001boot up mm-hmm [Music] all okay the october 21st meeting of the corvallis school board will come to order it is currently 6 32 pm we i am present in the boardroom this evening um director jones um director adams director tommy um director white bear and director al andrava are attending remotely and director baker is excused this evening oregon law allows public meetings to be held entirely online in the interest of public health and safety for all community members especially for immuno-compromised individuals and their families the corvallis school board will continue to hold its meetings online public comments is available at some of our meetings information about how to provide public comment is available on the corvallis school district's website additionally the board's public meetings are live streamed on the district's youtube channel and recording is
002posted to the same channel typically the day after a 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 provided by oregon law and because of technology issues and wi-fi and issues like that some participants in the meeting may have their cameras off at times during the meeting my first order of business is the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all we will begin this evening's meeting with the corvallis public schools foundation work session which will be led by um sammy ryan and lynn so i will leave so i will turn that over to you now
003well thank you everyone for those of you i haven't met before my name is ashley chavez i'm currently the chair of the corvallis public schools foundation board of trustees um this is my second year as chair and unfortunately i wasn't able to attend any of our joint meetings last year but i have in the past and i'm really happy to be here this evening with all of you um just i want to take a second to kind of remind everyone here if this is new to you or for folks watching at home the corvallis public schools foundation and the school board usually meet twice a year for a joint meeting and the idea is just to share information back and forth about work that we're doing and receiving your input on how you feel about
004that work we do a little recap of some of the things we want to focus on that we've accomplished in the last six months and then we usually have some discussion questions meant for everyone to help generate ideas and inspiration and a lot of times that feedback helps us go speak with donors and with community members to help share the message of the work that the school board is doing so that way we can have a good community conversation so here we are for our first one of this year and um with the corvallis public schools foundation board we're actually have grown quite a bit in size we have a large number of trustees so what we do is we have half of our trustees come to one of the meetings and then half come
005to the other so tonight um i just wanted to briefly share folks will introduce themselves but i did want to mention the folks that we have here we have rick and mindy who are both co-chairs of our development committee and that committee focuses heavily on fundraising and a variety of events to raise brand awareness of our organization we also have tammy who is our treasurer and has been treasurer for several years now we're all really thankful for her service there we also have mike who was our past president um before myself and continues to be a hugely contributing member of our board we also have emily who is one of the co-chairs of our grants and scholarships committee so that group looks heavily at how we structure our grants how much we're able to offer
006and then works collaboratively with the board and the district to select applicants for for those grants and then also not only selects them but also helps try to encourage a wide variety and diversity in applications so that way we really make sure we're able to see a lot of great ideas from folks who maybe wouldn't normally have thought to submit so that's something we've been focusing on a lot in the last year and then we also have two of our brand new members wanda and salaam and you'll get to hear from everyone tonight and i'm i'm just really thankful to have the opportunity to work with such a great group of folks so if we could go to the next slide i'll just kind of introduce a little recap of what happened at our last
007meeting um so we and i'll make this very brief since most of you were there but not everyone was so i want to make sure we just kind of have some groundwork from where we were at in order to move forward tonight so the last time we were here we talked about our hands across corvallis event typically that's been an in-person event where we have you know over 300 community members in the corvallis high school cafeteria and we we have a big event obviously last year we did not do that but we did have a virtual event and we just shared um how that was actually incredibly successful even though it was very different from what it used to be and what it used to look like and we really feel like we were able
008to reach a wider audience because of the virtual platform we heard from many guests that they had never been able to attend before and the virtual format allowed them to attend so that was really exciting and we surpassed our fundraising goal we raised over um a hundred thousand dollars at that event and so um we're we're really looking forward to having that event again and we feel like we've got our feet under ourselves a little bit better this year now that we've experienced it at least once before we also talked about at our last meeting we had just finished up having a strategic planning retreat and one of the themes that came out of our retreat was that when we did an analysis of our organization we found one of the strengths that we all
009agreed upon was that there's a great relationship between the school board the corvallis school district and the foundation and so you know one of the reasons we do this twice a year interaction is to keep that relationship strong to make sure we still continue to have rapport and trust and when we were in person we would often have little breakout groups for discussion that often resulted in ideas that we were actually able to take forward and make happen and so this time even though it's short and not that frequent is really valuable for the foundation and i'm i'm assuming it's quite valuable for the board as well because we continue to do it and hear great feedback so keeping the strength and vitality of that relationship is is key for us um last year we
010also talked quite a bit the timing of it was we had talked about investment in our summer programs which were about to launch because we met last in april and um i think the main point of that was that we've always had summer programs and they've always been absolutely critical and and needed but last year we discovered a new facet to that need because of covid and so we just had a really robust discussion about about the need in our community and how education had been impacted in a way that we had never experienced before and how we were trying to you know be flexible and support our students families communities and educators and that so um i think i think that was my favorite part of the last discussion it just really generated a
011lot of great content for all of us um and then of course we had our discussion questions which are listed here on the screen we talked about um celebrating success and you know proud moments um from the year past and then really focused on um at that time the resumption of in-person school and addressing what student needs would look like moving forward and as you can imagine that was a fairly emotional challenging conversation just because it was a huge unknown and look at where we are now we've really come far um so i really appreciate the discussion questions and the robust participation from from both sides so with all of that i'm going to turn things over to mike who's going to talk about our agenda for um tonight and mike market mike is here
012awesome thank you thank you ashley so uh this evening's discussion is going to center around the corvallis school district's racial equity policy and the corvallis public school foundation's channeling of resources up to this point toward supporting racial equity efforts after reviewing where we are we'll shift the discussion toward the further collaboration and investment needed to most effectively move forward from this point on the board will and school district will describe that uh program to us so uh i would like to share a few things about the work around corvall school district racial equity policy uh it's work that has been going on for a while uh even before the board started talking about this work in terms of a policy our staff students and administrators has been doing the work and helping the school board
013understand and have a better grasp of what does it mean to truly have an equitable system in our schools so i want to really mention something very phenomenal that we've done in the past years we committed a full year to develop our racial equity policy and we did commit to that work not top down from the school board but really to listen to our students uh listen to our administrators and teachers and have a student-centered uh approach to understand what does it mean to uh have an equitable environment in our schools so the school board sets us equitable systems goal and then engaged in a full year of community engagement during the board meetings and also outside the board meetings where we would have feedback on uh different uh sections of a proposed policy refining
014it and eventually we end up with a statement of commitments and a statement of actions and i would encourage anyone to go to a policy jbb for corvallis school board and read that policy it's something we're very proud of jbb and corvallis scoreboard policies and it guides us to continuously do this these actions uh and commitments uh in every single approach and every single dimension in our educational system so that's basically the background on uh how we came about the policy and how we developed it now i want to mention something very important next slide please about any policy uh policies can be divided to two there is standardized standard compliance policies usually they're driven from uh the law uh driven from uh really how you keep your lights open per se and there are
015transformational policies this is one of the transformational policies it's designed to fundamentally change the system and it's intended to dramatically improve district performance and lme eliminates the achievement gap so when you see in our school board goals a commitment in our equitable system goal and in every single goal to make sure that students identity in all dimensions does not predicate or should not predicate or predetermine success in school to translate that goal into strategies and into actions and commitments and describe it in our policy the racial equity policy helps us accomplish that and we're very confident and proud of this work because uh it's been driven by conversations with our communities of color students of color and educators of color as well next slide and now i want to really highlight the important aspect of
016if you want to walk the walk and you want to ask someone about their values you need to look into their budgets and i'll head it over to ryan to really highlight or actually this is the foundation correct i'll head it over to the foundation to really share with us uh how you're helping us and supporting our work sorry that's all right thanks sammy this is mindy can you hear me yeah okay uh so this is a list of key initiatives and projects that the foundation has funded over the last uh several years and we're going to go into more depth really about what each of these is about um i'll talk a little about the board training um on the next slide but just one at a high level we've got five big projects
017programs that we're really excited about getting them out there and deployed and we we are going to hear what kind of difference this is making in our in our schools in csd and we're also very excited um marcian rivero cacci's here with us and you all know her i'm sure most of you do and she's been an excellent partner and leader with the foundation and helping us figure out where we can best apply the resources that we are able to pull together to support csd along the racial and equity and inclusion vectors so stay tuned because there's some cool information coming um let's move to the next slide so we just completed a three session training i say we this included the board of trustees there were actually several people from csd leadership team ryan
018sammy um i mean i think sarah was there i'm going to probably miss a few people we also had the um we invited the old mill center for children board um to bring some people along and the benton community foundation really with the goal of that this is a community effort and it's a conversation that we really want to put front and center in everything the foundation does and we see that happening with the school board and with csd leadership so this is really um it's building upon some things that have been happening even as sami alluded to before the policy was in place um the conversation has been going on and that the title of this this long talk um really kind of alludes to that i mean this is not something that is
019one conversation it's a conversation that's ongoing and it can be challenging it can be uncomfortable but it's very very powerful and we all got to experience that those of us that were in the training over the last three weeks and i'm not sure what next steps are in terms of more trainings like this but we definitely have access to a lot of very good resources to help each of us have a personal connection with having that conversation wherever it may be but i know it's helped the board the foundation board really talk more openly and clearly about the work that we do and how it's going to support racial equity in our schools so pretty exciting and really powerful and so i'm going to go ahead and turn it over to i think emily for
020the next slide looking at my notes here yes yeah thank you mindy um so libros it's one of the projects that the corvallis public schools foundation is really proud to have supported um in the 2018-2019 school year we invested 11 000 in spanish library book collection at our four dual immersion dual language immersion schools um garfield lincoln linus pauling and corvallis high school we accomplished this by sending librarian ted mccann to the guadalajara international book fair this book fair offers an opportunity to access materials in spanish that are not available for libraries to purchase in any other way next slide and i'm going to turn it over to tammy are you there tammy tammy can you unmute well i just did the whole thing and in muted sorry um thanks um the safe program over
021the past several years we've helped the district establish and grow its safe program safe stands for students advocating for equity safe gives students an opportunity to come together to learn and engage in courageous conversations about race in my next slide marcienne thank you so much tammy and it's just such an honor my name is marcian and i'm just so grateful to be here um i want to thank both our school boards to the school board as well as the corvallis public schools board working together and collectively and i guess before i talk about safe i just wanted to briefly say that i just appreciate the the congruency in our work and i think sami spoke earlier about the importance of our beliefs matching our values and our actions and so i think in these next
022slides you will see that collective congruency between all of us so i just wanted to say thank you thank you thank you very much for the great work that you're all all are doing it makes my job really easy here we've got three amazing pictures and i can talk forever about safe but like tammy said uh safe stands for students advocating for equity and we started students advocating for equity because when we think about research and we think about what what it means to amplify student voice we know that by doing that it includes improves school climate it improves the mental health of our students as well as academic achievement it also increases grad rates and a sense of belonging so what you can see here is on the left the the picture on the
023left is you can see our first group that started back in we had a small group of high school students that came together um in a brave space to talk about relevant topics that were important to them and to also work on building base projects that really were important to them and what you can see now at the bottom right hand corner is our current group of safe students i love each and every one of these students and their safe coaches we have expanded safe to again like i said earlier started in high school we expanded it to middle school in this year with the support of the corvallis schools foundation we will expand it to elementary school so just very very grateful and our first safe group met just last week at corvallis high
024school and there they are so there we go next time as soon as i can on you thank you uh thank you marcian good evening and thank you for having us with you uh my name is rick wallace and we wanted to highlight the fact that in the fall of 2020 we invested 20 in racial equity coaches at each school building these coaches support the school's staff in ongoing professional learning and collaboration to disrupt systems and structures that historically have marginalized students and communities of color the work of these coaches continues this year and the inimitable mercy will give you a few more details thank you rick that was so nice wow our racial equity coaches uh what we have going on so far it's real exciting we have um one racial equity coach per
025elementary school um these groups of these educators are such a dynamic caring collaborative group that really understand the impact of this work on our um bypass our black indigenous and students of color and they are coming together this year and for years to come to do a couple of things to implement safe at the elementary schools against students advocating for equity and to also create spaces for students to come together and work on those building-based projects and again these are projects that are really relevant to them and to implement safe and to also support teachers and staff um in in digging and leaning into courageous conversations and working together to create a culturally affirming school environment so those are racial equity coaches and just so excited that we have one in every school i think
026we need to go a couple of slides ahead don't we so last fall i'm wanda and last fall we invested ten thousand dollars in leadership development in a career advancement for staff of color in our school district participants have been had access to leadership seminars and other professional development where cnn will tell us some more about it yes thank you so much wanda and so great to see you um our aspiring leaders program really came from a place of wanting for our leadership in our district to really reflect our diverse student population so we started our aspiring leaders program with the support of our teaching and learning leaders amy lison and nikki mcfarland as well as two of our other um building leaders salvador munoz and alicia wordsate and we have uh started last year
027we created a space really invited our staff to um to come together and create a collaborative space to be in community and to be able to work together build relationships build trust and really work together to develop our our collective leadership and and really lean into and support each other in our leadership aspirations we currently have 18 staff across disciplines that are part of this group and we continue to meet monthly and learn together grow together and and and really create a space for our future leaders in our district so it's very exciting that we have this program underway in the corvallis school district school foundation and last year we have provided about two twenty thousand uh for culturally responsive and racially conscious reading and mercian will talk more about it now thank you hello
028salaam so good to see you um this one uh is really a dear and dear to my heart as a former kindergarten teacher i love books um and the reason we um we we really wanted to build our our materials our books in our in our system we're two-fold um number one our our classroom libraries did didn't really represent the diverse uh books that we wanted to see in our in our classroom libraries and so we wanted to increase the number of diverse books that students had access to in their classrooms and so prior to that though i wanted to talk about these two seminal books that we purchased with the support of the grant through the corvallis public schools foundation and it's stamped by ibra mix candy as well as this book is anti-racist
029by um by jewel and we purchased through the support of the grant we purchased these books for all our secondary and high school or middle school and high school schools throughout our district so our students as of last year had access to these books not only in paperback copies but also in e-books and so teachers have been using these books students have access to them and it's just been really exciting to see these books in our libraries we also through the corvallis public schools foundation like i said earlier wanted to increase the number of books that were representative of our of our community and so we did early on last year send out a call out to our teachers and ask them to provide us with a materials request of books that they wanted to
030see in their classroom so over the course of a couple of months we had close to 40 elementary teachers reach out to us and and send us a wish list of books that they wanted to increase their diverse book collections in their classrooms and a couple of the beautiful titles and i looked through the list before i came here tonight and there was way too many to share with you but a couple that really stood out to me were um these beautiful titles black elks vision a lakota story by s d nelson as well as the highest tribute thurgood marshall's life leadership and legacy by kekla magoon and these are just two titles of many titles that are now in our classrooms and our students have access to i was just at the garfield library
031the other day seeing the beautiful books that profe mccann is adding to his book and i saw some of these books in his library so it's just so neat to see this idea of a book request coming in from teachers having the support from the community and actually having seeing these books in the hands of students so again thank you thank you so much for the ongoing support this will lead us into uh discussion um again when we come together and we're in the same spaces with one another it gives us the opportunity to have small groups and then doing some sort of larger share out that's not always the case um actually that's not the case um with regards to where we are today so we had a couple of questions that we wanted
032to gain feedback from both the school board and the foundation having had the opportunity for the foundation to share their support for the racial equity policy and the work that's been happening as well as their ongoing growth that gives us an opportunity to lean into a conversation or begin a conversation with a couple of key questions and so with the next slide the questions that we'll be having the opportunity to discuss are what are next steps and areas for continued collaboration and are there strategies that need ongoing investment i think both of those questions are important for um both groups to be able to talk a little bit more about primarily because um when it comes the word that stuck with me from the presentation tonight was congruency and i see a great deal of
033congruence between the work that the school board's doing the foundation's doing and this is one of two opportunities each year for everyone to come together and have conversation and to highlight um where that where there is congruency and where there's the need for ongoing support and so with that i'm going to give you an opportunity just to start to think about those two questions and to be able to share back and forth some additional information sam may see that your hands up yeah and as we think about these two questions i want to highlight some uh source of strength of having the corvallis public schools foundation as an integral part in our community and educational system one thing that we found very supportive in the summer programs for example that we have invested in summer
034programming as a strategic direction for years and as the state came in with extra funding we were able to have the flexibility we were able to have the ability to pivot quickly so the funds from the foundation helps us to do the work well and when the funds are not available from the states we can have that support i hear from other communities across the state that they say the states might require lots of documentation or reporting or very strict ways of where we should fund our our programs when the money comes from there that's different when we work with the foundation we have flexibility we have we have adaptability and ability to collaborate quickly and address the critical needs of our students and similarly as we work on equitable systems we're very grateful for
035that partnership and those sources of strengths of this partnership and so within this time together we have about 15 minutes to start this conversation and then from there we're going to transition into what do we want to talk about next time we need so we've had some information shared this is the heart of the conversation that will lead to where do we go from here as well as what are some topics we want to cover when we come back together this spring go ahead okay i'll be brave and and hop in first um i i'm just like sitting with all the information i'm like wow that's so amazing like all this stuff and so collaborative with students to find out what their needs are and make sure that that's what the focus is because i
036think a lot of times sometimes as adults we know what needs are we think we know what needs are and sometimes it isn't in alignment with what the students um what they're experiencing and so i really appreciate that collaborative work with students specifically and how they're experiencing education at this moment in time because honestly none of us have um we were on school in such a different time so anyways that's my long intro talk to um to also say that i think like when i think about next steps i'm like a lot was done but we haven't really been able to see it in full motion so continuing to support the efforts that were started with the funds how the funds were invested like continuing to support what was started to see how it can
037grow i think is an area for continued collaboration in this next steps i don't know what how far out you want me to think ahead to ryan because you know i like to think way out and think about long-term impacts versus like just the next few months or this year um but i'm also thinking about the way that we can continue to support intersecting identities as well so students experiencing a healthlessness and students from the lgbtqi to us plus community like how those identities and experiences might come into play and students i think we we do have some focus on students with disability already but i think the experiences of the intersecting identities um could also help tell the story a little differently so anyhow hopefully that makes sense but that's what i was thinking
038i was like wow there's so much potential to just grow and i can't wait to see the impact of what's been started with the these initial steps thanks lou i know that from the previous conversations we've had with the board for the foundation board short-term and long-term vision is valuable as the foundation continues to think about what are those next um steps for them as well as for the district so i think i think both are are important so let's go ahead i see that you have your hand up too yeah and so i have a i have a couple thoughts on these prompts and they're kind of related so bear with me this is a little stream of consciousness well i'm you know one i'm just deeply appreciative for for the role the foundation
039plays and i just want to highlight uh the situation that the school board is in i mean the reality is is that um across the united states and in oregon we do not fund schools sufficiently to meet the demand that that society is expecting and the foundation provides us with the ability our community the ability to be nimble and start really moving the needle on this work this equity work and i can contrast us to even other communities in benton county but elsewhere in the state that don't have the privilege of a partnership like the district has with with the public schools foundation so it just allows the district to be creative it allows us to do things that otherwise would not be possible and so i'm very very grateful for that you know to
040the to the point you know another thing about school boards is that we're a decision-making body even the way we structure our meetings is really centered around uh very linear and decision-making processes we are not well equipped to do formative processes creative processes and i think that that's a role that the the public schools foundation can really help us with and and this really what you're already doing and you know something that that the school board is investing some time in this year is in community engagement and i i can just see that the public schools foundation can play a role in in creating opportunities for for safe engagement to create uh opportunities for our hard to hear communities and bring them into our our process and do these formative processes in these creative processes
041so we can get a sense of of how to move forward and uh you know the word needs assessment comes to mind but i think it's beyond that it's how do we amplify those voices so we can hear them and bring them in into our decision making so i know that that was kind of a stream of consciousness response but i really do appreciate that the partnership with the foundation and a bill allowing us the flexibility to do that work where the school board is not very well equipped just because of the nature of our institution sarah yeah i was um i echo um vince's appreciation one thing i was thinking as as we went through the presentation as we talked about the um the support for um building leaders who are leaders of color
042one thing i was thinking is then we need to fill those spaces and classrooms with teachers of color so that we're we're not you know having the leadership look more like our students is great but i don't want to do that and they i don't want to not move people up but i want to fill those spaces so that classroom teachers look like our students also so i don't know what kind of role the foundation could do i mean hiring them is the school district's job how you hiring teachers that that look like our students at this position but um finding a way to help support those new teachers as they come in and maybe coming into a community that may not feel like it's you've always been their space um i can imagine you
043know being a difficult situation for some um new teachers who are people of color coming into our community so that's sort of what i was thinking is it to keep the keep the pipeline coming and support new teachers coming in thanks sarah um so now we have two of the foundation board members ashley and mike with their hands up actually do you want to go ahead and go first yeah thank you um i just want to appreciate the feedback i've been taking a lot of notes i bet others are too but um one thing that really comes to my mind when we talk about continuing collaboration is i feel like when we are looking strategically at our goals and the programs we're coming up with to assist you know what we what's helpful to us
044is hearing directly from you the areas of priority that you want us to go seek funds for and we take that direction from the actions we see you take kind of like we were talking about a little bit earlier but it's really helpful for you to keep us in mind as things develop and change throughout the year since we do only typically meet twice a year although we have um thankfully sammy attends as a liaison to our board meetings um that's so helpful for us to hear the kind of work you're doing and hear those updates from sammy and ryan because that's what we keep in mind as we start to develop our programs and our grants and scholarships and when we hear the challenges you're facing we're trying to come up with creative solutions
045for it but mainly what i think i think vince was getting at this a little bit too you know we can be a different kind of connection to the community by taking your message and speaking to them about it but then more than that gaining their support their trust and um of course what we do is focused a lot of times not only on monetary donations we we look at lots of different kinds of donations thinking about resource time connections support you know when people are thinking about voting all those things when they have that good reputation of the school district in mind and see the work that the school foundation is doing i think it all ties together so i guess what i'm trying to say at the end of the day is we
046continue to take our cues from what we see you do but if there's ever times where you feel like you're lacking resources to tackle something definitely that's the time to start reaching out to us because when we can go to a donor with a specific ask we get better results hands down when i say hey please support the school foundation we do lots of great stuff it works but when i can go directly say hey let me tell you about your local school here's what it looks like here's the need we tend to get way better response so that kind of conversation is really helpful and i just appreciate the back and forth that these two groups have and that we continue to build on it i'm really really thankful to work with all of
047you and we're fortunate to work with you too actually so thanks so much uh mike yeah ryan thank you um you know i'm just piggybacking a little bit of some things that that both lahui and um sarah made me think about in their comments and vince as well is that you know we're talking about continuing these programs and as louis said we'll see more about the impact and and not just have them be one shot in the dark but to continue on the importance of continuing to support those and it feeds into what sarah said about the pipeline of staff and teachers of color because we need to create the appropriate image and i don't mean image image is a bad word because that isn't always reality create a a safe reality for those people
048so they're comfortable coming here uh taking jobs and bringing their families to our community to carry on that that need thank you mike shawna thanks ryan and thanks everybody i'm excited to be part of this conversation as one of the newer board members and to be meeting some of you for the first time so thank you for having this conversation it was just really wonderful to hear these updates and to see both the commitment from the corvallis public schools foundation toward your own learning and growth related to anti-racism and equity work and really leaning into that work as as leaders yourselves and getting that training and building your own capacity as well as then centering this work around being student driven and educator driven as well and i think that that's really what makes this
049meaningful is filling those gaps in a way that addresses the real needs that are coming out in real time in that nimble way that you're able to and so when i think about the strategies that need ongoing investment i think this has already come up from a few that so many of the things that are being invested in right now in terms of sustaining them and making sure that they really have a chance to to reach their full impact not just now but building trust into the future it seems that many of the investments on the table right now are those that could potentially really require long-term support and so thinking about that in terms of feasibility or or long-term support for those and also while balancing the thought around making sure that decisions that
050are made continue to be student driven and staff driven some of the things that are coming up in the community that we're hearing a lot about in addition to racial equity and equity work in general is just concerns about the social and emotional and mental health and well-being of students across the board across all ages especially given the past 18 months that we've experienced and along with that staff and concerns about staff burnout staff mental health and well-being in all that they're carrying and juggling as well and so ashley to your point about thinking about what are the emerging issues that might be coming out that you might carry to other donors or might be able to carry in the community those are a couple of things that i know i've heard about and i
051i wonder if other school board members and staff have as well in terms of being potentially priority areas thank you um i actually was gonna i'll just piggyback on what shawna talked about and i think for um as i look at the ongoing support that the foundation can provide the district i think a lot about the fact that um we're not true of the pandemic yet and we also have talked consistently that um we have to think about the two two years following the pandemic and so as we think about those supports that have been in place for people to recognize that those are still necessary and that at this point people are in a different place it's been amazing to have kids back in school and to have them with us and at the
052same time for staff to be back in buildings um also trying to balance um not only what they what their um experiences were like before but also juggle continuing to juggle everything that comes with the pandemic and so as you think about our students i'd also encourage you to think about our educators and support for them as well because i see that's something that we'll need to continue into the future teresa go ahead sorry ryan did you did you say i say something now yes yeah i think you guys cut it just a second there um so i just wanted to offer that um something we can continue to um invest in as a community um related to interruption of education and the pandemic will be the ongoing needs of our most vulnerable households i
053know the foundation did a great job of of working to bring additional resources to those families um it's really i think important for us to remember that a lot of the federal programs that were intended to support households are moving on not coming those programs are not continuing um there you know continues to be a a an impending housing crisis uh for families as we watch the courts battle whether or not eviction moratoriums are going to expire or not um and so just you know whatever i think this continues to be something we need to keep in front of the community um particularly because we may be under the impression that things are returning to normal since our kids can go to school um but the uh the of course the effect of this is
054going to be with us for for quite some time so i think that's one way that um if you're looking for direct ask is uh how do we keep our kids housed how do we keep them how do we keep lights on how do we keep uh their um their parents and their households able to access medical care dental care things like that while uh they continue to work towards stability um and so that actually brings me to a question which might be a suggestion opportunity i'm not exactly sure um but for something for um that i am curious about which is how much work does the corvallis school foundation do or how much collaboration do you do with other providers in our community who focus on these targeted issues like affordable child care um
055housing things like this other issues that we've brought up uh over you know in the past months and even a couple of years really um i don't know how much um sit down a deliberate collaboration there is with helping to stretch those resources a little bit further um but i know that one of the things that often happens for households is that they don't um they leave benefits on the table because they don't know everything that is actually available to them and so if they don't know what question to ask then they you know then they don't get access to something and so one of the things that i have you know been doing in my work is trying to help families make sure that they don't leave something behind that could be helping support
056them and help them to be stable and in order to do that of course you know there's a minimum level of education about what's actually available that is needed and so i guess it's a it's a question of are you already doing this work and if you are is there a way we could deepen those ties um so that we can invest our resources through the school's foundation into places that where there isn't another resource um because we know where because we would know where to send folks if they have need um and there is a place that can can meet that and then of course there's you know stepping in when those those resources fall short which is a separate thing and i think the foundation did that very well early on in the
057pandemic serving family so um that is really the only thing that i would add um i will end with just saying how much i appreciate the commitment um that you guys bring it's a lot of work uh to engage a community and i know you all have a lot of other things to do as well and so uh your your small staff um and a lot of volunteer hours uh but really um it's a it's a big impact that you guys are able to make and so thank you for continuing to take that on and um yeah and i will stop there all right lee i'm going to turn it over to you sure yeah teresa i just wanted to respond directly to that since it was a fantastic question in terms of how much
058do we reach out to other groups that are doing similar work or trying to provide for basic needs of kids and families in our community and i would say you hit the nail on the head we are small in terms of staff we are large in terms of volunteer hours and incredibly dedicated champions of public education so we really lean on the fantastic work of the school district in this area and i would just highlight the family outreach advocates who are constantly in touch with families and staff counselors other specialists across our 13 schools and trying to efficiently get supplies and and needs met for families and referrals taken care of we just really try to serve as an effective mouthpiece for that work to um and to communicate where resources would be helpful so
059um yes it would be fantastic in the future if we can deepen conversations with other nonprofit organizations or agencies in the community and that's definitely a great long-term goal but for now we we lean on the great work of the school district thanks and then we're going to go to the last slide um now and so i'm going to leave it with you all right so that's me again thank you well i just want to say thank you for having us again and the time really flew and i would say this was one of the richest conversations we've had between our two groups and it'll be even richer when we can be in the same room again so yeah i just want to highlight again the incredible volunteers that we have in our space tonight
060not only the foundation trustees who as you somebody noted are really committed to personal growth and deepening their understanding constantly of how to be of assistance in our schools and community and also the school board members who are also fantastic volunteers and all of you together i would say um are some of our greatest champions of public education in corvallis so thank you for being those people um and thanks for this opportunity to keep the relationships vibrant and strong and to deepen our familiarity with the racial equity policy that you spent a year developing and sami's great description of what a transformational policy is and i hope that we can continue to bring that policy to life and have it be meaningful to our students and staff every day so i'm inspired by this conversation
061i hope you are too and any listeners tonight um what some themes i heard tonight that i will carry forward um creating culturally affirming school environments continuing to create congruency working to address the needs of students with intersecting identities continuing to strive for meaningful community engagement and creating opportunities to hear um the voices that are often hard to hear um amplifying the voices of those people i guess is what i meant um the recruitment and retention of teachers and staff of color and addressing staff burnout and mental health and well-being and with all of this um thinking in terms of a two-year time frame finally the vulnerable households who are going to be running into severe difficulty as the eviction moratorium ends and so continuing that that work and trying to deepen collaboration with other
062providers in the community these are all incredible um reminders of why we do what we do and so i appreciate this so much tonight so we've talked about what we might discuss at our next joint work session which is scheduled for april 14th so far we um think that it might be valuable to talk about what lessons we've learned from the pandemic that we can carry forward and what best practices or innovative strategies we might build upon so i think that's it for me tonight ryan i really appreciate everybody's time and again very grateful to all of you for creating this space for our two groups to come together yeah and also um i'd like to just finish with leif and her leadership um the work that's been happening um over the last several weeks
063with the long talk and all the work that's been happening to support the foundation's growth as well as supporting the school district is really phenomenal and i know that it takes a special strong leader to make that happen so again um i i know as a foundation board do you know that you are um good hands with your leader and i just want to reaffirm that because um again the congruency is because we're all in this together and that takes someone like me to make sure that happens so again thanks for being here tonight and um april is not far away um and we will be back together soon so with that and have a great night and we'll we'll see you soon thank you okay um thank you to everyone who from the relative
064schools foundation board and to leave for their work um and for sammy and ryan and marcianne for their contributions to a really valuable hour that could have gone a lot longer um and thank you to the community that's donated and has made it possible for the foundation to do the work that they do it's you know educating our kids and supporting our families as critical work and the donations from our community make it possible um so moving on the next item on our agenda is um the student investment account annual report and we have time for public comments specifically on that topic this evening but i don't believe we have any so we will move on to olivia and um her information about the annual report so i don't have any additional information other than
065um the report that was provided and as part of the agenda on board book tonight um a couple of notes i just wanted to to make clear and melissa and i collaborated with uh staff to put this report together uh the format is in an ode template um and we answered all of the required questions um in the report and then some additional progress markers which were optional as well the board doesn't need to take any action to approve the report but part of the requirement is that we submit to ode minutes of the board meeting that indicate that we made the report publicly available um created an option for public comment and that the board reviewed the report in a public session does anyone have any questions for olivia sammy well i i have
066a comment but but also if olivia would wish to comment on the comments uh i'd like to invite her to do so i want to highlight a very important section are requirements in the reports which is a requirement that we need to engage with the community we need to engage with communities of color specifically and we uh reading the reports i can see two strengths there first of all acknowledging the challenge of the pandemic and how hard it is to engage fully as we wish but also how how really came easy to document the work that we do it is what we do we engage with the community we don't settle on let's just invest without really listening to the community it's part of our design of our structures and buildings where we have equity
067design groups for every building it's part of our uh budgeting process it's part of everything we do that we engage so i want to call out that the elements in the reports that highlights how we engage with the community our use of use truth survey which allows us to understand the climate and our students where they are and how they feel and how we can support them it's truly impressive and i hear from other school board members in other districts some who would say uh this is too burdensome you need to trust us on the on our ability of doing this work we don't want those requirements to document for me i see this is an opportunity to document what we do and to celebrate what we do and we share it so i really
068want to thank you olivia and the team for highlighting our engagements and maybe with that if you would like to maybe just elevate in this public meeting some of those community engagement work and how we perceive it to happen in the upcoming year as well i think one of the things that we were um excited about this year is that lynn benton lblesd has um acquired thought exchange for us to use as a district and this is a new way to interact with our community um it's not just a survey give us your answer but it's the ability to you know free form right what it is that is important to you and then have other people comment on those comments which is a nice kind of way to kind of chain all of that
069together um and learn more about what is most important to our community we started it with staff and we have more plans to use that with um with our community this year so that was i think that's one of the ways that we're going to look to get more information more data from all of our communities this school year don't i also want to just add a piece of context about the student investment account so it wasn't long ago that we were hoping that this would come through as an additional source of revenue for us pretty pandemic that was just such a huge change for the way we're able to invest in public education and so i think it's also important that we in terms of that community engagement it's also the reminder in terms
070of how important this money is this is like the biggest shift in public education funding since measure five and it's an area that is ongoing and supportive of our work and it will continue to be so as people look at those investments that are in there while the format is a template that we have to use based on what ode has provided us it really highlights some of the things that are happening now that wouldn't be possible without this uh the support from the community and businesses in particular so it's a big deal and it's something that will go on after the relief funds are gone it's something that will continue to allow us to change practice and to provide more support for our students so it is it's a significant investment and really important
071for our work thank you appreciate highlighting that vince thank you so i mean i want to echo um you know the comment from from uh sammy you know i just really appreciate the the discussion here and one of the things that really stood out to me is that um you know very you know despite the fact that that we're in the middle of a pandemic you know and we know that the district you know ours and across the state are stressed trying to cope with with the pressures of trying to keep kids in schools you could see the thoughtfulness and the diligence in this report and one of the things i really appreciate is that everything in here is closely aligned to the strategic priorities of the district there's there's no ancillary you know uh
072investments here um so i just really appreciate the the report here and what we're sharing with the public um on the last question there you know there's this discussion about um how we are stressed and how that we're really focused on pandemic response and that you know we're not able to meet all the things that were surfaced in the needs assessment but i'm curious what are the things that are having to be set aside this year uh due to the pandemic response and what can we expect you know what is the plan for bringing those things back online uh as we go forward really thinking about that two-year plan i don't have that information i wasn't part of the team that put that part of the report together i'm sorry anna and i'm sorry i
073did i didn't get this question in ahead of time and i'm happy to take take an answer um offline and that's totally fine i think the problem is that we want to do it all because of course you do you know because our kids our kids deserve that and they deserve the best of us um but what i think we're learning as we get deeper into october is that we can't and um i think what we're going to be seeing in the next few weeks or some peeling away of some of those things that are the norm for school for our staff in order to be better staff members in order to be there for our kids um in a way that is um is best for them so i don't have specifics at this
074point but we can talk um or i can email with you if you'd like me to and that's fine it's just useful for the board and for the community to know that you know because of the situation we're in that there are trade-offs and that the the district is thinking about that to ensure the sustainability of of you know quality education for our kids and so just thank you for that and thank you for the diligence of doing that work i know this is a really stressful time and uh just lots of appreciation and thanks for this report thank you i was about to jump in and i thought oh i'll wait thank you so much in charge [Laughter] thank you for for sharing these updates and with with this being the first discussion that
075i'm a part of that really addresses the student investment account and those funds um and i'm also st i in my professional work i do some contract work with with the state with ode and help support some um large-scale grants and so i'm i'm doing this kind of work in a parallel world for myself and so that just got me thinking about what i was really reading in the report as well as format and so i hope that my comments come out as just wonderings and possible suggestions but also recognizing the very real staff capacity challenges with so much else to do that sometimes meeting sort of just whatever is needed for a report to turn it in sometimes is is what needs to be done so please know that this comes from that place
076of just questions and wonderings from being a new board member and looking for additional details that you can take and carry forward or not as um as you see appropriate so as i was going through the report i really appreciated just the mention of different community engagement pieces or the different ways that that feedback was being taken into account as well as just addressing what's possible what's not the pandemic and i also found myself looking for a lot of different details that i couldn't find here so i went back to the original proposal for how the funds would be used to really look up what were the goals how has that changed over time and i know in my own reporting work oftentimes i go through and put in a lot of details around okay
077how many feedback sessions with whom what were the ages of students well which families when and ultimately that serves can serve as a very helpful record to go back and sort of check it against the initial proposal but then what happened the next year and so on so we sort of have that as a record and so i was looking for some of those details and didn't see them in the report and i know that may not be critical to have there but just as a suggestion for one way that a running record could be kept and something else that i've heard from ode is how helpful that can be at times in terms of the more numbers that they have when that's available it can help them advocate for ongoing funding or even increased
078funding if they know where those gaps are coming in so that was one of the thoughts i had was around just gratitude for all that was in here and i think for myself in not knowing off the top of my head what this was in response to i had to do a little bit of digging for additional details that that might be helpful to include if it's easy to do so but also recognizing the capacity challenges yes does anyone else have any questions or comments so the next um so in november and in december we will have um presentations by our principals um in the past we've done those as simp dinners where we've rotated and talked individually but this year like last year will be collective so it will be our elementary principles next
079month and then in december our secondary principles so as you think about some of the investments that you see in this i think it's important to sort of think about those in terms of what you hear from them in terms of the actions that they're taking and so i think that will help um some of some ongoing dialogue about how um how those investments are being utilized so just kind of to put this as like one stage in that ongoing process of development and sharing thank you ryan that's helpful and thank you olivia and all of your collaborators on this report for putting it together over sorry that's okay it blends in with the things sometimes um i think it would be helpful i think vince got to this a little bit but just to
080like reaffirm and help the community understand like there is a plan like just saying there is a plan to meet some of those areas that had no change especially because a lot of them um have to do with um like literacy skills and like understanding what it means to be on track in ninth grade and stuff like that so that might be something we can hear a little bit more about in the future is like what steps have been taken this year to help it's not like i want to hear like a huge presentation of what that plan may be i know you all have a plan i'm sure um because that is what you talk about a lot and i think it's just good if you could affirm to the community that those kind
081of updates are coming in we all understand that last year was hard and last year brought in a lot of things we weren't expecting um of course because we have we're still in the pandemic we don't know how long it'll last and it continues to add layers of stress but just like even little updates about those key areas where it may there may not have been um as much um changes you all hoped because i know you all hope to have all these changes right as you already said melissa you you'll want to do it all but like even just having a little affirmation might be nice for the public here and that's good too because a lot of times that the no change click is kind of deceiving because it might be no change
082because we're just we're doing it and it's great and it might be no change because we haven't even started it so you're totally right on thank you thanks melissa i think that's important because sometimes people see and think there's a really negative impact happening if there's yeah so i appreciate you clarifying that for everybody thank you okay anyone else not then we can move on to the next item in our gender which is our bond update from kim and dale good evening everyone so we're gonna go through their update today and i'm gonna lead you tonight instead of dale so we're gonna go ahead and just dive right in we can go to the next slide so we wanted to update you on gmp timing and targets we have five bids that will be coming
083in in the next coming few months and um wanted to make sure you had those schedules so we have sheldon coming to the board in november with a budgeted value of 3.6 million adams again in november with a budget of 13.9 million mountain view coming to the board in december with 14.6 million franklin in december with 9.1 million and harding college hill in january with 13.5 million so we have a lot of projects and bids coming due in the coming months and there's going to be regular decisions by the board to keep this work moving if all of these projects come in within our budgeted values we will end with four point seven million dollars and then unallocated bond funds and i want to say that we are cautious cautiously anxious about this money because
084um with uncertainties in the supply chain and labor markets and we are watching it closely and we are working to make sure that we can get all of our bond promises done and that is our plan to complete all bond promises within designated bond funds so let's go to the next slide um we wanted to update you on solar energy so we have put together this chart of resiliency sites and solar maximization sites and educational arrays so as a district we have to spend 1.5 percent of qualifying construction costs on renewable energy we've obviously focused on solar so i want to quickly identify what a resiliency site is and that is a pocket within our community where we have identified having a school in south town midtown and north north end of our district where
085we would have um schools that can not only generate solar power but also retain power so that we can run in the event of an emergency so we will have batteries at lincoln and mountain view and at chs we have a considerable um generator that operates we are also um have that in the back of our minds that we should think about some batteries as we move forward also it's not in the plan right now uh so resiliency and operating in the event of an emergency looks like being able to have some minimum ventilation in our gathering areas so gyms and cafeterias running basic communication and technology functions in the offices lighting you for egress lighting i want to remind you that we've designed our classrooms to have daylight and operable windows that we can
086keep functions going and our goal is to maintain or to resume school operations in the event of an emergency so our community can start regaining normalcy parents have access to to get on with um recovery solar maximization are our campuses where we're looking at partnering where we have partnered uh with the corvallis sustainability coalition to really look at the the location at adams we did the solar array in the field and at franklin where because of the roofing being replaced and the um arrangement of the um directional array we're able to put more solar at that location and you can see at our educational array locations we we prioritize having solar at every school so that students can learn from the function of solar generation solar power generation so it ranges from the 1.8 kilowatts
087up to 50 kilowatts um but it every student will see that and it will show up on their uh their sustainability dashboard which is exciting so they can see the impact of of the um cloud cover they can see the act of rain of all the different things that impact solar generation so this is super exciting we wanted you to have it at your fingertips so this will be published out next slide so i mentioned the energy dashboard so here's the speaker at the energy dashboard so when you first log into the energy dashboard you'll see the picture on the left which is the map of the district with all of our logos you can click on the school itself and be brought into the summary that you see at the bottom of the page
088where you'll be able to evac look at um electricity um solar power generation water usage um gas usage recycling estimates that will have to be something that we um we estimate and put on there because it's not a direct reportable but and we're also monitoring what we're spending on irrigation and so it's it's very user friendly and then at the um little blue section that you see at the bottom there'll be a sustainability tip that every time you click on it it brings up a new solar or new sustainability tip so it's helping to educate users on ideas that they can accomplish and impact their footprint on the environment and when you click on one of these tabs you'll see a graph it's not populated yet because we're still in that phase of um building
089it but you'll see um the energy unit along the left and the timeline across the bottom you'll be able to compare to other schools in our in our district you'll be able to go pick your time frame lots of functionality there so we're excited to launch that we um with everything that our district has got underway with opening schools and coveted responses and this has been put on the back burner just a little bit but we are still tracking to get this done in the coming months so next slide i wanted to highlight the sustainability signage so at lincoln we have launched this in the front of the school outside as well there is a spanish version and an english version mounted on at the entryway of lincoln and it highlights um what the sustainability
090features are of lincoln and then throughout the building we've highlighted specific features for example um the water reduction or solar power and they're located strategically through the building so students can students or community can see the the um the um water reduction item right there in front of them read about it and connect it to the the actual operation of the building so we're excited to have that um out and we are seeing students read them and understand it and ask questions so we're really excited about that feature we're working on um just deploying this at garfield as well and it will be up at bessie coleman when it opens and we will ultimately be putting this type of signage in all of our schools so next slide so the maintenance and project we're working
091to make dreams come true construction is not easy and the face on this little construction worker it hasn't been easy so i wanted to just say thank you to the staff and students and families that are enjoying construction at catherine jones harrison and latisha carson we have struggled and i say this just that you're aware of it we struggle from having temporary heat at these locations and trying to balance that with the cold temperatures coming in that's all due to uh supply chain interruption with the boilers so the boilers are here we're in the midst of installing them and getting them up and running and we anticipate within the next two weeks we'll have uh permanent heat at both of those schools so um i think that the staff fun kind of feel like that
092with our clenched teeth sometimes but they ultimately are here doing great things for students and showing true resiliency through this so next slide we're going to go through some pictures pretty quickly because i don't want to take up too much time but there's so many exciting things happening so i wanted to point out the solar array at garfield we just talked about the installation and this has been a really exciting location where kids can actually see the array from underneath the panel next slide i wanted to point out the outdoor learning areas at garfield it's just so exciting on the on the left hand side you see the boulders that was an important feature for our schools they wanted to see natural play type items where kids can climb on the boulders at the top
093is our raised garden beds in the new garden that we replaced so it we are working to for functionality we're partnering with the pta making sure that they get the irrigation systems that they're interested in and really trying to make sure that it's still a school-owned project even though we built the raised beds they're now taking ownership and making it theirs and we are still supporting that through the bond and then on the bottom right this is if you haven't been out there this is an awesome thing to see it's the um garden on the playground between the new wing and the blacktop surfaces you can see it's depicting the valley the willamette river going through the valley there and kids have been really excited about it it's resilient plantings native drought resistant and so
094kids can run through there this is supposed to all this landscaping is designed to be um student-friendly and play-friendly okay let's go to the next slide i thought it'd be exciting to see a glimpse of the furniture in place so i'm on the bottom right hand side this is our new classroom furniture and you can see that it can be configured in all different ways i i know that i spent a day out there with a few other leaders trying to figure it out and you know it's so mind-boggling how many different configurations you can put together and the impact it can have on learning it's very exciting on the left is the art science room at garfield and the roll-up door that you see in the back of the room is still waiting for
095a supply chain interruption the permanent door will be a glass door but it's still we're still waiting patiently and in the meantime we have this great space that's available for students to do hands-on learning and art so that's very exciting um next slide uh on the left is our uh music room and the wall the shiny wall that you see there is the operable wall that opens to the gymnasium and you see that um in blue in the gym picture the the teacher in the space is so excited about the natural light about the flexibility of the space and you can see that just those stools that are bright colors just are so inviting for students to come in and out um so that's been a really exciting on the in the gymnasium something i
096wanted to point out um we did the seismic upgrades in this gym so you can see the metal um brackets across the top we were able to take the paneling down in this gymnasium and refinish it and it turned out just beautiful the keeping that original wood and the lighting was upgraded it's just such a brighter gymnasium than it ever was and so just exciting things happening so next slide the library all new bookshelves that match they've got their story time areas and the librarian ted has just done so much work to put this back into operable condition and so staff are really making this these projects it's special for kids so it's really important to acknowledge that next slide so lincoln uh you know this is a picture of the the dining commons and
097again we have that picture depicting um mary's peak from fit and green wildlife refuge and the the alternate seating on the left and the traditional seating on the right and it has just been a really great experience for kids next slide the playground's open yay i'm sure luhuy could tell us about uh kids out there enjoying that space and they did not like having it fenced off while we were under construction and so now it's open and kids can enjoy and our students are so happy to have that space available and i want to point out on the right hand picture you can see the burgundy colored it's called a glider and it's a very inclusive piece of equipment we can get lots of kids on that three three feet apart of course and but
098they can be on the outside on that little ledge bouncing standing to bounce that glider and a student can who has mobility um challenges can can just roll right up if that's what they want to do so we're excited about the inclusivity of this playground next slide so at bessie coleman we are making great progress we are tracking to be in the school moving in over winter break and that means there's a lot of work between now and then so what i want to point out in this picture this is the back side of the school and on the right there is the um the oak tree that is is really been an inspiration in this campus and it is survived and it is beautiful and the views that it provides out those windows are
099just amazing so we're really excited about that and so we can go to next flight just a little bit of pictures what's happening in this school so you know we are like i said on track and we're seeing all the finishes come together the stairway is in um and we are just pushing pushing pushing to be ready for this next slide i will mention on bessie coleman that supply chains are impacting there as well we don't see any critical path for building materials but we do have a load of furniture that's sitting in a ship off port that we have no idea when it will unload so we have contingency plans you know if it doesn't get here in time we will use um repurposed furniture interim so that we don't slow down or move
100in due to that slow down so crescent valley high school lots of things happening um i wanted to show you this picture because i'm not sure that that's one we've shown yet it's the parking lot where we've um created ada parking and access up to the campus and so that is complete that bus loop was in pretty bad shape and it was all fixed over the summer which is exciting no more potholes for buses going through next slide and i just wanted to give you a few pictures the metal shop is um we've moved in it's not there's no classes in that space until uh second semester so we are taking our time to get get that set up correctly but very exciting space and it's going to be amazing for students next slide this
101is the welding booth which turned out just amazing you know you'll remember our picture of a facility planning person who could touch side to side on the old welding room and now we have all of i think we have eight booths for welding and they are just fantastic and lots of excitement from students and staff next slide the woods area is just really special and so we have i won't say that we haven't had any challenges moving in because we have we've been working really closely with adam kirsch the instructor out there as you can imagine the work is very technical in these spaces and so as we've been in design really for over what a year and a half two years on this and it's now coming to fruition so there's been a few
102little hiccups where we've had new equipment purchased and figuring that out and how it works with the existing design but that's all moving forward and we're we're really close to being completed with that um on the right hand picture i want to point out we call it the wood wall and so all of those are different uh species of wood that are finished and they are engraved with their type of wood so students can identify their woods and an interesting piece is there was a there was a mistake on one of the engraved pieces of wood it was not correct and it was obvious that it was not correct and adam kerr said well it's not such a bad thing that should be something students can easily identify and realize because of the labeling but
103we are fixing it but it was you know just an example of how we are moving through and making changes but very beautiful well next slide at corvallis high school uh we uh we are open for business and everything is going fairly smoothly one of the supply chain issues we ran into were the um the roof panels for the covered walkway and we were notified in august that we wouldn't see those until december so we prepared the site to have nothing more than the support posts until we got those panels in december and then labor day weekend they showed up without notice and so we we pivoted we made weight room to store them and we worked with the school to figure out how to just install those panels while school was in session so
104that we didn't draw out and have to store and risk all kinds of things with these roof panels so we're doing a section of the covered walkway at a time to minimize impact with students and it seems to have been going smoothly but we're excited to see that covered walkway coming to fruition now next slide so the covered work area oh my goodness has come together so quickly so you can see on the left is the picture from september and on the right is the picture from october we've got the paint on it's finished it's amazing and it's providing an awesome space for students so next slide the sheldon library is open for business and we do have another this this supply chain is very directly related to covid we um do not have the
105circulation desk yet um that we worked to find all kinds of suppliers and we had a small company that was providing that and they were directly impacted by covid and so we are working with them and you know the librarian sarah has just been so excited about the new space we got her a sit stand desk that she could use in the interim and she has been making it work and lots of positive attitudes and enjoying the furniture and they're in the background you can't see it very well but there's these rockers in that space if you get out there you got to try the rockers because they're amazing and kids sitting them and reading it's great okay next slide so mountain view elementary school i don't think that we have done a design update
106on mountain view so i'm going to take a few minutes here and talk to you about mountain view so this is the site plan and there is a lot of site work happening happening at mountain view if you're familiar at all we don't this area i can't use my pointer so the area um [Music] to the left of the softscape playground along ranger avenue that is a area that is right now playground and we're remodeling that to become parking area and we are making a new hardscape play area just south of the the playground this is really in response to relocating the the office and we are already experiencing um cars on that playground even though it is a playground we open it up before and after school for parent pickup and drop off so
107it made sense to not be sharing that as a playground and a parking lot now we also were looking at traffic flow and how to address backup on grainger avenue so as you can see we're creating a traffic flow that brings people in off of elliott through the staff parking area and around the school or you can access from grainger on the east side of that entry so these are all changes also adding a sidewalk connection to the crosswalks at the corner of granger and elliot and a paved pathway from the building out to their natural habitat area so there's a lot of work that's going to happen and this all of this site work is going to happen in the second summer of uh phasing construction so this will happen in the summer of
1082023 but we're getting ready to dive into construction in june in the building so let's go to the next slide and i'll focus in on the on the floor plan so um mountain view has a huge campus and you would think it would be easy to plan phasing it is not this is a tricky building to do construction phasing we have two wings that are very far apart from each other and this heart of the building in the middle that is just going to be so amazing when we get through construction but the very first um thing that i'll point out is that the office will be relocating to its new location in pink and the the good news is that we're going to keep our existing office where it is through that construction process
109and that's a huge benefit for mountain view to be able to keep their office intact because it's such an important piece so that new admin area is going to actually be an expanded footprint and and take up a little courtyard space there we're going to be really using similar structure as we are at all of our other schools and making sure that they have all the spaces that they need and the little brown space number 17 at the bottom of the screen is the new art science room it's going to be open out to that playground area which has the um the covered playground our covered play shelter is right out there so that they can support indoor outdoor learning with a covered play shed really close nearby it's very exciting we are doing updated
110bathrooms in the gray area towards the top by the library those will be our new student restroom designs we're able to do that in one set of restrooms the other one is going to just get a light refresh due to budget basically we we need to make sure that we can fit it within budget and then we've just got a lot of small changes that we're making in the middle of the building to create that student support space where the old office is will become the collaboration space and we were able to create those spaces without explaining the footprint of the building and it will be adjacent to that library and it's on the intermediate wing where it will get the most use from students who actually go out and and can do those hands-on
111project or groups group projects so we're pretty excited dale did i miss anything on the footprint that you wanted to point out no okay okay next slide so here's just a few renderings that we had with our design advisory committee so at the top left is the view of the new office from the parking lot which will just make a pronounced office it'll be very nice and the the top right hand corner is um the office rendering and it is very much in alignment with what we've done at all of our other schools so you can see the consistency from school to school in the bottom left-hand picture is a picture of the entryway and how we're making a welcoming entry with bench for people to sit and and and visit while they wait and
112then on the bottom right hand is the the music room so you can see on the right hand side there's an opening that'll open into the gym and lots of space and lots of um storage so we're excited about mountain view next slide franklin k8 and so this is the site plan there's not a lot happening on the actual site to the exterior of the building but the exciting piece that we were able to do is on the left hand side uh the south side of the building we are putting in a door from the cafeteria cafeteria slash gym that will go feed out onto a patio and we are fencing off that south uh yard area to create a space that cat that uh the lunchtime can overflow into the outdoor space it can
113also be used for indoor outdoor learning lots of exciting things planned for that space but it's going to make a huge difference for the way they can run lunches just as a reminder this school is not getting a separate cafeteria i don't say that to be negative but to say we're we're thinking about how to provide some of that same flexibility in a different way this campus is small and challenged with how to um we didn't really have a good solution for how to add that space on this campus but we're really thinking about flexible adaptive adaptable ways to make some additional space for them okay next slide so um this is basically what we've got going on here so the the locker rooms are in the darker gray and they're labeled a we're going
114to be converting those existing locker rooms into science lab so it'll be taking all of that space and making a larger classroom space that can be used as the science lab as maker space and lots of excitement from the staff the science middle school science teachers they've had a lot of input they've talked about other schools that they like and it's been a very collaborative process to come up with a design there we're really excited about it the library is going to get all new finishes so we're going to be closing down the library actually at spring break to start working on those abatement and finishes in that space so that entire wing there will actually be closed starting spring break so we can get a jump start on the work here and we're we're
115collaborating with this little team and it's very exciting work you'll see upgraded finishes throughout the hallways and shared spaces so the gym cafeteria space will get updated the restrooms that are there by the cafeteria gymnasium and will be renovated to the new student restroom design and that is um a great location for us to do that because it is the the center of the building for outside use as well as student use all students use that part of the building so we're excited to get that upgrade completed and the office itself will be fully renovated and there are some great design features as far as flow and connectivity they'll get a new staff room and then adjacent to the staff room will be the converting a classroom into collaboration spaces and so um lots of
116opportunity to come with this and we are excited about these changes so this i'm going to tell you that this design advisory committee was very engaged as you can well you could probably predict they're very engaged staff and they brought us so many good ideas and the design evolved really effectively through that input and collaboration process so let's go to the next slide college hill harding center college hill we um have been we received our updated estimates and we did need to go through a value engineering exercise we tried to focus on maintaining the educational programs and the bond promises so and our as a board you know that we have lots of discussion with the community about the parking lots the parking lot where would it go what would it look like and in
117the end it looks like keeping the front uh drive-through area and adding some ada parking on that so there won't be any major changes to parking and as the facilities director i'm a little bit sad about that because i think we need parking but in the end it's more important to keep our dollars focused on where student impact will be and so we chose to make that cut rather than others so i wanted to make sure you knew that because we are going to have that out to bid here and and actually in front of the historic preservation review will be coming up shortly so we're we're really working towards that the phasing and scheduling is tricky as you can imagine so we are doing a lot of weekly meetings to try to work through
118the phasing essentially what you'll see is the two-story portion of the building closing down for construction starting spring break and then working through the rest of the building we'll get the two-story portion ready for college hill to move in then take on the rest of the building and then move college hill back to their locations and everybody else back in um we'll build this late late year this one is the one that will come to you in january for award so next slide and uh this i want to just point out that this picture is the mural for bessie coleman elementary school so this will be in the cafeteria it's an amazing picture and it's it's going to look amazing up on the wall so any questions all right i have a few uh questions
119and comments first of all thank you thank you really impressive presentation uh i want to thank the staff especially for their patients uh and specifically those and leticia carson and catherine jones harrison for their patience and endurance it's it's truly uh trying times and hard times and working through uh the pandemic to finish the work everybody is sacrificing and i want to really echo what kim mentioned in terms of the appreciation of that and also i want to say thank you for doing everything in your capacity to get the work done personally i'm aware that the supply chain disruptions and production disruptions are across the board sammy you've frozen vince do you want to go ahead and make your comments when we can bring sam backwards to once he's unfrozen yeah i don't have any
120questions well i mean i have a whole raft of questions and would love to discuss this report in detail because it's so exciting i just well first i want to say i want to express appreciation uh or just the resilience of the team uh dealing with supply chain um you know disruptions their staff being so resilient and you know while navigating a pandemic it just really underscores how this district has can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time can build facilities in the middle of a pandemic while bringing kids back to school it's just you know if you think about it you're doing triple duty where other districts are just you know just trying to get along so just a deep appreciation for the staff and the management team and the construction teams
121um my kids go my youngest goes to lincoln i've just really been delighted watching the progress on the external you know that can the site uh work there it's just really exciting but i have to say um you guys know that sustainability is one of my key issues and i just i'm just so appreciative that without any mention from this board or any pushing that this team is focusing on sustainability and bring that and you know i'm reminded of a quote from peter drucker who is a business consultant long time business consultant and he said if you don't measure it you can't manage it and i just love how how you're planning to build a comprehensive uh data dashboard for our resource consumption and it's really just that that first step and critical step in
122managing our resource use and educating our children and so throughout with that teaching and learning has been part of that and so i just want to express immense appreciation i hope there's lots of social media posts about this because i know there's people in this community that are going to be really really excited about this work that you're doing the sustainability work that you're working into the bond project so thank you very much so vince we are planning a communication campaign around our sustainability initiatives that also focus on um we get we are getting questions lead versus path to net zero what does that mean so we're we are working on that will be one of our first big communication campaigns here before right at the first of the year thanks for that i really
123appreciate it yeah thank you i apologize and i want to ask you did you hear anything um yeah probably halfway we didn't hear a lot it's hard all right i'll just say uh i apologize if i'm uh being redundant and also ridiculous with uh something vince mentioned because i connected halfway through uh but really thanking the uh staff for their patience and also our staff for their work during the disruptions uh some of these disruptions are beyond our control so i want to acknowledge that and really i hope that the permitting process and everything else that's within our control we can do everything we can to get it through but thank you for your work and appreciation for the staff for this work um i saw the 50 milestone and i know the percentage uh
124from what we spent to what we project can change uh as the projection may change but it's really important milestone to celebrate in terms of financially uh we're halfway through uh and uh it's it's just uh amazing to reflect on uh where we were and where we are right now and the path ahead of us uh so i just uh i want to highlight that uh i echo vince's excitement about the energy dashboard and i hope that there is an engineer a technical requirement that is there and it will be a feature that must be there and i demand uh uh i demand it's very strongly which is exportability of data to in a tabular format so rather than just seeing it in a graph students uh can on their own or through computer science
125or data science uh the class in middle or high school or even college can download the data and do their own research or interpolation extrapolation so i think there is so much value of exportability of data and in a way that uh students can't play with it or any community member can play with it and work on their own hypotheses or experiments uh so please uh let me know if this is there and if it's not there please please please have it available um and the other thing it's a question around the batteries first of all thank you for doing this work on the batteries and the solar energy thank you for the coalition and community partners for making it happen i'm anxious about the resiliency of the batteries and the transmission lines themselves uh
126reminded by uh the uh japan 2011 uh floods and tsunami where uh critical infrastructure lost their access to their backup batteries because the batteries were in the basements and it was very unlikely to have that place flooded but they flooded so i just want us to think about is the battery are the batteries located in a resilient location uh given any adverse events whether it is a earthquake a flood or whatever it is and also uh are the transmission lines from the batteries to where we can uh use the power uh going to be intact in the such adverse events and if not uh let's make sure that we can make that make that happen for those that were installed already and those that will be installed in the future so these are my questions
127and this is my appreciation thank you tackle the the battery question sammy they are in the mechanical yard behind the building it's basically a masonry structure that's secured um they're in their own enclosure so they're they're secured from weather so they're not very low they're they're no lower than the building is and they are hardwired to the building they don't go through external transmission lines fed underground into the main building distribution panels um so it's a pretty it's a it's a self-contained resiliency package there um if that answers your question on that yes thank you i mostly have a bunch of like appreciation um and i i'd love to see the new school names on the report i just wanted to say that too um how they were all over the place in there and
128seeing how many projects are almost 100 done i think i can't remember which school it is i was like 99.5 which school was that i can't it's one of i think it's um i never mind don't don't have to dig for it but any they're so close some of them and some of them we are just we're just seeing designs and it's just incredible to see how much has changed and been able to like since the last time we were able to visit the spaces which doesn't even seem like that long ago and to see how the students are being able to enjoy the spaces and everything and just appreciative to all the work that everybody that has been on the projects but also the community investment i'm always blown away with how much support
129the community has given to these projects and i just wanted to share that appreciation too in the solar arrays and outdoor learning spaces all these things that i know are going to impact students in the future in ways that maybe we didn't even think about are not necessarily me but like we as in the district and um the one thing that i did have kind of a question about is um the i know the weather is also impacting some of the stuff like i think at lincoln it looks a little bit super muddy but and there's storms coming in i don't think that's gonna significantly um derail anything but maybe if you wanted to mention to the community like don't worry it's still happening um i see them out there all the time i'm sure
130other people do and i had one question about crosswalk safety kind of stuff and that's like really specific but the weather's not going to super delay things right i'll touch on the site work it it actually there is a discussion going on the site level about the fields we're just so late um you know with that grading there that there's debate you know we probably won't want to put the seed down for that field until march um which means we probably won't put top soil over that rock but those are those are discussions that are happening at the site level you know these in this week um so that's in an effort to save money and not have to do the work twice but it'll also prevent a muddy mess all over the neighborhood other
131than that the site works should be pretty well wrapped up other than the planted the remaining planted seed lawns yeah thanks for bringing it that way you don't have to do the work twice i think that's important if communities watching and doesn't see stuff hit that hundred percent it'll save time and investment in the future and that's great for folks to know about that um i do have questions about some of the crosswalk safety but i can email kim about that later maybe that's really specific to the way that cars enter some of those areas i don't know how other school areas are um impacted by that lincoln that crosswalk is the one that's goes to the new driveway from alexander has a lot of um i was really concerned the other day when it
132was foggy and there was low visibility and people were just pulling in without slowing down and so there's a little bit of safety behind my my wondering and so just when when you were talking about the traffic flow i can't what school was that uh that you were talking about kim at mountain view at mountain view it made me think of that and so it's at the top of my head and i wanted to mention it yeah so i don't forget but um i can email you about that later that sounds great thank you oh one more thing if you all can just say thank you to the workers too that'd be nice too that we appreciate them we definitely do you know they're they were they were and are doing a lot to keep
133our projects moving um many sacrifices including working off schedule right like working after hours schedules is it's a big commitment yeah now the school's started and we don't we don't occupy the buildings when the kids are there it's after hours does anybody else have a question or comment now i just want to add my appreciation to to tim and dale and everyone who's been making these projects happen um it has been really exciting to watch things time i went and poked around the landscaping at garfield the other day um with my husband who's volunteering i think with some osu students to do irrigation in the raised beds and um my moment of illness is so exciting as someone who at one point dug a 10 foot trench next to an apple tree to look at
134root distribution was going to those raised beds and opening the windows and where students will be able to see into the soil and see where the roots are growing and what's going on below ground because that's a fascinating process with plants too um so there's details and things like that that just give learning opportunities to kids i think are just so exciting to see and to think about the possibility of so thank you thank you thank you for this work um so i think with that we're ready to move on to the next item on our agenda unless people feel like they need we've been doing this for two hours are we good or do we need a break if it's possible to take a short break that would be great let's do a five
135minute break okay that we are um ready thank you and recess i need that five minute breaks make sure you're there sorry here the meeting of the corvallis school board is back in session so the next item on our agenda is resolution number twenty one one zero zero three native american heritage month so laguerre tina or luhary and shawna tina also was involved in writing this resolution but is not here this evening would you do well have anything you would like to say about this resolution i think we do do we do the motion first sami that's what we did last time does anyone wish to make a motion to approve this item the motion wording is in your packet well i raised my hand but i'd like to defer to my colleague director whitebear
136i think it would be appropriate for her i think it'd be best if she if she made the motion okay um thanks vince i was like i wanted to make sure i had the wording um i moved to adopt resolution number 21-1003 acknowledgement of native american heritage month as submitted second so it has been mood by library and seconded by sammy i will now entertain final discussion just much appreciation oh sir go ahead and sit right here go ahead you've got your hand i was like it's fine it was fine um i just wanted to um say that the this resolution means a lot to i'm sure a lot of community members and really affirms the district's commitment to doing the work um and i know that shawna and tina and i spent a lot
137of time on this one so appreciate everyone's patience with it getting into the packet um especially because we had a lot of other board business going on at the same time and we wanted to make sure that people understood some of the history behind it and um the importance of it not only nationally but locally and um i'm just really excited that as a board we continue to do engage in this work to recognize our students and our staff and our families that are being highlighted in these resolutions and affirming that commitment to continuing to um to be in it with them and support them and as somebody that's also part of the local indigenous community with indigenous children in the district um i understand and i've talked about this before and board meetings how
138hard it is to be represented in public education as indigenous people even to this day and i hope that this is one step that we can take as a board to help with some of that and um i'm gonna get all emotional about it so that's where that's where i'm at with it and i'll um go ahead and mute now thank jimmy uh just much appreciation for lou for her leadership and uh for the co-sponsors as well sean and tina and i want to say it's it's uh really important to recognize this is not a formality uh it is a formal decision to celebrate the native american heritage month for november 2021 and every november in perpetuity for the school district uh and in addition to this formal action is the uh deliberative deliberate action
139of recognizing the work of the native peoples and really recognizing the things that uh are mentioned in their resolution uh it's timely there is much work to be done uh there are other municipalities and uh governing boards and councils that are asking a question if land acknowledgement should be done or what we accomplished by that and i apologize for highlighting this traumatic uh significance of uh a struggle and fights we need to continue uh to do uh but i wanna highlight that where we are here is important uh it's work that we need to do within the district within uh and also outside uh really sharing this important work and asking others to do it as well and nothing is more important than uh being educators in our work and walking the walk so really
140thank you for doing this work uh and i hope that i follow your footsteps in recognizing the native people and really elevating their voices so really thank you for this work and let's continue it so once again i i want to express appreciation for the leadership of you know director whitebear and the other sponsors of this resolution and the ones previous and the ones that will follow um you know some people might say that oh you know this is it you know talk is easy it's easy to take up a resolution or make a proclamation you know but the reality is that actions like these um you know it's the role of the board to set the tone for the district and the work that we're doing now creates the culture for the for the
141board for this governing body and also for the organization and that that this will last because this is something that we'll be doing in perpetuity it will go on to the board's annual calendar and board in corvallis school boards of the future um will be expected to to observe you know in this case native american heritage month and all the and do the other cultural uh celebrations that we should do every year and so i'm just really appreciative of this leadership and that we're taking up this work and i'm looking forward to voting in favor of the motion thank you shawna thank you i just wanted to share my gratitude as well for my colleagues lahui and tina for involving me in this process and just how much i've learned even from being a part
142of two resolutions so far and particularly this one where one of the things that really struck me was that this is not a new movement this is not a new action this is grounded in quite a long history and a little bit of that will be reflected in the resolution itself and i learned tremendously from that but also to encourage folks to learn even more beyond the resolution that's here and also just to share my gratitude for the careful being a part of this process just seeing how much time and care is spent in choosing every word in terms of making sure that the identities of students educators families community members are really affirmed and recognized as part of the writing of these resolutions and then the reading of them too thank you terese thanks
143sarah i just want to say this is such a wonderfully worded i we're going to read it so everyone's going to get to hear it um but it's such a wonderfully and thoughtfully worded um resolution and my hope for this resolution is that the sentiment of it finds its way into our curriculum into our classrooms so that we have some confidence as parents that the important message of this resolution and the important truths that it represents and the story that it tells is something that we can be confident our children will be learning um from k through 12. so thank you for making uh for putting this um in front of us for giving us an opportunity to share it and read it to the community and now um i hope that teachers will hear
144this as a an invitation to um to advance this even further thank you yeah i um echo my colleagues appreciation for the work by um lou and tina and shauna in crafting this resolution um i feel like the wording of it is really important it's an educational resolution which i think is important for the school district and you know i echo the the importance of acknowledging these months and days um living in corvallis you can also often live in a bubble where we don't um we we never are forced to acknowledge that not everyone um has the same identity that we do and so i think bringing up and acknowledging the heritage of all the people and the various people in our community is really important for our students it's a way to acknowledge and
145see them so it has been moved that we approve resolution number two one one zero zero three oh blue i'm sorry shawna um i should have said this earlier but i think it's important for the community to know when they hear the wording of the resolution when we explain in indigenous identities and native american identities that the some of the terminology is grounded in u.s based like demographic and political identities and that's why certain ones are called out and then it's expanded upon to be inclusive of other native american and indigenous identities so i just think that's really important for a community to know like why very specific ones were called out to honor some of the um the ways that sovereignty comes into the conversations with native and indigenous identities i just really yeah
146that's all okay thank you um so it has been moved that we approve resolution number two one one zero zero three acknowledgement of native american heritage month um director jones how do you vote hi director adams what is your vote i director tommy what is your vote i director white there have you vote director al-aldeba how do you vote i i wrote i also passes unanimously now due to the importance of this resolution and as an opportunity to learn from the carefully worded and important messages that are in it um i would like um dr whitebear and i directed whitebeard and director jones and director tommeny to read the resolution into the record and so that those who are listening can hear this resolution acknowledgement of native american heritage month resolution number 21-1003 whereas the
147corvallis school district recognizes and pays tribute to the significant contributions made in our community by native american people which includes american indians alaska natives and native hawaiians as well as indigenous people from canada mexico central america south america and the broader pacific islands and whereas the corvallis school district affirms that native american students families staff and community members should be valued for all aspects of their identities and whereas native american heritage month grew out of efforts begin by dr arthur c parker of the seneca nation's work with the boy scouts of america in adopting american indian day in 1912 and whereas reverend sherman coolidge of the arapahoe nation and then president of the congress of the american indian association first proclaimed american indian day on september 28 then calling on the nation to observe this
148day and whereas red fox james of the blackfoot nation traveled across the country on horseback to gain endorsement of 24 state governments to hold a day to honor native americans nationally before presenting it to the white house on december 14 and whereas american indian day was first declared may 1916 in the state of new york and whereas native american awareness week was first proclaimed nationally in 1976 and whereas what was then called national american indian heritage month was first proclaimed nationally in 1990 and whereas the calipuya people have called the corvallis area and the willamette valley home since time immemorial and whereas the confederated tribes of the grand round community of oregon and the confederated tribes of celeste indians continue to maintain their ancestral and cultural connections to the corvallis area and broader willamette valley
149and whereas there are countless cultural heritages represented by native american peoples and whereas the state of oregon has a documented history of anti-indigenous actions based on colonization which includes genocide forced removals deprivation broken treaties and the outlaw of native american cultural practices and whereas education has been misused as a tool of colonization in oregon serving to sever native american children from their families languages and cultural heritages through boarding in residential schools beginning with the indian trainings in the indian training school at forest grove which later moved and became chimawa indian school in salem and whereas native american heritage month provides an opportunity to continue the district's growth in learning about the many contributions of native american people to the nation world and local community and whereas education is a necessary component for creating a more
150equitable and anti-racist community nation and world and whereas the corvallis school district has made a commitment to equity and anti-racism and whereas the corvallis school district has a responsibility to honor and respect the diverse histories of our community and whereas the corvallis school district believes each and every student must be celebrated and appreciated for the distinct and vibra vibrant contributions made by sharing cultures language ideas beliefs and values within a school community therefore let it be resolved by the board of education of the corvallis school district does hereby proclaim november 2021 as well as each november annually as native american heritage month in the district and strongly encourages students family staff and community members to join in existing local celebrations and encourages all schools in the district to help highlight this month in great appropriate
151ways as well as highlight the contributions of native american peoples to the local community nation and beyond both historically and in current times adopted by the board of directors of school district number 509j corvallis of benton and linn counties oregon at its regular meeting this 21st day of october [Music] thank you um [Music] so the next item on their agenda is the division 22 report and action so melissa it's really hard to follow that i would just kind of want to sit in a minute because that's pretty amazing um and i also want to just say thank you to the board um because uh without your um [Music] your push for us to um ensure that we're doing this for our kids i think that a lot of our staff would feel kind of hanging
152out there trying to do this but they know that you have their back that means a whole lot to all of them so thank you for um for being there for our staff when it comes to how critically important it is for our students to be racially conscious we really appreciate that so thank you okay division 22 i have no powerpoint slides i have no pictures it's just a compliance report and um if you read through the um the cover letter it gives you depends on the summary so just some important things to kind of point out um as far as four major changes that occurred in june of this year from ode um the timeline has permanently shifted to november so for those of you that have been on the board for a while
153this report has come in february it's very confusing so in november it's really good we can put last year to bed in november and then be done the um rule is it explicitly states it's for last year and so just a reminder this is about what happened last year not necessarily not about what's happening this year although if we're out of compliance sometimes we'll say we are we are going to be in compliance this year so you see that in the report um we're supposed to be presenting this report to the community not just to the school board so we're here in an open meeting doing that it will be posted on our website tomorrow morning after actions taken tonight so um anyone can access it find it ask questions and make comments and we're
154just like the uh the sia report we're using a template provided by the state so that's what you see um in the attached report the um highlights include if you go to the second page of the cover um document the um last year if you remember we had a really really modified year we had very few requirements um because we were reporting for the year that ended in essentially in march as we went into pandemic emergency so this report is now reporting on the school year where we started um in comprehensive distance learning and ended in our own um in our own hybrid learning model so we do have some um requirements that were waived um including essential skills and i think a lot of you're aware of that and i've read a lot about
155that um in the news and then ode documents the kindergarten assessment for obvious reasons because their kindergartners at the start of the school year were not in the classroom and then the identification of talented and gifted that doesn't mean we're not we did not serve our talented and gifted it means that we weren't identifying last year and that has to do with the um not having standardized tests from the year before to help us to identify tag students some modifications for this school year are listed also on page two including essential skills again being removed as a requirement for graduation um health and vision or vision and hearing screenings did not happen last school year they were not required so that was waived pe requirements um time was waived but kids were expected to have
156access to pe all through last school year and um i think you might have seen some really cool things that our corvallis school um our teachers did for pe throughout the district so there was a lot of really fun action last year in pe um instructional time you can read through that some um things that were waived and hours that were added on automatically and then the last is adoption of instructional materials which is something that we did with this board right at the start of the school year to adopt instructional materials for corvallis online so we're in compliance with that modification so as far as our district is concerned for last school year and the division 22 report we're out of compliance mostly in those areas that have to do with assessment because this
157board decided that we would not be doing state assessments last year so that puts us out of compliance with administration of state assessments it puts us out of compliance for providing parents the opportunity to exempt their students from state testing due to disability because there was no state testing to accept exempt their child from and then lastly um the essential skill assessment for english language learners requires that we provide the opportunity for english language learners to complete essential skills in their language of origin there were no tests there's no essential skills so again out of compliance there um and then the other piece that we're out of compliance on has to do with dyslexia and the universal screening for risk fast factors of dyslexia we chose last year not to do star testing which is
158the vehicle that we um typically use to um universally screen for dyslexia in kindergarten and that just we didn't do any star testing last year because our kids were in remote learning and we thought it was more important to take care of their social emotional well-being um and then do as much as we can with content so um when it comes to the report you'll see all of those places where we're out of compliance but that there is a corrective action in place because we will be doing our state assessments this year so all of those will be back in compliance and with regard to the universal screening for dyslexia we are going to be um we are testing already we've already opened the star window we've already started those universal screeners and we're not
159just screening our kindergartners we're also screening our current first graders who were kindergarteners last year and missed the opportunity to be screened so we're catching everybody out so that's um kind of it mostly in a nutshell and if you have any questions let me know probably [Laughter] [Music] sammy thank you uh so i want to say thank you for the explanation i think you addressed many of the questions uh that i had but since this is the milestone where we provide our report to the public i wanted to present a record and the minutes uh to document our understanding of essential skills assessments and graduation requirements uh we my understanding is that we still require students to finish credits and they if they graduate and complete their credits then they will satisfy the essential skills
160that we are aiming for them to have so i just want us to be on the record to say yes that's what we do and that's our standard for graduation remains as high as it is yes we our standard still remains with the um number of credits in particular categories for graduation that is still something that's happening for our students the asses essential skills requirement was removed by the state legislature as they're taking a look at essential skills and whether or not there's something that they should continue into the future so there's going to be more conversation about that throughout this school year and i understand maybe a report or something by the start of next school year about essential skills and their their importance to our kids so that's we're just kind of waiting
161around for that thank you so first i want to say that i really appreciated this report because i remember doing pe with my with my then second grader um and doing yoga and all sorts of other odd dancing things because we were all kind of hunkered down and isolating together so thank you for that experience and that great memory um i also want to highlight that this is a another case of of how this district team just does not present this board with surprises there were no surprises in this report we knew exactly what was coming and sure enough here it is and i just want to appreciate that and um how unique that is you know um you know among school districts uh my question is is that based on my read of the
162corrective measures um the anticipation is that we will be in full compliance this year is that is that accurate that is my expectation for the this report one year from from now we will be in full compliance with all of the division 22 standards that's it that was my tough question thank you thank you thank you i have two questions and first just want to share gratitude for just how organized this report is as vince said there were no surprises based on what's been communicated along the way and i really appreciated that with each note of something that was out of compliance the corrective action is really clearly laid out in terms of what will be happening in the coming year to move things back into compliance and the two questions i had were one
163is there a consequence of being out of compliance from the side of ode or so we need to be aware of we have to um send our corrective action to ode and they have to say yes that corrective action needs to be put in place we agree with your corrective action go forward and do it and then we make sure that we get it done so that's um that's kind of the consequence as far as that's concerned okay thank you melissa my other question was here just in looking at the the requirements around presenting this to the community where it's noted here that by presenting the report to the school board of the district which we're doing here in an oral presentation at an open public meeting allowing for public comment and by posting the
164report on the district's webpage i know that we had public comment tonight but it was noted specific to the student investment act and so i'm wondering if there's going to be another meeting where the public has the opportunity to comment or if that public comment is accepted through the form of email or other communications only just so that if folks are listening and and do want to comment know the avenues to do that through um i was anticipating that we would be taking public comment through the um through email after after people had a chance to read it digest it and then ask those questions um that we would take those comments that way but i know we do have one more meeting before this is um actually due to the state so i can
165have a conversation with ken about making sure that public comment is open at that meeting for this report next week it is okay there you go that's good thank you so much thank you absolutely um i just wanted you to help clarify for the oops my zoom just appeared okay there just to help clarify for the community because i think sometimes there's a lot of anxiety around when it says out of compliance around assessment um can you clarify that the compliance has to do with state assessments and the follow-up to that is there is still assessment happening to gauge learning you see what i'm saying like because if you just read it and you don't know that that nuance you might be like what how do we know where the students are so if you
166can clarify like that might be helpful even if you're thinking about like any wording that where the report goes absolutely so that the the place where we're out of compliance is with state testing which includes folks testing smarter balance testing um and then and so those those two categories and also extended what is it it's extended assessment for our students with disabilities so those are the three areas where we're out of compliance those are big statewide assessments we're not um as a district we were um checking in and taking um taking in what our students were doing throughout the year adjusting monitoring um and uh making sure that our students are receiving the instruction that they needed throughout and our students also received um report cards and our students received credits for the work that
167they were doing so there was a lot of that assessment that's happening on a local level in a classroom at a building in a school thanks melissa i think that's helpful because even in the areas where it doesn't specifically call out each assessment name that we folk now so i appreciate you clarifying for everyone you're welcome thank you and they can also find that information in previous board minutes from the discussion that we had when the board took action to put us in advance of those tests for the year thanks terese thanks sarah um question and a comment my question is um around dyslexia screening uh so you mentioned that the um first graders this year are being screened because of the remote um learning of their kindergarten year i am wondering about the second
168graders this year who had their kindergarten year interrupted with the pandemic and what special attention we might be giving to them realizing that it's entirely possible that in october of their kindergarten year we they may not have presented yet with things we would be noticing but then the entire spring that they would have had in you know with a classroom teacher they did not and so i'm just curious about um what supports we're providing our second graders um around that screening um i'll wait and then i'll make my comment okay so i the the good news about the star assessment for elementary is it's um k through five so the star assessment that we use um and to do the universal screening for dyslexia is the same is um those markers for dyslexia are built
169into the star assessment that assesses a larger um array of reading skills and so all of our students are doing that cake and then that window's open right now so we are seeing where our second graders are i think we talked about this when we talked in may about um foregoing state assessments how the question was well how are we going to know where our kids are at when they come back and what we need to provide them and we talked a lot about the star assessment which really gives you some great data as far as what our kids are doing how they're doing and um where their um you know their gaps are so that will be happening for all kids k5 and um as far as second grade is concerned we can take
170a look at those those skills as well but um and those will be the kind of the purview of the rti or response to intervention teams that exist at every elementary school taking a look at testing talking about students individually and making plans for intervention okay thank you that helps to clarify because i do know that star is happening for all of our kids but i guess i was a little confused when you called out specifically the first graders that maybe there was some additional element that was being um paid attention to that was being um applied to our first graders in addition to the kindergartner so i appreciate that clarification and then um my comment is just uh related to um our reporting and our um our you know dangerous um situation of being
171in a full compliance next year um how that's crazy um that when that happens uh i would really love to see our district um really promote public um engagement in sharing that and celebrating that in recognizing that to get there having had what will at that time be three school years that have been touched by the pandemic the capacity to get to that it just speaks volumes of the organization and effort of our district leadership and um the classroom teachers who are working really hard and so when that happens next year um i would really like that to i think it would be good for our community if that came in the form of a really really public um way public engagement an open house if we can have one a virtual open house if
172we can't um you know something something along those lines but something just a little bit that really calls out what what um how impressive that is because honestly even outside of a pandemic we haven't had 100 compliance and so that's this is really important for the community to understand with the efforts that it's taken to get there so um anyway i just think we should celebrate it uh when we when we get to report that out thank you thank you trace yeah i um yeah i'm thinking about this report and this is angst of seeing things not in compliance and then thinking about the reason we're not in compliance is because we as a board decided to not um have the district do those state-level tests last year um and that you yeah i agree
173with lou that that created some angst because a lot of people worried about knowing where our kids are and so i think the assurance that we still know we're still gonna know where our kids are it's very helpful and i still think that um not doing those state tests last year in our few precious weeks of in-person learning was really the right decision for our kids so um i think it's worth being out of compliance in those few categories we have allowed our kids to just be in school yeah we don't question that at all yeah no i that was more for the people watching and this is more [Laughter] um so do i hear a motion vince i moved to approve the division 22 report for submission to oregon department of education and to
174be published on the district website right here second it has been moved by then and seconded by therese that we approved the division 22 report for submission to the department of state department of education is there any final discussion no say none then we will have our vote um [Music] therese have you wrote i vince what is your vote hi seana have you wrote i have you vote hi and sammy how do you vote i i vote i passes unanimously thank you melissa and all the team who worked together so our final oh no it's not our final i'm just trying to move on um next item on our agenda is board policy d.a fiscal policies um with olivia so um i don't have any additional uh reporting other than what was included in the
175cover to the board i believe this is just a routine uh review of the board to examine the policy and to provide feedback if you have any desire to modify it at this time so i'd just like to say that i i very much appreciate the work that this board has done with palsy d.a um you know over the number of years that i've been on the board um it really reflects the um the sober and very risk adverse approach that this board in this district take to fiscal matters um i particularly appreciate the global reserves that this district and this board have chosen to retain the reserves were crucially important for the retention of staff during the great recession and i strongly recommend that we maintain our reserve levels as they are [Music] just
176want to say exactly what vince said he said everything on my mind so sit carefully right yeah the only thing i would add is that um i always see this as sort of the kick off of our um budget process um because it's an important conversation for us to have as we begin to think about maintaining those reserves so um while there's no action it just informs us that that's still the commitment of the board as we begin that process so i think that's it's in some ways it's a bookend thank you anyone else then let us move on to our um the next item which is our enrollment update olivia's going to take us through this as well i provided some preliminary information in the report to the board that's included in the agenda
177attachment but wanted to provide some more detail um information to the board and some of the observations we've made along the way um so starting with overall enrollment in the district um next side please sorry i'm used to running my own shows [Music] keep going all right here we go uh so total enrollment by grade you can see district-wide we're serving as of october 1. students um our enrollment by grade level varies throughout the district um our highest class sizes are definitely at the high level between grades 8 through 12 all of those classes have more than 500 students in them and below 8th grade we only have one class that has more than 500 students obviously our long-term enrollment projections for the district are indicative of some significant decreases in enrollment overall so we
178anticipate that over the next five to ten years we'll see our enrollment decline between four and five hundred students and we also don't anticipate our kindergarten grade class being much larger than what we've been experiencing since 2016 birth rates in the state of oregon and locally have decreased every year year over year since 2016. so i think we'll continue to see smaller kindergarten grades and next year we may likely see a kindergarten class of less than 400 students so that's something we obviously monitor and as students matriculate through our system kind of keep track of what that looks like so we've got our eye on that bubble that we have at the fifth grade level right now um sort of replacing the the bubble at the eighth grade level um when we think about our
179middle schools next year next slide so this just shows the enrollment by school in the district you can see that when you look at our elementary schools they they vary our smallest elementary school is mountain view with 260 students this year um and our largest elementary school is currently garfield but we have about three elementary schools that are right around that 380 mark and you can see the the middle school enrollment varies significantly um that's a recurring trend and obviously with our high schools chs continues to be a little bit larger than cv this report includes the enrollment of our new corvallis online school at 177 students and 98 students at muddy creek on october 1st next slide please um i know last year we reported on our enrollment in corvallis online by resident school
180we had a lot of students in this program last year but you can see enrollment in corvallis online is fairly proportionate across across our schools there's not any you know really one um school that that makes up a bigger portion when you think about our school sizes overall next slide please um and keep going so the when we look at our enrollment um and the number of kids we're serving right now we're serving less students than we did last year um and we're serving quite a lot less students than we did five years ago and we when we look at 10 years ago we're very close to the enrollment levels that we had 10 years ago so you can kind of see we had an increase in enrollment and now we're sort of on this
181downward trend next slide um so just looking at the enrollment by grade this is going to to very significantly when you have kind of bubbles in your system as they work through the system so you can see our fifth grade class right now is our our big class and you can see how they've sort of matriculated through our system when you think about five years ago in those bigger class sizes um so we're not seeing anything too unusual other than the fifth grade class on the next slide the secondary numbers again 10 years ago we had a really large ninth grade class and that class obviously has matriculated through our systems but other than that we don't see anything too drastic although our 12th grade our 11th and 12th grade classes continue to show that
182they increase over time between when students start in ninth grade and when they graduate after 12th grade next slide shows our enrollment by school so this kind of helps identify our schools that are seeing increasing enrollment or decreasing enrollment and you can see that some kind of go back and forth some like adams and garfield um bessie coleman elementary obviously uh is experiencing a decline as is katherine jones harrison elementary um and then we have schools like lincoln that look fairly stable you know compared to five and ten years ago and mountain view has gotten quite a bit smaller than than what it was five and ten years ago um but for the most part um other than bessie coleman catherine jones harrison in mountain view our elementary school enrollments are fairly stable from one
183year to the next next slide is the secondary schools and again this is actually you know pretty pretty stable when you look at our secondary schools and enrollments from five and ten years ago it doesn't really look all that much different for these schools at all the next slide um so let's talk about actual enrollment compared to what we projected for the year so we were way off on our projections which isn't necessarily too surprising considering we weren't quite sure what to expect this year overall we had projected 6573 students our total number of students were serving currently is 64.04 so we're serving about 170 kids less than what we had planned uh two and you can see grade by grade um you know across our uh k5 it every grade level is lower than
184what we had projected middle school not quite as much in high school actually is higher than what we had projected our kindergarten class is where we saw the biggest uh change where our actual kindergarten class was 60 kids less than what we had anticipated it to be so um we'll be deep diving into more of this information because we're starting to develop our enrollment projections for next year so those projections are due to the state each year in december so in a matter of a couple of weeks we'll begin our work on enrollment projections for next year the next slide talks about our show's enrollment by school projected versus actual and again every elementary school um serving less students than what we had anticipated middle schools as well they're both serving less our high schools
185are actually serving more kids or miraculously corvallis high school was exactly as we projected it i don't i don't have a magic 8 ball for that one but it worked out and corvallis online we did not we did not project enrollment for this school um when we built the enrollment projections last december we didn't even know that we were going to continue the corvallis online auction so we started with a zero projection and currently serving 177. muddy creek is also experiencing uh again similar to what we are experiencing in our district schools as well less students than anticipated um and then the last thing i wanted to show which kind of ties these two things together the next slide then shows sort of what our raw student teacher ratios are these numbers aren't necessarily class
186size um because it's just purely based on our enrollment numbers and our fte that's budgeted for these schools but obviously our ratios are low er than what they usually are and that's because our enrollment was lower than what we projected and we have not modified our staffing levels we didn't lower our staffing levels because of that and so you can see across the board at the elementary level our average student situations are in the low 20s and that continues even through our high schools where we still are in the mid-20s with our student-teacher ratios so those are things that um again we when we start to build the budget for next year we we anticipate so we're starting over our our target ratios at the elementary level are 24 so we're not way off it
187won't require a ton of adjustment but we will be i'm looking at that moving forward just to maintain a sustainable level of staffing that aligns with the actual number of students we're serving so that is the end of the slides i have um and if there's orion has a comment or question at two comments um the first one is i spent the day with superintendents across our region and this is the norm this isn't um an outlier this is pretty common across the state um in terms of enrollment that folks see so just kind of keep that in mind when we think about the funding per atm and how the um the basically the support financial support per adm will probably go up across the state because there's fewer students enrolled statewide the second thing
188is that i also our class our student or student-to-teacher ratio is really great and i want to highlight that because this is the year when you want it to be great because it is also a year where students are coming back to us after i'm having been through the pandemic as you all are well aware so um while the numbers are there's some concern with those numbers there's also some um commonality in terms of what we see statewide and also if we're going to have a year of that kind of ratio this is the year to have it does anyone have any questions or comments vince so when i look at this data i'm really it gives me pause um of course you know it doesn't give me pause with anything to do with the
189district or your responses to it um i'm not concerned about there that we weren't able to accurately predict what i'm really concerned about and it's really that that total enrollment by grade and that decline going going down in in grade levels and so i'm not really talking to district staff here i'm talking to my colleagues on the board um my sense is that this is a structural problem with our community more and more our community is not welcoming to families uh simply because people can't get housing and i just jumped online uh to look at you know medium prices did a couple uh couple sources uh one reported uh average sale price of four hundred and forty two thousand dollars another one was for the zillow said 471 thousand dollars average sale price for a
190home [Music] um so this data really just stands out as as a real warning sign and so we have i think we have a role to advocate in our community and i know that we have some housing developments slated but i'm concerned that they are not going to be at a pricing level that's going to be approachable for families and so um for folks who are watching this video or online with us right now you know take this as a warning um that our community is in trouble and if we wanted to be uh welcoming to families we're gonna have to make some policy changes to make that happen um i was just gonna mention for this like i think that there was a lot of question of how many people would come back um
191either in person or are online or in general and i don't i know that the numbers are down but i don't think it's as bad as it could have been and i wanted to recognize that especially if it's a trend across the state and i'm also thinking about how many um folk may have not came back to corvallis that may have been here before because they moved or they're working remotely for various employers in that and the county and in the district area and they just didn't come back um if they left because of the reasons that vince already mentioned so i don't have to repeat that but um it's hard because we know what these numbers mean as far as like enrollment and budgets and stuff like that and it's hard to have something
192that we can tangibly do to address it and i just wanted to recognize that we i hope that um we can address some of those structural issues that vince has already brought up among others in town including like the climate for folk that um because it is a predominantly white town and so i know that has to do with some of the reason why people leave and have not known several colleagues that have left because of climate in town and so i think that there's a lot of factors that are completely out of our control and i wanted to recognize that um and say like it's not as bad as it could have been but i do appreciate you doing all these number crunchings for us olivia because i i like reading them like i
193was like but i know you do a lot of work for in behind the scenes so thank you and um thanks for helping us make sense of what that means as far as like projecting into the future too for the district thank you and thank you olivia for taking the time to go through this with us share the report in advance as well as to prepare a presentation to share with us i'm just really grateful for you for doing that and i get excited in seeing and diving into the numbers as some of my other colleagues do as well one of the you mentioned that a next step was doing a little bit of a deep dive into trying to understand maybe some of the differences between the actual and the projected i'm just curious
194if you could tell us a little bit more about what that process might look like or the types of things that you might be looking into to help understand some of those differences as you think about projecting for next year yeah when it comes to enrollment projections we spend most of our time really focused on the kindergarten number um when kids go from one grade to the next we always have a lot of historical context there and it's generally a lot easier to predict what that looks like for example we always see our ninth grade class is always bigger than the previous year's eighth grade class because we historically have students that enroll in our high school that may have attended like a private school or been homeschooled through eighth grade so there's historical aspects
195that we apply from one grade to the next but kinder is always tricky because while we have a lot of birth rate data we look at the statewide number we look at county and zip code data and sort of try to translate that you know to six years later and what that looks like and because the birth rate has declined quite a bit and because it doesn't necessarily mean that uh you know if someone had a baby in corvallis you know five years ago that they're still here right now and that that six-year-old is going to enroll next year so that's usually where we have the most challenging time and so we just look at how that birth rate data translates to our actual kindergarten class over like the last 10 to 15 years to
196try to figure out like what are some averages or some trends that that help us with that and i think um [Music] we anticipated a lot we kind of added to our projection this year for kindergarten thinking that there were students that maybe uh delayed the first year of school because of the pandemic but i don't think that actually happened and i think that's why our kindergarten number was so off i don't think there was as much delayed enrollment as we had thought there would be we continue to see homeschool numbers that are a little higher than normal and that's the same as last year but i would say that having our corvallis online option has definitely made a difference in districts where they did not continue to offer a comprehensive distance learning option i
197think those districts actually suffered a greater enrollment loss on average and so [Music] there's a lot of positives in all of it and going back to what brian said we know that uh statewide um you know there's a general decline in enrollment um the funding level doesn't change so the per student amount will probably go up so we haven't attempted to project what the change in enrollment means for our bottom line because actually the state's updating those estimates right now they just allowed districts to go in and update their enrollment projections and so we used our october one numbers um and updated our projections and as long as the majority of districts do that work when the state recalculates those estimates in a couple of weeks i think we'll have a better understanding but we
198don't anticipate it being a huge a huge issue so for the most part enrollment projection is very technical exercise except for kindergarten it becomes more of um you know you can start by throwing darts and then you just talk to a lot of different people and run all your methodologies by them and get everyone's opinion and then just decide on a number and stick with it and budget for reserve fte because if we end up having more kids than what we planned we have a way to deploy those resources really quickly thanks olivia that's really helpful and you also answered my other question just around whether or not this impacted sort of the bottom line and the budget and then um you also touched on some of the intersectionality too i know lou you were
199referencing that earlier in terms of thinking about some of the blended identities of students and as you were sharing olivia it got me thinking too in terms of i noticed that catherine jones harrison for instance was a little bit lower in enrollment prediction and thinking about students in life skills programs who it may have been harder to come back and maybe going online also was not a good fit so thinking about some of those just challenges families are experiencing in making that decision to come back or when to come back thank you the other thing i think is worth noting is the projection for linus pauling versus the actual for linus pauling and as we've had lots of conversations about boundaries in the past i think that's just important data to the for the board
200to be aware of sami yeah thank you uh i i was going to ask about the 169 students less how does that translate but uh in terms of money but i think i'm i'm comfortable with that uncertainty because of uh uh the big pot from the state uh it is going to determine that more than anything else um vince and shawna's and the lew's comments really made me realize something important here uh i think we need to share this report with the city council mayor and uh commissioners uh with permission of the board uh if uh kim ryan or myself uh send it i would like to share that a little bit of perspective here frequently from uh land use hearings and comments and people who wants to lobby for against land use our development
201uh they say they claim that we don't have capacity for our schools so we should not develop more we don't have capacity for kids in schools so we should not develop more and that's a myth data here shows it's very clearly our uh doors are open and and we want to welcome more kids uh actually we are pricing out to people so i think this data is so important to share and um i think that we we need to really be uh transparent with that as we are but have uh the city council and our partners in the accounting as well uh share that's with developers share that with uh uh during hearings or after hearings during deliberations so uh the community is aware about the facts uh one thing i realize also is that
202we need to vaccinate our kids as soon as possible uh it is a personal choice of every parent and every kid but that personal choice uh for entering the school is going to exclude people from coming back and we're seeing the impact of that personal choice into uh people maybe choosing not to go back and being not only priced out of school but also not feeling safe in school so we gotta have a conversation continue to have the conversation uh and ryan uh your recommendations i think puts us on the right track in terms of communication education outreach and this is another lens to look at it where's our enrollment and how can we uh make sure we get back on track and his vaccination part of it and as jonah mentioned um maybe that's
203uh that's an element why we have uh some schools are less than others with that sound i have a question do we know uh for basic basic uh uh carlson our or uh catherine jones harrison do we know why it is really significant drop is there any trends that we know of uh is it the location what is it that's we have a huge drop i wouldn't say they've had a huge drop they've been regularly declining for the last five years each year i mean so we we anticipated that those enrollments would look like they they currently look um in for those specific neighborhoods i think it's just that age group of kids in that neighborhood are starting to reach that middle school and high school age group and so and in particular um even
204even though there may be you know new developments or new construction in those areas historically when you look at our enrollment you know five years ago when you look at it now there has been a substantial number of housing units added in the last five years and obviously that doesn't always correlate to to students and i'm sure most of that has to do with the price point but for those neighborhoods in particular um we we anticipated that those school enrollments would be decreasing in particular at bessie coleman they had um a really large fifth grade class last year and a large fifth grade class the year prior to that as well so sometimes you can see that coming um and and that's been the case for for those two programs for those two schools thank
205you olivia i was saying i was looking thinking about imagination too and one of the things that happened this year as this summer if june we finished feeling like they're going to be vaccines things are going to look up and then delta hits and this atmosphere was very different when school started and there was a lot of anxiety about sending kids back to school and going back to school full time so i think that's and then i was interested that you know high schools are high those kids are old enough to get vaccinated elementary schools are low we're losing more students and those kids aren't old enough to get vaccinated so it was interesting we were receiving a lot of calls right at the beginning of school or you know a week or two weeks
206before school started and just trying to better you know make a final decision for families so there was some of that as well um yeah that's not surprising with the impact on that anxiety decision um i was just gonna just remind folk like some we can do all we can but some of it's still gonna be out of our control like literally a lot of younger people are choosing not to have kids very specifically for things like climate change affordability it does cost a lot of money and people understand that and so i don't want i want us to be like aware that that is a trend too about like family planning especially with folk that may be having younger that are having younger kids that will be entering the schools and so i don't
207i think it's just a really complicated conversation and it's good to have the combo and like some of it we're just not going to be able to control and that's okay and we can do the best we can and thank you olivia like sammy that was in my mind too like the numbers thing so it's helpful to know like we'll still be able to serve the students and teachers have jobs and staff have jobs to deliver the services and um if anything maybe they'll have a little bit more one-on-one time or something in the future but um for now we're at where we're at and yeah i just want to bring that other piece of reality into the conversation because it's it is happening i hear about it all the time yeah well i sort
208of feel like that not you having the low teacher the student ratio this year is is good for students who missed a year and a half of school and it's also good for our staff members who are this is a hard school year and so to you have lower ratios it's probably beneficial to them this year too um anything else on this topic this appreciation for olivia putting it together for us and helping us to stay focused um and so we will move on to our final um agenda um item which is board member comments anyone have any comments as you mean this so i was reviewing another another district's school board meeting and i watched uh superintendent uh literally break down in the middle of the meeting talking about the stresses on teaching staff
209and staff in general and i just want to bring the board's attention a conversation uh so shauna and i got to have a small group meeting with the superintendent last week and this very topic came up that this is just a really tough time for education we're in our second year of the pandemic and the pressure and the stress on staff it couldn't be greater right now and so out of that conversation sean i had this great idea that you know that we should partner um you know you know to show our appreciation support for our educators and our staff and our schools and um so you know the superintendent moved very quickly and got us a meeting with um with the director of the uh of the chamber of commerce and so i just
210want to wanted to surface this for the board because we are going to have a role to play in this but um i think it's time that we all all pull together and do what has been done for frontline workers for healthcare workers and now it's time for our education workers to get some support um the support that they need because they're doing tremendous work for our kids and so i i just want to let you know i'm just letting folks know and shauna and ryan if you have want to share in that you know and give some more details that'd be great but there'll be more information coming thank you thanks sarah a couple things um first i wanted to give a shout out to um bicycle education um folks uh they had it
211at garfield for fifth grade i think it was last week and so every morning i would see um little pools of fifth graders learning how to make left-hand turns coming down my street made me very happy um so thanks to the staff who are working hard to make that happen and doing it without volunteers because we don't have volunteers in our schools right now so um so fantastic that they were able to pull it off the kids really loved it i heard a lot of joyous squeals from little little kids riding by also heard more than one time when somebody hit the brakes um maybe inappropriately and so just proves that we need bicycle education so thank you very much for offering that um and then i wanted to um just take a moment to
212respond to some uh themes that came out in emails this week from folks um so the first thing i wanted to say is i really appreciate last week when we had our meeting i shared that i was concerned by the number of references in emails coming that had um that used racist references to the covet outbreak and i didn't see any new ones this week and um so i really appreciate it and i know some people who emailed last week um emailed this week too and so uh thank you if you know who you are um you were more intentional i hope on purpose but if not please still know that it did get noticed um i think in all of the emails there was like one link that used um terminology that we had
213called out last week so anyway um so thank you community for um being attentive to that either by monitoring your um your posting and your editing or by withdrawing so that you didn't have to either way our inboxes just didn't have um references to um such a racist um overtones and i i'm grateful for that so thank you the last thing i wanted to note was um we got communications this week related to the discussion last week around outreaching i'm in the plan for um increasing awareness and community engagement related to vaccines it was implied or outright stated in in a couple of correspondences that that that plan assumes that people um communities of color are somehow unable to understand this information or get this information for themselves it seems like it's an overt statement
214that they're not educated i want to just clarify that that's not at all what this plan is about the plan to participate in community engagement is not because of any assumption that people can't um understand information or don't know where to get it it's a couple of things one is it's it's a response to a state and national trend we aren't making up numbers around where vaccination rates fall vaccination rates are lower among particular communities in benton county in oregon and in the country and i don't i'm not going to say that i understand all of the reasons behind why that is i'm going to say that that's a concerning trend and we want to make sure that we're taking every effort and as an entire community that we don't leave any unanswered questions out
215there that we don't leave any unanswered or unknown resources for um responding to the uh pandemic we want to make sure that everybody knows how they can get those um but it isn't uh it's not a a statement about what people are capable of understanding or whether they're willing to go out and get information it's about that kova just really doesn't care it's not concerned with uh any of our ethnic or racial backgrounds it is going to go where it can find a host and if there are communities that have more opportunities for hosts they are potentially more vulnerable and i they are my neighbors they are my colleagues they are my children's classmates and their families um and so it it matters to me because i would like to see as many people in
216our county and in our schools come through this and still be here with us in the months and the years to come and that is going to involve some education um it is evident from community conversation that the education is not just for communities that aren't getting vaccinated uh that are getting vaccinated at lower rates it's for a bunch of people right here identities i am part of who are also not only not getting vaccinated but sharing misinformation and so to those who are knowingly sharing misinformation i'm asking you to please stop sharing this information because it isn't helping any of us we can participate in actual dialogue but um we don't there really isn't room in this this community response for misinformation um so i just wanted to point that out and so if
217you emailed on those topics and i haven't had a chance to reply to you i hope you're listening or review this because i i'm hoping to um have you hear this now and that's it for me thanks thanks terese for hitting on all those points um and if i had two things two points i wanted to bring up one of them um is related to some of the stuff theresa so i'll start with that one i noticed an interesting trend today um was it today i don't know what day it was it was sometime this week since our last meeting and looking at osu's kova dashboard because as the community should be well aware by now i like looking at those kind of things um but they're out of the i didn't do the math
218until earlier though out of the over 4 000 um tests that osu has administered they only had 58 positive cases and that's been in corvallis but um they also have a 93 and 94 vaccination rate among students and faculty staff respectively and so one i noticed that correlation when we were talking about the numbers last week with benton county numbers and how the numbers of students testing positive are a lower rate overall than like the county and so i'm noticing this trend which hopefully the community understands what that trend means is that the um the schools the students in the corral school district are also vaccinated at i think it was 10 percent higher than the county rate isn't that what it was something like that and it's showing in the numbers that the higher
219those vaccination rates get the less cases are gonna start popping up and so i hope that as a community osu is part of the corvallis community but they can't carry the entire weight of the community and so i hope as a community we can get to that 93 94 percent rate and continue to see those numbers significantly lower with our positive cases because regardless of what people think people that some of us know including myself are still dying and getting very ill and so i think that the more we can take responsibility as a community to help with that um we'll continue to see those numbers go down and the kids and the students in our district be at less risk as well as their families and the staff and so i hope folk understand
220what those numbers mean because it means a lot and i seen that correlation i was like oh my gosh that's the trend that we've seen with the data about the district and the numbers and so okay i will stop with my vaccine plug please understand that the numbers are telling us a story that we should listen to community um and then the other thing i wanted to bring up has to do with some things that i've been hearing amongst young people in the district about comments being said and climates created in the classrooms that sound a little bit concerning and hopefully we'll have some updates from safe in the future about some of that information but i am a little bit concerned about what i've heard so far how early on we are and um
221i hope we can continue as a district to work on addressing um racialized and gendered and identity-based um what leads into bullying and um hope we can get to a different place where those comments aren't being made and um yeah i'll stop at that but i would love to have a deeper conversation as a board about this in the future and i hope we can do that thank you way more one more thing thank you for all your work everybody and to my colleagues too for your work and the community thank you um sammy yeah thanks uh uh sarah if it's okay i have some comments but i want to share some thoughts uh for the last thing uh lou mentioned uh is that we encourage folks who might share things like this uh to
222look at all students belong and also the bias uh vice incident uh form so they could engage with the former if they feel comfortable with that that will help the district to collect data respond and and prevent hopefully uh and other than that i want us i have some comments one of them after i heard therese mentioned uh the comments i want to uh publicly uh uh claim responsibility and apologize for my colleagues for being a little bit late on the uh board chair acknowledgement of the emails and uh the community members if you haven't heard from any board member yet uh it's my fault uh because i have to reply first acknowledging the email and i'm gonna get to it uh really quick so uh i apologize and i promise you i'm gonna get
223to them really quick but if that's an indication of one thing is how uh really great uh uh and community engagements we're having lots of people reaching out about so many things and we're reading them one by one so really thank you for the community members for reaching out and emailing us and on engagement i i i am i wanted to share uh some stuff about the vaccine conversations and detect everything has been said about it um in the past week alone i had really strongly emotional conversations with people whether it's constituents friends family members uh we can or even oregonians from all the way from malala to lincoln county all the way from people who say how dare you not having a mandate right away you should have voted on a mandate to people
224uh who thought that we voted against the mandates and they want to know how they can implement such a thing so uh of course i shared with them our recommendations and that's we did not take an action on mandate uh but more than that uh really had strong conversation around what does it mean to vaccinate uh the the spectrum of personal choice to a collective uh responsibility of public health measures and how that translates into uh people dying as lou mentioned those are people we know close to us those are people like a family member who did not get to vaccinate until uh earlier last week uh or this this week and and had uh a reaction and uh adverse adverse reaction and and survived that survived that adverse reaction and the doctors recommended the
225second dose for a simple fact that uh the family member would have uh with almost certainty died uh if they had contracted covid and they were holding out until this week for since the uh the vaccine was available so that's what's really emotionally hitting me close home uh conversations with friends who were exposed or secondhand exposed or children exposed developing symptoms it's just really hard and and i think a friend who was really hesitant to have the conversation and started with with with this preamble sami i'm your friend i don't want to have this conversation and you expect that you will change my mind i will not change my mind uh i had to really come with an open mind uh and and also frankly a surprise that i i was having conversation closely with
226the person who was not vaccinated and i thought there is a social contract about uh knowing if someone is not vaccinated uh and and that's helped me to protect myself at the same time i felt really it's important for us to be open and to have people meet people where they are uh so they can make a an informed decision uh that changes from one person to another uh but i don't know what's the solution i think the solution is individualized every person uh we need to reach out to them and understand where they are to get them there but also as every solution and every approach should be individualized i think as policy makers we gotta make we gotta do something we cannot wait and uh it's urgent it's people's lives it's our kids
227mental and physical health and our educators mental and physical health so i i yeah uh just send me your thoughts i'm i'm really emotional about this this week um in so many ways uh and and uh well that's i'll stop my comments thank you oh sorry lou i think your hand is with two you go first i think you're going up and then down to race but okay i just wanted to i just want i feel like we need to end like i know that it's such a solemn topic and it creates a lot of feels and i just wanted to acknowledge all the positive things that happened this evening and the awesome bond updates and the partnership with the foundation and what that means to the community and the students we work with and
228the resolution that we just passed tonight and to not forget about the good work that we do as a board and that the community comes together behind and that the staff works on too and the partnerships we have and so i just really wanted to end like this doesn't have to be the end obviously therese wants to say something but i wanted to bring us back to that moment of like it's hard and i don't want us to forget the positive pieces and because i don't know how many people know this but there is there's a lot that we um we read and we consider and so to be able to highlight the positive pieces feels really good um because it is hard work to serve the community in this capacity beyond just these meetings
229that you see us on for the last three and a half hours so that's all i just wanted to bring it bring that up i also wanted to end with um an acknowledgment of um obviously gratitude for the work of the board but i specifically want to call out sammy and sarah and lou who have they they carry the leadership role of our board um i don't think that anyone um who is no to all of you out there who are just eager to run for the board next time i want you to understand it's a lot of email i just hope you realize a lot of email and in in the screen culture of zoom that we live in right now yikes it's really a lot of email um but that said uh you
230know i just am in awe of the um the work and the effort that sammy um and sarah and lou put into um the community engagement on behalf of the board um they carry a much much heavier load than i do in terms of responding to uh people in the community so um you know thank you for thank you for reaching out to us thank you for sharing and for wanting to engage thank you also for your patience that we are mere mortals and the three who are leading us in this effort um are working really really hard um and i just don't think that we i just it feels really important to just acknowledge that as a board so much of what we are able to do these agendas that are filled with really
231important topics these packets that get out to us that happens because we have strong leadership in our board and they work closely with our district and they align with and they spend hours and i don't that's not an exaggeration hours of time in communication each week to make sure that the topics that we need to to contemplate we need to review we need to have public discourse on are making it in front of us those things do not just magically appear there is no agenda elf that shows up and makes this for us it is it is there are people behind that and i am grateful for uh for each of you and so um i appreciate sami that you want to acknowledge that it's taken longer than normal but what i want to say
232to you is anybody waiting on an email from you it's worth the wait to give you the breathing room because what you will respond with will be thoughtful and considerate so if you're waiting folks um hang tight because you're going to get a response from somebody who's really doing their very very best to make sure that we care for all of the the constituents in our community and so thank you um to each of you for the work that you are doing thank you charisse um we had lots of reports on this um agenda today and all of those things take staff time and people crunching numbers and pulling information and so i want to appreciate the staff for the work that's done to get us information that we can digest and understand um because
233that's you know getting information out in a way that's understandable is a valuable thing and i appreciate that it gets done um anything else this evening hearing no more the media the corvallis school board is adjourned