School Board Meeting 12/10 (Middle/High School SIPS's)

001the meeting is called to order for the corvallis school board meeting on december 10 2020. if you're willing and able please 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 everyone thank you for joining us i would like to start by welcoming our attendees and those who are viewing the meeting over youtube and i want to also welcome our administrators uh let the record show that we have our board members in attendance uh with the exception of director baker who couldn't join us for tonight uh also i want to uh welcome uh two of our uh visitors or attendees from the educational service district and

002if you could unmute maybe and say hi so we can see you from all these uh beautiful faces here jason hey assistant superintendent from the esd i don't see either jason or david okay all right so we might be joined uh soon by jason haye and david dowery from the esd i want to note our appreciation for the collaboration with asd and the services they provide to our district and thank you for joining us with that i wanted to start the meeting with the next item on the agenda which is the middle school improvement plan which is really exciting work and we have our administrators here to share this amazing work so ryan and our administrators the floor is yours all right so nikki mcfarlane is going to introduce the middle school group and then

003they have a presentation to share with you and then time for q a at the end all right so i will go ahead and get started lindsay do you want to start our slideshow all right so what's awesome about tonight is that um you know if you've been at the past uh school improvement plan dinners each school has kind of gone it alone and created their own plan based on their own goals and while there is a lot that's been super challenging about the pandemic what um it has afforded us an opportunity to do is come together as a team and talk about what the work ahead of us looks like and so i'm actually quite pleased to be here with with the team tonight um because we have been working much more closely together

004than we ever have because of the pandemic and so what we um have done this year is all the administrators got together and talked about like what does school look like this year what do we know about our students and what does our work look like this year um and and gotten on board for kind of doing the work collectively versus in each individual school so it really does feel much more like we are one schoolhouse this year more than we ever have so just wanted to start there so my name is nikki i'm the secondary schools coordinator and i um you know support the middle school admin team and our middle schools and i'm just going to kick us off and they're mostly going to take it from here but lindsay if you can

005go on to this second slide that would be great and all of our admin will introduce themselves as they come on so we'll be taking turns throughout the presentation tonight so our first slide has some demographic information just to help you understand that first column around enrollment what you see there is the number on the left is the number of students enrolled in hybrid and what you see on the right is hybrid plus corvallis online so we have i think it is 223. i have to look back at my notes which are hard to see on my split screen yeah we have 223 middle school students in corvallis online i just wanted to take a moment um the school improvement plan dinner is usually pretty interactive and ask the board if there is something that

006you notice about this data as you look at all three schools beside one another hold on we're getting our participation pains popped out raise our hands sarah there we go and i have to now get the i need button um yeah i mean i think it's it's the um i'm seeing we're trying to address before this pandemic started with the the difference in the sizes of our schools um i see that there's perhaps because of the dual language program being atlantis pauline there's a you know a smaller percentage of students there doing um online then you have it sheldon so the you know we've sort of the population it feels like the populations of students are potentially getting even more different at our middle schools i don't know if that's an unreasonable assumption to make

007but yeah i mean i do think this is an unusual year and i think um when we look at this data as well as the high school data you know i have a lot of questions that come up about like some of the why behind some of the the choices of families and and who is opting for one option or another for sure and i think as we transition to hybrid in person i think we'll see perhaps um our data might tell us even more about how our families are experiencing the pandemic in schooling thanks sarah yeah i mean i mean sarah stole my thumb and thunder the thing that really popped out is really that that that difference between the the two middle schools you know the other thing that really pops out here

008is how our programs drive uh the populations of these schools where we have life skills and our dual immersion program in one school and then not in the other and so that's also shaping not just the number of kiddos but also the composition of those kiddos and their needs in those buildings thanks vince lindsay do you want to go on to the next slide unless there are other other comments um this is another slide of our school demographics um the counts here i think they can be they really count the federal definitions by race and a lot of our students are counted in that multi-racial category um just i think of note school-wide we have about 34 of our middle school students our students of color and 18 are latinx so those are things you

009can't necessarily see from this data but um analysis that the data tells us tells us that and equity continues to be at the center of our work in our middle schools and when we're talking about decisions that will affect students we try and keep our students of color and our students with disabilities and our students navigating poverty and our homeless students at the center of our decision making and make sure that we're not um you know making decisions that will have unintended consequences for those groups of students i think one of the things that we keep asking ourselves through the pandemic is like how can we um make sure that we are getting towards something that is better for kids how can we make sure that school is different and doesn't just fall back into

010the patterns that have been predictable throughout all the years of public schooling hey nikki can i make a comment yes so something that i really noted on this slide and then later with the high schools i just really appreciated the choice of doing counts of students rather than percentages typically you know and when we see uh student data presented we usually see it sliced as percentages percentages and what i really appreciate but appreciate about this is i mean if we look at our small you know our lower represented populations we're seeing counts of individual kids and it really humanizes the data that reminds us that each one of these is an individual kid and so i just really appreciate that attention to detail and making that choice uh to choose counts and not just do

011the percentages thanks vince for for noticing that i think this year too like principals and i got together yesterday and just talking about um how students are doing academically and again that's what we're talking about is down to a number of students not a percent but like how how is each student doing um and how can we improve our our outcomes in our schools matt's getting his lights on i see that um next slide lindsay nikki have a question from lou oh sorry i didn't see it no worries go ahead lou sorry i couldn't find the enemy but um i just wanted to appreciate the recognition of the multiracial data the two or more races and um just echo what vince says about showing that number because a lot of times what ends up happening

012with statistics with racial demographics is it's like asterisk or not counted and that you are trying to tell a much different story so thank you lou so this this next slide um you know speaks to what i was talking about before that as we try and improve our schools we can't keep them the same as they have been and so while i think there are some research that says during a pandemic you should keep things as they are because life is hard for folks um we've been talking about how this is also an opportunity to come back and have schools that better serve our students of color and from there i'm going to hand it off to darren who's going to um lead us into the next lex next section and um this does feel

013just kind of crazy i'm so used to this being more interactive so i do want to say while we can't necessarily see your hands sami if you can can call those when you see them and let us know i think having this be interactive is a really nice way to um do this sip presentation so thank you sounds good and one other thing is just um and what happened with the elementary is that a lot of questions came at the end so i i think there's also going to be the opportunity there as well thanks ryan all right next slide lindsey and darren you can take it away so i'm darren blandon principal at sheldon middle school we didn't actually say we were going to introduce as we went but i'm just going to go

014with that and i'll hopefully lead that into each person doing that um the way we put it together is you see our core values and then from our core values and you don't need to switch yet but it goes into our commitments which then goes into our mission statements for each individual school and then our key strategies and each one of those kind of build from each other and if at some point you're looking through that would be a great question if you notice that one of our key strategies doesn't come from our core values or commitments or doesn't stay connected to it call us on it i mean that's that's the way we build this ladder as we work our way through it um and so i want to just give you that heads

015up core values here um lindsey if we go to commitments then it should go from there which is the next slide that talks about our commitments and then from our commitments not going yet so we have time to prove through real quick it allows us to talk with our staff have some parent involvement have some student involvement which then would lead to our mission statements and when we get to our mission statements um you'll be able to see some of the work that we've done with that and from there we can go to the next slide and then i'm going to hand it over to alicia who will talk about how we put them together um and she's going to talk specifically about linus pauling but it's very similar for how all of us did

016that work great thank you darren and good evening board um um i am alicia ward satay and i'm the principal at linus pauling um so our mission statements um i just want to put this out there they were probably written about two years ago as we thought about this i think we landed on about two years ago when we wrote these we were able to center on equity in our conversations and also involve our school community which included are our staff both certified and classified i believe some parents were involved at one of the schools as well as our leadership teams um and so we really um it was a collaborative and collective process in which we brought a lot of people together to really think through what are our statements and what our what

017is our mission at each one of our schools um we've really worked hard at all of our schools to center our work on equity um through different equity trainings um our equity groups at each one of the buildings so it's really been a process that we have gone through to really kind of bring our staff into a focus and a perspective that really keeps equity at the center we know that because of these shifts that we have made in our schools that at some point here we will need to look relook at these statements and to really make sure that we are reflecting what we are trying to do at our schools and and really what um you know the things that will help us to to help all students be successful um and so

018i think this time as we look at this at these mission statements for a second time we really want to kind of widen the different perspectives that we ask for and the voices that are included i would say i know at linus pauling we would want to reach out to students and make sure we have a diverse group of students and i would also say reach out to parents and also making sure that we include the diverse our diverse families that are in our schools and so as we would as we go through a process to look at these again that would be really important to us to make sure that we are holding equity at the center um i know one of the things that we do um pretty faithfully at lp is that

019we use our mission statement to start all of our meetings that we have with our staff and i know we've done it a couple time with our times with our parents but i think it just really keeps that um that statement at the center kind of keeps us focused on on where we want to go and and what we're about um additionally at linus pauling we we also came up with we statements kind of commitments that the staff would have um moving forward and that was quite a process i remember us way back when we were in the building in the in our auditorium kind of with posters on the wall and really coming up with statements that really reflected what the staff felt was important that we could work on together so it's been

020it it's been a great process but i do but we will come back and we will look at these again and make sure that we are holding equity at the center okay so let's uh lindsey if you could go to the next slide please so now we will kind of go into our key strategies and i'm going to start with the first key strategy which is equitable systems and outcomes for our students um so we have been doing many different things at our schools obviously as mentioned dual immersion is one of those strategies we use at linus pauling some of the things that have changed or i guess we have tried to improve on is um we have are starting to offer last i think last year was the second year we're start we're we're

021offering the stamp test for eighth graders which will give students the possibility of being placed in an ap spanish class as freshmen we're very proud of that and proud of the work that we've done with this program to really um just raise the rigor of the program and to give a goal for our students which has proved to be very successful um it's amazing um the the work that they've put into this to to be able to do well on that on that test in our distance learning we're going to continue to do that it'll be a little different in that we're going to offer it in january instead of offering it usually we offer it in march in april and so we will offer it a little earlier this year but i know they've

022been working really hard in the class to prepare for the test so to be exciting to see the outcomes even even in a pandemic another thing that we've been working on in all of our schools is relevant and rigorous curriculum you are very well aware of a very rigorous social studies curriculum adoption that has just happened um where where um staff and administrators participated in a process that really looked deeply and and really kept equity at the center to make sure that what we are teaching brings in multiple perspective perspectives and voices to what we teach in social studies um we will continue to develop that you know in the pandemic it's been a little um i would say a little challenging in trying to do professional development like we would like to do but

023that is definitely something that we want to focus on and to continue to develop develop our teachers and their ability to bring those different perspectives in i would also see say at our schools we've been working on engagement across the board in in really helping our teachers to see um how how rigorous and interesting um lessons really bring engagement to the classroom and in in this case to to the zoom classroom um we've seen some really um very creative things that have happened even through zoom and um some of those things have been project-based learning which is that next um bullet in on the slide that's something that um we see as a collective we see the the the um the really need for that and part of our strategy has been to highlight project-based

024learning that's already happening in our schools and making sure that that we can show those those different projects that are happening as examples to the rest of the staff and then really working on focusing on that and and helping um our staff to move in that direction the addition of stem and steam programs has also been very um helpful in providing um a class that is very hands-on and very project based so that is definitely something we will continue to work on and then finally hiring and retaining staff of color that is really something that is very important um and i'm speaking to as for all of us um especially at linus pauling um that is something that we focus on every single time we make a hire no matter if it's classified or certified

025i feel like we have a real united purpose in in hiring we look closely at our candidates we we think about how will these candidates and how will these potential employees have a positive positive influence on our students and especially our students of color at our school we it is proven we have seen our hires bear the fruits that we knew that they they would the connections that are made the ability to bring students um back to school i would say in this pandemic i'm sure you've heard i'm you know we have students that are that are not attending but i really do believe because of some of the higher we hires we've made um with a counselor of color with other key people of color that are able to reach out in in their

026language and speak to parents and to also just reach out and and connect with students has been key in bringing some of our kids um back into our our school and and i know at sheldon as well as franklin that is also a focus that that they have in in finding staff um that can reflect the students in the school all right so i am going to pass it on i think who's next do you have a question uh oh any questions sorry well i was going to ask about the stamp test but then i looked it up online and so i answered my own question all right i had that gap in my assessment literacy but maybe you could talk why don't you talk about the stamp test because if i don't know then

027maybe there are other board members that don't know and so and maybe there's members of the community that are that are watching this that that might not know what the stamp test is sure so the stamp test i think historically really was a foreign language assessment that was used in many foreign language programs i would say around the state state and the country and so we were a little um leery about using the stamp test but as we um researched it and as we had um a better explanation and as we experienced it as as dual language staff so my teacher the teachers um and myself we really saw that it was a rigorous test that could very much help us to know which students were were going to be or could be successful in

028an ap spanish class as freshmen of course one of our one of our concerns is always um who are the ones doing well on this test and we were very happy to see that our native and heritage speakers of spanish were also doing well as well or even better than than our native english speakers and not always i would say in assessments we have given in dual language do we see outcomes like that and and that really is something that we want to keep focusing on and dual immersion is to make sure that we are serving the students that this program was made for and so that was a definite concern of ours but but we are seeing really good outcomes and um and and both groups of kids doing well um with this test

029thanks alicia and thanks for commenting on how you're using it to keep the the program aligned to its original intent i really appreciate that thank you this is good uh sarah and then jay sarah you're muted okay sorry i hit the wrong button um i was wondering what it once i love that we're really working on on hiring staff of color to support our students and to better reflect who our students are um and on this thing on the slide it says hire and retain and i was just wondering if you could speak a little bit more to what is being done to make sure that those new hires have the support um they need so that that they stay with us um and and we are retaining them yeah i mean i've been really

030happy with the retention of our staff of color at linus pauline i think you know i think that i think that the difficulty is when you're really just trying to start to to hire staff of color because you you don't have that many and so what's really important i've found with with staff is to make sure that there's a personal um you know relationship with each one of those staff that were that there's the ability to work collectively and work as a group to have that support from other teachers or other just other staff members who may be a little more um experienced um and so we've really worked hard to create a dual immersion kind of um plc or a group of teachers that really has um supported each other and kind of met

031them where they're at support them with getting the materials they need making sure that you know that that we are supporting as much as possible in in those one-to-one relationships with each one of them i would say with our with our classified staff of color it's kind of the same thing is really just um you know we've we you know over the years we've been able to hire more and more and so they're starting to see a group of them as opposed to being the only one in the staff and i think that really brings power to that group of folks and and really helps them to feel a part of the staff um we have a fabulous group of classified staff that are working in the classrooms right now that that are made up

032of bilingual folks staff of color and and they really do feel a part of of the group and i think it's it's also working on overall the culture of your school and making sure that that they are feeling part of of the family so um i think there's lots of different things to focus on but i think really those personal relationships are are key and i sort of following on that um i love the dual language program it's i have two kids in it but i we've done so much work to build that program and to make sure we're hiring staff for that program that reflect the students that are in it what about staff i mean not just at linus pauling but at the other middle schools who staff of of color that have

033been hired there because you know not all of our students of color are in the dual language program they're not all spanish speakers um yeah i mean i would i would turn it over to darren or or craig and let them talk a little bit about their efforts well i um i i'll chime in really quickly there and uh craig harlow again principal franklin school good to see you all again um and i would emphasize uh what alicia started with in terms of from the recruiting interviewing hiring process to have a concerted effort that focuses on staff of color in that and then um again what she talked about or what darren talked about and alicia just underlined there in terms of core values for a person coming in uh the ability to develop relationships

034to make them feel inclusive to make them connected to the community and the same values that you have as a board the same values that we want to fold into as your school administrative team are the things that are going to keep them here in corvallis school district i believe and then one thing i would add is just the sort of also that district perspective on um convening affinity groups um from across the district so um as we continue this work we know that there are also still still staff members um who are racially or linguistically diverse that may feel somewhat isolated as we continue to move forward and so having a district-wide stance around making sure that there's space and making sure that those affinity groups are meeting together so that relationship can be

035built across the district as well is really important and so that's sort of a district um way that we are working to support um the work that's happening in the schools and i think one other thing i would add ryan is we also have a team that's working on um and some of the folks on that team alicia and salvador are are here um we are working on like a leadership development um uh opportunity for our staff of color to try and elevate um to help elevate and build leadership skills as another way to retain staff of color and um we're doing some of that work um with funding from the foundation wonderful jay you had a question i just had a comment maybe a request for information so i applaud the whole stamp test

036and and nudging kids to be able to go up into ap classes i would recommend all ap classes be wide open rather than teacher recommendation limits or whatever but my question would be uh based upon developmentally appropriate meaning some 9th graders might have a certain set of skills or aptitudes to take ap classes but not all the whole bucket full of skills maybe my example would be in math where really the brain is developing more and more and more so maybe calculus isn't isn't quite ready for them is there an option i'm interested in hearing are there options for those students who are really adept at language but do not have ready the maybe other skills or aptitude yet as freshmen to take ap what might they be able to do um just hearing you

037know what the schools have in mind so just a request yeah i mean and the high school can probably talk even more in detail about this but i mean just initially um so so i i wanted to make sure that it was clear that when students take a stamp test in eighth grade and they place in a certain you know aptitude in that stamp test it is only an opportunity to possibly be in an ap spanish class so after that they have taken the test and we see that they have the content skills to be able to do that and the teachers from the high school you know when we were in the building would come to the building and actually hold interviews and and colleen works one of the uh the aps would come

038down with them and actually hold interviews in spanish to really talk about kind of what the class was about to kind of hear them speak in spanish to really kind of i would say assess the students readiness to be in an ap class because the last thing we want to do is to put them in a class where they won't be successful and i think i don't know colleen could probably talk a little bit more about the success rate but but i would say we are being very careful with that because um jay we we recognize that that that not all students are ready to take an ap class as ninth graders but what we've really felt strongly is we don't want to hold kids back either we want to make sure that if they

039are ready to go and they are able they've been in this program now for what nine years by the time they hit freshman year we want to make sure that if they're able to do that we want to give them that opportunity to do that and so um but i think that's a really good point to make and i i think you'll hear a little bit more about the efforts that have been taking place around ap tonight jay um paul's gonna speak to our eos program our equal opportunity school work um when the high school presents their sip so that will be um an opportunity to hear some more without a doubt um can i jump in for a minute to talk a little bit about it the schooling works i'm an assistant principal at

040chs and i work with the di program hi jay hi everyone else um so i yeah i can second everything that alicia says and i think it's more that we are recognizing the achievement of students than that we are pushing students right that we are working um throughout the di program k8 to really raise the rigor and to raise the challenge um for students and then we're recognizing when they achieve that i think the other two things i'd say that tie in one to go back to the hire and retain staff of color the teacher that we have teaching that ap level is absolutely phenomenally amazing uh native costa rican um and just works beautifully with students and the success rate last year was almost 100 um then i think the other piece that um

041that i would tie into that is that we are sort of flipping that ap model on its head to some extent because what we're looking at less is are the students ready with all the skills to be successful in that ap class looking less at that although that's clearly a piece and looking more at what can the class do what can the teacher do what can we do with the curriculum that in fact helps all students elevate to being successful in an ap class all of those students that have been identified so we flip that model a little bit there's a lot more reaching by the curriculum by the teacher by the teaching strategies to elevating students so that they do have the opportunity to be successful so this is a this is a great

042example of how we used to do sips by you know individual schools and how you've seen when the elementary presented how you saw the collaboration and you're seeing the same thing between our middle schools and high schools and across our middle schools tonight so again i think that as we think about these school improvement plans moving forward um year to year i think that there's things that we're learning about how the integration is seen differently when we go about it this way so um i think there's you know more to decide later around board development and the way we do these meetings but generally speaking i can i think it's really unique for us to be able to see that articulation happening absolutely the synergy and how every administrator from different sides of this uh

043different locations of the district are speaking to these issues uh it's just amazing to see that so really great great highlights we're seeing this year because we're talking all together at the same time are the same you know you know what i mean awesome so with that i want to say uh we don't have further questions and i would say let's uh keep our questions uh toward the end since uh i want to give enough time for our staff to present all what they want to present and then we'll ask our questions if that's okay okay then uh let's see yeah i'm not sure who's next sorry i am good good evening good evening i'm greg hyde i am one of the two assistant principals at linus pauling middle school so we've done some recent

044work on math placement for students entering middle school as well as grading practices and so there's been collaboration between teachers and administrators at the middle schools to create supports for all students towards successful completion of algebra one by the end of ninth grade we know that's a really important indicator towards earning a high school diploma in four years we've also increased opportunities for students of color to accelerate their math learning and complete algebra 1 before they get to high school around grading we've advanced our equitable grading practices some of the examples would be removing behaviors from the grade unweighting practice assignments that do not inform instruction or learning and raising the floor of missing assignments from 0 to 50 on the 100 point scale so that's some of the collaborative work that we've been doing

045and if there are any questions i'll pass it on to john see how you did that greg that was perfect all right i'm judge trowbridge assistant principal now at sheldon middle school uh hi everybody it's i'm super excited to be here i haven't eaten dinner yet so i might have to you know turn off my camera for a second run back but no i'm joking uh so i'm gonna talk a little bit about the next slide for us lindsay please um i'm actually really excited to talk about this alicia did touch on our on our equity being kind of our core and i think we are at the point and i'm thinking even about our employee retention sarah that you asked about that um and i think some of that is really with the equity

046drive that we have within our district um definitely at our schools our staff are really highly engaged they are actually the ones that are leading the pd now they are the ones that are leading other teachers and then they are working together collaboratively to go into the classrooms and um work together to also teach the students about equity one thing that we're we're doing at shelby and there's something similar at lp in franklin as well is speak up and really what that is is speak up for equity and that's just to give students empowerment when it comes to equity and really allow them to use their voices and use their experiences for other people to to be able to see some empathy there as well that has been pretty powerful we've been really focusing at

047least at sheldonland specifically on identity as kind of our foundation as we move forward alicia also talked a little bit about the increased collaboration i was going to talk a little bit about you know the social studies but i know that there has been a lot of talk of that already um i will just say that one of the big focuses and and i think we can we can think our district leadership is having that focus on the instructional materials by people of color or seeing themselves within the material which we know traditionally in our social studies curriculum it has been about a white man and so changing that narrative and allowing our students to see themselves with the material is going to be really powerful for them moving forward some other things that have

048happened our libraries really been trying to promote authors of color followed by buying some books i think there was a grant going through a foundation if i'm not mistaken i might be it is foundation right thank you nikki um so that's that's pretty awesome to see lastly the phased-in limited in person instruction we have started this at our buildings i think this has been one of the most powerful things we've been able to do as we as we move forward we really focused on our students with disabilities we focused on students that are not able to access learning independently our eld students and students with some tier three supports and that is a lot of work and i think given a lot of us purpose in such a interesting time um and i i have

049been i felt very lucky to be able to be part of that to kind of move forward and get our kids that really need the support in and it's also helped our teachers as well i will take any questions if there are any you were told to hold our questions that's perfect love it yeah i think i think it's better to at the end yeah all right so next too thank you ryan i appreciate it next we have lisa krause thank you john um i have a very temperamental microphone on this laptop so just let me know somebody give me a signal if you can't hear me but i'm going to talk about a few a few key strategies that we're all working on so i would say we've learned a lot since we started

050distance learning about 100 years ago and i'm really grateful that there were the six of us from the three schools walking together down this path all three schools have created plans that fit their individual schools but there are many common threads i would say that were woven throughout the plans and i would also say and you've heard it before we've shared more ideas among the six of us in the last six months than likely has been shared in six years so i'm very grateful for that we knew from the start that outreach to students and families had risen to the top in terms of importance we have counselors we have behavior specialists we have teachers we have educational assistants and administrators who all make home visits and this is what we call knock and connect

051and if families happen not to be at home we leave a little door hanger with a personal message to the families and for some families it takes two visits before the student becomes a little bit more engaged sometimes it takes three and sometimes it takes four but we know if it takes ten we'll do ten or twenty whatever needs to happen we have had a measure of success here that we're pretty pleased about i would say all schools have developed elaborate systems that help us track students initially it was in attendance and then engagement and now we're really turning towards our academic side and putting some teeth into that we have tiered systems of support to check up on on students uh at all levels um we also have principal chats via zoom and i'm

052going to tell you that at linus pauling our first principal chat we learned one thing that's very important turn off the chat until after the presentation we went through nine pages of questions afterwards and secondly on that list we have improved collaboration with our classified staff and the capacity for one-to-one academic support and connection if there's one positive about comprehensive distance learning it's that our classified staff has been made available to assist students more than ever before because they do not have supervisory duties throughout the day they're able to support students in classes they're able to support students before classes after school and homework clubs their work has been um overwhelmingly uh supportive and they are doing a wonderful job um lindsay if you want to go ahead to the next slide i'm gonna talk

053um i don't know if lin did we get the did we get the uh nikki we printed i said i sent lindsay um lindsay i sent you a message about making sure you had the updated one i know that we submitted something to the board but i think um it's okay i can i can work off of this one that's i think some changes were made to just make the data a little more um digestible and easier to read and comparable so um yeah i i think if you can go ahead with this one yeah it's absolutely fine so one of the things we asked are linus pauling students and and we're stepping into a little bit of a different phase here each each school will talk about um student voice and student perspective which

054is particularly important to all of us um through these unusual circumstances so what we wanted to know about our students is um how they were doing and so the question that was posed is we know this is a different way of learning and we're so proud of all of your hard work on a scale from one to five how are you doing with distance learning and so this particular slide that you're looking at was one that we sent to students at the beginning of october and i'll be honest with you i i was a little bit nervous about what we would see um one being this is hard and i'm struggling versus five i've made this work and i feel pretty successful i guess i didn't know what to expect or administrators didn't know what

055to expect so we felt okay with this because we knew that there had been any number of technical issues that had come up and and students were falling into really a different phase of comprehensive distance learning compared to the spring the spring it was care and connect and making sure everybody's uh you know good in their shoes and now we are sinking in for a longer stretch of of uh comprehensive distance learning so as we took a look at that we gave them those questions and then um lindsey if you want to flip to the next slide this one so of course again i'm a worrier and i thought what is this going to look like we posed the same questions to kids and um this is how they responded and it's almost a the

056very same as the first slide a few more i believe i can't remember the percentage in one than previously but in the end it's very very close and i think we will probably run a third one in january probably late january where we will actually ask we will have who the students are who are in one and two so that we can make sure that if we aren't helping them already that we would be able to help them directly i think i'll i think um it's going to throw it to me lisa yep so what we did was we had a survey for kids and we dug a little bit deeper and asked them more specifically to tell us about you know as you can see here most days are good some some days good

057some not as good the and then it works its way down the thing that i would point towards is that we have 13 of our kids that are kind of in the bottom two categories yes that was a percent events so let me tell you 35 people that are at most days not so good and 22 people that are a lot of bad days and so when you look at it you think well 13 that's not bad or eight percent five percent that's not bad but that means we have 57 people that are feeling that most days are worse than the other days that didn't feel good right and so we used some of this information to key in on our limited in person to go okay we need to get those kids in here

058because what they're doing right now is not feeling good for them so how can we get them in the building how can we have help them build relationships help how can we get them away from whatever they're having that is making them feel that way and we'll continue to do that as we grow we've also taken it with that individual data to be able to uh for the parents who have declined unfortunately that's happened with some we've gone okay well what can we do so we've had some study halls that we've created on wednesdays and we have kids who will connect to that virtual study halls and they'll be able to still be able to do that without coming in the building the same is what lisa shared we'll go back to this we only

059have our data right here that is the most recent we did it at the beginning and then we did our most recent we'll do it again in january and one of the things we'll key in on is not only our overall percentage but looking at the 57 kids who previously put that they were either most days are not going well or a lot of bad days and see if the limited in person or the study halls if that helps change kind of their response or their answers um and helps them kind of move towards feeling better because obviously as we measure kind of success or how the days are it's totally different than we ever have in the past and so there's some kiddos that are filling out this data that look like based on

060attendance and grades like things should be going well they come every day and they do it they're supposed to but they're more compliant than they are actually doing well and really having overall success both academically and mental health part of it and so we use this data to help determine where we go on how to support kiddos and from here i'll throw it over to craig thank you darren i think we might be the next slide lindsay well there we go so very similar to what you've heard from both darren and lisa on the previous two surveys this is a a snapshot and jamie luke our social studies teacher does this for the team for the middle school team at franklin this is and it was very similar to the first one and um in

061a practical sense we uh use this at the middle school sst to what lisa was talking about earlier in the slide how to support students in the social emotional aspects of navigating all of this with our specialists counselors myself and district-wide supports and uh and then big picture-wise the team uses this and what stands out to me and this is darren just references the good news is we see our middle school students their attendance is up from their activities and projects their engagement is up as compared to distance learning the framework of distance learning last spring um what you also see though is my perspective of this is how challenging comprehensive distance learning and online learning is for a middle school student in general that uh that social connectivity piece and the the construct of

062that embedded in their educational experience in sixth seventh and eighth grade is absolutely vital and just the actual framework of being in person for their learning is gives them uh guidance and and framing and stability as they navigate the day so that is our challenge uh next slide please and we will finish our presentation with this quote for you from paulo freire a champion of social justice as you know looking at the past whoops i'm sorry i can only see part of it on this looking at the past must only must only be a means of understanding more clearly what and who you are so you can more wisely build the future so thank you very much and i'll send it back to either sammy or ryan well i want to say thank you team

063uh you've you've shown tremendous amounts of synergy and collaboration that our students are the most beneficiary uh of so thank you for this work and really doing the hard work that you're doing and i do have a few questions that we want to go for and uh we'll start with sarah and then vince and then jay and then lou sarah yeah um well i have two questions one of them is just a pretty easy yes or no question um so that that the surveys of students does that include kids in the corvallis online or is that kids only in the hybrid for franklin school that was the students in the franklin high comprehensive distance learning online program that would be the same for linus pauling so that's the corvallis online correct do we have any

064assessment of those kids and how they're doing i would say we have regular conversations with mark um who is the admin for corvallis online uh where we talk about individual students yes yeah yeah and i would just accurate lisa look like we've um staff students individual students at our sst from middle school via mark keeps us really informed on that piece that's been an intentional decision we've made to make sure that students still maintain that connection with their home schools so we had some conversations earlier in the year do we create a separate structure for corvallis online or do we continue to support um students through their home school where they have those relationships built over time and so that's how we have structured that yeah because i just didn't want to i wanted to

065make sure we weren't missing kids over there um and then my other question is just how is everyone doing this was my question for the elementary school teachers too because i've been watching you from the parent side the heroic work that's being done by teachers and you how how are you and and your teachers doing you how are you how are supports going so that we don't burn out all the fabulous people who are supporting our kids right now well i would say that's you know that's that's definitely i mean i think in any any year in your building right you're you're creating culture you're creating um you know community but i would say in this in this you know in this situation i think for me at least as a principal it's been an

066on kind of ongoing kind of learning about what really we need to do to help our staff um i know you know there's been middle school is middle school so we're all a little silly and so there's been a lot of great um just um from you know doing a virtual um secret santa to you know sending pictures of yourself dancing to lots of different things that i think creates community even though it's just little things like that really generated by our staff um our counselor one of our counselors and our dean of students um next week will have a an afternoon kind of trivia game about about our staff and and so we're trying to get some ideas um flowing to really try to get staff um you know because they also miss the

067the whole relationship part of it and so trying to create different activities for them to do and of course us as administrators reaching out to our staff that we're in charge of and making sure that that things are going well and checking in with them frequently and um but i would say overall i mean it's it's not easy um but i i i'm very um every day i'm i'm very much proud of the many things that our staff are doing and really how they're just hanging in there and what it's six days until we have a little break here so uh not that i'm counting or anything but uh so i think that will also help all right vince first i'd like to thank sarah for asking that question because i know our staff and

068our teachers are working hard and if there's anything that we've learned about this pandemic and and the policy response to it is that change is a constant so just as we're starting to settle into cdl and things are starting to really work i'm sure that something will come and we'll have to change maybe we'll get back into buildings i'd like to go back to the survey data though and the the note that i made for myself as i was reviewing the packet was you know did we slice this data by student group um are there any patterns what are those patterns and really the question is are they any different than what we would expect is there any learning that we got from that when surveying that data that popped out about our student groups

069can i jump in a little bit on that one vince i would say there's sorry i asked you a question didn't let you answer because i'm just going i guess yeah go for it um i would say it depends on how you look at it for where you surprised i mean the thing that is different is that our students that typically worry me are for lack of a better term are our loners our kiddos who don't have a group who don't have a connection um they're doing pretty well right now because that's the world we're all living in and so there's been a little bit of a flip and not all of them but there's been a little bit of a flip that our social butterflies and our kiddos that usually have those connections those

070are the ones that are giving us feedback as far as our surveys that we're seeing that are really struggling because they don't have that same connection they usually get from walking around the halls from being involved in five different clubs from going to their athletics from athletics to band to this to that those are the ones that it's that are scaring me right that i'm like how do i remake up those types of things for them to have those connections and so that's where i would say that in some ways it's a surprise um and that's what i shared previously where i still can look up those kids and they still probably um most of them i see her at 98 attendance and are getting all a's and b's because they're compliant so they're still

071doing what they need to but then all of a sudden they report most days not good and i'm like wait a second most days not good but you're here 98 of the time and you have all a's and b's um so that's why i'm saying sometimes at this point not sometimes we have to define success in a different way and make sure that we're pulling data and information in ways that we never have before so thanks for that darren wonderful jane i if i could respond to that too i would say in our survey we we cannot extrapolate who is whom among uh among the uh the students who um replied um i g the surprise for me was to see virtually the same number the same percentages are the same numbers i was surprised

072by that only based on the fact that um i know and we see and and and we reach out to many families and many students and so based on that i was thinking that the numbers and would be much higher of kids who are really struggling i i didn't mention it before but i do want to mention that one of the other things another survey that our counselors put out was they asked students what social emotional learning subjects they would be interested in learning about and they got some i think 500 responses and after reviewing the results the counselors created canvas modules for those students who wanted to learn about healthy relationships healthy friendships anxiety and exercise and so they created um online like an online counseling class to work with students and there are

073i think my counselor said there are 75 students who are participating in that so it was a means for them to reach out and to say yes i would like help with this so i felt like that was a great success on their part thanks for both those responses and one of the things that i really appreciate about this staff and about this district is how how quickly i you know i can i can make talk about groups and talk about overall data and this team very quickly goes to talking about individual students in individual student needs and i just really appreciate that approach and just that that's kind of your default setting thank you jay and then lou and then therese and just to make sure we can give the high school admin uh

074sufficient time to present uh i'll say we have seven to eight uh minutes uh to answer the three uh following questions so jay so i wanna first say as a matter of comment thank you because knock and connect and principal chat and just the tone that you all have about collaborating with each other and then finally just your caring tone it's big and and so thank you my question goes to the surveys and it seems to me my math is a little nervous about how many people did not respond and i'm going to assume that if they didn't respond we might want to assume the worst and that may not be fair but can you give me a comment about i mean i'm counting at linus pauling maybe as many as 200 non-responders or maybe

075at franklin 50 am i missing something are those onliners instead or help me out with that gap now i'll go ahead lisa so my thinking here is that it was offered at the end of a class period and then students were told here here's a survey we would like you to take and um whether or not the students you know said i don't want to take it or whatever i don't know we did have fewer students taking the survey the second time we realized that so i think we'll refine that survey i you know jay we do know we have a number of kids we're working with on a daily basis and whether they responded to that or not i don't know but we will get individual email addresses um once they respond to the

076next survey thank you yeah just very similar jay um it was given to miss lucas kind of a virtual optional check-in and so the it varied a little bit from the first one to the second one and uh we could probably emphasize it more to get a better uh participation turnout i want to comment as soon as you said how you delivered them i want to go back on my statement that i assume the worst i assume that middle schoolers want to go home get on get off do something else and they may not really have negative comments so i just think so thank you for clarifying that thanks everyone for all the info and um really quick i wanted to see how awesome that those modules are that the counselors put together that's pretty

077incredible um so thanks for sharing about that um i did have a couple of questions one of them goes back to retaining staff of color and i'm just kind of a little bit curious about what is being done for white staff for education about microaggressions to help retain because a lot of times the focus is on the support for staff of color and so i'm just kind of curious about the other part of the picture of like the education for white stuff and then my other question i was really excited to see a pedagogy of the oppressed quote as a closing slide and i'm wondering if you all are using any of the other um kind of philosophies in that text or that approach um to think about creating changes postcoded and if that's being

078used at all as a framework or if it was just for the presentation which is fine too i was just curious i can jump in unless alicia you want to go no john go you go okay that's fine because i can just speak a little bit to the microaggressions that you were talking about um the way i see it is we had done a lot of equity work as a district sending teachers out to trainings and stuff like that and actual professional learning and now they have taken that so when i talked about the speak up one of the things they actually talk about to students is that as well and before they do that they talk about it as a group of teachers um so i think there's that opportunity there where our teachers

079are talking about it actually right now because that is a focus if we're going to serve our students especially our students of color we need to identify that ourselves so i think that is happening yeah and i'll just add real quickly i mean i think i think both schools aren't we working on um the book how to be an anti-racist so i think uh linus pauling there's been work um that we've been doing probably for the last two or three years um working with staff specifically around equity and um you know and and it is a different dynamic having um you know more and more staff of color every year in our staff it's very interesting because they bring a perspective to the conversation that i think you would not get if you didn't have

080them there and i i do think specifically talking about microaggressions i will say that was on my list to do this year and we haven't gotten to it yet but um i'm glad you brought that up because that is definitely something that i think we we need to talk about but we have done a variety of different things and um lisa is leading uh our our books our book study with how to be an anti-racist which i think has what 25 staff i think that have signed up to do that and so that's that's and i believe at sheldon they're also doing something similar to that and so um that is very encouraging and i really do think it's a process it's also a process around and i would say the three of us have

081had individual conversations with staff around just you know maybe framing things in a different way or have you thought about this in a different way and and so i think that continual um teaching like you know that's that's what we are we are all teachers at the core and and i think the continual teaching and um giving examples and working with staff is is really how we can move people along and and i've seen a lot of um a lot of improvement and and what what happens at linus pauling but i think that's a really good point um that i don't want to to be lost because that that is that is part of it for sure thanks i i appreciate you all seeing what's happening and what's been happening i think it's important for

082a community to know that that education happens on both sides because sometimes there's an assumption it only has to happen to support the staff of color directly with staff of color so thank you so much and i don't know about the other question though um i i can speak to that that question you know just um the pedagogy of the oppressed talks a lot about affirming individual identity and while that's not a text that we we work um with staff from we use loretta hammond's book and we use um how to be an anti-racist which i think are really about knowing knowing the identity of the students you're working from and getting to know them and connecting with them and building relationships so that students can learn from that um so i think those are

083some of the more recent works that build off of that earlier work that that our teachers are um are using for professional learning cool thank you yeah that um that text in particular too talks a lot about like shifting structures and stuff that's not found in others so that's why i was kind of curious of that part but thank you so much wonderful i see teresa your hands are down so unless uh you have a question raise your hand or on you uh otherwise i'll take your uh i'll take your spot go ahead but no no my my question got addressed already so i'll just i'll just only add that i appreciate it i think it was darren who commented about the shift in um seeing who was who's who was thriving and who wasn't

084and those those extroverted social butterfly kids struggling um maybe a little bit more in this environment and i just i appreciate that um that awareness i have one of those children and um it is uh yeah it's it's painful to watch that process unfold and to realize that the coping mechanisms that would be in place in normal times are exactly what we cannot do right now in so very many ways and so trying to find a way to creatively meet that need is quite exhausting i was um very grateful my child is in fourth grade so he he's not quite where you guys are yet but to see the awareness that that continues even beyond elementary school very encouraging and when his teacher introduced breakout rooms for this the morning meeting um our enthusiasm for

085the 8 15 zoom call changed dramatically because the ability to actually talk to a classmate and get a response became part of the morning experience and so thank you for being aware of that um because you know this is a curve for everyone and people are out of their comfort zones everybody's out of their comfort zone in some way um and in particular for those kids who went to school to see their friends uh that zoom just doesn't really quite simulate that so i'm just grateful to hear as a parent i'm grateful to hear that you're all in touch with that and that you're compassionate to others needs so thank you wonderful well thank you so much uh i have a question very briefly if anyone can speak to it i see lots of adaptation

086transformation happening in the systems series highlighted some of them which is great and i'm wondering is there any changes or adaptations that you are doing or you will be doing because of conversations you're having with elementary schools so they're telling you upstream you should expect these changes or these needs uh that needs to be met differently than how we used to do it and that draw that drove that change and that transformation in your practices is there anything that you found useful in your conversations from the elementary schools that did help you with that transformation and may craig you're you have to both hands so i don't want to call you on the spot but you might be one example of where the conversation is happening in the same building but the question is for

087everybody okay you want to go you got thrown out there you can go first yes i did and i'm at a um i guess uh it's been inferred a few times um the level one thing that uh i'm very hopeful on the backside of this is the level of true collaboration around the spectrum of learning for our students um and using our paraprofessionals or instructional assistants in a more targeted dynamic way that was referred to earlier i don't know if that's what you mean sammy something like that but um certainly i have seen more focus on the things that we just talked about taking into account a student's race their cultural background their strengths their challenges what's going on in their family life what's going on with them currently outside of school besides just a

088math score a reading score um i'm i'm really hopeful that that is a piece that builds as a result of this experience for for kindergarten through middle school students sami what i would add is we've tried to take some of the information from our elementary schools on how they prioritize the priority standards for the fifth graders because there has to be something that's kind of given up especially last spring and then use that to go okay here's where we're starting from so we're going to grow from there we're also tracking that the best we can as we go through this year cv by the way so then that way we'll be able to provide that information um for our incoming ninth graders make sure to cv because we have so many classes that usually are

089year long and when you go from a year along to a semester and when you go from a year long to a semester in all comprehensive distance learning but maybe we'll do some hybrid obviously the amount of um instruction that we're going to get through the amount of standards we're going to get through is going to be adjusted while we prioritize the priority standards they might not be in the same exact way the ninth grade teachers would have expected them to be so we're gonna make sure we go here's the priority priority standards that we put together and we're still trying to touch on the other ones but then be able to give them that information and then we'll ask for the same as the you know middle child that we are here um from

090the fifth graders to see if we can get that information to support them next year i mean next year will be will be huge as we look at this right and like what this year did to our students that sounds bad but it's true like what happened as a result of this and how do we like catch them up without freaking them out at the same time you know type of thing yeah yeah well thank you so much this is great and uh with that i want to really share the appreciation to all of you and uh share the comments from my colleagues for the good work that you're doing so thank you and i want to hand it over to ryan the high school administrators for the next presentation unless you would like us

091to do a short break um i think we should take four minutes come back at 7 55 um just because we have been sitting for the better part of an hour plus so um just a real brief break and then we'll just jump right in all right we're stretching our feet until 7 56 and with that we'll see you soon thank you as soon as the owl wakes up we'll return from recess all right so we are uh reconvening from recess and next item the agenda is the high school improvement plan all right so we'll have a chance to hear from our high schools now um again they put together a presentation and so again an opportunity to ask questions and learn a little bit of more about um the collaboration that's happening at that

092level and with that i'll turn it over to nikki okay hi again everyone um so um very similar to what i shared about middle school i feel like high school is collaborating a lot more and talking about students that we share and know if lindsay you want to go ahead and open it right up to that second slide with the three circles that would be awesome thanks lindsay so um you know really between the three schools we share students we have students that are attending classes at both corvallis high school and crescent valley high school and then we have students that go from from both schools to college hill what i often hear in in meetings with principals is a shared ownership for students and their outcomes i know especially our students who attend at

093college hill that principals are frequently checking in on their progress toward graduation and how they're doing and just to see if it is a better fit than maybe the comprehensive high school was so um that's just something that that i'm noticing i think even more in this environment and um and all three schools we do still really continue to focus on graduation you can go to the next slide so very similar to the slide that i shared from the middle school we've got enrollment here with the number in parentheses representing the students from their home school that are enrolled in corvallis online i think of note here is um the difference in the percent of students who are navigating poverty who are attending college hill i also know when you look at graduation data later

094in tonight's presentation you'll notice that's a group of students that we are talking about um continually trying to improve outcomes for um so yeah we'll be talking about some of the grad data for for all um for these groups a little bit later this evening and i know you've seen this data before so i'm going to just go ahead and unless there are questions about this we'll probably move more to that format of saving questions for the end and i'll pass it on to nicole good evening everyone my name is nicole hendricks and i'm an assistant principal at crescent valley so this slide oh can you send it to the next slide so this flight is um our st for across the high schools this is our student enrollment um by race and ethnicity and

095just as the middle school these counts reflect the federal definition which you know the number of students of color in some of the categories could actually be higher but they're counted in another category you know we'll see this for example there are 165 students who are identifying as native and indigenous students but the majority of those students are reporting under um are reported under the hispanic or multi-racial categories we also see this in in our staff so we'll have we have six black staff members who are reported under hispanic and latin necks or multiracial categories but even with this we know that a large portion of our student population just aren't represented in our staff just as in the middle school and we all know that this is an area in which we have work

096to do um we can go to the next slide um sarah i know that you had asked earlier how we were all doing and i think this this slide pretty much speaks to that um it says our new normal is always feeling a little off balance like trying to stand in a dingy on the rough seas and not knowing when the storm will pass but humans can get better at anything with practice and i like this quote because it represents us knowing what we need to do fighting through it and there's hope and there's a light at the end double and we're not afraid to keep trying and then now i'm going to go and pass it along to aaron hello my name is aaron mckee and i'm the principal at crescent valley high school

097and i believe i know everybody in this meeting so that shouldn't be a surprise to the people there at least um in their little pocket cameras um but this the district vision is something that that every school is it is their focus it's not just a district vision it's a school vision and it really guides what our mission is as well but every student being a graduate every student makes growth and closing that opportunity gap and it starts with that piece of when we look at our breakdown of who's graduating and and and how many students from each category and so on and i know that jay you don't like percentages but we know every student i'm just going to say we know which every student is that's not graduating and the way you get

098your graduation rate up is by focusing on those areas where you're not doing as well so if you want a 95 graduation rate you need to make sure that all your subgroups are also excelling and graduating and we as we do our growth goals and and and set um school improvement plans we're looking for how do we make sure that all of our students meet that growth and when we talk about closing that opportunity gap that everything every opera when we talk about the eos which paul's going to cover later and getting students into rigorous classes that normally wouldn't be represented there and and cte programs when we look at the graduation rate of students that are in our cte programs it's way up there like and so making sure we have students that have

099access to these programs that historically have not allows us to close that opportunity gap so anyway you know about this stuff and as we go to the next line we talk about the mission this is the focus of our mission so there's three of us that are going to speak to this and since i'm still speaking i will speak first and then pass it on to either eric or matt so if you look at each school's mission statement each school came up to that came to that mission statement through work with their staff it was talking with their staff of what do we want our students to to get when they come to this school and what do they want to experience and what is the staff are we all on board with making sure

100it happens and so crescent valley through rigorous and relevant learning inspire students to be reflective develop individual potential and pursue unique personal and career interests fabulous statements very difficult to remember and so that's why when i think about our district vision those are the things that we keep in mind and then as you see the other mission statements they're much easier to remember so there you go moving on to either eric or matt i'll chime in matt boring principal corvallis high school hello to you boxes out there um yeah ours is pretty short and i can tell you quickly how it came about um kind of three different areas we asked the staff to come up with and the prompt was what are what are three things you want students to leave corvallis high school

101with um and we'd also asked a group of avid teachers at a summer institute a few years ago back where back when travel was a thing and also um a group of students not the whole student body but but a couple classes and these were the top three they were they were all variations of these three things there there was not a a fourth one that was even close to the top three the practice empathy be resilient take personal responsibility and you know in 2020 practicing empathy is is actually a little easier because we we're all affected um by this being resilient is harder i'm really proud of our students and i tell them that when i get a chance to pop into their zoom that the fact they're showing up is is just so

102resilient in itself and that's super cool and the taking personal responsibility is hard in 2020 our capacity i think has diminished a bit and so if we can emerge from this year with these these core values um in practice i think we'll we'll be on the right path to to come out of this thing and to you eric thanks uh good evening eric wright college hill principal um so our students are really subsets of the students at corvallis high school in crested valley high school so their visions and missions are definitely things that we are trying to aspire to but one thing that i think we try to do a little bit uniquely at college hill is really celebrate the strengths of our students i think a lot of our students come to us and

103feel like in some way or another the deck has been stacked against them and so helping them to identify their strengths and to recognize that there are hard things that we face in life and that's what we do and that when we can see our kids ask hard questions and wrestle with um challenging things and and achieve and learn and overcome and um and look over their shoulders and see what they've accomplished and recognize their own strength that um that's really a great part of their growth experience and rather than identifying themselves and by their challenges that they face identifying themselves by the strength that they have is is something that we really try to instill in each of our students and as a staff we really believe that the past before us is challenging

104and that we do those tough things and i've talked to many staff this year that have said i know we do tough things and this is hard this fall and so it has been kind of a mantra that we say like you know when things are hard like that's what that's what we do that's what we signed up for what our students signed up for that's what is the staff we signed up for and um it's it's really um inspiring and uh to watch our kids uncover the strength that they have and to watch our staff help our kids to see that there's things that their kids our students could do that they never thought was possible and so that's what we would say our our mission is and so i let's go to the

105next slide thank you oh my up again nikki yes you are matt awesome um i was asked to talk about what we're doing at chs around equity racial equity um in particular and um i'm excited to talk about it um and we've been talking about it a lot at corvallis high school and a couple things happened really this summer at the same time um one a lot of our staff members joined other staff members from around the district um got at a racial at a book study talking about i think they read right white fragility first um i wasn't able to be a part of that one but now we're reading how to be an anti-racist and i am a part of that and oops my light went off sorry um we uh so i've

106joined that and through that um about 15 of my staff in talking with sheldon um who has a strong equity team and also have devoted some resources to an equity tosa they demanded essentially to me this summer that we need that too and that's work that we want and so we have an equity tosa and zachariah and a really strong equity team and we've been we've been meeting quite a few times and our staff meetings this year are the is just racial equity work and it's not easy um we have to grapple with a lot of things it wasn't an easy election season to be grappling with some of these things and we're mostly white we have a lot of learning to do and that piece has been powerful i am you know i told

107staff my very first staff meeting on august 31st that one of our priorities well it's our second priority first one was connecting with and caring for each other and our students the second one is talking about race and equity courageously and constructively and acting upon those conversations i think the difference this year is we want to act on some of the things we're doing now the summer work also corresponded with a group of former students from mostly students of color from cv and chs who wanted to talk about issues in race surrounding the theater program i said i'll listen to you and they have a great proposal about how to to do two things to have a committee that will um help to vet some of the shows the casting the production values things like

108that and also provide a safe space for concerns around race they were quite quite brave in sharing their stories and we i met with with them a few times and then met with them and marcianne melissa harder and we're working to get that set up um theater is going to be a thing again and we look forward to that being more equitable and and really a goal of being have it be a model for um having equity at the forefront and it's actually called this corrales school district theater's policy on diversity equity and inclusion the work of the equity team has um produced a student voice of concern that where students can report instances of racial discrimination harassment etc [Music] and the point of that was to allow a space but also to have some

109follow-up that for sure we had a student panel at one of our staff meetings recently we invited back to um two former students great great students um both black and we wanted them to share their experiences of growing up in corvallis and going through corvallis schools and they were fantastic because they are fantastic but they said some things that we needed to hear um what was very clear no one looks like us and one of the students had his first um black teacher last year in college in his life he's had one at osu and um talked about how they felt pressure to be the teachers of racial equity and racial history and one of the students made this comment we don't have time to teach everyone to be woke that that's not our responsibility

110we want allies not pity and we need you when you see something to say something um and one of them talked about um being followed at fred meyer all the time she would go there with you know 300 other our students um back when that was a thing and being profiled and being followed and and mentioned um how hard it is to concentrate on your fourth period class when that's been your experience at lunchtime and one of the things that that we had to work through that it's such a part of white privilege to not consider that as an educator that oh my god that might be happening to this student at lunch that is so out of my experience and and and i think the uh the really the the thing that resonated for

111me the most was the comment um we loved you guys talking to the whole staff when we were here but we could not talk to you about issues of race and with at age 15 to 18. and i think that's what struck me in tying them connecting the dots between those two students and the students of color in the theater department while they were going through our schools they did not feel a safe space to talk about race and and that's really what um we want to create and hold that space and then use that space to make meaningful change they can speak very eloquently now you know three or four or five years out all of these students but um that's really kind of the key for us so we're learning from that we've

112we've taken surveys of our staff about comfort in talking about race this these conversations haven't been easy at all um and so you know we're just we're working through these things and paul will talk about eos later and access in systems but i guess i want to report the biggest thing i'm excited about is we have a large core group of teachers and staff who not only want to talk about race they want to see movement toward racial equity so thank you thanks matt and i think eric you are going to talk about our commitments and how those um helped us to identify key strategies for this year so yeah um i think i'm off yeah so we're looking at academic achievement maintain make sure i'm sorry there we go i want to make sure

113that we are maintaining graduation rates throughout the pandemic and uh this is definitely a challenge i think we had worked really hard over the last few years to keep our graduation rates high for all students and looking at subgroups and we've had some more success in some groups than others but really trying to across the board raise the academic achievement of our students and trying to make sure that we are using strategies that can maintain those graduation rates through through this pandemic and we'll look at some of the data that we have had and some of the challenges that we're facing in a little while looking at equitable systems making sure that we are increased their participation rate in ap courses by historically marginalized students we know that historically in the corral school district students

114in ap classes were middle class and above they were white and they were asian and trying to make sure that our population in our ap courses and our other advanced courses uh mirrored our student body and really trying to look at what we could do system wise to to increase access and opportunity and again we're going to talk about equal opportunity schools there um making sure that we are implement implementing real-world learning for our students our students are going out into the real world and um our students are oftentimes asking us why why are we doing this how is this relevant how is this meaningful trying to make sure the kids have opportunities to not just fill in bubbles and answer multiple choice questions but wrestle with hard questions um design and build things uh

115do projects and really demonstrate their learning through real world learning experiences that's an equitable thing because not not all students have access in their lives to um to all the abundance that our world has to offer us and so we're trying to make sure that we bring some of the richness into our schools and then just really making sure that we look at health and wellness we know that students who are healthy students who have healthy lifestyles and practices are are more healthy adults and individuals that transition from high school into adulthood and so trying to make sure that we're connecting staff and students um using projects like sources of strength i know that several of our schools our secondary schools have source of strength which looks at not just um stopping or putting an

116end to two unhealthy practices but looking at the strengths and assets that students have and building on those as a way to help our kids develop healthy patterns and stuff so rather than take suicide an example rather than saying let's have a suicide prevention week or whatever looking at the assets and the strengths that students have in building growing those so that students are focused on the assets and the strengths that they have not just on the challenges that they're facing so those are some of the commitments that we're trying to make sure that all students have access to and i'll pass on to the next person to talk about some of the strategies let's next slide so that would be me yeah yeah you can go ahead i was just going to say we

117have seven strategies here on this slide and we may bounce back and forth between a couple of slides as folks talk about um well el salvador talks to us about sources of strength a little bit more and then when paul talks to us about eos so salvador if you want to start that sounds great yes uh i'm salvador munoz i'm one of the assistant principals here at chs and i'm also the athletic director um so i'll first i'm gonna first talk about the ninth grade success and senior seminar thesis here um so the ninth grade success uh we have spartan success blended in there with health and uh it's an opportunity for uh the ninth graders to uh work on those skills such as responsibility time management uh getting organized and completing assignments um you

118know they can receive uh help from the teacher they also uh can right now in zoom it's a lot different for the teacher because they can't just walk to the desk and help a student and this is what you know uh the health teachers were telling me but they also they can set up uh breakout rooms and uh they also have most of them have an aide that they can send a student into a breakout room with uh and then the senior seminar [Music] students are essentially working on under future plans from filling out the fafsa to looking at scholarships exploring schools and donna kaim is the one who teaches that and one of the things she was telling me was she just wants everybody to go through the process in case you know one

119of them is 35 years old and they change their mind and they want to go to college then they at least know the process but they also explore other career options such as military and apprenticeships they cover financial literacy anywhere from budgeting to credit to getting their pay stub to make sure they're getting paid what they work for and they also cover wellness you know they learn stress management skills and get some mental health tools they will be working on a virtual career convention and i was told that they are looking for volunteers so i'll leave it at that before i pass it on to i think paul and aaron you got it aaron you want to start with the bond mark well so you obviously the board knows that there's uh this big bond

120that had passed a few years ago and there's a lot of work involved with that and so at crescent valley we have five cte programs and two of them are seeing their facilities get dramatically improved that's the design and applied arts and the pre-engineering program and so that would be that would encompass um the ceramics and the glass arts jewelry making wood shop auto shop um engineering stuff metal shop and that's a there's a lot of stuff going on out there and but navigating that um we're here in the middle of a pandemic students are at school so hey what's the best time to do the work in the building is when students aren't there and so we're doing the best that we can and thank you for the board for that support of um

121having that happen but i'm also planning for if we come back to hybrid um you know where do i put those teachers so uh right now mr moses our ceramics teacher glass arts teacher and jewelry making teacher is in the back of the stage um and his kilns are on the boiler room but it's working out great he's it's unbelievable how adaptive he is and and our engineering teacher is in the french classroom um but hey it's fun and uh so we might be doing some uh we come back to the hybrid this year we might be doing some more things outside and there's different projects and we're going to be a little bit more creative with that and i'm actually looking at some limited in-person stuff that might be students that are actually enrolled

122in the class where they're doing things like that students that need to have some more hands-on and more time at school but the spaces are going to be unbelievable pretty excited about that and we know that students that are connected to a cte program have a much greater chance of it's our highest category for uh grad rates in our in our district 97 so all right off to you paul yeah thanks aaron uh so we're not as quite as advanced as the ct or the the bond work uh at cv we just wrapped up the the design process i would say about a month ago we're really excited uh a big focus of our work was um the t building where four of our six uh programs of study uh for our career and technical

123education are located at um you know we were all really focused on how can we and it's been a focus for a few years now how can we increase uh non-traditional student participation in our cte program so for example if you were to look at for example our metals program um female uh participation in that program is not proportionate uh uh or proportional so working on like what what are some things that we can do so we've been talking uh you know focus groups with female students and talking about as a staff how can we get more students to uh non-traditional students to participate in those programs and so we're really excited about the projects that we landed on it's a it's it was surprising to see how quickly we could go through four well

124nearly four and a half million dollars we didn't quite get all of what we wanted but um what what is in store we think will have a huge impact a positive impact on our programs particularly increasing work space by covering a portion of the courtyard having a covered walkway getting some uh renovated bathrooms um and some um uh glass roll up doors just increasing the light um improving signage um so we're we're very excited and then there's some basic things that needed to be taken care of no matter what that that we're going to be doing i know kevin skillings is very excited about the fact that we're replacing the dust collector that's been needed and needed replacing for as long as i've been here at least probably more um so yeah that's uh that's

125a quick synopsis of the bond work at chs and uh it's slated to get going in spring summer of 2021. i'm going to jump in and just talk about just the the successes that we're seeing in the phased in limited in person instruction as we have had a lot of kids learning from home and realizing as we have talked with students and families that there are certain populations of kids that are that are struggling trying to learn from home and so as we've been allowed to by the state we've been bringing some students in it's been exciting to watch um some students that have been disengaged re-engage in school um get some hope again that they can get some things done make connections with staff and other students and um excited to to see that

126continue to grow and develop as we're allowed to with safety so that's been that's an exciting strategy that i think has been effective for a lot of kids and really trying to target those students that are struggling most so looking at who the kids are that have trouble accessing learning for whatever reason trying to make sure that those kids get priority for those spots i can jump in really quickly and talk about grading for equity i know that um it was already mentioned at the middle school and we're doing the same thing it's kind of a district initiative i guess what i'd like to talk about a little bit for us at least is the incredible growth we're seeing in teachers being willing to really grapple with grading policies i remember when i in my

127first year in this position at chs we had a book that we bought a copy for everybody so that we could talk about this and it just went nowhere and now we have teachers who actually are sitting and and the pandemic actually has helped with this right they are grappling with okay given the fact that we're now doing comprehensive distance learning what does that mean about assessment and it actually means that assessment in a lot of ways can become truer than it has been um in the limited ways that we've been looking at assessment in a kind of more traditional classroom so when we were looking at changing grading our hope was that we could move students to a little bit more intrinsic motivation around grading i think that's been a truly hard thing to

128do during the pandemic but it has worked for some students and we have some students who are doing much better in cld than they were actually doing in person we wanted greater consistency we wanted to really look at bias and resist bias in our grading and improve accuracy around grades what grades actually reflect in terms of student learning and so greg mentioned some things about giving up zeros the lowest grade you can get is 50 so that all the increments between grade levels makes sense that where were in this year mostly in 90 10 some 80 20 around proficiency and assessments being the larger percentage in that practice work counting much less in the overall grade because it's all tor about building toward proficiency so greg covered a lot of it but we're excited about

129the ways that this is supporting students during a pandemic and i'm really excited about the impact i think it will have post-pandemic in looking at grading practices at the high school all right salvador do you want to talk more about sources of strength and that work at um just to provide a little bit more detail that work there at chs yes i can go awesome so um eric touched on a little bit you know the mission is of sources of strength to help with prevention of suicide violence bullying and substance abuse and uh the classes or the class was taught because it was a first quarter class by lauren reed who was a phenomenal fit i think you definitely have to have the right person in there and his relational skills with the students and

130positive attitude just make it a perfect fit for him i know that they went to a training i think it was the previous year is what i was told and the counselors got to go as well and um the student-centered diverse group he had 24 students this year and essentially were kind of peer leaders they connected with each other and they had a few campaigns uh throughout last spring but also this year uh one of the things they did was uh they reached out to staff and asked them to to submit two songs that make them happy and then they compiled it and created this massive playlist that's just you know it was pretty neat to see what everybody brought to the table there you know as you can imagine all kinds of music uh

131so they you you know the students took that and also uh another thing they did is uh they had a trusted adult or who is your trusted adult campaign and uh i don't know if you ever drove by chs but over at taylor field on the fence they put up cups and uh it was the hashtag who who is your trusted adult so with that uh you know several of them had staff members a couple of them had like a parent uh you know a different adult but uh essentially someone they could go to and and they wrote letters to them uh you know i heard that uh one of them it was a they wrote into their mom and and the mom reached out to to lauren reed and you know uh very emotional

132because you know she never would have thought that her daughter was gonna give her this and and then a couple staff members here that received letters you know that had never gotten something like this so just a a positive uh message and hope during this challenging time for students and staff uh you know every class they have the wheel so it uh if we can go to that next slide there's a couple pictures there actually um so there's the the chs uh the or not the chs the um who's your trusted adult uh cops on the on the fence there and then the sources of strength wheels so every day lauren told me they started off with a check-in and students uh would tell share with everybody else where they were they build leadership skills

133uh those first few weeks and kind of have a system i got to go under once and we played this really funny game but you know it just makes you comfortable uh i won't explain the game because it was really awkward but once you you know you were vulnerable then it you were in so um yeah um another thing they did is they also put positive messages around campus and overall uh you know it's a very valuable program uh to have to you know to offer we're talking about how we can grow this because um one of the ideas they have is to make it a school-wide initiative to where everybody has a trusted adult here not just the students who are taking the class or you know pure they have peers here as well

134who they can trust so yeah that's essentially it again very neat program and we got to figure out a way to to offer more sections in the future i would just like to add on salvador and i met with staff who are really invested in this growing this program at chs and they shared a lot of stories and i think one of the things that came up really loud for me related to an earlier question from sarah was about you know how people are doing the great thing that salvador and i both heard about was the impact of this on adult mental health so while there are lots of benefits of sources of strength for students that connection to the adults and the positive feelings of feeling like they of purpose i think that come

135through for adults is another real strength of this program in our schools and we have a little bit more um we're just kind of providing you some extra information about some of the initiatives that i think might be newer to you or you haven't really heard a ton about yet and so paul i think is going to talk to us next about equal opportunity schools and um the work we're doing in that partnership sure i um i remember last year around this time when we were together and i sure missed the the was it the lasagna and the garlic bread but no we were talking about how excited we are we were about partnering with equal opportunity schools and so really the the goal behind partnering with equal opportunity schools was to eliminate the the

136participation gap um when it comes to our advanced placement classes you know as aaron and eric alluded to um there there's was some work to be done in that area and there still continues to be work on that but we're excited about the progress we've made since last school year last year was basically a kind of a diagnostic year um in both cv and corvallis high school where we were identifying what are those barriers in place that we as adults put in place for when it comes to student participation in advanced placement classes and to break down those barriers and so each school has an eos building team that really works around that and leads the efforts in that and then also to identify student student goals student strengths skill sets and not just moving

137away from the traditional markers that we've used to determine ap readiness gpa test scores and looking more at a well-rounded student and what what are the strengths and assets that they bring that that that show that they they can be successful at the ap level so when we're looking at things like resiliency perseverance um you know what are their um aspirations and goals post-secondary um and so just compiling that information through a survey um and really identifying students who are ap ready um not based on those traditional markers and um and and really having com individual one-on-one conversations with those students um and really talking to them about what are their goals post-secondary a lot of it too is transmitting confidence and belief in in students oftentimes students are interested but not quite sure or

138feel confident that they can be successful at the ap level or in an ap class and so having that conversation with with with students and really saying hey we believe in you we you can do this and and then also um based on that survey we actually determined hey we have some um we're not offering some advanced placement classes that students would really be interested in so as a result for example this year we're offering at least at chs we're offering um you know ap environmental science um in ap psychology we offered some for for the first time um and so we're excited about that and there was a lot of student interest in that so that was pretty exciting so that was last year really kind of a diagnostic identifying um you know what

139what was the work to be done and then starting to recruit students and then this year is really about sustaining it's also about continuing to we have not eliminated the the gap yet and i'll i'll i'll walk you through the data in just a second and also a pandemic happened in in the middle of all of this work and so adjusting to to the new reality and really supporting teachers and students particularly first-time ap students that are that weren't planning on taking their first ap class on zoom so really really supporting those new to ap students and then as an ap teaching team um really just providing space and time for us to share best practices and what is working what is not how can we make ap curriculum accessible how can we make ap

140students new to ap students feel welcome and feel comfortable and feel like they can be successful uh in this uh in the zoom zoom environment so it it's been um yeah i mean it it it's been exciting work um who would have thunk you know our first year with a lot of new ap students uh we we'd be doing it this way but like others have alluded to our staff and students have been tremendously resilient um so when you look at this chart that lindsay put up thank you what you can see is we have shrunk uh the participation gap uh last year um are when you look at the uh blue line which is our medium high income white and asian students 47 of our 11th and 12th graders who are who are medium-high

141and high income white and asian last year were enrolled in an ap and it's an interesting uh phenomenon that happened but actually equal opportunity schools explained it to us that this work was going to also increase ap participation across the board they kind of likened it to a rising tide lifts all boats and so it is increased to 55 of uh this year and then our students of color um and low-income students last year uh enrollment in ap classes was at 30 percent of our 11th and 12th graders and right now it's at 51 so there's still some work to be done um but we're excited about the progress that we've shown um that we've accomplished and um we are going to continue to to focus focus on this work um thanks paul i can

142um so we're gonna actually lindsay go back just a couple of slides to those key strategies so i realized we kind of jumped ahead a little bit um i know eric shared something about limited in person and jennifer and mark were also going to talk about limited in person both at the comprehensive high schools and and how that looks um but also mark was going to talk specifically to athletics okay i'll go first nikki um you my name is jennifer still i'm one of the assistant principals at crescent valley and uh so limited in person we started to phase it in uh in the middle of november and collectively so how that worked out is through our student success team the sst process we were able to identify students who are marginalized and so those

143are the students that we wanted to to bring in for sure because we know we noted that they weren't engaging and they're struggling and for various reasons and so that was the uh process to identify the students and so we invited them in to participate and collectively we are serving 130 students across the three high schools uh including students who are in life skills and wings programs so the typical str it varies a little bit for each school depending on kind of staffing schedules and student schedules but typically it's two cohorts of 20 students or less one cohort in the morning and one cohort in the afternoon and so um there is some variance but that's mostly how how it's uh how it's presented at our schools um i would say that the students are

144you know not only working on work they're also being assisted to create plans to um think about time management how to get not get behind in their work and to create goals to pass their courses and they're just enjoying the connections i would say the wings the students that are in the wings program are really benefiting from the social emotional connections that they're having by being able to come into a building and and see other people i was able to get some testimony from students and so i'll just share a few one student a senior say said i really enjoy coming to school again i feel like you get more help on my assignments and i get more work done while i'm here i enjoy seeing teachers and being able to talk with them face

145to face i'm really happy i got this opportunity to do in person uh another student said it's more peaceful because there are not as many people around i feel more confident being here another one is being a part of something that feels like the learning i'm used to um students said i'm actually getting my work done so just i know at crescent valley watching the students come in they're really you know they're happy to be there and they come in and they do their work and they're getting to talk to each other and talk to adults and it's it's really sweet actually to see them come in because it's you know all these tough stuff boys coming in and and they're all happy and so anyway it's a really good thing and we're excited to

146be um to doing we're excited to do the work and seeing the work that the kids are doing and um and it's rewarding to serve the students that need it the most nikki can i throw a comment in absolutely um it pertains to limited in person uh we struggled for a while because no one in our life skills program on the staff end agreed to come into the building to work with students and that was disappointing and but christa schmieder who is not a sped teacher at all you know her as our leadership ceramics teacher said hey i can teach some art to life skills students and another um an ea but not a life skills ea ren hope he said i'm in it i'll help and so um we've been able to bring some

147life skills kids in a couple two small cohorts twice a week or two times a week um i guess that's the same thing isn't it um and it's fabulous i mean just uh it's just fabulous so i just wanted you guys to be aware of that thanks matt and mark do you also want to speak to um to athletics and kind of how that has has looked as a way to re-engage students yeah i'll talk about athletics a little bit um i'm mark henderson i'm one of the assistant principals at crescent valley high school and also the athletic director at crescent valley related to limited person is our is our been our ability to get kids back on campus to participate in athletic workouts based on oha's guidance for k-12 sports and the current benton

148county risk level we are allowed to have both indoor and outdoor sports practices these sports practices practices are entirely voluntary by both student and staff and at each school we've got roughly about half of the sports teams participating about two to three times per week right now so it's exciting to see them out there the kids are excited i can probably speak for sal when i say it's good for our mental health as well to go out and watch uh watch the kids having fun and as the as the county coveted risk level changes our indoor coaches and players know that that could change at any minute and they could be we would have to stop the indoor part thanks mark and thanks everybody for um for kind of letting us jump around just a

149bit we do have a lot going on as we think about ways to engage our students um get them ready for when they do leave our schools and and prepare them for graduation so i'm going to let paul um lindsay we're going to go ahead to slide 13. um and i will let paul talk about our graduation data um to to wrap up our our presentation tonight okay thank you nikki uh yeah we have we have a lot lots of celebrations on this data point we have some challenges that we we are focusing on but i would particularly want to highlight with our students of color the orange line um that is we're all excited to see that growth from 78 percent to 91 that is i think that speaks volumes to um the equity

150being at the center of our our focus of of everything we're doing so we're pretty excited about that i know aaron alluded to our cte concentrators which just started getting tracked three four years ago or i think it's five years now and a cte concentrator is basically a student who has taken at least one semester or i'm sorry one year of a career in technical education uh uh coursework um and uh throughout their four years of high school and so obviously that that's a that's a that uh that's you know that's a huge indicator of success um and i would also want to and i don't want to ignore the the green line uh our students with disabilities now the data is a bit bit misleading in the sense that um extended diplomas and certificates

151are counted as non-graduates which which uh i know matt has said on many occasions that we have real problems with that you know a lot of our students in life skills earn those those diplomas and it's the amount of growth they show over four years and for them to be counted as non-graduates is quite insulting but that's uh that is the that's how the state counts them um but it does speak to work we have to do when it comes to better serving our students uh in special special special education so there's a lot of things that we've been focusing on to improve that um you know moving towards more of a co-teaching model where where our special education teachers are pushing into core classrooms english classrooms uh math classrooms to co-teach uh and we've

152seen a lot of success with that model and so we're we're continuing with that and and expanding that um so yeah with that i will i wanted to pass it off to i believe colleen to go over the next slide so yeah we just wanted to kind of circle back around to candy's work and the work of our teacher of many of our staff members about how to be an anti-racist and how to step forward uh in terms of equity for the school so one of the things that candy wrote is the good news is that racist and anti-racist are not fixed identities we can be racist one minute and an anti-racist the next what we say sorry hold on here i've suddenly bounced around and you're all in the middle of my quote um

153what we say about race what we do about race in each moment determines what not who we are and so we're very excited about moving forward with our staff and providing a wholesome environment a supportive environment for all of our students thank you uh before lizzie turns the slides down i want you to go back to slide 12 if you don't mind and i want to make very brief comments i did hear this and i saw papers or statements and research talking about it but this is a clear data point that shows us the practice and the evidence that's when we focus on the special needs and unique needs of our students of color and low-income students not only they succeed but everybody succeeds so really thank you for highlighting that it's it's really the

154numbers are showing us how equity works and how equity is good for everybody so just want to highlight that thank you so much and i'll turn it into jay a couple of comments maybe uh time for data later i would like to know how many um in-person students at each high school i think i heard someone say 20 quarts of 20 is that 20 for high school in the morning and in the afternoon or or 20 total in the district uh and i don't need that tonight but just looking i'm also interested in hearing uh just an update as we move through the school year about uh students who are seniors and how they're doing with college application what trends we can see if anything and then finally my bigger point is thank you i'm

155thanking both the high schools for their cte expansion and the just the excitement i can hear in your voices last comment one of our jobs as a board member is to convey to the public what's really going on in our schools and we're kind of spoke to people i'm sad that i look on the chart i think there's eight people watching tonight but but what i what i want to tell them is that based upon knowing you and knowing what you say tonight when you say things like we do tough things we practice empathy we work on being resilient and we take personal responsibility those are genuine comments and i really appreciate you so um it's easy to turn and say to the public hang with us it's tough tough work and all these things

156that are in your character are just absolutely coming out so so jay i have those numbers if you want them um i can break them down but i'll just start with there's 55 students at corvallis high school 32 at crescent valley high school and 43 at college hill high school and if you want the numbers and the cohorts i can tell you that too but no no no that was a great summary that's a great summary thank you thanks uh next up is sarah okay um well i'm gonna ask my question again you all touched on it a little bit but um how are how are those teachers doing you know you mentioned teachers who were you're not ready to come back into buildings um yo i just i'm worried about our teachers right now

157just because i feel like they're you know they've all become first year teachers all of a sudden in this new world um so so what you how is the support for them um what is the experience for them looking like right now they're overwhelmed and i think though a lot of that is they take a lot of pride in their work and and the work is so weird right now um and that um that's a bit of an energy zapper where you just want to show up as your best self and um that's it that's not possible every second of every day right now um certainly not for principals either but um you know it's okay i describe that to everybody it's not great by any stretch but it's not a train wreck i mean

158this is okay and i talked to probably 10 teachers today who said um that it is literally getting better every week and things aren't taking as long the biggest issue was that everything a teacher would plan there go my lights again that just takes three times as long and so um but you know they're hanging in they they really are but you're right to be concerned um i think about their physical and mental health at this point um their biggest fear has conveyed to me is if we do look at coming back in a hybrid model what is that what does that mean what do we gain um and because they're getting better at what they're doing and if there's a another five-week learning curve in the middle of a semester um a big fear

159is that the kid taking geometry second semester gets an inferior product to the the kid who was able to take it first semester so um those are the conversations i'm having with teachers they're it they're more about those types of things than i'm scared and where's my mask and where's my whatever um uh but they are welcoming winter break to be sure i'm going to jump in here because i bet aaron's going to be positive and bring home strong i think there is um i think my staff is feeling they're tired they're they're exhausted and there's there's some fear that we are going to lose some kids i think um we talk about this generation of kids being digital natives and they're good at playing on their phones but not necessarily adept at navigating education

160in a distant learning model and the research that i've done says that historically about 50 percent of kids who sign up for online classes pass them and so we're now asking our staff to help 100 of kids who did not sign up for online classes experience success and so our staff are working hard and every day they're fighting for every kid and trying to help make sure every kid is successful and sometimes the results aren't always as rosy as we would hope them to be so i think it's our job as leaders to make sure that we are reminding people of the hard work that they're doing remind them that they're seen i want to just say that my staff got to meet with ryan and rinda they came around with our staff and just

161trying to offer ears and support and it was really kind and people felt cared for and so um a lot of our work is going to be taking care of our people because they are they're given a lot thank you for being honest i you know i just you know i again i see school from the parent side every day and the work that's being done is heroic um keeping our kids going and i just i don't want to lose i don't want to lose kids and i don't want to lose teachers totally and we have to keep equity in our in our mind as we think about these conversations because the education of a middle-class white family who has a parent who can stay at home is very different than a family where the

162adults are all in the service field and they leave for the day and the kids are home alone having to navigate school with all the distractions there and so there's a lot of things we have to have to work through and it's not simple or clean for sure yeah i'm not sure you can bring it home well whenever you want to go into battle you want to make sure you have the best possible people going to battle with you and i can't think of a better team than i'd rather go to battle with than the the teachers in this district their and the and the support staff they're unbelievable having said that the challenges that a staff member has this year are significant just like everybody that has whatever job they have staff members teachers

163all the support staff in schools they're in this business because they like to be around people they like to make a difference and they like to make that connection and there's so much about public education where student comes to school and you read the body language of what's going on and you help that student make the adjustments and there may not be any words said it may just be hey let's hang out for a while or i just want to be in this room because i know this person cares and as much as the students need that the staff need that too and and they're missing that we have staff that come to school to teach their classes we have some staff that are taking care of small kids teaching their classes um it's it's

164not the same thing it's it's all over the place and and somehow with all the learning doing canvas and learning at home and keeping kids connected and for good reason some kids not ever having their camera on okay that's the reality they're they're doing it and like i said i wouldn't pick a better team to do it so um it's hard and i'm concerned about our students staff and families but they're doing it and they're doing is better than anybody i can imagine so my kids go to two of my three daughters are in this district right now and i'm very happy that they are um it's not an accident that i live here with my children and have them be part of this process um and it's a team and there's some really cool

165things we're gaining from this um the the shift on on using the digital stuff to support and when we go back we're going to have all these extra tools to make it even that much better um so i am pretty optimistic thank you for that eric um but we have some great people and we're really lucky sarah thank you all for what you do i i just want one thing you've asked every one of the um principal groups how the teachers are doing and i want to recognize that the elementary principles you saw a few weeks ago the middle school principals earlier and now these high school principals they've been working non-stop since june last year to make this year work and we also need to take a second and recognize that hard work they

166have um done more for our staff and our students than they ever probably anticipated they would have to do and they're also learning and on that edge of that learning curve so i know not everyone is here but i think it's important to make sure that you recognize that we know how hard you've all been working to and your mental health and wellness is also incredibly important to all of us indeed indeed thank you absolutely thank you sarah for asking this question and lou and then vince um yeah i just had a couple of questions and comments and um one of them has to do with um the mission statements and of course my small trial just came in right when i was about when i'm unmuted [Music] i was wondering what the graphs earlier

167up on on the enrollment by race and ethnicity page i just wanted to point out that there is an over-representation of some students of color in college hill and want to acknowledge the hard work that happens over there there to help those students feel a sense of community and belonging that may have led them that they may have missed somewhere else and that's not like a diss on the other schools but i know that it's hard for students of color in corgalis and um wanted to appreciate the hard work that happens but i did notice that there was an over representation and i didn't know if y'all had noticed that um and and i also have never seen the mission statement side by side like that um and it kind of from like my background

168in rhetoric was kind of looking at it i don't know if it's noticeable to a lot of folk but it's almost written in a class privileged way where like the longer the mission statement is depends on which school which corresponds with socioeconomics populations at the schools and i think that what you shared eric about the um we do tough things and how much that means i'm wondering if that can be amplified more i'm not suggesting to like necessarily rewrite the mission but um you all do do some really powerful work and you do do tough things and i like that how you all use that but i did notice that with the language and what is implied by the language in those how it's corresponding with socioeconomic class at the schools and i don't know

169if that i've never noticed that until i see them side by side like that and thought it was worth pointing out um but just a couple more comments and my actually my questions too is um that the sources of strength thing was really awesome and um i think there's a lot that could be learned from that big jump in the ap participation with students of color that's it's that is a really significant like percentage jump um it's not a huge number of students but the of course because of the demographics of the schools but the percentages went way up and i think that's really awesome um and also the way that students of color graduation rate has been going up um is worth noting and i'm wondering how we can shift like conversations from a

170deficit model about students of color too to reflect that increase because a lot of times it's we refer to students of color as like the ones struggling when they're actually graduating at a higher rate at this moment and i think that's worth highlighting um but the question i had was actually for matt after all that the question is about the theater program and i'm wondering if you all have been connecting with the work the majestic is doing about equity work and their dei work i know that jimbo down there has been doing a really um incredible job of using an equity lens in theater and they've been really creative and have a review process and everything so i'm not sure if the students have connected with the majestic yet but that was just a question

171i had if that had happened yet um yeah i don't think specifically with the majestic but i know that um and that's great and i want to pursue that thank you i know that some are in in college theater programs and and or even graduate school and these issues around race and representation and appropriation and all that are are just right in the forefront so i think that's what spurred them to to to bring this up as well as they wanted to share their personal experience but i think been fast fantastic to partner with the majestic and convenient so thank you yeah no problem it's pretty cool to see that going on but yeah thank you yes so at first i i just i want to express my appreciation um you know there's you know

172there are districts all over the state are taking different approaches to to you know covet and how did how to deal with it and i'm just immensely impressed by this team the middle school team and the elementary leadership team how you know in the time when you could just sit back and say hey you know we're just gonna try and survive we're just going to get through this year we're going to get through this pandemic you know and just try and keep our kids from rolling back too far you guys are like trying to completely transform education i mean it's just i'm just really impressed with the amount of effort additional effort on top of addressing the pandemic you're doing that you know you're meeting those expectations but further you're you're taking it quantum leap

173forward in your own equity work and the work that you're doing in your schools and i just think that really needs to be called out you're doing double duty so i can see the fatigue on your faces i mean the hour is late but it really needs to be said that the the leadership team for this district is just doing amazing work um i don't know what got india maybe it was the pandemic uh but uh you're doing really really good work i just want to call out that graduation rate that is not a fluke folks that's not a mistake that didn't happen that's focus that's the focus of of this team making that happen um i'm just really impressed with that the equal opportunity schools and you know other board members have called that

174out um i think sammy really highlighted the important message there is that this equity work is helping all our kids and so i'm just really glad that we're able to show that to the community too bad more people aren't watching it right now um the other thing i have noted here is that thank you uh for focusing on some of our most uh vulnerable kiddos our life skills kids and making sure that they're getting into buildings and getting the things that they need because it's really hard to do that at home so thanks for doing it for focusing there uh my question and it's you know i don't need all answers tonight uh but it's a standing question you guys are doing a lot of work what do you need from this board how can

175we support you right now how can we support you over the next six months as you're doing this work and you know i'd be happy to hear comments now but just sit with that question and if things come to mind push that through ryan and let us know how we can best support you because you're doing really amazing work and we really appreciate it thank you vince would anyone like to comment or or you can go home and get some rest i'm okay with that too the hour is late i would love to get you home but i have one last question unless uh therese or jay have any questions i want to give you an opportunity raise your hand if you have so one last question is on on my mind and it's sorry

176go ahead yes um eric keeps trying to raise his hand all right go ahead this is just just really briefly i just wanted to really thank what lou had to say about um seeing our students uh cultural diversity not from a deficit perspective and i think that is i think once we can get our system to be able to serve our students more equitably i'm excited to get to the point where we can really talk about all those different cultural perspectives as an asset and a strength and a way to bring more richness to all of our conversations but also to individual stories i just so i just want to thank you for for challenging us in that way i think it's easy to look at that always as as a deficit or as a

177shortcoming but as we can really see that as an asset and a strength that um different people bring to the table i'm excited to have those conversations so thank you for pushing so thanks eric i'm sorry i've not noticed uh but thank you that's what's really well said um i hear from parents that their high school seniors are burned out of school and getting ready to move on which leads them to either do one of things two things either just give up on everything or take on more than what they can't chew i've noticed that with my youngest brother who's a college senior not a high school senior i'm taking 21 credits in engineering and i'm telling him this is too much you'll regret it take your time don't rush into graduation uh that's for

178a high a college level but i i'm hearing it from a few parents here and there i'm not sure if they're these are anecdotes or it's a pattern uh so that's the first question is this something that you're noticing that high school seniors are feeling this pressure like i need to move on to the next step more than usual during this pandemic and if it is what would you tell them or how would you guide them that's a good question sammy i think i'm not sure that senioritis is stronger than than usual because it it usually kicks in about now in a typical year but um i i see i think less energy around checking out then energy i'm i want to get done at the semester and just do something else because zoom school

179sucks and so um i see quite a bit of that a lot of students are working and and out of necessity and that is um sort of rearranged some priorities from some kids i've had a lot of conversations this week with seniors it's like hey i get it you're working but you need to graduate we need to you know keep your eye on that ball as well so i think that an uncertainty about what a next step would even look like you know until this thing is behind us i have though had a lot of seniors tell me oh thank god i'm applying to college it feels normal and usually that's a source of anxiety for kids i think it's less in the kids i've talked to it's like oh cool i fill out an

180application i write an essay there may be something good in my future and so um to be honest with you i'm worried a lot more about the ninth graders than the seniors um they've transitioned into a school they've never seen and for way too many of them we've literally not seen their faces we've just seen in black square and that's my my real worry we know our seniors um and so if if kids are disconnected that's on us that's not on covet and i just i i worry about our ninth graders okay source so there's two things that we have this year for our seniors that we didn't have last year so we had last spring to see what our current seniors would do so we had some idea of the ones that were going

181to struggle when the school year started and in addition to that the way that our schedule was set up this year a lot of our seniors a typical school year senior might take five classes for the year and the way that it's set up right now they can finish four in the first semester especially if they're signed up for four ap classes because all the ap classes had to happen in the fall so we're in a situation where seniors have taken all their classes and now how do i finish out a school year with only one class and so some of them are going to finish because they did a year's worth of work in a semester that they would have if they were the year before would have taken the whole year to do

182that but yeah i'm going to agree with matt the freshman are the ones that we didn't have a pattern but that's you mentioned or matt or um darren mentioned in the previous meeting about that transition piece and trying to communicate with the high school and being the middle child and also needing to get that from the elementary school so the big thing i've done this year with the darren has been the instigator of this with me at least and i'm sure alicia over lp has been doing that for uh chs but is just communicating the students that he had that were eighth graders last year their their last three months of school and where they struggled and trying to connect those dots uh with those kiddos and and trying to get them in the limited

183in person and so on but yeah not knowing who the kids are is really hard um not seeing them face to face and so our outreach uh this year our our support staff and jennifer um still and nicole and and so on they've they've been going to homes and doing care packages for all new students to the school just trying to introduce themselves and see them and they've been trying to get to every incoming ninth grader just so they can put a face to these students um that's that's so you got to give him at both hands and then you can't forget about the middle child of those 10th and 11th graders and it's yeah it's fun sammy i'd like to answer real quickly as a parent and as a as an educator so i've

184got two senior boys at chs and i want to really give a shout out to the senior seminar and counseling departments at chsnc and the work that they're doing i i had kids who were seniors three years ago when the kids are seniors now and the senior seminar practices about helping kids have a concrete plan that they leave high school with to help them with their next steps is a much more robust experience since i really want to say kudos to those teams and what they've built and put together because that has been that has been strong and i feel like there's there's a lot of things in there kids looking at looking at going straight into career looking at the military looking at trade school looking at community college look at universities i think

185there is a more robust comprehensive look at those sorts of things that students are walking through and so i want to give shout outs to that at the two high schools um i also really want to highlight just those educators that are that are really focusing on those kids who don't do those assignments on their own and really giving them some extra help i i see donna kyle who does that work at college hill and chs and um i know that she really is fighting for those kids and asking them tough questions and making them wrestle through some things about how they're going to be prepared for what comes next and um and it is challenging right now because i know that employers say the things that keep you employed um are being able to

186show up to work on time and stay off your phones and right now those are skills that are hard for us to train kids in because time is really flexible and right now the kids to be successful in school they have to be plugged into technology all day so trying to help our kids to be able to have some self-control in there and manage their time are things we also have to work on and so that's going to be interesting is how we send our seniors off well so just on the first time wonderful lou uh lou will have the last question yeah um it's just a question speaking of um freshman's i have a freshman um at chs this year so um and some of the things that have that she's noticed that have

187worked really well has been able to focus on a smaller amount of classes at one time and i know that was by design because of the pandemic but i'm wondering if you are thinking of how that could look in the future or it's a switch back to more classes or seeing how kids are doing with our students are doing with a less amount of class one of the things as somebody that teaches and works at osu is that actually models the classes in college is having less classes for longer times and spread out differently and so i was kind of curious a little bit if that's something you all had considered moving forward or if it's just for the pandemic time i want to answer that first because i don't want any district office people

188to answer it first um i knew you were going to answer it first i hope we keep something similar um there are some drawbacks to this intensive block schedule but in my opinion they don't outweigh the the concept that students have half as many classes at one time and teachers have half as many students at one time and i don't think we're going to be back to normal until the fall at the earliest and we have such care and connection work to be done our staff needs half as many students and and the kids need to have those deeper relationships with their teachers and you know the big the big argument is there are gaps in certain subjects i take math in the fall i might not get math until the spring of um the

189following year um i think what i would say in response to that is if we're if we're you know if we have an equity lens and we're looking at um our most vulnerable students i mean thanksgiving break killed them i mean it's you know i mean any break in in a week was a momentum killer for them um as we've been learning in limited in person this week so i'm not worried about that um there's the top end argument i can't take six ap classes at one time well good i don't need to um and i actually talked to my ap teachers and i said if we stayed with this and it were a normal in-person year would you be comfortable with the coverage in first semester and they said yes there need to be

190the need there's review needs in the spring for the test but they said yes they could um and so there you have it i had to get my my voice out there on this one because i'm gonna go any negative feedback from parents students or teachers another big um equity lens on this one for me is in a typical year if you have all those classes all year long where do you ever get that catch-up opportunity so like if we have a student that's coming in ninth grade and we know that that student has struggled in math they could take math first semester and if there was a need they could take a second semester and where you can't do that in that other model you just get behind and then the next year you're

191taking two classes or language arts or anything like that so those those are the pieces that um are not lost on me with this model having less students your account that you connect with and having more opportunities for a student that has struggled with school to have more successes can i ask just because one subject that hasn't been brought up is foreign languages um and i think i'm more comfortable with all of the other subjects being offered on a semester block than i am with foreign languages and has there been any discussion of how that might be addressed so historically when we had intensive block you would often take say well take spanish as example because my wife was a spanish teacher you would often take spanish one second semester your sophomore year or freshman

192year and then spanish two first semester sophomore year and then you can even take spanish three second semester sophomore year so you can stack them that way and as long as you schedule it intentionally like that you could make the odd years second semester and even years first semester so that kids don't have those big gaps that's what we did this year for scheduling so all spanish one is second semester and all spanish two was first there are some dual language kids who have gaps this year but yeah the dueling is this year the language issue i think um is a it's a bigger issue than than just the world language i think um and and i'm saying that because i've talked to my spanish teachers who have taught in the intensive block previously and

193they said they covered a lot more in the intensive block than they did in the rotating year long and they were comfortable with the i mean they understood the gap but they liked what they covered so much that they um that that they were okay with it and and the research um about gaps in learning i've looked at it quite a bit actually there are a lot of studies that winter break is as bad as summer for most kids and so we need to keep those types of things in mind as well wonderful well thank you i don't want to take more of your time but i want to highlight this great work you're doing it's transformative it's resilience and it will outlive us i i don't think i'm exaggerating by seeing by saying the

194changes and the problem solving we're doing right now and the solutions we're creating right now it's going to last not only beyond the pandemic but we're redefining public education and its impact and its ability to respond to the unique needs of our students so really thank you for answering our questions and for the presentation uh one one thing before i say goodnight uh i want to say thank you for your families for allowing you to be here with us and uh for for us taking you away from them for most of this evening so please thank them on our behalf uh and thank you for your continued service for our kids and community uh much appreciated take care team thank you board have a good night good night next item on the agent is consolidated

195action as a reminder the items under this portion of the agenda are for action does anyone have a question about anything in the consolidated action i'll just say that i was prepared in our last meeting so there were no surprises so i have no questions wonderful does anyone wish to make a motion i'll make the motion i move to approve consolidated action is there a second a second it's been moved by vince and sent by sarah to approve consolidated action for the record we do have cvhs change order and also at the budget committee appointments is there any discussion i will highlight a really great thing about one of our new appointees to the budget committee member um uh budget committee membership is one of our corval school district uh graduates who graduate in 2015

196and also uh really great advocates and uh in their resume actually they highlighted something that matt mentioned earlier in this meeting about advocacy for equity in theater and all of this great work that we see from our high school students and those who graduate from our school so i'm really proud for this vote because we're appointing one of our own and someone who also contemplated on the impact of budgets on equity in their application so with that if there's any further discussion see none we'll call it for a vote and we'll go with director conroy what's your vote yes uh doctor finger mcdowell uh by sheriff digger mcdowell's what's your vote yes dr jones what's your vote yes director whitebear what's your vote yes dr adams what's your vote yes and yes uh passes unanimously

197and uh we do not have uh consali information for uh tonight so we will move into board member comments is there any board member comments or future agenda topics that you would like to suggest sarah um i have a couple comments first so i don't forget is good luck to director or chair um sammy with your defense on monday that's a huge thing to be taking on in the middle of all the other things you do so um would you well i will not come any ask hard questions um i i told him he needs to plant questions because i somebody who was supposed to be a sympathetic attendee asking me a question that stumped me at my master's defense and that person was not invited to my phd defense it was my father um

198and also you thank you melissa for pointing out um that the the principals who we've been seeing have also been doing heroic work i have focused my questions on teachers not because i don't recognize that but because i don't get to talk to these teachers i get to talk to the people who talk to the teachers um so yes our principals have done amazing work i've been struck with both of our meetings with our principals with the strengths that they bring working together um and the positive things that i've seen develop that i think you know i have i have things that i've written down and among the papers on my desk that i have these notes of sort of positive thoughts that i've had along the way and tonight i wrote down on a

199piece of paper there are good things because we need if there are good things that we've learned during this pandemic that we can carry forward and i think this amazing collaboration um has been has been one of those good things um and i think that's given our schools the ability to continue the equity work and the social and racial justice work that has been it was key to to um increasing our achievement gaps and opportunity gaps um increasing graduation rates that are the goals of all of us um so i just want to express my gratitude to the elementary school middle school and high school principals who have taken their time to talk to us for the work that they're doing the work that they're doing together that or there are pieces of that that

200are going to carry us out of this pandemic stronger rather than limping and i think that's it's touching to see thank you next up is a day i just want to say thank you to ryan i saw you have a new letter out to people in the community or school people regarding opening it is one of the most perplexing problems right now it is we are balancing fear for our grandparents and for people over 65 like me and and all that that just makes me so anxious and yet we also know there's a huge need for kids for connections and for school and and we are walking a hard hard hard line so i thank you for pushing and nudging forward and we just you know keep moving ahead i'm absolutely thrilled with the way

201we heard the meetings with tonight in the elementary we have really good leaders who are are hearing that same concern and are working hard so hooray uh just thank you yeah and we'll we'll bring an update to you next week um in terms of what more details are on the plan and the process so um we just knew that that wouldn't be tonight um based on time but we will bring more information for to you before we leave for the break thank you wonderful any comments from board members well i want to say thank you for vice chair uh sarah finger mcdonald's for your well wishes and uh for anyone of the public who's interested it's monday at noon and it's about uh using engineering tools for decision making and emergency management community-wide emergency management

202situations and uh i was assured by my advisor that i have no choice or decision making around who will be asking the questions so feel free to ask any questions and go as stuff as you want but i'm really excited anxious and uh yeah it's exciting so i'll let you know how it goes and you're all welcome to attend as well i really want to uh repeat that appreciation for our uh teams across the district it's been really phenomenal uh board members i would like you to spare maybe two or three minutes of your time within next few days if you if you may and maybe send me uh or send me and ryan and lindsay uh separately your thoughts about how the sips went this year compared to previous years so this is a

203new way of doing it uh i feel it was really a great way of doing it um so if you have any thoughts about what went well what should change how can we do it better uh let's reflect on that anytime you have you can do that of course as it is fresh in our minds uh that could be really uh helpful so feel free to send me your thoughts i'll consolidate them and share them and with our leadership team and hopefully that will inform uh the following years yeah for sure sammy um since i wasn't here and don't have a comparison do you just want my thoughts in general sure yeah i think i i would lou um just because you don't have necessarily a comparison but just what what went well around it

204and what other ideas and suggestions you have yeah thank you absolutely awesome all right any further comments or anything for the good of the order see none it's 9 39 and we are adjourned