001I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I think Veronica must have decided if Jan was online. >> I think she's working. >> So, is there anybody for public comment? >> Is this good? >> Having none, uh, is there any further budget discussion? >> I did have a part two budget message, but that works. >> Absolutely. >> All right. So before we begin discussion tonight, I want to take a moment to speak about this process and my hopes for moving forward. Budget work is difficult work, particularly in a time when school districts across Oregon are facing significant financial pressure and uncertainty. Healthy disagreement and hard questions are not only acceptable in this
002process, they are ne necessary. In fact, one of the things we've worked intentionally on as a district over the past few years is moving away from unhealthy peace, where concerns go unspoken, frustrations build quietly, or people avoid difficult conversations altogether. A budget committee functions best when questions are rooted in curiosity, preparation, transparency, and a shared commitment to student success. It becomes less productive when assumptions are made before information is sought, when operational speculation overtakes governance responsibilities, or when conversations shift towards suspicion rather than understanding. There is a difference between thoughtful oversight and perpetual skepticism. Strong governance requires hard questions, but it also requires a willingness to engage information in good faith. Remain focused on student outcomes and avoid allowing personal theories, individual agendas, or operational rabbit trails to overshadow the purpose of this work. Our
003district values community, integrity, and hope. Uh, our district values of community integrity and hope were never intended to be words framed on a wall or repeated only in moments of celebration. Their true meaning is revealed in moments like these when conversations are difficult, emotions are high, resources are limited, and people see the path forward differently. Community means choosing respect over division and assuming positive intent even when we disagree. Integrity means having the courage to ask hard questions while also having the humility to genuinely consider the answers. Hope means refusing to let fear, frustration, or uncertainty define us and instead remaining committed to building the strongest possible future for our students, staff, and this community. At the center of this work are children who are watching the adults in the system closely. They're learning from us
004what leadership looks like, what disagreement looks like, and whether people with different perspectives can still listen, collaborate, and move forward together with professionalism and purpose. I also want to remind the committee that district staff have consistently made themselves available for conversations, clarification, budget walkthroughs, and deeper review outside of these meetings. The people sitting behind these presentations are not hiding from difficult questions. They're public servants who spent countless hours trying to navigate extraordinarily difficult decisions with care, with transparency and professionalism. Some of the most important conversations happen not in the moments of public reaction, but through thoughtful dialogue, preparation, and genuine willingness to seek understanding before drawing conclusions. None of us are expected to think alike or agree on every decision before us. Strong organizations are not built on uniformity of opinion. They're built on the
005ability to wrestle honestly with hard realities while still treating one another with dignity and respect. What we model in this room matters. Our students, our staff, and our community deserve to see adults who can engage in difficult conversations without losing sight of shared purpose, shared humanity, and the responsibility we carry together on behalf of children. That's a standard our staff have worked hard to build across this district over the past sever several years, and it's a standard we must continue to uphold. And I wanted to just start with that because I uh know that there was question after the last meeting about the extent to which we value and welcome debate and hopefully those who know me know that I value and welcome debate uh quite a bit. I just want to make sure that
006uh in the end we are uh role models for our kids. I do so in a respectful way and that any digging or questions that need to be asked are uh done with enough time to allow us to prepare answers adequately. That's all. >> So, do we have any motions at this time? >> The discussion. Yeah. Um, yeah. So, I think we had and should I have a microphone or something here? But we good. turned on. >> So, we had emailed back and forth about the assistant principles they would have is, you know, people, coincidentally, my daughter ended up in an issue on the bus today that Jeff Taylor, our assistant principal at the grade school, stepped in on. And then I ended up following back up with him. It's like, hey, you know, we're
007this conversation we're having. You're not a stranger to it. Like, what is it that you're working on with this and what can we see and what don't we see? and he said, you know, you're going to see referral numbers and things like that, but some of these softer interactions where he just sits a couple kids down and, you know, it's like, hey, for something like this that happened on the bus, kid hitting another kid, they could just throw the book at them or they could sit down and work this through, figure out what happened. You know, one kid apologized to the other and they move on. And, you know, there's a lot of this that that happens that we don't see. And then on the other side, he just so mentioned, and this is something
008that I didn't know, is that uh the assistant principles have been leading the way, as he put it, on like the calls and getting the attendance numbers back up. And he was really proud of the numbers at the grade school. They're up to like 77% now. And that the high school's down at like 58%. And then I was looking at this graph after we started getting some of the enrollment numbers and this regular attendees report that it's like crashing off late in high school. So there's a lot of work to get done there. and that directly impacts our budget. And I started trying to grind into, like you said, there's some of it that's enrollment based and some of it that's like the days that they're actually here and trying to come up with a
009number of like, you know, how much I guess if you were going to be creative about it from a sales marketing perspective, how much revenue are they bringing back in? And of course, this is positive outcomes for kids when they're back in school as well. And then there's all of this bullying and harassment. I mean, that's the online chatter. That's what came out in the equity committee. This is the stuff that people are concerned about. And these are the frontline people who are dealing with dozens of these cases like every school year. And we can say, okay, principles are going to take it on. Cool. But they're also managing the entire school on top of handling these discipline cases. And I have concerns that losing two of them are going to have, you know, a
010a outsized impact on the benefit that we're going to get from them. And that's why I'd asked, hey, what what is the plan B? what was the last consideration I guess it would be before we arrived at this mix of people to get cut and if we were to say hey we want to keep the assistant principles here because we feel their role is valuable and we don't want to lose it then it's like okay then what is the alternative rather than us being unproductive and poke around a budget we don't fully understand that you guys have put a lot of consideration into that's why I asked you like hey what would you put forth if we were to come up with a plan A and B a plan A that we go with what
011you proposed and a plan B where we come up with a way to save the two assistant principles or come up with some way to reallocate part-time. I don't know what the mix could be and what would be the downstream impact because we know we have to make bad decisions and nobody's going to be happy with it. Everybody that works in our district is valuable and we don't want to lose any of them. But, you know, it's just full consideration here. And these two in particular, given what they do for the district and the impact it's going to have on parents and students directly, I just think it's worth worthy of some consideration. What would the alternative be if we were to change between >> Would you like me to speak to the assistant principal?
012I mean, I think all the administrators in the room would agree that that was um probably one of the harder uh conversations and not one that they would have voted on. Um ultimately the assistant principal cut was a decision that came down to uh cutting more from the top or losing more student facing programs and looking at uh our the size of our admin team relative to similarsized districts. Um, I had felt pretty good about uh staffing our administrative team heavily um when I got here because we had had and still have a lot of work to do. And my strategy was to give our administrators the most narrow lanes possible so they could go an inch wide and a mile deep with their programs and leverage as much change as fast as possible. Um
013the reality is unless we lowered our ending fund balance, which is already as low as a lot of people would be comfortable with in order to save um assistant principles as a program. Um in Dayton, we would have to cut uh staff who are closer to so most likely uh classroom teachers, licensed staff. If those cuts came from the grade school, you'd be looking at class sizes of over 30. If those cuts came from the junior higher high school, you'd be talking about losing programs that provided opportunities for students. >> Um, historically, uh, we have, uh, addressed student behavior and attendance with either deans of students, which are licensed positions, or student management, uh, positions, which have been filled by classified staff. I think um the the as much as people want to hold on
014to our assistant principal position speaks so highly of the work that Nicole and Jeff did this year. Um and like I said, I think the admin in the room would share your desire to hold on to them. and not even admin. I've we've heard it from uh licensed union members as well that having assistant principles takes a load off their plates when it comes to managing uh behavior. Just a uh it's a really hard call to preserve administrative positions while you're cutting into student programs. So, we tried to make cuts that uh that we could justify that weren't limiting opportunities for students in doing so. >> Yeah. And I don't want to downplay the role of other administrators in here, but I feel like this particular group of administrators do more than just like administrate
015like they are student facing and engaging like every day. Not that everybody doesn't have an impact, but they are one-on-one like with students and parents every day. And I think that's just kind of unique among the other administrators. Again, not that we don't want we don't want to lose anybody here, but these two I just feel like have an outsized >> impact for you. Yeah, >> that's it. >> I have a question. >> Okay. Yeah, >> I think the only outstanding thing for me is to understand a little better the placeholder administrator you have in the budget. So, is there a funding resource reason for holding that a placeholder or what is your biggest reason? >> Yeah. So right now um we had cut uh rift both of our assistant principles and um the small
016high schools grant is a fund that goes to rural high schools under a certain amount of enrollment and uh historically in Dayton that has been given to the high school principal to um either use to supplement like oftentimes it would be CTE be um would be an investment they make so that they could the intent of the grant is to have comparable programs to larger schools just knowing that you can only do so much in a small school with with funding. Um for the last for the entirety of the time that I've been here our high school principles have had oversight of that budget and has have saved it for a rainy day. So right now, uh, the proposal I had was if we find that this is a need after all the staffing shakes
017out and the dominoes shake out, and it could be assistant principal, it could be a different position um that it's used for, um, can we can we use this money for staffing? And so we have it as a placeholder for the highest paid administrative position outside of being principal, the the uh assistant principal position currently, not knowing exactly what the plan is with it moving forward. But I will tell you that we spent 5 hours probably last week in deliberation about how to address our uh behavior support and attendance support at both schools so that it's not only equitable but effective um for both buildings. And uh I there's a lot of great ideas thrown around but we haven't landed on a staffing uh setup a structure yet for that and a lot of it
018will be dependent on the budget committee and what's passed. >> So is that funding source not enough annually to support a position like that? >> Correct. >> Okay. Mhm. It Yeah, it would the argument would be um knowing some of the the transitions that will happen with staffing after next year that this is buying us a year to smooth out those transitions basically. >> Okay. Hey, uh Amy, I just wanted to clarify too that a higher level teacher salary is pretty much comparable to a assistant principal. At least it's pretty close, right? Because I know in sales. >> Yeah, it's pretty close. I don't know. I don't have the exact numbers about 20,000 difference it sounds like. >> Yeah. So that's why it's a good number. So you can do both of those because again
019assistant principal and a higher pay like a higher experienced teacher are going to be pretty comparable. >> Yeah. Anything else, Chris? >> Yeah, I don't think so. Thank you. Anybody else have any questions? >> One question I have is so we're talking about um you know the the person who sort of is the um helps with the the support of the kids who are struggling right with their behavior and that kind of thing. Um it doesn't necessarily have to be a an assistant principal who does that role. So, um, you know, I guess my question is h, and I'm kind of thinking the answer to be yes. Have you guys looked at who is best suited to do that if if the two assistant principles do go away? like is there a certain staff member
020that has the time and ability to potentially step into that role so that there is someone who really is still that person but they don't do all the other things in >> I mean we would we would definitely need to put someone in that position regardless if it was licensed classified or administrative whose skill set was suited for that position. Um, one of the things though that we're really trying to avoid, and this maybe isn't the best year to try to avoid it, like Dana and I discussed at the last meeting, it is really hard to not think of actual names attached to positions, but when you are trying to set up a district for longevity, it's we've done a lot of shifting of positions because there are people that we really want to see
021in them and that it's kind of watered down roles and responsibilities and kind of tried to make square pegs fit into round holes and then there's a domino effect on the whole system and everyone else's roles and responsibilities in the structure. So, what we're trying to get away from is finding the people and then creating positions that fit the person versus saying this is the structure that would best fit the programs that we're trying to run and have equitable outcomes for students and then try to find the people that fit that structure and hire for that and uh grow our own within that. Um recruit for that. Uh, and there's just been a lot of clunkiness the last few years by by starting with the person and not the structure to begin with. I don't
022know if that's an answer that makes sense, but well, I mean, it does make sense. I guess my thought wasn't so much finding a person who could do that, but just saying, "Okay, an account an assistant principal makes x number of dollars a year." And now what we need to find is a person who does that role but doesn't do all the other things that an assistant principal does. Therefore, you don't have to pay quite as much, but you're still getting the quality of that person who could support a kid who struggles. There will be I mean there will be more work on our principal's plates no matter how you slice it unless there's an assistant principal because assistant principles are able to supervise they're able to evaluate they're able to suspend expel you know
023what I mean there's just a lot of pieces of the puzzle whereas deans of students or student management >> that it puts an inette impact on the teachers too because if they don't have and we don't have a plan for somebody to refer all these problem cases to then they explode in the classroom and that distracts from the rest of the curriculum and takes that teacher's focus for it from everyone else. So, it's going to have another net downstream impact. And so, I mean, I can hear that. Okay, we have to lose these two positions and we're going to do something else. But, you know, those were kind of the two specific questions. What is the plan B? Like, these are the class sizes specifically what we do and then okay, if we proceed with
024the cuts, then then do we know who specifically and how we're going to manage this because we know it's an issue. >> And, you know, a lot of the who is I mean, we're in a riff situation and two assistant principles have been rifted. So there's a recall process that is, you know, bound by legal parameters. Um, and so a lot of the who specifically I don't feel as comfortable talking about in a public meeting because that is, you know, has a lot of personal implications for people and their careers. But um, there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle that we would need to figure out regardless of if it's an assistant principal, if it's a dean, or if it's but that is dependent on the budget that's passed. what we can make
025work within that. >> We're losing a counselor too at the grade school and that's another one of >> We're not counselor at the grade school. I I do want to clear that up. Um we are going from four counselors to three counselors. There will be a grade school counselor, a junior high counselor, >> but that's one of the other people you could have offloaded this behavior problem on to and we're cutting there. So that again begs the question >> counselors have a very different role than a assistant principal or dean and they're technically it's not best practice for a counselor to do anything disciplinary with students right um it's a conflict of interest with their other work >> so but they do help with behavior in the non-disciplinary >> right and I think that's what
026we got to with the conversation with the assistant principal this week is there was you know that we didn't want to make this a disciplined case it was something we easily able to talk through emotions and have an apology you through and this is something that a counselor could pick up the slack on if we were losing the principal but we're taking a double double knock here if you see what I'm saying at that department so then it again begs the question then who would pick up the slack in this department are we asking the teachers then who's ultimately going to absorb it and I understand if that has personnel implications and we can't talk about that but it also has budgetary implications and to like who are we funding to do this these people
027all have other responsibilities so somewhere this has to even out Yeah. And I guess, you know, my answer to that is um every year at this time of year, even when we're not in years of big cuts, there are question marks that are dependent on forecasting, that are dependent on hiring, that are dependent on changes in kindergarten enrollment, that are dependent on transfers in and out. And so the staffing setup in May is I don't think has ever been in any district I've been a part of the exact staffing structure in terms of who's serving in what position or what positions even exist necessarily that you have when school starts that first week of September. So I think what I can commit to publicly and what I have is that we will have support for
028behavior in both buildings. I do not know what that looks like. There's so many uh pieces of that puzzle. Like I said, uh some are legal pieces that have to do with riff and recall. Some are budgetary depending on um you know what the budget is that's passed. And then we haven't even gotten all our building admin in the same room to go through their budgets to see how much leaner they are um in different areas to make sure that we are have all the things on the table when we determine what what classification of staffing we will use for uh student behavior and then where we'd be pulling that from. Maybe it can be pulled from um you know positions that we still haven't hired in other places. Maybe there's still some changes to
029be made if that's the case. Um, but it there is a little bit of a chicken and an egg issue between budget and um, riff situations and staffing and it's a little bit of a dance and that we can't finalize things fully until the budget's finalized. And if I may, just as a point of reference, and I'm looking around, Jaime's probably the only one that knows this other than me, but we spent a lot of years with significantly higher enrollment at the junior high and high school, and we only had one principal that did both. And so, we got lower enrollment, and now at least we got two people. So, >> you know, I'd love to have vice principles, too, but just, you know, as a point of reference, >> we've done it with less
030And one thing I'd like to one thing I'd like to add to that too is uh I mean as someone who was actually laid off from Dayton in 2009 um I appreciate the gradual because the year that I was laid off we eliminated 20 I believe it was 27 certified positions it might have been like 26 and that was catastrophic and so um when we look at this I think having the gradual because here's the hard part when you think about the high school like you know you're asking about well what we do look like the high school the hard part about the high school and junior high is you have to worry about teaching endorsements, right? So, you can't just look at FTE. You have to look at, okay, we're going to we're going
031to cut an entire program. And the hard part is then we don't have a lot of options. What programs are you going to cut that are not going to have an impact? Because kids don't come to school for English. They come to school for FFA. They come to school for business classes or they come to school for, you know, these other programs. And unfortunately, those are the ones are not required to be offered in the school system. So, that's where I would be really cautious, too. And as much as I love the I mean the vice principles or assistant principles as well as someone who just lost their position in Salem Kaiser and is being repurposed as well, you know, you have to look at it without looking at the names and that's a thing
032that sucks. Um but we really can't look at the names in this process because ultimately we got to look at the process and make sure that it's the best thing for kids. I think what I hear is the budget you've built with this kind of reserve admin position is what we can afford right now. If if we find something we need to spend that money on for a person, >> staff to support our kids, it's there for you to use. And you're asking us to say, >> "Please find the best way to use it." >> Yeah. But this is supportable possibly into the next year as well and it's a budget we can work from beyond this next school year as well. That's what I'm hearing and it's very helpful for me to hear that
033clarity. I want to say thank you for that email kind of clarifying all those moves. That helped me. I don't know if it helped anybody else. That helped me. >> Helped me a lot. Um >> very much so. Yeah. And I feel a lot more confident moving forward with what we've got. And I can't not say how much I appreciate the work that the staff, they're here and not here. >> Yeah. >> That you guys have done to help make the really terrible decisions that we're making today. I don't think anybody loves this. >> Um I certainly don't. And >> um just is what it is, I guess. Yeah. >> And to to to underscore your point, when um I was high school principal and was in charge of staffing of just the high school,
034uh I would always keep one FTE if possible in my back pocket because of everything that happens between now and August. Um because you don't want to find yourself in a bind where your hands are cuffed and you need this thing but you can't get it cuz your budget's all the way tapped. So that um it it might be, you know, a few more weeks before we know, you know, what the best move is for the money that is available. Um but I I don't want to make that decision unilaterally. And honestly, like I think Jamie said it best to like we always are able to when we get all of us in the same room deliberating land on something that that we feel like we can lead well and that works for everyone. Um
035and this budget process has been a lot of especially at the building level admin their voices have been what we've used to make these um hard decisions but also we haven't gotten to the now how do we rebuild >> what needs to be built part of it. It's just been like how do we make the budget balanced and so there's just a lot of work to be done now with okay so now what that we balance the budget how do we make sure the programs are operating in the way they need to for kids >> well the approach that you shared I I think is very supportable I mean when you're looking at cutting $2.5 million finding places for people really important >> even if it's something different than what they're currently doing as sucky
036as it is, >> you're trying your best to keep people employed and support our students in the same same move. So, thank you for that. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> I just as you move people to >> know um some positions are going to be being paid by grants and things. >> Have we I don't want to assume, but have you double checked that that's not suranting that they allow all of them? >> Yeah. Um, we have a meeting too with Luke Nef uh from OD on Friday just to go over all the changes of I think it's this Friday, maybe it's next Friday. Uh, all the changes of the grants because you do have to kind of resubmit your plan and have it re-approved. Um, in a perfect world, you don't want to pack
037all your grants full of staffing. Um, but in uh the world we're living in right now, uh, it's the best bridge to get us over this hurdle. Um, I agree with what Jeff Craropper said in the last meeting. This I it is important to look at these grants as part of Oregon sustained funding and they're woven together with the state school fund. Um, and so that is why I feel more comfortable um, filling the grants with staffing than I would if it was like ESSER or something that was specific to COVID because then you're just kicking the can down the road a little bit. Um, but uh, I just the conversations I'm privy to with superintendent groups in the legislature. I'm there is part of me that's like this next year if we can um
038maintain programs for kids even if staffing feels stretched out or if we are um you know having decide to hire an AP as a bridge to get us over the hurdle into the next year where maybe we will have even one fewer admin than that. um I feel okay about doing this for this next year because then we'll be at the start of a new bienium and um a lot of our voices will be at the table for what the funding looks like. So >> okay, >> just a couple brief comments and uh first I want I also want to echo just thank you for making the best of a a situation that that is a result of broken school funding. Um, I don't think that's a surprise to anyone here. Um, sadly our state
039has chosen to ignore the the kids of this state and and I think we see the results there. Um, the good thing is some districts have been dealing with this for three plus years. So, you know, maybe there'll be enough breakage at other places that something finally gets done about this. Um, I appreciate you putting students first and and trying to limit the breakage where you can. So, I think this is the best we can do with with what we got and you've you've led us through difficult situations before and and I believe that you've earned that trust for us to move forward with. Well, I appreciate that and honestly, we would be in a much worse situation if the budget committee hadn't done such a great job uh in under or with administrations prior
040to me. I mean, uh we I inherited a pretty large reserve and ending fund balance. And every year we've been talking about this that we're going to we are going to be tapping into it to maintain and even build programs knowing that that 1.3 is our stopping place of tapping into it and that um at some point enrollment or funding is going to have to change or we can't continue that pattern. And this is the year that we say, you know, it's the it's the stopping point and we either are able to build back up enrollment or we have to look at um you know, starting to what what programs uh we're going to have to look at cutting for kids, which I really hope that we don't end up in that position because like
041you said, Craig, um in my mind, and I'm sure uh the principles sitting in this room, uh there's not too many more programs we could cut while fulfilling graduation. requirements and division 22 standards because there are things that were required by law that you have to provide to students and it's pretty bare bones um you know outside of some of the programs that like Jeff said are bringing in students like CTE and athletics and even then we've we've cut those so that our teachers are going to have to be doing more fundraising than we want them to have to do to take kids to state and national competitions and um yeah >> well we talked about discipline is a it's to the assistant principles, but this this campaign to drive up enrollment. Like we talk
042about graduation rates and it's the seniors in high school that look like that are driving our enrollment numbers off a cliff. It's like 48% or something of kids showing up to school in the year. >> Dependence are two different things on enrollment. Um thankfully >> because that could be problematic if not other states sometimes are uh use attendance formulas. But I Robin, I don't know if you want to speak to you just sat in on a forum about that. >> Yes, I was part of a focus group. They had I was in focus group number 13. I imagine there was more and they put lots of administrators and other people who have a a large impact on attendance in their district into these groups. We met for an hour and a half and the point
043of the research is they're putting together a legislative report that they'll present to the legislature in September um with survey data. So I took a survey. I put some heavily worded opinions in my survey. So then they chose me for focus group and then they'll take that focus group data as well. I've worked with attendants in every district I've been in. So Sheridan, McManville and here and after COVID, it feels futile. Like everything we're doing, especially the high school is like as much as we can possibly be doing, including myself showing up on your doorstep begging parents, please, please, please send your kid to school, them saying, what do you want me to do? They play PS5 all night. I can't do anything about it. And so what was >> that's hard >> comforting and
044also really disheartening was every single person on my panel said until the state steps up and offers schools some more support to get these kids to school we don't know what else we can do. The elementary principles on the panel >> they have been adding and adding and adding to their incentive budget line to basically pay kids to come to school which just stops working at secondary. So my hope when I texted Amy after is that in some small way my voice was heard with a perspective of eight years working in attendance and seeing the very direct line in which attendance became a battle I felt we could no longer win. Um because the woman in the folks who got it who isn't even a educational researcher, she does research in another field said this
045is every group she's interviewed same thing over and over and over. Um so I don't want to say that as we're giving up we're going to keep working really hard to get our kids here and we need showing up at your doorstep. But for perspective, there used to be teeth in Oregon law. So you could send law enforcement or >> fight law or something like this >> if there was not that we want to all would start with that but after some >> somewhere you can escalate to to >> because of compulsory education. >> So that's my so and I will tell you I've only taken two families in my hired truency and both kids showed significant improvements in their attendance. One woman said DHS finally got involved after like 20 safety calls and a
046fourth grader who's never made it to school more than two days in a row for his entire elementary career was there every single day to center. So sometimes we have to work together with entities that can do some of the work that we just can't physically >> but then I just worry that it snowballs if we don't have the people here anymore to go knock on the doors that we're losing those people. Hey, you know that there's people that were getting like, hey, I don't want to, if nothing else, I don't want to have this focus on me anymore. Get out of here. Get off the PS5 and go to school, Jimmy. Like, >> Roger, one thing to point out, too, is that this is not just a Dayton issue. And so, as you know,
047I'm on the board of directors for Alam ESD, and they're also doing a regional task force on this very issue, too. Um, and so if there is a need, you know, that's something that Amy could easily tap into is you utilize some of the lic attendance because that's one of their high priorities as well. >> Yeah, because I was grinding through with the limit of these regular attender reports. That's what I had to grind through and it looked like you know we were kind of middle of the pack kind of at the state level but they ranked all the Wamtt County school or no not the Wami Yamh Hill County schools and it was just Sheridan and Willamina below us at Newberg and and Mcmminville are all having better attendance numbers than us. So it's
048like okay why do we fall at this place in the pack in our locality and then you know yeah we're talking about losing the people we have most directly on point to help fix that. I I was just I have a kind of a different take on it in that 100% of devastating losses in any type of personnel when it comes to education, but I've worked with a lot of excellent educators who also take this as an opportunity. And when I hear you talk, I hear like with them or without them, it's going to pull us one way or the other. and Amy and I were talking. We we have 100 plus employees in this district and that's a little it's about seven kids per adult here. And it's also an opportunity to do things
049differently. We don't have to have two assistant principles working their tails off trying to deal with the parents and the the behavior and attendance so teachers can teach. That's working in silos. We we have an opportunity to come together as a district and change how we do things. And I'm not talking about 80 years ago when Larry was in speaker. Talking about the issues that we have today. >> The issues we have today takes a team. And Amy's opening speech is is right on. And but if we keep talking about silos, if we have this to address this, we're we're going to have the same problems. Do we need the assistant principles? Yeah. let's let them lead us but as a team where we're all working together addressing the different issues rather than just in
050the silos that keep doing >> and and and there I just want to to add to that that the to the credit of um you know the teams they had knowing that the admin structure wasn't going to be as robust moving forward. They kind of had a plan over time on what they're training first and then what their next tier of training is. And so especially the the 612 team in particular um has kind of a gradual release of responsibility for training up all staff so that the tier one behaviors will be minimized so that the work is less over time. It's just the timing of these cuts is not coinciding with the timing that they had planned to lose an administrator. Um they were counting on one more year to train up staff in
051the way that they felt they needed to so that that team approach was more effective. So now we're just having to think on our feet a little. >> And I and I appreciate wanting to get out of the silos, but I also hear in some of these schoolboard meetings that like the late start Mondays are what we have set aside for meetings and professional development time. And I just don't think you'd find a teacher in this district that would say, "Sure, I've got extra time to deal with attendance policy issues and call in parents as well." It's going to be like >> the research around attendance said does say the most impactful way to influence it is in the classroom with the teacher. >> Of course, of course. >> But you're right. We're all tap
052time. >> Yep. >> Can I do a call to vote? >> I I'm willing to make a motion. >> Yep. Do we have a motion to approve the budget? >> Well, I move to approve the proposed budget for the 2627 school year in the sum of $23,91,000. I'll second. >> We have a first and a second. >> All those in favor say I. I. >> All those opposed. >> And you didn't vote. >> I was going up and then it was all opposed. So I just >> would you like to redo the vote so that you didn't get counted? >> Somebody give add a couple of graphic. So that's that's unanimous. Yes. Budget's approved >> and I have another motion. Mr. Chair, approval. >> Absolutely. >> I move um to approve the taxes be levied
053for the Dayton School District number eight as follows. The general fund operation for education 5.0892 per thousand of assessed value excluded from limitation of 1,889,600 for payment of bonded debt. >> All second. >> How many seconds? >> All right. All those in favor say I. I. >> I. I >> all those opposed votes unanimous. No further then that concludes this meeting and this meeting is adjourned at 6:40 p.m. Nicely done.