School Board Meeting (9/24)

001the meeting is called to order for our meeting on september 24th 2020 and this is the corvallis school board meeting welcome everybody the first point on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance please join me if you are willing and able to the pledge of allegiance of the united states of america to the republic for which it stands one nation under under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all welcome everybody and thank you for coming uh i want to uh start with welcoming everyone who joined us uh with that i will head uh the team and the staff regarding the equity transformation plan i understand we have really exciting news and exciting work that we will be learning about so ryan yeah just to do a sound check can people hear me okay great

002um we're working off of an ipad on the other side of the room so i just wanted to make sure that was you're able to hear me okay um so this is um we've invited kristen miles to be back with us tonight um as we continue our osba ford development work and so when we met in retreat um back in august we spent some time talking about our equity work as well as community engagement and then we also had a conversation around policy development on a policy let me try to say that one more time a policy on policy development and so those three things are in some ways are intermeshed and interweaved as we think about our work in our school district and so what we've asked is for kristen and marcianne to come

003to three this meeting and two more meetings and to talk about our equity work and our equity transformation plan and the four pillars of that plan and with the intent that after we've spent time together working that at the third meeting will revise that equity plan that was adopted in my first year as superintendent so um sort of the the through line is a focus continue to focus on equity understanding how our work is impacted and supported through community engagement and finally the board work of revising policy and so that's our intention for the year and again it's an opportunity for kristin to come back and provide for development for marcianne to highlight the equity work that's happening throughout our school district and also tonight with the pillar focused on community and family engagement to

004hear from staff and students and family members who have been working with us along the way as part of our adult team our delta and safe so again thank you to all of you for being with us tonight and with that i'm going to turn it over to kristen and marcianne to to leave this uh salute this agenda topic and i'll just go ahead and put it directly over to marcianne because i think she's going to do her piece first and then we're and then and then i'll engage with you in a little bit so i'll go ahead and give her the floor oh thank you so much kristen thank you so much to the board and superintendent nas and i want to say a special thank you to malia and jermaine and emily i

005know um moja you as a student you've been busy all day and germainia as a teacher been busy all day as well so thank you for being here in this uh 12th hour of the day so um we are just very excited to be able to connect with all of you today and just kind of give you um try to make as well as we can in a virtual setting try to make our equity work as visible as possible and so today we wanted to and i know that the board in the board packet you had um some information about our equity transformational plan and i'm hoping that lindsay could just show us the quick visual um just for you to see the visual that we're going to be working off of today we'll probably

006just show that for about a minute so you can take a look um but what lindsay is going to be popping up here in just a second is our equity transformational plan which is made up of four pillars students at the center culturally relevant leading learning teaching and teaching practices equity leadership development as well as family and community engagement empowerment so there we go thank you thank you lindsay and so this equity transformational plan has really been our navigational tool that we've used since we started our since we really accelerated our racial equity work and it's really a tool that we have used to interrupt systems practices and policies that have been designed for those with privilege and access and so this equity transformation plan template serves as our north star in guiding and transforming

007our racial equity work so we'll come back to this visual in just a second so lindsay can go ahead and just take that down and we'll bring i promise we'll bring it back okay it and it's our deep belief as a system that intentional and racially conscious actions in each one of those areas are vital to the transformation of our system in our district and so our hope for tonight is to give you a 30 000 level view of our racial equity work and um and then as superintendent nas mentioned we will be coming back throughout the year and providing updates on our equity transformational plan in our strategic objectives goals actions informative outcomes so um today again it's just more of a of a 30 000 foot view and we will definitely dig deeper

008as the year goes on and with that i'm just completely honored and humbled um that i'm here today with uh in the in the virtual presence of these amazing community members we've got emily barton um so emily's there up in the corner and emily um i am just so um deeply honored that you're part of our delta our delta is our district equity leadership team advisory group and emily is one of five delta leaders and uh she's also a parent and community member so she's going to have a chance to share and just here in a few minutes and then we have jermaine joseph hayes who's a one of our safe coaches so students advocating for equity she's one of our coaches she's also a high school teacher and a parent of two uh beautiful

009children in the corvallis school district and then we have malia de tarchang who's a safe student a safe student leader or yeah safe student leader delta student leader try saying that five times fast and she's also high school extraordinaire student and we're just so proud to have the three of you with us today um we talked at our previous uh retreat about the importance of the counter story and the importance of the multiple perspectives so i'm hoping today that you have an opportunity to not only understand a little bit about the context of our equity transformation plan but really hear stories and narratives of uh folks in our community um who's it whose it's positively impacting um i also wanted to share that we know that we have made excuse me tremendous strides in our

010in our school system in terms of really moving and accelerating our racial equity work but i have to also say that we have a long way to go and so um we realize that it's going to take time it's going to take uh hard work but i feel like we have a strong we have a strong system and we also have the capacity and the perseverance and the vulnerability and the desire and the willingness to really do to really work hard to address interrupt as well as transform our system that um that really will address the racial disparities and inequalities that persist in our schools so at this point i was hoping that we could um have each one of our members share a few words and i think since uh students at the center

011is really the focus of our work i was hoping we can start with malia somalia you're up hello thank you marcianne uh and thank you to the school board for this opportunity to join you tonight um my name is malia dattarchung i use she her or they them pronouns as marcian said i am a student in my senior year at chs and i'm also a member of the district safe team students advocating for equity along with that i am an equity on the equity leadership team for delta and then in our larger community i volunteer for the corvallis community doula project which is a local non-profit reproductive organization and i am so honored and thrilled to have been invited to join you tonight to share what changes i've seen in our district community to advance

012racial equity and so i have two that feel especially important to me tonight first we are in the process of renaming our schools formerly known as jefferson hoover and wilson elementary schools they are now called husky jaguar and wildcat elementary we did this because we learned as a community that these presidential names are embedded in histories of racial violence and we don't yet agree on what we should call our schools in the long term but we know that we can't keep walking into that racist history every time we walk into our schools and the second piece is i am so inspired by the work of the district equity team and its effort to develop a district-wide curriculum that addresses systemic racism this curriculum holds the promise of creating greater safety and understanding for diverse identities

013and experiences within our community now both of these initiatives make public a set of values we aspire to in our community and this is so powerful and important however changing names and developing curriculum will not in themselves eradicate inequities and i attended the board meeting in early august when the issue of name changes was discussed and i heard the conversation and frankly i also heard some disagreements and friction as our community struggled with our different perspectives not everyone wanted the same thing um and changing the names of these schools did not necessarily change minds nevertheless the decision to go forward with the name changes was an important and public statement of our values of inclusion and diversity the renaming creates a new identity and welcome for more of us who are here it also might

014just offer a welcome for those who have not yet come and it is crucial for our schools to prepare a place for all now the deeper work of changing our institutions is still to be done and that kind of meaningful change takes time centuries even many generations we are not the first to tackle issues of racial inequity and nor are we alone only two hours away in portland oregon portland oregon is the center of the black lives matter movement perhaps the most successful and sustained protest removal movement against racial injustice of my generation this protest is a loud conversation it's messy it's often painful but we need to do it and i believe both renaming our schools and developing equity lessons have first and foremost created platforms for conversation and this is a powerful first

015step in advancing racial equity so i want to close with a student-led project this past spring the safe team created a fantastic shout out of thanks video and it thanks teachers and administrators and this video is a great way to show how students are experiencing these district efforts that we are talking about tonight i'm so proud of this district for giving space to the voices of students faculty staff administrators and community members as we confront our challenges i hope we will keep coming back to the conversation conversation table we must because change is coming and we are a generation that has tenacity energy integrity and we have compassion we need to dig keep digging deeper into these commitments and this right here is one of our conversation tables so i want to thank you for

016having me tonight thank you appreciate it i wish we could all give you a standing ovation malia you give me hope you give us hope and you're our inspiration thank you so much thank you so much um so next our next pillar is uh culturally relevant leading and learning and teaching practices and i'd like to hand it over to jermaine hello so um thanks for the time um hi malia seeing her in the space makes me miss all of my safe students so much because um we're so apart in this new virtual space um so um as marcian mentioned a little bit earlier um i do wear i guess three relevant hacks to this conversation i am um a mentor for the safe team at corvallis high school and this is my third year of

017doing that this is actually my fourth year in the district i'm also a mom my daughters attend garfield elementary school and i'm also a teacher so usually i teach at corvallis high school and this year i'm working with corvallis online so i guess the hat i'm going to wear since malia already spoke about safe um i'll wear the teacher hat and just share a little bit about some of the positive things i've seen happen with teachers at corvallis high school primarily but also across the district so i don't know if the board is aware of this but over the summer over 70 teachers from across the district took part in a racial equity book study and i have to give major kudos to eisley dumble who is the racial equity tosa that stands for teacher

018on special assignment at sheldon middle school so she conceived the book study and she led it and we actually didn't even expect that we would have maybe more over 20 teachers but i think the events of the past few months has seemed to ignite something in many teachers who were able to tune out primarily white teachers because as a black woman i i cannot tune out right and i think anybody any person of color would probably say the same thing so out of this book club what i have seen is that we are having conversations that have not happened before hard honest real conversations about the inequities that we see in the classroom every day and people have shared a lot of personal experiences that they've had in the district two of the major things

019that i feel have come out of the book study is that um teacher-led initiatives two major ones we at corvallis high school and also at crescent valley um met with our administrators and said listen the creation of this racial equity tosa position at sheldon has done a great deal to shift the culture in that school we would love to have one at covales high school we would love to have one actually at every school so out of this book study this teacher-led initiative resulted in two racial equity ptosis being created at both of our um at two of our high schools at crescent valley and at corvallis high school not only that the racial equity team that had fallen dormant if you will at corvallis high school for i'm not sure what the reasons were

020has now been re-energized and um we are working we have um several staff and um certified and classified staff who are part of the team and we are starting to have a lot of the difficult conversations that need to be have had in all of our buildings about racial justice racial inequities so i feel like that keeps me hopeful that they can be some meaningful change that can take place in terms of culturally relevant teaching the reason why i led my little statement with the book study is because i personally feel as though as a teacher my teaching cannot be culturally responsive if i have an inability to talk about race in real terms so i feel like the racial awareness needs to be there first before you can even get into a conversation about

021our teachers in the buildings being culturally responsive so i'm very encouraged by um these two things i see room for growth and one area that really concerns me i know malia mentioned the racial equity lessons which i'm really looking forward to being part of this process of developing these lessons um my daughters go to garfield elementary so i know as a parent when i receive their schedule for virtual learning i was quite pleased to see that there's a dedicated time every day for equity learning great i wonder is that the same at every school will that be the same at every school or are some schools i'm going to sort of opt out of this work that needs to be done so i guess i would say that's an area of concern because while i

022think it's great a lot of these changes are teacher-led we can get these efforts going but for sustained change and to have a long-lasting impact the changes need to be systemic and that's why we need to have the support of our administrators and also the school board as well so um i'll leave it there for now i know it'll be a little q a afterwards um but thank you for listening this is not an exhaustive list um by any means of things that are happening these are just the things that stand out in my mind as being meaningful in the time that i've been a teacher in the district so thanks so much jermaine thank you so much and thank you for speaking about your experiences with the book club and just the importance of

023really leaning in and having courageous conversations and really building that language so thank you so much i appreciate you so much so next we have emily barton so she's going to be talking about which is partly the rest of our time with the board around family and community engagement and empowerment so emily hello it's nice to see you all thank you marcianne for introducing me and for inviting me to be part of this team i'm honored malia and jermaine are amazing women and i'm pleased to be in their company i thought a lot about what i wanted to share tonight i have many many thoughts and i'll try to be concise um first of all i'll share a little bit about myself um i've lived in corvallis since 2007 i raised my children here my

024children have graduated from the corvallis school district and they're both in college they attended linus pauling corvallis high school in college hill and some of the other hats i wear in the community uh i am the development director at community outreach previously worked at the boys and girls club of corvallis um i also uh just joined the corvallis public schools foundation so i'm really pleased to um represent the delta there and i also am part of the school district's bond committee advisory um and all that work was really um all of those doors have opened to me because of the opportunities i've had to develop my leadership skills in the delta um so i wanted to share a little bit about the delta work itself it's really a a great way to that the school

025district has created um for the district leaders to commune with the parents and the students and to practice uh the racial equity protocol that we've learned in beyond diversity there's so many aspects to that training and getting practice in it is pretty tough because it takes a lot of courage it takes a lot of vulnerability um and to have a safe space where we can all engage in that has been very meaningful to me and it has been very meaningful for me to see how deeply the school district leaders engage with the protocol um i know it's hard to hear us talk about all the experiences that our children have had in the district many of them are really heartbreaking um and i think as humans the temptation is to just fix it you know

026just put something nice on there or say let people know you know what's what's coming up or what's taking place um but one of the uh tenants of the beyond diversity protocol is that we accept non-closure and that's a hard one it's one of the hardest and what i see um in the district leaders is that um they've learned to listen and uh that is the first step you know that is the first step of making all of this positive change and when i hear you know malia talk about the future it gets me excited and when i hear germaine and her work as a teacher it gets me excited and when i come to the board the school board and i see um you know advocates like marcianne and kristen miles doing the work

027here i'm really excited and i i'm excited about the change of the names in the school district as well or the the buildings um the elementary buildings um so i i wanted to give just a brief update also about what the delta leaders have been up to um and what our plans are like for the coming school year uh we all came together like marcianne said and we had a a get-together to talk about what we're gonna do in the next year and i think because we've had such transformative experiences on delta um we want to open that experience to more parents and we want to bring in more perspectives so one of the areas we've decided to focus on is recruitment so we all worked together to create a letter that's going to be

028translated into multiple languages so that we can bring more parents into the delta and they can learn to advocate for their students in a way that will make positive change happen i know that it's it can feel like it can feel as apparent like there's a big system and you're just one little tiny knock on the door and that doesn't always feel like progress so when you're given tools and when i'm given tools and when i'm given you know the opportunity to speak and the opportunity to shape the future it feels like the system is truly being dismantled and that it is being rebuilt in the ways that will support all students including the students who are a black indigenous and students of color so i just want to thank the district and i want

029to thank the school board for supporting this racial equity work and for continuing to support it in the future it's very important relevant and i think that especially in this time during the pandemic and during all of the social and racial upheaval it's never been more clear that a trauma affects learning and b that uh communities of color suffer disproportionately um from the situations that are arising in our society um from the inequities that are in our society um so i think that you know taking that into um putting that at the forefront of our um transformation of the transformation that the school is undergoing because of the pandemic i think that that gives me hope that when we rebuild the systems that they will be created for everyone emily thank you so much wow

030your words malia's words jermaine's words are just so impactful and so powerful and i appreciate that in you know 30 minutes into this our school board that you have all engaged in practice and internalized the protocol you've spoken your truth you've uh you've used the agreements you've engaged to stand and deepen conversations about race and you've also spoken from your narrative your personal stories i thank you so much for sharing a piece of your heart with all of us the last pillar that i'll just briefly talk about is equity leadership development and i think you've seen it in you've heard it in the last 20 minutes 30 minutes you've heard jermaine you've heard millie and you've heard emily really share and and share their leadership capacity as staff community and students of color in our

031system and so i just could not be more proud and honored to be with all of you and be doing this work alongside you our equity leadership development we could go on forever talking about what is what strategies are part of that pillar but couple of things that i just want to mention and what you've seen today is the importance of uh engaging in in uh racially conscious conversations about race right to not be afraid to lean in and to use a protocol and one of the things that we've worked really hard as a system is to not allow to opt out of the protocol right because as we've as we know sometimes without a protocol without agreements and conditions it's really easy to detour and to talk about other things and so we have

032really encouraged and our administrators and our teachers and our staff to really engage using the protocol because with the protocol then you can have interracial and interracial conversations about race and we've also the equity leadership development piece i one of the things that i've noticed it's so much about listening and it's listening to understand not listening to respond and so [Music] allowing ourselves that opportunity to give each other feedback to be able to to listen and understand somebody else's lived experience is a way of transforming our systems and so i just want to thank again malia and jermaine and emily for being here tonight and for sharing a bit of your story and i look forward to um engaging in the pillar which we'll be talking about more today which is the family engagement empowerment

033pillar so from there i'll hand it over to kristin thank you um i wish we had a lot of time tonight because i would ask if you had any questions i would ask you to reflect on this for a minute but um but what i would love to do is hopefully capture some of that in this next piece because one of the things that marcianna and i have talked about and i know you know this really well is that none of these things stands as a silo alone equity work is not divorced from community engagement those are really those are really interlocked you can't take one of these pieces and set it aside and say okay we've done that we're going to move on to this just like as we've talked about in the past

034equity work is not a training it's not a program if you haven't embedded it in all layers of what you do not really doing it and i know that that this group knows that and believes that um so i'm wondering if we could bring up that slide that had the pillars again with the questions on it and lindsay if you don't have that immediately available i do and i can share my screen awesome thank you so now that you've heard some about the four pillars and and we can take these um we can take these in any order i i might like to ask your your guests tonight to actually weigh in on those on the those bottom questions first um because we've looked at last year we looked at and you developed questions that

035you wanted to answer as part of the community engagement part of this and i want you to consider those questions through the lens of these four pillars having heard from students staff and parents tonight what is the board's role in engaging the community and particularly through students at the center equity leadership development culturally relevant leading and learning and then obviously we're talking about family and community engagement you wanted to ask yourselves what modalities can and should the board use to engage the public you wanted to discuss what opportunities currently exist to engage with the board and one thing i added because i've heard you talk about this a lot is um and it's just been bits and and and just you know little sentences here and there but i have heard you describe yourselves as

036inaccessible and i want i'm gonna ask you to to really define what you mean by that because as as a listener i could interpret that as there aren't sufficient modalities that there are systems in place that keep you inaccessible as a technical thing from the public or are you describing um how you come across are you describing the perception that the community has of you is you know is there some perception there that you are intimidating um i'm asking these questions i'm not saying these are the things this could be a both and it could be either or but i but i'm gonna ask you to have that conversation but i would also like to ask your guests and and i think it would maybe be helpful to have them reflect on this first and

037i will just i'm not going to ask anybody specifically um any any one of them can answer any of these so just weigh in as you as you see fit what opportunities do you know of that currently exist to engage with the board or that do you believe are there how accessible are these opportunities how accessible is the board and in your opinion what modalities can and should the board use to engage the community so i'll just i'll just put those there and i know that emily malia and and jermaine i believe have seen these before now so we're not just you know throwing them up on the screen but we like to we like to be prepared um so i'll just ask any of you to weigh in on any of those if you

038wouldn't mind i can start thank you um so i am just going to talk about my experiences um i feel terrified speaking to a board um as a community member and i think the reason that is is because um the structure i i'm gonna say like the design the design of a board meeting it feels like a trial and um i'm the defendant in some way or um you know i'm speaking to power in some way and that my engagement with that power is very limited um and so that's that's one experience that i've had um and i'm especially if that board um is a board that's primarily white males of a certain age i know that's a hard thing to hear and it isn't that i don't have many white males in my life

039of a certain age that i adore because i do but my experiences with white males of a certain age is that um the things that i say are frequently dismissed so that makes me fearful um and you know i have i have different experiences with white women as well um and those can be really um like kind of more passive aggressive type um behavior so i have so i guess walking into a room uh where i feel like i'm speaking to power and i see the representation of people in my history that have um treated me poorly um that's really hard and i'm gonna just like take a couple seconds to contrast an experience i had when i was a student when um the supreme court of oregon's held a session at oregon state university

040campus and after the session there was a banquet where we sat students sat with supreme court justices and supreme court lawyers and ate together and had conversations um and as we asked questions um there were limits on what we could ask but we asked questions and i came away from that with a completely different experience um it was really beautiful thank you thank you for sharing that um i want to ask one follow-up question on that is it a different experience for you in in a virtual setting than it is in an in-person setting to speak to the board i i would say yes um because the structure of the room is my home and i can see you know it i i get to take that back it really makes a difference whether or

041not i'm seeing friendly faces um because i i know that i can see myself represented on the school board i know that there are uh you know people who understand my experiences on the school board and i'm speaking to the school board in the presence of people who have been part of my supportive community um so all of those things make a difference i think the virtual setting um can affect the design issue um but not necessarily the representation issue thank you thank you very much jermaine malia would you like to add again no pressure just wanting to open it up no okay thank you um i would say right now especially when we're all in such a virtual and digital world um our schools are our community and and that's really the way we

042need to think and it is so important that we think in that way we have parents handing out books we have teachers redefining curriculum and figuring out how to show up in these virtual spaces spaces and that is just incredible it's amazing truly and it isn't just about keeping school going it's about keeping our community strong through this time and the more the board can understand the identity of our schools as located in community i believe the stronger we will be as a community coming out of this really challenging time and when thinking about equity and access to technology it would be wonderful to have more analog ways for community members to engage in showing up and i think in many ways it depends on what the board is engaging with the community about but

043to me as a student the visual of seeing faculty handing out books seeing the streets crowded with our community for graduation those are the places where i'm inspired and it's powerful to see that um and so but until we can have kind of a common meeting place and even perhaps when we do have a common meeting place again we need to go into our community in these ways and we need to go into all parts of our community thank you thank you very much for sharing that jeremy um well you know actually it's funny i think emily and malia actually covered a lot of what i i would want to say um i definitely agree um i know we're in a virtual space right now but there there's something about the typical school board meet

044and set up that is just i think inherently intimidating to anybody coming in right because they're sort of away and separate and there's a sort of like a power dynamic in play so i almost wonder whenever that's a possibility again if maybe just reconfiguring the room um could be an option of sorts i'm thinking more of like a community circle where um there's not this sort of physical separation of like the board and then anybody who like comes to speak um but again who knows when that's going to be a thing right um as far as engagement um i know that there's some engagement happening um via social media i have like a love hate kind of relationship as soon as i get on there and go to like the various like corvallis groups and

045and i'm like i don't want to see it because you know the environment right now is so polarized um but i mean i have seen a couple board members sort of chime for example um somebody had posted they wanted to have more information about um the hybrid model or covales online and um some of the points that were being made were not were baseless to be fair um and this board member directed um the individual to a group that had been formed on facebook where they could find information about the issue so i know facebook can be a bit of a minefield sometimes like venturing into that space for anyone but the reality is a lot of community members who may not be able to send an email or feel comfortable sending an email are

046on the um or on facebook so i guess that's one thing that i saw that i thought was encouraging because um that person was able to join this group and and get the information that they needed so i don't know how much of that is being done but i just think it's one of the modalities that um probably needs to be explored and perhaps expanded i think a lot of more people could have access in that way because the reality is a lot of people are not going to send an email um you think about access and privilege there's um certain parents that would be the ones emailing and student parents that would feel like they don't have a voice they don't have a seat at the table so that's what i was kind of

047going to add but i think all the points for you so far um are grape ones that i agree with thank you anything else on any of these questions that the three of you would like to add okay um so just in the interest of being able to see everybody at once um let's take the slide down for now i can read the questions out i've got them in front of me um and you and you've seen them that's better i love looking at you know something projected but it's nice to be able to see everybody so i'm just gonna i'm gonna open this up to the board to reflect on what you've heard from from your guests tonight from your community members and then the questions that you wanted to answer and the questions

048that that they just answered for you from their perspective and i'm gonna repeat those to you and we can always go back to them um what is the board's role in engaging the community what modalities can and should the board use to engage the public what opportunities currently exist to engage with the board and what does the board mean when it describes itself as inaccessible so those questions are before you and you have community members here what are your thoughts right now let me ask you that well if no one's going to go then i'm going to go because i have lots of thoughts so i haven't been looking at zoom i've been looking at my notes because i've been writing the whole time i just want to say thank you for me this is

049very actualizing because i've i've been on the board since 2013 we've had deltas for years now and one of the things that i've always yearned for in years past is to hear more about our equity work now the work that you three are doing and i just it's been so wonderful to hear all the great progress that's happened thank you so much for all the great work that you've done um it's very exciting um my goodness let's go to inaccessible because i think we heard that really well emily i think you you articulated it so well how we're inaccessible how just the way a school board functions the way the room is configured the way we we process our work is all couched in the dominant culture it's ratified by the dominant culture it is

050designed to reinforce the dominant culture and i just i really appreciated your comments it's something that i have felt for a long time it's something that i've wanted to deconstruct but it's so hard one of the things another thing that one of the threads that i heard was um the inertia of the system i think was malia that when you first started talking you were talking about how big the system is and how hard it is to create change and um that's hard even when you're sitting at the top of the system as well it's a big ship to turn and uh it's been doing this for what seven years now so i'm i really appreciate that it does feel big and accessible and hard to turn um but being inaccessible another thing that that

051really hit me malia is you said this phrase we need to go into our communities in that way and you i really appreciated the idea of going into the community and it's something that this board has not done well we've tried we've tried to have our board meetings at elementary schools but we haven't really gone into the communities we haven't gone uh out of our comfort zone and i think that that's what you were speaking to and that really resonated with me um a couple times there was a couple mentions of meals and i was reminded of something so my my kids i still have a kid at lincoln elementary school in lincoln elementary school when we were still able to all be there we have an event every year called posada which is a

052big loud noisy boisterous meal and there's pinatas and kids running everywhere and parents everywhere and the room is hot and it's just great fun and everybody gets to be together and as a parent lincoln parent and as a school board member i get to have very close contact with with not the available that you're serving is critical for us in um community engagement for this board and i think that's where where we can grow the most and then i'll give some time to my colleagues thank you all right kristen i'm going to help you out we have two hands up to reese first and then lou thank you thanks sammy uh well i think um i first would just really like to say how much i appreciate hearing um the the observations of those who

053are not um on the board around what the experience of being in the presence of the board is like um the especially uh the references to the space itself like not just thinking about the board as an entity but also how we physically lay ourselves out and whether that that speaks to approachability or not um there were many things that were said i i'm not gonna comment on everything that um that sparked an idea or a response from me because there are seven of us and three hours uh so um but i i think i will just say that um many of the things that were hit on um for me speak to uh the various barriers around the idea of accessibility identity categories that are are relevant um process and procedure as an element

054and then of course and then i already mentioned the physical the physicality of the way in which we we present ourselves um so i think that each one of those uh there's intersections among those and they we need to explore the intersections and also each of those individually are worthy and important for us to talk about like whether or not um there are community members not whether but which community members cannot be in the presence of the board and be in the presence of someone that is like them that's a huge that's a huge barrier and i i think about that for my own self because i do represent many categories in our community that are important in education first generation college students um and an educated woman and thinking about gender gender gaps but

055i'm also a white middle-class parent and so in that way i i wrestle often within myself about what place i have on the board and if i really um if i am the most able to represent uh in our community obviously there are white middle class parents out there but we are not exactly underrepresented and so um i i wonder often about the questions that board members wrestle with themselves about how they um my colleagues i wonder i wonder this for myself too how did we decide uh how did we come to the place of feeling that this was the right place for us to step in and serve our communities and what are the criteria that we wrestle with sort with or think through about the point at which it is time for us

056to step aside and leave room for other people to serve and i i feel like one of the one of the things that i'm the most well curious about for my within my colleagues and past people who have served in the board as well as what was the point at which it became clear to you that you shouldn't do that and should we maybe be stepping aside before it feels clear to us uh that we should take that step when there still feels when it still feels like we are letting go of something rather than setting aside something that we've outgrown and so i don't know these are just things i think about in terms of accessibility that you know becoming comfortable settling in and feeling a sense of um a right to be there

057rather than an invitation from the community to be there are are all kinds of things that are are running through my mind right now um i hope that we will set aside time in the in the very near future um to talk about things like how our board meetings are set up and whether the pers who are the procedures there to serve um and uh what room is there to change and break away from things that we are doing just because we've always done it that way as opposed to because it is in the best interest of our community members to do it that way so um i appreciate the comments i'm there are many other things that i'm thinking of but i'm gonna set them aside because i i have confidence my colleagues will

058also bring them up and they won't go miss this evening um and if they do then that's okay they can they can surface at another time but just a lot of gratitude right now for um the candor that was presented this evening in in talking about uh something and i i hope i hope that if we were meeting in person you still would have felt you could say those things but if there's any possibility that that is not the case then uh let's call that a win for zoom because we need to hear those things and maybe the virtual format might create a space for people to say things that they they might not be able to do in another way so thank you very much and i will um mute myself now thank you

059and thank you sami for reminding me that you guys do the hand raised thing so i'm looking at that now and i just want to say if there are things that don't get to get said tonight don't worry we have more sessions write them down bring them with you next time um ryan i want to do a time check how long do we have for this conversation we have like we have like five we have one yeah okay all right um i am taking notes on what you're saying also and we can prep for next time too um lou please hey everyone um i did really want to say thank you so much for bringing your voices into this conversation and i'm saying a lot of things that needed to be said um i'm not

060going to go on too long but thinking about our role in representing community and listening to community i think is like one of the things that's always on my mind is how do we represent the community in a way that's equitable because we are in a predominantly white um and so making sure that the voices that aren't represented get heard is super important and um in helping the community understand that those voices are silenced by sheer numbers of the community and so i think that that's really important to think about and i have a feeling that we did it did that a little bit of justice with the recent decisions lately on the school names um and making sure that we helped amplify those voices um in thinking about the modalities one of the things

061that i do like about zoom is that more community have been able to attend meetings because if you think of just the size of the meeting room is not that big and so i remember that one meeting i think was for school boundary conversation was so packed like super packed and i was like that wasn't even a ton of people and it was like overcrowded and people were in the hallway and so thinking about the size of the room and the limitations around that one of the things i noticed even when i was um i guess interviewing for this position with the board was the feeling of having that barrier of the tables in between us is very apparent of that that is a literal barrier between the community and the board and it's designed

062so we can see everybody and they can see us i understand the design around it but i'm wondering how we can reconfigure that in person i really like the um i can't was i i was that you jermaine that brought up the circle um and i do a lot of work in the community that's very community based in used circles a lot and most things that i do and so that really resonated with me is helping us understand how that brings people together and it's used in lots of different cultures around the world too as a way to communicate in a more equitable way and so people are heard and feel like they're not their voices aren't being overshadowed because of power dynamics one of the things i like to think about too um in

063changing systems and knowing that it's a steep slope but looking at the places that we can change and not looking at them as like unattainable and so thinking about stuff is as um tangible as changing a meeting room structure or dynamics that way um is something that stands out to me and i'm always asking like is this where is this in our policies where is it in the governing documents i feel like there's a lot of things where we can just be like yeah this doesn't make sense so we can change it instead of just doing what's always been done and i really like to think of new possibilities that's really exciting to me um and engaging the community one of the things too um about getting out into the communities like besides like bringing

064up the um examples from helping pass things out and being at graduations and commenting on social media pages um i was thinking about um what it meant what it must have meant for people that knew our roles i didn't think about that until um i seen sammy at one of the um the search efforts that was happening recently in town and when i seen him there and thought about like our roles on the board like i was going just as because i i like to help the community and that's just something i do and that's something that's really important to me um with some other community work that i do but it kind of hit me when i seen sammy there and i was reminded like hey we're also school board members and i wonder

065what that meant to those families and i don't know who else helped with that and i'm not trying to say nobody else did or didn't help pass out fires but that's who i did see that one day that i was able to go down um and so i'm thinking about community engagement in those ways too or just knowing about like the volunteering that has happened with the like wildfire reliefs in the community and some other things where we're engaged with the community and things that are um really important and impacting people's lives and it's because we care about community i'm not saying that people that don't do those things don't care um but i'm just trying to point out like i'm sure people will notice that because if they know we're on the school board

066they see us there and they're like oh hey that's person's on the school board that's cool they're here and um i know that happens in other settings as well so just a couple things that are off the top and i will meet now but thanks again y'all for bringing your voices in okay i know we're at time um sarah has her hand up do we have time for one more just like a two minute okay thank you sarah thanks i won't say much because a lot of it's been covered but um yeah i think about the discussions we've had around frustrations with um yeah there are a lot of these things that all mesh together but people understanding our roles and what we can and can't do and how do we communicate things like you

067know can we deal with complaints do we deal with process things in the school where does that go and i feel like a lot of times when people think oh i have a problem i'm going to reach out to the school board and they're reaching out for something that we can't really deal with and so then we're putting up i mean it can't change that complaints have to go through a certain process but we do end up putting up another wall saying oh we don't do that you have to go over there um which i think is this perception it's this it just moves us move farther and farther away from the community and and what they may need from the school district or from or from their individual schools um so i think those

068sort of things are important for us to sort of figure out how to clarify the board's role and to clarify when when we can help and um and how to get in contact with us in in ways that aren't you know sitting up at a table i mean it's i was intimidated the first time i had to go sit behind that table um and i'm certainly not somebody who's underrepresented in the world um so there's you know i think a lot of the structures we have um but i think there are things we can change that we just do because that's always how we've done that and that we need to look at those structures and see what we can change and then we need to be better at explaining our role and and when

069we can step in so that we don't just create this feeling of distance um because it's just not a a good understanding of who we are um and i do think being present in the community is really important i don't always know if people know that i'm a school board member um my daughter is more than happy to point it out to them if they but um yeah i think being out in the community is really important and i think but i think i also feel like we have bubbles um right now our bubbles are even smaller because we used to have a lot of conversations like at school pick up with parents at garfield and would hear about things um and concerns and just sort of get a pulse for what was going on

070or it you know sporting events or things like that and without those things going on we have less opportunity to to be out where we can um be you know sort of feeling the pulse of what people are feeling and so i think especially the longer this goes on it really needs to be an effort made to figure out a way to feel that understanding of how people are feeling about schools and what's going on outside of our bubbles because um the bubbles have gotten kind of impenetrable um as we've all hungered down so thank you for just a moment and just uh highlight um one of the things that malia said was related to community and um that really stood out to me because i've been looking forward to this presentation tonight um because

071i get to see malia i get to see jermaine i get to see emily people that i feel like i've spent time with when we were able to be in person and have missed out on those relationships and so um as she was talking about that um as emilia was talking about that i was like yeah this that's that's really is what community is is is you know that that excitement to be able to be with one another um and even when you're having um even when you're in a boardroom so how do we make um make this space feel more like that i think it's a really good challenge for for the board as we move through this time and we move towards um coming back together at some point how do we create

072that um in this space so thank you for um both to marcy anne and to kristen for facilitating and for jermaine to jermaine and malia and emily for being with us tonight and i just have to say how nice it is to to spend some time with you so kristin are you gonna um close this out yeah so for for this part of it and i assume the rest of your agenda has nothing to do with the promise scholarship program is that correct yeah i'm like do you want me to stay here um so i've taken notes um under the questions that you have asked yourself about what you are saying about what your your community is saying your community representatives tonight and my plea would be to bring those back next time and start

073really um looking at what isn't answered yet looking at what you have said and by the end of this we're going to have some concrete plans like what can you do and you've already started talking about some of those things but we'll bring this back next time so again if you had thoughts tonight write them down bring them back we don't want to lose those and um and i'll see you next time thank you kristin really appreciate it i want to really highlight how wonderful this conversation was it's built on honesty and for our board members in a disposition of power to really take the listening seat and we listen as much as we can and we really appreciate that opportunity and this structure and there are so many things we need to change system

074exchanges policies and all of it should be grounded by listening and lifting every voice thank you so much all for this really fruitful conversation and again this is one of many and we will continue this commitment thank you thank you all with that uh i want to say the next item on the agenda is the bond update and yeah you have a wonderful evening uh everybody again malia jermaine and emily thank you for the opportunity have a good evening thank you have a good evening take care and thank you marcian and uh kristen for leading this conversation appreciate it so next item on the agenda is the bond update and we received a report from the bond team and we would like to ask them if you have a presentation or would you like us

075to start with questions we do have a powerpoint presentation we'd like to show you of uh all the the good progress that's been happening over the summer and if you're ready we are ready whenever you're ready and one thing i would like to say is that dale has been able to join our delta for several meetings last year and so not only is he helping to manage and oversee our bond but he's also been participating in our delta and i'm grateful for that opportunity it's eye-opening for me believe me all right um bond updates um slide please garfield um some of you folks got to tour that on monday we had an administration tour and you'll see some pictures of that here in a moment but lots of progress has been made in the back

076area we we have what we call modular city 11 modulars out there are almost ready for students to return the furniture is being installed with social distancing in mind and all of those important factors the west wing has been the focus for the classrooms this year and it's great to see nice white painted walls and new ceilings going in in those spaces and as well as new mechanical equipment phase two um is the new addition and we're almost ready to receive permits they've been working hard on that for months um and we think we're almost past those hurdles uh imminently um this the smoke and fire did have an effect on us a lot of the trades people that worked on the projects were affected they either had to evacuate some even lost homes um

077and then one of our critical path items on schedule is the completion of the power service to garfield pacific power has been very busy up in the santiam canyon restoring power and that does take priority we are working with them to determine when they can get back to garfield to turn on the power for our project there so we're working working on developing the timelines with a bit of a wild card at the moment slide i keep this slide in here and you've seen it before but that blue area on the right is i'm using my mouse that doesn't quite work the blue area on the right is the new addition and the picture on the left is inside the new edition on our tour from monday this is the new admin area basically and

078slide please and in the upper left you see a close-up of claudia and lee from bar field getting a tour that's kim showing them an aspect of the wall framing so the big the big picture is the is probably the most exciting aspect in this slideshow and that's the development of the new south parking lot um what you see there is the curbs almost done the crew in the background is laying the raised crosswalk which is kind of a speed table to slow down traffic so that the children can walk across this driveway um you know safely there's also your the picture is taken from basically a 10 to 12 foot wide walkway that goes across the front of the entire school kind of a transit mall if you will for pedestrians and bikes to

079to get in and out safely slide on the left you'll see the the west wing that's the corridor it used to be dark had dark paneling on it it had a low ceiling um the new work enabled us to replace that duct work and raise things up and the ceiling will be about a foot higher than it was it won't feel nearly as claustrophobic and it'll be far brighter you'll notice the concrete slab that they're standing on in next year's work that will be polished concrete for this school year it will be just a slap just concrete it'll be clean and shiny but it'll just be concrete um mechanical rooms always interesting to contractor types like me um hot water heaters on the left and then the right picture is the two new boilers all

080highly efficient um lower right corner you can see the the tour group entering the building but i show that picture because it also shows a roofer up there doing his work slide and here's an exciting slide that i don't think you folks have seen before this is the color selections for garfield some of which are already being installed i'll let you absorb that one for a moment all right slide lincoln um first the first the bullets utility work on viewmod is complete and that road is repaved um over the over the trenches that we've created uh structural steel is going up you'll see that in a moment the county health clinic steel is up and the wood framing is starting soon they're gonna pour a slab i think it's on saturday if i recall for

081the health clinic that's about four thousand feet square feet by the way which is about twice as big as it was before um this job like the others lot in this case lost about a week and a half to the smoking fires also the wind shut down the crane they can't do steel erection in high wind conditions oh and i also remember hearing about a lightning shutdown for the same reason so slide please and here's here's where the really exciting shots occur the left does show a column i'm going up during the you know the smoke osha guidelines really prohibited crews from working in the really bad conditions this one that one was probably borderline or on the way on the way out um so that did have an effect on the right you'll see

082in the foreground the plumbing for the new bigger bathroom set near the gym in the music room area um and then in the background is the new building that's the uh the west wing slide please these shots show just some technical aspects of the steel erection on the left if you look really close you'll see some yellow tape and you'll see cables crisscrossing again that's kind of a construction interest that i thought i'd share the steel erection company has to rack and align the building very carefully to get you know perfectly vertical and you know they get it down to within an eighth of an inch amazing tolerances in this big clunky steel so that's kind of exciting at least for me um on the left picture you can see the gap and then on

083the right picture you can see an iron worker up there placing that last uh truss in that wider slot so these guys are um are experienced experts with good balance your audio is a little tough kim yeah okay and there's the colored board for lincoln also pretty exciting stuff and slide husky elementary the modulars are fully ready to go there you'll see excavations and concrete form work going up and um our building permits are very close we're probably within a couple weeks that'll allow pouring concrete and to do the um the public improvements work that's out in the street basically and this job also was shut down since it's all exterior work everybody was directly exposed to that smoke and it was just not feasible slide please there's the modulars you may have seen that

084in an earlier report written report slide and that doesn't heal this is a good photograph it shows all the hard work that goes into the the really big structural concrete footings this is the form work and i was pleased to see when i was out on site that this crew is taking um taking the cove 19 guidelines seriously with mask wearing while they're doing work slide please just more con footing work and on the right i show that because i wanted to make sure you folks are aware of the effort that goes into dust control on these sites um there's a lot of water that's applied just to make things comfortable for the neighborhood and legal and then there's husky's color board okay crescent valley um there's been some work going on over the summer

085for the new entry vestibule and an office remodel and that's about done we did not i think you've heard this in an earlier written report but we did not get a state seismic grant so we were able to launch the seismic design and get it underway um and that works slated to go out for bid roughly end of the year for execution next summer um we are working hard to get a set of bid documents developed for the fiber new fiber backbone for that school and that's part of the video surveillance upgrade among other things and it's our intent to pursue and likely get an e-rate grant to pay for 60 of that work we are about to go out to re-bid for the cte project if you recall we did it on on april

0862nd not the best time in covid terms to ask a bunch of businesses for their best pricing so we received pricing that was over budget our market research with other contractors and districts has indicated we expect to do much better and hopefully bring it to a place where we can proceed with the work um we're having some scheduling and phasing discussions real soon and that information will be put into the bid documents scheduled to go out in about four weeks so that's that slide chs the roof is done that's terrific and i will add a side note we're working with our partners in town the sustainability coalition to develop some solar projects one of which will be up on that new roof enhancing the solar capacity of chs not in this slide deck is mountain

087view where we're also planning a solar array at that site and that one would actually be a similar size to the one we're talking about at chs but it isn't it is intended to power that school and include some batteries that that site could be a resiliency pocket for the north town the cte project at chs is well into design development we're aligning with budgets which is nice um and that project would go out to bid around the first of the year with work starting in the spring and we continue to meet regularly with staff and interested parties in the design advisory committees etc next slide there's a written ring on the right you'll see the canopy that connects the two buildings to allow students to work and dry on autos or other big projects

088and on the left you can see the covered walkway that feeds the new school to this um cte renovation project javelin is doing well we have um phase one wrapping up steam lab is is the longest and most complex part of the project wrapping up in november but most other work is done that was planned for phase one or close to done you'll see pictures in a moment library renovation and is already designed in part of gerding's contract that'll happen next summer we're also in the middle of designing the phase two work which is the seismic upgrades and mechanical systems improvements and that's all scheduled to happen next summer the new office is operational new furnishings are in place and let's see the first pictures um this is the steam lab um and you can

089see paul jennison inside one of the collaboration rooms in that space there's uh one two three four of those in that wall there and those are neat places for breakdown activities um this room will also get polished concrete and that'll be a really neat space when all is said and done on the left side of the left picture you can't see it but there there's a bunch of casework and a chemical resistant top going in for for projects that require you know chemicals next slide this is the outside of the mat room there's a painter putting some color on those window frames and on the right mr paul jennison von liaison extraordinaire and um and former hvac supervisor for the district it's just ecstatic to see these improvements in that mat room it apparently didn't

090have much temperature control at all in the past slide and i'm just going to let you guys absorb this one it's pretty exciting i'm going to highlight dale for anyone who's watching this for the first time why this is really exciting it's uh single stall restrooms consistent with our policies to give students safety and privacy and also increase uh adult supervision so this is wonderful to see this coming to fruition is my sound better now yes perfect so um i this space is just so amazing and i wanted to point out that um i was so excited to see them come to fortune and we all talked about are they going to feel tight and small and they don't they feel very comfortable and so bright and inspiring for students you can't see it but

091the lighting is awesome it's fun shapes and the bottom left hand corner is the all user restroom with a sink in it to support um students who would need to have that sink available within their stall and we have also a door that opens up into a larger space so that we can accommodate the changing facility as well just so fun and exciting to see this come to fruition yeah it is and these are located right on the corner uh near the near the cafeteria and there's entrances there's two entrances into this complex from either corridor so that's a nice feature all right slide kim you want to address these next couple slides sure so in the top left hand corner you can see that we've created the secure vestibule so you're seeing the inside

092of the office looking out into the vestibule on the right hand side the chair that's closest up next to that brick sits right in front of a window where a visitor could be greeted and buzzed into the office through that interior vestibule door we've got counter tops that are at two different heights to accommodate all users so if they're in a wheelchair we can see them they're not stuck behind a counter that we can't see them we've got furniture solutions that we've brought in because we wanted to have maximum flexibility so we've got sit stand desks for all of the staff there are some pieces that we are waiting for so we've got a little bit of mixed match going on right now but it's all planned to be unified and all similar we've worked

093really closely with the staff there to make sure that as the furniture comes in it's actually meeting their needs and we have flexibility to mix and match because we got similar furniture to put into the steam lab so as we have changing needs we can move some of this furniture around within the building um interesting fact is the back cupboards on the bottom have a locker for storing skateboards which was one of the things the staff said they needed and we also have some personal lockers so that when subs or classified staff need a place to secure their personal items they can do so nice and this is the cafeteria i don't know for those of you who were on the board when we were talking about whether or not to upgrade the cafeteria this

094slide if you haven't been in the cafeteria before this it has made all of the difference we've never seen it look so bright and so inspiring no i had a reflexive wow but yeah the report didn't do it justice these images are amazing they are so um we had talked about doing so we've got the an additional door on each end of the cafeteria so that we can get students in and out faster and we removed the darker colors that were on the ceiling and it just has made a lot of difference the bright colors it's just going to be a game changer for our students so next slide and i'm going to pass it back to you dale okay so the jaguar adams and wildcat projects were passed just past the design development stage

095which is really the point where we really quit making changes to the design i mean we're going to continue to tweak it all the way through but in general things are really stable now so that the architects can focus on completing the drawings that we need to use for construction and bidding purposes um and as i mentioned earlier we are working with our general contractor fortis to work on phasing and scheduling plans um in fact next week we're having a session we're meeting you know socially distant fashion in gymnasiums with big projectors and white boards and we'll take turns at the whiteboard marking up our thoughts on how to manage these projects in an operational school setting and our friend and colleague david dodson with willamette planning is helping us through the land use process

096already too slide please um here's just an overall site plan for atoms we're kind of sharing a potpourri of images here the schools do have similarity but they're also different but some but the design elements and the feel of the projects are going to be very similar when we're all done slide please interior shot from wildcat school art and science area and the library and the library oh yeah and then slide please and we'll see um see jaguar this is representative of how the cafeteria editions you know kind of blend into the facility and the architects are taking great pains to make sure that the additions don't look like they're just scabbed on they they look like they belong there so i think that might be our last slide any any questions before we go

097to questions um just to sort of highlight um if i think if a district was undergoing any one of these projects they would come and provide a report to you on it with a lot of excitement and anticipation and just as you think about the scope of work that's happening across the district um it's and i've said this before but just how incredible it is to see so many spaces being improved enhanced recreated for our kids um i had the opportunity to do a tour um during the summer and we talked about the conversation we had had about light refresh and what that really what like what the what the definition of that really was and then you see some of those pictures from garfield and you think that's more than a light refresh that's

098um there's a tendency to lose perspective on the scope of each one of these projects is really special and unique and has so much value we just are happening to do 12 of them over a period of four years so again um yeah just just tons of excitement and appreciation for the work that's happening so now i guess we can go to questions but i just had that you know i had to add that part because that's uh it's just it's just really phenomenal wonderful guys go ahead kim i just wanted to put out there also that the appreciation for our school admin teams because the this work that's happening in their schools is not without a huge toll on the principal the office manager all the teachers and we've been going through some really

099um different times right with it's requiring a lot from everybody and for the principals at these schools it's a lot more so i just want to mention that and share my appreciation for their involvement and for their collaboration and their patience as we work through these indeed thank you um i apologize sarah vincent liu i can't tell who was raising their hands first so whoever was first okay i'm not sure if i was first but i'll go first um so i just want to say first having this report and seeing just all these exciting things going on in our buildings feels so good at a time when it feels like everything else we're dealing with there you know pandemics and wildfires and online learning and the equity problems because of that and then to see

100something that's just new and exciting and the colors and those bathrooms and that cafeteria that are just they just feel good and making these spaces for our kids that feel good um thank you because we need this right now to see these really positive fabulous things um so i'm gonna ask the questions that i keep getting asked by people in in my bubble which is garfield um if we're able to return to school are those buildings gonna be ready because i think everyone who drives by garfield worries um and it returned to school we saw your news this weekly about the importance of air circulation are we going to be able to ensure that in all those modules modulars we are creating an environment that is safe for our kids to return to yeah kim

101you wanna you wanna tackle some of that and i'll jump in yeah that sounds good i i predicted that that would be the first question that we received was will we be ready to open if kids are ready to come back and so the answer to that is is that um we're still working on what the impact of the wildfires is we are scheduled to have our parking lot paved on october 5th and 6th so that's good news we do anticipate that the parking lot will be ready the all of it is going to be right up to the last minute right and so what we know is that garfield may need to be delayed if october 19th is our date that we come back with students in person but we're going to work really

102hard to do what we can to be back in that building and we're going to if we have to be delayed keep that as small as possible i don't i can't commit to a date right now right because we're still working through those impacts and the pacific power wild card of when we can get power back is really a big variable for us because there's things that have to be in place to occupy the building which includes fire alarm systems and the intercoms and phones and life safety as well as of utmost importance right now is wi-fi in the building and so uh we need to make sure all those things are in place and it's all contingent on power in the building so we do have some contingencies in place if that drags on

103we're looking into generator systems but we would like to not have to go to that expense um as far as the modulars at all of our schools that are in place right now so there are things that we're going to be doing to make sure that those are safe so first of all we're doing we've done thorough maintenance and filter changes on all of the mechanical systems we are going to be running those at 100 outside air and we are also going to be talking to staff in those rooms about um like in all of our modulars we recommend keeping some windows open also and so yes i will they will be safe we will have the ventilation that we need to be safe and the other schools are all going to be ready without

104any delay to open up and sheldon's steam lab won't be open until november 2nd but that's on target with what we had or planned all along so i anticipate that we will we'll make it work um to address the question about neighbors driving by garfield and wondering how on earth can they be ready that admin build admin wing will not look ready for a while but the good news is there's a temporary office installed just to the east of that they've taken up a couple classrooms and renovated those into a temp office and lee and claudia inspected those the other day and they were pretty happy i think in fact i think i heard them say it was an improvement over their previous office so they did say that yeah so um and just as

105a reminder for the board and for anybody who's watching is that we will have construction happening in garfield during the school year so they are working to build a temporary barrier between the construction zones and the student zones and that will all be in place well before we have any students or staff in the building yeah awesome um who's next vince our lou let lugo all right you're an expense okay i'll go so i sent you guys a bunch of questions about you know the the cost impacts of fires and scheduling impacts of fires and so i know you can't answer to that question but my top question that i have is when do we get the webcams they are on the website right now they are i looked around for them and i couldn't

106find them when i was reading my packet so can we get the link let me i'll send you the links i'll email um out to the i'll have send them to ryan to send out to the school board and then i have one nerdy question and this one's for dale so you put a picture of a mock-up at lincoln you know steel mock-up on a on the concrete on concrete slab and i'm just curious how are those mock-ups used i i'm not familiar with the practice well i'll describe it briefly the the mock-up started with a concrete slab and that slab was polished with with three different grits of polish and that'll allow the district and the architects to select which one they wanted to put into the uh into the final building from there

107they went ahead and did metal stud framing and the sheathing and created they're creating a wall system with all the layers that goes into modern walls eventually it'll have windows in it and masonry and sheet metal flashings and it's pretty all-inclusive and it gives the architects and the owner a chance to really understand how the buildings intended to go together by the trades and they get a chance to align expectations and then it stays in place during the project um so that the trades can go take a look at it if a new person comes out they can go take a look and see how it was supposed to be built so pretty useful tool yeah that's really interesting thanks for that you're welcome um thanks and the webcams i didn't know they were up

108either they're on the bond page fence i just pulled them up they look really spooky at night it's kind of awesome i'm going to check that out yeah those were just updated this last week okay so check out the bond website because there are some changes that i think are improvements yeah and it's right on the top so that's really helpful that way people don't have to dig to look for them so thanks for bringing them right if they're towards the top um i just was gonna make comment i didn't really have questions just a short comment about um i was super worried about them during the smoke when they were out there working so i'm glad that they had time off to but um it was pretty amazing that there was nothing there and

109all of a sudden the smoke cleared and there's these massive structures and i didn't and um dale you know my small child loves that construction site and was super excited to see that go up more excited about that than the crane i thought she was in here and it's only going to get closer to your home yeah so um it's pretty cool to see that keep going and exciting for kids in the neighborhoods to be able to see their future school going up and um i just wanted to say thanks for the update and everything looks awesome and glad the workers um had some time off too yeah thank you but it was like the big building emerged out of the smoke almost or the frame anyways thanks awesome thank you lou and next to

110reece and i want to give jay an opportunity because i think you might be uh participating over the phone if you would like to participate right after theresa if you have a question uh so therese thanks sammy so uh i have a question about the parking lot for garfield so i'm trying to remember our conversations about how that was going to be laid out and i thought and maybe this is old maybe we already discussed that it wasn't going to be this way i thought that it was going to that the entrance is going to line up with 12th street no no was that discussed and decided that it wasn't going to happen maybe i'm confounding the neighborhood association there was a lengthy conversation at the neighborhood association about what a bad idea that was

111we have lots of iterations on that conversation and a lot of iterations of the parking lot design but ultimately we determined that we could it wouldn't be a good flow to the parking lot to be able to get um both the entrance and the exit off of garfield if we were going to align with 12th street okay well anyway i just was i i couldn't really remember where it landed and then the other day when they were out there working on it my neighbor said oh i see they've made a decision not to do this that's that's smart and i was like oh yeah i forgot about that conversation huh well i'm pretty sure that they didn't make a mistake so if they put it there that's because that's where they wanted it to go

112but uh so i think my neighborhood association was just lagging behind on where that conversation had ended so anyway um my question my only other question is uh so did kovad and the closure and then not having people in the school did that give us a jump on any of the projects timeline at garfield and or was our timeline unchanged by the the the lack of people in the building last spring um they were able to get us a jump start on on several projects because of the school closures and they did take advantage of that in some respects it helped mitigate challenges caused by covet there were a few material supply impacts manufacturers that got affected and so things were showing up late there so it was kind of an interesting time i would

113say that a little time was gained by that that early start but not not a tremendous impact okay all right well i just it's exciting to watch and we're we each day we get excited to see something some new visible change so um we're really really looking forward to when the new edition the work on that is more visible so that will be that will be an exciting day for us thank you the one thing i'd add about that edition terese is just um when on the the couple times that i've been able to go and visit garfield and we've talked about where that edition is going to be it's uh it's a it's a big addition and i think that that's what you'll walk away with is that it's a lot of additional space

114um in the school um which was which is one of the things that you know there's a lot of projects that i've thought oh this is kind of how i envisioned and it's going to look and it's tended to look that way but that amount of space is something that every time i go there i think yeah this is this is definitely different and more um more improvements than we that i had anticipated there so it's gonna be really i think it's gonna be very exciting i did just realize so you mentioned that the if we're able to return on the 19th in person garfield may not quite make that date um i guess my question um is maybe more for ryan but um how comfortable are you with whether you think the 19th of

115october will be realistic for our district to go back to in person thank you thank you for the question um no i am glad you asked it because um you know tonight's agenda was pretty packed and so it didn't feel like there was a time to add a code update but um you know i look at those numbers weekly and the numbers that we had for last week in our county were 36 per 100 000 and i think it was 6.2 percent um rate um based on testing and for even our k3 those numbers have to be below 20 and below 5 for and and for three consecutive weeks so the data from last week was definitely the most the highest number in the highest percentage of confirmed cases and so i think that those

116things cause me pause um in our in in thinking that we will be able to go back on october 19th um i will look at the data again next week but i think that as we continue more tests in our area that i think our numbers will continue to be higher and so i am um less confident in that at this point in time i appreciate you taking a moment to answer that question thank you yeah thanks ryan i really appreciate that uh feedback in it but uh i wanted to ask jay or tina if either one of you have any further comments or questions heard none i want to highlight a few things thank you for this update i want to really reflect first of all on the impact on your crew and employees

117especially those who have been impacted severely by the wildfires i appreciate your attention to their health and safety and they are part of our community and we hurt for their hurt and we trust that you will be taking care of them and their needs uh the collaboration with community partners the attention for the health and safety of the community at large and the neighborhoods that's something i want to really highlight and appreciate the speed of progress and the construction is phenomenal sarah and vince you remember our visits and you can see some of the screenshots here and our memories of what we saw there uh if if i don't have a recollection when that visit was i would say it was a year or two ago and if i know that we're through a pandemic

118and unprecedented wildfire i would say probably 10 years ago but that was probably a few months i can't remember maybe a couple of months so thank you for this progress and uh it's really something we appreciate and we value every school is going to be a better school when our students return and it will be equipped to support their needs so thank you for this update i will be sure to take that feedback to the to the teams so thank you appreciate it um with that uh again thanks kim and dale and we'll move forward for the next item on the agenda which is uh for uh first read it's a resolution 20 hyphen zero nine two tax lot boundary adjustment supporting material and updates regarding that resolution are provided in the packet so i

119want to ask ryan if you have any overview you want to cover before we ask for questions um yeah i'd be happy to provide an overview this is a area that falls in the corvallis school district um but is um pretty close to fallon with proper and um close to the schools in philomath and so the request was made by this um superintendent that we consider a um this resolution that the board would take up um the process would require our board to approve the resolution the falumba school board to approve the resolution and then three county um governments to also approve those are lynn county because of where we're located between linn county and benton county um and then also polk county which has a little bit of fulham school district also goes into

120polk county and so that would take all three groups of county commissioners to approve as well for that to go into place um in addition to that it's an area that the tax dollars for this property has been going to follow with and so in the agreement it would also bring back those tax dollars from the last 10 years to the corvallis school district i reached out to the fulham superintendent earlier this week and there are four four primarily its apartment complex the boulevard apartments that were built um just a couple years ago and when i talked to the superintendent um earlier this week there are four students currently residing in those apartments that are attending school in philomath um and so um generally speaking um i would recommend that we move forward with the

121resolution i think it makes sense for community i think it makes sense for a location for students to be close to their schools neighborhood schools and so this is the first time this is coming to you but it will come back to you a second time for action so tonight um as we've done oftentimes with policy board policy if you have questions i'll do my best to answer those and then if there's additional questions i'll be able to research them over the next couple of weeks before this comes back to you for action so with that um i'd be happy to open it up any questions uh vince you go first so thank you brian thank you for this one this great report it's completely aligned to the previous report that we got on this

122this process there's no surprises here um this just looks like the next step so yeah great doing that my only question is under the under the law that was cited there's uh equitable division of assets i'm just curious how will those assets be revested back to the district is that going to be a lump sum i know i know in the previous discussion that there was some uh there might be some difficulty in getting those funds or some friction there in that transaction i'm just curious how that's gonna get be resolved so that um document was included just to show in terms of timeline so the timelines for the paloma school district to to repay those um tax dollars um so it's it's the timeline that um i believe was included in there to show

123that um since we um so last time you met it was an exact session um to have this discussion um so that's okay so this is the first time in public session and um and so the other piece of this is that it's also an opportunity for me to communicate to the columbus superintendent as this action moves forward um and understanding the costs associated with that between the two communities so their board will also have that opportunity to to see these dollar amounts okay so that that's yet to be determined um yeah that that would be a piece we would work through maintaining the timeline within the ors great thank you any other questions comments feedback all right cnn we will be hearing this for a second read in the next uh meeting yeah and

124our next business meeting next business meeting wonderful and next time on the agenda is uh the review of 2018 2023 board goals and strategies uh for this is a an opportunity for us to make changes if the board members would like to do so uh otherwise just to review the documents as a reminder for us and uh i want to acknowledge and highlight this is the first time we reviewed this uh documents or have it uh have a time to set aside to review this document for this board and its composition so uh with that i want to uh first maybe ask ryan if you have any updates or feedback from staff and from the districts regarding the goals and how to move forward sure i'm sorry but can we have a bathroom break before

125we jump into this topic so we don't have to split it up with that absolutely without without objection uh how about five or ten five is fine for me with all all right without your objection we have five minutes recess starting from now do we're back from recess and uh the school board meeting is uh uh joining for the review of 2018 2023 board goals and strategies and we where we're at uh overview from ryan right yeah awesome can you hear me okay great so a couple things that um i think are important just as reminders and also new information for new board members these board goals were adopted after quite some time where they were they were provisionally approved we started this work in a board retreat three years ago and during that board

126retreat we started to narrow down the board goal areas and from there we have continued to revise this document the provisional improvement changed to adoption or approval once we aligned it and showed alignment between this document and the 20 20 20 vision of the corvallis community and so we were able to highlight not only the support from the board but also community support in that document and how so many similarities showed up between the two um ed junkins was on our board at that point in time and he highlighted and pointed that out for us which again showed more um committed committed community buy-in and commitment to the board goals through both products so that being said annually we bring this back for input from the board they are developed um in terms of priority

127um the first um goal um just gonna pull it up so i have it in front of me i thought i was i thought by now i'd have it memorized but i don't quite have them memorized so as an example under health and wellness the conversation had been that strategy one of support and enhanced programs that promote student mental wellness and safety that was prioritized um above physical health and we had um some data related to um student survey data that helped us to identify that as a as a need that needed to be prioritized in addition to that we had a long conversation around our equity equitable systems goal each one of our goals has language around that race culture socio-economic status language ability gender or sexual orientation does not predict or predetermine success

128in school that's in each one of the goals however we still felt that it was important or the board felt it was important to call out equitable systems so that communities recognized that in our priorities so um that was another decision that was made so as you look at the document the things to keep in mind is that there's an equitable systems goal but um outcomes are shouldn't be predetermined as called out in each one of our goals which is a component of them or equity work and that there's a prioritization from one two four or five on each one of the strategies one being the primary and then also recognizing that we have used this document really consistently over time staff um tend to know these goal areas based on conversations we've had over

129the last several years um also it's a tool that we use um last year when we worked with kristin and osba we really focused on mental health and one of the reasons for that focus was based on this document and identifying that ongoing need around mental health for students so it's a really important tool that we use it's also tied to my evaluation and my success and my role and so i think it's just important that we come back to it on an annual basis and have conversations about it making sure that it still aligns and where it doesn't align or modifications need to happen those are taken into account um so i think that that's a pretty pretty good summary of where we are right now um and i just thought we should open

130that up for conversation thanks ryan uh we have uh tina vince sarah and lou alessa tina yeah i just wanted to point out that under each goal under the student identity that um we have every protester class listed that's a part of our anti-discrimination policy but gender identity and i just want to point out that we know outcomes for this population can be accepted um and we wouldn't have put in a transgender policy if you didn't think so and i also want to put up uh point out that um that we just passed abby back so that also points out that you know it's important to recognize this population and ode put out a student's success plan for the lgbtq group so i just wanted to make sure that maybe we could put that gender

131identity in that student identity and so because for the rest of us who um for the folks who don't have that on their forefront um can be reminded if you work through our equity lines so just to recap what i heard you say adding gender identity into each one of those goals along with um our other other race culture socioeconomic status is an important inclusionary piece okay thank you tina i appreciate that uh is there anything else you want to say um just to structure things i would i think actually it would be good to just get a check in if there is anyone who wants to speak to this point the gen adding the gender identity or are we all in consensus so anyone who wants to speak to that yes lou uh maybe

132putting in gender expression too since those are different things right any questions or clarification all right thank you thank you lou all right see none we'll go back to the list and after tina i have vince thank you um i have a couple items here and none of these are for action tonight or for revisions like with what uh director baker just did which i support that change and uh applaud that you know detecting that no i wanted to note that i was impressed that the pillage of our equity action plan aligned very nicely uh with equine the strats in in under the equitable systems it's nice to see alignment it's one of the things that i like most about this uh these goals and how they have been implemented in the district from the

133board all the way through so alignment uh the other two that i have comments on and these are not for action tonight these are these are big overhauls one is in health and wellness um you know you brought up uh ed jenkins um in his service and he was he you know until he left he was never satisfied with this goal area and i think he's right i think well i think we captured our intent i don't think we did it as skillfully as we could and i think that we you know next year or i think that we should take a look at this goal area engage partners in the community engage our experts in our own organization and and take a very you know hard look at this and refine this language re-target

134the goal uh to be more focused on the outcomes that we're looking for the other is uh that i had comments on and this is long-range facilities planning we are now what we're approaching halfway through our bond process the the community is changing although we're in the middle of a pandemic so it's hard to tell right now but um we do have an urban renewal plan in place in south corvallis so the community is going to be changing in the long run so i think you know looking at these the we've done a really good job community communicating the needs for improved infrastructure and facilities for the corvallis community in the current bond project we did a great job the district did an outstanding job of doing that but i think we need to rethink

135this where are we in our in our bond cycle in our long-range facilities planning and that's that's you know a two-three year you know out process so just bringing those up for consideration for the board so one thing i just want to highlight that the health and wellness component are something that uh i'll put down in future agenda topics um so we maintain that um to come back to it later thank you ryan wonderful thank you vince and uh same thing is there anything from vince's comments that any of the board members want to speak to yes sir that what vince said was pretty much exactly what my comments were going to be that we've sort of talked taking a critical look at that goal it sort of always has gotten shoved off so um

136we need to think about it wonderful thank you sarah anyone else i want to speak to what vince mentioned perfect so next up is lou i was gonna just like add into what ben said but i knew i was next so i just didn't raise my mind but um i'm wondering under health and wellness um where um some of the work that's being done to address bullying fits in especially under mental health and even physical health for students that are physically impacted by bullying i don't know if that would fit into that goal at all since it is so connected to student mental health um so i just wanted to add that into that one possibly or at least see where it would fit um and then tina i already mentioned this stuff with tina's

137comment and um i know i brought this up before but the equitable quotable systems statement doesn't feel like it's accurate or fits reality that students identities don't predict our pre-government's success in school because people's identities do predict some of the experiences that they're gonna have in school and we're seeing that even like with socioeconomic status and access to things right now from covid so it's not just racial identity it's all identities do impact based on their experiences with different systems of oppression and different life experiences that they have and it's such a definitive statement that says that it does not predict that and i don't know if any school district will be would be able to do that by 2023 it's like a huge goal that's like going to take some major societal transformation in

138order for that to come to fruition um so i don't know if there's a way that we can tweak it where it's something that's more attainable because i feel like out of all the goals and it's tied to everything how are we going to meet that by 2023 and that's how i'm looking at the goal so i know it's like an aspirational goal but it also is a has an end date on it like aspiring to reach these goals otherwise they wouldn't be listed right and so i don't know if it should say should not predict or if there's a way to add in there like we're making progress for students with these identities not being impacted so that's just my over all like we need to work on this one a little bit more

139on how it's worded perhaps it's um it's interesting that you mentioned that because we have had a lot of conversation about that um one of the previous board members judy judy ball um really advocated for that um what she saw as aspirational language as well um but also like a commitment to it and so um previous boards have really grappled with that um and i don't know that there's um i mean we've we've gone with what once um one set of language around that but i think people have always sort of wondered um does that does that fit and so i don't know if um vince um or samuel or sarah want to add anything about that having having served with judy yeah but i but i i definitely hear what you're saying and we

140have spent a lot of time going back and forth on that very point yeah i uh if you don't mind vincent sarah and feel free to follow but i will channel judy's assertiveness on this uh by saying yeah the five goals with the time timeline we have uh are statements not of truths but of desired truths that we're committed to so by that we say uh yes by 2023 we will do everything we can all the resources we can to make that's a reality uh and the same way with all students will read grade level text by third grade that's the benchmark that's where we want to go uh it's not happening now it's not happening in a couple of months so and i unders i really hear you i i've i've had the same

141challenge when i try to advocate for a similar structure of goals and then nonprofit i serve one of the prophets i serve at and uh it was really not comfortable to state things that are not true and actually are factually wrong right now so probably i will i'll say maybe we need to advocate for a preamble at the beginning of the goal saying this is what this mean uh we're not saying this is true as of today um and i don't know if vince and sarah want to speak to that as well vince well sam and sammy i would just comment that the structure of this of these goals is different than what you see in other school districts typically us school board will articulate values and a vision and you'll notice that these goals

142while they're stated as goals really are couched in vision language what is the end state if we achieve these things we put ourselves out of business essentially is that so and so the document still serves the purpose they it serves as that visionary that long view that that and that is the role of the board that is what we are supposed to do is is we choose the destination of where we want the captain of the ship the superintendent to take us to and so i mean if we wanted to call these values or visions one two and three i mean that would change it but that's but that was the the original intent is for these to be vision visionary do i totally understand how what you're hanging up on in the in the

143word yeah and i i i agree that they're visionary they're not but i think where we get hung up is that these are the goals and there is an end date on them um and if you it we're stating something um that is that aspirational there there does seem to be some some it sort of seems like wishful thinking almost if you say we're by 2023 we're going to have solved this problem um so i don't know how we would i mean i think it's a fabulous aspiration and it's something we should all we should definitely keep working towards but i do think there does need to be an acknowledgement that years we probably will not have solved that problem i appreciate the um background and context on that one um i'll be like really

144transparent about when i first interacted with these goals was not as a member of the school board it was just as a member of the community and they were really hurtful actually because i was like you're telling me that all like many of my identities don't impact did not impact my personal experience in education and that my children's education is not impacted by these things when they are and they feel it very specifically and mind you this is when my youngest was having some issues that were that had to do with gendered violence in school and it was really frustrating as a parent to see that posted on there several times as something that the district is striving for and believes in so i just wanted you all to know that it wasn't just from

145my experience on the school board where i started interacting with that language specifically and i think it would be naive of us to think i'm alone in that feeling and i'm sure other people have felt that if they've seen it um so i just wanted to point that out why i continue to bring that one up and perhaps we should say should not instead of does not as an alternative wording is to acknowledge like this is where we're trying to get or even use that as a guiding because since it's in every single one is this a guiding um a guiding statement for all of our goals instead of it being specifically able if that makes sense like equitable systems guide all of our goals and then have it listed it's so it's does that

146make sense um so that's where i just wanted to share that part of um where it's coming from with it because i think it's important to understand like the context for where i'm bringing this in from i had something else about it too but i kind of started rambling and forgot what it was so hopefully i remember thank you before i go to vince any other board member has a comment on this specific issue i have my hand up sammy oh sorry i did not see that go ahead go ahead teresa it's okay i just wanted to uh i um appreciate and i'd like to affirm uh director white bear's comments this goal has been challenging for us as a board and certainly the history of it the context helps to some extent but the

147general person walking around in our community certainly the students in our school district and by and large most of the parents are not privy to nor will they be interested to crack down the origin of that particular goal and the way that it came about in order to contextualize it so i think we have some responsibility as a board to make that goal more accessible and this was my challenge with it and i know i mean we did we had extensive and multiple rounds of conversation so i i don't in any way want to you know belittle the process that we went through as a board but to say that we unanimously agreed that this was the best way to construct the goal i think that's an overstatement i think we reached a point where

148we simply had to go forward and this is what we landed on and so i would strongly support and participate in revisiting this goal to bring it in alignment with um various pieces certainly what is actually attainable and measurable um my concern then and my concern now is when you have a goal that is aspirational and you don't name it as one that you don't intend to actually satisfy you run the risk of messaging to the community the belief that you've achieved that every time we review ourselves as a board we run them we run the risk of messaging to the community that we think we are being successful in this area and it's not that we aren't making progress or that we have we don't have um micro scale successes we do and we

149should be proud of that effort in our community but we have not arrived we cannot arrive at this goal that's not really possible i mean the the the scope of change in human nature in general that will be required to reach a place where these will not these indicators will not be used against people in a negative way by other people is not going to happen not just by 2023 it's not going to happen in our lifetime it's a it's didn't come about in one generation we're not going to undo it in one generation we can call ourselves to task on the things that we think we can make progress on and how we're going to decide in 2023 if we've done our job and i think that that's what this goal does not do

150it does not give us any way to say did we do what we set out to do we will always be able to say things hopefully we'll be able to say things are better this year than they were last year even if that trend continues we this goal lacks an end goal that's measurable for us to say to the community we've we've achieved this phase of this process so i really think that this goal deserves some serious attention from our district to uh grounded in something that we can actually use to communicate with um people and members of our community and to tie us to something that's actually something people could look to the board and say you did or you did not actually achieve this thing that you said you were going to do

151i love framing some element of element of it as aspirational perhaps a preamble perhaps something should just maybe not even a full preamble but just something that initially frames the goal as saying this is where this is where things should be and this is what we are saying about what we're going to try to accomplish what our what our intention is to accomplish i think would be hugely helpful and i um and uh what's i guess i'm i'm really in a place of thinking about gratitude this evening but i have i'm very grateful um to lou for calling it out on on this and for sharing the perspective not just as a board member but as a community member how this goal lands it's been a concern i've had all along and i know i'm

152not alone in that and so this seems like a really good time for us to commit as a board to um do the do the work of finishing what we started in the initial draft of the goals related to equity thank you thank you therese next up jay stanley can you hear me i can hear you very well okay great the uh on this issue i absolutely agree with lou and then what teresa has just said just wanted to affirm that we worked hard at wordsmithing and being bold and maybe we went a little too hard on ourselves or unrealistic and and it doesn't communicate i think like lou has said a very positive or a reality check so i agree with what they've said appreciate that any further comments on uh loose points thank

153you vince yeah sorry vince go ahead and then okay yeah so i i just want to well one affirmative and absolutely and that it was never it's actually hard to hear that that this goal was harm was harmful it was never intended that way um but of course such as the nature of living in privilege is that you don't realize that you're being harmful um i would suggest that or immediate action that we should change does to should you know just to address that address the issue that lou has brought up but i think that that's really just a band-aid for the you know that really that we should probably think about a more engaged process i'm thinking about engaging our our staff i'm thinking about engaging our students and other members of the community

154and taking another look at these goals um and that's that's a big project that's not something we're gonna do this year but thinking about next year really opening this up again and i don't think we're gonna throw away these ideas i'm not advocating to you know get rid of student achievement or equitable systems and that's another topic that i'd like to talk about we did we had long conversations about equity how we were going to include equity into these goals we talked about equity as a cross-cutting factor in all all the work that the district does but it was actually ed junkins that coined the term equitable systems in that it is part of of what we do how this district operates it's part of our function you could and what's i find very exciting

155is that it's actually transforming it's not really equitable systems anymore it's anti-racist systems so we're the process of deconstructing dominant you know dominant culture systems and reconstructing them in an anti-racist form is what this goal is all about and that was the original intent of it and so i think that we need to have that conversation i think this speaks to the point that therese brought up that we have an obligation to communicate to the community what was intended here and clearly i mean the deep thinking that went into these is not reflected in these words so i think we need to develop documents to scaffold this one thank you vince back to you lou um yeah i would i would say that it wasn't so much the equitable systems that was standing out or

156the strategies actually it was more actually one of the strategies was standing up that i forgot to that's what i forgot to mention and i wrote down so i wouldn't forget again um it was more the actual wording itself and so it's it's just to you know as i already mentioned and i won't go on about that again but i guess my other part was like if we're really going to be committed to this as a district and as a board like we really need to commit to it so when stuff's coming up from the community that people's voices don't get shut down by people who have privileged identities and not saying from the board necessarily but also from the board sometimes but also from like other community voices coming in and overshadowing those voices

157but with the recruiting and retaining of racially and culturally diverse staff i don't know what the demographics are of all the schools but it seems heavily weighted to the eli schools and a very specific type of diversity too in those schools and so i'm hoping that when we're talking about recruiting and retaining racially and culturally diverse staff that it's gonna that it hits all the schools um and like i said i don't have the demographics but it's something i've been noticing increasingly and i had some i do have some curiosity about on where those um staff are landing and where they're leaving from to because we see when staff are leaving in our reports and so i think that's telling as well so lou just uh give you some background on the language it it

158derives from the district's definition of equity it's in policy yeah well thank you lou i want to really reflect on this conversation and appreciate and thank you for really bringing this up and as board members mentioned bringing the lens of how this impacts our community and parents that's a very important and it's been insightful and uh great learning for me uh and i wanna just echo uh calling out that strategy uh from my uh learning uh uh recently i learned that's uh that len ben blen benton lincoln county area which probably 13 disc school districts for the black uh teachers and educators representation it's much less than the black community in the county so and also in the uh in the states in oregon and in the nation so our school districts really need to

159look deeper into the representation of our community in our schools and teachers so this is a really important strategy and i really appreciate the reflection on this goal and we should really revisit it and and bring this voice and this important issue any other points and let me see the hands risen any other points that hasn't been discussed or you want to discuss something that we have discussed can you hear me uh yes yay go ahead i have one thought on this and then one thought on on student achievement having listened earlier about communication and the board's role and how difficult that is the second item i would add in gold to a 2 or a 2b item that says increasing and supporting school staff and administrative voice empowerment and leadership in our school regarding

160equitable systems and is is that as we listen to how in the world we can do better at some of this to me if we don't have stuff bubbling up from student voice also staff and principal voice we won't know what's wrong nearly as well as we could and we can go out and try to have meetings and be more attentive ourselves as a board but i think we can also build on ryan's style of being in the building so that he can listen but also directing staff and school leadership to to have power and voice in this area they're the ones that are going to come up with the problem and some solutions much better than us trying to you know attend well do our best but i think i think a specific reference

161to their role staff and school leadership ryan works hard with them but i think we need to name that strategy and say ryan please help uh carry that out that that would be one comment i would make about equitable and then i'll i'll finish um i don't know do we need to say something in these strategies given i can't imagine that if everything from assessing monitoring reading to student health if there's something in there about how we take on this unbelievably major impact to our schools over the next two to three years i it's not gonna just go away when we start school again uh in late october or whatever and it's whatever way so to me to me it it's it's like we we've ignored maybe the most or one of the biggest giant

162impacts on our kids called the covid problem and it's not in any strategy so i'm just throwing out does it need to be in there somewhere and i don't have any specifics okay thank you uh brian you have jay can you repeat the language that you shared yeah so on the equitable systems i would use the the line two but i would make it a separate one saying increase and support school staff and administrative voice empowerment and leadership in our school blah blah so in other words you're asking not just student voice to step up and help us with equitable issues but you're directing as a strategy um staff and admin that it's your job to be forward on this we we can't do it on our own by a mile we've got to hear

163from the trenches thanks thank you jay and the second item you mentioned just to summarize it it's related to uh being able to capture the impact of covet within the health and wellness goal is that correct yes and student achievement goal i can't imagine that we shouldn't be talking some sort of strategy maybe maybe our strategies are so vanilla and all-encompassing that they work for no matter when where we are at whatever setting but i i find that that's this feels like too big of a problem for us that we can ignore it and not even see it in our board goals for the next two years you thank you jay so with uh with that's any questions or comments regarding the two points jay mentioned yes vince i'm wondering if we need to add

164to jay's point about covid is adding a sixth goal that's temporary for the for the duration and because kovit is impacts all systems when within the school it it actually impacts all of these things um all these goal areas so i'm wondering if there are if there's one a goal that we can state around the impact of the pandemic and then the top strategies that would be in there and i would welcome and staff and superintendent have done much of this work already they have built an operational blueprint they're in compliance with state guidelines they know how they're responding to this i'm wondering if we could get a response from staff and maybe that so that would and that will help guide the help the board align so it would be something that would sit

165on top of the operational blueprint essentially yeah jay is am i capturing your intent yes yes i think that i think it could be a separate um yeah piece that that kind of captures about three or four major strategies that we know we need to do but ryan knows better and his staff knows better so we we better be listening hard yeah so then uh to come back at a future time with that um laid out mm-hmm yeah and i would add a question i i really like this and uh i have a question for ryan and staff the way i visualize those goals is like five north stars for us that we sat two years ago three years ago and we want to reach to these north stars as close as possible in a

166few years did covet help us or is the pandemic letting us know that there is a sixth star or some warning for those five stars that needs to be elaborated then we need to stay in the document or is it that the way that you're steering the ship through the storm of uh one two three years of the pandemic the way that you will operationalize and you will work toward reaching those five stars has changed but the goals remain the same that would be a question for for me to really evaluate how are we going to incorporate uh as possible sixth goal or refinement of those goals or maybe something that goes into the blueprints um and that's me my personal thinking uh to reflect on this discussion that jayenn vince added i don't know

167if that makes sense yeah i don't know that um like i think we probably need to have some time to think through with the goal and strategies would be and how those um how those relate i i don't necessarily see that as a six north star as much as a condition that is currently impacting our movement towards those uh towards the north star right and so i think for me um it's important to recognize that the condition um because of the length of time that it will be with us um so that's that's my initial response to that yeah yeah um and so what i what i just described in summary what i've heard is that there's a couple of of changes that you want to have happen immediately and the two that would happen

168immediately that i wrote down um are the addition of gender identity and generous expression would be one and the second would be changing the language from does not just should not um so it does does this should and then to come back um with information around the um around a goal and strategies related to coped and also go to strategy to adding a third strategy for staff and admin uh voice and so i haven't heard um consensus on that piece necessarily so that was that's the one that i left i i think it's so sort of hanging um i heard jay say um make the recommendation for including that i haven't necessarily heard that as um this the same sort of support that i heard around the edition of copenhagen okay so would we like

169to have a maybe a thumbs up or in between for further discussion or thumbs down vince go ahead i'd like to hear the superintendent react to that because i mean the strategies when they were developed they were done in collaboration with staff and so those are while the goals really sit roundly in the space of the board strategies are in that borderland between the board and and staff so ryan i i'd really love to hear your thoughts about that as a strategy so one of the things that i have noticed over the last probably six months has been the increased passion and desire to um from staff to focus on work on work around racial equity in a way that um i haven't and i haven't historically and so what i like about the idea

170is that um and in fact they came up in our leadership meeting on tuesday from a couple of principals are engaged in the book study that jermaine was talking about and just how um systems and programs and just our schools evolve more quickly when it is uh um when it's something that staff desire like um the the staff in the schools really are working on and have a lot of um fire and passion around and so i i feel like i'm hearing that and i s and i've also been wrestling with how do i um how do i support that work and how do i continue to basically just remove barriers so that work continues because i feel like in a lot of cases that's my role in situations like that so um i don't

171know about the specific language that jay proposed but generally speaking i feel like this is a time where that work is really important crucial and there's a lot of momentum and so i want to be able to support that momentum and if it comes through voice from staff and students around equity um to um district leadership and the board um i think that that's happening and i think it's and so um so generally speaking i think that's an important piece for us to to consider okay is that does that answer your question vince yeah it sure does no that was exactly what i wanted to hear and i mean for me i feel that it moves the board into a more collaborative posture with staff and that's always a good thing the board should be

172a student of staff they are the experts and so we every opportunity we have to learn from our staff particularly and particularly around the issue of equity they have done so much good work and they're out ahead of us so let's i i agree so i would i would very much like to see a suggested language to come back from from staff on that as a strategy thank you any other board members want to comment on that all right so i think i have i have what i need related to your goals wonderful thank you and we spent a really good amount of time on this but i think it was well spent so thank you all for this really great discussion we're moving though to the next point in the agenda resolution uh 20901

173indigenous people's day there is no action required this is the first read uh this resolution is introduced and i would like to uh give lou an opportunity to speak about the resolution before we enter to further discussion i think sammy and um yeah i just wanted to briefly say about this resolution because i'm sure you all have had a chance to read it in the cover sheet is just to re-emphasize the purpose behind it there's a couple main things with it one is to help align [Music] the direction of the city and the state in regards to indigenous people's day with efforts of the local schools it's something that the city of corvallis has added in their proclamation since the first one was signed and so it's a great time to start listening to that

174call and that was in 2015 in the other part of this that i wanted to point out was um that it's been asked to start this year and move it forward annually that way it's not something that's signed every year and i kind of wanted to explain this and the reasoning behind this before we entered in a conversation when they're signed every year it's a reminder about it every year for communities but there's also part of that is that it could not be signed every year so it's always this is it going to be signed is it not going to be signed and i would rather us think about it as something that the district would like to continue to do and not have to sign every year into existence and it that feels like

175a different type of statement and commitment that we see done annually and so it's when you sign it once a year it's temporary like we'll do it this year for you we'll do it again for you next year and so it's like the annual signings for it um are good reminders like i said but they also have a different type of impact for the people who um they are represented by indigenous people's day proclamations in particular and honestly being somebody that does identify from an indigenous populations more than one um in my backgrounds the thought of it being something temporary and something that's like almost gifted every year sends a certain type of message as well and so i think that having something in place that lets the community lets the local indigenous community as

176well as um beyond know that it's something that the district is committed to annually would be really powerful and it's something unique all that most of the other ones you see are done annually and so that's a big difference i think in this one as well the points in there are pretty informative just basically an outline of how long this ask has been happening nationally and how long it's been around locally for some contacts and also um some context about who the land we're on as well and so i'll leave it with that so we can have discussion and thanks thank you lou and i appreciate you working on it and the engagements of several board members supporting this effort so i would like to ask any board members who wants to speak about it

177uh or discuss this resolution and i do have vince's hand up so i would just i would just like to thank director white bear for her leadership and bring this resolution forward and i look forward to voting yes on the motion to approve it thanks vince sarah yeah i just also want to express my gratitude to lou for bringing this forward um i think it's an important thing for us to do i think this is one of those areas where um our kids are ahead of adults in the room a lot of times and so to be able to um sort of bring ourselves to where they are i think would is is a good thing from what i hear from from students about um indigenous people's day and so i think um it's a

178really valuable thing for lou to have brought this forward and um i think it's an important thing for all of our kids and to support the way that they're learning about about history and about um who's represented in it so thank you thank you sarah jay you're up next i agree with what's been said thank you lou i think it's an important uh perspective that we've not always reminded ourselves of and so thank you for bringing it forward thank you jay appreciate it any further comments can i say one more thing too yeah and i really wanted to thank tina and therese too for helping work on this resolution too [Music] and take a look at it and have conversations about it and the impact it can have so just wanted to make sure to

179thank them as well absolutely any further comments well you have my full support and it would be an honor to vote together on this resolution and i do hope for future boards uh to and the school district uh staff and students to make sure we uh recognize this day in perpetuity because this is an indigenous land and we have to acknowledge this uh every day and every year and never forget that so i appreciate you lou bringing this and i really hope this brings systemic changes in how we acknowledge our indigenous uh people and this indigenous land and the history of how this nation came so i appreciate your work thanks sammy um i forgot i did have one more thing sorry yes please um i don't know if it's possible to give staff a

180heads up about this since um that we are voting on this at our next meeting um just so they have a heads up on it if they don't already because indigenous people stay is like basically two days to school days after our next meeting and so i don't know if that's a possibility just so they know about it and um i'm not saying we're for sure voting yes on it until we actually vote on it but thanks for the support so far on it from what i've heard and um it was just it's just a suggestion of something that they may want to know about it we can include it in the staff update thanks ryan wonderful any further comments from staff brian or uh feedback about this no wonderful thank you so much and

181i appreciate it with that uh we'll go any further comments with that we'll go next to i sorry i see sarah has her hands up from before yeah so okay for the next item on the agenda is consolidated action and as a reminder the items under this portion of the agenda are for action and they are budget committee vacancies and lincoln elementary school fortis change order number one does anyone have a question about anything in consolidated action vince right i'm trying to find my question hold on up above the the no this is for lincoln disregard i well we have lincoln elementary school uh ford exchange order is that why you're asking that that wasn't my question i'm good thank you sorry um any other questions uh sarah yeah this this isn't really a question

182so much as a comment about the vacancies on the budget committee um one of the we think about systems and systems have been built by a dominant culture that make it seem inaccessible i mean one of the things i think that's a big challenge for things like representation on the school board and for boards associated with this sport is how do you get on those boards so i don't know what we can do to make sure we're reaching out to some of our underrepresented underrepresented groups and parents and community members to see if we can expand representation on r because it's less representative than our school board at this point thank you sarah for this comment uh teresa up next teresa do you have a comment and i i cannot hear you all right we'll

183come back to teresa if uh i think your hands up but we cannot hear you um i while uh we're waiting on that i want to just echo sarah's comments and uh appreciate it because uh personally i i was one of those who joined the the school district uh system through the budget and uh one of my questions i remember i asked a question and i got a response this is not a budget question so i was like okay let's run for the school board and ask that question so definitely we need to make sure that there is a representation in our budget committee and we we value the diversity through that committee and make sure there's opportunities for those members to maybe apply or run for the school board as well teresa can you

184hear us and do you have a comment yes i can thank you i lost my connection for a moment so um forgive me if i'm saying something that already was said uh when i when i lost my connection we were talking about diversity on and representation on boards yes we're still waiting are we still there okay good all right um i wanted to uh comment and circle back to an earlier idea around um processes and uh equity because i want to i guess i kind of want to link that to this comment here and saying that it's i think it's great for us to say that we want to have more diversity and invite make sure that we are deliberate in reaching out to and including members of our community who may not traditionally find

185themselves in these positions my concern with that statement is that our process doesn't really allow for uh the well the varying circumstances of life that may be true for members that are not already sitting on these boards um our meeting times uh the manner in which we uh disseminate information that needs to be reviewed um the prior to covid the expectation that meetings took place in person where we have no child care where we have poor uh not not necessarily reliable translation services for people who aren't sitting in the room things like that i would very much love to see our the diversity of our boards expand and i think we just need to be upfront that to do that we have to overhaul our processes because our processes they serve white middle class educated

186families with two parents where someone can stay home and someone else can go out and it's not a hardship if you need to call off work in the middle of the day to take an emergency phone call and you don't need any particular um extra time or access to get a hold of the things you need to get a hold of to be prepared for a meeting and so i don't know i mean i'm raising the statement i don't know what that actually looks like i would love for us to engage in a conversation about what it would mean for us to actually have individuals that work not nine to five jobs um not monday through friday participating in these roles in our community so that's it thank you thank you for your comment any

187further questions or comments see none i would like to entertain a motion is there any motion i move to approve consolidated action do i hear a second this is jay i second it all right it's been moved by vince and uh second by jay uh to approve consolidated action is there any further discussion on uh this motion scene none uh we'll take a roll called woah terese how do you vote hi jay hi ina lou hi sarah i'm vince hi and i vote did i miss anyone all right passes unanimously so uh with that uh next item on the agenda scene there's no consolidated information uh is board member comments are there any board members who wish to comment and therese uh uh is your hand up for that see no that's not sammy sarah's

188next yeah i um i was thinking about what we were going to be talking about today and even further as we had our discussion this evening um i've been thinking a lot about an interview it was a discussion i heard um the woman who has the amicus web podcast and somebody at the national constitution center about ruth bader ginsburg justice ginsburg and it was actually an interview that was taped before justice ginsburg died but they were discussing the justice and they talked about her view of law and the constitution as an abrasive law a law that a of you that expanded the embrace of the values of the constitution through her work and through both her work as a lawyer and as a supreme court justice and i ended up writing down that word i've

189got it scrawled on a piece of paper on my desk embrace it because i felt like it's an important thing for us to think about as you develop policies and goals and think about what it means to increase representation um these systems that we've built but what can we do now in our work to make them more embracive as we move forward and i just um the whole discussion about her was just really inspirational and that was a thought that stuck with me and i and it felt very applicable to the work that we do in the school district um just as it is to her work on the supreme court of the united states the other thought i had was i got to listen in in secret standing out in the hallway to a

190discussion today of fifth graders talking about returning to school um and it was very interesting they were looking at numbers and metrics you know where things you know when we had met the metrics and did we stay there long enough and what that meant for fifth graders compared to third graders um and you know there was this eagerness to return resignation looking at the let the numbers and you know this sort of learning that was happening on sort of the you how do you read charts and numbers and what those numbers mean level but also this opportunity to talk about what those numbers mean for them and their lives and their schools and um i was left feeling like these are just brave kids um i'm gonna cry this will be the fourth meeting um

191these brave kids who are looking at this reality and trying to understand this reality that is so tough um but i was so proud of them and i'm you know this was my limited exposure to what's going on in a classroom um and the care that the teacher was taking talking to them and i was just so touched and i'm sure that that's happening in you know at kitchen tables and then you know at desks and bedrooms all over the district right now um but yeah i'm just i was just really struck by how how brave our kids are being right now and it was it was a special moment to get to listen so it was i was very appreciative today for online school because i got that window thank you sarah you made

192me cry jay two thoughts one i i think some of you know that i supervise some student teachers this year i have five that are in the district in various buildings and i'm with sarah and that i'm touched by how from the teacher perspective because my student teachers talk about their uh a guiding mentor teacher and that they're really jumping all the way into an adventure that's unbelievable so hooray they're working at it really hard and that's nice news my second sort of tongue-in-cheek is that um with the i want to say thank you to lindsay for helping me communicate with the board i am in a cornfield vineyard in south dakota and i would turn the light on except it would bother the people next door and it's so dark out here that you

193couldn't see me anyway but i am appreciative of the ability to have a board participation from such a long distance and it's now 11 32 in my time zone so thanks a lot i think i set a personal record yes you did unless you count saudi arabia at 3am as a record jay you can have your record and i'll have mine that's it that sounds good uh lou you're next yeah i just saw a couple of things um one of them is i wanted to recognize not just the impacts of the pandemic on local students and community members but the ongoing injustices and the reality of the impact of brianna taylor's case has on some of the families in our community and just really wanted to take a moment for us to recognize that they're

194also grappling with that on top of the pandemic and everything else going on and it's hard to find wars to even talk about that but i felt it was important that we recognize that um and the other two one of them is just to say happy national hispanic and latinx heritage month which started last week and if you don't know why it's in the middle of september i encourage people to learn more because i really want people to look it up i don't want to tell them so um so happy um national hispanic heritage month latinx heritage month some folk like to refer to it to everyone and i also wanted to um express some deep gratitude to the um tech support for the district they are doing a lot i can't even imagine how

195many calls they've had to um have to help students i was down at lincoln earlier on the phone with someone forever trying to get one of the apps to load um on my child's ipad which i was grateful that i was able to do that because that now she can do her schoolwork but um i know they're navigating a lot for families and want to know how them they know how much they're appreciated not just with things like that but just all the many calls so in the teachers too helping us navigate figuring out who to call when to call if we should be using email phone or whatever app the teachers are using as well so i just want to appreciate that thanks thank you that's rhys thank you sammy i wanted to just

196say that i've been able to attend to zoom at pta meetings and uh to be able to check in with wilson and franklin and just catch up on how things are going in their communities it's great to get to hear from families and to hear them thinking about and brainstorming how in their communities they can um best serve the families that you know are part of their communities and uh one of the things that came out of um actually both pta meetings was questions about within the group discussions and questions about whether or not every um opportunity to make the free and reduced lunch program accessible to families who do not have transportation to get to the sites has been explored by the district i said that's fantastic question i don't really know the answer

197to that i certainly would love to bring that back to the district and say have we explored all possibilities of leveraging volunteers or potentially allocating some staff time to make those meal programs usable for families for whom getting to and from the pickup and drop-off points may not work uh or be feasible so i'm not really looking for a response from the district tonight it's a question i'm putting out there for you something that would be great to hear hear back on um and just to know that at least at those two communities if an opportunity presents itself for um volunteers or staff to assist in some way you have support from those communities to step in and help fill that gap and i would hazard a guess that if you can get it from

198franklin and wilson you could probably get it from from some other schools as well so um that's just what i wanted to pass on and it was great to hear um just the the differences in um you know the way that kids are navigating zoom hearing some suggestions um so it was it was just they were lively conversations and i was i'm grateful to get to participate in them um thanks for that i will um share some more information about that in the future but just as a we have gotten some questions that have come through um one had been about adair and maintaining a site um there has been a site ram at san diego christian so we've been able to work that out to maintain that um as an option for it there

199and then we've had some questions about food options and choice we have a a lot of families who are pre-ordering meals which has been really successful um and some of the um the meal um needs and requests um like a vegan request and some of those things um sharon has been able to work through those questions that have come up um with those families so food service has been really adaptable and really working hard to continue to serve meals to our kids so um i can't answer that one specifically for you tonight terese but it did bring up a number of examples that i've heard sort of day in and day out that they've been working through to make sure our kids are fed so um so thank you for that piece and that question

200to come back to thanks ryan uh tina you're up next i'll have an opportunity to kind of listen to myself maybe this couple of classes this last um and i just wanted to say that i have a profound appreciation for the districts the teachers the staff administration because i always talk about um how kiddos can't receive an education when they're not being taken care of and they're just the staff and teachers have really gone out of their way to um provide care for their source and emotional well-being and that is crucial right now and gives a struggling time to try to um partake in this online schooling which is new to everybody and so i just wanted to say i'm thanks tina appreciate it any further comments i see therese probably from before or do

201you have more comments all right so with that i want to sorry sammy i can't retain that information to remember to put my hand down it's okay it's overwhelming and uh working with uh with zoom is really challenging and with that i want to uh thank board members uh for being engaged in the community and communicating with the community and bringing in parents and community voice uh i want to uh share a comment uh to everybody i know you're scared you're anxious and that's where we are right now uh i have cautious optimism that our district is doing its best the iniquities are already exacerbated uh as lou mentioned and what's going on in the nation and uh is making things harder and more challenging the future uncertain but i know that we have the

202best people i can imagine to let us ride through the storm and make the best out of the care of our students and children i don't know what we will call this generation that's in the schools but we will call it something positive they are going to be pioneering trailblazing their own education and the support that they need so they can make the best of our the community and our country and world i know that because those challenges are going are hurting us and are going to hurt us more but we will be stronger and we will be more resilient and our eyes are already open wider and wider than never ever before in terms of the status quo we can't return to it the status quo in the future will be more equitable more

203just and uh it will never happen unless we work toward it yeah so with that i want to really thank uh ryan and your staff and uh the equity team and safe and uh board members for uh working toward that vision a better future for our community in our schools thank you any further comments or anything for the good of the order cnn i would like to wish you all a happy wonderful night and jay i envy you for the view of the stars from where you are so you all have a good night and we are adjourned