School Board Meeting 3-11-2021

001the corvallis school board business meeting on march 11 2021 is called to order we do have all uh members of the board uh on here for the roll call so the records show that they're all in attendance and the first item on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance please join me if you're willing and able for the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all for being here i want to welcome especially our community members who are watching us live or through the recording on youtube i want to point that our live stream includes in the description the agenda meeting link so you can find

002the meeting agenda link where you can find the information and documents that we upload to the meeting packets through the school board meeting website and next item on the agenda is school board member reports any reports from school board members vince i just have a brief mention here uh the district is meeting with osea which is the union representing our classified staff uh we had a planning meeting this this week and we'll start at the end of april in actual negotiations once we have a little more uh clarity on the fiscal landscape for for schools looking forward and that's all i have thank you any other reports ellu um we didn't talk about the naacp session right i don't think so i think that was after i'm sorry it's like that i'm in the mood

003and there's dishes behind me thanks for your patience you open um i just wanted to say that the session went really well and it was great to be in community um with focus they were learning more about what school boards do and um and also like how to engage with us and so i really encourage community members that want to have future informational sessions like that other organizations to reach out to us because i think it's great for us to be able to go to the community not just invite you to our meetings and i think that was a great learning experience for everyone yeah thank you any other reports vince are you good so i want to report that the public public schools foundation is fundraising uh from the breakfast and uh if i'm

004not mistaken it's 100 000 goal was met through that event so really gratitude to our community members and those who are donating to the public schools foundation uh i am privy of the good work and the important work some of us will hear about the scholarships program and the partnership that the schools foundation and the school district have is exemplary it's a really role model for other districts so thank you for our community members for supporting this important work uh the other reports i want to mention through my capacity on osba uh we're working actively on ospa caucus of color we're working actively on sharing information updates about legislative action so uh there are bills that comes to uh interest of our caucus members and we follow them we share information to them so i'm

005really grateful for this work and i'll be sharing with you some updates legislative updates that might be pertinent to the school board in corvallis and into education in general i encourage you to participate and with that i want to mention that i shared an informational um invitation to those who might be interested in a bill that increases that that includes uh 16 and 17 years old to be able to vote and i shared that with our student representatives and i testified in support of it personally in my personal capacity but i was really pleased to see kate faltz testify in uh and bring her opinion about uh the bill it was phenomenal i haven't recorded so i'll be happy to share it with the board members as well i also included chair wagner uh comments

006afterwards saying uh you have bright future ahead of you and if you were in my district i would feel worried so i would say for me i would say the same thing uh you have a great bright future ahead of you really your testimony was strong and in my personal capacity i want to say the involvements of our students here in corvall school districts is a role model and expanding their access to votes in school boards is a good step ah forward and i was really fortunate to connect with uh this opportunity kate feel free to comment on that if you want or provide more perspective sure well i personally really enjoyed testifying because i think this is really important i was glad to have the chance and i've been working on a separate project

007about getting more youth involved in government politics so i had data at the ready and i was happy to do it i was glad it was well received and i'm looking forward to working more on it because i think it's really important legislation wonderful thank you and what a great example of reward learning and civic engagement absolutely next item the agenda is the superintendent's report all right well i just have a couple things i wanted to highlight from the last couple of weeks uh the first one to share to share with you is that last week was classified employee week and so we have 414 classified employees in our school district doing everything from serving our students lunches and meals to making sure our schools are safe and clean getting students back and forth to

008school and and oftentimes also supporting students individually so it's an opportunity again for us to recognize the work that they do um and what an important participation and commitment they make to our kids in our schools i think that's even more stark and specific this year as we think about making sure our schools are ready for kids to return it's a really important role that they have played and in preparing us for our students to return to school so again as you have a chance to interact with or say thank you to our classified employees please make the make sure to find that opportunity to do so for board members and also community members also this is national school breakfast week and so um one of the things that we'll be offering tomorrow is a

009special meal um and we'll be offering a special meal breakfast meal every um once a month as we move through the rest of the school year it's going to be fruit pizza tomorrow so it's fruit as well as healthy bread and then when kids come through tomorrow as well with partnerships we'll be doing the food hero grow this program and so students will also leave with seeds that they can go and plant for spring flowers so again that's tomorrow morning as kids come through and um collect their meals for the day also i wanted to um highlight one of our students suraj kul um carney um siraj was recognized as oregon's top high school youth volunteer in the 2021 prudential spirit and community award program as a state honoree siraj will receive 2 in scholarship

010an engraved medallion and also a virtual celebration where the other 101 state honorees will also be recognized based on his number of volunteer hours he's also qualified for the president's volunteer service award which recognizes americans of all ages who volunteer significant amounts of their time i'm in service to the community um a president's a volunteer service award certificate and a letter from president biden will be coming to saraj's mailbox soon and again i'm congratulations um to suraj for his work on one of the areas that i know has been a vital area of volunteerism has been through with our mass brigade and so again thank you siraj for helping to keep us safe in this wealth community another area of recognition for community support is the dolly parton imagination library it's in partnership with our

011early learning hub with our library with samaritan and with the school district so all students actually not students pre-school age students future students of ours k-5 can sign up for the program and receive a book a month all the way up to their right before they come to school and those books are everything from the little engine that could to the last book before kids come back to us or start with us is look out kindergarten here i come and so if you are a parent or community member who wants to sign up a preschooler anywhere from birth to five please go ahead and go to the dolly parton imagine library website and sign your child up and at this point this started on march 2nd read across america day and we already have 340

012kids from corvallis that are signed up for the program so again it's an exciting thing to do and a way to really influence and focus on literacy and then the last update i have for you is around sustainability the corvall school district participates in the energy trust of oregon's strategic energy management program to reduce our use of electricity and natural gas those are our two highest bills in terms of utilities as a part of the program we've earned thirty thousand dollars in incentives and also reduced energy costs the most recent incentive was a challenge to all its participants to create a video um to be used to promote sustainability students from our district submitted three videos earning our district a thousand the thousand dollar stipend and also one hundred dollars for each of their green

013teams and so we wanted to share one of the videos with you tonight um from the sheldon green team which is coordinated by liz weiland um and with that i'm gonna ask parker to go ahead and turn on the video i sustainability video we are going to talk about how you can be sustainable within your home to have a better future [Music] tell people you know that they can also help make a change for the better treatment of our environment because the more people willing to be sustainable the healthier our earth will become one very important thing that you can do for the environment is to educate yourself it's great to be able to be good for the environment but the first step of that is to know what to do whether that's by book

014by podcast by documentary by listening to somebody else speak you need to educate yourself this way you can also educate others about how to be better for the environment another thing you can do is take some steps to reduce your carbon footprint this is if you eat red meat try eating less of it raising cows uses a lot of resources and has a very high carbon footprint another thing you can do is try driving less and if you can walking or biking more these are all steps you can take to reduce your carbon footprint hi i'm kate do you have any ideas on how you could help be more sustainable or help save our planet you've probably gotten some ideas from some of my fellow teammates but nothing is so simple than turning off lights

015when you leave a room this is the same with tvs and other devices such as computers laptops ipads tablets and phones if it's not if you're not engaged in it or if you're not using it turn it off power strips are the same way if it's not charging something or you're not using it to power another appliance turn it off just don't forget to turn it back on when you need it next all three of these options are helping the environment and helping you save more money happy savings another way to be sustainable in your home is recycle you can use any type of bin to recycle plastic bottles glass or any paper one way that you can be more sustainable at home is to save materials to make into something else [Music] and i'd

016like to thank you for watching our production of how to be sustainable in your own home i hope you can use this and thank you for watching so in conclusion um as we near earth day it's an opportunity for us to see the work that our students on our green teams and sustainability work that's happening in our district and also for us to again recognize that while we have been in distance learning we're still finding ways for students to come together and interact with one another and create something across spaces and across the community so with that i'll conclude my superintendent's report thank you very much ryan what a wonderful video and great update uh any comments or questions from our board members or students representatives wonderful thank you really thank you and thank you

017to our students who are sharing this video i learned so many things there so thanks for sharing yes sarah sorry i wasn't fast enough with my hand um ryan i just wanted to know how the kindergartners did this week yeah so it was a great week for us to bring our kinders back so you know that first week is in phasing so small groups each day but one of the things that really stood out to me about the day um because i i visited a different school each day and one of the things that really stood out to me was that often times you see kinders who are tentative and a little nervous about starting school but what happened was they were able to see people that they know and they've been interacting with even

018in this different format um all year long and so it was almost like a new um not an inter not an introduction but it was like a welcome greeting and so it was awesome to see that happen for kids as they got to interact and meet those people that they've known for for months now but they have not seen face to face so that was really cool to see i know i heard one story about a student who was a little nervous because they didn't know exactly what that person was going to look like because they had been seeing them without their mask because they're in this format and so they went through an activity of like you know doing a mask and so what they would expect to see as they greeted one another

019um again creative ways to help to establish and uh nurture that bond between the staff and the students so um i would say that it was a success and i'm excited to see next week when they return and our first graders come on board as well so thanks for the question sarah wonderful question thank you any other questions or comments see none thanks ryan and uh we want to transition now to student representatives reports and let's start with college hell we have jesse martin with us hi i'm jessie sorry if this background noise um i hope everybody's gone okay but um as a school with about 150 kids we never really have much to report so i'm sorry about that but we do have this um book that our academy class writing our world made

020and it's basically an anthology book and it has a bunch of poems from everyone in the class and stories and it's just i read through some of them i wish i had more time to read them but all of them are pretty long um but you guys are just talking about sustainability our green team our small green team is gonna be work uh gonna try to work with sustainable corvallis and um the school board or not you guys but the school and the city and um try to plant trees on the east side of our building which would eventually help with shade and heat because our building's pretty old um jesse i believe that we lost you so uh i'll wait for a little bit or maybe how about jesse we'll wait for you until

021we get the connection restarted and we'll get back to you can you hear me jesse yeah we i think we lost jesse so yeah we'll come back to jesse and next up is uh crescent valley uh we have kate waltz and calvin karlski is uh unable to join and we have with us uh simon moulton uh standing in so simon and kate simone i'm sorry simon that's okay yeah so um calvin can't be here today because he has a soccer game i wish their team the best of luck um before i get into my statement i just want to say um i know siraj he um the speech and debate and he is an absolute legend and he totally deserves all the recognition coming his way he is amazing and also just a truly kind

022human being who deserves all the best and i can't wait to see what he does next so i'm really great i'm really glad to hear him getting some recognition and also i know miss weyland because she was my science teacher seventh grade and my theater teacher eighth grade and she is amazing and i was in green team while i was at shuttle one so seeing that was awesome and they're doing a great job so all of that was awesome to see and i just had to share my enthusiasm okay um going into the stuff that's actually relevant to crescent valley um so we had our parent teacher conferences uh this wednesday when we didn't have school so that was yesterday it was like a million years ago but it was yesterday and we're also gonna

023have spring break after uh the end of next week so we're all looking forward to that um our fall sports so football volleyball soccer cross country cheer are continuing to practice and have had some games which are live streamed on various platforms so go raiders and speaking of competitions speech and debate has the national qualifying tournament this weekend and will be preparing for district competitions to qualify for state and then of course stevie will be sending cohorts a b back to school april 12th through the 19th this is going to be a psa to my fellow representatives kind of going off of what samuel mentioned about legislation i've heard from a lake oswego student rep about connecting people in our positions around the state to advocate for things like senate bill 776 and senate joint

024resolution 25 so i'll get more info on to that wow words i will get more information on that to you guys soon we will probably be meeting next wednesday at five which is kind of a weird time but i just wanted to put that out there um we'll hopefully have some intra-state connections coming up soon and then finally um address to everyone i guess student government has been working on connection and equity so we have a mental health committee that's working on support for cb students we've recently unveiled the student support groups where people can request to be in groups with different people and they'll be a counselor moderating and this will be every other week so that people can talk about mental health in a safe space and also that committee presented to a

025combined group of cv and chs online students on mental health at a recent karen connect meeting and we will also be working on a project soon for next year on equity and social justice curriculum and additionally simone and several other uh people from across the district have been working on a presentation on diversity and hiring so i'm going to turn it over to her to talk more about it um one of our junior class presidents and she's also a great student leader in student government so i will pass it over to small good evening everybody my name is simone moulton i'm one of the junior class presidents at crescent valley i alongside both teachers and students of color across the school district have been working on a presentation around the importance of a diverse teaching

026force and how our experiences with diversity or lack of diversity have impacted the corvallis school district students these students of color have put vulnerability and honesty into their testimonials and want to share their voices experiences and perspectives with you we made contact in february asking for a spot in the agenda in today's march 11th meeting unfortunately we never received any form of correspondence back this is important to us and we want you all to hear our voices so i am coming in today and asking directly that we are assured a spot on the april 8th meeting agenda thank you simone and i would definitely connect you with uh parker our secretary and i'll be in touch with you soon through parker to make sure that we can uh have a time to discuss the issues

027i know uh the real estate of uh the issues that we need to discuss is limited but if there is one thing i learned about school boards is student voice matter and it should be a function center so definitely we'll make sure that we have a time to discuss and deliberate and maybe share uh information yeah um and then with that i'll go next into a crevasse high school we have ezra heart and christian moon uh ezra couldn't be here tonight so it's just me but fall sports have been going well and we just started our peer mentoring program it's currently focused on helping freshmen succeed in their distance learning and helping them or those who are in hybrid uh have a smooth transition into in-person instruction right now we have over 20 groups to

028have around eight freshmen in each our student leaders in hybrid also have the chance to be on campus with the freshmen on their first week back to help them find their classes have some familiar faces and help them ease into that transition because it's like it's a big first day kind of week and that's it for us thank you thank you and um i'm gonna try to see if we have jesse still with us or were you able to return yeah i'm sorry my zoom literally always does that to me whenever try talking um i don't know what you guys heard but the main thing i wanted to get across was that um we're gonna work with the city and the school to hopefully plant some trees on the east side of our building to

029block the sunlight which will help with our heat in the summer mainly because our school building is pretty old compared to the other ones on uh in corvallis so that will eventually help with our um energy used yeah um but i guess we're also our our very small green team is um sustainable corvallis soon too so that's cool but that's all we have as well thank you very much uh does anyone from our board members have a question or comment to our students representatives i had a question for jesse um did you have a chance to include your poetry or your writing in the anthology i wasn't in this rotation but i was in the first and we had a similar one but we didn't call it um anthology but um a lot of my

030friends are and it's really cool to see their writing and um i can possibly share with anyone who wants to skate as well that would be great i think that's something where um if you wanted to you know pick out one or two to share then we would make sure that that got forwarded onto the board okay i mean if you want i have one that really stood out to me um if we have time right now i think so yeah okay yeah this is the short one but it's just the point of view of a bike and i don't know why i liked it so much but i am a bike in a shed nobody to ride me and no place i call bed but not so often a boy comes to play ever

031so gently he'll tuck me away more and more as a time flew by the boy grew up and said goodbye but as he grew thick and thin my parts were just too small for him through beats and batters and broken parts he showed me even bikes have hearts i don't know i just really like that that's nice thanks thank you thanks for sharing thank you thank you sorry yeah um simone um yeah okay you're still there i i'm spooling through um so to send that information to us if you could send it to parker dot kang k-a-n-g okay um so sorry we'll try it one more time p-a-r-k-e-r dot s-c-h-u-l-z-e at corvallis.k12.org in order to uh schedule the yeah okay thank you yep that that's it for me awesome thanks yeah okay since we're getting

032into kind of details kate when you talked about speech competitions it's near and dear to my heart could you explain how that national competition relates to the state competition are you involved and and do you have to do state to get to national yeah um literally you do not have to ask me to talk about speech and debate i will gladly just ramble about it as much as anybody will let me um so basically nationals and state are actually separate state is because there's a lot of events that only happen in oregon so like i'll use myself as an example my main events are oratory and impromptu oratory is national so all the rules are the same across the nation but impromptu is only in oregon so i can only compete and prompt you at

033the highest levels at the state because that's not a thing at nationals but i can submit my oratory for nationals and how that works in remote learning is we just do a one take video and so you can submit your one take video or we do like impromptu and debate events live so nationals is one thing and there's like the south oregon district for nationals that's a different thing than the south oregon district for state which is very confusing and i understand why that would be a question about it because it's not very self-explanatory but they're separate i'm not entirely sure when nationals is by no state is always at the end of april and we've been able to do speech and debate virtually so i hope that answered your question any other questions or

034comments all right i want to reiterate our appreciation for our students representatives and if you do have any questions or comments uh during our deliberation of uh the agenda please feel free to do so uh we appreciate your voice that you're live on um with that we'll move uh to open the public comments uh period and i believe we do have a mary there with us mary there if uh you're available could you unuse yourself are you with us no it's not okay all right so we do have one person uh canceled their public college testimony and mary is not with us right now uh for everybody else and for mary as well feel free to email the board at board for balance uh that's o-r that's kidnapped for the ask your vows that k-12

035that's our that us and uh we appreciate your voice and if you want to sign up for the next public comment period uh the instructions are available on meet the board page on the kerbal school board so with that the public comments period is closed the next item on the agenda is the superintendent's 2021 evaluation uh as an overview the preval school district's board of directors provide an animal evaluation of the superintendent um i would like to entertain a motion to approve the crevasse school district board of directors evaluation of the superintendent 2020-21 director vincent so i moved to approve the superintendent evaluation is composed by the board chair director jack conroy thank you it's been moved and seconded any deliberation or discussion and seen them and i will allow for uh your comments and

036uh and maybe uh comments after the uh motion as well see none i will take a vote uh director adams what's your vote hi sexy baker what's your vote hi director conroy what's your vote hi vice chair finger mcdonald what's your vote i'm dr jones what's your phone i director white bear what's your vote hi and the chair of trump was i passes unanimously and with that i'll start reading uh to the record the eval the evaluation statement this is the corval school district board of directors evaluation of superintendents ryan nas 2020-2021 superintendent nas is completing his fifth year as superintendent of the corvallis school district navigating the most challenging crisis one could expect in their career the covet 19 pandemic impacted schools across the state nation and the world corvallis schools were no exception

037being disrupted by the ongoing public health crisis that disrupted all aspects of our lives from the start superintendent nas held a long view of the pandemic response while his eye on strategic priorities this has allowed the district to remain far ahead of the school reopening window in team in terms of programmatic preparedness he has kept his long view of the pandemic response and realizes that even once community spread is contained the resultant needs of children and families will go on for years the corvallis school board recognizes this year for this year's performance of superintendent nas in the strongest terms and with the highest regard and confidence in his leadership 20 20 21 school year priorities the corvallis school district achieved its highest four-year graduation rate of 90 percent in 2019-2020 superintendent nasa's tenure has been

038marked by continued efforts to maintain academic growth for each child despite the descent into the global pandemic the corvallis school district showed marked improvements in graduation rates student superintendent nas continues to work toward meetings as student achievements goals and closing the opportunity gap during these unprecedented times while the full extent of the impacts of covet 19 associated disruptions will remain unknown for years the district not only showed improvements in the four-year graduation rates for all students but also showed growth in the graduation rates of priority student groups in the past year 96 of ninth grade students were on track to graduate with and 86 percent of ninth grade students successfully completing algebra one over the course of the past seven years the graduation rates for hispanic latinx students increased from 52 to 88 and the

039graduation rate for students navigating poverty increased from 53 percent to 83 percent these gains reflect a foundation that was laid for students over the course of their time with us the school board continues to support superintendent nas in examining the impacts of the pandemic and distance learning on elementary reading levels and has full confidence in superintendent nos and his team's ability to close the achievement draft in the years to come it is clear that superintendent nas holds success for every child as a core value and he has ensured that equity is a thread in every aspect of district planning and operations district leaders are supported and feel that they can behold that that can they can be bold in creating systems change system changes to create opportunities for all students and staff there is a

040sense that the previous several years of equity work in the district is growing into a phase of more adaptive change given the extenuating circumstances in the unprecedented times superintendent nos has done an excellent job in navigating equitable systems while staying within regulatory constraints and keeping all our students safe the pandemic has given him an opportunity to apply his values in equity to unprecedented focused action he keeps students that need the most support and care at the forefront of decisions this is evidenced by the distribution of internet hot spots food and supplies for families and the ways in which instruction has been structured he also thinks about the impacts and experiences of staff in the decisions he makes the school renaming task force is another example where he has brought an equity lens in enabling community

041members to feel safe participating and sharing their voice superintendent nas is steadily working on hiring more diverse staff and representative staff that reflects the diversity of our students and community the board looks forward to supporting superintendent nasa's work on diversifying the district's workforce across its buildings and programs the recent supports of the region he also thinks sorry that's all right he also thinks about the impacts and experiences of staff and the decisions he makes the school renaming task force is another example i think we we said that already right yep yes the recent support of the regional racial equity initiative and the implementation of indigenous people's day and black history month resolutions demonstrate superintendent nasa's commitment to an understanding of equity within our schools is directly linked to equity beyond our buildings and policies superintendent

042nas communicates the district's commitment to equity effectively data are always disaggregated and ha and hard questions are asked most often without a request from the board equity and justice are always a thread in communication both internally and externally the community and partners know that equity is a core value of the district and seek to engage in this work early on superintendent nas recognized that the global pandemic was an opportunity for real world learning the distant the district team has been effective in leveraging project-based learning and digital learning to not just mitigate the impact of the pandemic but to take advantage of the opportunity to expand pathways for student learning superintendent nas emphasizes the importance of real world learning because of its effectiveness as a teaching modality under superintendent nasa's leadership the district has made many

043strategic investments in career and technical learning and project-based learning he has made great progress in moving corvall school district closer to being leaders in cte and innovative project-based learning education opportunities he and his leadership team have vigorously worked to create additional success pathways to lead to create leaders uh to create to lead in careers in the trades he is clearly enthusiastic about real-world learning and curry technical engineering and career technical education he uses every opportunity to communicate the district progress in the area and actively seeks community partners we appreciate commitment the commitment to cte programs including growing new areas of focus in the high schools and middle schools cte gains remain a strong example of success in this area the district's success in cte participation is enabling our students to graduate and be engaged in

044growth opportunities beyond graduation investments in programming and infrastructure have been very strategic the board is pleased to learn that 97 percent of cte participants and 98 of cte concentrators in 2019-2020 graduated on time we anticipate that corvall school district under the leadership of superintendent nos will empower students to be adaptive persevering and engaged in an ever-changing world health and wellness have been a focus for superintendent nos over the la in the last two years but especially during the global pandemic he and his team have been scrupulous in planning and preparing for the return of children to in-person instruction at the same time the school nurse program is effective in supporting students and guiding the district in health related decision making his leadership in building mental health clinics into the district school district has provided corvallis

045children an opportunity that few other communities in oregon have a mental health provider available for telehealth with access in school the support of students whole wellness is evidence in decisions being made and the prioritization of resources the mental health challenges brought by the pandemic are enormous the role of social workers is supporting students during this time cannot be understated having his support and this supports infrastructure in place already has helped many find the space care and connection they need food distribution has also been a huge in helping students stay healthy and well superintendent nasa's exemplary direction to the district speaks volumes to that type of professional he is he understands that our children in our districts cannot learn with that partner with that or participate at the levels needed to receive academic instruction until their

046basic human needs are met and well-being is placed at the utmost importance right superintendent nas thank you for your leadership the corpul school district bond project is a model program that has not only delivered outstanding value in facilities construction while advancing strategic priorities based on district core values but has proven to be resilient in the face of health and natural disasters as well superintendent nas has demonstrated exemplary judgment professionalism and well-placed trust in integrating the project management team into the district bond processes even when changes are necessary are invariably well considered and communicated delivering on all that has been promised in the scope of work the bond construction project is a highlight in the midst of a challenging year with significant disruption and disturbing conditions due to the wildfires and proven 19 public health crisis

047superintendent nas has quietly demanded a transparent and prudent facilities planning and construction process at all times it is clear that he has student learning and the public interest top of mind he has empowered a large team of people to think creatively be inclusive and work swiftly to meet the needs of and schedule of the bond construction process bond construction communications have been exemplary from the launch of the bond campaign to the present the district makes excellent efforts to engage and bring the community along in our construction work fiscal tracking of the bond is transparent and the bond oversight committee is composed of critical financial thinkers problems that arise are quickly and efficiently resolved the board has every expectation that the bond work will come in or below budget today is march 11th it marks an

048exact year to date since superintendent nas decided to proactively begin suspending events that brought large groups of students adults and community members together his decision was in accordance with the governor's first guidance to minimize potential opportunities for the virus to spread since then superintendent nas has remained steady disciplined and proactive in his decisions communication and actions in times of crisis institutions and agencies look for attributes in their leader the board recognizes the difficulty of maintaining fidelity to a plan while adapting to changing health recommendations and state mandates nevertheless superintendent nas looked at the whole picture he is keeping equity consistency and routine as important dimensions in planning and responding to coven 19. knowing that consistency matters to the district students families and educators the district team worked with public health authorities to resume in-person instruction

049when the risk to the students staff and community was tolerable he held steady in his tense that the safety and well-being of all students staff and teachers were his top priority superintendent nas has been very effective in relying on his strong leadership and administrative teams while keeping a long view of the pandemic response and keeping his eye on strategic priorities this has allowed the district to be ready to resume in-person instruction when it was appropriate accordance according to the public health conditions at every point when the information was clear and certain superintendent nas and the team have been forthcoming with parents and community he has been unwavering in his adherence to a deliberative and deliberate phase re-entry for students and the criteria required to allow that process to begin the dynamic regulator regulatory environment of

050the pandemic has forced the district team to repeatedly revise operational plans and execute those challenges at every step the district has had the capacity to move swiftly to be compliant and meet the needs of the children incorporating children teachers into the planning process ensure the staff buy-in of programmatic decisions and was effective in building goodwill between the district and labor unions during a very stressful time the reality of a dramatic shift in a short amount of time relying on people with varying skill sets and facing their own challenges in this crisis creating created a dynamic situation it cannot be understated that the work to develop and redevelop education delivery plans has been curriculum this year all of the staff working on the many aspects of how we teach our students have shown astounding dedication superintendent

051gnosis every step in planning and executing plans related to the pandemic response has kept students learning health and well-being at the center of all decision-making he has not allowed himself to be confounded by changes in regulation information or political pressures on behalf of the corvallis families the school board expresses its gratitude is gratitude to have superintendent nas leading our district over the last year his steady leadership and dedication to our students and staff have been invaluable superintendent nas sets an example for other districts he has been great to work with and collaborative about ensuring we stay committed to the goals put in place he is open to feedback and is not afraid to be vulnerable his leadership has been nothing short of phenomenal this year through the disruptions we have experienced during the pandemic wildfires

052and racial justice movements dated this 11th day of march 2020 sorry 2021 and receive this day of 11th day of march 2021. thank you and thanks to the board for all of those um those kind words and accolades um i really feel i always feel and feel fortunate to be part of this community and part of the school district and recognizing that many of you have kids that come to our schools um and the trust you place in me is um is as of high value and um high responsibility and i really appreciate that um and also the support of this board working through and supporting um all that has happened over the last year not anticipating the way this year would go and having the cohesive team that supports the work through policy and

053through this process and through budgeting our priorities makes a huge difference so thank you to all of you for the evaluation and our continued work together thank you any board members wish to provide a comment or follow up jay i just wanted to say that in light that this will be my fourth year as a board member and my last one because i'm not running again that i wanted to publicly express my appreciation for ryan i have had 30 years in schools i've had a number of leaders working with me and i have told people in the community that the secret to board service is to have a really good superintendent and so you sleep better and life goes easier for board members that's been the case during my four years words that come to

054mind i i have one anecdote uh when i was working as a principal um my superintendents asked me every month to get up and come over to their district office uh i just want the public to understand that ryan's style is he gets up and he goes to the buildings i think that's a gesture and a statement of where the trenches are and where the work is being done and it's a huge statement of his his profile and his his uh just the personality that he brings lastly i would say that words to come to mind when i think of you ryan are trust and integrity and a good listener and so i thank you for your hard work and appreciate working with you for four years appreciate it yeah thank you jay and it's

055funny i was thinking about that just the other day how you know in your five um having a board member who comes on and stays for is able to stay with for a whole term and then comes off the board um that's sort of one of those things you and i have together um and that sort of a unique experience that way for me um just in you know year five as a superintendent and so i you know i was just thinking about how sort of that that's been unique in this role so far and also to have somebody who has the background in education um as a teacher principal and now um supporting student teachers and so i do think that that that unique view that you bring in perspective has really um has

056been helpful and i really appreciate it and i'll say more about you when we get closer to to june but as of now that's those were my thoughts just the other day no um i was like i had something to say and i was listening to jay and ryan talk so much i'm like what was i gonna say um but i just wanted to echo everything that's been said already and say thank you to ryan like this has been a lot for all of us to um go through together as a community and i think that having a strong a strong leader in the community to help navigate all these unknowns and things that are out of our control to have something tangible to like to orbit around i guess i can say it that

057way has been really much appreciated so i just wanted to i'm sure that with the community too that kind of appreciation because there's a lot we can't control and the things we can you've done such an incredible job with and i i remember the other part see i talked long enough where i remembered exactly what i was actually gonna say um i was just gonna reflect really quickly like last year at this time i was like how do i evaluate ryan we just met and like i've barely been working with you and so i'm really i'm thankful to be able to provide um and to participate in evaluation with a full year of experience with you and just have been reflected a lot when helping with this process of all the things that have happened

058so yeah thank you and thanks for your continued focus on making sure that we're thinking about all of our kids vince so i know that we have a meeting to get to so i want to keep my comments uh short but i think the hallmark here is trust and i'll share uh with you uh what i've said in the past and that's you know not only as a board member who has known you since before you were superintendent um i've just really appreciated how you've grown into this position but i think you have really been exemplary this year and you'll notice that in the statement from the from the board there's a lot of your team embedded in that and i think that that's because you have built a really strong cohesive team that works

059well together that's not just the district office that's also our our educators and bringing all those forces together to do so much good for our kids this year has really been truly phenomenal and that's why that word is in here i just i just want to on behalf of the community and as a dad in the in the community i want to say thank you yeah thank you and you know i think you what you said is um so accurate because it's really the work of the team i'm just the superintendent with the evaluation right but it's the the team um overall everything from you know the decision to go with wenaha as a smaller project management team and taking on this large project how would that go to everybody who has continued to adjust

060and pivot again and again this year from one set of expectations to the next one set of rules to the next um it has been quite a year for everybody and i think that that um at the end of the day i think that we will be stronger coming out of this than we weren't going into it yeah sarah yeah um i just want to echo my colleagues appreciation for your work um i think in especially as a parent with kids in the district um i have felt sometimes like i'm kind of in a privileged position because i as a board member know a little bit more about the workings and whys of what's going on and um it's been very striking during this time that we have a leader in our superintendent and a

061team in our district that worked very hard with our kids best interest at heart to to keep the schools going during a pandemic and um i'm just really grateful that we had a team and a superintendent that we again i'm going to say trust um and could rely on during this really uncertain time so thank you thanks sarah i want to mention uh something important while uh folks might have heard my voice reading those words they are the words of the seven board members uh and uh if there is a unified voice that uh would be in one sentence it's uh really the values that uh jay mentioned trusting and knowing that you listen and confidence in your leadership uh exactly a year ago i remember our phone conversations uh anticipating uh that so kids

062are today 11 march 11th was the last day we tell them uh see you next week but we did not see them in person next week and it's the same day the who announced the pandemic and folks in oregon started realizing that this is going to be serious it will disrupt life for us maybe for a week maybe for a month maybe more and i saw how you pivoted and how you showed the perseverance of your staff and the district to make sure that uh we can deliver on our promise to keep our kids safe and educate them uh it's hard uh at times of confusion we need someone who not only provides certainty but also is vulnerable to say uh we don't know what we don't know but we can manage what we know

063and what we can control and this has been really important and critical to the road ahead as we start a new year i have exactly the same trust and even stronger trust that uh the school district will be better than last year and even better than before we entered the pandemic we have created systems and created infrastructure and grown a lot and hopefully that will make sure that we can deliver on our promise and close the equity gap and all fronts health and education and everything and with that thank you thank you sorry you have a comment all right with that uh we'll transition to the bond project update and we have dale and kim with us welcome dale and kim and do we have our reports our presentation tonight it is not a powerpoint

064presentation it was the written monthly board report i hope you folks had a chance to read that and i'm happy to answer any questions you might have wonderful thank you any questions to dale i'd like to add one comment on on the superintendent nas we appreciate greatly at the bond program his availability to us to help make those quick decisions that need to be made and we meet weekly and ad hoc as needed and i know it's a big chunk out of his day uh week but it's super important so thank you for that thanks dale right board members uh if there is any no oh we do have two hands and i'm trying to see who is it it's lou and vince is just a quick comment tell of the excitement of little kids

065and seeing what uh lincoln going up um i'm sure my child's not the only one she came running and was like mom there's walls and literally jumping up and down so i just wanted you to know the excitement that that is continuing to provide so that is fantastic thank you for sharing all right then we have events yeah i just have a question are are we going to be addressing the dragon arm wildcat gmp approval tonight yes okay then i'll wait all right any other questions or comments on the report series um it's a question not specifically about the report but um director white bear's comment reminded me that you know we live across uh very close to garfield so we've been watching the um the progress on that building and so my son asked

066me if the inside of the building was really going to be accessible when school reopens and um so i said i don't know but i know people who do so i will ask so just very quickly can you tell me what will the kids at garfield what should they expect to see and um in terms of what it would be like to be in that space and moving around sure you mean this spring i assume right like on march 29th yeah yeah yeah um the the construction team and the administrations work really hard together to make sure that the the areas are separate where there's active construction and where there's not um there are you know heavy-duty construction fences to keep the the children on the playground from entering into the zone of the new

067addition um and same in the building there's there's you know plywood doors with locks that keep children from going into an active construction zone um and we're you know doing our best to make sure that um you know access is very tightly controlled um the built the we had a tour last friday with some foundation folks and others and we walked them through the the remodeled um west wing and the reaction was you know as expected is they feel a lot like news spaces so we're excited for the kids to return to see those those new those those new rooms they feel really nice so i i think the kids will be excited they'll get to experience the new student restroom model um which is also fantastic so a lot of a lot of fun

068things to see there thanks any other questions um just clarify a clarification about uh the seismic and hvac and children of sheldon scheduled to next spring are we talking about spring 2022 that is correct and i understand that would be in terms of uh being flexible and providing an opportunity to uh resume and personal instruction uh as soon as possible when that's allowed uh is that right certainly yeah that that had a big part a big part of it wonderful awesome scene there's no further comments or questions uh we'll move on to the next item and agenda and we'll keep you there and deal with us uh for the gmp uh for the jaguar and wildcats uh gmp and it's for action so board members is there any questions or a motion okay you're muted

069we can't hear you i'm sorry i moved to authorized staff to execute the guaranteed maximum price amendments with fortis construction for the addition and renovation at jaguar elementary for 12 million four hundred eighty four thousand two hundred and sixty seven dollars establishing a full guaranteed maximum price of thirteen million two hundred and seventy three thousand seven hundred ninety six dollars and at wildcat elementary for eleven million nine hundred and forty one thousand seven hundred ninety two dollars establishing a full guaranteed maximum price there of twelve million seven hundred eighteen thousand eight hundred and forty three dollars and to approve the allocation of bond reserves in the amount of five million seventy seven thousand eight hundred and nine dollars for jaguar elementary and five million thirty six thousand one hundred thirty three dollars for wildcat elementary

070to fully fund the projects adams seconds second any discussion on the motion scene none we'll go for a vote um vice finger mcdowell what's your vote hi director jones aye director white bear aye director adams aye director baker aye director conroy hi passes unanimously thank you very much thank you folks absolutely and i believe there was a question from vince or you're good no i'm good okay good perfect awesome with that uh i really appreciate adele and we'll move on to the next item the agenda educational updates with ryan all right so um assistant superintendent on harder and i we're going to provide you with an educational update this has been sort of a staple this year as a part of our meetings just to provide an additional update about our transition and our movement

071towards um responding to covid so if parker could pull up the slides and we will work our way through [Music] again this is an opportunity for us just to provide you with an update about where we are in our progression and next steps and to answer questions that you have um so we um as you know we have an operational blueprint for re-entry one of the things that we wanted to highlight for you tonight was just some information about um transitioning students back into the classroom and some of the ideas some of the guidance some of the processes and procedures we haven't taken place both around learning and also around health so as you know right now we are still following ready school safe learners which as you know contains 160 rules that we follow

072we are anticipating based on the letter sent out by governor brown at the end of last week that there will be some additional revisions to the ready school safe learner guidance and in that letter to director gill and to oha there was a request to have those updates by march 19th and so we anticipate seeing um new information new guidance new direction um or modifications um at least um coming out next week so we'll keep the border prize and the community apprised about what that means for us go ahead and head to the next slide so this is just a reminder about where we are where we are in our phasing again recognizing that our kinder started this week thank you to sarah for asking the question about how that had gone but just getting

073a chance to highlight our district office staff have been out at schools providing support during that transition time every day and we'll continue to do that as more and more of our students return to the classrooms one of the things that is important to note is that we have made a change based on the letter from governor brown we have not yet seen the executive order but recognizing that staff would need to make some modifications for next week in terms of preparation we are planning to bring our second third fourth and fifth graders back at the same time um starting march 29th which was a modification information that we shared with families yesterday um for our fourth and fifth grade families and also all of our families today in our community update with that our

074other stages and phases are going to continue with those same dates again recognizing that we've worked with our associations around some guidance and a collective bargaining memorandum of understanding we felt like it was important to maintain that integrity of that document and that agreement and every other aspect other than recognizing that there are the changes that came to us through that governor's order next slide okay oh go melissa i can't see you so it's okay i just i wanted to go back to that slide and just highlight the sixth and ninth grade transition week um sarah brought this up a while ago and we were talking about bringing our kids back and what that would look like for sixth and ninth graders who'd never been in the building before and that week that's just for

075them is our commitment to making sure that that transition is smooth for them we um you've already heard from one of our student reps talking about what that first week will look like with students coming back to help the ninth graders as they're moving around the building and all of our our schools are also doing a lot of other planning to prepare for and get our kids um excited about being in a new building so i just wanted to highlight that too i've shifted my um view so now i can see you as well okay sorry about that okay so one of the questions that i've had recently has been about [Music] has been about air circulation and so we have gone through our facilities team has gone through and looked at all of the

076classroom spaces and has assessed the way that area circulating spaces where there's air intake directly from outdoors classrooms that have windows that can be opened we do have some classrooms that are internal without windows and so in those places we've added filtration systems with our hipaa filters and we've also have sharing out those reports with each school and so if there's a faculty member or there's a space where there is a concern we have additional filters available so again we're really focusing on the quality of air and air movement one of the things that i think is important for families to know is that our schools may feel a little bit more chilly than usual um early in the morning because we are pulling more as much air as possible from outdoors and so that

077does impact the temperature but we're also really focusing on error movement anything you'd like to add that's perfect i'll take the next one though when it comes up so this is uh the covid19 dashboard that we have now posted on our website we waited until we were bringing students back on site a larger number of students back on site so that we could protect confidentiality when um we had students unlimited in person we have had students and staff who have um come up positive for covid but even during limited in person i'm really happy to report that we haven't had any in-school transmissions so what we're seeing now is a coven 19 dashboard that is going to take into account only only when students are in the building and only those buildings that are phased

078in and ready are phased in and where students are attending so with this dashboard you're looking at the elementary schools and um current cases of um of proven 19 in elementary schools now that we have our kindergartners back in as we start phasing in our middle schools and high schools then you'll see those num those nas go away and we intend to keep this as updated as possible we have an eye on this and um i also want to just one more thing sorry just to highlight and shout out to our district nurses who are working above and beyond right now um we have a covered response team we have nurses who are actively in conversation with benton county health they're calling parents they're calling staff they are learning everything there is to know about

079um all of the rules that are in wrestle and all of the things that we need to consider when we're wanting families and staff to stay safe so i want to honor that because their work has been really hard and they're doing a great job so again as we think about resumption these are those four areas that we've talked about before but to just continue to highlight um as we think about coming kids coming back and we think about even students support over the summer as you probably saw last week there was a grant that's coming from the department of education um focusing on summer programs and it's a so for us when we think about that we're thinking about student and family connection we're just continuing to think about mental health continuity and service

080as we move through even through the summer and into the fall academic support and credit recovery and also empowering our students through internships and career preparation so these this these four areas you'll continue to see from us and we'll continue to report out on as we move through the spring through the summer and into the fall and again there's money and support that's coming from the state and the federal government and also support from our foundation which is again a great partner in this work we will have a work session with the foundation coming up later this spring we did one this fall we'll do one again this spring and so as we have the opportunity to talk with them i just want you to kind of have these four areas in mind because they

081will as they've been thinking about supporting our work this summer okay next slide so our ready school safe learners and operational blueprint guidance um says that we are going to not allow visitors into the building so our schools are open for students but they are closed for visitors and we're going to continue to use the same the same model that we've been using throughout the school year with the doorbell and calling and making appointments if you need to come in to see an office staff member we have made one small change with clubs and extracurricular activities we um understand how important those are to our students and it's not just at high school it's all all three levels so what we have decided is that our clubs and extracurricular activities can operate as long as

082they have an administrator approval and and a club advisor who is a csd employee because there's um or i'm sorry csd certified staff member because there's things that need to happen to keep our kids safe including contact tracing in those groups and doing the entry screening kind of process like we do when kids come into the building so we've laid some of that groundwork with our administrators and our office manager so that they can do get ready for clubs and extracurricular activities graduation is coming and information from ode is coming they're hoping to give that to us is it next week or is it going to be i thought i heard was next week yeah we're hoping for next week and yeah the guidance is really focused on indoor and outdoor entertainment you have probably

083seen that as an area that's related that ties back to county rates so moving us out of extreme into high that has an impact on what we're able to do around graduation i think we'll have information coming out again before the break and we want to get some more information to families as soon as possible and so there's a work group that's been meeting made up of high school administrators leadership teachers those folks that helped to coordinate graduations and we've been talking about what that can look like for the spring so stay tuned for that information so a couple of other key dates just to have in mind kindergarten registration will begin april 19th um we have postponed that student transfer window um we've done that um sort of one of the challenges this year

084is um that we oftentimes come back after winter break and we begin to plan for the upcoming school year this year we've continued to modify and plan for iterations and what we're providing for this school year and so there are some things that need to happen prior to those transfer windows being opened looking at the calendar for next year and recognizing that you'll have a meeting july 1st where you work to identify board leadership we will probably come at that meeting with requests for openings school by school by grade level by number which is something that we've done the last couple of years and then again the first day of school is september 8th and we have our school calendar for next year up on our website so if people are trying to look for

085those key dates now that's available you adopted that calendar last year and so that has allowed us to have that information out and it made available all right that's it for tonight so if you have questions for us we would be happy to answer them we have vince so ryan i know you have been receiving a lot of feedback from the community and so is the board on on instruction hours and the apportionment of core instruction and where that's at and i just can you take a moment to just talk go back and go over the thought process and how uh the decisions were made to just lay that out and why we laid out instruction the way we did in the schedule for yeah sure and then melissa if there's anything you want to

086add feel free um so there were a number of decisions that have been made related to the the current schedule the first one is just sort of that first intentional decision was really focused on how many kids could we have in the building at one time and so that decision led us to having to meet two cohorts because of the rule around 35 square feet per student and so recognizing that we knew we needed to have a cohort and a cohort b the other thing that we know is that we will have kids that are not able to return for in-person learning for a myriad of reasons from living with a elderly parent or caregiver giver to having health concerns myself or health concerns for the student to i don't feel safe yet returning my

087students to school that's one of the things that we're going to continue to communicate out that's why that dashboard is so important so parents can see that information and community can see that information and so we under the guidance even that governor brown put out on friday that in that executive order there will still be the expectations that we're providing instruction for those students as well because we're responsible for providing students instruction to all of our kids and so having that in mind one of the things other things we know is that from our surveys that we've done that we anticipate that there's probably close to 1200 students in that group who won't be returning at this time and so we made some decisions about core instruction being made available for everyone and to do

088that we looked at that synchronous learning time as a way to provide that and also recognizing the desire to get kids back in into the school and so the balance between having that strength greatness learning for all students those that are able to return than those that aren't as well as recognizing the intention and need to have students back in school those were all considerations the other big consideration for us has been transportation we know that it will take an hour per level for getting kids to school and getting kids home from school so that's six hours if you think about elementary middle and high of dropping kids off at school and another three hours of picking up and taking kids home so transportation is also a big factor in the way we built our

089schedules and then there were some intentional decisions made level by level one of the things that we talked about at middle school was really focused on as much time as possible for that in person and recognizing we still had that need for um providing that synchronous learning so that's why the chunk in the morning is focused for ellen for middle school age students at the high school one of the things that i think we'll see happen is that the instructional time will be that primarily that synchronous time and recognizing when kids are coming into the building to continue to do practice one of the other questions that i get a lot is um about the social emotional component as well as the academic component um and i think that people have um read or heard

090that there's it's really just focused on that social emotional social emotional component which is really important but you can't do that without some sort of activities that are also enhancing academics i think about things from even our our youngest learners so um ryan has a components of phonemic awareness built into it which is a skill that kids need to be readers so all the way through i think that there's ways that those two things are going to interlock and mesh and so it's not one or the other it's a combination of the two so that is really the thinking that has come through our work with our teachers and our association um to build a schedule that accounts for all of those variables and factors um and i think that one of the things that

091is also a challenge is that we are 198 school districts all working to create a plan for students to return to school without necessarily a clear framework of how that should look and so we're all doing it a little bit differently which causes sometimes comparison from district to district and community to community and out of that sometimes we're focused on the you know the best aspect of each one and why can't we do it exactly like that but at the same time there's intentionality about the big picture of how that's rolled out perfect that's exactly what i was looking for and i would just underscore that the the plan that that you've developed and the thinking that you just just shared with the community really was a product of of all the smartest people in

092the room it was done with all the with our district leadership staff and with our teachers at the table working really hard and ideas coming from both sides with an emphasis on giving the best instruction we can for all our kids and one thing i really appreciate is that cohort sees that that is not true across the state that not every school district is meeting the need of all their kids some are not allowing kids that can't come back to school they're out of luck and so i knew that that i'm glad that it was a deal breaker for you that that we had to serve all our kids so thanks for that explanation yeah the one thing i'd add to what you just shared was the the component of our classified staff in that

093conversation as well and their focus has really focused um has been on that health and safety component recognizing that those are the folks that have been making sure that our buildings have been clean and will stay clean um to making sure that um those kids who have individual one-on-one support um that relationship is intact and there's plans and processes in place um one of the things about the professional development that's happening for teachers um the week prior to their grade level coming back is that they're going through sort of a day in the life in the stude of the student to think about what are the um what are the processes and procedures that we now have in place and are thinking about related to health and safety one of the other things the thoughts

094that have coming up from those conversations also is the message that we got from teachers that they feel like they've kind of got this uh distance learning thing kind of figured out here and that learning while we know it's not perfect learning is happening and so yeah i guess that's another question follow-up question is what assurance can can you give parents that are really concerned about that academic component because we've been hearing a lot about that right now i think one of the other intentional decisions around that is that one of the things that we learned in the spring was that by having days of instruction and days that were asynchronous that that wasn't always the best option for kids and so having continuity across stays rather than one day i'm in school with my

095teacher and the next day i'm working independently and then the next day i'm with my teacher and then the next day i'm working independently we felt our experience was that there was more learning loss in that model than the continent continuity even if it's portions of the day but it was more days um in the week right thanks for all that explanation i really appreciate it next up is sarah and lou sarah yeah one of the questions i keep getting and i've asked this question before but i think we need to keep saying it um is about the um portable classrooms and assurance that the air quality and those will be will be good also um so just you know what what have we done i mean it sounds like you've gone into everyone and

096looked at them but what have we done to make sure that those especially some of those old ones are gonna be safe places for our our kids and our teachers to be melissa do you want to take that one we've purchased a pile of air purifiers for um so a lot of those if it's not about windows if we can't do the airflow and make sure that we're having those air exchanges in order to bring in clean air then we have air purifiers and those have been placed in those classrooms that our facilities staff have deemed um that they that it's needed so we have air purifiers and maybe one of those modular classrooms that you're referring to that that might be the case and you'll see an air purifier in that room thank you

097um yeah i just had a couple of questions um just what the support i know i asked about this often the support back looks like for students that are transitioning back after being out of school for a year for that um it's a huge transition even um those couple days i know are in those um hours in person are gonna really positively impact students but it's also like a big jump also when you're been out for so long and i was just kind of um wondering what kind of supports are in place and if there's i know that we have like limitations on like staffing right now and everything but if there's enough social workers to help with that support too across the district or that's in the talk settle i have another question too

098after that do you want to start that one most and then i was i was going to start with elementary and what we've seen um since we've started uh comprehensive distance learning is that there's always two staff in the virtual room and that's going to transition into on-site there will always be two staff in the physical classroom so the the classroom teacher and what we're calling inclusion assistants to ensure that all the students are um are taken care of when they're in in the classroom um and ryan's already alluded to the fact that the kids were super excited to see the same people um when they walked in the door the kindergartners were this week um that they've seen online so that's going to be a huge help also in addition to that our district

099behavior coach um has been going to um the to every single building um having meetings with their leadership team um and their student support teams to talk about um how we ensure that um that behavior challenges that we're facing that we're being first proactive and appropriately traumatic you know trauma informed responsive to the needs of our students and how to make that make sure that that happens our teachers are very concerned about how our kids are going to be coming back and they know that they need help and they're asking for that and so we're um we're working really hard to make sure that we're giving them that um that information before the kids walk in the door so they're ready for that challenge ryan do you have more i think that you really cover

100those things that i was thinking about it's okay um while we have had you know what we do have staffing limitations we've really been intentional about how we use our using our staff and then i think the other piece has been goes back to something we've talked about before but having our those mental health team members has allowed our school counselors to also really be school counselors and i think it has just created better structures for us over time than we would have had coming out of this if we hadn't made that investment two years ago great yeah thank you i was i thought about that too like is it i'm so glad that it's already been in place to have that support um for the kids because it's a it is going to be

101a big jump but i'm really happy for the students that are going to be able to be back and have the experiences they need um and you mentioned we started talking about next year and talked about some credit recovery stuff and we don't have to talk about it right now but if we can at some point i've brought this up a couple times of course about like structural things of um supporting students like if there's any structural changes in education that you know of that have been discussed um like more broadly passed beyond our district and i know there's been some work locally as well um but i'm just wondering because i right now i feel like the model is that it's up to the individual students um to be able to recover and i

102know the district is doing everything they can to help um with that but at some point we don't have to answer right now unless you have some initial thoughts on any of that besides the summer credit recovery one of the things i would share right now is just that as we look at greater investment coming to us from the federal government as of today one of the pieces for us will be thinking about how do we utilize those resources and how do we do that in such a way that accounts for that question really um at the um at several different levels so yeah i think that there's more to come on that all right let's uh sorry go ahead do you have one more question i was just saying thank you to melissa and

103ryan thank you wonderful let's go with one more question from jay and then we need to transition to the homelessness students reports uh jay up next so assuming for just a second on that this is a terrible challenge can you give us a quick answer on how is our staff immunization in terms of how many could you say are able to be immunized and then assume for a minute that the governor's standards might loosen and we would be able to put more kids in classrooms for those last nine weeks or quarter of the year are we thinking about that possibility or is that going to be too tough to juggle one more time to maybe open up even more what do you think um so the first question my answer is that we have been

104able to move um our staff through that process of having bold shots we haven't had johnson and johnson so it's been moving through both both shots and um we have close to 90 percent of our staff that wanted to um take part in that so a pretty strong number um and it was a really um successful process i think um with support from samaritan so um we have we have moved through that process um smoothly and well um to your second question i so one of the things that we have worked through has been a um a memorandum of understanding with our associations recognizing um the health and safety component and bringing kids back to school if there are significant changes that we see coming then we would need to move through that process again

105um so that is one one consideration that would not need to need to be accounted for um one of the other things that um i've been asked a couple of times is about when is like timelines thinking about where we are in the school year and all of those things um i know that it's been a difficult year and a challenging year and we've continued to pivot but that may mean we need to pivot one more time thank you yeah wonderful well thank you ryan uh i i said jay will go last but i want to make sure there's an opportunity for our students or representatives if anyone wants to ask questions or comments feel free to raise the virtual hand on the platform um because i won't be able to see you directly so

106is there any question from our students representatives and while i wait for that i want to say thank you ryan for uh the continued and persistent effort to make sure that the community is aware of the decisions if i would say something i would refer to the evaluation to say how confident we are in these plants not in these plants and you making the plans and in the plans that they will work and when they don't uh we will adapt and change course accordingly so really thank you for the communication i know there's so many faqs from the community members some of them the board is receiving i appreciate you responding to those when they're operational and detailed uh that's what's very important yeah thanks awesome with that let's move up to the next report

107uh an agenda item which is the homelessness student report as a reminder for board members we received this report in an earlier meeting and we couldn't have that time to discuss or ask questions about it and i understand that amy is available here to answer any questions as well um i want to start with appreciating the work there uh it's alarming to know the challenges that our homelessness uh homeless students and families are going through and i hope that we can provide every possible resource and i know and acknowledge that the district is doing its best at it it takes a community uh when that's the case and you have a question or comments on the report oh no i was just going to say um i i know that like student reps might want

108to leave so i just wanted to put that out there because we have school tomorrow it's not spring break yet yes absolutely so yes as a reminder for our student president of you're off the hook if you want to leave if you want to stick around you're more than welcome but it's 8 12 and as kate mentioned if you want to go sleep or do homework or something else to feel free to do so thank you kate for the reminder yeah thank you have a great night have a good night all right well that's actually i want to ask you i mean do you have any comments or points you want to share first um i just want to also introduce sarah devine i think she's been here with you maybe last year when we

109gave our report with sarah's here and she's our our mckinney-vento homeless liaison and responsible for a large portion of that report along with a few other people so we are both here to answer any questions um i think we did a pretty thorough um job of sharing the data that we had so we are open for any questions thank you and welcome sarah welcome back uh sarah finger mcdonald uh you're up next yeah i'm first i just want to express my gratitude for the speed of the response and the creativity and partnership building that happened a year ago to put supports into place for our kids and our family i know a year ago i was lying awake at night wondering what we were gonna do for kids and families when we closed school for

110a couple weeks um and it's now been a year and having having our districts step up and really provide resources that weren't you know invented at a moment's notice was impressive and critical um i was interested in the report that in your first sort of study of data from march to august you were serving more families than you were in september and i was wondering do we know what happened to those families and do we expect to find more of them as we start reopening school buildings um it just seemed sort of striking that when school started again in september we were serving fewer families or was the community stepping in then and doing some of that work yeah so i would say um yes i think when when we when everything sort of closed

111down to in person in march a lot of our other community resources like food banks had to also close temporarily and we didn't and that was kind of a unique piece um in the ways that we were supporting in a large part of how we operate as a team supporting families like we know that we don't work in a vacuum so we are also as much as we are you know directing our district resources to families we're also working to connect them to where those resources exist in the community and the landscape of what that looked like in september was really different than what it looked like in march thank you vince and lou thank you a lot for the report it's a very it's very disquieting information uh my concern is looking forward towards

112summer where we've been struggling uh clearly in the data it shows that we're struggling to detect these families and get supports on them as we get towards june 30th i mean the eviction moratorium is going to be lifted and we can expect that in the first months of the summer that we're going to see a rash of increased homelessness and i'm just i'm concerned about sufficient resources uh for your team to meet those needs are we going to be able to detect them and what advocacy what can this body do to support the work that you're doing thanks vince i think one key thing to note is that we have done some intentional budgeting to make sure that we are able to continue staffing our welcome centers we call it throughout the summer one thing

113we're talking about is checking in with families in june before they're gone from us and and get kind of a a regular list like no matter what this this family's going to continue to get their food box the entire summer and then you know our navigators work all summer and so they're a constant connection and even though sarah has time off in the summer she still attends many of the meetings and is part of the community and and um has maybe a few hours when i you know push her out the door and make her take a vacation but we are still very connected and i think the um just the nature of being a family liaison doesn't fully allow you to disconnect in the summer and if you read the part of what's keeping

114us awake at night the the eviction piece is huge and and it is definitely something that we are all just watching real close and have a lot of concerns about sarah is anything you want to add yeah another another kind of piece of that is that we know we know this is coming unless it changes again this is the third moratorium that we've had where they almost ran out and it was very stressful and then they passed one at the last minute so i will also just put the caveat of there's a lot of unknowns and because we have this end date we are very intentionally looking ahead many months to see which families do we anticipate are in that position where come july 1st they are in dire straits and facing an eviction and

115we're working really hard to connect them with the resources that do exist now there's a new wave of funding for rent assistance and we are doing our best to make sure that we actually have less of a crisis come july 1st because we have all of these months to be supporting families trying to identify new families that we didn't even know were facing these issues and trying to put that leg work in between now and june so just that piece as well great thank you thank you sarah um lou um hi amy and sarah i have like a couple of questions and um in case you didn't know i am a very into like reading data kind of i'm just heads up on this but i did have a comment too and really wanted to

116appreciate how much time was invested in the application assistance part that was mentioned in the um in the report and getting the food and supplies to folk just because of like knowing transportation needs and like i'm still a little bit baffled with how many um actual signatures are needed right now with like the lack of access to printers and stuff like that so um just wanted to appreciate those kind of details that were put into supporting families um i have one question about um number representation numbers of where um college hill students are housed in the data sets if they're spread across chs and cv is that where they're at yeah that's where they live okay i was just kind of curious about that because i think like the number may look a little bit

117different if yeah and i didn't know why they weren't pulled out since they're pulled out in so many of our other data sets yeah and that's actually something i've spoken with lori who helps with all of these data pieces she pulls everything out of our cis system which only has corvallis high and so it's a little challenging that's actually a piece though that i personally would love to see as well and i think that's definitely something we could work on because i think you're right it tells a little bit of a different story i think so too thank you um and the data dip on um for the graph is is pretty concerning as already mentioned because we know that the problem did not just suddenly go away it's worse than and so um we

118all know that's concerning i have a question about um about the if there's been any analysis of the intersections of poverty and race um in like understanding how that may show up in our um in our numbers a little bit more like a little bit more detail like with the disaggregated data because even without disaggregated data there is such a huge over representation if you have 8.6 of black students in the community and only representing 1.4 of the population that's a huge over representation and i've done some work with the hope um board um this past year and like education about some of the implications with the impacts of homelessness on black and indigenous community members in the county and just knowing that those numbers are really over represented like those are the two groups

119in the county that are represented in the homeless population and houseless population and um you see it reflected a little bit in here but if you look at the multi-racial group you know a lot of those students are in there and so i don't feel like we have the best representation just like all the data sets really of knowing how we can connect to some other resources that may be able to help families out like reaching out to the tribes and reaching out to other community organizations that are really specific um if they're pushed into another data set then we may not be able to connect them with those resources so i'm just wondering if there's a little bit of of um of that analysis that's going on and also with the query youth with

120the homelessness population um with that intersection of being part of the lbgtq plus community um that's not really reflected in this data set and just knowing from other community partners like at jackson street in other areas that that is an area of concern and i'm wondering if that might show up in future reports and i only have one more question after that thank you i think um an important update that maybe ryan and melissa can talk about bringing next month is shifting how we collect race and ethnicity data and um expanding our categories working we have a team working really hard with lbl right now to change how we collect that data and to expand on exactly what you were saying like we we will be able to i think have a better picture once

121we are able to have um once we collect that differently in the beginning and then i suppose the same thing about our lgbtq data it's not a data set that we have ready access to and so what does that look like we have some anecdotal data but it is it is not um quantifiable right now and and at the same time i'm confident that the people who are working closely with our kiddos um could give you some some some stories and information that would verify exactly what you're saying and one of the the key things that i think sarah does and the team does is connect with the community like we can't do it all and there are people out there who really have resources and are able to connect with different populations in our

122town and in our community better or differently than we can and we cannot um lose sight of how important that is and so i i would just say yes and we can always do better connecting more and we realize how critically important it is yeah thank you i'm glad that that's going to happen because i think it's hard to like really grasp the full picture of what's going on with the students until we have those cross analysis kind of conversations and really dig in a little bit more that way we can have a better starting point um with helping out families in the community that are part of the district and um the last thing you all talked about like supporting legislation if i don't know if there's specific ones in the report that you

123know of that are going on right now that can be aware of that can help address some of these um some of the needs and that was it so thank you so much for answering all my 500 questions i believe i just saw a legislation update recently and there are a few about homelessness and then also about eviction that are coming up in our local our state legislator and we can we can get you some of that information like ones that are really impacting education we can get you that information yeah thank you earlier i appreciate that uh sarah and vince uh do you have your hands up from before or do you have further questions i have another question yes go for it so in the report you mentioned the training for elementary staff

124on poverty informed practices and remote learning can you discuss that i'm just curious about what was embedded in that training what did it look like yeah so we my co-worker annie bitner and i designed she's a family advocate at two of our elementaries um we designed a training kind of based around um a documentary called pop growing up poor in america i think uh followed some families through the start of the pandemic in schools closing and just all of the kind of it painted a really good picture of the challenges um that families were facing the type of poverty looked a little bit different it wasn't based like in oregon or in our community and then we kind of took that into a process of almost like building empathy making sure that we were kind

125of seeing the full picture of what families were experiencing at home and what that looked like and really thinking about as educators as a school system what are the ways that we can be really conscious of kind of all of these challenges that are challenges upon challenges upon challenges especially for our most vulnerable students and what does that look like as we move forward knowing that distance learning is a reality for at least a while longer that's really we did it virtually so i don't see any reason why that's not also something i could give to parker that could um they could send out to you all just because you could do it on your own time it's a virtual presentation that's um professional learning so i can i can add that to my my

126list of things to to share out with you i would really appreciate that and i'm sure my colleagues would as well so i mean did you have any debrief it was there any uh evaluation on on what the impact of the program was what were i guess what are the key learnings that came out of that or the aha moments yeah we did ask um every participant to fill out just a really brief kind of reflection at the end and then we collected all of those responses in a spreadsheet um which was really illuminating to kind of look through and i would say the responses that i saw most commonly were you know kind of things like it's a good reminder that you know these students are are in my class i'm sure and um

127it's really hard to hear and sit with the realities that these students and families are facing um and where we want more tools we want more resources we want more ways to support them i would say we heard a lot of that great and so i guess my follow-up was you know this sounds really really good really important it sounds a lot like the pot i used to work at osu we um we used to do poverty simulations um akin to that those were like half day things but um and they had a lot of impact i'm just curious um well i would just say i would advocate for all staff to have this experience yeah so thanks very much and thanks for the great report and the work that you do crucially important i

128want to just summarize uh really that requests from board members uh speak to me really well um making sure that we're updated on any legislative uh at work we could do advocacy action our spare time uh so feel free to uninvite us with the senate bills or house bills as as they come in and uh hopefully that will inform us to communicate with our uh representatives and also keeping us updated about this situation as it grows and what more resources you're doing and giving and the connections you're creating and also what we're learning uh the advocacy parts of the school board i think it's our responsibility to step up um and as you mentioned the vision moratorium scares me uh on my way here i found this envelope uh my door as i was getting

129out of the house with a five percent increase notification on july 1st uh the day where the merger expires and uh that scares me but it will be a nightmare for those who already uh did not pay uh some monies that they owe and that money it's not going to go away they still need to pay it so summer will be really grim and without the support and the help that we can offer it will be even worse so thank you for the work thank you for your hard work sarah and amy and everybody who's doing this work um and we've got to do everything we can to care for our students and their families yeah the one you know one of the things i would like to add and just you know appreciation for

130um sarah and annie and the work that they've been doing you know day in and day out um since this pandemic started um one of the things i had wondered about early on was um was this a you know by enhancing what we did in our welcome center was it something that was going to be at some point another organization or agency would sort of take on um and then we would sort of pass that and then still continue to partner with you know great people like sarah annie but then not necessarily have that um be part of the capacity of what we're doing where i what i think now is that really what we saw was probably there was an unmet need that existed before the pandemic and now we're providing resources that are

131going to need to be continued long term and so i think about it differently than i did at the beginning and i think it's just important for us to come and have that in mind moving forward because i think that we're able to do things um in different ways um relationally and through access through things like transportation and some of those pieces that are hard for some of our families and so i think we're providing sort of that uh a need that's been there and we know that it's gonna continue to be there and we're just gonna need to continue to do this work yeah indeed indeed all right with that uh we'll move forward uh i have a question to the board and staff uh would you like a five minutes break or power

132through and continue all right i see a five minutes break uh request so how about we recess uh send these for five minutes and we'll be back at 8-36 okay thank you amy and sarah appreciate it um back uh uh about now oh yeah sorry i wasn't sure when to pull it off yeah we'll be returning shortly it says we're live all right we're back in the session and uh next item on the agenda is the scholarship committee presentation and i understand there was uh an update center from lou and jay and vince the committee uh are the group that's worked on this scholarship uh so uh blue and gay and vince and ryan would you like to share an update with us yeah yeah so um the the scholarship committee has been able to

133meet a couple more times and we have established criteria for the scholarship you'll recall that this year we'll be dispersing five thousand dollars in in scholarships to students and in the and you can go back and look at the description for the scholarship none of that has changed one of the things that came up for this uh the committee though was that there are we started getting into the details of actually how to administer the scholarship and realize that there was some detail there that was going to be a little daunting for the board and i'm going to you know attribute jay conroy with a great great idea why don't we reach out to the the corvallis public schools foundation let you hold on a second while i close my door kids going to bed

134can be noisy so anyway um so we did that um jay uh went ahead and reached out to elite gifford at the public schools foundation and their scholarship grants and scholarships committee they considered it and they have agreed to um to you know potentially administer the scholarship for the board if that is what the with the will of the board is uh the details on that arrangement would be that there would be a five percent administrative fee uh so fun you know for just handling the the fiduciary uh aspects of the scholarship um at least one board member would be able to participate in the review of applications and that review would happen on may 10th from noon to 1 30. and so uh that's the report that's where we're at at this point um

135i guess the question that the committee has for the for the board is whether um working with the public schools foundation would be uh and make it easier and i guess i'll also hand it back to my fellow committee members if i missed anything okay i would i would just add that um our hearts were in the right spot but if we goof up in terms of not doing this in the right way we could be causing ourselves more problems and those include things like uh doing a good job of reviewing and also setting the parameters and the foundation and leave do do this kind of work a lot and so um with great respect lou has had some background i have not and i don't know about vince but we just decided that might

136be the best and most uh wise way to to do our delegating of the scholarship so i strongly recommend we do that i'm reminded of one of the other things that came up in our discussions i for review of applications if the whole board were to participate and we were going to deliberate over those uh if we were going to meet we would have to meet in a public session and that would have us discussing the applications of students and that just didn't sit right with committee members that was i think one of the big reasons that we reached out to the foundation lou did i miss anything is there anything you can add um no i was just gonna say a little bit about that too if there was a way for us all

137to read it that would be amazing like through the online portals but the way that the foundation has it set up is a little bit different than that and so it does limit how many people can actually be present for those screening times but um i think it's a great opportunity as well just having administered scholarships for over a decade for like a tribal government i know like the ins and outs of the administration part of it can be a little bit tricky um having to set something up and especially because this is like a short term it's not something we would set up for forever and ever kind of thing um so it's great that they already have the setup they have the mechanism the application itself that way um students information is stored

138somewhere securely um as well so it's another confidentiality thing to keep in mind and i was like oh yeah we would have to be in public that would not be good to be discussing people's personal information um especially with everything that's in it but i think that they have all of the things that were presented to the rest of the board before are able to be just put into that application process and we came up with like um a little bit of a way to how those would be gauged and stuff too so yeah well see jay you want to add something are you good okay um so with that uh board members any thoughts discussion comments feelings i'll start with mine i really think it's a great idea and it's uh even a better

139way to show the partnership with the foundation and uh five percent uh administrative fee may seem something that someone will posit with but with the foundation i think they gave us way more than the five percent and how much uh they support us so i think it's still worth it uh sarah yeah i have been on scholarship committees for years and it is not always an easy process it's definitely not a process we would want to you know just you have to discuss records in public um my only question would be well will we have a way to i don't know if we would do it through schools or how to to make sure that students who are qualified and deserving will know about the scholarship and apply one of the issues with some of

140the scholarships that i've worked with is that we have money and getting students to apply is sometimes hard so i don't know how we could do something to to make sure that students are really encouraged to apply and they know about the opportunity um so that you know we're we're reaching the kids who we want to give money to yeah great question i don't have an answer to that but i mean it is going to be on the same page as the other scholarships but um i think it would be up to us to like send a ask out to the counselors and be like please let students know let them know that this is like a unique scholarship opportunity um and that some students that may be interested in it may not be it

141may not be on their radar to even look at that application so i think that's just going to be something we're going to strategically want to do once it's on their page and send a link over to the counselors with a nudge to encourage students to apply yeah i think you know i think you've already started off in that way by including aaron mckee and matt um and eric wright and just like looking at what the what the language was initially um that you put out so i think that that's um just one way of making that investment do you feel in addition to this work also in communication do you feel the board could do outside communication with community partners who might have interaction with parents parents and families would that be helpful as

142well yeah i would think so yeah so maybe as soon as we have the website uh page that we can do our own recruitment should be but definitely we need to reach the kids where they are and make sure that they know about it and acknowledge that's a traditional means of communication or not they're always going to reach everybody so really appreciate the partnership all right so i get this from uh the board uh do we feel okay with the recommendations and the direction of the committee i see uh headnots any objections all all right yes go ahead so the the committee will go ahead and proceed with uh starting to that relationship with the uh public schools foundation and we will report back on the status progress at our next meeting wonderful wonderful good

143this is good um and i want to acknowledge that we do have some board members who have video conferencing difficulties because of the internet so i see thumbs up from them as well so with that thank you uh jay and vince and lou on working on this and looking forward to for the steps forward uh sarah further comments all right so scene then let's move on to the consolidated action and we do have licensed personnel action including annual contracts renewal and budget parameters re-adoption as anyone wishes to pull out an agenda item and i would start with the budget parameters for myself and consult with blue as well anyone else all right with that let's start with budget parameters uh if i can ask parker to share a language and i want to thank olivia

144and ryan for uh presenting us the budget parameters as we adopted it previously uh which was just the parameters without the preample and there is a language that lou uh provided as a modification that will be uh presented for your review uh perfectly send it to them over email or uh we can we put it on the screen yes put it on the screen and as a review for folks are watching uh this is related to the budget parameters that sets the direction and parameters of how we develop our budgets and this is the preamble uh lou do you want to speak to it or maybe share a brief about what you changed or differentiated sure i was about to just highlight the area then i was like i can't because it's not my screen

145being sure um i got into teaching mode but um it's basically the same thing except for it's based on our previous conversation about the role of um or just acknowledging that emotions do come up in any decision that's made and in taking that language out while keeping the integrity of what's meant of understanding that these decisions have long-term impacts and consequences and so those um pieces are still in there but it's just um slightly tweaked the sentence itself that was changed as they set forth the ideals that the district's decision makers would adhere to as they develop the budget through an understanding that these decisions have long-term consequences and so that's the sentence that was changed um for consideration and just so that way there's parameters in understanding like why these are there this is

146why these our um parameters are in place is because of these reasons um that are stayed in the preamble so instead of not having a preamble just modifying the preamble so it still has the intent behind it thank you lou any questions comments concerns or agreement so i want to clarify my understanding are you seeking a motion to approve with this amendment as a matter of fact actually i would say how about we take uh strawball if everybody is comfortable with this uh the consolidate action will approve the parameters as presented for re-adoption and next meeting we'll have this embedded in uh the document so we'll have it for re-adoption with these changes in the next meeting great then i support the the edition thank you and thanks mr for the clarification any other concerns

147questions all right see none uh well take that into consideration for the next uh meeting to be included in the consolidated action with the budget parameters and now in the cassandra action we'll be approving the parameters as presented with that i would like to entertain a motion regarding the consolidated action so i just want to confirm that we're just doing um item what this is just the licensed personnel in consolidated action is that my understanding yeah technically whether we approve this uh or not i think it's the same language we have heard last time yeah right so yeah i think i think it doesn't really matter because you're going to bring it back and approve the new language yeah so to clarify the answer is yes and yes uh we're approving lessons personnel and the

148budget parameters presented for re-adoption as in the packet is the same that we adopted a month ago or previously all right then i move to approve consolidated action any second any further discussion yes i do have discussion yes so uh in the licensed personnel action we are seeing some notable educators leaving our organization and some that have touched me personally and shaped who i am and how i think about education and leadership i just want you know anna gomez who is a teacher at linus pauling middle school she was a colleague of mine at oregon state university and is an exemplary human being a great educator and has been an inspiration to me in my you know work professionally paul navarra i remember numerous very great conversations particularly at our sip meetings where paul was

149very comfortable sharing the truth what's going on at chs and it's really helped me as a board member i want to call anna marie gasser husky she's going to be leaving us she's been just a great administrator i used to be the liaison to husky back in the day and it just has been a pleasure watching her grow as a professional and learning from her work in that school and then colleen works at chs uh is at the end of her career and has just been a tremendous educator and it's been really inspiring to me in the way that she works with the with the students at chs so i just wanted to to uh you know call out those educators i'd also like to uh call out that we're renewing the contracts on our

150on our district leaders and principals this is not a trivial thing these folks work hard for us and have done great work particularly this year and then of course we have a whole bunch of renewals for our teachers as well so this is actually while it's embedded in consolidated action it's an important milestone in the year for the board yeah absolutely jay i just wanted to echo vince's comments and we could be here a long time thinking of names but the one that jumps out of me in this group is colleen works i have one quick story colleen and i did social studies curriculum work i was the high school government teacher and she was the middle school social studies teacher and we argued about whether eighth graders could learn the constitution and i was

151just not convinced they understood search and seizure and she could do it and and and her passion for for kids just then carried forward i know she jumped into the high school and she's a strong leader and teacher there so i appreciate her and all those others who've given so much of their time so thank you to all of them thank you much gratitude for our educators they're doing tremendous work and the community owes it to you for your hard work and yeah so with that any further comments all right we have a motion on the floor uh and see there's no further comments we'll take a vote director adams what's your vote hi uh director conroy what's your vote uh my share finger mcdonald's what's your vote hi dr jones what's your vote hi

152director baker what's your vote i direct your white bear what's your vote all right and share i'll drop a voice i passes unanimously and uh let's see what's next we have consolidated information any uh items you want to pull out from consolidated information blue and then j blue j was first it might be the same thing as a bfj oh no it isn't i'm sorry please go ahead okay bff bf and jay what about you i just wanted to take a minute to acknowledge two people who i personally knew so whenever that's appropriate all right and uh and then vince uh i want to acknowledge some people and then i want to talk about financials i think we're pulling all of consolidative information out looks like it all right let's start with acknowledgements uh the

153corvallis board i was going to give you the time that i stole from you for last meeting that wins for six hours but all right jay i just want to note that the retirements of debbie bell and sharon gibson two people who i would tell you uh personality if you don't know them they are both very kind and caring and they do their work with just a real supportive attitude i know uh debbie in the business world and sharon in the food service world and i just came to really appreciate them for their their heart and their hard work so and i wish them a great retirement likewise jay uh the same two people and my reflection on them is almost identical i i remember early on in my board service that when i walked

154into the the district office debbie bell was always there and smiling and and greeted me she knew who i was and she was happy that i was there and she's just always been a bright point in the district office and then sharon gibson has just been inspiring and bringing the creativity and dedication to her job uh even when um things have been tough and and food service was not getting a lot of kudos from the community she leaned in and worked hard in that space and just is a dedicated and kind person and so just you know wanted to recognize the retirement of these two individuals and you know people in the district you you impact us i guess is the message that we're trying to share absolutely absolutely thank you all right let's go

155next for uh bf and then we'll go for the financials so policy bf uh it's the policy developments and this is for our first read um i think uh lulu uh brought up first so uh ryan do you wanna have any comments first about it or i don't i don't think necessarily i think um really this was trying to incorporate the [Music] information that was shared by board members after that first review of the um of the policy again we took the boilerplate policy from ospa and wanted to include additional information there based on the conversation from the board so um i i think we've we've tried to do that and if that's not the case or if there's additional modifications were welcome and open to it okay lou okay um you ready melissa i

156was just curious about what lrs 332. and ors 3 39.240 how they inform this policy because one of them the 505 has to do with personnel policies and the other one has to do with rules of conduct and it seemed like very interesting that they were in here and not other policies that we would potentially be interacting with and so it's just it's more a point of curiosity of how those two inform this policy in particular the other one totally makes sense but these two i was just really didn't understand sort of like before when i asked about these it's either a broken link or i'm curious to why or how they inform it because the how i think is really important for us to know as board members um if we're citing laws um

157and then the other one i think we actually had a email about the um one of the highlighted one that's in the middle and i was just bringing and this was a while back and um apologize for now because we get so many emails um but the terminology about basic responsibility if there's um clarification of what that means um as far as basically is it like delivering it to the board when it comes um to light so that's kind of the only actual question about the text i had and um it was something i had written down a while back so i don't remember exactly who brought it up initially but i made a note of it and so let's just bring it up thanks so i i remember that question coming up and so

158as i was thinking about it um i think the scenario that was given is um if you had a superintendent who didn't bring or refuse to bring the policy forward and again i don't have it right in front of me so i'm going from memory so i may be wrong about the refusal piece but like a reluctance perhaps and so there was a question about what if that was the case for the superintendent um how would that influence an impact on policy development yeah i think that's i think that was the premise of it too and so i was wondering if like basic responsibility could be a little bit more specific just to help um answer that question or to help clarify for the public too of like what that means i mean i have

159an idea what basic responsibility means like i would imagine any you're the one who would be putting it all together and bringing it to the board but i think that if it's a little bit like spelled out that might help clarify and i thought about it in a totally different way um i thought about it in terms of um the responsibility that i um that you're a group of seven and you're um happened to be my evaluation tonight but generally speaking you evaluate you hire you fire the superintendent and so i thought about it in terms of the um how that would go down pragmatically if there was refusal on my part to bring policy forward and where that would actually rest it would rest in my evaluation um and my continued employment so that's

160how that's how i thought about it so i didn't necessarily think that it needed a different more language it was kind of clear to me about the consequences of that um but that being said if you feel like there's additional language that would better clarify that i'm totally open to it but i just wanted to share from my perspective how i thought about it that totally makes sense ryan and i don't necessarily think it needs to change it was just like something i remember being brought up and i had it written down from when we talked about it and just wanted to make sure it was really clear and documented like what's meant even if it's in the minutes that there's that understanding that doesn't necessarily mean we have to change it but yeah but

161there's a responsibility on the part of the superintendent i think uh the way i interpreted that i'm pushing this to the extreme examples uh that's how he tested policy his language uh is the basic responsibility day in day out we would expect our superintendent to present those policies to us and that reflects the need the systemic need and we would approve them or discuss them maybe basic what basic means to me as i read it is the board still have the right to override so let's say if you get uh several board members who say we want this policy and in this extreme example you mentioned uh the superintendent is reluctant so there's that two ways of accountability and override where the board will present that to the agenda and work on it or in

162the evaluation as well but that's not the usual it's not the basic yeah and then contrary to that extreme example the basic responsibility is what we've been doing for the last four years uh does that make sense or is that how i re yeah no i mean that's that was that would still be your prerogative you and i work in conjunction to set the agenda for these meetings and right you would have the ability to bring put policy on the agenda yeah yeah and that's where yeah i don't know like maybe yeah i think i think it's making sense to me but i don't know uh how do you feel like we we're okay to approve it as is with this understanding and will james both have their hands up oh i'm sorry trying to

163look okay let's go i didn't i just spooled and then i saw that so i have some language that might solve this problem and so uh if you'll indulge me so i i would consider revising the sentence to read the responsibility for the routine initiation review and recommendation of new policies or policy modification will rest with the superintendent and the reason that i i came up with this language is because i thought about what our practice is and our practices is that those routine those routine policies that the updates that we get after every legislative cycle and you know minor adjustments that does rest with the district staff and with the superintendent um and that's how they come to the board that doesn't preclude the superintendent from from initiating a transform transformational policy it just

164states that the maintenance of our of our routine policy process would rest with the superintendent does that capture the intent can you read that one more time please the responsibility for the routine initiation review and recommendation of new policies or policy modification will rest with the superintendent yeah i think so i like it so instead of basic i use the term routine yeah yeah that's how i interpreted basic two bins is that it's just the process that we go through where we pull that down from osb and we go through and we make those adjustments yeah i'm going to find the answers to your questions lou and i'll make sure and send those out um on the ors and i'm sending this text to you thank you thanks vince okay i agree with vince i

165wonder and we're talking about people who read this getting confused if you added one more word in the now first sentence that says new policies or changes in existing policies may also be proposed so you just change those sentences and you you talk a person reading it for the first time would go oh no wait what's the board's job and you and also might might clarify that this is in addition to what's been stated about the superintendent just uh i think we're stumbling over the fact that we don't read about it very often and then we go wait a minute who's in charge and the answer is we both are sort of can you clarify which paragraph that you're referring to the sentence says new policies or changes in existing policy may be proposed that's

166that's the sentence that i said you might want to add also so you say new policies or changes in existing policy may also be proposed by and that would fit really well if it was the second sentence that's wordsmithing and and i would not die on that one but just a hopeful to help people understand what is it that we're doing in this policy okay i just wanted to say thank you for like helping make it clear for the public like what we mean because just because we understand exactly what it means doesn't mean it's always like and i think it's helpful um even if it's like just a slight tweak that helps clarify um and knowing what the intent is like like i said before i totally know what it is what you're talking

167about and what we intend it to be but sometimes it's not as clear all right i see uh previous hands up vince and jay we're good sorry i'm good all right any further discussion on the uh police policy of policy all right good discussion and uh the next item in the agenda for discussion is financial december january financial i might have a couple of questions as well about this if you want to go first so um financials it's not about the substance it's uh i'm just curious why we transition to getting uh individual transactions in the financials i was a little shocked when i opened the december financials and it was 70 some pages long i was like oh my goodness what did i get um you just got information straight out of our financial

168system database um our um we usually have staff that compile that report for the board and it requires some scrubbing and compilation and i needed to pull the report for you in time to get it on the agenda so i did what i could do which is essentially information straight out of the system anyway which i actually would prefer that staff not have to manually um massage um information for the for the board report and so it's something we'll continue to work on to find a better solution in the long term so my feedback is i don't want it to take extra time for staff to massage a report for the board either so i think if there's software that can roll that that information up great but until then keep sending me all those

169transactions i can sift through them but yeah typically i i wouldn't want that level of detail but um yeah we don't want to waste staff time either yeah okay any other questions well vince uh you just reminded me that i shouldn't go to the to the weeds so i'm not gonna ask about controller refurbishments and ip changes for mattel sheets what was that about even though i'm really curious to know but uh my my question that i think is appropriate for our board level is uh the other one which is regarding capital improvements fund resources and i can't pinpoint the page uh right now but i my understanding and correct me if i'm wrong and the capital improvement fund resources we budgeted for an amount and we actually have actuals increase revenue uh more than

170what we budgeted for my interpretation is because we had a great rating and uh and we got more when we sold the bond the second phase of the bond is that correct and could you explain more why we got more revenue than what we budgeted for that is correct and so in the december financials the financial statement for the capital projects fund which is page number 12 of the december financial packet um it local sources would be representative of interest earnings and so we budgeted a million dollars of interest earnings we've received 1.5 million through the end of december so yes we're receiving more interest earnings than what we budgeted and for the other financing sources that represents the bond premium we budgeted just shy of 40 million and have received 50.4 million and so

171um the other financing sources the bond premium line that won't look any different through the end of the year there won't be any more activity in that account but the interest earnings will continue to accumulate as this only represents the first half of the fiscal year that's wonderful thank you lou was like getting this big packet i just wanted to say thank you to olivia and other staff that usually compile this down i just wanted to express a moment of appreciation because it's a lot of information to shift through and i hope that we're able to find a way to make that a little smoother for y'all thank you though jay just have a question i remember when we all kind of gave judy ball a bad time about digging through some of these and

172i'd like to ask vince if he could give us a excuse me a note about what is our duty as a board member to be into these and i'm you know i'm happy to maybe pass that along to the next group of people that are board members but if we have an obligation to be into it we need to get whatever detail we're supposed to get into so how to read the financials no no no to what what level of funding i guess i thought we were getting more detail so i will tell you a story about the about the school board when i first got on it it used to be a time honored tradition that that the board would go into the transactions the expenditures reports so individual things and ask questions about

173ones that were that seemed large and that we didn't know what they were um and while at that see it was it was not done in a nitpicking way it was just out of curiosity and i have to say in that in that exercise i learned a lot about the district and its operations i remember expenditures for things like the fly rig in at the chs theater you know we didn't know what it was we didn't know what the company was then it was an expenditure for like i don't know ten thousand dollars it was a lot it was a lot and it was just really interesting so it's things like that that i think digging into that if there's an expenditure that's that you're curious about i guarantee you that olivia knows exactly what

174she's spending the money on and and you can learn a lot from from what the what the district is spending on so at this point i'm i'm fairly familiar with most of the things so i don't pull anything out anymore i'm just more asking about what would you if you were giving a seminar to board members what is our fiduciary duty as a board member to what level of scrutiny and um and i don't mean to take too much time but that was just my question i think i think that if i think board members need to look at what the expenditures are of the district and get familiar with them and then look for anything that would be anomalous and that we we would be acting in our oversight capacity in doing that thank

175you yeah one thing i would add that actually i learned it from vince something a practice i do is read the uh ex actuals uh from the budget and let's say we are halfway through the year uh you would expect it more or less to be 50 percent if not it's not necessarily a red flag but it's a question mark maybe there was a budgeted expenditure at the beginning of the year there's nothing that you're going to expend the end of the year but if it is a trend and you're expecting that you will be over budget that's where you want to ask are we actually going to be over a budget um of course it's not only the percentage of expenditures over actuals uh it's it's are we on a trend to go over

176budget um and honestly i never saw that as an issue or a problem for us uh for the district but that would be another question mark vince uh do you think that's appropriate or do you want to maybe correct me with what i said that is totally appropriate so that's something i always look at and olivia does a really good job of laying that out for us uh the rate at which revenues are coming in and where we were the previous year and sometimes the year prior to that and then also how fast are we spending out the budget and are we on pace um the other thing to look at is ending fund balance and the projection for the ending fund balance and olivia always includes that as well so there's lots of important

177it's really just she's giving us a bellwether of where we're heading and making sure that we're on glide path to to end with a balanced budget at the end of the year yeah awesome olivia you olivia you're the expert in this space so please chime in yes um i think in response to jay's inquiry and my experience the level of detail of information reviewed by the board on a regular basis varies significantly across districts in some cases and in the past experience i've had the school board didn't review like transaction level data in some districts the board reviews the check register for the entire month and so it could be um you know one thing one end of the spectrum to another or something in between the the cash disbursement detail that's provided to the

178board on a monthly basis has been the same since i've been here and that the board receives information for any disbursement that's equal to or greater than one thousand dollars um just as like a food for thought and in the future that's a pretty low amount um i personally don't approve any purchase orders or requisitions that are below 2500 um we have a workflow within the district and um for for things to come to me for approval they have to meet a certain amount and so even at the thousand dollar level it's a pretty low level of detail uh for procurement uh for procurement and purchasing regulations the threshold for us to even enter into competitive procurement where we you know solicit you know at least uh more than one quote is the ten thousand

179dollar limit and so um it might be something to consider for the future in terms of the minimum level of disbursement that the board wants to review um and it would obviously you know minimize the of transactions that you're looking at but it's just something that you can consider it's it's been that way since i've been here and we haven't really talked about modifying any of the components of the financial statements the investment report that you receive monthly is required in the board policy on investments and the financial statements are also noted in our fiscal policy so um the disbursements report is not necessarily indicated anywhere in any board policy so it's kind of just an informal process that we've been following wonderful thank you olivia really appreciate it any more comments or questions yeah

180i really appreciate olivia and uh since uh people are watching i want to just acknowledge how amazing the work that we do and award-winning our budgets are uh they're good to good to read and they are very very well organized and we've been awarded uh awards on uh that good workout but it just sounds like there's a training opportunity here uh we're important to learn about about school finance and get maybe get a little look under the hood when we have some time and maybe a topic for our retreat and we can learn from our finance director absolutely and i'll check in offline with ryan as well uh probably uh we could do it with refreshers or training with the budget committee whether this year or maybe later on so i'll make sure offline we

181have a plan for that thanks for the suggestion vince um good so that gets us into the last item before the adjournment which is board member comments do we have any comments or future agenda items for consideration uh with the understanding for future agenda items my it probably will be budgeted for next year we have really heavy agenda uh terese thanks sami so uh in the course of uh some work that i do um with well it doesn't really matter anyway i have been learning more about how high school completion programs work for students that don't graduate in four years and i would like to learn a little bit more about how our district came to kind of form its its policies around uh how it will provide services for post four-year seniors students in

182general i'm particularly trying to understand a little bit more about the variations across districts around what happens when kids reach the age of not being able to be served by um by the public schools so i'm curious about uh how our district approaches that are we serving until we are not legally allowed to serve do we have an earlier cut off than that how did we make that decision the literature that i've come across so far is pretty clear that students that complete a high school diploma even if they complete it late tend to fare better in terms of wages later in life than students that opt for a ged i'm a big proponent of the ged and i'm absolutely i think it's it's can it's a very rigorous test and so i it's not

183about i don't think that this phenomena happens because the actual education that people are receiving i think it happens probably related to perceptions and a combination of additional barriers that might be directing a person toward a ged in the first place so um anyway i'd like to understand a little bit more about uh how our district has uh come to its process of serving those students um and so that's that's something i'd like to hear i guess a report out on no doubt when we get that report out i'll have probably some questions about that perfect do you want to talk a little bit about it maybe fifth year program as well um you know actually i think it would be something that i'd actually rather have eric wright come and talk about yes yeah

184just about um sort of because he helps with you know he's um responsible for college hill but he also provides support and a couple of other avenues as well so maybe i think that would be something that would be worthwhile so i i'd rather just have him come and speak if that's okay that would be great thank you yeah thanks teresa probably related or not uh the 50-year program is going to sunset at the end of this year and senator also reached out to learn about how our district is doing it so maybe uh if there's a need for advocacy about it if you're interested uh you and other board members that we can connect offline about how to connect with senator gelser to advocate for uh continuing the fifth three year program and other

185post uh four years program interventions yes i would very much like to have to continue that conversation i wasn't quite sure what your comment meant when our agendas are full and where my two requests for uh kind of cleanup measures on our own policies would stand are we still going to get those in before uh may yes you bet so actually one of them i think we're gonna present it uh embedded in the uh calendar uh so i'll briefly mention the election of officers uh it's just gonna we're not gonna schedule elections of officers uh throughout the may or june meeting and we will have a schedule proposed for the board uh with the july 1st meeting and that will include the election of officers on the first day of the new cycle that's being

186said i would say yes we will discuss within the framework of the calendar but that seems the most practical way of the elections for officers and the other one if you could remind me which one was i i know that one and that's i'm working with osba on that one jay about the extension of time between um first and second read of a policy or resolution thank you it will come before the end of the year well the other comment is i want it's a statement of appreciation it's hard work we do when we do evaluations and exchange thoughts about uh evaluation they're hard so i just appreciate the the tone and the thoughtfulness appreciate you guys very much yeah and that's one of the things um sort of appreciation for sammy you know recognizing

187the amount and you actually the whole board but just the amount of work that went into putting that whole document together um i know that it took time and intention um that was obvious and so thank you for for the work in doing that well thanks demon uh i i leaned a lot on the board uh last night i had a couple phone calls uh chicken and for language with sarah and vince so thank you for the help um really the board did a huge work on the evaluation and i i enjoyed working on it um all right so jay uh i'm ben lu hi lou um this is a little ways out but i'm wondering if it can be on sometime agenda maybe i don't know if it'll be in this um ward year

188or another one but i'm curious um about thoughts on the ethnic studies bill that got passed and um and how that's fitting into the long-term plans of curriculum since they're i think it's the spring that the standards are getting reviewed um and it's just a couple more years out that it'll be part of curriculum and so i'm just kind of curious um just knowing what the with the priorities and commitments to equity and anti-racism in the district i'm kind of curious where we're at on that i guess we don't have to have any updates of course on the spot but it's just been on my mind and some opportunities that may be coming up through the local ethnic studies programs with the local universities and stuff like that and so just wanting to know where

189it is on the radar is all at some point yeah sounds good um yeah and that's something that i think having amy and nikki come and help to talk about mrcn actually i think that would be another an important conversation um thanks and also um wanted to thank you again ryan and the team for helping get the kids back in as soon as we could and glad that this week was a good start and looking forward to more kids having good starts um in the coming weeks yeah absolutely thanks okay anyone else uh i want to invite uh every one of you to join the caucus of color uh either as a boy as a as a member if you self-identify as a black indigenous or person of color or as a friend of the

190caucus which is open for all osba school board members there is really important work happening and i'm really proud to be working with lou and our colleagues across the state there's legislative advocacy professional development and just learning from our colleagues across the state on uh the work that they're doing has been uh phenomenal i'll be sharing with you a letter that the officers of the caucus and myself sent to osaa related to uh the implementation and the creation of rules that uh were negatively impacting uh students athletes and other districts uh and if you have any questions feel free to ask to reach out um but i i i signed off on that letter in that capacity and it's included really some disturbing news about how our students black students are impacted by some roles

191so i look forward to continuing that discussion with osaa and they seem to be receptive and actively working on making sure that our students are safe but also their culture and identity is being respected uh the other thing i want to say today is really a summer day to remember march 11th is the day everybody recognized life is not going to be the same at least for maybe a few weeks month or year also or the japanese community is remembering the 10 year anniversary of the fukushima disaster uh with and it just disturbed lives and killed lives uh because of the tsunami or disturbed lives because of that nuclear reactor and the way i'm reflecting on both disasters the pandemic and the other nuclear disaster they said about that one it was not a natural

192disaster it was man-made air quotes which means that they were preventable and the harm could have been reduced and in our backyard we have actually a nuclear uh technology that is fukushima safe so it would not repeat the mistakes of the past it relies on gravity to save people the same way i'm thinking the education system that we're building right now i hope will be mitigating the effects of a future pandemic if this would happen again and probably it will happen so i'm just reflecting on the severity of this day for us as an institution and people uh how much learning we got and how much better we will be to save ourselves and our kids from the hardships and the struggles that we went through last year whether it was a loss of lives

193or loss of jobs or loss of learning and really much appreciation for everything ryan and his team is doing to really build that institutional learning for us as a community and as the educational system at large and i'm sure there are some learnings from corvallis that will be shared across districts and might might be the standard of how we do things uh so thank you for being bald and for inventing and for giving me hope that the future will be better than the past absolutely thanks well with that we are adjourned if there's any more comments thank you