciousness is completely different than mine at the equivalent age and they they're just so much further ahead and they will have so much more opportunity that i didn't get to have and so i just wanted to voice that that perspective that white perspective that this isn't just about kids of color this isn't

157about kids who maybe love differently or believe differently this is for white kids too because it creates opportunity and access for them as well and so my i want to step back in and ask a technical question and amy you kind of touched on on this a little bit but i'm kind of interested you know how what do these lessons look like um in the classroom and and maybe and maybe we can talk about that at the three levels you know in maybe in elementary school and then middle school and high school yeah mercy on jump in if i um if if i miss misspeak or if i forget something but basically our um we had a group of teachers create some lessons around those four topics and so let's say it was um on

158identity it they're centering around a book and the activities are varied depending on grade level so kinder and fifth don't necessarily look the same they have very similar outcomes and some lessons were designed to do in the opening circle that's already part of caring school's community when you do this today we're also going to add a part where we're talking about identity and who we are so the lessons in the way that they were given to the teachers were um here's the objective here's some activities you can do about it here's a book that aligns with this and here's you know uh for identity maybe four to six lessons that the teacher could do over three months or two months and then we jump into the next section and then here's kind of an outline

159and guide and here are the people who created that they were modeling reading the book and modeling teaching the lesson so and every teacher we offered um if you don't feel comfortable if you're worried your principal can be in there with you any of the people who created the lessons will be in there with you and um yeah or stand anything to add to that no i think you covered it yeah and as all good educators do at the end of the year they asked for feedback everyone gave feedback they worked over the summer and in the fall and are adapting and adjusting based on feedback they got from their colleagues thanks for that thanks for including the how you're supporting kids because these are tough conversations and discomfort is part of this work and

160so so you know that's part of that part of the equation nick can you talk about middle school in high school i'm going to let marcianne talk about that because she has worked much more closely with the equity ptosis and i only you know i joined in in our last meeting as we saw that um one thing i can share is i i feel like there were staff who were really um motivated to get started with equity lessons and so they were working on those lessons and staff groups um and of course we understand the power of collaboration and so that is the work that marcian was speaking to for us for our next steps is bringing together those secondary um equity tosas and leaders to to be more aligned and make our you know

161make our lessons um reflective of those of those standards but also to ensure that students no matter what their school is are are receiving a similar learning experience and through these equity lessons and so marcian you want to speak more to the lessons yeah definitely um so secondary is um we're in kind of different places in in our schools but we are working together to align the work at secondary and so um at the middle school particularly at sheldonland who's done a phenomenal job of creating these lessons um there are 10 lessons that are tied to the book to the standards but they're also tied to the book this book is anti-racist by tiffany jewell and there are 10 lessons and i'm just going to give you a couple a couple of the titles so

162the first one is who am i the second one is growing into my identity the third is making sense of the world and so there's 10 lessons again that are tied to some of the resources but also the standards that we've been talking about um the lessons amy talked about earlier in elementary they're they're mostly taught during community circle which is a wonderful way to start the day in secondary at least in the middle school we've had we've had a couple of different irradiation different ways of doing it because the secondary schedule's so complicated i wish it wasn't but it is um and we're still kind of finessing that right and um so in one school the lessons were taught during homeroom time um in another school we were thinking oh wouldn't it be cool

163if it was taught during pride time but but again we're forming that and this is this is we're starting that um at the high school we have uh taught the lessons during an advisory um and also there's a second period so an extension to advisory and but again we're looking at it is this working how's this working for students how's it working for staff and we're taking that feedback and tweak it as we go along but again i am very thankful for the secondary folks really putting their heads together and saying you know how can we do this in a way that's really again keeping our students at the center while we're building the capacity of staff at the same time so that's the k-12 kind of view of what we're doing thank you so

164much and thank you for accelerating the momentum of this work uh like i said this is you know as a board member this is really actualizing it's so satisfying and exciting to hear you know how this is happening on the ground in classrooms and it's just i hope there are there are board members that were on the board you know you know seven nine years ago that are will get to see this so they can see how their work has paid dividends so thanks so much yeah well well make sure to share the video with them uh lou okay my internet's been weird again hopefully y'all can hear me um i just wanted to follow up something that um vince brought up that i was thinking about too as you all were presenting is how

165important this curriculum is for all students um and one of the i think i've shared this before in board meetings it's always sad when i hear students in my classes when they reach college saying they feel betrayed by their k-12 experience because they didn't learn about some of the things they learned about in some of the college classes and um it just helps prepare students for in the future when they go for the ones that do go to college and then just in for life in general because it's not like learning about each other and oneself does not impact your life and it does in really positive ways and so i really appreciate how this curriculum and how it's in alignment with the state standards and i appreciate you all pointing out that this is

166ode directed as well as localized efforts and i think the combination of those two together just really help students so much in the educational setting and preparing them for their futures no matter what they do because they'll be able to take this into multiple facets of their life i think i had um do i have time for two questions or just one um you do have time for our two questions take your time okay so the first one is kind of a little bit shorter you all talked about how you don't um like that the curriculum isn't shared out and i just wanted to for you to emphasize or and i emphasize to kind of help make clear that that's pretty normal for all curriculum like you don't share all the curriculum for math and

167science and um social studies at request right not necessarily i mean i think that what a couple things come to mind one um when we we've gotten a few requests and we've said no we're not going to give you a pdf of this and part of that is twofold one i think marcin kind of mentioned but i'll highlight both of some thought about that um one is in our current social media state it's important for us to think about who created these lessons and who put their heart and soul into them and it's mostly our staff of color and for me to put something out in public just to somebody who is is mostly opposed or thinks they're opposed until we actually can have a dialogue um for the potential for that to our staff

168of color to be harmed in a way that that was never intended so that that's always top of mind when i'm asking our staff of color to do any at work and what that looks like so that part is there and the other part like i said is they're kind of evolving so i could give maybe a copy of some objectives but then as we do the lessons and teach the lessons we're adjusting that so one thing that we have offered and that we've done with multiple families is um if kind of like our sex ed lessons you can come in you can sit with the principal you can sit with the teacher we can walk you through it you can you know we have they're mostly digital so we'll walk you through that if

169you have questions about that and have it engage in a dialogue in person about it um because we're not really it's such a bigger context just sending you some paper isn't going to tell you the story that we want to tell you and that we know what happens in the classroom does that does that give the context that you were looking for yeah totally yeah because i mean i wouldn't expect to ask for like to get the science 10th grade curricu entire curriculum from you all and to understand like what the learning outcomes are without having a conversation and so i think why i'm asking this is for um to help community understand that that's pretty standard it's not like just because of the topic and there's also the added layer that you added in

170as well with the um that it's evolving and everything like that and taking into consideration other things as well but um i think it's just shouldn't be viewed by the public that if that this is just the it's only because it's this curriculum it applies to most curriculum requests like so that's what i why i was asking because i don't want people to think that the district is trying to create like a super top secret bolt of curriculum when all they have to do is go sit there and have a conversation look at it and get the context no matter what the topic is um so thanks for that the other part um i'm sorry may i interject uh if you don't mind uh just to to keep it something is that okay if i

171interject sure so uh i'm just thinking if it is within that line of uh the conversations and we have conversations with parents uh is there a list of uh probably uh the anti-racist by tiffany jewel and other sources for adults uh who wants to learn um so they can have those conversations with their kids at home uh is that something that's available in the district's website or we could make available so we encourage them have a conversation with us so we you can learn what we're teaching the child but if you want to learn with your child here's a list of resources is that possible yes now we've started to to pull together even just like here are um state policies our local board policies but also here are the standards that align to these

172lessons around some of the questions that have been coming to us from from families and so i think adding in some of those other resources there would is you know is a good idea to just kind of say like this is where this is coming from and these are the these are the resources we're using and please engage in conversations with your children wonderful wonderful thank you and thanks lou for uh allowing me to uh yeah totally that's like that's an important part is having the resources and being able to have conversations and i always appreciate those questions too um so one of the things that you all talked about heavily and like it came across in the surveys and every in the presentations is that sense of belonging and is somebody somebody that works

173in higher end student affairs or has for quite some time that terminology is used in higher ed too and i think it's really important for community to understand that sense of belonging that terminology and that approach is heavily researched and has supe is well documented to tie to positive educational outcomes not just in k-12 but in higher ed and so it's not um it's something that is proven to help students succeed academically for quite some time right and so this isn't like brand new um either but one of the things that i did notice um is the the number of students of color that are feeling like they don't have as strong of a sense of belonging and it's kind of a question like the curriculum is awesome and it's going to get us farther

174on where we need to be for students to feel like they belong or that they feel like they're accepted by their peers and all those kind of things but the reality is is that bullying and bias is still happening in the classrooms and in the district and how is how are other efforts coupled with the curriculum helping with that like i don't know if this is too big of a question or if we need to come back to this another time but i think that that's something students and parents may appreciate and students and families may appreciate hearing yeah i think you know marcian we were having a conversation related to this with our middle school administrative team last week maybe or recently right is like um when we we see when our our black

175students for example share with us that they they can't be themselves at school and that is some of the data that came out of youth truth when disaggregated by race at the middle level that what what they've told us is when they see themselves in the curriculum and they're not just hearing stories of white folks and hearing a white perspective on history that matters to them and again that's kind of where we wanted to start this conversation is we are doing these equity lessons and it needs to be showing up throughout a student's daily learning experience it is not just like a one and done it needs to be embedded every day right it's not like i can check this off the list we did the equity lesson and now i don't have to talk

176about people of color anymore that is not the approach that we think is best for our kids of color does that help you to i think that answers your question around what you know what else does it look like because it is a lot more than just these lessons and i think um just to add on to that lou we've also been spending quite a bit of time talking about bias and bias incidents and microaggressions with our admin to like make sure we're all on the same page and that we're really aware of when these happen what is it and and really digging into those conversations to being intentional about making sure we we see them or we know how um that we have people that will tell us when it's happening and that we'll

177respond so awesome thank you i appreciate all y'all's work on this it's um like i said before it's helping prepare students for life after corvallis school district in some really powerful ways and i'm just really excited for the students as they continue to engage with the material and move on to other grades in other parts of their lives thank you thank you uh great questions lou and the last question goes to therese therese thanks sammy so um i wanted to um first i just wanted to acknowledge how much i appreciate in response to your the question about sharing curriculum um i wanted to express um gratitude for recognizing that putting the curriculum out there in uh its full um you know an unveiled fashion without any context would be i think i i think could

178be um a pretty violent act toward the staff who have really poured their knowledge and their lived experience um and their their care for our children into the formation of those lessons and so i'm just appreciative that that's on the um that that's on your radar and that you're thinking about those lessons taken out of context can really be um could could be be very damaging um toward those who have have created those so thank you for recognizing that this content is created in a context and it needs to be understood and presented that way which brings me to my two-part question i guess my first part my the first part of the question is have you thought about because i know you all sit on loads of free time right so you know in

179all of your free time which doesn't exist i realize um have you thought about um in terms of engaging parents offering an opportunity for parents to go through a lesson um and experience what how i mean these are really they are lessons they are built out these are not you know draw starter question out of a hat and see where it goes i mean that could be part of a lesson but that's it's not it's not this you know very casual thoughtless these are planned and the the teachers know and there are learning objectives then um and so i'm just wondering if you have given any thought to the district's capacity to give parents an opportunity to really experience um a lesson and and see what it would be like not i mean well let

180them do it themselves i guess um that's my first question i'll i'll pause and then i'll ask my second question i would say it's a great idea and that is not something that we have really felt like we've had the capacity to do yet um i think it would be a great reach goal for us and i absolutely think it is that because you know our you we have you have a lot on your plates right now and you always have a lot on your plates pandemic aside it is a tremendous amount of work to run a district at a school district and so um if so i would throw that out there as as something aspirational goal perhaps but um i think it could go a long way in in two ways one in

181challenging the idea that we don't want our parents in our community to know what we're doing um because that's absolutely not true um and also uh that that um that parents um aren't invited to the conversation or that we don't think they're important to the conversation because we we also know that they are which brings me to my second um aspirational goal questions suggestion which is um what is their what's the capacity or could we get to the capacity where these lessons could involve some um take-home opportunity for kids uh i think about the um the what i'm gonna budget the glorious head start model of if you teach the children the children will teach the parents and so um and so the idea of you know can we can we get something home with

182the kids that is meant to be built on where the kids are invited by completing that activity to share with their families what they've talked about what they've learned and invite something that um could then involve and engage the rest of the family um again it's a another layer of it's another layer of curriculum development and so i i understand that that is that's an ask to say can you do more work um and also um i my gut tells me that if we if we can dig deep and find a way to create those tools we have people in our community that would make use of them and would would uh would benefit but also would become allies in the in the effort um who right now are at best sitting on a fence

183and at worst actively um working against that this is even happening in the district i think largely because they don't understand and they don't have direct experience with it so um so can we give our kids homework um that they can take back into their into their homes and and do with their parents at the dinner table kind of situation or or whoever that child perceives as their their family um their people that's a that's a good goal and we have a model for that the caring schools community that we use in elementary k-5 there's take-home activities with that sel curriculum so we have a model for that and that's a place that we we could definitely get to wonderful cool thank you and thank you for all the work that you guys are putting

184into this because this obviously has been around in the district for a long time but these are like these are really they're measurable and they're visible um uh outgrowth of an effort that has been here for a long time um but now i think it's a beautiful thing in our community to be able to point to something in the district and say this is how this is happening inside our classrooms um this is quite literally this is the time of the day in the class schedule where we are we are doing this work and i just think that's really a great um it's a great thing and it's a it's a a testament to the passion and the effort um and the commitment on the part of the district staff um the board yeah like

185we have this goal but uh we can't make it come to life that is really that rests on on your your your skills and your commitment so um thank you so very much for for bringing that thank you for your support thank you everybody thank you uh i want to conclude this session by sharing the gratitude of the community and the board through the work uh melissa martian nikki amy and your teams do it's uh it's really worth sharing and spreading uh i hope uh maybe when uh conferences are back uh osba or cube at nsba would be very fortunate to hear our story uh we're making huge strides and there is much more work to be done and that's the process however i feel very content today to learn about what we do to

186support equity curriculum and to make sure our children are compassionate to children who are good citizens in the world and they care about each other and they have uplift each other as well uh thanks ryan all right with that uh thank you uh and uh wish you a great rest of your evening good night have a good night all right team uh i uh took uh uh a liberty uh by uh reducing the time for each agenda item uh from now on to five minutes so we uh could have had enough time uh for the past agenda item so consolidated action as a reminder uh the items under this portion of the agenda are for action uh does any board member have a question that they want to ask about any of the agenda items

187and we have the minutes for june 28th licensed personnel action and appointing a new budget committee member if none do i hear emotion i move to approve consolidated action do i have a second i'll second all right any discussion i have one point of discussion uh we're reappointing a budget committee member however we do have another vacancy uh and uh we're making the decision to keep it open until filled so let's proactively work on uh getting uh budget committee uh member uh applicants to join uh if anyone is watching uh until 9 19 p.m uh you qualify you'll very likely qualify you need to be a voter and a resident in the district uh nf agent probably uh uh but that's it uh and you have interest to really support the work that we do

188uh we offer the training and it's a great opportunity to get involved so i encourage community members to apply and encourage my colleagues to reach out to anyone who reach out to them and tell them to apply uh with that uh we'll go for a folks director adams what's your vote hi uh director tommy hi dr jones hi dr baker aye and uh provide sharer white there okay and by sheriff freddie mcdonald is excused and the chair puts i the motion passes with six to none all right next item in the agenda is consolidated information an audited financial statement september 2021 and unless unlicensed personnel information as a reminder the items under this portion are just for discussion would anyone like to discuss any item and consolidated information look at that all right we're good

189so next on the agenda is board member comments uh does any board member wish to make a comment or propose an item for a future agenda item therese thank you i just wanted to express uh how much of a pleasure it was to join uh leticia carson elementary school pta for their meeting on monday it was great for a couple reasons one because it was it was great to hear them working through their process of adopting their new name and all the legal pieces that go along with changing a pta's legal name and so if you want to donate to them you still have to donate to wilson pta because that's the name on the account for right now um but it was great just to hear that but also it was so great to

190see uh our ptas um alive and active they have been they haven't stopped they haven't stopped but now in this new school year um to see them and they're forward thinking about what we're gonna do to serve our children as we are coming through this this part of the pandemic and so it was very exciting also it was really neat to hear about the partnerships that they are forming with individuals and agencies and entities in the community that are connected to historically connected to um to leticia carson including um a relative who is a renowned artist who is offering uh to contribute artwork to the building um and so it was just such a wonderful uh this is a wonderful display of um of energy around um really living into and stepping into this this

191name and so anyway um i loved it if you have a chance other board members if you have a chance to drop by and visit pta meetings there i find them always to be very delightful and pta members if any of you are still listening right now if you think that it would be beneficial to have a board member um come to your meeting um please reach out and let us know that because there are a lot of meetings and so we don't always uh see it or realize in time um but a direct um a direct ask is always welcome and so please please send an email and invite us and we promise we won't have more than three of us so that we don't violate public meeting law um but yeah if you

192have a chance um colleagues to to drop in um they're so much fun and they are it's great to see the heart of the heart of the schools um at work so that's it thanks series vince and lou vince so first i want to express my appreciation for staff and all the hard work that's going on and what a wonderful meeting i mean this was a lovely meeting but i want to finish by expressing my appreciation for my colleagues um you know school boards are being pulled in a lot of different directions right now and there's a lot pushing on us and i really appreciate how this team keeps its focus on children keeping children centered and that equitable outcomes are always at the top priority so thank you for not getting distracted and staying

193focused on the needs of children and thanks again for a great meeting this was a really good one i just wanted to um just again thank the staff who came in and presented tonight um it's really great to see the work that's happening and see how assessment is starting to look in the district and also having that deep dive into the curriculum this evening is much appreciated i know it takes a lot of preparation and you can really see the excitement in everybody everybody's faces and hear it in their voices and see the amount of care and detail that was put into all the presentations and i'm looking forward to the next one too um and i also wanted to thank the community for doing their part with helping keep the students in school with

194the vaccines and and mask and just thinking about overall community health and really i wanted to encourage community members to take a look at our board packets to know what we're going to be talking about and if you have questions about how to reach those fill or to find those feel free to reach out to any of us and we can help show you where that link is it can be frustrating probably for community if they're sending in messages or leaving messages on our voicemails about a topic that they're expecting us to talk about and it doesn't show up on the agenda because i know that no matter what community is sending comments and about it takes time out of your day as well and i just encourage you to prepare those with in mind

195what we're going to talk about that way you're not disappointed if we don't get to something you were hoping we would and i just wanted to offer that to community that that's a good way to find out what's being discussed and where we are on certain topics and um thanks thanks lou all right shawna i just wanted to echo the gratitude that i'm hearing other board members here as well for everybody who shared tonight as well as just the thoughtful attention to everything that's happening across the schools to attend a student voice and student experience to look at how to better engage families in these processes as well as educators and staff and also wanted to just mention that we have some congratulations in order here among district leadership our superintendent completed his doctorate so

196we have dr ryan moss among us so congratulations ryan thank you that's very nice of you as you know it's uh so it takes a take some time it does and i had the honor to listen to his uh dissertation defense and it was fantastic uh very informative and also relevant to the work that we do in the corvallis school district so ryan thank you for your leadership and also for your contribution to uh the body of literature with your work and research and dedication and congratulations dr ryan us thank you awesome any other comments yeah i want to know if we have it in the budget to splurge for a new name plate for him so that it can save can we do that if we if we don't i'll make i'll make a

197designated donation because i feel like it deserves to have deserves to be on a name plate it sounds good listen let's do it by private donors seriously though um ryan it does take time to get used to and um i know how hard it is to finish um a degree in general but especially like leading a district during a pandemic and i hope you and the community understand how awesome that is and um yeah i just wanted to say that too to you dr knox thank you dr whitebeard awesome well i hope ryan will get you'll get some time to rest and relax during the holidays uh and we're very grateful for all the work that you do thank you uh all right team any other comments or future agenda items well i just want

198to mention a heads up uh very many folks uh want to learn more about the math uh and the curriculum and that will be an item uh on the agenda that we will be discussing uh and learning about uh in december uh the first meeting of december right yes so that's something that's maybe you can reach out to anyone who have emailed you before and tell them uh be expecting that and again echoing uh the gratitude to community members who reach out to us on topics we uh want to be committed to share as much information uh as possible and as thorough as possible and sometimes it takes time but i'm really excited about that update uh that will help all of our students succeed and uh be better so really grateful for uh that

199opportunity in december uh other than that uh i wanna share uh uh really my excitement about everything i learned today it's a really good meeting i feel good uh that's any further comments see none we're finishing right on time one minutes ahead see there's no further business in front of the board we are adjourned have a good night