001bless you the corvallis school board meeting is called to order on november 12 2020 and uh i want to welcome you all and the first item in the agenda is the pledge of allegiance if you're willing and able please join me to recite the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome everybody and i want to mention that uh director tina baker sent their apologies uh for today for tonight and uh the first item on the agenda is the school improvement plans for the elementary group so uh this is an exciting time of the year where we hear reports from uh our teachers and uh from our principals and schools leadership and one of the unfortunate
002things that we don't get to really meet together in western view and get to have the face-to-face interaction and enjoy dinner together so that's an unfortunate thing but the fortunate and great thing is to see you all here and we do have a presentation that i look forward to so with that i want to hand it in to ryan and looking forward for this great great work that we're highlighting for our elementary schools yeah thanks sammy and thanks to the elementary principal team you can hear me okay now okay um thanks to this team one of the things we talked a lot about was how do we modify the school improvement plan dinners this year and how do we do that in such a way that it really highlights the work that's going on and
003also recognizes the cohesion of this team and so this was actually a recommendation that the elementary principles made to have one school improvement plan that represents all of our elementary schools and so it shows the way that the principals and schools work closely and collaborate so tightly together i've shared this with you before but in terms of school leaders this group is in constant contact um with one another working alongside one another problem solving and supporting one another in a way that's really um pretty um special and unique and so i think it makes a lot of sense for this group to present um with a you know a unified voice um thinking about all the five to ten year olds across our community rather than by individual school or building so while this you
004know covet has caused us to create some new norms and expectations and traditions i think this is one of those places where we're able to highlight and elevate the story because it really is representative in the way that they're presenting tonight so with that i'm going to turn it over to the team they have a presentation and some slides for you and then also and are anticipating questions and i think that as you think of your questions i would i would encourage you to think about are the questions that i'm asking um indicative of the kind of question i'd have for all of our elementary schools or are they specific to one building because again i think what we're trying to represent tonight is um everybody together so um as you prepare for that part
005of the agenda i'd just encourage you to think about how those questions again help to galvanize the relationship we see across schools all right is that our is that our cue ryan we're good to go all right lindsay thank you is going to start sharing our presentation and um while she does that i just wanted to um kind of reiterate what ryan said and then we'll do some quick introductions that um as you can see on this front slide we as an elementary administrative team will work together to actively and intentionally make a shift away from individualistic system to a collective system where we work together to benefit all and i think we found some real power in this um through co-fed and through the changes and i think many of us knew this but
006coming into this year it was really critical to be more intentional about it so hi everyone i'm amy leeson i work at the district office in teaching and learning and my primary role is to support elementary things um elementary programs and i'm glad to be here tonight so um as we do introductions i'm going to ask the team members to introduce themselves in their title but another thing that we have gotten accustomed to doing is is the knowing that we are more than just our title it's a very weight thing how we introduce ourselves so um also share something else that the board may or may not know about you um and i will just say that this year i have um two children in middle school which is something as a seems like an
007elementary parent forever seems really hard to say and um and i'm celebrating at the same time so um i think why don't we have peter go next hi my name is peter henning i'm the principal at adams elementary school new to corvallis fiscal year really enjoying the collective work of our team i am seven years in on a schedule of reduced sleep with our three young children and two of them participating in school this year here in corvallis so it's been fun to be in the role of both a parent and as an employee of the district all right craig i think you're next we're going in alphabetical by school thank you and we're going alphabetical by height um i'm craig harlow principal at franklin school it's good to see everyone even in this flat
008dimension and i will share i'd like to share with everybody i haven't shared this with anyone yet but i just found out about an hour ago that i'm gonna be have another grandchild so i'm that really made my evening congratulations thanks sammy okay i think i'm up next i'm lee santee i'm the principal over at garfield elementary um and i am also a parent of a middle schooler and a student in elementary um and um i gotta say i'm the parent of a middle schooler who like became a teenager in covid and it's a really surreal experience because when we all left school she was um rather sweet and innocent and now she's very much a teenager okay i think that's me then for huskies hi everybody my name is rinda gregory and i am
009the interim principal at husky elementary and i am a parent of a graduate from the corvallis school district and i currently have a senior which is exciting and kind of you know sad for him because he's having a senior year but he's doing a great job these kids are resilient and they stay connected with each other they find a way and it is my true honor to be working with this elementary team for a short while it's been really fantastic i can tell you that for sure i'm beth martin i'm the principal at jaguar elementary i'm also a proud and tired mom of three young jaguars um and i also like to share with people that i'm really good at unicycling so if you ever see me kind of riding around the school that would
010be the principal doing that i'm erin hale principal at lincoln and i've been in the district for about 22 years off and on and have six children two who have graduated from corvallis high school in lincoln lincoln and franklin um and have four other students in the district right now including a senior all the way down to a fourth grader right now and so um my receding hairline is kind of evidence that i've been here for a while um but i i truly appreciate the wisdom of this group and the support of the the community and it's a wonderful place to be hi my name is byron beathards and i work at mountain view and last year at the end kind of towards the end of the school year i stepped away for a little
011while because we had our second child so we have a five-month-old and a two-year-old at home right now and byron you lead also one of the online programs is that correct oh yeah um i help with corvallis online for the elementary part okay i think i think just wildcat bring up the rear i'm eric beasley i'm the principal at wildcat elementary um i have three daughters um they all attend corvall schools and i have a freshman at cv and a seventh grader at sheldon and a fifth grader uh at wildcat and um it's been fun to be a principal and dad i think that my uh kids enjoy having their principal at elementary school but not so much after middle high but um tonight one news in the beasley household is my my 15 year
012old just passed her driver's permit so we got to go cruise around the parking lot which was really exciting a little scary um and fun so that's that was big news uh in our house all right thanks lindsay you can move to the second slide and uh we wanted to start tonight with um sharing this with you um i would say most people that have been in any meetings any of us are facilitating this slide has come up more than once and it really reiterates um what we feel and what we fall back to when we're when we're feeling stressed out about the pace of things and just adjust this shift of uh distance teaching and distance learning so it's a an african proverb in boontube if you want to go fast go alone if
013you want to go far go together and i think this team and you'll see tonight really um is a good example of of this coming together so i'm excited about tonight and uh we i think we're ready to go so next slide lindsay i am feeling very lucky that i get to uh introduce this and um because this is a really important piece of who we are as a group and what we're trying to do so many of you will recognize that this is our compass our four agreements and our six conditions from courageous conversations and also our racial equity lens questions um and we wanted to take a minute to also give you a sense of how we work as a team and also what we bring back when we're working with with our
014staff so we always start our meetings coming back to our four agreements asking everyone speaker truth experience discomfort accept and accept accept accept and expect non-closure um and stay engaged and really before we jump in um we always take a minute to really center center ourselves on the compass and and recognize where we are um because it can really make a difference for our means um just knowing where i come in on the compass uh makes a difference for how i show up and also really takes the time for me to be able to acknowledge that maybe other people aren't in the same place that i am so um i'm just gonna ask all of you to take a minute to just recognize where you are right now on the compass um are you really
015um on that left side of feeling and believing or more on the right side of thinking and doing um and just take a minute to really place yourself on the compass so that as you go into this uh presentation you have a sense of where you're coming from um and um this is something we always do with our team um and we also um rotate through where we'll have one of our team members just monitor our our four agreements in six conditions um and we do a debrief at the end of every meeting so that we can really talk about where things showed up or where there were misfortunes okay i think you can go to the next line so our commitment uh corvallis elementary schools commitments are uh predicated on our foundational belief that
016student achievement belongs to everyone we're dedicated to upholding intentional systems devised to ensure every student's achievement will not be predicted by race ethnicity economic status mobility gender orientation disability health or initial proficiency and kind of going back to amy's at ubuntu one thing i just want to call out while it says corvallis elementary schools we just i just want to acknowledge how much we appreciate that togetherness we feel amongst our our teaching staff amongst our exec team and the school board we we talk with colleagues from other districts where they don't have that shared commitment for for this work and we just we just we often say how much how lucky we are to just have that support throughout our system because it allows us to to go far uh when we're together and in
017the in the next slide uh you'll see that represented uh in august i snapped a picture of uh board chair sammy out um speaking with um chris lewinberg from keci and he's like wow this is real just to be able to courageously make decisions um so all of our kids could really feel that alignment that commitment through our organization so next slide hi everyone um so when we're we're looking at equitable systems um corvallis elementary schools are committed to ensuring all students know they are safe realize their own value and experience inclusion we are committed to exposing barriers through engaging multiple perspectives and interrupting systemic cultures that perpetuate racially biased practices um that's something and when you hear us working as collective i think that that has power in in looking at our entire um
018system and across all schools to have that conversation instead of looking within our own school walls i would say some of the highlights that come from that are our explicit support of the teaching of racial equity and anti-racism lessons that focus on the four social standards of identity diversity justice and action and those are developed from staff within our own school district and so it's a really proud moment for us to be able to support that hard work they've all done um and also our own learning and seeing both the impact and intent of the the safe group so the students advocating for equity and wanting and in the process of rolling that down to elementary as well and looking at our student leaders kind of evolving into a safe group that could start young
019as well um we have our engagement and the renaming process which has been also a really profound and powerful experience for our students and our staff and our community as a whole we each have had for long-standing now some version of an equity team a school-based equity team and what you'll see now is kind of an evolution of that um to both have deeper and further kind of representation on that that's including expanding that to parents joining our equity teams and making sure that our marginalized or underrepresented student groups are also reflected on that equity team as well those equity teams are looking at systems within the school as well as looking at ways to support the social justice work that we're seeing starting to unfold as well right now in addition we have our
020current and um our model right now wednesdays have devoted professional development time for about an hour and a half to two hours we're bi-monthly dedicating those pd sessions explicitly to our racial equity work for our staff um i i would be remiss if we didn't talk about the fact that we're each also doing our own personal racial equity work we have certainly not arrived at perfection with it um and so that's also us continuing to grow and recognizing the need to hold ourselves accountable and for that um and and stay humble within that process of doing it um and then the last uh point i'd like to make is just our leaning on each other um as we're having and engaging in more conversations um about equity and about race it presents itself with conversations
021that we're all still practicing on how to engage with and so you'll see us leaning on each other to talk through that to debrief to collaborate to support and then that also translates into us being able to do that with our staff as well because we also recognize that the conversations don't stay within our team and they don't stay within our staff they trickle down to our students and then to our community and so we use each other to to practice that and to continue that growth mindset that i i'm proud to say that i feel like we all have lindsay can do next slide so the foundation of our academic work is rooted in equitable systems and we can't even approach this without that lens so thank you beth for that introduction corvallis elementary
022schools are committed to knowing the academic strengths and needs of each student and using the knowledge to guide the instructional program for each child we are committed to examining and addressing the role race plays in the institutionalization of academic disparities this year brings a new level of challenge for our educators not only are they in our students homes educating but they also don't have the physical access that we're traditionally used to so when we talk about knowing the academic strengths and needs of each student we're looking at that in a more holistic lens than ever before we've talked about the difficulties with our teachers barriers where students sometimes have cameras off so we can't use visual cues as assessment and some of the traditional assessment systems we've used to gather knowledge about our students strengths
023and weaknesses aren't valid in this environment so we're having to be innovative and find new ways to get to know the strengths and weaknesses of our students but also understanding that parents are a great source of input for that so we've entered into a lot of dialogue with families in committing to examining and addressing the role that race plays in the institutionalization of academic disparities we've embarked on some real deep dives into looking at our systems and academics and one example would be re-examining the practice of leveling students in math the upper elementary levels and how that leads into middle school and really interrupting that system which we see creates a barrier for students and families of color we know that leveled math classes particularly the advanced classes don't reflect the demographics of our student
024body so we've decided to tackle that problem collectively and come up with solutions that work for students some of the steps we've already taken involve professional development for our online math curriculum for our math teachers strategies for differentiating and accelerating instruction for those students who need that and working in collaborative professional learning communities across buildings to leverage our staff next slide all right so in our elementary schools we are also committed to real-world learning and committed to designing learning experiences that are rigorous and relevant to students and responsive to their needs in doing so we believe these opportunities need to be culturally responsive inclusive of all students and provide platforms designated to encourage critical thinking collaboration creativity and problem solving and moving into this year and thinking about real world learning in a time of
025comprehensive distance learning you'll see in some of our scheduling and pieces we'll talk about further in to this presentation that we've intentionally partnered with different community community partners to help us create real world learning lessons and experiences that are relevant and engaging to students currently some of our partners that we're working with are the corvallis environmental center gen timoney wildlife center osu extension confederated tribes of grand ronde and the tribal history curriculum salmon watch with benton county soil and water conservation district okay next slide another commitment that we have is in the area of health and wellness and we are committed to supporting the mental and physical health of our students this is such a critical time where students and families are faced with challenges around sedentary situations right and also the lack of social
026interaction and we acknowledge has bearing on our students and families and staff members um and colleagues mental health we recognize the critical need to address these issues and this can easily be underestimated during this time and we hold issues around toxic stress trauma race and economic status at the center of this work and so in our design we have an intentional about continuing our work around social emotional learning and ensuring that caring and connection are at the foundation of our work and we appreciate and acknowledge the importance and role of our mental health specialists our skills trainer counseling and our systems to access those services um and know that it's it's even more critical um as we understand the importance of mental and physical health and wellness we also have redesigned our work around our
027support staff and the role of our whole child specialist to ensure that students are getting access to activities that encourage physical movement and drawing upon their interests and i think the exciting piece for us as we go about this work is i'm just to lean on each other and to create spaces where we can provide social interaction i think in my building of grade levels and classes that have provided hot chocolate time for example which is just an opportunity for kids to have uh time to chat and to interact and that's a highlight of their day we begin our day with an opening community circle and end the day with a community circle just to acknowledge the importance of developing that social emotional learning and addressing the importance of community thank you next slide so
028our goals for instruction and student learning have been developed collaboratively with a large team of stakeholders across the district we've had teacher input from all content areas and in grade levels and creating a comprehensive guidance document for distance learning and then our instructional goals this year not just for distance learning i shouldn't focus on that but to be flexible across whatever learning system we use this year in the covet pandemic so our goals are really rooted in culturally responsive teaching project-based learning and universal design for learning our goal was to shift from the care and connection focus in the spring to a rigorous system of instruction this fall that also really had a basis as aaron has said in wellness and care and connection at the same time we we found this to be an
029opportunity to interrupt some systems and instructional practices that had been ineffective and to transition into some new learning opportunities for our students which we'll highlight in the following slides next slide um so goal number one with just a design engaging project-based lessons that foster student agency autonomy and voice i'm just going to walk you through an example of what that looks like at jaguar elementary right now um so the project-based learning has some really key components that you use to design a project-based learning plan and so we had originally um when the renaming resolution was brought forward wanted to look at a ways to engage our students um in that process and so originally it had started with kind of defaulting to something that felt pretty comfortable of looking at doing biographies on people of
030color and bringing names forward with that um but what ended up evolving is that our equity team our school-based equity team took that on and wanted to look at that in a different way and so when you have a project-based learning plan you're looking at having a summary a driving question and looking at key milestones that you you aim for for at least a six-week period and so over about the course of a month the equity team kept coming back together and this is kind of the the framework that we developed and then hand it off to our k5 teachers um so the summary is in this project students will learn about thomas jefferson study our renaming task force process learn how and why to listen to multiple perspectives and create a project to share
031their learning and or take action steps towards positive changes in their community so what we ended up doing was evolving something that was folded in the renaming process but really had the uh kind of umbrella of community and civic engagement and so what you see in this slide is the driving question of how do you create change that you would like to see in your community the renaming task force and process became an example of that um but we we looked more at these key milestones over um in that that chart of weeks one through six and so we really wanted to start with um having our students understand multiple perspectives and how to how to really internalize those when you're thinking and building your own understanding um really explicitly teaching about why why is
032our school being renamed and having some really honest conversations and those conversations happen from kindergarten up through fifth grade um and and then the the rest you can see there but what's where we're at right now is week three and we're uh building that understanding for our students about um how to create that change and what that looks like and so this week we're having guest speakers and each grade level is having two two guest speakers one that's associated with the school district and one that's associated with the school community so melissa harder and myself have been the representatives that have come and talked to the grade levels about the school process and the renaming process um explicitly but we're also having um community speakers so angel harris with the naacp is joining our fifth
033grade class tomorrow we've had mercedes jones with the confederated tribes of the grand ronde i'm joining our school the safe organization that high school they're coming and speaking to our students as well and so um it's been this really um wonderful opportunity to embed a real world learning project-based learning um all all together and so it's um that's i'm looking forward to getting to weeks five and six and seeing what our students produce with that as well but there's certainly an energy and excitement that comes with that right now next slide so our second goal is all about expanding the sphere of success for students however that's defined right and so we want to design online learning that supports all learners including students of color students navigating poverty learning with disabilities and emerging bilinguals and
034so in our system we're really looking at how to expand the spirit of success including alignment around defining success what does that mean and being strength based in our view of students and families being cognizant of how people are showing up and why what is that telling us about what we need to do to make sure that um students feel a place in in our learning opportunities and with that across our buildings we have renamed roles where instead of educational assistants or special ed teachers or rti coaches the response to intervention coaches these roles have been renamed to reflect this intent of making sure that we're implementing inclusionary practices so inclusion specialist inclusion assistants are new names for those we hold weekly inclusion meetings for each grade level so those communities of educators get together
035to look at how our students are doing those who again are often uh marginalized through our systems and i'm seeing what we need to do differently so that we can expand our spheric success and we also have weekly meetings called student support team meetings where we're addressing um meeting the basic needs of our students and families and that includes anything from electricity or groceries and to making sure that they have internet access and tech issues are solved and so um through these um systemic ways of looking at our students we're able to ensure that we're moving towards this goal we definitely have not arrived in in my building yet but these systems can be seen in each of our buildings and i appreciate that unity so that we're able to consistently work towards this goal
036next slide right so so goal three looks at facilitate collaborative learning and build community among learners and it might be easy to right away you know just talk about things with within students but i think one thing that we wanted to do as an admin team is really model that first amongst ourselves and just to give you a picture we talked about working together um like in past years that might have been you know one to two meetings per month and then checking with each other and now it's like two to four times a week so just in terms of like how how um you know the pandemic has limited some of our in-person time um but our our strategic time together has has been exponentially increased and i would say the same thing for
037our teachers as well and they're working so collaboratively from what they've done in the last seven months you know beyond just like learning how to use zoom but with google classroom and and parent square and seesaw and you know virtual manipulatives and all these things you know and amy does a great job by the way i just have to say bringing us together and she's always got these new tech things to help us collaborate like recently it was the pear deck or it might be a jam board or something to try and i love that that when we come to our meetings we get to explore and sometimes they're awesome sometimes they're they they are hit miss but the she models that like she models that um keep trying with technology and that's what we
038want our teachers to do too i think in this pandemic it's an opportunity to try some new things and explore because i think collaboration is a really tricky thing and so we've been really trying to model that vulnerability as admin teams when we go to staff meetings like how are we going to try breakout sessions and we're like oh it worked or it didn't work and and because we know teachers are are in these kids living rooms and they're trying to build those connections and um the one thing i would just say is that we have some great tools with like the caring school community curriculum which has the morning circle so we we've we've been able to virtualize some of those things we've also had to look at other ways to try to to
039build those um those collaborative learning spaces with tools and innovation because this this is has been really tricky without being in person although we now are are doing some limited in person which is exciting so um so this is something that we're still we're still really working on in a distance learning space and um i'll just give you an example um at wildcat you know in the past we we love we all of our schools have like a positive behavior philosophy so we would like recognize a student like give them a way to go or a husky high five or each school has a different thing and so we're like okay that was a really positive thing because we draw them on fridays their little assemblies and and so we just created a google form
040and so kids have been putting in like gratitude and things they've noticed from other kids in class and we had so many uh the other week when we looked started looking at them and it's just it's exciting to see that like you know that typically came from adults before but now we have students recognizing students and so in other ways like like um that we are finding ways to to have kids involved and collaborating and that's been that's been really exciting so um we'll on the back side of all this i think that we'll be able to leverage some really exciting things with technology that we haven't done before and but we are really excited about the in-person collaboration in the future next slide our fourth goal is to incorporate a variety of formative assessment
041types and provide meaningful feedback um and this was a really important one to us because we are a team that very much believes in engagement and feedback um and feedback is really that piece where um learning really comes alive and and it's that active role that we as teachers play in engaging students and learning um but we also acknowledge that uh this is this is that piece that sometimes um can get lost in the mix especially as we are going to these new formats of comprehensive distance learning hybrid all of these different things so we wanted to keep formative assessment and meaningful feedback at the center of what we're doing because we know that that's what really makes the difference for kids it really is that peace that um you know as opposed to to
042comprehensive distance learning possibly being as a slide deck and and a video um the feedback is really what makes it interactive and makes it engaging for students so um but we are also engaged in learning new ways uh to to give students meaningful feedback in a way that's timely and in a way that's meaningful all through a number of different formats so that has been um a challenge for all of us but we wanted to keep formative assessment and meaningful feedback really at the center because um we don't want to lose the perspective that that our whole goal is to engage each and every student in meaningful learning and a important piece of that is giving students meaningful feedback so that they can take it the next step and learn that next thing okay next
043slide okay so if we think all the way back to the beginning of this presentation we started with thinking about how we can intentionally shift from an individualistic system to a collective system and then we walk through our commitments on equitable systems academics real world learning and health and wellness and then we started to articulate our goals around project-based learning supporting all students collaboration and building community and then our goals around assessment and giving feedback to students and a quote we often refer to is when you know your why you're what has more impact because you're walking towards your purpose and i think that is our that encompasses our why as a collective group and now we're gonna shift to start talking about our our what and um this is the part where it gets
044exciting because things start to narrow down to see that more technical piece of how we start to do our work so we're going to start talking now about the key elements of our schedules and instructions that we have collectively worked on together so the big encompassing piece that's overarching all of this is relationships and bruce perry is a researcher who we often refer to who does a lot of research around trauma-informed care and he says relationships matter people not programs change people and so as we think about that and our goals and our commitments we created these technical pieces to work from to start creating schedules routines and systems within our school to help improve and change our systems to you peter i think you're next so we already talked about how we are using
045some of our traditional roles in different ways our license inclusion specialists which include our ell teachers our special education teachers are supporting each group grade level with a focus on planning and implementing lessons and looking at structures designed to reach all learners each grade level teacher is also assigned to i think we've got this in almost all of our classrooms to work with an inclusion assistant which is a paraprofessional who's teamed with a teacher i will say that our inclusion assistants are playing a really integral role in this design for learning and are being recognized by both students and teachers as really valuable educators in the classroom we couldn't do any of this work without them they're part of the planning process and the instruction process and then finally our our traditional specials teachers are
046specialists we're calling whole child specialists this year that's our music teachers our art teachers our pe teachers our counselors are taking on a different role to become key players in the grade level professional learning community teams so you might see a physical education teacher planning with a kindergarten team for a six week period and we try to make it intensive with grade levels for a purpose first so that the teachers can work together on instruction with students but also that the whole child specialist can bring a different lens for classroom teachers planning roles and develop some projects we're already seeing some work that's influencing classroom teachers in developing partnerships between specialists and classroom teachers that we expect to last for years i think lindsay we go back one slide just for a little bit more
047and yeah that one and craig you want to share a little bit of this yeah thank you um so uh and this you heard a little bit about this earlier from both peter and beth um but the instructional framework that provides guidance for our elementary group is around culturally responsive teaching project based learning and universal lesson design those frameworks were a focus prior to our current instructional framework and comprehensive distance learning but they have been a key component this year to drive up that engagement and and focus on rigor for students in our current situation culture responsive teaching as you know is a foundational piece and the process of familiarizing ourselves with the levels of culture isolating race and recognizing the race as a driving issue in equity and also recognizing our own implicit biases
048in being culturally aware and continuing to learn and grow with that and really it's about seeing instruction as it happens in our schools in a ready for rigor framework as we work as a elementary administrative team together as we work individually with our staffs as we work across the district in professional learning situations of um that ready for rigor framework of a level of awareness around culture seeing learning partnerships between adults and students in the schools seeing the learning environment is it intellectually safe is it emotionally safe is it in that way healthy and safe for our students and digging into how cognition happens for students when you set those elements correctly in a ready for rigor framework and then universal lesson design is about adaptability um so it's as much about knowing your students
049and adapting to your students as as much as the content um knowing multiple modalities or differentiations for presenting learning knowing um multiple ways to engage students and accenting accenting things like student voice choice autonomy background knowledge relevance for the for the student learner and having adaptability and flexibility in the expression of that learning and providing multiple means for students to demonstrate competencies in that learning and finally as you've heard earlier a project based learning is an instructional framework that guides us in our work and especially in this setting of engaging and making the learning rigorous um you heard death earlier talk about that essential or driving question to start off a project-based learning and having a sustained inquiry piece where the students are gaining knowledge and it's authentic and it's relevant for the student and
050presenting a public product that is open for feedback in public critique and being able to reflect on that as a learner those are all key components next slide peace please okay so what does all this look like um when we start to put it together and um i want to point out an intentional change i think is important when we start to look at this i remember the day our group came to this in july of this last year our schedule if you notice the top is a student schedule and there was intentional effort when we were taking these key concepts and ideas and this why and as we started to put together and try to make sense of how would this look we started right a little bit when into looking at like well
051what time does the the teacher start and when does the assistant come and and we were doing these questions but then when we centered our work back on why we do our work our students and created the student schedule that's what i remember in my experience in our group i remember my experience going oh this this starts to work and and here's how this all can all work and so we started with designing the schedule from a student perspective so what might a student day of learning look like in our elementary schools this year as we started to reimagine how things could happen and how they could look and so this is an example of that in there in the schedule you can see intentional scheduled times for all of the commitments and all of
052the goals that we mentioned you can see intentional time for community building intentional time for racial equity lessons intentional time for wellness intentional time for longer breaks during the day and we use this as a starting point to implement across all of our elementary schools so the students at mountain view when we go to our break at 9 30 know that they might have their break with the students at garfield at the same time or the students at jaguar and so um by starting together with this like we're intentionally saying here's what we believe in and we believe in this so much that this is consistent across all of our schools because what happens and what each student experiences at each of our school is important for every single student in all of our elementary
053schools next slide so you can then see um here is the adult focused schedules and and and and how how are how are these schedules all interconnected how do all of the different roles in the school interface with each other because when we start to shift our system as a school we don't think of it as a hierarchy everyone every adult in the school has that equal opportunity to build that a relationship with a student and has equal opportunity to make a positive impact on any student in our schools and so how do our schedules and systems interconnect to make that happen so that we can continuously work on and improve our and work towards our goals and our commitments that we have and so here's us an example of how the different roles within
054our school fit interconnectedly to work collaboratively and collectively to help meet our goals and commitments okay next slide okay so we're going to move into some technical information around school demographics but i want to take a five-second pause and recognize the adaptive leadership that you just heard those other elementary leaders describe to you in their goals in their why just five seconds think about that it's amazing work as we look at the school demographics um the one of the things that we wanted to point out to you is that you'll notice the headers have the total enrollment as of october 1st and then they have free and reduced lunch ell and individual education plan and you haven't heard any of that language until right now because those terms those headers are what are used when
055we have to turn in reports what you heard and i believe it was aaron who used it when he was reading one of the goals um the language that is used by our leaders and by our staff and we're still making some transitions but the norm is that um frl is actually referring to students who are navigating poverty and ell is referring to our students who are emerging bilingual and student iep are students who and learners with disabilities and those are all assets and that's what this group and all of our leaders are focusing on so as you look at this technical information that's one of the things we wanted you to keep in mind because you didn't hear that other language at any other time you hear the asset-based language that these leaders use
056giving you another second to look at that because that's there's a lot of numbers on there i'm going to chime in rinda lincoln does not have 3818 kids it looks like it sometimes so that was my favorite so 318. 318. thank you aaron i think that is an important piece of clarification i i imagine it feels like 3818 for probably most of the schools at this point with all the gifts that the students bring absolutely teresa you're right you got it that's fantastic it's been principal hale i appreciate that lindsay you can go to the next slide so these demographics are identifying the student population um by race and the thing that the team wants to make sure that is very clear is that collectively there is a goal to focus on having the staff
057mirror our student population a lot of progress has been made in this area and i'm sure that both lincoln and garfield could talk a little bit more about the impact that it's had on their students but there's been a lot of progress and there's still work to be done and the last thing that um the last point that i wanted to share with you all having been with this team for just not even two weeks um stepping in for mrs gosser is there's a lot of technical data in these these two slides and these leaders look for the student experiences based on all of the student groups that you've seen on these two slides and they look for perspectives of the students who are in our schools and so although you see all these numbers
058that's not what our leaders see that's not what our staff see they look at the students and they ask for their perspectives and their experiences to make it the best learning environment with those three frameworks that craig discussed and those goals that the rest of the team has shared okay next slide all right as we close out our part of the presentation and getting ready for questions we found i think marcian shared this with us and it really resonated with the team as um how we're feeling about this year and so i'll just read it and give everyone a moment to to let it sink in if you haven't if you haven't heard it before we will not go back to normal normal never was our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized
059greed inequity exhaustion depletion extraction disconnection confusion rage hoarding hate and lack we should not long to return my friends we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment one that fits all of humanity and nature and that was from sonia renee taylor and it's powerful and it's where we are we know we're not going back to normal because normal never was and it's not what what our students need so um i think that's the end of our formal presentation and we have a little bit of time for some questions and answers thank you very much amy and team uh phenomenal work it's uh it's really phenomenal work that you're all doing leading uncharted waters to make great opportunities for our kids and a best future for them given the resources we have and
060the limitations we have you're you're creating so many great work that i would love to highlight and and mention here but i'll go first with the questions uh let's go first with vince and then sarah and as a reminder uh for board members uh raise your virtual hand if you have a question defense well i have a couple uh a couple questions but i'm i want to make a comment for for the really for the board um we do not have adequate time this evening to give honor to this work um this is really tremendous a tremendous body of work um i am reminded of when the term equitable system first emerged in my consciousness we were in a work session this board was doing strategic planning and ed jenkins was the one he just
061kind of tossed it off and didn't think give it a second thought but it stuck with me and that's why it's in the strategic plan because it spoke to a systemic approach to rooting out bias in the discrimination that we that we inflict on our children and i'm just i'm struck at how we wrote these goals we created a strategy strategic plan and it's this team has really given it life you have operationalized it and and moved it into your classrooms and it's i'm just profoundly humbled and so while we're going to get a chance to to be with you tonight and you get to share this this this really a short presentation uh compared to the the work that lies under it i think that there is a real big opportunity for this board
062and our community to learn from this team and so i just want us to think about as we go forward and as you continue this work um how can the board continue to learn from this team about the work that you're doing because this is it's i i have to say i'm just i'm kind of speechless i'm just i really don't know um i think i'm going to defer at this point and let other members of the board speak and ask questions and if there's time i have a i have a couple of kind of nitpicky questions awesome so lower and then raise your hand again so i have you at the bottom of the list we have everybody raising their hands so sarah you're up next yeah so thank you all so much for
063you for all of this and for all the work you're doing for our kids um i'm seeing it from the parent end and um i have two questions um my first question is how everyone doing how are the teachers doing how you that's you as we we're building these systems and i just can't imagine the work that's going into the time that everyone is putting into classrooms um even though we're not in classrooms so how are people doing if i could um showcase lee santee for a moment in thinking about karen connection way back when this first started in march um she had this survey that she would give to staff to ask them on a daily basis how they were doing right and i appreciated that being modeled and borrowed that idea with my
064staff just to kind of get a pulse on how folks were doing because we know again that mental health piece is so critical for our our staff members because they're going to be working with kids directly and so i think it ebbs and flows but just to understand and acknowledge and come back to how people are doing use our tools such as the compass um to open up that dialogue to acknowledge where we are and then to help us get centered right and to have some tools to help each other get centered so thank you lee for the survey i was thinking back sarah one thing that um when we were talking about like gearing up towards a hybrid like monday tuesday wednesday thursday and friday night cleaning and this idea of like wednesday being
065a day that pop perhaps we could from an operational standpoint clean the building in between like cohorts what's been interesting in distance learning is i i've heard some feedback from some staff and families that that wednesday has has been kind of a different day for for many kids to let our whole child specialist because we've aligned them as you saw in the presentation with grade level teams but we we didn't want like the only six week experience of music or pe to be that six weeks and so they have continued to put out um kind of a recorded um asynchronous lesson and i just one thing that i think teachers have felt like is that wednesday gives them a chance to catch their breath to collaborate and you know i i know that um that
066it's been a hard lift for for everyone and so that's that's and especially for our families i mean we as principals we we often hear and are are constantly thanking our families and even as we we're talking about conferences coming up how can we do conferences different to really acknowledge the the work of our families and support them and listen to them and and uh so um but that's just like one thing in our schedule that i didn't necessarily exactly think about how that would play out for staff and for families and it's been a good thing so but that's the long answer the short answer is they're tired and but um and then my my second question if nobody else has anything else to add um is i i guess i have to sort
067of tell a story on myself to ask this question um vaguely i was in a situation in the last week where because of social distancing i overheard a conversation among some parents about changes to math and changes to you know this just the way um some things we're doing being done and your changes that are really being put in place to build equitable systems and and to give opportunities for a broader range of students but these parents were seated as taking opportunities away from their children and that it was creating problems you know sort of across the yeah it was obviously a hot topic for them um i didn't step in because it was totally operational and as a school board member it would have been very awkward where we were to have this big
068debate but i heard this conversation um so i'm just wondering how this fabulous work that really upholds the values of our school district is being communicated to parents so that they're not seeing it as taking away but giving to everyone so that's sort of my my my question um i'll just jump in and start here but everybody else please jump in after me i would say that um that's a really important point and it's not a one-time thing i think this is about conversations and about dialogue and change um we we actually um i just think it it it's about really engaging people in a dialogue so that we think critically about what we've always done because i think a lot of a lot of that fear and anxiety comes from well this is that's
069just how we've always done it and it's different so it must be taking something away um and and that's going to take dialogue and it's going to take time um and and i would add um that we need to give all of our teachers everyone that works in the school permission to engage in those conversations um and not apologize for what we are doing um what we're doing is really powerful um and and so some of the times those conversations are hard but we we have to just dive in um the other piece that i think is really important specifically about the math conversation is um we have to look at both sides of the coin and it's not just oh we're not going to level for math and we're going to teach math exactly
070the same way um we we are fundamentally changing how we're looking at this and so our practices will be different this is not just oh we're getting rid of leveling this is we're doing something that is going to work better for all for all students we believe um and and i think we have to have both sides of that conversation and so sometimes if someone's only experienced one thing that's a really hard conversation to have which is why i think all of all of us in schools need to engage in those conversations with parents because they may only see one side of it if i could just add to that that's a conversation that's certainly uh relevant for me right now um and i i go right back to how we started this conversation tonight
071um and comparing individualism to collectivism um and and and recognizing a belief gap um and what is my responsibility as um kind of a servant leader in that is to give opportunity and voice to things that i know are inequitable um and and that is communicated and i would be transparent in this space or on a one-on-one conversation of recognizing that it can be difficult to think in a collective nature when you're really worried about your child or your your individualistic experience and i get it and i i absolutely understand that and that's not going to change that this system that we've created and lived within is inequitable when we know we have classes in the the middle and high school of advanced math that are predominantly white students that tells me we have a
072miss and we have to do something and that conversation i will have that conversation um and i i absolutely understand the perspectives that go into that and there has to be a moment of interruption and then we have to keep moving through that and that's kind of where we're currently at right now thank you for asking that that's a question that we've heard all heard i think multiple times it's something we've all very deeply considered in our why and how we're grounded in our work it's not the first shift we've made in education i can't say this as a longtime member of the corvallis team but towards inclusion with special education where we brought students into classrooms we found has benefited all looking at our english language learner population and including them in our general
073population our general classrooms has benefited all so we're not viewing it as opportunities being taken away they'll still be there but finding ways to to offer those opportunities to everyone in an equitable way it can feel like some are losing but i think the challenge for us is we often hear the loud voices of those who have currently and maybe are fearful of losing that and so we're intentionally trying to seek out the voices of those who don't already have to get a different perspective it's not easy in communication as you said is definitely i'll just add real quickly that um your goal that we share is to have all those students in that math class by their freshman year all of them uh so to paraphrase rgb you know it's not pie we're not
074um reducing somebody else's by granting equity and access to all of our students and and i will be totally transparent and that lee has argued with me about this when it was my child who was bored in math and i was fighting for a child who came home one day crying because he was bored in math um but then my experience of then going to you know back to school night in the middle schools looking around and going this classroom looks nothing like the classroom my kid came from in elementary school this is like all that we've taken all the white kids out of that classroom and we've left all of the brown kids and the black kids behind um and that was a really powerful thing to me that you know we don't want
075to leave anybody behind we don't want to have the kid who's bored and we don't want to have the kids who don't get the opportunity and so i think that's you know a message that's really important and it becomes very stark when you go to back to school night and the populations and classrooms are very different and it's complicated because there are there are things where you you do have to change the design and instruction you know one of the things that we have looked at the research of joe bowler like we're up to 30 of students are misplaced and whenever you start to sort kids like in that and and um but you know john hattie who's a researcher we follow his work calls it basically an apartheid when you do tracking models and
076you know it's like like you can change the names of the schools but if you don't actually look at the systems in your school then that's just like we're we're not going to be a part of that and so we um we are looking at like how do we how do we add that depth and complexity how do we have kids scuba dive in math versus just water ski you know through that and i think that's something where we we do hold this belief that all kids can do math and there's going to be some some creative looks at doing that we at wildcat are a little further along in that with that with that conversation and it's been it's not been easy we've had some bumps but it's been um really rewarding to see
077kids also like in fourth or fifth grade not believe okay i gotta walk to this class because i'm not good at math i just i mean that's just that's not okay we can't we we have to continue to help all kids you know feel successful and we're there's some really innovative tools out there now too where we're giving kids you know opportunities to extend and enrich in ways that you know in the past was just like okay you know here's the textbook do the pages and that we're just we're really moving far from that and i could just ramble on too but i think my colleagues you guys have a lot more questions so i'll just be quiet well and i apologize we were talking now so it could be pie any other auditions all
078right lou hey everyone um that was such a great question sir and i just really appreciate all your answers and it's just a really good reminder that change is sometimes uncomfortable especially when you're privileging from the systems in place right and it's really powerful to hear how many of you all are like really committed to this and helping um change things for all the kids and um it just makes me feel emotional right now but um i just wanted to say that that goal one project not just because it was related to the school renames but as are such a really awesome example of how to do that kind of really in-depth learning um that's project based and something that's in real time and not only like learning how to learning about all the different
079components and learning about perspectives but it's probably helping some of the kids process what's happening to you right and so i didn't i wanted to point that out like that processing piece how much that helps with the learning as well and so i just wanted to um give you props for that um the schedule you put up those are just examples right like those aren't the new ski okay cool because i really like those 15 minute breaks that the kids get from the screen and stuff but and they weren't in that one so i just wanted to clarify um and speaking of those breaks the um the emphasis on the health and wellness and um house a lot of the teachers are telling kids like get up and move around and jump around um i'll
080be in meetings sometimes in my second grader i hear these huge booms and i'm like what is going on it's not time it's not little baby elephante time it's time maybe do some other exercises but yeah so it's working at least in my house with the encouragement um and then i did have a couple questions though um the first one i think i wanted to ask just for as a point of like um learning you are doing some like amazing work but um as we continue to like grow thinking about how the very first slide um um [Music] um curious if you all know what kind of african proverb that is and thinking a little bit more critically about like how we frame like proverbs in like instead of saying african maybe saying south african
081since i i just did a google searches off it i didn't know until that but because i was like what part of africa was that in and how that even how we frame things can impact how even the kids in school are hearing it generalizing um so i didn't want to be like super criticizing but just like a learning opportunity and i feel like this group would appreciate that yeah for sure thank you lou yeah no problem and so that was kind of a question that i was gonna just answer but um the other question um all the things that you all are learning um i how you said you have less time for like the in person but like more time for all these collaborations i think was something super key and how all
082of this is playing out and seemed like this powerful model that i feel like a lot of other districts can learn from and different levels can learn from but i'm wondering how you all imagine taking what you learned about prioritizing the increased collaboration because it's like it kind of just happened because of the mode we're in but like how do you continue to prioritize that kind of collaboration for future work beyond the pandemic so that's kind of my main question and thanks for hearing me out on the other parts thank you lou i think that's such a key for that aspect as well as other things that we want to continue the momentum and i think of the power of collaboration that's happening with my inclusion assistants who typically in a school day last year
083would have been involved with bus duty or crosswalk duty right but now they're is this leveling of opportunity for voice to be involved on in spaces where in in school or in person school that opportunity was not there and so i i'm not sure yet exactly how to continue that collaboration and that momentum what i do know is that that's a value um that we want to continue and just be creative about how we create time and spaces um for those conversations and those relationships um with colleagues to grow um so thank you for bringing it up i don't have the answer yet but uh we we do know that we want to maintain momentum in that area and then other things just to take a step back and be reflective of what things how
084we learned from this experience and what can we continue i think something for me that um is i like really like lean on our team to help me process and i appreciate that um and something that was interesting that happened just like a week ago for us as we we've only intentionally for about the last month been meeting twice a week that sounds like like kind of a lot but like we've only been intentionally scheduling two meetings a week as this group and then about a week ago we found that we were also scheduling in lots of impromptu meetings between those two meetings um and so it felt like this like common need to come back together more so now we're back to meeting about four times a week and sometimes the constraints for collaboration
085is going to a physical space or being able to leave our physical school building in an in-person day and something that i've heard ryan talk a lot about are the things that we can learn from this time and take with us as we move forward into whatever our new structures will look like eventually and i think um i had to look back um i had a look back on my calendar recently to find some things for someone from the springtime um and when i was doing that i saw my calendar there were these like little things um after march 13th um like learn how to do google meets and like these like little reminders of things and now i feel like i know how to do that um and i know how to do zoom
086and google meets and so i so i think the opportunity to collaborate is there because now i feel um more prepared with like virtual platforms to to collaborate so if i need to be in a school building for a day um i can go on to a google me and participate in a meeting and collaborate where before i'd find that limitation and i would like text ryan and be like i'm not gonna make it today to this meeting i'm sorry or something like that right before but now there's other platforms that can be used and so i think moving ahead with collaboration for whatever whoever the it is whether it be us or teachers we have other like technology can be used for collaboration in a way that we hadn't used it before i shut
087the one funny little story um i got this really nice email like your messages on friday have been so amazing and and we had been taking some turns and like writing our principal messages just to you know as we were collaborating teaming up and i i just responded back i'll let my colleague beth martin know she like is a really gifted writer and so um so i definitely don't like like we have different strengths and when we come together and sharing some of the work is something i know that that we will post you know all of this want to continue to team up because you know we're all we're all doing some more things and we can we can team up on so many documents and writing and things like that thanks that's really
088great to hear and i know everybody's probably gonna be tired of zoom um when everything's over but like just that hearing that y'all are considering keeping stuff like that to keep these kind of collaborations i think is great and um the last thing i wanted to say was i really love that quote you all put up at the end and just in like thinking about how it feels like that is like the one of your guiding posts in this work and how that um how we can show that out more broadly but yeah i can't wait to brag on you all about this work because it's really amazing and sometimes i think um we can be really skeptical of like but i really feel like you are super committed to this and i mean we
089like people in general not like the board but um can be skeptical of change especially when it looks so promising but um you'll brought a lot of passion tonight and thank you for that wonderful well thank you lou for the questions and thank you everybody for the answers teresa you're up next to unmute myself i don't know why i can never remember where the unmute mute thing is on this um well i really enjoyed um hearing a lot of the back the kind of the backbone the the skeleton of how you guys have framed this year um it's certainly helpful both as a parent and as a school board member um because we don't have the same you know kind of face-to-face drop in and observe kind of opportunities as we as we've had before
090um my question is uh really about um how uh how you guys are um kind of embracing and accounting for the natural uh differences that are emerging among the schools um with regard to um maybe classroom approaches might be one area um or just in general that it's like i say classroom approaches instructional um instructional um designs um because i think one one thing that we know is that even within a grade level um some teachers are like i love zoom i'm really comfortable in front of zoom other teachers maybe not as much and so some of the communication you know approaches might be different across the teachers but you are using this unified um plan across the district which is different than what we've historically we've heard where really it's been very building specific
091and you've you've worked with your staff and now now we've got this kind of one guiding document and across even more uh people um that are are trying to bring that to life in these now very distinct virtual spaces and so is my question is just how how do you talk about that amongst yourselves and what what are you paying attention to what do you think um it's me so i'm there's going to be like 10 questions and you just pick the one you want to actually talk about um what will be the um what will be the things that you are paying attention to to try and either bring closer in to maybe have a more consistent experience and what areas have you really embraced and feel really comfortable with saying this is gonna
092this is working or we're not worried about this or we we're gonna embrace and run with these differences so i'll leave it at that i would like to answer that yeah we just jump in when you when you want i i think one of the things that i notice um i do and i notice our call like the rest of this group does is when we notice something and and i don't know how to explain it exactly for myself how that sits but when i notice something where i go it kind of just raises a question or like a a feeling i get or like where i go hmm like is this is this in line with what we believe or talk about i usually we have a text message chain that um is pretty
093filled like it rolls and um and we check in on that like we like do a gut check and calibrate so um i guess that's if there's a specific thing i probably couldn't name i mean like the most recent one was conferences right like how will that look what will we do how what will the time slots be what will the evening time be and we have like calibration on that but there's there's like big pieces we calibrate but we also calibrate on like really small things like are we doing a fundraiser with pta are we doing this like and so um they happen all the time um and they happen often and they come up like rinda um starting working right just this recently like early morning message like how are you doing this
094and what's happening with this and we just quickly calibrate as a group through that process um so calibrated that i was going to say the same exact thing so i think that's that's how some of those things happen so it's not this like really fancy process um it's it's a it's a commitment to communication and collaboration and i notice i feel uncomfortable now about things if i feel like something is out of step from what we believe for as a collective and i need to like work with our group to get feedback on it to know how i can like if it's a really hard thing like recently like when we experience hard things and kind of about the question that you had sarah like like let's have these conversations together like i can learn
095a lot from you we can we can learn a lot from each other by having that dialogue and also doing that i need to have some help and calibration to have that conversation with my colleagues um and and so we calibrate on really big things that are really important and meaningful and also on really small like minute things that need to be decided really quick like what will the office hours be and things like that really like really small things and things are really big and really matter i think what i see in i would like to add on a more granular level our system affords our teachers to have that time to collaborate more than ever right so there are daily plcs or professional learning community times and collaboration and calibration are really they
096sound alike right and i think it's just that frequent check-in to be able to align and see what is loose or what needs to be tight and to kind of have those conversations uh with each other so our system affords that at a teacher level too knowing that there's still nuances and differences and at least the conversations are happening to try and align more and go to the why or the purpose behind anything that might be different or necessary difference i think another piece here is that the alignment is not with everything every little thing is a lot grounded on the key beliefs and core beliefs that we share so we aren't squelching innovation that's still happening but the the collaboration is really fostering that we put some systems in place maybe some byproducts of
097them that we did not see are helping with alignment like our inclusion specialist team is meeting with every plc across the building they didn't get that chance to do that before there's a lot of organizational learning that's happening through that a lot of two-way sharing so i think you know we've kind of stumbled into something that some of the top educational systems internationally already knew and have been preaching that the collaboration and extra planning time is really what makes it work our american tendency is to have more face time with kids and less planning time and this has been a real learning opportunity for all of us i appreciate that um and i heard a lot of that this is just a really very iterative i mean we're going back and revisiting this over and
098over not unlike um on the parent side how to make the school day work we are revisiting it every day and communicating sometimes quietly sometimes not as quietly as we adjust our approach and and you know find fine tune or sometimes don't adjust our approach let ourselves implode and then just begin again the next um so i appreciate hearing um that you guys are really trying to stick to those larger the visionary pieces um without you know drilling down to encroaching on that teacher innovation i do think that's really important and i also think it's really hard to translate the teacher innovation um in this format when the you know the opportunity to observe it in action is is much more limited as a parent it's much more limited so um i just had one
099other question that i wanted to ask you um it's kind of a it's sort of a from two different angles so the question is about um being um kind of um being a support to you so as a school board member um with this group here that's gathered this evening you guys are you know you're our your our district leadership right you're the people that are out there whose messages to the staff are going to um they're going to carry with them throughout the day and so as a school board member what how can we best support you in this endeavor uh what can we do what do you need to hear from us um what do you not want to hear from us uh what would not be helpful is a fair way to
100answer that question also and then um and then equally as a parent what does it look like from your perspective as a parent for us to um support our our classroom teachers and to support the infrastructure of the of the building i ask it wearing both hats um but also because i want to be able to communicate with my my peers and my community members um what a model of of engagement and support could look like versus what um we might think it looks like or what it used to look like in the classroom or maybe what it we called it but it never really was and so maybe there are some things we aren't doing anymore because of this new format that we should never do again um so in in along the veins
101of of how do we how do we bolster the most support effectively for us principles and for this process both as board members here and as parents what would you what would you say to us and what would you want to hear out of the mouths of board members when we're engaging with the community um you know when i hear you asking those two questions i think for me um as a school board um just that idea of having our back you've heard us like we're digging in and we're doing really really um good and hard work and that doesn't come without a price sometimes and so um knowing that um you know i always come back to safety and trust to be able to do hard things um and and how a school board
102shows up in that space i i have felt that um but i would just i think ask um for that continued level of support and and knowing that we're we're out there and we're doing it um and it's something that i would think speaking on the behalf of everybody and our our team that we 150 believe in and it's hard um and so that when that comes back to you that that sense of us knowing that safety and trust is for me personally important um and then i would say as from a parent perspective it's um kindness and grace for for how hard our staff is working um i had a conversation with some parents a couple weeks back and perspective kind of came up in that conversation of do you know that teachers are
103in your home right now and your experience is wholly your own and the the things that we're asking teachers to do are also pretty pretty hard and full of some challenges and so they're getting feedback and critique like they have never experienced before because they are so exposed and that's a really vulnerable place for them to be and so while apparent my email upset about math i pair i parent my email upset about an identity lesson a parent my email because technology's not working the teachers and the staff are are fielding those and so the conversation we ended up having is do you know how many um how little kind emails they're getting right now saying thank you i appreciate you i know this is hard and so i would not underestimate the value of
104a kind email and i think that showing up as a parent in that way would go a kind of an immeasurable kind of ask right now even though it seems kind of small i would echo everything that beth just said i would also add as a parent um if you're interested in learning more to truly come from that perspective of asking questions and being curious and assuming that positive intent like i want to know more because i want to know what's going on um rather than coming from the perspective of there's something wrong um i i think all of our teachers are doing amazing work and that that why behind what they're doing they know it they they're very intentional about what they're doing and they want they want people to ask them about that
105um and and so i always encourage people come in with questions to generally to genuinely understand where someone's coming from i would echo bethany but also on the board side and something that i would ask for support is continuing to recognize the power of the planning and collaboration time that we do schedule if we do need to make any shifts in format we'll need that time to do it intentionally and do it well and i know that there can be pressure from the public for us to be in front of students at all times but just knowing that to make that work and matter and they do it in a safe way we really do need time so if you could continue to support us and getting that time for for our staff and you
106can count on that support you're doing miraculous work thank you um we appreciate that point that was very uh well all of those points were were very helpful and particularly um how do we help defend the uh the creating that space to create something that's intentional and so i do hope that i have a i have a this hope that somewhere in all of this you guys will find in all of your free time uh the ability to generate a wish list of what you hope we don't ever pick up again maybe you already have it maybe you're already building it in your in your text chain but i hope someone's keeping it in a spot somewhere because we have the opportunity to defend some changes um that have come through through necessity but in
107fact are are are better and we will we will have to because people are eager to go back to what's familiar and a lot of what was familiar as you already pointed out in your presentation wasn't working for everybody it was working for the people that didn't that already had the advantage in the system and so i would love some time um to hear from you directly what are the things that we need to not take back up um and if if you know teacher planning time and more you know um intentional collaboration is one of those things how can we begin now to lay the foundation of messaging to our community that we're not going to turn that we're not going to give that up because we see it as having benefit to our
108children pandemic or not we need to hold on to it and maybe had we you know as a educational system at large had a little more investment in that we may have seen that the early days of this would have maybe rolled out differently and so now we're here and i think we've learned some stuff and so when you have the moment to um to make that wish list of what what you think it should look like um when the opportunity for something different actually emerges i would love to hear from you how we can start um preparing our community that our schools are not going back to to what we had before of all of our of all of our team members i think byron likes lists the most and i think it was
109like i think it was april that he actually had the don't go back and do list so i don't think we've released that in a while but i think we need to we'll have to resurface that because like you should definitely revisit that and and send it out there they're not on the call but i do just want to give a shout out to it because i know they've been slammed but when my son's ipad failed we had a new ipad in 35 minutes from the time i got on the phone to the time my husband showed up in the parking lot it was all ready to go we didn't miss a beat in school at all that cannot be an easy thing to do and so they're not here but i know that they're
110they're doing a lot to keep all of this going and i wanted to make sure that i give a nod to their efforts because um they they've certainly been at the forefront of keeping things from falling apart in my house more than once so um anyway thank you so much everyone i'll i will turn it over to others now thanks would anyone byron or anyone else want to highlight maybe one thing we don't want to do again uh after we come back no pressure if you feel compelled to share one no worries we can do it later on if it you want to no okay so let's go to jay i'm absolutely impressed and i know we're going long so i have a couple of comments and then maybe some questions that you might give
111me answers to uh after the meeting as in send us a note or something so um i will tell you that i um am still in retirement but i am supervising student teachers and my anecdote is i watched a second grade uh teacher up in um uh portland and i saw her mom folding laundry in the back room back round and went oh my gosh this is absolutely not what i thought teaching was all about i will also share that that those same student teachers are saying a couple of them the fundamental of this isn't what i expected i believe that when i have to talk to kids over computers i cannot get the energy back from them that i know teaching is about and i know you guys know teaching but unbelievably hard on
112teachers who are uh getting fed by energy to not get fed by energy because of the system so i think that highlights my second big point which is for us to get school improvement plans at this time when you are in i'll call it a deficit or a hugely challenging time you should be saying uh folks we're just going to try to hang in there as best we can that's our plan you've done more so i compliment you on it but oh my gosh your challenge is is so huge that that um that would be enough for me um my other comment would be our goals for the board include number one although it's not absolutely prioritized uh student achievement and uh we highlight some indicators including third graders at reading level all third graders
113will hit reading level and uh math levels and so on and um i i guess i have questions or concerns that anybody would expect you to hit those targets under these conditions so assuming that you can't because i i just don't think you can i i'd like to know your thoughts not tonight but maybe some some addressing of how you are going to hit that achievement stuff as you roll back into classes it is huge and that's what i would have in my improvement plan which is oh my gosh i've got to help people get back closer to speed so you don't need to answer i just know you you need to plan and and i would be interested in what your thoughts are uh another question that i have would be about you all
114couple of you talked about the importance of meaningful feedback from students to teachers and if we are doing it virtually it's difficult if students are absent it's difficult if students cameras are off it's difficult so my question from for feedback you to amy and you to to um to uh ryan is is what's the level of absenteeism of kids today and the level of performance and i think we have to be really honest i mean i again i supervise some high school student teachers in lebanon and so on and and it is difficult to get kids to turn stuff in and to feel like they're engaged so to me that's that's it's called assessing where my kids are and then making adjustments and going from there um and my last question is a real narrow
115one i would love to know where the the wisdom of leveling math has been done and done successfully in the long haul in other words you need you need to give us moms and dads parents the confidence that i can do as teresa or sarah was saying my child can can be enriched and do other things and still take calculus as a senior or are we are is that i mean is that a program that's been tried in pasadena or or timbuktu or topeka or whatever and look how this works so that you can pass that information to parents and say relax it's not just our intuitive good hearts that say we are so upset that there are no students of color or limited students of color in those classes but this is the right
116way to get there um and i think you know you've got a very strong group of parents that that care deeply about their individual kids success and i but i also think that they represent or they they recognize good education research and so if you can help them please do that other than that my last comment is is i know about school leadership and this team is as close as any team i've ever been around in terms of collaboration caring for each other i don't hear or see egos uh my school's better my schools are better my curriculum's better um and so that is just so huge in terms of success and i just compliment you and i think it reflects uh amy and it reflects ryan and people around you but uh hooray for
117you it's wonderful thank you thanks jay i took note of all of that we'll get you some information thanks thank you can i kind of answer a little bit of it absolutely is that okay um and it kind of answers your question sammy too about um what's something that we wouldn't take with us um and i so i think i was using the compass um to like center myself or like find where i was when i sometimes i i move to um feeling when i start to think about or hear about um academic achievement and that you maybe like when i hear like we might not make that right or and i i kind of always think about that in my mind and flip that differently to be like well why not like why couldn't
118we and then what systemically is getting in the way of that um and so when i think about right now and thinking about um students reading at third grade reading you know at on reading level by third grade like so why couldn't that happen right now um like why why couldn't we help students gain the skills to get there and and so i guess the thing i would want to want to point out that sammy is something that we would get rid of that and it kind of fits with that i was when i was thinking about that and hearing that is we've often put things into categories or into tears or into boxes and sorted um kids that way um and i think something that we've moved away from that we'll continue to move
119away from that we wouldn't go back to when we heard aaron talk about it is that sphere of success so how do we intentionally increase the sphere of success for students and i think in the belief that if we create systems that support our students who are the most pushed out of our sphere of success and most push out of our system then every student in the system will benefit and succeed and so sometimes when i start to think about where i get off center when i start to think about academic achievement and pieces like that it starts to seem really individualistic um and and that's like kind of where whiteness shows up into our system sometimes and so i wonder often about how do we shift that to be more collective um in our
120approach of how all kids can benefit and learn from each other and when we build a system focused on meeting the needs of students who are most marginalized how does the how does the rest do that um and i also think i just wanted to like check an assumption maybe and just think about all the pieces that we heard is kind and nice too right and like when we're collaborative and work together and what i know about our team is really rooted in a lot of research and a lot of learning um and that we're continually learning and focusing on like new research and where that is and so that would be like great conversations to have too on where that where that comes from and where the and where that learning and where um
121and how we make decisions based both on belief but where that's rooted in best practice and research too that's why i i really appreciate dr white bears like it's like pedagogically we have to shift to a more project-based approach so we talk about high high ceiling low floor where you know we're not we're not doing that sorting when i was when i was the principal at atlantis pauling i remember you know kids would come in already have having taken middle school classes at the elementary with different things and i remember just kind of thinking about you know i was trying to understand why and it's like oh because you know you talk to to you know high school well if a student takes geometry in in middle school then they can take um then they
122can take algebra 2 as a freshman and they can bypass you know the science 9 and they can they can take algebra 2 and it was all like this whole system and structure basically so kids can get more at advantageous ap classes earlier and that's and and we i want to support our kids you know we we talk about avid programs like kids getting into you know we we don't we don't want to to reduce but but we don't want to sort kids in a way that's going to take away opportunity because we have you know and that and that's the big the big piece that um there's opportunities with kids going through um in lots of different pathways i think that's something we're trying to interrupt a system that that that limits kids beautiful
123thank you uh vince we are running short of time and unless you have a one nitty-gritty question or i want to question that i don't have any i'm sorry uh to disappoint the group i don't have any small questions to ask i i think that has been abundant my point that i initially made has been made abundantly that that this team has really moved made it quantum leap forward over the really this last year i'm just i'm really astonished this has been an amazing conversation and so i just would love to see the board come together maybe not with the whole team because i know you're all busy but maybe some of you and helping us better understand the work that you're doing that research that is grounding it because i know that your approach
124is evidence-based and just helping us be better understanding your work so we can be better advocates and make make better decisions ourselves because the time will come and i i think it was you beth that sometimes we have to make hard choices and uh this board will have to make hard choices um from time to time and we need we need your wisdom and we need to learn from you uh so we can make the best choices for our kids so thank you all for this tremendous work that you've done and for sharing your time but you need to go home and go to bed yes thank you all i want to round applause even if it is virtual but really great work thank you you're doing uh really great work the analogy that i
125have for you is from my years in the early 90s when i was a pre-k and my favorite show was power rangers when i saw the logos and this presentation you're coming together just like power rangers uh avengers voltron whatever you prefer and you're accomplishing a mission that seemed impossible uh people who are past some people who were pessimists uh assumed already that this is a lost generation and i would say this is the greatest generation to come yet uh if we take that as a mandate for ourselves if we see what you're doing and uh work that's your uh transforming uh the education as we never seen it or imagined it before uh so thank you for taking that mandate uh uh close to heart is that we're going to prepare our kids uh
126to be really heroes of uh their time and uh be the best of themselves uh put them all in the sphere of success and expand it as much as possible to include everybody that's the vision of public education and we're getting closer to accomplishing it so with that really thank you thank you thank you i do have some questions and i know uh our board members asked some questions that you might want to share it back with us with more details or information examples but one thing i want to make very clear public education is here to stay a corvallis school district is uh is stronger than ever and it will continue to be because of you and because of the collaboration of our teachers staff and our principals as shown tonight so with that
127thank you so much and uh unless there is any uh concluding remarks from ryan or amy um i want to say have a wonderful evening and take care of yourselves and your families and thank you for being great stewards of our communities children uh take care thank you to the team thank you and i want to give everybody yes i just want to say that i'm a little disturbed that you were in pre-k in the early 90s yes [Laughter] sorry i was in college in the early 90s yep i'm 30 30 something so with that uh thank you everybody have a wonderful evening and and uh we will go for a recess uh if there's any objections for five minutes recess or you want more let's do a five minutes recess and the board will
128convene afterwards uh principles feel free to have dinner or go back to your families if you want to have a wonderful evening thanks a lot again and we are going for a recess for five minutes we'll come back in 8 27. you [Applause] the board is coming back to session i'll make sure we have everybody here wonderful uh for those who don't have the camera back uh let's just to make sure we have everybody uh maybe raise your hand or uh have the camera on and while we're waiting i want to make clarification sarah if it makes it any different i was in pre-k early 90s i'm not sure if that makes any difference it does not okay i tried i graduated from high school in oh wow cool awesome all right i think we
129have everybody nope one more one two three four five all right well let's let's uh let's get started okay all right so next item on the agenda is uh a superintendent's update and uh i want to uh ask ryan to share his remarks about the updates sure so i just have a couple of slides to share um with you all regarding um changes that have come into play since we met last um specifically the new metrics from the oregon department of education and so um i know that many of you have either seen this information or read a little bit about it but i think it's good for us always to kind of stay on the same page as we look at what's happening now and how things continue to proceed and move forward so
130um sorry okay sounds good so go ahead and go to the next slide so we are continuing to adapt to the new information from the governor's um office that came through oregon department of education and oregon health authority and the modifications to the the way that we look at metrics moving forward um as a as individual school districts so the way that we had been looking at the information was we were looking at uh three weeks in a row and we were looking at uh the number four hundred thousand in each community and that had a impact on the ability to for schools to reopen and so the way that the metrics have changed is that now it's a two-week look back and so it's a composite it's the addition of two weeks of time
131based on the per 100 000 rate and those two numbers are added together for those two weeks to come up with the number that we use to look at our ability to reopen schools there was also um the the conversation around why that changed was really looking at where we were in august and when those metrics were first established and where we are now and that that means that we also are able to learn from our experience that we've had through covid and that information came into account in the new metrics that the state put together for us one of the other things that it does is it also creates windows so you probably remember when some schools in lane county were in the process of opening and they were planning to open on a
132tuesday and the metrics came out monday night and that impacted their plans for the following day and so now the way that the metrics look is that it's a two-week window in time so if you're meeting in during any period during that two-week window it allows you to move forward based on whatever category you're in and i'll get to that description here in just a moment and the other thing that has changed for us is the ability and the numbers related to limited in person so that there had been a maximum of 10. it's increased to 20 and then there had been an absolute number of 250 to a limit and that number is no longer there so again looking at greater flexibility as districts look to implement limited in person learning um with just
133some of their kids so i'll talk a little bit more about that in a couple of minutes in a couple of slides okay next slide so here is the way that that new the new metrics look um again remember it's the composite or the addition adding those two weeks together um based on the numbers per hundred thousand and and remember for the majority of time we've been looking at 30 being our number um as a way and 34k 3 and 10 for 412 and you can see that the numbers have changed dramatically so on site anything less than 50 and then 50 to 100 is when you can work towards implementing k3 and then expansion from there and in the slides if you come back to them later there's a little bit more information in
134that instructional model column at the bottom of each that gives you a little bit more detail and also how the transition between 100 and 200 cases how those also play a part in a transition into or out of remote learning next slide there were some other changes to limited in person again one of them we've already talked about is just that limit of 20 students as i'm at designated times in a cohort and then also staff can can't interact with more than three cohorts that that number of 250 has gone away and so the reason why i'm highlighting limited in person tonight is because for us that's the initial stage and that's something that is underway this weekend next week bringing back just small populations of students at our schools ranging in numbers from you
135know 10 to 20 students students primarily who have had limitations in terms of access or potentially in terms of disability but students that have had have really had a hard time with limited in-person and those are the students that we've been communicating with families and working closely with to bring those students into the school setting and so as you think about where we are right now i think about it in terms of phases in phase one looking at that limited in person as that initial phase okay next slide um i wanted to also highlight for you that we have done a parent survey that closed yesterday we had over 3 400 responses to it and it was also a proportional representation from all schools so in terms of who responded we felt like we had
136a pretty good understanding of the professor perspective from elementary through middle through high and across our schools one of the questions asked about um the hybrid model and having your student come back to school through the hybrid and about two of every three parents said that they would want to access through the hybrid model of the third that said gave a different answer about half of that or of that 15 or 33 so 15 said that they were unsure and the other said that they felt like um the current model was a better fit for their child um we also asked for feedback around concerns and in this area we asked we gave a list of about 10 potential concerns and wanted families to identify for us what those um concerns were um overall and
137so what the two concerns we heard most often related to hybrid were student motivation and amount of screen time and then for corvallis online it was the amount of work and the pacing for the student related to motivation because again that's a fairly independent program we also one of the things i want to highlight is we had a lot of really positive feedback um go ahead and go to the next one and that positive feedback was really focused on our teachers um and our staff working directly with our students um it's you know beth gave an example just a little while ago about how how appreciative teachers are of positive feedback right now um i had the opportunity to read a ton of positive feedback um about our staff and about how hard they're working
138these are just four examples we had 1700 comments but and so so these were fairly easy to find um but it was pretty i'm consistent throughout that our families recognize how hard our teachers are working um and are really appreciative of them and so by the time i had a chance to look through the data and read read the comments i felt really um inspired and really proud of the work that's happening i know that the challenges of dealing with a with kobit and remote learning there are definitely challenges but i also heard a lot of appreciation and gratitude for our staff um and that's something that i'll be continuing to share out with them we have a superintendent's chat next week and that's one of the things i'm going to want to highlight for
139folks so they can hear hear all of that appreciation as well so here's some considerations as we continue to think about reopening one of the things i highlighted earlier was the phasing approach so phasing for us starts with limited in person and then we focus on individual grade levels and the guidance from the department of education starts with k3 so one of the things that we're going to want to do is get some more information from families so we'll be working to put together a second survey with more specifics the first survey was really for us to see district wide at a 30 000 foot level what families were sharing and thinking um with us so we could continue to think about planning in a lot of ways when i was talking to folks about
140it i was thinking that that initial survey was sort of like the survey we did back in june it was sort of the beginning of summer and then later in the summer we asked families for more specifics about which program they were opting into this obviously won't be a two-month window before we get the next survey out but we feel like we need more specific information to the school level to continue to help us with planning as we continue to move forward and at the same time i'd be remiss if i didn't recognize and remind people of the facts that we're continuing to monitor and adapt to county metrics and that's something that we'll continue to do and continue to watch closely as we move forward so um more than anything tonight tonight i wanted
141to give you an update um highlighting the fact that we have started limited in person um this weekend next that we see this as a phased approach that the metrics have changed from the state that we need to react to and at the same time we want to do that in a way that accounts for a progression and phasing and that starts with more information from our k3 parents and focusing on that k3 age level in grade level so with that i can see that there's a hand raised by jay i don't know if there's others but i'm going to go ahead and close down the presentation and so i can see other questions that arise all right jay you want to go first sure um just a couple clarifying is the are the people
142who are doing online where they asked are you interested in coming back to school or did we tell them when they signed up that's not an option so we um plan to send out a second survey to that group of families before we move into the second semester so um we what we've said was that it was a decision for a semester um and after that semester started if there was a request for a change that needed to be addressed between the two principles either byron or mark and the homeschool principal and so that i'm on camera right now and that's the process that we would use that's a process that we would use in any school year when we're thinking about goodness of fit um and uh you showed it to me several times
143i need you to get out of my meeting [Music] another question could you give me a a a reminder what does linn county's impact have on us i can't remember we've got kids over there do we have to listen to their detail too i think right it's a it's a consideration but it's also a piece that working with our county to have conversations about at this point our county has said that that they don't think the percentage of staff that's coming um is significant enough to have an impact on us but it is something we continue to pay attention to um a 16 of our staff come from lynn county at this point in time last question um i really like what we're doing i mean hooray and we're getting kids back i'm nervous about
144when we talk about limited instruction to certain cohorts and the word systemic bias if someone were to look at what students we're asking back is there a a awareness or concern that there is a bias of who who those kids are or who which kids are not yeah so i think one of the things i'd like to share and i don't know that i've shared this before i think i have but just to confirm it that we wanted to have a consistency in terms of decision making around this and so it's really our student support teams that the elementary principals talked a little bit about before that are making those decisions so they're looking at students that have been engaged or have not been engaged what have been factors or things that have gotten in
145the way for students to be able to participate and so then they're making decisions at the school level with regards to who those students are and again we're starting small as i as i shared before you know definitely under 20 students at each one of our schools but looking at at those those students who um and in some cases have not been interacting with the school or their teachers or assignments for the majority of this this fall term so i think so i think one of the things we're doing to address bias is we have teams that are making informed decisions um based on what they know about those individual kids and then and as you know from conversations we've had in the past um also understanding what stu kids stories are um because they
146have a long-term history in many cases with those kids who they've been with them for many years and they know the kinds of supports that have been important over time for them vince you're up next so i just wanted to express appreciation uh because of for those uh who are listening online i i work for the oregon school boards association so i get to i get to interact with a lot of uh school districts and school boards that have conversations with superintendents just like this um and i just want to express my appreciation both as a board member and as a dad for the um very sober and measured approach that that the superintendent and the district have taken in considering and moving towards reopening schools particularly right now and just really emphasizing the safety
147of our of our children and our staff and just to make sure that when we go ahead and move kids into buildings uh that we know that that we're gonna do it safely and that it's gonna be the right move to make at the right time so thank you for that ryan i really do appreciate it thanks that events clue thanks ryan i always appreciate how you're like re-emphasizing that we follow the state metrics and the guidelines and that's what you've been doing this whole time and just showing that commitment to what's laid out for us by the state can you um what was the number again that it needs to stay in in the county for live in person under 50 over the two week 153 no under under 50 for the two weeks
148um lindsay can you go back to the slide that show has the graphic okay i was just wondering what the number because um just saying i just did the google of benton county and it's at 92 over the last two weeks and so i don't know where those numbers are coming from and how that's correlated just to help because i know other people like google their cases and stuff um so how that's gonna or how that's impacted anything or if it has not yeah that's perfect so um so in this example lou you gave me the number of 92 and that's probably a pretty close that's probably the an accurate number i'm always kind of you know there's a couple of different data sources so we just look at the one from oha that comes
149out and it's by a hundred thousand but that puts us would put that puts us in the yellow range um and the yellow line range um is about um careful phasing and moving um towards k to three um in a hybrid and so that's where we're at right now um and so that's why we're having some of those conversations about what does that mean for our k3s uh moving forward okay great thanks ryan so like if it was over the hundred we'd be back in the yellow and would not be in the boat we're in as a kind of yeah and so basically if you're um trending up in that 100 to 200 range then you need to be moving towards your planning more towards that distance learning and if you're trending down then you
150can begin to think again about those k3 students and what are the phasing phasing you want to do to move those students back in okay thanks ryan i just really wanted to emphasize that we're like only eight cases away from that hundred especially with the holidays coming up and the impacts of like helping minimize spread on fam like families doing their part too in this because that does the number of cases does impact it it's not like you have a magic wand over there ryan and you're like woohoo we're like right under the hundreds so that's really dependent on the cases in the county and i think sometimes um it's easy to forget like how easy it spreads and how fast those numbers can go up and we're seeing that wide and globally too and
151so that's why i was asking the exact numbers and looking up exactly how many today it's at and um to frame that question because eight pieces is known a lot and um yeah so thank you for that and i did want to also say i appreciate how you're you are prioritizing the in person to students who need it versus just people who want to be back in class um our families that just may just want to be back because it's more comfortable and um prioritizing the students that really have that need to have the in person at this moment um before going well on more people are back and like easing in with them in mind and i think that's really important um and i have two other questions one of them is um how
152teachers feel about the new metrics um when those were released how staff and teachers um feel about it and then the other one um within percentage that you showed like um isn't super high i mean if it was like 90 something of families who prefer going to in person from the current mode from hybrid um later is there going to be a um a situation where families have a choice to still continue to use hybrid at home that way it's clear for families if there's a prioritization needed of numbers of kids in classes is that going to work yeah that's one of the conversations we're having right now um with our administrators and um with our associations to think about um you know um i'm recognizing that um trying to balance the work that teachers
153can do well and i think um what i hear is that teachers feel are feeling more confident now in their how they're doing in the remote learning um that it's taken time but they're feeling more and more confidence in it and so how do we account for that that confidence and kind of feeling more comfortable in that mode um and how do we keep from interrupting or disrupting that too much um and how do we make sure that we're moving sort of steadily but also not um not losing the things we've learned along the way and so that's what we're trying to figure out right now and so that's one of the reasons why um i think we need more information from our parents um and i think we want to really want to focus
154on those um those in those primary grades first um and so so again it's i feel like there's more information we need to be able to um develop to cook to really to affirm the plan that we have and make the shifts needed to have the staffing and have the options for families and also recognizing how how hard teachers have worked and how how challenging this has been but also the successes they found to your first question about how teachers feel about the change in the metrics um i think that there's um there's anxiety and um and anxiousness about that um i think when you see numbers going up across the state and you also see the changes to the kind of loosening up of metrics at this in schools that there are some questions
155about that and there's some stress around that um and so i think that it's it's it's mixed for sure great did that answer all of them you had yeah you answered them um curious because there's no way all the kids can fit in class like not everybody can go back in the model right now and that's kind of where my um question was kind of leaning towards if there was going to be a prioritization or if parents were more if they had an option for their kids to stay home or there's um that they care for our parent um if that was going to be taken into consideration that way there are more spots for families that need their kids to go back for whatever reason so it was kind of i see what you're
156saying like it depends on staffing and capacity and like what could be offered so that's a lot of um a lot of thinking you all have to have to appreciate the thoughtfulness you are putting behind this decisions and the other thing about that is that um you know initially we had when we started talking about hybrid it was two days in person per week for students and three days um that they weren't um in in person in school and so that's still one of those considerations um for um for recognizing in the hybrid it doesn't mean five days a week in person um it means transitioning to two days in person and so how what does that mean as we've also had more lengthy synchronous learning across stays and so those are all sort of
157um like sort of competing interests and values about the way we use time um and also the ability to have and support all of our kids so yeah it's it's not a um it's not an easy answer there isn't an easy answer for it thanks ryan it's really helpful i think for folk listening to know how complex everything is it's not like yep metrics change everybody's coming back so i appreciate you giving some of the details you just did yeah um the only other thing i would add was there's also a a component right now for for our high schoolers that are um that are participating in athletics um and having students begin to do um a couple of workshop workouts per week um we still osaa is still anticipating having um seasons coming up
158and so that's one other place where having limited number of students um limited number of time following precautions but for physical activity um that's the other place that that that first phase really accounts for but generally speaking um again it's a small number of kids um and and the the one of the challenge of the of this um for us has been is is looking at um just how dynamic all of this is so um recognizing that we start um one week and our metrics look one way and we move to the next week and they might look different um and so we have to continue to every plan that we make i guess um has been changed or modified as we've moved along and so i think that's the other consideration for the board
159is that the plan that i share tonight will probably be changed and modified um as we continue to move forward because that is how this viruses work were i gave you the quote months ago now that you know the virus sets the timeline um and that's still the case for us um and so i think that um i'll continue to come to you with updates um as we move along through the winter and into the spring each time we meet because i think that that's the the best way to keep you all informed and it's also important because because things continue to change for us and then she had a question too i was just going to comment that um in addition to the metrics that that lou was looking at and benton county has
160updated theirs so their their dashboard is current willamette esd also has a nice uh dashboard to help uh you know folks like school boards and you know members of the community to interpret these metrics and make sense of them in real time so we might consider putting those on the district website uh but i can certainly share those out to the board yeah and they've um willama dsd has been helpful statewide and willing to continue to make changes they modified them right after the governor changed the metric standards so that people could continue to utilize that site wonderful any other questions or comments well thanks ryan uh being cautious and adaptable is the name of the game and uh let's do our best uh school district-wide that we're doing the precautions but really a message
161for the families and for my colleagues at osu students faculty and everybody is to really know that it takes all of us to make this happen and low community spread is going to be very important and critical uh with that i i'm not sure what we can do as a school district to keep that community spread to low other than uh telling the community that we're uh doing this interfaith way with all the precautions uh in place following the guidelines and public health recommendations and and that will continue to ask for input yeah wonderful thanks a lot all right if there's no uh further comments or questions uh really with the deep gratitude that i find for you leadership on this work uh we'll move into ratifying the financial agreement with oregon school employees association
162chapter 2 osea so with that does anyone wish to make a motion and of course after the motion we still can have a discussion and questions or vice versa vince hold on a moment so i can get it in front of me so i moved to approve the financial component of the contract with osea for the 2020-2021 school year do i hear a second this is jay i second it all right any further discussion or any discussion on demotion i will just say that uh like um the other association the the process that the district engaged in was was very even-handed and tried to work diligently to come to an agreement and was really emphasizing the needs of of staff as much they were able within the budget constraint um it was a it was
163a challenging process because of the fiscal situation that the the district in the state is in and so i just really applaud the the district negotiating team uh for their you know their heartfelt and candid approach to the process it's once again an example of how our leadership and our associations work to cultivate a collaborative relationship to meet our needs thank you yeah i just want to add that again for us it was you know the challenges of the economics of the time and at the same time continuing to work together to come up with a um a solution either in terms of model in terms of when um increases went into place throughout the year or other ideas and considerations to try to address the needs of the association while knowing that we have
164um our finances our finances are are tighter than they've been for quite some time um so yeah i'm happy that we were able to come to an agreement and we're we have that um on the agenda for tonight wonderful wonderful any further questions our discussion see none and i will uh sorry okay go ahead okay see now now we'll go for our votes and jay what's your vote all right all right uh and then uh we have vince what's your vote hi therese what's your vote hi lou what's your vote hi sarah what's your vote i vote i passes unanimously congratulations and thank you for our association and uh bargaining team uh start with negotiation team from uh the district side i really appreciate this collaborative work and making sure that we can get work
165done for our kids yeah and you know thanks again to vince and terese for their participation and also to um to our team which includes um jennifer and olivia who really helped us to come to this agreement wonderful well thank you um yeah i want to just share uh the leadership of your staff is phenomenal i've been in a other uh bargaining outside this capacity and the transparency and what you share and how you share it is just the role model of negotiation so i say that in other capacities and within my union as well and i think it's it's just something i'm learning from and and i really appreciate it's the first time we've uh negotiated um on zoom or on uh with youtube with a live link so that's that's different but um
166again yeah again we have a really great team committed and trying to do our best within the confines of a of a tight budget that's wonderful thank you all right um next item on the agenda is a consolidated action as a reminder items under this portion of the agenda is for action does anyone have any question about anything in the consolidated action and i do have one but vince go ahead so my question is about the cv early renovation work i'm looking for kim oh there you are hi kim okay and we got dale too good um can you just give me a uh i know that you wrote this the cover sheet and i read it and i think i understand it but can you just go over it and there's yeah and i
167have some fiscal questions embedded in that too so can you just go over what the changes are and how they unfolded so i can have a better understanding here dale do you want me to take this or would you like to daily you're muted thank you go ahead kim and i'll chime in if you if you need me okay so as everyone remembers um or likely remembers on april 2nd was we bid out the crescent valley high school cte project and that was right after we had just shut down for quarantine and our bid came in three million dollars well a little right around three million dollars over budget which after much analysis and review we determined was likely because we didn't have a lot of competition on the bid and contractors were a little
168bit unsure of what the market was going to hold for us and so as a as a team we looked at it and made the decision as a leadership team to proceed with re-bidding the project as it was without redesigning because we felt like we had already gone through the full design process and felt like the design was what we needed to best suit best meet student needs moving forward okay so we went ahead and re-bid it with a lot of active solicitation for contractors and subcontractors to ensure that we had competition on all of the bids that came in and the bids came in and see a significant reduction in the overall bid structure and we are still working on the overall gmp or growth guaranteed maximum price for that project and that bid
169package but we as a leadership team are confident that we are going to be able to complete the project as it was designed and bid and we are asking for an early bid project so we can get going specifically on the electrical work in f building and there's some seismic work associated with that uh we are recommending this approval so that we can have power back on in f building in time for second semester so that we can have students in the science classrooms okay so any details to that no no no i think i understand i understand the logistics there it didn't so it looks to me and correct me if i'm wrong it looks like there's about a time seven price increase is what it looks like the way i read it and
170so am i am i totally misapprehending that i am this just by the look on your face yeah yeah dale do you want to take that financial question yeah can you help me with the finances here sure it's really a it's really just a sequential acquisition of the project we did some um the first package that went out was um to acquire some electrical gear there was a little bit of abatement work all of which we released in preparation for what would have been the start of the project in this in the late spring and that that work occurred and we did purchase some early equipment but then the project essentially got put on hold so this is another step in the procurement of the project and it fits within the overall budget package for
171the project so in a um at the december 10th board meeting we're going to bring to you a guaranteed maximum price for the for the rest of the project it'll be somewhere in the 12 million dollar range for the total package and they were you know well above 13 million as kim indicated in alaska around okay thanks to both of you for indulging me and helping me understand i'm sorry i was dense i vince i do want to add and because i don't want any of the board to move into this approval without knowing that we will be allocating some bond reserves to this project just as we are to most of our other projects in order to get the full package completed right bond promises completed we aren't adding anything extra to this project
172okay i'm i'm happy we can we can put it back into consolidated action i'm happy all right any other questions or comments you ask my question so i'm good too uh so if that's the case i would like to entertain a motion if there's no further questions or can you tell me the action oh my hands up so i'll make the motion so i move to approve consolidated action do i hear second this is therese i second all right thank you terese and any further discussion on demotion seeing none um let's go for a vote teresa what's your vote hi sarah what's your vote i'm lou what's your vote hi what's your vote was that me yes sorry hi jay what's your vote and i vote i passes you anonymously well thanks kim and dale
173appreciate it thank you thank you all right next item on the agenda is uh for information uh and discussion only um there's no action at this time so as a reminder would anyone like to discuss any ideas on the consolidate information and we have board policy acb and also we have the administrative regulation acp hyphen ar the first one is all students belong first reading and the second one is bias incidence complaint procedure i do have uh one comment uh that i'll share after board members share their information and it's uh as an output regarding the swastika discussion so i'll share that after we have vince lou and jay vince so i have a question on on the policy acb and the question is why is the word nazi in brackets right um i can
174give it and can you guys hear me melissa's here i'm not turning my camera on but i am here um so it's in brackets because it wasn't part of the original uh boilerplate that was sent to us by osba it's something that we're inserting on our own i wondered and so when the when the policy is approved those brackets will go away yes they will yes thank you that was verification yeah okay and then the the second um the second question or comment is on the ar it's on step two of the ar and it's the in the first sentence and they used to turn a phrase uh reduce the complaint to writing and as i was reading that it just i understand what the intent of that turner phrase is it just in the
175context of this type of complaint the term reduced to writing didn't feel sit right with me um and perhaps consider another usage like commit the complaint to writing or that sounds great yeah that's a style no i totally understand that too because when you talk about reducing something as important as a bias complaint that doesn't feel very good so thank you vince right yep and that is all i have thank you very much thanks you're next um yeah on the um policy the acb i had a question on it i'm trying to pull it up again because i pulled the other one up um i'm wondering because we did this with some other policies we added gender expression because that's different from gender identity and i don't know if we can add that into um
176to this policy and others as well because they can be different things okay i can look at i can do that very cool thank you and um just one of my consistent because you know i'm all nerdy over here melissa um i love it the links for the legal references oar 581's all three of them don't go to the actual it just goes to the page where you have to do a search oh okay yeah that's just because you know i like to read those but um okay um just that part the other ones usually they usually go except for if they go to that homepage i've noticed a lot that they're the ones where there's the dashes after it and i don't know um what can help with that and i know at one
177point i was like maybe just putting the um how to search it on the bottoms of policies okay you often but yeah it seems like it's mostly those ones when i've looked at them all right we'll fix those links thank you and then on the um the ar too um yeah we've been said about reduce another word maybe document did something like that instead of reduced but um the other one too um it seemed like something was missing on the second bullet point um because it says educational components that address the history and impact of hate does that mean like the hate symbol are actually about hate itself that wasn't very clear to me like if it needed to say um hate symbol if it's specifically about that one or if they're talking about overall
178how he impacts people i think it might be the overall impact what is what are your thoughts with regard to how that should be how that should go i would be interested to hear that yeah it just wasn't clear if that was what the intent was because that's pretty and maybe like um yeah that's a real big idea and maybe focusing more more on the hate symbol yeah um just because like if you're talking about that that's huge in yeah and it could be it might be a little bit too broad um unless it unless you're intending it to be broad i just they just kind of stood out a little bit i was like that's a big task it is it is educational material together um yeah so there's just that one and then
179um bullet point four on the same step is it one no it's three excuse me it's bullet three it says accountability and transformation for people who have caused harm um i'm a little bit curious how the transformation of people would be assessed and if it may be a different word um because it you can educate somebody but that doesn't mean you're transforming them or it doesn't mean you're trans like you're changing the ideology behind the symbols how they're valued by that person um by providing this and i don't know if what's kind of meant is like that transformational opportunities are being presented to them okay and i think because it's i don't know how else you would assess that like if because somebody could still hold the ideology um behind a nazi swastika but not
180wear it to school anymore and you wouldn't be able to know if that was transformational for them having the education those kind of they're fine if you're talking about the opportunities are being offered to them okay and that was um uh yeah that was it thank you thanks lou jay you're up next so to follow up lou do you think the ar aims at transforming or simply don't bring it to school anymore i think that it's aiming at transforming what's acceptable um in places of learning where people feel safe and feel like they can access their education and that does come along with transforming communities as well but i don't know if a policy can encompass um because the policies we have to be able to gauge them to and assess if they're working and
181how do you do that with something that's built on hate like how do you assess if somebody still holds that ideology and yeah that's that's kind of what i'm saying that i was looking at but i didn't wasn't sure the intent of it and if it is to transform people then how would you determine that was my question yeah i guess my yeah my comment or question there is unbelievably difficult and maybe not appropriate to measure transformation of what's in a person's heart it's just i don't think my opinion would be that's not something that we should we can engage behavior but we we shouldn't i think be i don't know how you would you know sit down and say young man have you changed your heart that's just not i don't think that's good
182for government to be doing that so there's a comment um my other question i think i raised it last time but i want to have clarification maybe from the group as a whole so this this policy aims at eliminating discrimination and harassment and and uh we discriminate all the time in some things that are not wrong it's you know what kind of car you drive or whatever we're talking about certain kinds of discrimination and harassment and and so i don't like harassing and i don't like discrimination in any of these areas and then the question goes are there other areas where we would we that i'm uncomfortable with and the one that i think i raised last time and i'm just asking for perception or if it's even viable is is it ever appropriate in
183a school for a person to be discriminated or harassed based on their appropriate expression of a political viewpoint that is not interfering with reasonable educational environment but i would hate to have somebody harassed because of a political viewpoint if it was being uh you know not inappropriate and i just don't know whether the the board as a whole wants to weigh into that or wants to leave it to these are more based on the constitution and statute so we've got a pretty clear guideline so i guess i'm just throwing out where the board might be feeling in that area yeah if i may i'll take a stab at it and if any uh colleagues want to also uh talk about it and maybe a staff but i would say jay the way i see the
184fine line of political speech versus the purview of this policy is really the criteria that is included in in here which is we're documenting substantial disruption for uh our operations as a public education uh entity and also uh we are or not and or we see that students are their rights to learn or their rights have been infringed upon by that speech hate speech or implicit bias or all these actions so i think i think that the way i see it is if anyone puts their political speech in a way that disrupts operation uh and uh may infringe on people's rights uh definitely that's still disrupting our uh our work uh so if someone brings a fascist ideology such as the nazi ideology uh that's the time where we want to say no this is
185not only political speech it's it's uh disrupting operations and also infringing on the rights of our students so i think that's that's where i see the metric can be evaluated and how our documentation and the cover page uh really give us a justification to uh be able to evaluate any speech that uh that makes that violates these or that means these two criteria whether it is political or not uh lou you want to speak to that yeah i was just gonna say the policy and the um state guidance is pretty clear what they're talking about and that it is um that is symbols of hate are pretty much spelled out in here um and i think that there's also some national examples of seeing some um some sanctions that have happened that are good to
186learn from too that may seem like they're politically um like their political expressions when they're when they're actually symbols of they could be symbols of hate on how they impact students and so a really recent example is i can't remember was it in arizona maybe where one of the teachers dressed up as a border wall in a predominantly hispanic serving elementary school and the teacher was sanctioned for wearing that because of the fear it instilled in the kids and a lot of them and parents expressed how that impacted them and because of the proximity of all of the things that are happening in the racial tensions that was considered um something that was they were sanctioned about and so i would say like that seems like it would be a political like endorsement but it
187was really about the actually about the impact of that very specific piece of it i don't know how to play out here but it was just it popped in my head when you asked about that because a lot of times people will associate certain things like that with political parties when it wasn't really what it was about and so that's um that was an example of a symbol that may be interpreted but i really think like leaning on the guidance and not like pushing it to a direction that it's not intended for is really important and what the intent behind this is to protect kids rights to access their education that are free from harm including psychological harm because that was part of part of the background on this policy too because it's not just
188about like physical harm that takes place but it's also about the psychological harm and how that can inhibit learning i know if a kid if one of my kids was in school and somebody was wearing a scalp the indians shirt because they were playing philomath that would be psychologically harmful to them they wouldn't be able to concentrate in school for the rest of the day so it's like those kind of impacts on how it's interfering with learning is how i was reading it i don't know if that's helpful if i'm getting ranty but yeah spot on thank you lou any other one i want to speak to that yeah i mean the way that i kind of the lens through which i kind of shoot this is and particularly in the political context is you
189you move to hate when when your political ideology is attacking someone else's inherent id identity and particularly you know and those are listed here and so you move from the realm of politics to hate when you start attacking the hearing qualities of a person that that are largely immutable so yeah for instance you can't change the color of your skin so for me that's where the where the line is drawn so a quick response do we have coverage then because i i agree i think this policy is aimed at immutable characteristics so it's not it's not aimed at general discomfort it's aimed at you know if somebody is harassing or discriminating based upon immutable characteristics but do we have policy where we protect students who appropriately express speech we have protection for them from harassment
190by other students or discrimination and the easy example that someone i thought was going to get to was the was the antifa if someone were an ant wearing an antifa shirt and just it's an expression and he is not being disruptive but he might be if in the classroom but but walking down the hall he keeps getting harassed by someone do we have policy not maybe here because that's not under any indelible characteristic um do we have policy that protects that person from harassment or discrimination i'm it's kind of i don't necessarily want to push it into here but i'm i'm nervous about because we think about harassment yeah we have policy and harassment discrimination we went over that the last meeting and i think if a student in the situation that you presented was
191wearing a shirt and felt that they were being discriminated against or harassed and they wanted action they could refer to that policy and we would take action based on that policy tell me again which one it is sorry it's jfcf thank you thank you amazing harassment intimidation bullying menacing and cyberbullying perfect thank you that's all i want to do and there's an ar that goes along with it how the district operationalizes that thanks thanks jake uh we'll move to sarah yeah i was just jumping in because as jason clarified what he was asking about i was thinking it's the bullying policy that's you know that thank you you know i i support a kid in class as i support this candidate because of this economic policy and you know that's not the popular candidate and
192they get harassed and and bullied because of that they fall under that category you know i think that's that's where we then we cover that yeah uh i have a suggestion oh sorry vince go ahead i just would like to point something out that you know here too the argument could be made that our children of color our trans kids our queer kids would also be protected under policy jfcf and its attendant ar but the reason that we're adopting this policy acb is because this policy isn't effective there's something missing in our policies the reality is that even though we've had had this policy on the books for a long time nevertheless our system has failed to predict our children and so we're building a new policy to further uh focus the attention of the
193board and of the organization to protect these particular people and so i just wanted to point that out and that that is why we're doing this yeah thank you vince i want to pick back on that and make a comment uh about this policy it's it's unique in a way and first of its kind in a way and it's not and another way it's unique in a way because we're doing this for in public education and where you you might not see any policy similar to that as i learned in other states but if you go to other public institutions the military or other places they do have policies in place to protect uh folks community members their employees and the public institution from uh hey so it's it's something really important and it's i
194think it's it's really critical for us to uh move forward with this at the sta as a state and as a school district um with that i i think one of the things i want to mention here and appreciate uh the uh the students who brought this up uh this is emotional for me i in 2015 i wanted to move forward with the resolution because folks were justifying hating on muslims on campus at osu shocking threats to muslims and islam but because they were not specific particularly about serbs in place no action was taken at the time uh and we did a resolution at asosu and i don't think justice was served still community members are hearing that and experiencing that students and in a place where they need to feel safe are experiencing that
195it's emotional for me because i experienced hayton uh when i was in middle school and higher high school on sectarian purposes and it's just it's awful it's awful and and i hope this this will bring resolution for the students who brought uh those concerns to the states and said we need to act on it uh i want to acknowledge also our uh community members especially uh folks from uh the south asian uh community uh they uh they met with ode leadership and you've seen the emails uh that they sent to the board and uh there was a follow-up from ode leadership and uh and unless it's listening session uh ryan and i sat on and i'm an on appreciation of ode's leadership vulnerability and really wanting to learn from our community members and also the
196courageousness and the sharing that's our community members some of them are students former students um and shared so many great things uh tangible tangential to this they shared some information inputs about oregon social studies standards in 2008 and provided some uh some information about things that the standard missed the mark on in terms of culture and religion but also another feedback that they provided and you might have seen that in the email asking for a clarification distinguishing the swastika and its origin from the nazi swastika and a suggestion that came from there was don't even call it swastika because the swastika is a sanskrit word it has a positive meaning it was culturally misappropriated and by the nazis and i'm wondering if staff and my colleagues are okay with a suggestion such as we changed
197the nazi swastika into uh and the german name of it is i think hack and cruz so we could call we could say nazi symbols such as uh the hakenkos so we change we make it very specific into the any symbols are paid from the nazis it's not only the hawken course if there's any symbologies uh from there we bring it there but we stopped the cultural misappropriation of of the swastika and uh our hindu students our our south asian students uh i think brought that as a really important point that i think we should we should observe so i don't know what's what's that uh what's what what do we think about that could we do that are you asking me um um oh yeah yeah you could ask me i would not like
198to ask you first yeah maybe um i think that um i think that what we and what i anticipate after the conversation with um the department of education and um again the appreciation for marcian who brought students together and some of our safe students and also students who graduated the last couple years to share their perspectives i think that the department of education is going to come back with some new language based on that listening session i really believe that and so i think we should um recognize the voices of our students um and because they because we've been asked specifically um you know we've had conversations about saying nazi swastika and our policy how do you feel about that and that's where um they those kids had had students that or i should say
199young adults had more time to reflect um and said i think we should these are the recommendations that we would make so i think we should look at those recommendations that they've put forward melissa can then can do some confirmation with um osba around that but that would be that would be my recommendation okay thank you and uh i'd like to ask my colleagues are we okay with that recommendation sounds good so i see a thumbs up can i just add something to that sammy too of like the importance of it beyond the like cultural appropriation of the word is that that seems to be like the most commonly used symbol like nazi symbol that people recognize but there's other ones and by limiting it to nazi symbols you're also like if people are more
200likely to sneak in some other ones too and so like i like how it was more broad with symbols and look forward to seeing what the other recommended languages but there's plenty of other symbols that could be used as well that aren't as recognizable and so having a more broad term is um it's good wonderful thank you sarah yeah i um this was just a thought as we were sort of briefly touching on why this is important to have and um i have a bullying harassment um policy and you know i just i think we need to be clear that this is about making creating environments where children cannot access their education because of who they are and um i you know i think about often like how i walk down the street and then
201perceived and how that is not the same for all of our community and you know how my kids sit in a classroom and are perceived and how that's not the same for all of our community and so i think this is a really important policy because it's it was an effort it was not going to solve the problem but it's an effort to move us towards a move us closer to having children i'll be able to sit in classrooms and and and access their education in the same way so um you know it's like inherent identity that is a key piece to it so that's just what i was thinking when i put my hand up i forgot it was still up so i will take my opportunity to save my peace thanks sarah therese
202i think i might have forgotten that my hand was up as well but um i i think i would um i would encourage us to consider uh not narrowing the language with references specifically to um those associated with nazis uh and to recognize that the symbols that can provoke those kinds of feelings are much much wider and go far beyond anything that people would even know to associate with um with the nazis so if there is a way that we can capture more broadly i think that we that would be wise yeah um and if you if you don't mind i want to speak to that maybe melissa if you can correct me if i'm wrong the way i see it in the language it says symbols of hate means a symbol image object and
203then uh animus express that expresses animus on the basis of phrase color religion gender identity sexual orientation disability or national origin so that's that's created the whole sphere of symbol of page yes and then the ode wanted to specifically say including and then they said news swastika uh or the counterfeit arts flag uh and whose display and then they mentioned the criteria so my understanding melissa is that those are just examples clear cuts if you do them you're in violation but if you meet the definition as well you still fall under symbols of hate am i right and that and that's how i read it as well sammy so yes i think they were wanting to call out those three specific because they are the most common um and they wanted to make sure that
204they were there my understanding too is with finalization of this in january february there might be other symbols that are added um or there might be some you know some other specific language so um we might be up for revising this policy again and that might um you know broaden or add any of any other objects of hate or symbols of hate that they want us to add there good thank you lou yeah um when you said that sammy i just thought about how um policy is really interpreted sometimes and read word for word and wondering if it should say including but not limited to and then adding the rest in to prevent the it's not this reactions that may arise um from goku would want to display symbols of hate instead are not on
205the list and so that's the problem with list is sometimes there if it doesn't say like including but not limited to people are like this is what it meant and so i'm wondering if we can maybe put that in there um is my question but i was also like as you were talking about the importance of this and how the current bullying policies may not be doing what they need to and that's why this is needed i um i talked about it at our last meeting with the bullying policy but just like i'm glad this is in place and perhaps that'll save somebody's life and it was i was really thinking about my nephew with this one and how all of the bullying was based on symbols of hate and hate language and bias and
206that's completely what it was based on but the policy didn't protect him or hold people accountable and so hopefully a policy like this that oregon is bringing and that we're bringing to the school district could potentially save a kid from um for making that kind of choice where their life is no longer here and i don't think people realize the impact of these kind of incidents how harmful they are psychologically and emotionally especially to kids and how um as schools like we're supposed they were supposed to be protecting their places of learning so they can feel safe to learn and oftentimes things fall through the cracks of policies and so i hope that this is one of those ones that catches somebody falling through those cracks and i just really felt compelled to reiterate that
207part of it from that experience but yeah but if we can add including but not limited that would probably be helpful for that other part melissa right now are we okay with uh with that suggestion so we'll we'll take that one the including but not limited to you and are we in agreement on saying nazi symbols of hate but not saying specifically the um german word for swastika um i'm okay with that or if you say nazi symbols are paid such as the hawking cruise do you think that would be limiting that's what i've heard from some from some people in the group so i just want to make sure you're all on the same page i like that as i like using that and then the way that because it's in the intention of
208the policy was to call out the nazi swastika and we are showing that we're you know we are understanding the misappropriation there so i i appreciate that but i i obviously this is your purview yeah so what the rest of the board think uh calling the example such as the cruise with the intention that it's all nasty simple to pay or just keep it not as simple to pay threes can i i think it's just getting late can you succinctly rephrase for me what it is that we are attempting to decide right now yeah i'm suggesting to say that that language will say symbols of hate etc including the news nazi symbols of hate such as the hakken cruise or the confederate flag and this is this is the language that lou just recommended we
209amend to say including but not limited to is that right okay so i thought i i thought i heard consensus that including but not limited to was preferred over including and so now we're trying to then discuss if we should make this specific statement nazi symbols such as and then using not the swastika as the as the terminology okay right okay thank you for clarifying what we are discussing or what the specific thing we're needing to decide is yes events though i appreciate i i think i appreciate the topic and i appreciate the the conversation um i think i heard the superintendent say that that oda was still bringing in recommendations on the specific language here and wanted to delay and i think that to to get all that input i think that's wise because
210it's after nine o'clock and no good board work happens after nine o'clock at night it's my new saying uh but um there are multiple names that you i mean bent arm cross is another name for the swastika symbol um so there there's multiple things that you can call it i think we just need to take a step back and let the let staff take all this information in and process it and bring something back to the board that's aligned with what's going on with the state they're hearing from a lot of constituencies and so we can have all the information that's available rather than make a decision tonight we have time okay three i think that given that we know that language and recommendations are coming it makes a lot of sense to not do
211this work twice and make this decision now and then have to come back and make revisions to it in not that long from now uh so i would i think that that's wise and i would support vince uh vince's suggestion on that i also uh related to the amendment to that language i do have some concerns that um the reason that the word swastika was chosen is because it's identifiable these alternative names are not necessarily identifiable to people who do not actually use them use those symbols of hate and so the policy will speak if we change those that language to to those more specific terms it will speak to the individuals who want to use them it won't necessarily bear the same meaning to the average person who may not be familiar with that
212and i don't know that i like the idea of a policy that then potentially inspires people needing to go look up what all of these symbols of hate are in order to know if they are if if that's what they're seeing or that's what they're talking about i support not using the word swastika i just think that perhaps simply saying uh making that that perhaps the recommendation that we will get back we'll just simply say uh symbols associated with the nazis and we don't need to give examples or limit ourselves to it being only one most most commonly utilized one because they certainly had a plethora of ways to to uh indicate their their message um through pictograph and we would that let list danger is is real that we're not going to be able
213to capture everything so i like the waiting i like the including but not limited to and i like not subbing out language that we know we shouldn't use for a bunch of words that very likely many people will not know what they mean all right any further inputs see none uh melissa do you think you have enough direction at this moment i do thank you thank you all right thanks folks uh with that uh any further questions on the consolidated information there's none uh we're going to have a board member comments any board member comments or uh topics that our future agenda topics uh suggestions it's not a topic it is just a reminder for those that um have the chance to get the word out that the mid valley stem hub has uh educator
214grants available for innova uh uh innovation and uh they have not received sufficient applications to award those grants so if we could the application is not complicated i looked at it before our meeting this evening i mean not complicated in the sense that we're not talking about hours and hours of time to put something together um they're not huge pots of money but it's money sitting on the table that at the moment is going to go unawarded because they haven't received enough applications even to award the grants that they have so it would be great to get the word out to those who overlap with that content area that there is the potential for money for maybe a small project as as a board member for that group i appreciate you bringing that up thank
215you ryan oh and i want to move to strike vince's comment that no effective work happens after nine o'clock because if that's true this board is in serious trouble okay little effect no little good board work happens after 9 pm all right sarah i can't figure out taking my hand out and unmuting myself it's too much after nine o'clock um so i have um two things one is that november is native american heritage month and it's a fabulous time to especially focus on the um culture and true history of our native american citizens and students and staff and board members and acknowledge their contributions to our country's history and culture um of course we should not limit that celebration to one month but this is you know an acknowledgement that the special focus this month
216should be on on that celebration um my second point and i owe sammy some some writing on this um is that um we talked a lot about metrics today and how we're going to open schools and i just want to reinforce that it's our community that's going to determine how safe it is to open our schools um there's a lot of data that shows schools aren't super spreaders but there's also a lot of data that shows how safe it is to open schools is really impacted by the prevalence of the virus in the community so especially as we're moving our activities indoors and we're starting to think about holidays um really eliminating our contacts um wearing masks social justifying is really key if we want to help the superintendent in this very complex process of
217trying to get our kids into classrooms um you know i'm a parent of a child who has been really struggling in the last couple weeks with online classrooms so i feel the pain of all the the families out there who um are really ready to uh get some in-person education for their kids but it's everyone in the community that's going to decide if that's really possible so that's thanks thanks sarah well sarah basically said when i was gonna say which was happy native american heritage month i'd say native american and indigenous heritage month and um and since uh sarah talked about the celebratory part of it i would say like um maybe think of some amazing indigenous people throughout history or in current times that may be considered major contributors to how we live in
218society or who are some heroes you can think of um that have native american heritage to start learning about and so um just wanted to throw that out there too and sir so the other thing i was gonna say too was don't forget to wear your mask so mask up and socially distance and all the precautions um ryan and the whole team is working really hard on the school part for in person and i would hate to see all of that just slip away with one week worth of data um yeah so that was pretty much it so happy and happy new american and indigenous heritage month oh and one more thing about that i also wanted to celebrate all the staff and teachers and administrators that have native american heritage as well for indigenous
219murders thank you lewis say matthew jay i just want to do some thanking first to vince and therese for that all those extra hours and working on the the bargaining it's hard work and extra and it's it's it's work well done so thank you and ryan to your team uh thanks to sammy you're doing a great job in terms of getting this prepared and and pulling us together and so i appreciate you again working as a chair uh thank you to the board members who are are participating um as presenters at the uh uh coming saturday session the oregon school board uh the public should be proud that that uh our board members are um leaders in key areas and uh so i appreciate that very much and then finally thank you ryan for pushing
220forward on learning in person limited learning and um it's really hard on the public but you're doing a great job of trying to pull together all the pressures and the sensitivities uh it's not easy it's not uh it's very complex so thanks for your hard work you and your team thanks jake appreciate it and just wanted to remind everybody about the osba convention on saturday so if you have any issues logging in i would say try to log into your uh possible account that's what's generated for you and if you have any problems uh there is an email or maybe you can contact lindsay to get that set up because that's the only way for us to watch the videos and really excited to learn from ryan sabrina and joe but as a work on
221mental health and also from my colleagues on school boards i'm gonna give a plug for my uh panel uh we have a very intelligent panel on on the digital divide from all around oregon uh that's uh uh satya the chair of sam kaiser and i are hosting so feel free to join that one there are other ones at the same time they're all going to be recorded so you're not going to miss on any uh but it's really going to be exciting day on saturday and with that uh yeah thank you all for a very productive meeting any other comments for the good of the order okay no no thank you bye you're good okay awesome so see none we are adjourned have a good wonderful evening