001I'd like to call to order the February 10th, 2026 Forest Girl School District Board of Directors meeting at 5:30 p.m. We'll begin with a roll call of members present. Kate Granuski >> present. >> Pete Truax here. >> Maya Andrade is excused tonight. Marica Franco is arriving shortly. and Alma Lozano is excused and I am here. If we can all please rise for the pledge. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. All right. I move to approve the agenda as presented. >> And I'll second. >> All in favor say I. >> I. >> Opposed. All right. We are going to go right ahead to the board reports tonight. We'll start with
002Director Truax. >> Okay. A couple of things. One, excuse me. I am the board representative to the city of water scrolls apart from Rick committee. They we've had one meeting at the ungodly hour of 7:00 in the morning and uh there was the first meeting of the of the new session. So it's more of a get acquainted meeting. um my effort to have the meetings moved off of 7:00 in the morning met with a resounding thud. And so we meet again tomorrow morning at 7. Items on the on the agenda. One of the items on the agenda of concern to me is the new East Side Park which was purchased about almost two years ago um for roughly half a million dollars and we are in the city is in the process of putting together
003the plan and beginning the uh preparation of that park with the use of people on the east side of Forest Grove. that be from basically from the city limits with Cornelius west to the um intersection of highway 47 and highway highway 8 fold. of those that those people who have been underserved as far as regional parks in the city are concerned will have a have a spot and that is sorely needed and uh highly anticipated by that group and they will be involved in in in part we hope to have um since that's about a block and a half from Neil Armstrong and from Fern Hill and about uh three blocks from Echo Shaw in Cornelius and another three to four blocks of Joe Gale that also might be a part of my adult survey
004of the school district also. You'll have those kinds of discussions. Um the other thing I the other item I wanted to share with you was uh from the poem Pipa Passes by Robert Browning. Um the final line uh one of the verses is God's in his heaven and all is right with the world. So I just thought I would share that. I am I'm finished. >> Thank you. Director of Truax. And for the record is now in attendance at 5:33 p.m. Hi Lisa. >> Hi. Hello. I'm so sorry. Sorry for school coming directly. So appreciate that. Um, and putting you on the spot, Lisa, if you did want to give any direct report about I know you did attend the town hall with you speak about that, but >> yeah. Um, I thought that was
005a great experience. That was my first time I think being in that type of conversation and going into a town hall meeting in my role. Um, I think there was great conversation had. um a lot of the things that we're seeing a lot right now with budget cuts and how ICE immigration was impacting their communities and just it was great to see other elected officials kind of we're all kind of on the same page and bringing up those voters to um so that overall it was great and empowering to see our community there as well. >> Thank you for representing that. Um for my report tonight, there's a couple things legislatively um one of urgency, but I did want to share with the board that the board chairs in the region had our second meeting
006and this is something new for our boards to be able to do to find a way to connect. We agreed at this meeting to meet on a regular basis every month. Um we're meeting at noon time on Zoom. We did have every single board chair there from from our region. And the conversation at this particular one as we're getting to know each other is how we can work together to be more effective especially around advocacy and that's the same conversation we started last week at this board. Um one of the other topics of that meeting was House Bill 411 which you have some potential testimony in front of you tonight. Boards did talk at length about the impact that the class size bill will have fiscally and what that means. And one of the things
007we talked about this the same conversation we had as boards last year when this bill came up. But one of the things we surfaced is we're we're showing that same fiscal impact. It's clear that we mathematically cannot afford the pieces that are in that bill. And yet we're not able to sort of break through with that information. And one of the things we talked about is we asked how many boards in our region actually talked about that bill publicly and shared that fiscal impact. and and and most boards had not they had individually tried to talk with reps. We had not really coordinated fiscal impacts. So there was interest and consensus in um having boards work together to maybe compile fiscal impacts of bills like that one. And there were several boards on that call
008that were interested in holding a work session publicly to be able to share with the community what that means and why we why we are advocating to spend our money in other areas that impact student outcomes. And so it was a really good conversation. We now in between those meetings are starting to share testimony and questions and facts with each other so our boards are aware of what other boards are talking about. And one of the other things we're thinking about is we ask boards, are there a regular item on the agendas where boards talk about their advocacy work and how they're doing that work. And some boards did have that as a regular agenda item. Other boards did not. And we talked about the importance of maybe making sure that's built in. That's some
009of the work our board has started to do so that we have a space to to share maybe a common message even and eventually work together as chairs. So, that was some really exciting progress there. Um, in front of you tonight, I brought to the board, we had notice yesterday that House Bill 411, which is the class size bill, is going to come to a hearing tomorrow. We're in legislative session, so we get very short notice that these things are coming for a hearing. Um, I already signed up to provide testimony. It's the testimony I'm bringing to the for tonight is very similar to testimony that we sent last year which just really talks about again fiscal impacts but um thank you to Dr. West for providing some answers to some questions that we had
010about what that potentially looks like and um I have a copy for the board. What I'm looking for tonight is consensus in submitting this as a school board. And again, our our work tonight at 7:00 is kind of backwards, but this is exactly why our board has wanted to talk together. We haven't really figured out one of the things that director Franco brought up to me is just identifying our operating procedures as a board. And this is one of them. What does it look like when we're submitting testimony? When is it okay for us to submit that as a board? What are our expectations for that? How do we communicate that? So, I think we'll be talking more about that tonight at 7, but in the meantime, um I'd like to hear from board members
011of your your comfort level as as submitting this as a board as opposed to um me submitting individually as a board member. >> I for one would be much more comfortable submitting it as representation opinion and testimony of the cabinet school board school district. Um, I think this is uh an item that we need to um step up to. I don't think it it's we all want smaller class sizes, but this doesn't solve the problem. Uh it to me it's a giant step. I'll have other comments uh later on tonight, but the note uh the message that we received earlier this year from uh Dr. Williams of the Oregon Department of Education outlining something reductions that they have talked about nothing short of abysmal and um I haven't had a chance to whail on that
012for bit. So I think I will save that till uh our discussion this evening. But this is this this document is is very hurtful to engage state as is the current financial situation. Make no mistake. Um we're we're in a bind and we have to figure out a way to get out of it. I don't think some of the I don't think the answers are founded in either the the legislation you're talking about or the uh proposal uh from Dr. I'll shut up. >> I'm I'm totally I think it's an efficient way to have one voice. you know, all the board members, they're in support of of what we do and you you work with the street off staff and Suzanne and I I think, you know, when you look and see how many people
013are testifying, you we're all on the same page. You don't have to apply separate. I think that's very appreciative. Um I think I agree with our consensus here with the board. I think it's a well-written letter and although I'm not a teacher and I have only been in the student portion of it. Um, logistically speaking, financially speaking, I do think we sense so I we're in opposition where this just isn't doable. I think it would be great if us as a board we've already agreed to have it represent. >> Don't ever say only a student ever. >> That's why we're here. >> Most important part. So, okay. Thank you for that. Um, and again, we'll talk tonight about how we land on things like this and how we go forward as a board. Um, I
014did, because we're on a short timeline, I did reach out to Senator Sullman and I also reached out directly to Rat McLean. They're both literally in committee meetings this morning. The Senate Education Committee Committee was um quite a discussion. I I did share the link to that because Senator Sullivan had some really important points about looking at state funding and rethinking how we fight for the state. So, you're right, Mr. True. This this is a small part um to a much bigger issue that we some would argue we need to tackle first. Compliments to both Senator Sman and Rhett. Mlan because Rep. Mlan actually texted from committee and had her legislative aid Grace call and Grace and I were able to talk through some of the elements of this letter. And one thing I shared
015with Rep. complain in particular is that though she might not always vote uh the same way that we would on a particular bill as as our representative I' I've really encouraged her to at least um elevate the numbers and the fiscal impact of our district and I think that's a way that both things can happen. We don't always expect our reps to vote the way we want but we do expect them to represent um what we're what we're putting out. And the last piece and again we'll talk about it at seven is I think it's important to share this testimony with our community um so that they know how the board is doing this work and what's being submitted on their behalf and again part of the bigger discussion about how we do that how
016we want to do that and what that looks like. So, um, thank you to everybody for that. And I think that >> you need a motion for consensus or can we just >> I think we can just consensus it. >> So, when you make the statement, would it be okay for you to say you're speaking on behalf of the school? Well, I did and this was another thing that came down from OSBA is that people were told on Friday if a board is submitting general testimony as a board, they suggested strongly that it needs to come to a board as a resolution. So, I was able to connect with Spencer at OBA and say I don't that's not accurate, is it? And he said no. Um, the board publicly needs to identify a way that
017the board wants to be able to do testimony. Yeah, as long as that's been talked about and agreed upon, that's that's fine. And I think what we're doing here is explaining to people how we land on that. It's really difficult in a short session because we literally have a couple hours to pound something out and then we might not meet for another week. So, um, we'll again talking about those logistics tonight at 7 will be really helpful. So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. West unless Okay, great. I'm going to start with our enrollment data that gets us up to speed with where we're at as a district. When we met last month and I shared these data, we were roughly about 80 students below our projections. We had picked up
018a few students. That's typical after the holidays. And we have many students that travel between Mexico and south other countries in South and Central America. And some of those students return, some of them don't. So we we have picked up a few students uh as you see in these data here primarily at the high school level where we have the influx of students at the elementary level and being to a slight degree at the middle level. Um we are below our projections. That said, our class size averages do remain low um overall. So if you look here our instructional class sizes K6 are at 24 78 24 912 24. So we are doing a good job of maintaining low class sizes. We are being helped by low enrollment. Um and as we have been discussing
019because of our declining enrollment because our enrollment is below our budget projections for this year we actually have more staff than our methodology would suggest that we should have um as we go through our reduction process for this year and we will have to do that. Um, we will be looking to maintain these class size ratios as low as possible, but we also need to offset our costs and that will probably um involve impacts to staff and so we may see a bump in at least one or two of these levels in terms of instructional class size. Any questions from the board before I move on to my regular reporting? And um moving on to just a couple of highlights that I want to bring up. Um I too attended our congresswoman's um town hall,
020Congresswomani. Um and I agree with Director Franco. She did a nice job of fielding questions and being present for the individuals who were there. I also attended the town hall with Attorney General Rayfield, Senator Sman, Representative Sosa, and Representative Mlain. Um, many more people attended that town hall and the environment in that town hall was significantly more emotional than what we experienced with Congresswoman Bonichi. And I'm bringing that up because I want us as a school district to remember that we have families and students that continue to be impacted by federal action in our area. Although we are seeing a wall right now. Um it is not a zero impact at this time. I'm continuing to hear from families and staff that are directly impacted by enforcement efforts. So just want to raise that and
021elevate that as an activity at least itself that as a district we are responding to. In addition to that just briefly I'm going to highlight a couple of things from the along middle school today because I was there this morning as provide a bit of time this morning and it was a ton of fun. Um so one of the things that our interim principal Terry Miguel has instituted for this year is she is recognizing any student who shows any growth in English language development, literacy development in Spanish or English and math development. So today was award day for language arts and I was able to go around with um the administrators as they presented awards and every student previously had been award um and I was reminded and I'm bringing this up because I was
022reminded that our middle school students are they have one childhood and one of adulthood and even the kids that didn't want to were pretty proud that they received received that award and that recognition and I think that's a wonderful way to elevate the progress and the hard work of students and it brings some joy into our middle level which I think is really important to highlight because there can be a perception that the middle level is just hard and sometimes it is but those kids are also delightful. Um so that was great fun. While I was there, I was also able to step into a classroom and insert a health lesson. And today's health lesson was around tobacco use and specifically around babies. And it was such a good lesson. It was clear, direct, truthful,
023honest conversations with the kids. And the kids were asking smart, smart questions. And I do believe the way that these lessons are being taught at the middle level and the way these health teachers are engaging, this is a preventative curriculum and at least some of these students will choose to not use tobacco or vape products because of what they're learning today. So I want to thank our middle school followers who have been engaged in these activities. They're really having a positive impact on our students. And I'll turn it back to you. Okay. Um, I do see FPA in the house. Is there a report today from Okay. All right. Just making sure. We'll move on to unscheduled public appearance. The board appreciates community members sharing information during public comments. Public comments can be made in
024person or through Zoom by submitting the designated form on the web page. Public comments will be limited to three minutes as is the protocol for board meetings. Board members will not comment or respond to questions. Public criticism or complaints about school district personnel are not allowed. And I do believe we have one in public comment. Dale even can the microphone. Welcome Dale. >> Thank you. >> You could just state your name and uh affiliation maybe address. Sure. Okay. Cotkkey board members and superintendent Dr. West Dale Fe started teaching in 1966 in Forest Grove and retired in 2000. Affiliation, parent, grandparent, uh, community member, activist, active at age 81, still love life. I mean, is that good enough? Live at 3363 Levana Drive. uh and lived there for a long time. Neighbor of former mayor Pete
025Truax. And u so my purpose here is just to let you know why I'm here. So I'm going to do that. So, at the Forest Grove individual vigil in front of the library, I talked with former mayor Truax, colleague, and at Neil Armstrong Junior High and friend, and said hi to many people I know, including city councelor Angelina Falconer and board chair Christy Cocky. And your dad was there and he left early. He's a personal friend of mine. I had a longer cons uh uh conversation with Kate Granduseski who was a special ed teacher in Forest Grove when I was and she really said I need to get an appointment with Dr. Suzanne West. And so I said because you said I need to do that I when I talked with Bethany I said a
026former board chair and current chair need an appointment directly with her. So I have an appointment with her on February the 13th. My teaching career started as a fifth grade teacher at Joseph Gale in 1966. Then one year later, eighth grade science teacher because they wanted me to coach seventh grade baseball because I played eight years of baseball high school and as a in high school they only had a three-year high school, but they brought me up. So I played four years. Varsity hit number four and then played four years of college baseball. I wanted to be a professional baseball player. That didn't work out and became a teacher which was better for me I'll tell you. Uh I earned a couple master's degree at the University of Oregon specialized and came back. I didn't
027have district didn't have to hire me back but they hired me back because they liked what I did before. And so they had a title one uh grant Neil Armstrong Junior High. So it was a reading clinic which meant a teacher when one aid director teacher in one aid. But we served the lowest performing 56 kids because I had a neat way to identify those kids, the lowest performing readers, Neil Armstrong, and served them uh for about 12 years. I guess ended up doing a dissertation related to that in title one evaluation of that and that I did a dissertation related to the stuff I did at Armstrong. So, I retired in 2000 uh after serving in Forest Girl schools in a wide range of areas. Many different schools in Forest Grill. Where's the timer?
028>> Just about time. You're our only public comment. Do you think you can wrap within the next minute? >> Oh, yeah. I have to say something. My time is being used. All right. This is what former mayor Pete Truax used to say and it's from his speech teacher Pacific. I love a finished speaker. I really really do. I don't mean one who's polished. I mean ones that's through. I have about 45 seconds I guess. So I really appreciate you uh Dr. West and how you introduced uh Congresswoman Bonamichi at that. I appreciate how you moderated at that uh at Pacific University and so I got to know you somewhat in that role. I also read about you and what you've done so I can understand why you uh Kate Kreneski has high high regards for
029doc Dr. West. I don't see the timer up there. >> You're good. >> I'm good. >> All right. But please let me know when 10 seconds I'm done. Well, in conclusion, we'll get to know you more later. So, I appreciate your service. And uh I don't know if I'll come and talk too much more, but I want to give you the book on tyranny 20 lessons from the 20th century. And anybody else wants a book, I have an extra. I've given 185 of them away so far. It's very important people be aware of what what uh Timothy Snider says about tyrann. >> Thank you so much. actually have a couple comments that all same at the house. >> Thank you. >> Um all right, we are going to move to consent agenda. The consent agenda
030is made up of routine non-controversial items to be voted on under one motion. Are there any items within the consent agenda a board member or the superintendent wishes to discuss separately? Seeing none, I approach the agenda as presented. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. I post. All right. And we're going to move on a little bit early to action items. Um, Oregon Schools Association employment agreement with Sarah Hamlin, director of human resources. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you. >> Good evening, board members. Sarah Hamlin. Um so we are here tonight to um put in front of you the um classified employees agreement which has been tenatively agreed upon through the process that we went through of negotiations um one more. There we go. Um through the spring and um and through the fall. So negotiations
031began on April 21st in the spring and we met regularly um until the summer and then both parties agreed that we would break for the summer. Um and then we picked back up on in September and began meeting regularly. Some of our meetings were a little bit shorter, some of our meetings were longer. A lot of the meetings went from um early in the morning until about 1 p.m. So we had a good amount of time to work together and collaborate throughout this process. Um and on January 21st we wrapped up our last TAS and so we came to a tenative agreement across the whole contract which we were very excited about. Um the association began their communication with their group at that point. I'm sure they had been communicating all along the process but
032the communication about the fact that we have TAed the entire contract and they voted last week and overwhelmingly voted to ratify the contract. So we are here tonight to um get approval by the board questions. So I do have a couple a little bit more information about the process. Um so through this process uh with the classified agreement we did notice every article was noticed and so that gave us an opportunity to really go through and make sure that the contract language um was what we needed on a really broad scale. It gave us an opportunity to review all the different articles and and the language within throughout the process. Um we wanted to ensure that the language was clear for our staff members and as streamlined as pro as possible and um we approached
033the negotiations with the lens of operationalizing in areas where we needed to in order to ensure that we could um live up to the language that we were negotiating and excuse me that we were agreeing upon. Um so through this process um thorough discussions and really clear real world examples allowed the teams to be able to come together and help each other understand um the the perspective um that we were trying to put forward and it moved the conversation along to a place where we got to agreement. Um so really digging in and and trying to understand each other's perspectives was really important throughout this process. um for us to gain a clear understanding. So, the updates to the contract um some important ones or some ones to to be mindful of um we did
034have some salary increases this year um over the next few years. So, the salary increases are outlined on this slide and then the new insurance caps are also listed there. One thing to point out is that the OSBA has uh been contributing to a um their own insurance pool and that insurance pool beginning with the 2627 benefit plan year they will then be putting contributions toward their staff members premiums um in addition to the district's contribution. That is a similar format that um the FGA uses at this time. So, a couple of other items that we've worked toward. Um, the OCA uh had to they had a lot of discussion about where their financial priorities are. And coming out of those discussions, um we agreed upon um a grade change for the special education instructional
035assistance. They will move to grade six effective with the 2627 school year. In addition to that, uh, special education instructional assistants that are skills trainers at the Oak Grove Academy will begin receiving a 50 cent differential, uh, per hub. And the there is now going to be an option for uh, employees who work less than 12 months to be able to be have their pay spread over the time that they work. So, right now, all staff's pay is spread over 12 months. um all classified staff pays. Um and this allows a staff member to be paid uh based on their work year versus having that their pay spare over the summer. A couple of other items that we feel were really important for our classified staff members are tuition reimbursements. Um tuition reimbursement is an
036important investment in our staff members continuing education and professional and personal growth. Um the tuition reimbursement doubled this year from last year. We also increased the translating and interpreting differential uh 250 cents per hour. And then we switched an emergency leave day to personal leave. The emergency leave day there wasn't a lot of clarity or it felt restrictive in how staff could use that day. So switching it to personal allows a little bit additional flexibility there. And then there was a sick leave pool created. This allows classified staff members to be able to contribute to a pool um and then other classified staff members to request days from the pool if they are experiencing a significant um health situation. Okay. So thank you. We spent a lot of hours together, a lot of time um
037and effort collaborating and thinking creatively together and understanding where each other was coming from. And so we just want to extend our thanks to everybody who participated in the com in the committee, the negotiations committee. We have a couple of members here tonight that participated and we really appreciate everyone's time. Um and we want to extend a special thanks to Pete for being a part of that committee as well. We appreciate your perspective and support throughout the process. >> Would you like to add anything? >> Well, I would like to see if Kent would like to add something just on as president of the U association if he could I'm putting him on the spot. I realize that. And >> thank you, Pete. >> You're welcome. You're welcome. All glad to do that. uh if
038you could, you know, share with us a little bit of um if I I'll go first. It was uh it wasn't the smoothest of sailing at some at some points. We did have some some rocky uh issues to deal with. Uh and we got through those. Uh we were mature about it. We didn't throw chairs at each other. uh we didn't call each other names at least not the diary and uh worked worked well uh through those tense situations to to actually uh move beyond that and move towards agreement. Um maybe I'm looking at it through rose color glass but I think that was the the issue. Kent you can correct me if I'm wrong. >> I will not. And if I may, um, we did reach out to Kent and I'm gonna try to
039save you here, Kent. Um, Kent said that he didn't want to actually speak tonight. Um, but I will jump in. Ken, you're welcome to come up to the mic if you would like to add something, but I'll jump in and um, echo a little bit of what we heard from Sarah. Um, the process was longer than I think it has been in this district for a while and it was good. As Sarah said, we went through every single article. Um, we were able to talk about a lot of language, but even more than that, we listened to each other. So, two director true access point. um we didn't always agree and that was okay because we were able to listen and we were able to find points of compromise and that is what these conversations
040are for. So overall, I think it was a productive and constructive process that landed us in a good spot with our association colleagues. Thank you for that. Are there any other comments from the board? Questions for Sarah? >> Thank you Sarah for the presentation. Yeah, congratulations to everyone. It does mirror what we do well. Number one, it is so much time that you don't see behind the scenes until you're there, you go through it. So, appreciation for the additional time that people spend and energy they spend. I will say a couple times I would check in to say, well, how's it going? How's it going with negotiations? And the answer was always, we're having some really important good discussions and it was I mean that was truly pretty consistent throughout. So, it's really nice to
041hear that we can get to the other sides of those and I'm happy to see some of those agreements and they mirror what we did with the teachers association as well. So, >> and I will I will add that we came I came into the process halfway through. So, it was difficult for everybody on both teams. They had uh one board member who left and then uh the new new kid in town came came into the into the game. So, um that was that was a bump in the road, but they both sides negotiated that well and put up with me. Um I move to approve the proposed three-year OCA and FGSD classified employees agreement be effective for school years 20 2025 through 2028. Any discussion? Seeing none, we'll do all in favor say I.
042>> I. >> We do a roll call vote on this. This is an important agreement and I think everybody has to be on the record. I would much rather have a roll call vote on that. If we could do that. >> Noted. All right, we'll do a roll call vote. Uh, Besa Franco. Um, yes. I I'm not Kandowski. Yes. Peter, >> yes. >> And Christy, I am a definite yes. And that motion passes. And thank you to everybody. And thanks Pete for the suggestion and thanks to everybody who's here tonight and for the work that you did. Um, okay. We are going to adjourn. I believe soon. >> No. Oh, recess. Recess. Recess. Do I have nothing? >> All right. The board will now recess at 6:09 p.m. and reconvene an executive session at 6:35
043p.m. for the purpose of hearing a grievance appeal in accordance with OS192.660 parenthesis 2. That's just F. As a reminder, these sessions are closed sessions. The media may attend but may not report on discussion or information disseminated during the executive session. Same thing. Does it have to be Okay, board has concluded executive session will now reconvene in regular session at 7:04 p.m. We are going to talk for 26 minutes about our board advocacy plan ideas. And for the board, I've shared sort of a framework based on your initial feedback, which was on a initial framework that we put out, kind of compiled people's thoughts, and then put together um this agenda for what we can accomplish. We're not going to accomplish all of this in 25 minutes, but I think it's good start to start
044to have a discussion about how we're going to do this work together and and then we'll move forward from this discussion and maybe even continue in leadership and then just see where we go from there. So, um question. Yes. So, I didn't Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. So, first the first section um I almost felt like after this morning we need to have a bigger discussion about what is our role in advocacy and only because I had conversations with each director separately specifically about this testimony. Um, and then our two commitments are advocacy and engagement, but then we also had conversation about upcoming budget meetings and communication to the community. And it does seem like our two commitments are kind of merging into one. Maybe advocacy and engagement is going to be where we land
045because advocacy maybe does need to also be engaged for the community here. But um if we can start with the first one about how we coordinate uh advocacy access and when we agree we should be able to coordinate as a board on advocacy and not individually. What does that look like? And if exceptions exist, what are they? and what is the minimum shared understanding on especially legislative issues that our board feels like they need to have together so that we can speak on behalf of our board and there's a couple different questions wrapped up in that but I'm thinking about even our recent attendance at town halls and our communication with people there um when you're out individually talking with people if I'm talking with people in Salem or Petas how do we want to
046coordinate what our talking points are and should be and when can we go off script then be okay with that as well and I think we could use this as an example if they want testimony about this particular bill. >> Well first of all this is director um madam chair it seems to me that your example Excuse me. >> Your example that you cited for us tonight uh that you brought to us through your testimony is hits the ball our part in that we are we were able to see that you agreed to it. become the consensus that you can go to uh sale tomorrow or the next day or whatever and make a statement saying this is the viewpoint of the course but collective viewpoint even though you may have author who are sharing
047the authorship sharing credit the rest of the board if you hadn't gotten that you would have still gone down and you still would have testified. But then you would have to say these are views, my own views and not necessarily those of the forest growth or correct. Um I think it lends a little bit of weight when we do have that discussion which we had tonight and are able to say yeah you carry our water for us gentlemen. Um I think that's the crucial step that we have to do is that we when we have a statement that we want to make uh instead of going off uh wild air um such as I'm want to do at times uh we come to the board and we say this is the issue this is my
048comments on the what say you on those comments and we can be still guessing now go ahead whatever it is but I think the timing is important is that we don't put the board in the position you know courtesy enough to put the board in the position where you they can't say yay or nay um they enough time. Sometimes that's the fault of somebody else. But we can't create that issue on our own. You have to give us an opportunity or Besa has to give us an opportunity to to see the testimony to see the opinion and sign off on um I think there's the shared messaging part is one where we make every effort should make every effort to get that shared message out to everybody and either get agreement or opposition or modification.
049Um the ability to modify failing that um frankly whoever makes suggesting one >> well it feels really reactive. I mean these are special cases with short session it feels reactive. What Spencer talked to me about at OSBA is they're having board members call them saying, "We have board members on our board going out and giving testimony and our board has not agreed." They're getting calls from different boards. And it comes back to how does a board agree ahead of time? And I also like to back this way up to think about how do you build an advocacy plan? And it maybe is intertwined with the work around the budget communication where we're we're trying to elevate with the community how we spend monies in this district, why we spend the monies we the way they
050do and how that's tied to what our students need and then building our plan around that. I mean, we were reacting to a couple bills here, but I wouldn't know when someone I met with someone today and she said, "Well, what is the school board's what's your platform?" And I, you know, I said, "We're going to talk about tonight at 7." Like, that's, you know, I don't know. I mean, we're reacting to these short bills here, but as a board, what does that look like in the community? Is it building it from building an understanding of how this district operates? And from that then when a bill comes up we can say oh 401 that actually ties into the work we're doing and that's going to take away from the splurge. You know what I'm
051saying? Like back it up way up. What's our purpose for this advocacy? And that's what we're saying at that legislative been board's been doing this for a couple years and it's not working right. So we could get aligned but aligned around what? Well, I I think that um it's going to depend on the issue. So, for example, you know, there's a huge budget shortfall and it's not only with us, but it's throughout the whole state. And I think with our superintendent and your advocacy um and communicating with um our senator and is that um because we're acting now that they're coming and asking questions and asking how we go about this. I think the the three things that the board is responsible for is this hiring the superintendent, evaluating the superintendent, and including the budget.
052And so the budget is a big big piece. Um, and I think tying it in with I mean makes sense. I think tying in um what what the issues are in our short ball and then how the legislative bills are going to impact us. And I think that the chair should be the one that mits the letter, but what you've been doing all along is, you know, contacting all the super other members of the board and and asking what are your thoughts about like the one that we just gave us. Um, but you know, I since I've been on the board, well, I would say since Fred and Mark and Val got on the board, um, we have been a consensus board and so periodically we have said things to our representatives and said states
053down the Salem and you know there's one person speaking but the other board members have seen it just under but I I don't have any any real wisdom other than I think that doing what you've been doing communicating with the other authorities then coordinating with Susan Suzanne about um you know how do we word this so they get their message I think also the coordination of um with the other superintendent but I think a really good thing that you're doing right now um is coordinating with other um board chairs because often times you need a leader. You need someone that's going to, you know, sort of say, "Let's do this." you you always are going to have followers, but you don't have a lot of people that have the initiative like you do this to
054um to um you know people to to talk about the issues because the issues in Washington County are almost all the it's special ed it's funding etc. So I I think we're on our way. Uh that's what I right now. Thank you. Well, I just I still feel like if we come back to the visits when Senator Sman and R Mlan came and S and Travis talked about what we are doing that work that to me is advocacy in a proactive way and since that like for instance I don't think I've done any further thought about pushing that forward as a message and and those should also will be letters, you know, and then once this session is over, when we do meet with those reps, what if what would we like to make sure
055we build maybe off that meeting, what are the things we want to build upon? What is our overall theme? And I still feel like this is reactive. Like I can write this up and we can agree, but I don't call you guys first to say, "Hey, I'm writing this testimony." I mean, I kind of do, but not really. I'm just like this already, right? So, I'd rather have it be a situation where this is part of a plan that we have. So, when some of these topics come up, yes, our board is laser focused on this, maybe this doesn't have any impact and wasn't worth the time or the time that I had to ask Dr. West and Eileen to pull some members. >> Well, one of the things I think of is the revolving
056door of Dan Salem of legislators. um many of them don't come from educational background and their agenda may be technology, it may be agriculture, it may be forestry, etc. And that even when we're not in session is how can we educate them about the needs of our school districts because they continually do the same things over and over again that are not really meeting the needs of our our kids and our teachers. So when they're not in session, do we meet and identify a couple things where we become proactive for the next session and say, "Okay, what what are we going to what what are we looking down the road?" And it could be, you know, I I think for the next years it's going to be um deficit spending. I mean, I think we're
057really going to be looking at deficit spending. And so what did we identify as a group? I mean, Washington County is pretty much a powerhouse because of the population, but we should be educating those people on on and and I don't know exactly how to do it if we try to leave, you know, a handful of them, you know, from this region and that region and that, but I think that that's something chairs in Washington County. Um, and also talking to our legislators, how do we communicate to help the other legislators understand what their they're I don't want to say to their face that they're ineffectual in their legislation, but it's not meeting the needs of our students. And so I think we need to, you know, deal with a short session right now, but
058then I think we need to plan on how we think the legislives in a productive way to think of a job. >> Well, I think this is something we talked about. I think Adam brought up which was having more communication, what that communication looks like with our representatives and how we strengthen that uh and and kind of how we get the conversation going and back to your communication about I mean yeah about Christiey's point about being proactive rather than reactive. Uh, and I think that ties into just stronger communication with our representatives and more communication more often so that we're not like you're not having to just quickly react and then us have a consensus about like this is us as a board and this is what we want to do as a board. Um,
059and I think it just goes back to just how can we regularly have meetings with our representatives, not during any short or long session when they're busy or having to juggle with a jillion things and when they maybe have more time to talk to us and foresee issues that are going to impact us and how we can work towards a solution or some sort of understanding that this is what our district need rather than reacting to something that's already been put through and then having to to fight for what our district needs are in a moment where decisions are being made so quickly. That was one of the conversations I had with Grace today about Susan Mlan was she had mentioned at the legislative setting up something and Grace said, "Well, would be nice if
060there was a way that we could all talk together." together and I said, "Well, actually, we're going to try this Zoom thing once a month and maybe that's a format where it is a public meeting, but we do use one of those to invite our reps to that hourong Zoom, but then by the time we get there, we do have some proactive talking points. I have I don't know what those should be." And then when I was talking to this community member today, she's like, I I'm watching these meetings and I'm looking at the website, I'm not really clear on what it is this board is advocating for doing. How would you know if you don't really post? It's the same issue when I I watch Janine explain. gave this amazing speech that would be
061important for people to hear, but how does that all what is the implication we need? So, right now I'm just sending that to you guys. Oh, this is a good one. Sending something to Sam to say, hey, I just heard this. It just feels so disjointed. Um, and I do you have thoughts there? Because then there's OSB and KOSA are kind of trying to streamline. But again, that's for the active is planning. And I feel like if you became a schoolboard member in the north road, what do you need to get comfortable with when you're talking to our community about what our schools are doing for kids and what we said? Maybe those are the two anchors that we work on. So we have kind of elevator packaged talking about spoil I guess my issue
062is that we are in a situation now in special session and with the irrational behavior of our administration that federal administration, not both of um that we have we have by nature we have to be reactive because the the legislative session is so short and everything's coming at us from a viral and on the national scene everything is so irrational and so hurtful and so hateful that we have to react to that. We don't have a choice. Nobody ever ran a school board saying, "Oh boy, I can hardly wait to deal with the immigration problem." And yet every school board member across this this great land of ours has to deal with that. Um, so I I I agree in in a in a perfect world, we would be able to develop an advocacy plan
063saying we want classrooms that do this. We want activities that support this. We want funding that allows for this expansion. But the real world has a cruel way of intruding upon that almost Eden like thinking that we have time to do stuff and we don't. Um, so I don't I don't I don't have a complaint that we don't have a advocacy plan written down that we ought to be able to say in case the fire break last. Um, I am I wouldn't be concerned if we didn't have members of the school board that weren't and and administrative members that weren't able to say, "Okay, in the event of this fire, this is the glass we're going to break and these are the things we're going to do." Uh I think that's a it's almost by
064management by walking around the grip. >> Yeah. I think to Pete's point we're constantly going to have to be like catch up. I mean for the foreseeable future that's what our reality is and it's not just us a school board but I've seen it across nonprofits too. It's a lot of need to be reactive and also trying to figure out how to make procedures so we can be proactive in case it happens again in the future. But it's really hard to do if you're trying to react to the world that's happening around you and create solutions or come to a consensus and also try to establish um some sort of procedure so that it doesn't happen again. And I think it's just going to take time. Um, but I think having these discussions and figuring
065out what that looks like and setting it up and also trying to be reactive at the same time is kind of the world that we're going to live in for a while. But I think it's important that we set up some sort of ad plan and how it's going to look like. Um, that can be amendable in the future, but as of right now, I think it's going to be a very slow progression forward. Um, but those are kind of my my thoughts on it and I agree with what what kind of a dumpster fire right now to react to it. Well, and the missing piece for me is again I feel like and this is a conversation we can talk about in leadership too is I'm not sure if what I'm doing is having
066an impact and maybe the flow needs to come from the superintendent to say here's what we're hearing at KOSA and here's how this board could advocate on our behalf and here's where I don't think it's worth your time and coordinate that a little bit more so it's on me. Oh, I want to look at this thing and then me sending it. I there's not I just feel completely disorganized with it. Maybe that is partially because it feels so reactive, but it doesn't feel intentional. And so I'm thinking, okay, if I'm not in this seat or we have different board members in this seat, what will be their path for doing this work? And to have to recreate it every time I mean there's an element depending on the person and their capacity, but generally what
067is the expectation? So we could agree in short session that the chair will work with the superintendent to identify key bills that this board we know are coming so we can be ready. But I think there needs to be an education piece with that because again I'm sending this to you but I'm not really hearing from you first before I write it. What are your thoughts? Which could be important. So, >> well, I dispute that you've given us this is the right way to go about it as far as I'm concerned. You give us the rough draft of history and then we can take this and shape it. We can, you know, do all the things we do. But if there if you were to say, okay, this bill is coming before uh legislature 401
068is it? >> What do we do? All of a sudden, you have five people sitting around here saying, "Okay, let's do this." D and it ends up at the end of the end of the evening or the end of the session, then we've done nothing. But you've given us a starting point here. You've given us something that we can say, "Yeah, this is a great idea." Or, "This is a great idea. Here are a couple of things that could make it even better." Or, "Christie, this is a croc." and start over, but at least we have something. And I think so you you're you're doing the right thing. Don't don't sell yourself short on this because I find that that's how stuff gets done is somebody comes up with an idea and then other people
069take that idea and run with it. But if there's no idea to run with, then you end up like the New England Patriots ground game. >> Knew I'd bring that up somehow, didn't you? >> Get that in there. Okay. So, we have a few minutes left, but Dr. West, do you want to chime in on your analysis of >> I have one. Okay. I wanted to ask um you know and it's it may be erroneous on my part but I have assumed that OSBA with help um asking us to support certain kind of bills etc along with the superintendents in the Washington and and and that they would say these are the things that we would like you to help support what have you But it hasn't flowed that way since I've been on the
070board, you know. And so I don't know if that's that's okay or not. I think they've well at least OSBA has shifted. We are now sending the Monday update to every board member. That was one huge change that we requested last year so that board members themselves are aware because we learned that wasn't getting pushed out and even if it got to chairs, chairs weren't getting into their boards. and even if it got to the boards, no one was looking at it. I think that could be an anchor that we use to say within this framework and based on where HOSA is. There's also a little nuance to sometimes what OSBA asks for is not directly in line with some of the points that we would like to elevate and sometimes we can be a
071little more bold with those points or we sometimes disagree. But that could be an anchored part and I think they're trying to shift that Kate. >> But I I do think what I've heard legislators say is that OSBA and HOSA are organizations of No. So legislators when they see OSBA lobbyists coming and HOSA lobbyists coming up to the mic, they're prepared for them to tell legislators this isn't a good idea. Now that's that's a perception that I've heard. So they're starting to tune that out, right? And I think they're starting there is some impact to be had with individual districts, especially collectively as chairs if we could get there. Sharing actual fiscal impacts, which is the one thing that legislators say is recipe, thoughts. Uh well, there was a lot there. I know it. So,
072I'm not sure where to start or insert myself. Okay. Actually, since um I'm not sure how tied to time you are. I do agree with much of what directors said in terms of how you organize yourselves. um having a whether it be an organizing document or a starting point for the draft for advocacy I think is super helpful. I am not embedded in OSDA so I don't know what you're receiving and what that looks like but I do know that OSBA and KOA work pretty closely and superintendent are in regular conversation KOSA around how do we support advocacy at the state level so that is something that we can certainly coordinate on and collaborate on but I I don't know what that looks like from the OSA side of things. Um, in terms of these
073other questions, it sounds like no conversations. I think so. I mean, I think this is a starting point. I I was going to ask before we close tonight if the idea of having and I've talked with Besa and Alma about this as well, a couple subcommittees and maybe we just need the idea that this board would be okay with maybe Pete and I working together to move this forward and draft up some ideas to bring back. Um are is that okay with you Pete? I mean I and I had asked talked to Brie and Alma who have talked about engagement ideas and things that when Alma is back we might have a conversation about officially or unofficially just saying hey do we are we good with the two of them when they can you know
074putting their heads together and bringing some things for us to consider to your point be having somebody with a starting point based on this discussion we're having um would there be any objections to that I didn't really ask Pete but we can move you on that afraid of that. I should Okay. So, I think what I'd like to do is see if he and I could put something together and then bring it back and from this conversation and see where we go. >> Okay. Okay. 7:30 7:33. Um, we got a turn. Thank you everybody.