School Board Meeting (2/4/21)

001a special meeting for corvallis school this district board of education for february 4th 2021 is called to order the first item on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance please if you're willing and able join me 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 welcome everybody uh we do have a roll call of all our board members with the exception of vice chair starfinger mcdonald who couldn't uh join us today for uh emergency reasons so with that i want to welcome our audience who are joining us and for those who are listening to us we do welcome public inputs and encourage it the next uh opportunity for

002a public comment uh during a school board meeting would be in our next business meeting with and we always welcome the community to reach out to the school board over uh email as well in the meantime and uh director adams for what reason you would like to be recognized uh i'd like to move that the agenda to amend the agenda to bring items for consolidated action item five consolidated information to the front of the agenda do you like to take unanimous second sense on that yes let's see unanimous consent in the interest of our staff all right with that objection so uh as a clarification uh what we just did now is we move the agenda so we can act on the consolidated action material we do have our staff team presenting material related to

003budget committee vacancies and bond items and approval for some early work and license personnel action and we will do that first and then we will transition to the work session related to the promise scholarship uh with that in mind i want to mention for community members who want to access the material that we will be discussing during this meeting it will be available in the uh in the video uh description and also it's available at the corvallis school board page on the district website uh with this does any uh school board member wish to pull out an item for consolidated action for a question or clarification or discussion all right i will have a question uh a brief question about chs and uh jaws early work if that is possible and that's all for me

004so dale welcome and thank you for being here um my questions regarding and uh hello kim it's related to both projects you described that there is an approval that we're doing right now for an early work on a preliminary work and then there is another approval that we are expected to do in uh the next meeting could you briefly describe the difference between the maximum guaranteed price that we're going to approve right now and the one we're going to do in the next two weeks certainly the the first one is is the chs early work piece and then the um that allows us to get mechanical contractor on board to help us meet our schedule obligations for that project and then in two weeks the full price will come in and um the project has

005already bid out to the entire subcontractor market and it's and it appears to be on track and that's why we're comfortable in bringing this piece of the of the work to the board early and that'll help us ensure success down the road um the other one for the the three elementary renovations that one's not coming to the board in two weeks it's out in early march that project is still out for bid for the bulk of the work however the abatement work we wanted to get out early so that we could secure those contractors to start on spring break wonderful well thank you that's a lot for me um any further questions uh on any item in that consolidated action and scenes none seen none uh the chair would like to entertain a motion related

006to consolidated action director adams what's your motion i moved to improve consolidated action and do i hear a second second all right tyrese got it it's been moved by director adams and seconded by director jones to approve consolidate action as presented is there any further discussion or any discussion on demotion see none will take a roll call vote a director adams i director conroy hi director jones aye sorry uh director white bear hi director baker hi and uh chair of the above voice i passes unanimously thank you very much i appreciate your work and really uh wonderful work happening there and looking forward also for the appointments for the budget committee vacancy we encourage community members who want to be involved to apply for the budget committee vacancy and you will see in the material

007the timeline for that it's a great opportunity this is how i started getting involved in the school board so please try to join and help us doing this good work yes i just wanted to say yeah i just wanted to say thank you to um director adams for bringing this up and moving this to the front of the agenda um this this team is spending many nights right now working with the design advisory committees and so for them to be able to finish early tonight um it's really appreciated so thanks for thinking of that um in the future i think that we want to either look at their items coming forward as an act as action items so that they can be adopted earlier in the meeting or some other way that we sort of

008recognize the the workload of this team right now and they're taking that into account with our agenda so thank you for doing this um twice now and i think that's this practice we want to start to take on absolutely and i'm also in favor of that i think there's uh two benefits out of this uh being stewards of our staff time and uh really with much gratitude for the uh hours you spend on on these projects but also another thing is we call out those projects at the beginning of the meeting and uh i think that's part of our celebration and uh really calling out the good work of the bond so yeah i'm definitely in favor of doing that great thank you all right and thank you so much i appreciate it right so

009next item on the agenda is related to the promise scholarship work session with much gratitude for osba providing this works at these workshops and this scholarship program that allows the school board to invest its time in professional development related to issues important to the board and at the same time the board gets the honor to receive scholarship funds that can be awarded to students or former recently graduated students it's really great work an important one and again i want to reiterate the material related to the discussion we have today or tonight are available on uh the video that's being screened and also in the packets i encourage community members to uh look at it uh with that uh the floor is yours ryan marcian kristen welcome all right so in your packet you have the

010agenda for tonight and the agenda going to be again welcome in a debrief of from our previous discussions we also have a slide deck we want to share with you related to our district equity work and i think that that's something that again is really intended to do some grounding as you move then into that policy revision looking for feedback there and then also to end the night with a review of the scholarship committee information and update as uh several board members have been working on that based on last year's scholarship um last year we earned five thousand dollars that can be used for scholarships this year and so an update on where that process is so again i think that this is being the final meeting for this year um related to the um

011the work with osba i think that our intention when we started was to come back by the third meeting to a policy review and so i feel like we've you know we've met that goal and again tonight is a little bit of additional information as you continue to make this give us feedback on the policy and then also to see another area of completion which is that the moving forward with that scholarship process for our students so anyhow it's exciting to be at this stage um and again a big lots of appreciation for kristin um from osba and marcianne who have been with us since our retreat um back in august so um here we are and here we go thank you and before i hand it over to marcianne whoa let me stay in

012my chair um i just want to say thank you for having me back and and allowing me to work with you i i rave part of the reason janet is here tonight i talk about this project all the time when we talk at osba about um you know what who who's doing who's doing well like who is really fulfilling the purpose of this project i come back to you all and and vince can attest to that like i mention this group a lot um you all have worked so well and collaboratively and are really producing a product that is going to be meaningful and this is our last night as as an msp team however when you get to the point of adoption um i just want to come and be in the audience for

013that i want to finish that out with you so please let me know when you put that on your agenda so i can be there and um so tonight we're gonna i assume i mean you're the most well prepared board that i know i assume you all looked at the policy the draft policy that we sent we're gonna ask you those questions that um that we said we were gonna go through marcian has some information before that but i will also tell you that the check is in the mail you can expect your scholarship it's literally in the mail this time normally i'd be bringing you the novelty check and the real one but um we'll get it to you and then if we could find out um who you give scholarships to and and

014where they're gonna go and what they're gonna do that would be that'd be wonderful we'd love to keep up on that so with that i'll turn it over to marcianne to get us started okay sounds great thank you kristen so good to see everybody um i think before while parker's bringing up the powerpoint i just wanted to again thank all of you as ryan and i were reviewing some of the information that we want to share tonight regarding our equity work and our journey one of the things that i reflect on is that just this gratitude towards all of you and the leadership in this district because while in covid i have i guess one of the only silver linings that i see is that i've been able to collaborate with folks across the state

015they've reached out to us asking us about the racial equity work that we're doing and the two things that i say that you need to have as an ingredient in this racial equity work is to have a supportive board and a supported superintendent so thank you so much it makes my work so much easier when i know that i have all of you um as part of this collective so again thank you so much and kristin um it's been again so wonderful and i'm so glad that we're going to continue working together so parker if you wouldn't mind bringing up the slide all right it wouldn't be a board meeting without a powerpoint right so tonight ryan and i just wanted to share um just some slides with you to kind of give you a

016bird's-eye view of uh our racial equity work in our equity transformation plan and our equity transformation plan is a plan that we um started back when we accelerated our racial equity work and one of the things that i'd like to say about our racial equity transformation plan is that it's an iterative plan it changes and it has grown and developed over the course of the years because it has built on itself and it has also continued and it continues to be refined based on our work our growing work our racial consciousness growth as well as our connection to the community so tonight we're going to be sharing with you some slides that will share show you some visual representations of some activities and some examples of what our racial equity looks like in in real

017life and so next slide parker thank you so our racial um our equity transformation plan as you've seen before has four pillars and these four pillars i'd like to think about it as the legs on a table right and when we have all four legs on a table we can actually transform systems and if one of these legs on the table is missing um it loses its integrity so when we think about our equity transformation plan these four areas are integral in transforming systems and so tonight you're going to see examples of each one of these areas students at the center thinking about our how are we aligning our priorities to um keep students at the center equity leadership development how are we building capacity of our staff in our communities in their racial consciousness

018and their empowerment culturally relevant leading learning and teaching practices how are we creating rigorous learning environments for our students and lastly family and community engagement empowerment how are we engaging our families and communities as partners in this racial equity work and so in a second i'm going to have parker move us to the next slide and uh one of the things that i know this is kind of tiny but we wanted to visually represent or show you what we've some actionable items that have occurred since we amplified our racial equity work back in 2014 and recently ryan shared our graduation growth over the course of the years and back in 2013 and 2014 when we amplified our racial equity work if you're a latino student in our system we had a 50 50 chance of

019graduating and so we can see by the growth in our graduation rates that it really has taken a village has taken a lot of courageous action um in order to really improve educational system and education for all our students so you can see here some a list of some strategic and well thought out activities that we have done in the course of the years and if you'll notice at the beginning the first two two to four items there it's really about building we spent a significant amount of time at the beginning really building the capacity of our staff our staff have participated and continued to participate in trainings that help them really acquire language common language to be able to talk about race to be able to talk with one another to be able to

020do some self-reflection and we felt like this was really important as an instrumental excuse me in a framework for really the work that we're doing now and one of the things that you'll see here is um a couple of things that i wanted to highlight is the expansion of our safe students this year we are expanding or expanding our safe student groups to our middle school and then we hope to expand our safe student groups to the elementary level which will be wonderful another area that i wanted to highlight is our equity training that has got that has been propelled in other areas of our system including facilities and technology because one of the things that we believe is that every single staff member in the corvallis school district is an educator and it's important

021that we include all our staffs in these trainings and then lastly another piece that i wanted to highlight is our aspiring leaders program and that's something that's underway this year and we're excited to be able to grow and empower our staff of color to be leaders in our district and that work is very exciting and that's something that we are is underway right now next slide right right yes yes please ryan two things so you know this morning um we had the foundation breakfast and going back to the data that marcian shared about our latino students and their you know basically the 50 50 chance of graduating back in 2012 and where we are now um with 88 graduating um and last year's four-year cohort and last in the year before that at 89 percent

022so i feel like that's an area that um as you see in this work you also see some of the outcomes the same thing is true of our students graduating with the seal of bioliteracy um that that number has also gone up significantly over the last several years so you also saw a graphic of that when we talked about on our equal opportunity schools our eos grant when chs and cb presented and you saw the number of our students of color in advanced placement courses as well as our white students and you saw how um the growth for our our students of color has an overall impact on the overall group of students that are in our school so there are lots of examples in our data that are showing how this work is playing

023out which is exciting to see the last thing i'd add is that that are um well it says we have an equity transformation plan that is a year-long plan really that it's a plan that has continued to grow and evolve it's been iterative as marcians said and as i think about that plan it really goes back to those four foundational pieces on the previous slide the leadership development students at the center uh culturally relevant teaching those pieces for us have really been paramount and they've also continued to be the focus as we've thought about new initiatives to bring forward we're continuing to think about how do those fit within those four pillars and are there specifics pillars that need additional support are there or are they um strongly in place and we need to look

024at other pillars that need more support so we've been thinking about that strategically where our advancements and making sure we're making advancements in all four of those areas so it's been exciting to see and this is a graphic that we've shared a couple times now and i really like to see it and look at it because it does really show our progress in terms of what projects are happening now versus early on in our work the growth and development we've made as a district thank you ryan well said you know and i know that the title in this slide um says if we can go back one second parker um the title in that slide says corvallis school district equity journey and we talk a lot about in our district uh that this work is

025not a sprint and it's a marathon and one of the things that i wanted to add to that analogy is that it's actually a marathon but it's also a relay race because we want to honor the work of those that have done this work before us and really build on the work that has happened previously so this is a journey that continues and we are just really excited about the things that we're seeing in our schools and in our district next slide parker so in these next slides we um you know like they say a picture is worth a thousand words so we wanted to highlight some pictures that are connected to our equity pillars or equity transformation pillars and this first one um is a picture that highlights students at the center and this

026is our safe students and when we were in person we would meet in the room that you're in right now ryan and sammy and we would come together once a month with these amazing high school students and really lean into a lot of amazing work the students just have so much to say and we have fortunately been able to continue to meet as a safe group even through comprehensive distance learning and so here this is the picture to show these these amazing students and also to highlight malia malia was at the corvallis hands across corvallis breakfast last year and she is really a beautiful example of a student that has really found her voice and has been empowered through a program such as safe next slide this next slide is connected to our leadership development

027and also our community engagement and this is a picture that was taken a little while ago it's our delta family and i know delta members and leaders have come and presented at some of the board meetings and in this space what i appreciate about this group is that this group has really been a critical partner in our racial equity work and we have come together and continue to come together once a month to really engage in racially conscious collaboration and you'll see in a couple of slides coming up just the critical um the critical aspects that this group and the work that they have done to really help us transform and reimagine um some structures that were that really weren't working for their children and so uh this this is a beautiful picture of the

028group coming together once a month and celebrating but also doing some critical work next slide in this picture here um this is uh uh on the left is a picture of angel harris and denise stuffin and they um engaged us in a really this was during black history month two years ago or a year ago and we were able to lean into some pretty critical information we talked we this was prior to the adoption of our social studies curriculum and here they were leading a meeting around thoroughgood marshall and we spent some time looking at books looking at our history books at the time and realizing that the books that we had at the time really weren't representative of the what we wanted students to be able to learn in terms of just the the

029narratives and the celebrations of of our bipod community and then on the right there um you see a picture of our delta leaders so we've got emily and angel and denise and yani and and this is uh this group coming together and really thinking about um what types of topics need to be discussed be discussed at our following delta meetings and in fact uh prior to this meeting i met with them tonight and they're planning uh their next meeting next week so it's a it's a group that i'm just very honored to be a part of and just so honored to see their growth as leaders in our community one of the things i just want to share about that is just how um you know seeing this group of people um initially just made

030me smile when i saw that picture on the slide before just to think about how we've been a group that has continued to meet together even during the pandemic to continue to meet together and and sort of in fellowship and in friendship and and in a way that concerns can be brought up and can be talked through and addressed and so i feel like i feel like it's a group that has again it's one of those lines on the previous slide that showed year in year out and it feels that way and that's how relationships are really formed by continuing year in and year out to have conversation and work with one another and i feel like this is an area of real pride for our school district because it has been um such an

031important group to be with and hear from and also such important relationships that have been formed thank you parker next slide so when we think about our culturally responsive teaching and learning pillar this picture was taken during a glaad training in glad is guided language acquisition design which is used in many of our schools to provide access to students to content and so here we have some teachers that were involved in some training that and you can tell that they were having a great time interestingly enough and which was really cool this training was done completely in spanish and that's something that we've really tried and strived to do is provide training in our some of our teachers native language and along with our culturally responsive teaching and um we have spent some time the

032last couple of years providing training around culturally responsive teaching for our teaching staff and while we were in school one of the things that i wanted to highlight was um we went ahead and did classroom tours in building tours and really looked at you know when you walk into a building and you are culturally linguistically diverse what does the classroom say what do the classroom library say what does the building what's the feeling of the building and really trying to ask the question whose perspective is missing in these spaces so the walkthroughs that we did were really influential and helpful because it really helped us see when students are in classroom spaces do they see themselves in what's on the wall when they go to the classroom library do they see themselves in the books

033that they're reading so those two pieces have been a great highlight for us next slide here we have you might recognize a couple of people in that picture there sami and lou um part of our culturally responsive teaching in our social studies adoption was the importance of community voice in student voice so here we wanted to show just a couple of pictures where you know in a typical curriculum adoption it usually takes about a year but we wanted to extend our social studies adoption process to include community engagement and community voice so on the left there you see a picture of our panel and the kiva panel was an opportunity for community members to come and speak to our social studies educators and talk about what impact um uh what impact the social studies or

034the their experiences they wanted to share that with the teachers so it was really really powerful and in the right there you see some of our safe students they actually created a list of top the top 20 culturally responsive things that teachers should be doing in the classroom so that picture on the right there you see some of our safe students presenting at a crescent valley staff meeting and i think it was at 7 30 in the morning so the fact that they got up that early was pretty impressive but they presented in front of the teachers and and just shared from their perspective what was an important what were some important things for teachers to remember as they create culturally responsive spaces next slide this one these next two slides um really highlight the

035importance of gathering multiple perspectives and community engagement and so if you haven't had a chance sometime go to the welcome center and there's this beautiful mural that's on the outside of the wacom center and this picture here is a group of families that came together to give input on what the mural ideas for the mural and the difference between a collective mural and a you know a typical mural is that a typical mural is usually predetermined if there's a commissioned artist a collective mural is actually a collection of ideas based on the community response so this particular mural title was coming home and the question that was asked to the community is what does welcome mean to you and so this was a year-long project and you can see there with the different panels the

036different tiles there each tile represents a perspective a community member and so when you get a chance check it out it's beautiful mural that's right outside the welcome center next slide parker and again this uh is another meeting that occurred when um our artists were collecting perspectives from our community so there they are making um you know they were sketching some things but also breaking bread together and and being in community next slide and then this one's um pretty awesome this was i wanted to share with you equity and action and i know ryan spoke about the design advisory groups that are happening and this picture shows a group of delta parents that had originally they had spent some time talking about what conditions need what conditions do they need to be present when they

037are in a meeting right and one of the comments i remember one of our delta members said is that you know i want to be able to show up to a meeting and not leave my identity at the door and so we spent some time talking about what those conditions would look like and so with the support of melanie quimps from the monahan group we created this equity look fors and these equity look fors are eight look fors that provide facilitators [Music] some guidance in terms of how to facilitate a meeting that is emotionally safe for the community members that provides multiple ways of engagement and also ensures that all voices are heard the beautiful thing about these equity look for is is that they continue to be used in our dac meetings and in

038other meetings as well pto pta meetings so we're excited about just the use of these equity look fors because they are a wonderful way of reminding folks and creating spaces of community that provide emotional safety and engage our community and in multiple perspectives ryan is there anything else you want to say about those before we go on to the next one uh no i thought well i guess yeah i would just add that um this is a i feel like this is a really powerful tool for us um you know one of the pieces that stands out to me um as i think about those equity of course is the concept of lived experience and and learning and getting equal space to each in the conversations that you have in the decisions that you make

039as you bring in community and i think that that's something that has really resonated with me and as those equity workforce have been designed and something that i take into account um often in terms of the decisions that we make and whose perspective and voice do we hear so it's been a really helpful um and important tool for us next slide parker so this you know earlier we talked about delta and we've talked about community engagement and one of the beautiful things about this work is that it can't be done unless there's trust and there's authenticity and this picture was taken gosh i want to say two summers ago if you remember and one of the things about delta is that we always it's so important to break bread together and be in community and

040and so we this picture was taken in the spring at the end of the year we brought everybody together and it was an opportunity to unite to bring people together and to celebrate without any other agenda it was just about being together in community and what you can't see in this picture is that ryan was actually flipping burgers [Laughter] in the back so it was it was great for the community to see ryan in kind of an informal place and this was at the martin luther king park and it was a great event and you know when we're able to be in person again we will definitely celebrate again so um just wanted to share that with you and then the last picture which is the last slide is this is our kind of a

041culmination of some of our racial equity work and back in 2019 um the racial equity regional racial equity group was formed and it's a collaboration between corvallis school district gaps so greater albany public schools philomath lblesd the naacp lebanon and now we just included lincoln county and so the commitment of this group together is to have ongoing collaboration and sharing ongoing learning and strengthening our partnerships and a document that we signed june of this past year was the proclamation and that's what it said it was that we were going to continue to collaborate together that we were going to continue to learn together and really strengthen our partnerships so this group again continues to meet and it's been wonderful to do to share in this racial equity work with them because you know as we

042think about our students here in corvallis all our students in oregon deserve this level of racial equity work so um with that it was just it's been wonderful to come together and even while uh in in covid we have been able to continue to meet it's a collective and we continue to um collaborate and work together to to improve all our systems um so with that i think the powerpoint that was our last one besides a thank you there we go thank you so again the intention there was to um provide context for the work that's been underway and the work that continues and to have that information on front and center as you begin to look at that policy um and the work ahead of us so um thank you marcion for putting that

043together um and in some ways you know in the midst of uh some of those things some of those experiences feel so long ago but they really aren't um and they're continuing and so um i'm actually left with excitement and anticipation for when we're able to come back together and those things are able to continue in person so um thank you for that feels like you know thank you for the memories it's like bringing that to us because it is um intentional work and i do think we have a lot to be proud of as a school district in this area and the work we're doing thank you ryan so kristen i'll hand it over to you thank you that was wonderful i'm glad i got to see that thank you um so the next

044part of this is really to talk about the the draft policy that you got from us because the next piece of this is going to be to wrap in the community and so our ask of you tonight we we prepped you with the questions that we're gonna ask you we here's what we're not asking we're not asking for um line edits um we're not asking for wordsmithing because we do want to leave space for the community to have some input without feeling like it was a foregone conclusion what they were got what they received right and i know that's your intention as well so really the question tonight is about alignment is what is here i mean we'll go through the detailed questions but the overall question is is what you were presented in alignment

045with a the district equity equity lens and b what what you felt like you articulated your expectations as in our last session and so um so we pulled some notes obviously from that that mural activity that we did and then on the side of that that night i just captured some thoughts that you said and so we generated these questions from those thoughts to make sure that those expectations were met so have you all got the policy in front of you okay because i don't i don't want to i can only like share one thing at a time so if you've got the policy in front of you then what i can do is bring up our list of questions and we can go through those and i'll take notes on those so i'm gonna

046go ahead and share that it's not fancy i've just got a word document open hopefully that's okay and um so it's the same thing that that we put that we sent you earlier um in general let me ask you first um what were you let me before we get to these what were your overall thoughts about what you were sent remember without like line edits but what were your overall impressions about what you were sent um i noticed that um i mean i i noticed that it focused on racial equity um so it like that shifts the lens that we would use to read the document and that protrude would take so that was the main thing that i is that the kind of feedback you're asking for with this okay i was just making

047those on the right that's great thank you yeah that was the first thing i noticed and then the um the way that it really um the things that added speak to the commitment to anti-racism that the district has made thank you it also doesn't lose some of the other equity work too that um was previously included so it's not saying that it's only in racial equity policy they have components to it and i think that talks um speaks to the way that there's interlocking systems in play that impact people's experiences great thank you tina i noticed that there was focused and direct language so that we know exactly that we're addressing racial disparities and racial injustice with looking at it um with the the equity lens and the racial equity lens that we needed great

048thank you vince so i was really i really like the new edits um the first thing i noticed was of course that it's got it's definitely shifted to a racial equity reference frame but what i really appreciated most was that i understand why this document exists the previous iteration of this was really a it was really a technical document this really explains where we're coming from and why we have this policy particularly in the beginning the really addressing the why but later in the in the bulleted points later there's a few places where there are value statements plugged in there that really flesh out what's propelling this policy and why we're doing this and i think that's really helpful that's helpful for us it's helpful for the the public to understand what we mean and

049it's super important for our staff so they understand what we mean by what we're doing why we're doing thank you therese thanks so uh in general i felt um similarly to what what vince just said i feel like the the purpose of the document what it's here to do feels pretty clear to me um i won't repeat things other people already mentioned so there are a few places where i felt like there is really specific reference to uh expand the idea what we mean by inclusion i'm specifically thinking about calling out the idea of or calling out the um individuals whose first language may not be english um that's would be an example of places where i i feel like the language got more precise uh and and zeroes in a little bit more uh

050deliberately on what the purpose of the document is and and you know what it's intended to convey there are a couple of places where i think um that i hope the community will bring um perspective to help the language be more specific to what something means i'm really thinking about culturally responsive for example as a phrase that i feel like has a lot of range of potential interpretation and so i i hope that's an opportunity for the community to help us to um you know drill down a little bit more when we say culturally responsive in this document what do we mean so that we we sorry my dog wants to participate too um just so that we can sidestep uh any potential for um language that um is um you know really what am

051i trying to say uh vague enough that we can't really be certain that we've done it and so putting a little bit more behind some of those phrases i think will help the community to own it so anyway that's not a criticism it's just an area where i see potential for um the community to help it take more shape absolutely thank you jay my reactions are similar to what has been expressed i had thought that we talked about last time that we would retain the title educational equity and have racial equity as a [Music] focused part of some of those issues so i my reaction is i think it may lessen the impact of the overall policy of equity for all kinds of identities and groups which i thought was a really great lens and

052my question i guess would be is it is it our intent or our concern that if we don't say racial is the most important we will be doing something that's not what we want to do so that would be a kind of a question um i think i understand what you're saying about wordsmithing um one thing that jumped out at me and i i just want to throw it out as a as a question of we really mean this um and and i'm on paragraph five if i asked you all who is responsible for your child or your students learning i i as a principal and i as a parent uh would typically say to people uh education responsibility is shared it's shared between teachers parents student and then administration i don't know that that

053sentence um where it says the district is responsible and accountable for the learning and achievement and for that one doesn't to me strike to my beliefs and so um um i would just ask us to step back and think about do we really mean the responsibility for it is only on the district so and then i had a lot of other little things but the big picture i look i really like the equity lens i really it makes us all stop and see perspectives and i just didn't want to lose that by the uh the focus uh of race and we need to decide whether that's really what we need to do thank you grace did you have your hand up for something new i wanted to ask jay a question about what his certain

054thoughts okay um are you are you referencing um paragraph five where it says ensure that every employee in the district is responsible and accountable for the learning is that what you mean okay so i was just wondering i or i guess an alternative reading of that i read that to me not that the district is solely responsible but that we don't have any employees in the district who are not responsible to participate so meaning that going back to ryan's comment earlier about making sure that we are you know or i don't know if it was right it might have been marcian um who commented on that it's it's all of our staff that we need to bring into the fold of this of training and awareness and so i guess i read that statement to

055say that our our custodian is is responsible to uphold these ideas our bus drivers are responsible it's not just our classroom teachers it's every point of contact for kids so um yeah that's how i that's how i took that i'd be curious about how other people's uh how other people are thinking about um that reference and it's the scope that it includes just a quick response thank you i i agree that that that i think that sentence was originally intended to say to every employee you need to be involved in a big way i think the wording itself may not be that clear and then i guess i would still come back to my fundamental is there something about equitable lens beliefs that should state about my responsibility even i'll even throw a community member

056uh for for for every student's uh overcoming educational gaps that we need to say those kind of things and yet also reiterate what i think is a fundamental strong education which is it is a shared responsibility so i'm just i think you clarified what that sentence intends to do i don't think it does in a clear way and i also would then be saying do we have a place for um shared responsibility for learning and we see that in this policy yeah i think that's a good question and something that i don't know when is exactly the right moment or if that's a post-community involvement conversation but i definitely hear you thinking about the policy of course can needs to reflect on some level what the district is saying it actually can usher in and

057enforce which might not include a community member but maybe there is something in a preamble to a policy that says that the overall framework of this policy is kind of contingent on the idea that we hold some things to be true that parents and community members are are collaborators in this and that it is not going to be the so solely the district that is going to achieve this i think that's a that's a good um that's certainly from an equity from an equity perspective making sure that we're rep we are saying that these voices these participants are actually all relevant um there could be a strength in calling that out in some way may i uh may i uh maybe to this point i think uh point eight and page five uh might speak

058to uh this discussion teresa and jay were mentioning and i think sequence matter um i did not think a a lot would focus on the sequence of the points but uh number five ensure that's every employee so we start from from the inside or we take the responsibility as an institution as adults but then eight that's mentioned including partners i think we might want to ask as we engage community members with this discussion uh is uh 0.8 strong enough to really reflect and echo what teresa and jay mentioned and also maybe is the sequence in the right place i'm just thinking as basically yeah we take responsibility but also it takes a village so we want the engagement of all partners uh who demonstrated culturally specific expertise can i i'm probably jumping in out of

059order um so i apologize for that i i agree with what i heard sammy say the other thing i've thought a lot about is that eight really feels like two bullets um where it says the district shall seek near the middle and again we're not trying to worship with it right now but to pull that out to make that a separate number also gives it more you know it kind of becomes two two points instead of one and the second point is really that parent um parent and family um empowerment and um and and that relationship sort of like what we talked about around delta because i i think what i what i've been thinking about a lot from the conversations we're having right now is where does that um how does that play out

060for us and i think with our our delta group that's an area that that does play out and so i could see how we would talk more about the partnership and then down below talk more about the um the uh just looking for the exact word in here the partnership and then the empowerment down below and and these community pieces that that you are pulling out and you know where there is shared responsibility where there may not be etc might be really good questions for that community feedback piece where do they want to see themselves represented in this as participants in their child's education so um you know not not that that is is being overlooked but i wonder with this feedback if then you know staff goes forward to the community and says part

061of the board's feedback was this what are your thoughts about including yourselves as as active partners in this so i think that's a great point to raise and one that would be good to carry forward into that next process lou you've got your hand up yeah it was um kind of wanting to like underscore something that sammy said about number five um in the responsibility line with adults i like how that is um is helping our mind staff that students aren't their teachers they think students can be teachers but that's not their primary role isn't to educate and i think that's really important that that's called out there because that happens a lot and it turns into like a lot of microaggressive behaviors too where people don't realize like they're trying to empower students to

062share their stories but it's also putting this like burden of responsibility on students where they may feel further marginalized in the classroom and so i appreciate that that's really pointed out um one of them that and also what ryan said about splitting number eight makes a lot of sense too um one because it's really long and i think it has different like intents behind it the two different sections of it um i'm kind of curious about number one um with that one and thinking about how it almost frames it as historically under students are kind of maybe perhaps in a burden or that it's partially on um on them for needing specialized programming and it's just maybe how it reads to me it almost feels like it's putting this um almost a blame on under

063students where it may um cost additional resources if that makes sense i'm trying to think of how that can be framed a little bit differently where it doesn't have that kind of feel to it because i think that ends up happening where like oh people are spending extra money for these special programs for these students and um and it can create an interesting kind of um the wrong impact on the students and families i think i don't know if that makes sense but i'm trying to think around that one a lot i think that's a good question to i i mean a good question of raise especially as as we do get to the point where there's a little more you know like final word smithing and that kind of thing and also seeing like

064how does that resonate with the community i i think i think all of these things are great pieces to bring forward vince and then we're going to go ahead and move forward to the questions that we asked you to prepare go ahead i was just gonna jump on that on that the special programming language one i wasn't clear what that meant and i agree lou that the way that read to me was that special programming was really remediation i know that that's not necessarily what we're talking about we're talking about ap and things like that so that we're getting in the weeds but i i had the same reaction okay that's good to know i'm making notes of these things um okay so looking at the questions that that we asked you to and based

065on the things that you said that you wanted that's what these are and and of course we wanted you to to look at this um against the the equity lens and see does it align so in general did you find that that this draft policy again it's not it's not done yet but does it in general align with the objectives of the equity lens in your mind sammy uh i believe so yeah i think it does um one thing i'm wondering about and it's part of the a couple of questions in the equity lens uh mission and vision aligning with the mission division is if we want to communicate this policy to someone a member of the public uh two five years from now and they might ask us why did you do that so

066probably i'm i think i might be asking after answering a couple of questions here number one and two a so i apologize but i think it doesn't rewind um here's what i would say and i want to have an affirmation about what i would say is really consistent with what we're doing and number two is it's really telling there that that so i would say racial identity has been the common denominator for every fraction in the equity gap meaning uh no matter of the socioeconomics or gender identity or other identities race has been the strongest predictor so when we tackle racial equity we are actually tackling all other dimensions of inequities more efficiently and also treating the root causes and common factors of inequities because of how how severe our systems has been impacted by

067racial disparities and that's why we're prioritizing we're focusing on this work so i think that's the number one i'm trying to answer the uh does it align with division and mission i believe yes because of what the data is telling us and the belief in this and i'm going to jump really quickly briefly and we can talk about more 2a i'm wondering i'm wondering if what i just said is accurate representation of what we're doing and if it is i would ask myself for a question to question three would the community interpret the language the same way i interpret it because i want to acknowledge my i'm in the process now and i want someone who could read the policy five years from now can articulate the same thing so the why part does it

068is that what you're asking like in your mind it does sufficiently articulate the why but what would it look like from another another lens is that what you're saying sammy yes from an outsider lens from uh from other community uh community members especially community members from other disadvantaged uh demographics that uh that are also interested in addressing educational equity and yeah and that might be a really good framing question for community input too does this articulate the why let's see i don't know i think vince you had your hand up first yeah sammy just surfaced probably the the biggest problem that i see with the document as it is right now in that we are isolating race and i think in the dominant culture isolating race talking about race exploring race is is not polite

069conversation it actually is a moral in the dominant culture we don't talk about race um but here we are talking about race and i'm not saying that we shouldn't i'm just saying that we should get what sammy just said into this document how why we're isolating race and how we're operationalizing our equity work orienting it that way the other thing that you the question you asked is does this align with our vision and mission and i would say yes it does but i feel the board uh moving past our vision mission statements i think that this this conversation that we've had over the what last nine months is really really moving us past that and so i think when the board comes back to its goals and its strategic documents i think we're going to

070need to really dig into those because this is moving us past that so just to make sure that those things are aligned great don't know who was next lou you want to go i don't know if i was next but sure i didn't see who was next either i would have said it was you but um yeah i kind of feel like i'm not in alignment with sammy and vince on this one um in that i think it does explain the why very clearly um to me it does anyways but it might have to do with some of my other backgrounds um in everything and like with critical race theory and stuff and that might be why i can see the y and so i think the y is there it's just like making it

071a little bit more clear for folk that may not have that same lens is what's needed because it is in there it's the first sentence like acknowledging the historical generational compounding reality of the systems and structures that have intentionally created opportunities for some groups and perpetuated racial inequities for others um and then the other added piece that added that helped clarify that is that second read sentence we recognize that the historic persistent racial achievement gap is unacceptable and that these disparities contradict the beliefs and values that the district articulates and then says what achieving equity is so i think it's to me it's pretty clear the why but um if you don't have that lens it may not be as clear so perhaps something that helps clarify what that means um yeah that's where that's

072the main thing there was something else i should have been i should have wrote it down better but yeah that's right i do think that there's a lot of yeses in these questions though like um like things means uh um sufficiently addressed like g and um and then the um e because it definitely takes a systems approach and i i do agree with vince that race isn't talked about and i think that that makes a lot of folk uncomfortable and sometimes it feels more comforting to lump racing with everything else instead of talking about it specifically and so i think that's where um a lot of times there's a disconnect with talking about the impacts of racism and white supremacy structures that impact people of color where it's equated with other types of oppression um

073not the same and that's where i think sometimes it can be felt a little bit um easier to push things together where this is specifically trying to pull it out and so i know it could be hard but it's important okay that's all my air time for now yeah it's gonna say for now not for the rest of the meeting um jay tina go ahead we haven't heard from you tina go ahead thank you jay um so i'm just putting together some of my thoughts and they might be a little scattered uh as a trans non-binary individual i see the why and um working with marginalized populations in advocacy work that i do um it's very clear and like lou [Music] uh stated that in the first sentence there's our white and when we start

074addressing um racial inequity in our educational system and the structural racism when we start addressing that that's when the rest of the injustices will be start you know start to be addressed so it's perfectly clear to me and i don't think we are um not giving a clear look to the rest of the marginalized groups i think that it clearly states in there and i'm hoping that as the community comes together and look at this policy that it you know it gets you know maybe the words will be refined a little bit more and the structure will help with that but um the y is definitely there and once we start addressing the racial inequity in our educational system the rest will follow thank you okay so my my reaction would be um that i

075would i would pull i love the idea of pulling out the y and even in some cases separating it for different identity issues um i don't want to minimize them i quote jamming them together under quote educational equity but i do think that educational equity is more than just racial inequity especially and and sami i'm not sure that that factually we were right if we say that that's a bigger predictor racial inequity is a bigger predictor than social economic i'd i'd have to go back and and uh and double check that because students of poverty and i know we could look at our uh numbers of students on free and reduced as a measure or something uh and their performance in schools there's a strong correlation i think we talked about last meeting in terms

076of of their success or students with disabilities and so to me i'm i'm all for absolutely calling out the systemic oppression problems but i don't think that saying and racial covers it all is an accurate picture i i think it short changes some of the other stuff that would be just my general input uh let's see vince you had your hand up yeah and this is we're coming back to that same point i made earlier and that's why this is that this particular point is important how we opera operationalize our equity work by focusing on race because race is one of the culturally most difficult things for us to navigate it also is one of the strongest factors in dividing us socially and so the idea of focusing on race as a means to you

077know create access for all people regardless of identity is a concept that you know we need to spell that out and so i mean for folks that that you know jay i would i would turn you back to uh glenn singleton and courageous conversations where he explains that really well um how to use race because it's the hardest topic for us to discuss and so i think that that's just a concept that needs to be embedded in the policy to explain this very point that this is the way that we're going to approach this it's not the only way but this is the way our team has done that and we've been using the courageous conversations uh framework ever since i've been on the board we started yeah back in 2013 and it's been effective

078i've heard you say was um race is an effective and important and maybe the most important vehicle to address the topic of equity why can't we why can't we say a equity is absolutely important and gaps in achievement are absolutely important and the board believe say it in these words otherwise i think community's going to say just like the email we got the the the why did you guys just focus on or spend so much uh and i think if you make a paragraph that says um the board believes that racial equities is a whatever you've said was a key avenue or uh i don't know i would i would put it in there in those strong words otherwise just assuming that everybody knew knew it know it i'm afraid we're gonna get a lot

079of pushback so a succinct way to say it is is to say that we know that if we can address disparities across racial lines we can address all the other disparities at the same time something like that i think you could easily say and i'll i know this is not about me but research shows that that all else being equal race is the biggest predictor i think you could easily say that um you know because the research shows that race is the single biggest predictor of success or failure in school this is why we're advancing that and there is research to back that up i'd like to see that that would be really helpful and i think it's that's a great okay what would you say intro um let's see sammy were you raising your

080hand a little earlier i want just to mention what you just mentioned kristen uh part of the courageous conversations uh training uh or probably beyond diversity one of them as i attended with the district i still remember that the bar graph that shows uh income and one element of student achievement which was the sat and if we remember our conversation with lou first conversation with lou during the appointment uh i'm not going to critique the sat as a credible predictor but one example of a student's achievement and it was so glaring where you see the equity gap regardless of the income of the parents if uh parents are doing uh more than six figures uh in terms of income or there is poverty you still see that black native students are uh underachieving uh white

081students and and and uh that that's that's the time where i just felt like yeah exactly there is this common denominator and if we treat that we will uh we will at least address most of the are a critical part of the other aspects of inequities by i wanted to just echo what was just mentioned uh referencing this research would be important and i think it will be a message for uh the board five years from now maybe a hundred years from now if someone comes in and the lens i came into the board with and say wait a minute maybe we need to address another inequity or maybe we need to address all antiquities uh this paragraph mentioning and referencing the research i would tell them look at it at the data if 100

082years from now this is not true then look at the data and change your mind but until we reach that ideal we need to lean on what the data is telling us that uh race continues to be that common denominator for uh for decades and and we hope we can treat it soon but probably this is how we can treat it soon if we can treat the common uh cause and common denominator of why we're not addressing the equity gap thank you this time i'm watching i know who was in what order i was gonna say the same thing as you um kristen with like the research piece like it is like unquestionable that is race is a huge like is the biggest thing and i do want to go back to what i said

083in my previous one and just say it in a shorter thing is the district made a commitment to be anti-racist and i think that this that needs to be remembered when we're developing policies and this is one where um because of the way that race is experience racism is experienced and impacts learning that this shift in this policy can have positive ripple effects for all the other layers of oppression all the other systemic things that are in place using the racism as a starting point and it really aligns with that commitment a commitment to anti-racism we're going to have to have a not commitment to that as a district in order to not continue to do that work and so if we made that commitment as a district that doesn't have an end date like

084anti-racist work is part of what we're doing as a district at this point and we made that commitment and unless it changes at some point where we're like we feel like we don't need this commitment anymore then i feel like we would be able to shift things but i think that that a lot of it comes back to that commitment for me and always centering that and remembering that that's about action and how can we implement those actions within our policies thank you tina i just wanted to follow up with um jay's um comment uh so i do work with a lot of uh underserved um youth and i've had a very deep conversation and this is this is going back to liv just experience i had a deep conversation with a student of color

085who intersectioned out intersectionally falls into many of the marginalized um and underserved uh populations um and the student we talked and the student said that the first thing that is noticed is my skin color it's not my gender identity it's not that i live in poverty it's my skin color and historically we pathologize in the educational system are students of color and their skin so once we start addressing that and we and we go and we continue our anti-racism work the rest will fall in line and when i was talking to the student like i asked the student we have heart to hearts all the time how do you feel that if you're not recognized for your gender identity or that you are low socioeconomic status and the student said well first because i can't

086change to my skin color i need that to be addressed first i need not to have my skin color pathologized and i need the policies to reflect that i need the work to be done in the educational system to reflect that and i bel it that's pretty deep that's telling me that once we start recognizing this within our district work on our ant you know each of us individually and as a collaborative group work on anti-racism work and develop policies we'll get there thank you therese and then i'm gonna keep us moving through the questions this is great though as always [Music] thanks kristen i i appreciate your commitment to keeping us moving through anything um so i i really agree with many of the things that have been stated i would like to um

087just point out that when we look at any it's not just education when we look at any issue that we would consider to be um well structurally problematic whether that's housing access or healthcare access it it it doesn't matter what the topic we are looking at is we always find that race is significant if you look at the zip code effect right so we you know we talk about well how much can you predict about a person's life outcome based on their zip code oh shockingly you can predict with very high accuracy what's going to happen uh in a person's educational attainment in their um in their lifetime earnings their relationship status zip codes are really powerful why are zip codes so powerful because they're tied to these neighborhoods these opportunities and what is the

088greatest um segregator of our neighborhoods it's still not economics it's still race and so if we're talking about housing you're talking about race if you're talking about health care access you're talking about race so i think what stands out to me about the need to call out race is that we can talk we can create a policy that addresses socioeconomic disparity we absolutely could make that policy and we absolutely would see some people benefit from that the problem is that we would only see poor people benefit from it the problem is that with race we were not going to catch in a policy around socioeconomic issues we're not going to capture those individuals of color who do not need the supports provided in a policy related to socioeconomic status but if we draft a policy

089that's focused on racial equity we will catch individuals who are low income as well because there are more of them who are people of color than not um and so we'll catch them and we'll bring the others along too and i think that's the whole idea is that you don't make a policy that the district says well now all the kids of color don't have to pay for sports you say we need sports to be more equitable who can't get into our sports and we see oh our children of color underrepresented what else might be going on there and then you lift that barrier and that barrier goes up for everyone that that applies to but we can't address issues of race if we don't make race a focal point because if we make anything

090else the focal point race will not be called out and so is it is it sufficient to just have a racial equity policy and never talk about socioeconomics no it's not this is that's another layer of conversation that we have to that we have to to come and have but we can't have that conversation meaningfully and productively until we have laid this very strong foundation of a commitment to anti-racism and so i i see them as not exclusive but i just see them as scaffolding and if we have to pick a foundation to build on race is where we race is where we build it because if we don't we're going to be inverted and we'll topple and we don't want the top to be heavier than our base and our base clearly points to

091we must address issues of race first because every other area that we are concerned about can sit on top of a foundation that addresses race but it will not work the other direction um so that's what i i don't even want to say that's what i have to add that's my way of framing what i think we've been talking about i have no idea that it actually makes a new contribution to the conversation but i'll leave it at that thank you before we move on do we need a break it's been about 90 minutes does anybody want to take a small break or do we keep going let me keep going keep going okay although what is the thumbs up mean lou do you want a break it's okay it's fine it'd be nice to

092have one at after the next round i'm gonna i'm gonna say a break would be good because it's not been 90 minutes for the rest of us it's been two hours and 30 minutes because we had our meeting and you need a break i need your break let's take a five minute and come back um you know what 802 803. thank you that was funny because you said it will take a five minute break you can come back in and i was expecting you to say five minutes that's what i was waiting to hear you say anyway good time you i'm hoping can't tell teresa and tina are you with us yep yes thank you all right let me go ahead and pop these up again now i'm guessing that why question is one of

093our biggest questions and that some of these are actually going to be kind of yes and no um which is okay um but you know if there are things that you need to talk about also that's great um one of the things that seemed important to you we're looking at 2b now is this policy strengths-based one of the policies that you had a a bit of a reaction to and like it was one of the bees i can't remember if it was baltimore or somebody it was it was more of a policy board kind of that you know you shall not fail to do this and it was it was negative in connotation and so we took notes saying that you wanted a more strengths-based model does this meet that expectation so i think i

094was one of the people that raised that that complaint and i think yes barring a couple of words from earth wordsmithing things that i'd like to change but overall i think this is definitely strength based okay that agreed to jay i just think that lou had a suggestion there's i can't find it real quickly that um the the item seemed to be defensively stated and you could and you could change it to be it's not you're going to lose money because you're going to have to give money to underserved people but you could frame it in a way that says it's too late but it's a positive thing to have money allocated to to meet those needs not not um i mean i know who wrote this must have said you know we got to

095make sure that people know this might mean they won't get as much but necessarily i'm not sure you do i think you just frame it that they may actually need more resources though um it was basically what jay was saying i think that the strength space with some like revision to that would help because it kind of contradicts number five right above it a little bit and so just like i i understand like the whole premise behind the strength space but i just wanted to specifically mention that that one is coming still from a deficit frame a little bit but yeah but the rest of it feels very strongly okay great how about this one you wanted this policy to be ambitious and enduring ambitious as in not just meeting the letter of the law

096but being bold does this meet that expectation lou um i think based on our last conversation before the break it shows that it meets that um i think that's a good example of like yeah definitely thank you sammy oh you're muted sorry yes i just want to agree with lou uh it pushes us back beyond our comfort zone it's it tells us that we need to do uh better and more and i really like that's in this policy it's definitely transformative and ambitious one that's yes thank you any other thoughts or agreements or disagreements okay i agree okay does it encourage allocation of resources where they are needed that was an important component in your discussion your thoughts on that i'll jump in yes i think it really does in in the it makes mention

097of resources or programming and things like that but i think overall it will serve as a very powerful lens for for allocation of resources so yeah i i think it definitely is going to affect resource allocation lou um in agreement with vince and also that it's talking about more than um money resources it talks about other kinds of resources too which i like that it does that it's talking about um like cultural capital and stuff like that um i think was cool that that's included as a resource and community input as a resource thank you sammy um you can tell when you're reading me a computer your hands up yeah you're faster than me so actually that got me and probably i'm trying to answer this question next question the systems approach as well to

098wonder this is educational equity racial educational equity to address uh the diversities in education i'm wondering our acknowledgement that the whole child the development of a whole child is important for the students achievement gap should it be here and when we start talking about resources i thought about oh uh yeah resources here we're talking about programs curriculum support facilities education other educational resources what about the social and emotional learning they impact that goal number four the health and wellness and also out of the belief that we know that the health and wellness goal uh is inseparable from the student achievement gap so we have to address both so i know this is educational policy but it is not academic students achievements so it might be needing to be holistic that's the first thoughts i'm getting

099in my mind the second thoughts i'm getting in my mind is yeah maybe we should address this uh complexity of the systems that that are needed but also i want to step back and say should we be very focused here or should we take this holistic systems approach i'm going to leave it as a question mark for my colleagues ryan staff and maybe the families or the community members as we check in with them great so that sounds like that's moving that on to e which is does it take a systems approach and so there's a question there right about you know does it should it more take a systems approach any any other thoughts on the system's approach piece yeah i mean i it speaks to actions that the district will take on a

100variety of levels um so i think systemically and i was thinking when i was considering this question i was thinking in institutional terms the big gap that i saw was where is the board in this document and i mean check me here i don't think the board is mentioned once and so i'm wondering where is the board where is our accountability to educational equity what is the board what are how are we going to participate in that so when i think about the the system institutionally i'm thinking top to bottom from from the boardroom to classrooms to central kitchen so that was that was a gap i don't have an answer for that necessarily of where the board how the board should show up or what we're committing to but i think that there needs

101to be some codification of of the work that the board is doing particularly this year and perpetuating that and embedding that in policy and holding ourselves accountable to this work jane i think that's uh first of all i think that that the spelling out in items one through eleven is both a good systemic look and it it also talks about specifics no dollar amounts but it talks about focus and resource so i answer those questions i think it does i think we use the word the district right above paragraph the second one and we use corvallis school district acknowledges so is there a a parenthetical or an a statement that says the board administration staff um so that you you you're right board does not exist in this in specific but but uh when it

102says in item one on the second page the district provides every student i mean so you if you want to throw the board in there the board acting through both the district and the leadership you can clean that up i think i wouldn't need i think a lot of the items are board work items so you wouldn't have to say the board will the boardwalk lou um i like the inclusion of the board i just wanted to save that part too that was i think that's a good gap that could be put in there um i have a question about number four like how if that's actually reinforcing systems um because this is actively worked toward a teacher and administrator workforce that reflects the diversity of the student body um corvallis school district is predominantly

103white like corvallis as well and so if it's like thinking in ratios to reflect the diversity i don't know what that means but if it's talking about reflecting the student body that's not gonna happen necessarily in a very good does that make sense okay i was just making sure i wasn't babbling but um i think that it could reinforce if we're saying like we need to keep it to some kind of ratio or something like that to reflect the student body whereas like why not increase the number the diversity of um teacher and administrator workforce because that's actually really educational and empowering and awesome um it doesn't have to just be like this reflect the student body because you're just going to uphold white structures if you do and also like heteronormative ones too tina

104i thought i saw your hand up oh um vince and lou have already spoken to my thoughts so okay great um so looking at f then one of the things that you talked about was that terminology that that the goals of this policy should be straightforward specific and clear things should be named does this meet that expectation sammy yeah this i'm just now thinking more and more about it uh the clarity about what resources makes me ask myself again yeah uh as terese mentioned we have health outcomes suicide rates are all these things are related and they impact students achievements and putting resources for social emotional wellness and equitable way in terms of uh to address racial disparities will impact education and again i'm trying to see if we we have this document 10 years

105from now would they read that clearly and uh i'm not really sure what they read that's holistic resources not only textbooks and curriculum or students achievement specific resources that's all vince yeah i detected some jargon particularly around social justice in here that may be inaccessible to some people we just had a really good conversation around centering race but there's um on the second page top of the second page we used the turn of phrase de-centering the dominant d i'm sorry it's getting late de-centering the dominant narratives and problematize students of color um this is jargony i know what that means but not everybody knows what that means um so i think there's also a mention of systems of oppression or i might have added that in one of my edits to that that's kind of

106jargony as well um so what do we mean by when we say these things and unpacking those for people so this document is more accessible and that might also be a good place for the community to weigh in you know like is this is this an accessible document could somebody not like you know like immerse themselves in edges speak every day understand what this means lou it was just related to events said like once you said that i'm like yes that's exactly we need to be able to and that's what i had mentioned earlier like i understand exactly it's like super clear to me because of like having critical race theory frameworks for my education like formality like um the college one um that's where i'm like even if we do leave it in there

107is it possible do we ever in policies have definitions because even if people are like yeah we know what that means they mean something different in different contexts for people and so even thinking about what systems of oppression mean or understanding like what we're talking about is really helpful and i don't know if we do that in policies or if that's something we could try out is having like what we mean and this is what we mean or even thinking about like a anti-racist framework like what what is the definition by the district for these words for the community to have an understanding very public facing on the web page somewhere and in the document so like that way folk know exactly where we're coming from um can i add something yeah just to answer

108the question of lose i believe definitions definitely belong to our policy and i can recall our uh one of our transformation of the transformational policies that regarding uh nondiscrimination based on gender identity uh i believe there was an emphasis on putting the definitions there in the policy so yes definitely i think it's a good idea and i'm supportive of it and if you think of it in terms of like um i think there are certain policies with definitions in them but also think of like oregon administrative rules and statutes that often have a definition section at the beginning um so that you can contextualize the rest of what you're reading i think that that's you know that's that's an established practice that makes a lot of sense too great idea how about g are racial

109justice and equity sufficiently addressed you guys are getting sleepy [Laughter] this should have been the first question probably so christian i i would are you there yes i would i would say they are but i want to drop back just a conversation about definitions um if you ask public what does racism mean and you some of you are much more uh experienced with working with groups than i am i think a number of people will say it's the intentional act and they will not include systemic and they will not include institutional and i think including those as as what we're talking about helps the the public understand and not get defensive so i'm just saying as you think about definitions and the overall picture um if you don't if you don't add to that i

110think you're going to get a defensive reaction that doesn't need to be there because if you think about institutional or systemic um or whatever else that would would grow that definition i think it would be helpful thank you lou i think tina was first oh i'm sorry i missed that one this time tina i think the framework is strong in addressing um racial justice and then equity um i think this is where the community plays a role a strong role in helping refine that and um and tapping into the populations that will play a you know even stronger role in giving a voice to this policy thank you blue um i was just gonna say that i don't know if racial justice and equity can be like like fully sufficiently encompass within a policy but

111i think that this does a great job of trying to get there for us and um it's been mentioned earlier too and i know we've got feedback too from community about like what about other um what about other inequities besides racial equity but i think that the policy itself how it's written focuses on racial equity but it still includes other um components of inequities in the district and i think that it has it specifically um spelled out in number 10. i do have a question about the culturally responsive piece on there i forgot to ask earlier like that what that means and how there if there would be capacity to do that because of the number of cultures represented within our district um so i don't want to set it up where there's these expectations

112that there's going to be a understanding of cultural responsiveness like what does that mean and so would be curious of how that would line with community too what that would mean to them and what they would be looking for in culturally responsive materials and assessments but i think that it does specifically call out other inequities too but it centers racial inequity as like the central piece so i appreciate it that it does on both yeah returning back to the the question uh are is racial justice and equity sufficiently addressed in my notes i have uh this trite response not until this policy is no longer needed but i really appreciate it uh tina baker's uh comment and you know as a white man i can't know if it's been adequately addressed so i think as

113when this policy goes to the community process i think that needs to be a a prompting question is this policy sufficiently bold because that's feedback that would be very useful to me great community question too right all right how about this um i think there was a partial answer to this but i don't want to skip it um does the racial equity policy align with the vision mission and board racial equity goals there was i think vince mentioned that yes and it may surpass them at some point um for which is great insight does it at least i guess align with them in your in your minds yeah seeing yeses okay uh last question is this policy ready to go forward to the community for input i've done a few technical changes to it that

114that i don't think that would need community input like splitting up that one long paragraph right um i think that there are probably um other maybe i mean most of what most of what your questions are and your curiosities are are less technical and more adaptive and and i think those are great questions to go forward to the community but in general do you think this is ready to go forward for feedback lou would that include like having something like the definitions and stuff like that and we need to look at those before it goes out to make sure that that's what we mean by the definitions or is that something that would just be developed later that would be my question about like is it ready to go because i would think that that

115should be included with it to make sure that it's um people get why what we're saying and why it's in there i'm not saying people won't understand but that way if there are folk that um aren't familiar with the terms or even what we mean by them because like i said they may be different so i don't know if that's something we need to review or if that's something that that would just go out so that'd be my only thought on it go ahead ryan i think that um that for the most part the conversation we've had tonight has helped us um understand the sort of the boar's perspective on definition um it's something we could we could um share but i also wouldn't don't i'm not sure that i wanted to slow the process

116so i'm just kind of trying to think about the best way to meet that request glue and also move the process forward um do you have a thought on on that um wait who are you talking to okay um i don't i i mean i was asking because i wasn't sure if that was something that needed to come back or not or if the district already has those working definitions are those definitions and how it's encompassed in the work and so that's where that question was framed with not knowing if it is i haven't seen it yet but it might you might have developed that at some point and i just haven't seen it but um yeah and i don't know if that's something that um a small group can also work on and bring

117back for feedback or not when i worry a little bit about if we have to create a index of terms for people to be able to access the policy then then i just worry about the policy not being accessible to begin with um and so i think what we could do is marcy and i could mercian and i could look through the policy and share some common definition with all of you but it is something that i think is a really essential question as we go out with a policy if if the language isn't um accessible then we need to identify what language is going to be accessible for folks um and build the policy around that okay i i agree and i also think that it's good to have language in there that's the

118thing that we can help um folk learn too what does what that we mean by stuff um yeah there was something else with the definition pieces but i can't remember what it is um i know what it was people might think we're referring to something else because of the way that some of these terms are used differently and that's where my only hesitation with it going to the community because they might be like oh this sounds great and then find out that we met something completely different than what they had envisioned i'm not trying to hold up the process i'm just trying to like have us think through a couple of things and how it might change how community interprets it because there's a ton of community members that use this terminology on a regular

119um that will probably be looking at it and so i would say that that might be something that could go with it i'm comfortable with just like if we're in agreement with what some of this means we're in agreement with it but yeah jay i think i would appreciate a a connector line or sentence that we talked about early on in this conversation about why focus on race i think that that will avoid a a pushback that we don't have to face if we can help it um and when i push back i don't mean it's kind of like the mr arnold's letter you know what happened why did you guys focus on race it wasn't clearly stated so if we can if we can somehow make that tie and then um i agree with

120you ryan it's i don't want to make it too burdensome but i'm i'm with lou i think a couple definitions uh including racism or types of racism might be helpful again to let them know we're not narrow i don't need to see it i just trust your edits vince yeah and you could use the process to find out what language is is impenetrable and what isn't and as long as you have people i'm looking at you marcian there to scaffold the process and explain that and they can go wow i don't know what you mean by systems of oppression explain that to me um and you can do that then you can say okay we need to unpack this part this piece so that's just a process approach sammy yeah i think probably even summarize

121what i wanted to say in terms of having working definitions uh right now and understanding they might not be as accurate as do we want them to be in the final edits and also maybe they're not all the less of definitions but those working definitions are part of this conversation and i i feel there might be two outcomes of having working definitions really thank you lou for this suggestion number one is clarifying what the word mean to the community members and different segments of community members who would read the policy by number two maybe it's a feedback when people ask for a specific definition or they interpret differently maybe we need to revise the language to make it more clear so i think working definitions right now without committing to a specific list would be

122fruitful in that sense is understanding what we need to define and also maybe help us revise the language to uh speak to the community where they are thank you lou um i like the idea of working definitions too that way it's not like this is concrete and that way it can move forward um and that's always like i feel like you all know what you're talking about in the policy and that we have great conversations in the meetings and seem to be on very similar pages with some of these definitions um i don't think that people will necessarily ask what they mean if they don't know though because um that doesn't usually happen especially in a in a group setting or in a meeting where um folk may feel like oh now i don't know

123what i'm talking i might start feeling like some kind of like do i belong in this conversation i don't know that the folk that i don't know may always ask i know some do but not all and i worry that we would leave some folk kind of feeling out of place um in the conversation if we didn't have something vince okay so would you all feel comfortable then if staff came up with some working definitions that were part of what was presented to the community and and not necessarily run through you all again but that's part of the community process is here's what we're working with you know we also want feedback on these things and how does that sound to you ryan and marcianne okay sounds fine yes sounds good kristen great so with

124those things i also heard jay mentioned and i think that this could probably be done having one of the having a sentence in there that that talks about you know this is why we're focusing on race i mean i think it'd be very easy to construct that you know the research says that race is one of the greatest predictors of xyz this is why we focus on race and then with all that other contextual stuff with that and and some working definitions then is it ready is it ready to go forward to community input phase absolutely i see smiles i see head nods i don't see teresa or tina what do you think i see thumbs up yeah i i think it is great wonderful um you've done such great work this is so amazing

125um i'm going to hand this back to marcian and ryan i don't know if you if there's a process you want to talk about i also know that i think you were going to talk a little bit about just the scholarship process but i'll stop sharing marcianna and i as we always do we'll get together compile our notes move it forward and then please tell me when you're going to adopt this because i'm going to sit in the audience and watch first first read or second read let's go for a second on special adoption great so we are um yeah this has been really a fruitful conversation and it feels like we have made great progress and i really feel like for staff we we have a sense of where to go from here so

126thank you for that work we will um be working with some community groups and reviewing the language and then we will bring it back to you um a little bit later this uh the school year so um again something that we will be able to feel accomplished in and help to move forward so thanks for all your work tonight and the meetings throughout the year and again thank you to kristen for continuing to work with us for the last two years and support our efforts and help us to be a better a better board and a stronger administrative team and better collaborators with one another so thank you so much for all for all you've done to help us kristen i have so enjoyed working with your board over the years and it just like

127every year gets better and i hope you do this again next year and and i really do mean it when i say like this is the model board for this program um you get out of this in in collaboration with staff this is this is what we envisioned when we came up with this program and so thank you for being that board and any chance we have to highlight that you know we will so thanks for having me back absolutely absolutely and so we're going to transition to a conversation around the scholarship itself so i'm not sure if that was the single board member who's going to provide the update or if it's the the group that's been working on it but i want to turn it over to you to share an update with

128the board um and potentially share a little bit about next steps so we have a lou and vince and uh jay and uh let's start with lou since you were the one who prepared the cover sheet um it was it was a group project so i'm okay with whoever wants to go i think maybe can we just like all chime in together that might be good and not have to like go back and forth kind of thing but it's really um the purpose of it is for um students to seek post-secondary education as outlined and it was kind of looking at beyond just um like the traditional um collegiate path perhaps and looking more at trades as a priority area and also looking at somebody that would be first generation and seeking post-secondary education was

129important and thinking beyond the traditional um ways that a financial need is assessed is usually through like pell grant eligibility and so we were thinking i have a little bit of background with that um in a previous career path but thinking about other ways where students may be eligible through like the free reduced lunch program which has expanded in um oregon that would include more eligibility um are looking at snap in oregon health plan as eligibility so beyond just like looking at pell grant assessments um which is a little bit more expanded um and then i want to see if jay and vince want to chime in on some of the other components of it that we've discussed as well because i don't do the whole thing you did a good job lou i think

130that we were looking for guidance from ryan about how much money we wanted to spend this year and then we we outlined that in the letter i think in terms of uh the number of scholarships slash amount did the board have any specific recommendations or feelings other than that i think we're looking to for a thumbs up from everybody that what lou described was a good pathway and then we'll go go do advertising and soliciting input thank you lou and jay um i have to say i have to express my appreciation for my fellow committee members that i don't have any experience in scholarship programs or how to set them up or how to administer them so a lot of the wisdom and how to how to block this out has really come from lou

131and jay to make this go and so really we once we got going we've met three times and once we got going it really started to come together really well and we we've actually gotten into some of the criteria and we decided you know we realized oh we better pause and check in with the board and get a reaction to make sure that we're going in the in the direction that that the whole board wants to go and so that's the purpose of of this uh check-in here is just to get a nod from the board and with your with your consent uh uh we'll you know we'll go ahead and continue with criteria and setting up rubrics and scoring rubrics and we're actually fairly close to to being able to go ahead and deploy

132this scholarship program so it's pretty exciting so reactions from one more thing before we get reactions that we didn't talk about is um that a lot of times with merit-based scholarships too thinking about the way that extracurricular activities and community based engagement is used as a criteria we were thinking about students who may have hardship or barriers to be able to do that so if they're like helping support their family or if they um don't or they don't have the opportunity for um activities outside of academics that there's an opportunity to include them as well um and the criteria so really trying to think beyond just like um how scholarships are generally structured around very specific things like academic need-based space with pell grants in um in looking at the community service and engagement kind

133of stuff and counting things like community and family involvement so it's like an older sibling helping take care of their younger sibling or are they i don't know are they helping caretake for their grandparents and stuff like that are those are the kind of things too that would be included as far as just the traditional way of thinking of um engagement and so that was kind of important as in our we talked a lot about that spent a lot of time on that part of the conversation about what what kind of impact that can have on students um yeah and i also wanted to thank um ryan and um and the high school principals for helping like double check that we knew we were using the current terminology for some some of the language too

134um that way it's they would know what we're talking about so yeah okay wonderful uh you have tina raised her hand are there their hands yes tina i just wanted to say thank you for addressing some of the barriers that are typically placed in extracurricular activities is one of them um we do when you are looking at offering scholarships or grants or opportunities to students who are on ohp or snap or falling into those categories they usually don't have they usually don't have access to participate in extracurricular activities so i just wanted to say thank you for addressing that piece um in the scholarship application um i think we also vince and lou we we we weren't clear whether the whole board wanted to do the what did you call it evaluation scoring uh and

135or did we want to have members who were interested in serving on a committee do it or our committee do it so your guidance there in terms of mechanics of doing it i don't know that we decided i think yeah i'm gonna step in here and encourage a subgroup rather than the full board to go through the process of evaluation um that's my two cents about it and i'll i'll put it back to the board how do you feel about the same group continuing this work or if someone wants to jump in into the process well i'll say that uh the board has previously participated in um oh what were they called opportunity grants i think something like that and we have scored those and there were many many applications that we we needed to

136score so i would be comfortable uh participating in scholarship applications in fact i think it would be a lot of fun okay so yeah vince do you suggest the full board or uh did you do it i don't know the whole board did the work to get the money so the whole board should probably you know see who these kids are that are applying yeah i like that i think what do you think i think you all would like it too i think it would be a great opportunity to see the like the applications coming in and get to read their stories and um look at the goals and things like that i think you would help us um learn about the students that were that we're working with and for and um have that

137perspective as well it's really if you haven't i don't know if everybody's been on scholarship committees before but if you haven't it's um it's really amazing and i was excited that we got to do this because i actually missed doing that kind of work so with that uh now i'm changing my mind but i want to ask a question probably for uh ryan and marcian uh would there be any concerns about uh students identity or privacy uh or maybe deterrence for students from applying uh like in terms of students applications when we review them as a full board is there a way for us to preserve that well i think we can send them to you um individually rather so you know again it's not uh you're not coming together as a full board um

138and we can obviously um you know strike the name um so you wouldn't have that information um as you're reviewing them so i think i think we have the ability to do that um and let everybody provide feedback awesome well that sounds exciting so full board the full board on board yeah sounds good are there any are there any concerns about the direction of the scholarship are we off the mark at all is there any recalibration we need to do i have a question erin is um the question that jay brought up earlier was around the amount um and how many scholarships that you would be um providing i can't i can't remember if that was in the the written document i don't remember seeing it yeah it wasn't but the the committee was pretty

139clear that they wanted to they wanted the amount given out to have some impact so my understanding is that we'll be dispersing last year's scholarship this year and that's five thousand dollars so my understanding is that we were looking at two one thousand dollar scholarships in one five hundred no is that right no that's no five one thousand dollar scholarships okay so yeah that's awesome it's really great so we we reach a few kids and we're giving them some money some pretty good money scholarships go well unless someone disagrees with me events with you to your question i i i read this uh uh uh proposal or plan for the scholarship and reflect on our plan for the policy and i can say we're we're walking the walk uh uh my answer would be we

140are matching the intent of the policy and how we're deciding on this uh policy so really thank you for the detailed attention i can put some uh names and faces on a couple of the criteria that lou mentioned of superior juniors and seniors who have had life challenges and they did their civic duty of taking care of themselves taking care of their family and and and they deserve the recognition and they would be an awesome community members uh it's not necessarily the standard uh uh way of thinking who deserve uh the opportunity so thank you really much uh for being as inclusive as possible and really thinking about equity i can see our policy reflected in this uh uh this proposal so um back to the logistics um so i see this in many ways

141like your word self-evaluation so in that instance um what you've done in the past is you've all done your own scoring and then that has come to someone who compiles that information i i'm wondering if the the folks that compile that should be j lou and vince um sort of as the group that started it and we on our ann parker and i can work to coordinate sort of the back and forth um with the overall board but again wanting to kind of maintain that integrity that this is a board scholarship and wanting you to um have that um that ownership in the process does that sound okay yeah i think we're comfortable with that we can figure the logistics out good question sami you threw me a curve are you clear the the committee

142did not think we would award scholarships to this year's juniors it's for right you said juniors and seniors i didn't want to have we weren't going to open up to this year's juniors absolutely i apologize i was just reflecting on okay uh who usually happen to uh interact with us through committees or representatives so that's what i meant by fifth years juniors and seniors [Music] all right any further discussion on this item or on the workshop uh in general well thank you i i have a really brief reflection and inspiration of today i i came in today uh reflecting on a person whose birthday is today today is uh rosa parks birthday and the reason i think of her as an inspiration for this work there is a false narrative about her the false narrative

143is that her impact and legacy is about one moment uh where she chose where to sit on the bus and have this action of a huge impact and that was it but her life and her legacy has been a representative and persistent effort to correct the injustices and to do uh the right things and that was one of the biggest highlights of the change started changing things uh and the reason i think of her as an inspiration for tonight uh was uh this idea that when we see the accomplishments when we see the 90 and 89 to graduation rates uh those moments of success and i'm hoping for so many moments of success and revolutionary change and our system in the future uh are not a spur of the moment is the repetitive efforts and

144work that we need to commit ourselves to tireless hours and thank you for really this rich and in-depth uh discussion and work um so we're i'm personally inspired by rosa park and uh and by her birthday tonight to coincide with this fork and it's a reminder uh it's going to continue and we have to continue it it's not one moment at all it's continuous effort right but that's uh really thank you very much uh kristen uh really enjoyed this and uh i think uh there is a question that we will have if we should apply for the scholarship if the scholarship will open up for next year and uh i will be very motivated to uh do that as well so you'll be seeing an application from us unless i get pushed back from the

145board but i think it's uh time really worth spent thank you for this work and thank you for supporting us doing this work you can always have somebody else facilitate but i will fight them to stay with them and both of those people are on this call right now so vince janet [Laughter] all right well thank you thank you marcian anything else on their work session all right thanks a lot and have a good night so uh next item on the agenda is uh consolidate information online non-licensed personnel uh information as a reminder uh this portion is uh for information only uh would anyone have to have have any questions that they would like to ask and it's a kind of a performance because we can't ask specific questions on personnel as a reminder all

146right so with that uh we'll go for our next for the board member comments and i'm going to split that into uh open uh comments and uh four check-ins uh hopefully quick seconds uh i would like to ask board members maybe open up the email that i just sent to you last night however for the record for each check-in we'll we're going to uh talk about each check-in briefly so community members also know what uh we're talking about uh so a brief a minute maybe are to describe what it is and then if there's any questions uh from board members and then we'll have a question about the check-in uh that i'll ask to see the direction from the board uh all of these things are not a formal vote it's just basically gauging the

147interest of the board about future topics or specific direction so for the first one uh the first check-in with jay jay would you like to briefly describe your interest on a future topic regarding board officers election and organization meeting sure um i was i was taken aback when i first joined the board meeting board sitting in the in the board uh session in may no june and the old board elected our chair and i'm an old political science guy and uh i've never seen any group uh let the preceding officers elect the new officers i totally understand and have no absolutely no concerns about who we've elected vince did a great job sammy you're doing a great job but i don't think it makes good sense um and i i think the law that's applicable

148talks about an organizational meeting of the board meaning the new board um i think what i heard in that meeting was that we need to have a representative in case there's business to be done in july and august and i have looked at a number of other boards uh who have either specifically said the vice chair shall be you know if if that is not the chair shall continue until or the most senior member shall continue so there's ways around it or uh you know um anyway so the punchline is it's just it's not a big deal and neither of these issues are very big it's just a cleanup matter that i think you know is something that i should should do before you know go much further so that's that's that issue and then

149i'll talk about the other one later thanks uh jay so as a summary uh uh we want to check in if the board would like to prioritize in uh developing a change into this policy so uh there are a couple of suggestions that jay mentioned and there are a couple of pathways uh one is we check in with the staff on osba regarding implementing a couple of those proposed suggestions uh also we could uh keep the policy as is and hold an organizational meeting on july 1st uh so i'll brief 15 minutes or 20 minutes or whatever it is uh july 1st are the first business day after july first where we would have an election of officers uh salem kaiser does that or at least did that last uh this year um and the

150third par uh of pathway is to say uh we continue the common practice uh as as described by jay so i just want to do a check in uh should do we check in with staff on osb on this board and present an opinion on the couple of pathways that jay suggested a couple of options that jay suggested just like thumbs up or thumbs down or if you have questions i would check with osba illegal so if this question so then just if this question came to me if say sami you emailed me and said if we were going to do this i would turf it to osba legal okay lou that was my thought too is like we should see like check how check with someone but my other question would have to do

151like with staff time and contracts and stuff like that like how that would impact any of that kind of stuff too like when contracts start and end if that's anything we need to worry about as well yeah absolutely and that's where uh it's a good practice when we have a proposed policy change out of the uh pipeline of policies or work that's with entailed staff time i want to make sure that we have a consensus that uh the board would like uh to invest a little bit of staff time including as uh as you mentioned and this mentioned that checking in with osb illegal so i think it's a good point though to be thinking about i agreed okay so with that uh second check-in and also from jay uh regarding uh two weeks period

152between the first time we get to an initial uh uh reading uh for a resolution or action and then uh from the to the time where we have uh a second reading or a vote with an exception of a emergency clause where two thirds of the votes will break that two weeks mandatory uh waiting period from the introduction to the vote uh jay would you like to maybe summarize uh what you want to do i would like to have a policy written that reflects the values we've talked about both in terms of wanting community input providing for a transparent set of transactions and and you do that i think by by by instituting a process that says we will give ourselves at least a two-week deliberation window for people to provide input and give us

153a feedback uh and again uh these seem fairly superficial in terms of all the other heavy stuff we've been working on but it's just one of the little things that we're knitting in the back of my mind going you know that that isn't really as positive and effective as i think it should be why not just write it in to say we'll give ourselves an automatic two-week period unless we need something done uh sooner and we can over over uh override ourselves with a two-thirds majority so thank you luke i think i was confused with this one a little bit because i thought we already kind of did that like when we introduced like first reads and stuff like that and then there's that window so i was i think i need more clarification of

154like what exactly is meant because it like we don't usually have a meeting back to back right so we have the first read to give input and then get more input on that and it's already out there a few days maybe not two weeks before but there's a so i think i was a little bit confused if you can help clarify that sure the clarification is is exactly what you described where once in a while we have back-to-backs we have a meeting on one thursday and then turn around and have another meeting and in in my reading that's too quick of a turnaround unless there's an emergency so if you happen to have the you introduce your bill or your your resolution in one of those back-to-backs you're going to have to wait in effect

155three weeks because we want to give ourselves and the community an opportunity to have input or if it's an emergency we can go ahead and enact it the second week now you're exactly you have to write we typically try to do the the second reading and that's fine it's just that this is prescribing that the second reading um has to be two weeks away or enactment has to be two weeks away in most cases okay thanks i just haven't seen us do that and i felt like all of our back-to-backs were like not business meetings they were like budget meetings or trainings in between so thanks for clarifying that that does happen sometimes no lou the one that got me was was the name change i mean we we we had that resolution on our

156emails on a sunday we had a board meeting thursday and another board meeting the following thursday and and we had more emails in that in that issue than any other issue i've been around but we decided we needed to move forward and i i don't i don't think that was i mean we talked about this before and i'm totally fine with where we've ended up with but i don't think that was a good picture of board governance i think that was too quick okay thanks jay i forgot that that was a short win of summer meetings all right with that uh that chicken is would you like to have uh staff and or osba to provide an opinion or maybe a draft i don't call it legislative concepts but a policy concept for this so

157uh check in are we okay would you like us to do that and i see a thumbs up from vince i'll take the sounds from everybody else as a yes so i have a question what would constitute an emergency um i don't know ryan it seems like we've had some finance issues or um board action i don't know i'm not sure i know any so i i think the the devil's in the details on that i think that the exception is going to be important if we implement this i just want to i don't want to hamstring the board and being responsive to the needs of of district staff so i think i think the the term that that is coming to my head is operational necessity if we need to adopt a adopt a

158policy uh to accommodate operational necessity then i think we need to be able to circumvent it if we were going to implement it and that could be regulatory it could be operational ecobee but their emergency is a strong term emergency to me indicates crisis yeah and i i don't think that that's necessarily that because we've talked about this previously and i don't think that's exactly what you're intending my response would be could that be a board determination there was operational necessity or are you going to just say if there is operational necessity we don't need the two weeks i i would like the board to have have a dis i mean if there's a reason for a second reading which i can't picture in my mind all the things that we have second readings for

159then that board should also be able to decide what's an operational necessity that we should waive that two weeks that's it right so so i want to be clear to to really have a clarity on the intention and not have deliberation as much as possible on this topic unless we have it but it seems that there is really important interest here to discuss this um and i can add a couple of uh uh cogs into this uh conversation in terms of bond projects where as you see they come to us for really an action that will impact the progress of projects so with that in mind uh do we have enough uh common picture of the attention uh with understanding there are some details that we need to hear back from uh staff and osb

160before we have uh first reading for this if there is um so with that are we up do we have com comfort to determine if this is something we're interested in or not uh or you want to understand the intention more like we're good okay and with that everybody is on board should we do this or should we work on this and bring it to the board all right i'll take the silence as a yes i see thumbs up on the virtual platform so with that we have a third check in and this is uh less of a staff time well there might be some but it's really about uh related to our commitments for community engagement as a board um and we talked about that during our retreats in the summer and i will

161leave it to lou probably to summarize uh the this community engagement and collaboration with the board opportunity uh and then we'll have a check-in with you um yeah it's basically just an opportunity to work with the local nwac the branch on a community engagement kind of to learn what the board does how to what kind of issues to bring to us what it means to prepare like a lot of people don't know there's a time limit when they come to our meetings and stuff like that and it felt like a really strong um way to partner with them and it was more framed like as a partnership with them from the board and not just like waiting for folks to come to us it's like how can we reach out to community too and who's

162um what's an organization that's doing incredible community work that's related to our commitment to equity and anti-racism and how do we get more voices involved with what we do as a board and so that's kind of what it was and seemed like a um a nice opportunity and um and recommended that me um director baker and um in chairs on me so with that uh the check-in is if the board is comfortable or is okay with us to collaborate in the name of the school board with the local naacp uh by co-sponsoring this community engagement opportunities and collaboration including this forum uh with that three of us mentioned are is the board comfortable with this direction yeah let me know if you let me know if you need any materials about boardwork this year absolutely

163absolutely and we'll talk about one of the things i'm looking forward to is that we will talk about boardwalk board governance and the role of the board uh it's a really exciting opportunity and i really appreciate lou for taking the lead on this and uh initiating this conversation so i take it from the board that's we will do this uh last second from my side is uh i'm working on a proclamation slash resolution uh one one or the other uh to celebrate black history month and the next meeting deadline is to have a language ready is the evening of the 11th and i don't want to do it alone uh if uh board members would like to uh collaborate with me check in the language uh one of the things i learned from different resolutions

164across the states and the nation uh having a strength-based resolution so really having multiple eyes on it would be great and i already reached out to a couple of my colleagues who are uh black oregonians who are also school board chairs uh lou and then vince i was just since i would love to work with you on that that might be why um somebody else can raise their hand thank you vince same i don't know how much i'll be able to contribute but i'm happy to look at it thank you all right uh with that uh uh we're one short of quorum so we have our group i'll reach out to you lou and vince and uh looking forward to have that any uh board member comments or future topics that you would like to

165consider hello i just wanted to say um happy black history month to all of our black and african american students staff and community members we appreciate you and i'm glad that we have this month to celebrate you and looking forward to sammy working on that resolution as well for something more official and the other thing is um just to say thank you to the community for your continued patience i know that um it's really hard with the pandemic that we're in and there's a lot of anxiety and excitement about reopenings and what it means to have a vaccine available just that reminder that that vaccine rollout takes time and the effectiveness of the vaccine depends on a couple of um of doses as um they've determined so far anyhow and so just want you all

166to know that you're appreciated the patients knowing all these impacts that are felt throughout i know we film in our own home too as board members that have kids experiencing it with you and um just wanted that appreciation and also the appreciation for all the staff too for continuing i had a conference with um my youngest child's teachers and i was like i seen a meme that reminded me of um some of the conversations i overhear um when they're like explaining this lesson and ask if people have questions and then they're like do you have a cat and so stuff like that i was like oh that sounds so real but um so you all are appreciated and um we're getting through this the best we can together and that's all thank you lou vince

167then there's been jay vince yeah i i got to start my day with gratitude so i want to i want to end it with gratitude and i just want to really express my appreciation for the public schools foundation in the and our staff and the tremendous program that was pulled together you know i was really struck the pandemic really the hallmark for the pandemic for me has been isolation i get to see you guys through a screen i get to hear little stories here and there but this morning we got to see story after story after story of how children and families are being impacted by this pandemic and how our staff are just working small miracles every day um from making sure that you know learning materials appear on a front step to filling

168warm or filling tummies with warm food i'm just deeply grateful for the work that the foundation and the district have done in partnership i'm really grateful for our teachers who who have worked so hard and while it may not look like it learning is happening it really is and we're having success despite the pandemic and so i'm also really grateful for this leadership team who has worked tirelessly to get us right where we need to be to be ready when conditions are right for us to reopen schools we're going to be there and we can we can take that opportunity so i'm just deeply grateful that i get to live in corvallis and i get to serve this school district in this community in this capacity it's just been a tremendous day reflecting on these

169things thank you vince therese and then jay terese thanks sammy i would love to hear a little bit about the outreach that our district is doing to our housing vulnerable students i know we usually have a report on that and i'm not sure if it's scheduled on an upcoming agenda but i think about that group of students quite a lot and in particular right now uh it's you know there's a whole entirely other added layer of challenge facing our housing vulnerable families so i would love to hear um what we are doing to reach those students and and just yeah get an update on how they're doing i also want to share an appreciation for the patients in our community this is really hard and um we just have we're we just are on the

170cusp of you know choices that can tip us one way or the other and so i hope that we can hang together um for a little bit longer so we can tip the right direction um but all the moms and dads and aunts and uncles and grandparents and older siblings and who are chipping in to make this work i'm tired i'm sure that you're tired too and my son put it very well the other day when he said mom i just think i need the opportunity to miss you we're just we're just together so much and so i really never get to miss you and i just said oh man i want to miss you too buddy so um may we eventually soon be able to miss the people that we live with thank you

171series right you want to say something about that report yeah that's the report um is coming to you for the next board meeting so the time the timing of your request is perfect terese because it's on the agenda isn't it great when someone asks you for something and you already have it there and so it's so easy to just give them what they wanted isn't that great thank you you know in this day at this time it is actually a really really nice thing to do all right thank you therese jay i just wanted to say thank you to the work done by the foundation and by those people who helped pull the the good testimonials together i was really touched by uh heartfelt concerns i know aaron mckee and i think he was crying

172i'm not sure because he just uh it was just a really powerful statement along with the despair of empty halls that was a very sad part for me too i i don't i just said uh i i appreciate the the gratitude that the board is expressing to the community for for uh for being patient uh it is crazy how uh you know we want our kids in in the building i actually went to my old law background and said is there a way we could assume the risk you know there's that old you buy a ticket to a baseball game you assume the risk of getting hit by a baseball well if we had everybody sign in and say i assume the risk of my child will assume the risk of maybe uh being hurt

173but i'm that's just an old idea and i'm glad teachers are getting their their immunizations um uh lastly uh speaking of black history month i was inspired i happen to have a student of color who is a teacher a student teacher at crevalles high and and he held this is in a uh obviously a digital classroom he held 23 of them uh in unbelievably quiet but great participation uh if that makes sense when he was talking to them about black history and the need for them and most of them by far were white to uh know of some injustice that they would see themselves working for i don't remember ever a high school teacher asking me to think about an injustice that they would be willing to work for and he did a great job

174and it just he's credibility to beat the band and so at that point i was going way to go i'm glad our kids at least in those two classes got him so nice inspiration thank you jay any other comments from board members i want to reiterate the foundation is doing great work thankfully we have a video recorded so please watch their video it's uh uh they're they're really powerful and impactful uh stories and testimonies and uh please consider uh supporting uh the foundation they're helping us uh do miracles one day at a time as board members mentioned uh so uh please consider supporting the foundation uh they need your help your support and uh our kids uh are benefiting tremendously from uh this support so thank you for community members who are contributing and supporting

175the foundation and also thank you for the partnerships in the community uh immunization is happening for our educators from our teachers bus drivers and everybody which will get us closer to safety closer to resuming operation uh maybe one day a week maybe two days a week hopefully one day uh five days a week it's not anytime soon but we're getting there closer and closer it's going to take some uh steady steps some of them will be small steps but we gotta commit to getting out of this pandemic sound and safe for the safety of our children our elderly and everybody in between and with that uh i want to thank you all thank you ryan and thank you melissa and your team uh we really i really appreciate this session and i learned a lot

176today from from you all and from my colleagues anything else for the good of the order see none we are a journey have a good night