4/22/2025 FGSD Budget and School Board Meeting

001I can't hear anything. Hey, can you hear me? I I can hear you, but I can't hear anyone else. Oh, hi. Yeah. How's your time in New Zealand? Oh, it's great. We we've had just great weather and um just a lot of fun. How about you? Well, you know, I had to come home early, Kate. My mom fell and had a brain bleed. Was in the hospital, so I had to fly home early, couple weeks early. So, how is she doing? Oh, she's doing okay. She's doing okay, but I just needed to be here because, you know, we didn't know how things were going to go. So, yeah, might be starting. Okay. Thank you. Mark and Kate, we're about to get started. And we're live. And we're live. Live from bars. It's Tuesday night. Oh,

002wait. That's Saturday. That's fine. That's fine. Sorry. All right. Ready, everybody? Let's do it. Okay. The April 22nd, 2025 Forest Grove School District budget committee meeting is called to order at 5:31 p.m. Let's start with the flag salute. [Music] 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, for roll call, we have Jordan Miller, present. Brad Zafaro here. Christy Cockkey here. Peter Bower, absent. Pete Truax here. Nicholas Az here. David Anderson, present. And on Zoom, we have Mark Everett. Yeah, here. and Kate Randeski here. And then for some excused absences, we have Melinda Fischer and Valerie Ingram. For tonight's agenda, do I have a motion to approve tonight's agenda as presented?

003So move. Do I have a second? Second. Perfect. Do I have a motion to approve the um and then we'll take Oh, sorry. All in favor? Oh. All in favor? I I I All right. Then do I have a motion to approve the February 25th, 2025 meeting minutes as presented? So move. Do I have a second? Second. All in favor? I over to Eileene. All right. So tonight we're going to focus on um some data requests. All right. So, we'll focus on data requests that we've gotten over the last month. We'll talk a little bit about the budget development process and what's going on and where we're at in that at the time. And then we'll provide an opportunity for you guys to have some conversation around budget committee priorities and discussion about um the

004budget this year. Uh looking at the budget calendar, today is the second of our preliminary meetings. Um the next meeting, May 8th, will be the first official budget committee meeting, and that's where you will get the budget document itself and the budget message from Superintendent West. Um so that'll be the first big meeting. After that, you'll have up to two meetings to deliberate, discuss, get public information, and approve a budget. And then from there, it'll go to the board for a hearing and adoption. And what time are those meetings? 5:30 or 6? I believe 5:30. Okay. Say 6. I thought 6:00 6:00 those nights. Sorry. And then on a Thursday instead of Monday. Those will be on Thursday. Yes. The next three. All right. Uh just a reminder of budget committee responsibilities. Budget committee is

005really designed to receive the budget. the budget message, um the document itself, listen to community and public comment, review, discuss, deliberate and uh look at it in alignment with the district goals and priorities and then ultimately approve a final budget for the board to adopt. Um this is setting the maximum appropriation levels by major fund and major function. So this is general fund instruction, general fund support services, grant funds instruction, grant fund support services and so on. So ultimately we're looking at setting that maximum amount that we have for spending authority over the next fiscal year. Um I did want to appreciate I met with a couple of budget committee members over the last month. There was a couple of comments uh questions that came out on um multi-year data comparisons. And so I wanted

006to bring some information on 10-year comparisons on how we receive our funds and how much resources we've received and how we expend our funds over the last 10 years. And so we can see that trend over time. Um I'll go through this a little quickly because I'd like to spend more time on the discussion at the end of the meeting today, but please feel free to stop and ask questions as we go through. Looking specifically at our general fund because that is where our operating resources are. that's what we have the most discretion to spend. Um over the last 10 years from 2015 16 to 202425 we have received 57 almost 58% more resources. We've expended or budgeting to expend 51% more expenditures. Our ending fund balance has grown from 3.7 million budgeted to almost

00710 million budgeted. Um I did want to remind just kind of 201516 we were just coming out of the 2010 recession. So we had a really significant low fund balance post 2010. Um so that we were coming out of it and since then we've been able to um really invest in reserves for our long-term stability. Um all right looking at our expenditures over the last 10 years we took every 3 years um 201516 181 19 2122 and 2425. You'll see this consistently over the next few slides. Um but looking overall instruction has stayed about 40%. Uh instructional special programs is about 23% of our spend. Support services is about support for students is about 9%. Support for instructional staff is 3%. Administration is 7%. Business maintenance and transportation is about 15%. But overall looking at

008the last 10 years, each one of these categories has only changed plus or minus 1%. So, it's pretty consistent over a 10-year period on how we're utilizing our resources. Looking at the same data another way, this one is by major object, so what type of expenditure it is. The blue bar is salaries and benefits. The red is um all other objects. So, that's going to be your services and your supplies combined. And then your ending fund balance is the top. um other objects has stayed 20% pretty consistently throughout. But you'll see um salaries and benefits went from 74% of our budget down to 70% of our budget. And as a result, our ending fund balance went from 6% to 10%. So that's building that ending fund balance that we talked about a couple sites ago.

009So you can just see that shift in um spend by major object. Why did this Saturday? uh because we increased our reserves so we stopped spending as less so that we can keep reserves. Okay, got it. So since salaries and benefits is one of our largest cost drivers, it's 70% of our total expenditures. I wanted to spend some time specifically on that one. Um expenditures over the last 10 years have increased just over 10%. It went from 31 million to $45 million over 10 years for just salaries. Um license increased 47% classified increased 52% of expenditures over the last 10 years. diving deeper into the why for the increase in the total salary cost. We there's three basic reasons why we'll see the increase in salaries as high as we have. Uh labor rates is

010one. The license scale if we look back to 2015 to 2025 the scale itself has increased by 30%. classified has increased by 32% over the last 10 years. And then we also have the benefits costs associated to that. When we look at our benefits, our PERS rates alone went from 10% to 22% of salaries. So almost doubling in just our PERS rate. Um and then we have our Oregon paid family medical leave and other insurance costs. Um but the primary driver is our PERS because it's as salaries increase the PERS costs are going to increase but then you're also going to get compounded by the rate increase too. So um and then lastly on this page is our FTE changes. We've increased our FTE in our general fund by 65 uh FTE overall since 2015

01116. What percentage is that representing FTE increase? the FTE increase. Uh don't have that, but I can get that. It's about like 500 FTE or something. So the next slide shows the classification of the change. That was amazing. Very glad you asked question. It's not licensed and classified, but it's broken down by function. So how we spend whether it's direct in classroom or support services. So great question. Um looking at general instruction, general instruction has changed from 224 FTE to 237 FTE. Um this group is primarily driven by enrollment. So as enrollment drops, our instructional FTE will drop. Um but we did see a significant drop in enrollment, but our instructional FTE has not dropped the same rate. Um when I started a little over 10 years ago, our elementary class size averages were over

01228 to1 and 28 29 to1. Tom McCall was 32 33 to1. They were really large. So as we've dropped those and now our elementarymentaries are about 23 to 24 one and um tomacall is 28 to1 you're increasing your FTE and we support less. So it's it's not just because we have less students we should have less instruction. We've also invested heavily in our classrooms. That was one of the things that parents and patrons of the district yelled about a thousand years. I probably still do. Um, not as much. Oh, good. And then this is, I think, a good indication that moving in the right direction. Mhm. I think we had a board uh come on that was very vested in reducing class sizes and we um we had a significant shift in how we were

013expending our resources to prioritize class size um for a few years maintain that you get crappy I mean could you could you mention um when that shift did happen. Where did those monies also shift from to allow for that? Was it just or what where did we It would have been reductions. Um I don't know off the top of my head specifically like what reductions we took that year. Um it was also the one-year hiatus that I took that um was that shift. Um so I wasn't here the year of the reductions. Okay. Yeah. Um looking at this slide, the other significant change is the instructional supports. Uh the fourth grouping over and that's really due to our health aids, our mental, social, and behavioral health increases in FTE and staffing and counseling just the

014shift in student needs um that we have across the district. So that was the other big one. The last one is our administration and going from 56 FTE to 72 FTE we invested in both calc our deans in our elementary schools and technology IAS in our buildings. So those are the three big ticket items for that group. Um any question on this? So the mental health support and counseling they coming out of the pandemic a lot of those a lot of the needs were severe. So I mean that was the rationale for all those increases. Those needs are not trending downwards as far as I can tell. Right. Either holding steady or growing. Yeah. Right now. Yeah. And we're pairing this. This is just general fund FTE. On top of this, we now have our

015student investment account FTE that's in our grant funds. Um and that is heavily. We have 10 counselors in there. We have mental health specialists in there. Um, so we have another significant investment in uh supporting students in our SIA that is outside of our general fund. All right, next we're going to start talking um that was all the 10-year look back stuff. Is there any further questions on that data before we move on? Okay, now we're going to start and talk about budget development for the fiscal year 2526 and where we're at and next steps. Yeah, I'm going to share the next few slides. So, I want to start with a couple of expressions and ask you to hold those in your head as we're having this conversation. There is seemingly no limit to what

016schools are asked to do. If you've worked in a school system, you know that there is a lot of outside pressure from people to do this thing, do the other thing, now add a third thing. Um the pressure to continue to do is real and constant. However, uh there is a limit to what we actually can do and you'll see some of that within the budget process. Our resources are finite and we have to make some choices about what we will fund and those things that we cannot fund. And this is how we do it. Switch to the next slide please. We have to balance our budget. That is a legal requirement for us. So what we start with is by looking at what are the resources that we have coming in. So that's our

017general fund from the state. It could be grants as well. It could be revenues from forestry. We look at all of that combined. And then we look at what are our expenditures. What are those things we need to spend our resources on? As we are determining what do we spend our resources on, we have to balance what sometimes feel like competing demands. As you see up there, we have strategic and integrated plans that we use to guide our work so that we're moving in the same direction. We have legislation that tells us that there are some things we must do. We have legal requirements that we have to meet that require us to expend resources, for example, to keep kids safe and make sure that our buildings are spaces where kids don't fall ill or

018they aren't at risk. We have contractual requirements. We have board policy. And then there is the very real need to have the HVAC running like it is right now in this building. Um, so those are real expens expenses for us. And then we have equally real and valuable and important the input that we receive from our community, from our staff and our students to make sure that the educational experience is enriching and also helps prepare students for graduation and a choice-filled life. And so we need to have extracurricular activities. We need to have clubs. We need to have elective options that are authentic and hands-on that kids can really engage in. We need to engage with our families after school and make sure that our families feel welcome in our schools. All of those things

019are as real as the lists that you see on the left hand side. These are the various components of putting a budget together that we have to consider as we examine what are our resources and then where do we expend those resources. So digging in a little bit deeper, there are some significant items that we look at when it comes to our budget considerations. Start with the state school fund. That's our largest source of revenue, our largest source of funding. The governor's proposed budget right now is 11.4 billion. It's actually 11.36. We round up 11.4. That is just proposed right now. It has not yet been passed by the legislature. We are however using that as a planning principle. Um it's it's a pretty safe bet that the governor's proposed budget match to what the

020co-chairs present when they put forth their budget. If those two values are the same, and they are in this case, it's a pretty safe bet that we will in fact see a state school fund of 11.4 billion. So that is the planning principle that we're using. We also look at floor funding. What this means for us is that because of declining enrollment, we want to budget conservatively. We want to estimate at that floor the amount of resources that we think we will receive. If we overestimate, if we plan to receive more resources than we actually do, we end up in a situation that you've seen some districts in recently where midyear they end up having to look at furlow days, reduce positions, and and we don't want to do that. So floor funding is a

021way for us to budget conservatively. We also have considerations like reductions in grants which have been pretty consistent over the last few years. And the one that's highlighted there is reimbursement for high-cost disability. We are able to claim reimbursements for the cost of educating students um that exceed what is typical. Um that amount of reimbursement has declined steadily over the last few years and it's estimated right now gosh it's almost half of what we expected would be available to us. So that's a pretty significant hit for us funds state funds or federal funds state funds. They are state funds. So we we have to dig into all of these assumptions that we make about the budget as we build it out. How much federal fund is in the state? Well, it's safe to say for

022most districts, they have somewhere between 9 and 15% of their resources coming from federal funds. So for us, it's probably about 10% I'd say roughly as a school district. But the majority of our resources are state. So in your mind now something goes wrong with part of that education are you going to be using these funds? Anybody have said about that? Any information about that yet? Yeah, I'll um I'll pause that here and answer that question because it is a conversation that we continue to have. Okay. Um as we go through our budgeting process, what we're talking about right now is general fund primarily and those are state funds. We also are budgeting our grants, our federal grants and our state grants. For our federal grants, what we are doing because we think it's the

023responsible thing to do is we are building a budget for 100% funding. We also have a budget for 75% funding and a budget for 50% funding. And we have a plan if there's no funding. We're hoping for the best, but we don't want to be caught unprepared if the funding is frozen or completely eliminated. Does that answer your question? It does. Okay. So, you actually have multiple budgets that you're working on to cover these contingencies. We do. We have them in our back pocket. As I said, we are planning for 100%. We are hoping for the best but we don't want to be caught unawares in case the best doesn't happen. Good on you for having that back. Yeah. Thank you. Um guess I guess would there be like another place where you can get

024that 10% ban or 12% back from somewhere else in case we have to remedy that? Well, so there's a couple of things that can happen. Um one is nothing and we just have to deal with it. Uh something else that the state can do is the governor could declare an emergency which would allow the state to access what's known as the rainy day fund. Okay. Um by accessing the rainy day fund, the government, the state government could make up whatever difference is lost through federal funds. What I think is important for us to recognize first of all just like when we talk about our fund balance that's a one-time use of funds that that's a savings account. So declaring an emergency and using those funds the governor would have to believe for one year you

025get it for one year and the governor would have to believe it's a real crisis. Also we have to recognize schools are not the only agency that access federal funds in the state. There's the police department, the fire department, there's wildfires that we fight, there's the fishery and wildlife department, there there's departments and agencies all over the state that access federal funds. So then the governor has to balance well, which of those is the priority if we dip into our rainy day funds? So it's your question is a question that I've been thinking about quite a bit in the last few months, but it's also very complex and nuanced. Any other questions before moving on? Okay. Um, in terms of expenditures, some of the things that we are paying attention to, we're in the midst

026of collective bargaining with both of our associations. That will have some impact on our expenditures when we finalize those contracts. We have curriculum adoptions and investments that we are required to do. If you're not familiar with this, the state does require districts to adopt new curriculum on a seven-year cycle. So, it rotates through different content areas every seven years. Sometimes districts have an independent adoption. Sometimes districts apply for waiverss to bypass a year. Um, we are looking at all of that as ways to save money, but we still have this legal requirement that we need to respond to. the increase in PERS rates which director Cl has already referenced that is something that is top of mind regularly because it's a significant expense for us investments in strategic and integrated plan as I mentioned earlier

027and again as director mentioned the impacts of different state benefit plans like paid leave Oregon those are all examples of the components that we consider when we build a budget Dr. West. Um the just looking at this, I'm guessing that the purge rate is probably the biggest thing on that list of you. The biggest thing that could swing us collective bargaining right behind that. Is that a clear? Collective bargaining would take the top spot. Okay. So the the curves increase is millions of dollars for us, but our single greatest expense in the district is the cost of our staff. Okay. and the curriculum adoption. Is that a very big swinger financially? I it's significant given the proportion of the number of students we have compared to our budget. So, a curriculum adoption for a district

028this size. And I might need to pitch a Hail Mary um to the back of the room there to director Loly. Um, I I would say a typical adoption allin for a district this size is somewhere in the million-doll range. But that's correct. That's for new instructional materials. Predominantly, new instructional materials, consumables, sometimes durable goods like microscopes and slides, professional learning that goes along with that. Sometimes there's software that is associated with the new curriculum. That's pretty common these days. Does that answer your question? every seven years. Every content area rotates every seven years. So, if we were to look at a schedule, we have health adoption coming up, then it's science adoption, then it moves through the different content areas on a seven-year rotating cycle. And we worked last year um Oh, go ahead.

029to really look at all of the adoptions and to look at the next 10 years so that we can look, okay, can we push one adoption one year that is, you know, a high year and the next year is a low year. So, how do we how do we look at all of those adoptions over a 10-year period and kind of balance it out so you don't have these huge swings of one year you need a million dollars, the next year you need three? Like, how can we look at it and level it out to where it's consistent? I mean there is some flex but we really tried to look at how can we consist make it consistent over the 10 years so that we're not constantly in this reactionary state. So um that was

030a big haul last year. Yeah that was that was really powerful work so that we took away the highs and the lows and then but we do have instances where a science adoption costs a little bit more because it has more material associated with it. So we balance that science adoption with other adoption that might be lower in cost like the health adoption that's going to be less teachers, right? And so we're really trying to have a predictable investment so we're not switching back. And the reason the state requires us to do regular adoptions is that what we know and understand changes regularly. For example, the second a social studies textbook is printed, it's outdated. So, so going through a regular cycle of renewal for those Yeah. for our different content areas is important for

031us as an education system so that we continue to have the most update resources to prepare our students. We do a similar process with technology and um computer upgrades and system upgrades um so that we don't have a year where we have to replace 100% of the student devices and the staff devices. So we can do the high school, middle school, the elementary school staff and so we can spread that over a period of time so we don't have that significant swing in the technology investments too. [Music] two, right? Um, looking at the general fund specifically and how it's built, what we do is we budget two different ways. We budget our buildings based on enrollment and demographics. So, our buildings get staff and their discretionary allocations based on how many students we project to

032be in their building and then what the demographics of the student population is. Um, and so the buildings are primarily budgeted based on enrollment. And then we look at departments. So whether it's CNI or superintendent's office or business or transportation, we're really building those budgets from the ground up. We're looking at what expenditures do we need to be able to meet student needs and keep the operations going and make investments into curriculum and instruction and we're building those budgets almost zerobased. We're looking at what we spent historically, what we need going forward and we're all at the same time using that lens of our strategic plan, our priorities and our goals as we're building those budgets. So then we take both of those and then we apply all of those contractual agreements and contractual requirements

033to it. We apply our union contracts. We make sure we have all of our professional development that's in there. We make sure that the working conditions are set. Um our benefit leaves and benefits are in there, our subs and our temp time and all of those things that come with operating a building that might be outside of that discretionary building budget or the department budget. So, we're applying all of that to the school's budget and the program's budget. Um, and then that's what kind of builds the the general fund as a whole. So, it's kind of two-part. Looking at our other funds. So, these are our our grant funds, our food service funds. We look at those different based on what the needs are for each one. Um, Dr. Wes talked about the grant funds

034and the federal funds just a moment ago. Right now, we're estimating our revenues based on our historical trends and what we believe flat funding would be for many of our grants. And we're looking at utilizing those based on our strategic plan, based on what our um goals are, what the grant requirements are um and have already started building those out for next year and will be incorporated into this budget. Food service. Now that we are 100% C, free breakfast and lunch districtwide, food service is pretty easy. What do we think the meals per day is going to be? Breakfast, what do we think the meals per day for lunch is? How many student days there are? And then we have minimal operation costs after that. Um, debt service funds. We know what our debt payments

035are. We know what our debt requirements are based on what loans we have out there right now. and that then drives the tax rate that we need to pay off our bond debt. Um capital projects funds that is all based on the 22 bond and what we believe we're going to get done this next year and meeting our bond promise and commitments. The enterprise funds is so that's 500 funds that's your plant sale and your Viking house at the high school. So that's student driven um enterprises. The internal service funds is our unemployment reserve account. So, what do we think our unemployment costs are going to be the next year and making sure that we have enough resources in there to fund that? We are self-funded for unemployment. Um, and so that reserve account is

036what helps fund any unemployment needs that we have. And then the trust funds is the last one. Those are 700 funds and there's very little in that. There's a few scholarships and then there is also the insurance pools for the union. So, those are held outside of all of the other resources. Um, basically everything outside of the general fund is there for a specific purpose and a specific reason and we must spend those funds that way. Um, so just an overview on those. You'll sometimes hear these funds referred to as restricted funds for exactly the reason Director Clinton said is we are restricted for their use. Brad, did you have a question? No. Okay, some other considerations that we have on our radar for budgeting. Um, the legislature has passed some resources for summer funding.

037We do not yet know if we will receive summer funding, those rules and the identification of districts is still being determined. Um, there is a likelihood that we will, but we don't know that for sure yet. Um, if we do, it'll probably be somewhere in the neighborhood of about a million dollars that we'll have access to support summer learning this summer. And we would be really excited to receive that. Um, in addition, as I mentioned before, there is a house bill moving through the legislature that would provide an additional $200 million towards high-cost disability reimbursement. Um, we would be really excited to receive that for our district. We estimate that that would be about an additional $2 million. Um that would cover quite a bit, not all, but quite a bit of our high-cost disability

038needs. Um so we're looking forward to that moving. There's some momentum behind that right now in our legislature, which we're excited about. Senate Bill 317 would increase the special education funding cap. For reference, right now the state of Oregon funds school districts at 11% of their fully funds school districts at 11% of their special education population. There are a handful of districts in the state of Oregon that have 11% or less of their students that are identified for special education services. We are one of the majority districts in the state of Oregon where the the number of students identified for special education services exceeds 15%. What I have seen over the last few years is the district moves between 15 and 17%. Right now we're closer to 17% of our students being identified for special

039education services. So if you think in terms of funding, that's a number of students that have real needs that we are needing to move money from the general fund to support rather than receive those monies based on the weights that students would provide if we were fully funded for their needs. Dr. Because this special ed includes both those who are advanced as well as those who need remedial help. Is that right? No. These are students who are identified for an individual education plan under IDA, the Individuals with Disability Education Act, which is a federal act. I believe the other student group that you're referring to are students who are identified as talented and gifted. Yeah. Yeah. And there are no additional resources for students identified as talented and gifted. There are requirements that we must

040meet associated with the needs of those students which are different than many other student groups, but there's no funding to go along with her. Yeah. And then there's a list of some other bills there that we're keeping track of. The reason we keep track of these other bills is that these are bills moving through the legislature that have a direct impact on education, but there is no funding associated with it. So, for example, House Bill 2009 is the accountability bill that's moving through the legislature that will change our reporting. That will change the way we interact with the Department of Education. It may change the curriculum that we use. It may change the assessments that we use. There'll be a cost associated with that. We just don't know what the cost is yet until the

041legislation actually moves through the legislature. It's approved and then the rules are written. So that's why we keep track of the different bills that you see there. The others, just for reference, there's a bill 3365 that would require school districts to implement climate change studies K through 12. That would be a cost to us. House Bill 3919 expands genocide and holocaust studies. That would be a cost to us. And then House Bill 2251 has a lot of people excited. That's the Belltobell cell phone ban. Um but there would still be a cost to us if that were implemented. And none of these bills have funding associated with that. Any questions before we move on? Okay. So, in terms of our initial outlook, um, couple of goals that we've set for ourselves and some realities that

042we're facing. We expect to maintain a two-year positive fund balance given the plan that we are currently developing. Um, that is good for us. That means that we have a soft landing in front of us. If we continue with thoughtful, intentional, sometimes difficult but planful budgeting, we will be defic deficit spending regardless. Um we are at a point right now where our expenses exceed our revenues. So we are going to have to rightsize that. The way we do that so that we do have a soft landing is by making some reductions in this coming budget cycle and we'll need to make more in the second half of the bianium. For this first year of the bianium school year 2526 we anticipate that we'll have to make about $1.8 million in reduction. So that is what

043we are planning for. Questions before I move on? Okay. And then in terms of the priorities, we've spoken a lot about the strategic plan. That certainly is one of our guiding documents. Our integrated plan is aligned to our strategic plan. Just to separate those two in your mind, the strategic plan, if you've been involved in any kind of organization or business, you've probably been involved in strategic planning. That's really important for us. That's our northstar. The integrated plan is required by the department of education and the effort there is to take six different grants that are provided to school districts and through a process of needs assessment, community engagement um and braiding of funding to weave those funding sources together to meet goals that move us towards our strategic plan. And then we have guiding

044principles which director Clue will share with us here in just a couple of minutes. We engage with our community and we want to hear what they have to say. And then we have a budget priority survey as well that we've sent out every year for the past many years that had great response this year and we have some information to share with you about that. Okay, next slide. To orient you around our high level strategic goals, there's four buckets that we focus on. Instruction and learning, behavioral health and wellness, family and student engagement, and then creating a resilient organization. The school district identified these four highle categories three three years ago now. Is that correct? Three years ago now. um through a very rigorous and robust strategic planning process. Lots of people in the community

045were ga engaged, lots of people within the school district were engaged and these are the main strategies that emerged through that process. As you receive the budget book, next time we meet on May 8th, um, one of the things that we will ask you to do is to take a look and see if we have aligned our resources towards these goals because that is what we should be doing. If we say this is what we're working towards, we want to make sure that our resources largely support these efforts. Would you like to add anything to that? Back to you, director. Right. So, we sent out a survey this year um midmarch and we actually sent it to staff, community, parents, and um students at Neil Armstrong in the high school and we had a huge

046response from students at Neil Armstrong in the high school. So, it was amazing. This is probably one of our best budget surveys that we've gotten back for feedback. Um so, it was really great. We ended up having uh 796 respondents and 67% of that was students. Um so it's amazing to have such a great student feedback in this result. We asked two main questions in the survey. One is what are the three most important priorities to you for the district to continue to fund? And the second one was what are the three most areas of consideration for reductions? And so just to kind of get a feel of what that um where the priorities are of our stakeholders. And then this shows that the three most important priorities for our community was um safety and

047security, class size after school, and counseling and mental health. So those were the the things that came right to the top um going through the survey. We are still going through all of the the notes and the conversational pieces and the the comments because we had a couple of open boxes. So, we're still going through that data just to dive in a little bit more. Um, but this was the overarching uh feedback that we got for what our community values to clarify. After school is after school enrichment and activities. Yes, it would be activities and athletics, right? Are the parents and the students have the same correlations? Not always, but we are going through uh right now and separating out the feedback so that we can we can have the staff feedback and the community

048feedback and the uh student feedback so we can see how that might shift. Um this with having 67% of the respondent students, it's probably going to be more emphasized on what our students feedback is. Um, but we're still we're still kind of going through and playing with the data to try to figure out what is it really telling us and um read the details behind it. So, one thing that is consistent just to add to that um that we hear from our stakeholders all the time, safety and security. Yeah, that continues to be top of mind for for everyone we engage with. After you've had a chance to digest those results and summarize them, will we be able to have access to that along with our budget? I'll bring a couple more slides back to

049the May 8th meeting. That'll have I can break down the the feedback from the different um groups for that May 8th meeting. So, we do want to finish that up here pretty quick so that we can make sure that we are looking at that lens when we're finalizing the budget. So, all right. What are the least important ones? The least important ones, curriculum, district supports, staff, professional development, and technology. Those were the four that rose to the top for the least important. Um, just doing the quick review of the data. This is a good illustration of that competing priority slide that I showed you where we have a legal requirement to refresh our curriculum on a regular basis and we have a group of people saying curriculum doesn't matter. So we have to balance those

050things. If somebody were excuse Go ahead. Okay. If an old-fashioned person were to look at this, he would say the reason for schools is to teach. Curriculum is the tool that we have traditionally used in teaching. So what where are we missing the boat in sending the message out this continuous fluidity in curriculum changing it to match what our culture is? Where are we are we missing the boat and sending that message out to the public saying, "Yeah, you can talk about after school activities and class size, but if you don't have anything for the kid to go into the room for, what the hell does class size matter?" It's a good question. Um, and I Yeah, I've been asking that question for 28 years, but Yeah, I we can never communicate enough. Yeah. So,

051I I think your point is a good one that there's more we could be doing and even doing more, we're still going to miss people. The other thing that I believe influences results like this is that we have a very specific understanding of what curriculum is, especially those of us who have been educators. to the general public who hasn't worked in our school system that is not as defined. And so when they see curriculum on a list or they think about things that could be reduced or paused, this comes to mind because for them they don't understand the importance of having a upto-date current literacy curriculum for example at the elementary level that I can use to lesson plan and that guides me through the best instructional practices. That is critical for us at the

052school level. but our families may not actually have that schema. So, that's something that we need to work on. Um, I just had a question about the staff. It is it correct about 25% of the staff completed the survey and an incredibly small amount of parents and communities. Right. So, when we're looking at I want to be careful. I feel like the context of that data that was just presented, I know that will be coming in the future, but I would like us to really keep that in mind because that's a those bars and would I I just want to be careful. I think that's David said too. Yeah. Well, the breakdown, but the numbers. So even when we break it down 100 community members out of number right a large amount of community members.

053So the the question would be also you know are there different ways that we're gathering I realize I think with the budget process we are obligated right to have the community survey so the student voice is awesome but and I think for future timing um we sent this out probably a week and a half two weeks before spring break and so just um timing probably wasn't the greatest and so just next year it's already on our radar to get this out earlier so that our community has time to really take the survey and our buildings have time to push it out and we can we can do better at um just that overall distribution for staff and families. Um right before spring break I think was a challenge um extended circle at this week or

054so at this point it won't help drive the budget. Okay. Um we're we're pretty well close. So if we extend it, we would not be able to incorporate the results of it into the budget process um necessarily. So I think people we're really trying to see how we can do um how we can improve it next year if we hit solid on the students. Um I just impressed about the number of students have premium. Yeah. Um, historically when we've sent this survey out, there's been years where we've gotten 10 responses. So, the amount of responses that we got here is is actually pretty impressive compared to what we've seen in the past. Um, so we are we are happy with the results, but we know we can always change and do better. Um, I guess

055it makes me suspiciously happy. What happened here? I think we're on to something though with maybe even looking at like the building the foundation with the education of somehow getting our community to have more conversations. We I was just talking about this with Jordan about learning about the pieces of the school and then when we're doing the survey there's context for people for why they're taking that survey and building out maybe a bigger engagement structure. I know that we've been talking about that in general but yeah there's some potential there. I also wonder too this survey accompanied a video and that video encouraged provided a little bit of information about our budgeting process and what we're facing in terms of reductions but then encouraged people please take the survey we want your input so that

056that I think is learning for us too that that personal request may have been what drove at least some of the increase the survey in the names. We did not collect names. Okay. So, I I can't tell you specific. I mean, like who like who who requested those who who requested it or just sent we sent it out to everyone and we posted it on the website and we had it in multiple places where people could access it. Yeah, we have about 10 minutes. So, I really do want to hit the next topic. Um, I'll go pretty quick on this one. This is last year's budget committee priorities. So when we sat here at the same time last year um having the conversation about what our budget committee after listening to everything, getting the building

057blocks of our budget over the last couple of meetings, uh hearing about feedback and priorities and strategic plan and all of all of the information, what is this committee's priorities in uh looking at this 2526 budget? Um, what is up on the screen is last year's discussion. So, we kept everything pretty well the same in the bullet in the main, but then the what's in the box was really the highlights, the talking points, the discussion that was had at the table. Um, so with that being said and looking at that, what is missing? What should we eliminate? What should we add? or what should we consider highlighting and emphasizing and prioritizing as we go through the budget? Um, we talked about being a million 1.8 million that we're going to have to reduce in this

058budget cycle, but at the same time, we know we still have investments that we have to invest in. So, that 1.8 is actually a little bit higher. Uh, but net, it's $1.8 million is what we're looking at to balance the budget. So what are those things that we should be thinking about and considering in your lens um as we go through that process? Are you looking for something now or kind of I mean if you guys we could do got nine minutes. Europe. [Music] So I recall from my days we had a survey that came out from the University of Minnesota which indicated all things being equal and this was a long time ago. This was I think when when Herb was superintendent and um Schlaggel was president Bob was p principal at the high

059school. Um and the survey said all things being equal that which drives a student population to produce uh and to change to a positive aspect of what school is was connectedness. Whether you are connected with the class, algebra, heaven forbid, or history or poetry, speech, or whether it's an activity, uh, drama, football, music, or whether it's a personality, one of your teachers, a principal, janitor, uh, the building uh, administrative assistant. That was the key that drove a lot of kids to coming back day after day after day was to interface with quadratic equations or with Mrs. Jones in the kitchen or so on and so forth. And something keeps on nudging me that I'm not sure that's that connectedness has changed. That's still part of the glue. that we need if we don't have it,

060we need to get it. We have it, we need to improve on it. Uh to get kids involved and then also to get through those kids, get their parents involved and through parent conversations get the community involved. Uh simple as that. Do is it the case that absenteeism is a major problem and getting worse as we go along? Our absentee rate improved slightly last year. We don't know what this year will look like yet, although it is trending in the right direction. Overall, absenteeism is down um across the state. that started in the pandemic and we have not generally as a state recovered. So that is something that we spend a lot of time talking about and working on. We work with Northwest Regional ESD which is our education service district partner to pull together

061attendance teams at all of our schools. Those attendance teams um look at what we call a multi-tered system of support to identify which are students most chronically absent and then they leaz directly with students and families to attempt to improve attendance for some of our students. And that's really important because um sometimes kids just disengage and they don't have families at home requiring them to attend or encouraging participation. But often times lack of attendance means that there are systems in the home that need support. So using these processes that we have in place, we can provide some wraparound services for those families that need them. I asked that question because it's related to what Pete was talking about is it feels I don't know because I'm not on the ground but I'm wondering if we

062have an engagement challenge where students don't feel as satisfied and rewarded and motivated to just show up and put in the work and the time. Um, and I don't know why, but I, you know, if there's high absenteeism, that's kind of an indication that that may be the case. Yeah, it could be. Um, how much do I have time to get a little geeky? Yeah. Okay. So, so you're touching on something that I spend a lot of time thinking about because absenteeism is a symptom. Yeah. It's a symptom of It's not the problem. It's not the problem. Yeah. Um, so when we look at absenteeism, we have to ask ourselves, what is the real problem here? Why are kids not showing up? That they develop a habit of not attending that we need to break.

063Do they have systems at home that need support? Are they excelling and they've realized they don't really need to come to school to still pass a class? That could be a problem, too. Are they failing and feel like there's no hope for them to catch up? So, we we need to when we're addressing attendance issues in our schools, look at all of that as part of the solution to bringing students back. Which means that addressing attendance problems really can't be done systemwide. It has to be done on a student by student basis because the reason that students aren't attending are so individualized. But you don't see broad stripes that indicate places of focus as you learn about the individual situation. We can generalize some things. Um again, there are a number of students that have

064simply chosen to disengage. There are a number of students that have failed enough classes that they feel like they're not going to make it and they give up. There are a number of students that feel like school is too easy and we need to find a different way to engage with them. There's a number of students who feel like school doesn't connect for them. They need, for example, to build the Viking house. They need to be on site swinging a hammer to have that authentic connection to their learning and see how geometry is applied when you're framing a building. Um, so all of that is true. In the data that I have looked at for our district, there is no one general reason that we could apply to the whole system for why students are

065absent. There are small generalizations we could make where a nonzero number of students fit within those generalizations. In our discussions one time either on the sport or when we met together with the community we were saying that there were about 15% of the staff there's about 50% of staff and about 79% of students who are Hispanics or different ethnicities or whatever is there different balance that we can we can do in the future. So uh this could be resolved in a way that that student connect better with the staff English and that is a really good point and that is something we need to work on as a school district. We have not rightsided that yet. We still have disproportionality between our student population and their demographics and our staff and the demographics of staff.

066So that is something that we continually work on. We don't have parity yet. I think one of the things that Pete was talking about that was also there is the idea that just trying to build relationship with kids just makes sense. I mean and trying to really connect and that that strategy that herb who was the superintendent at that time um that was a real focus for at least a couple years and it kind of carried through for the next three or four after he left. So it matters. Yeah, it does matter. Has has that problem ever been put in front of the students, put upon the students to try to solve in regard to, let's say, 60 kids that you actually could maybe get to show up at some point for one meeting with

067someone that's not in the position of the teacher authority or whatever. Go, hey, this is the problem. How do you think we should solve this? maybe across the spectrum of 60 kids of just asking them and maybe there's some I don't know what the expanse of our ability is but saying hey we're if you help us with this or give us your unfiltered ideas on going hey why what could we get you to show to school because I had plenty of friends that would they'd show up for only Viking house but the other stuff they might not go cuz I look at the bigger problem of going well hey if I'm if if I'm out in the world then I'm viewed as my peers as really smart and they'll say it's street smart and I'm

068the leader of a friend group and then but I go to school and I'm way behind the kids around me. Well, what's the incentive to go from, well, I'm really smart if I'm hanging out here and I'm really not if I'm hanging out here. I don't feel that way. What would be the incentive to pull myself to that point of going, well, I can't read as fast as the other kids in 10 minutes to every class. I'm I'm tuned out. Well, I don't know. Maybe the h have it has it been put in front of those students of going seriously just show up one day for one meeting we're not going to impose a bunch of discipline but what could we do out of out of the box make it more fun whatever the ideas

069has that's a great idea have they been I don't think so and I'll look to my colleagues who have been here a little bit longer than I have whether we've engaged students in the way you're describing to address attendance and I didn't know if there's some empathy interviews like one-on-one interviews that I like the idea of having a bigger group discussion student feedback ideas. Yeah. I also think that if you you probably find that you mentioned the Viking house that that the the kids that are involved in the Viking house most likely want to want to be there. And so to be there, they have to be passing the rest of their classes. And and the other side of that too is athletics, which we're familiar with that I mean, if you're going to play,

070you got to pass five of your classes. So you're you're there at school, you're passing a class because you're engaged in that you made connection in that activity, whatever it is. So, I think that was the other point, you know, he brought up that we found that that trying to find that that niche to to at least get kids to engage in the school day. I think the person delivering the message too, like we you know, the resource officer back when I was in school was Bob and I'm sure that he had conversations with students and those students opened up to him more than maybe the the counselor or someone in that. So finding that role of the connection. No judgment. Yes, I'm taking you to the principal's office, but also right, you know, I

071I dislike having to interrupt this conversation, but we are over time and we do have a business meeting that we need to start. How would you like feedback? Um if over the next like two days by Friday maybe if you guys could send me any more feedback you have related to this conversation and priorities um that way we can look at it and make sure that we are um balancing the budget with that lens. We're going to finalize the budget at the end of the week um and then start the budget document and all of the stuff that goes with it. So, um, do you want a priority list? Just if you have more conversation or more things that you want to make sure that are embedded in the in the budget. Okay. Um, send

072the feedback to us. We're happy to look at it and make sure that we are uh balancing that with all of the other priorities in the process. So, uh, we do value all the feedback that we get. we do look at that and make sure that we are aligning our budget the best we can um with what we're hearing. Um so we do really appreciate any feedback you have. Um if you have any questions between now and May 8th, please don't hesitate to call me, email me. Um I'm happy to answer any questions you guys have and please send them to me in advance so that can make sure I have the data ready for you um at the next meeting. But yeah, we look forward to May. Thanks. So, turn it back to you.

073Close it up. Uh, is May 8th tonight we're going to get a look at the book? Okay. No sneak preview here. No sneak preview. We kind of gave you a little sneak preview today, though. I really want to look right here. Don't miss. All right. So there be there being no further business, the meeting is adjourned at 6:36 p.m. Our next meeting will be held May 8th, 2025. Thank you. No. The April 22nd, 2025 Forest Grove School District Board of Directors meeting is called to order at 6:47 p.m. We'll start with a roll call of board member present. Dad, I'm here. I know. And Mark on the owl. Yeah, here. here. And we'll ask everyone to stand for the bice at this time. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America

074and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. Approval for agenda. I move we approve the agenda tonight is written. I'll second. All in favor say I. I. I. All right. No student report tonight. I do have a fairly brief board report, but I wanted to start with are we able to present that slide? Not right now. Working on it. Okay. Well, we'll come back to that. I will share um I wanted to thank the banks school board and Gaston school board chairs frame and chair Nelson who allowed um agenda time for me to visit as a legislative policy committee member. So I was able to go to both those those boards really for the first time and share just uh that we

075are really trying to work as a region. Banks and Gaston or Sher and Sherwood are three of the school districts who don't have a representative on the LPC committee just by nature how the committee is formed and so our job as a committee is to make sure we're liaison having leaons and communications and uh so I was able to share what our team is doing and also get some feedback from them on some of the testimony that we've been submitting on behalf of LPC. I I do also want to celebrate for Banks. It was their first the band was actually performing and this is the first year that the band has qualified for state in banks. Shout out to the Banks band. Um just much like our own music programs here. They they have a

076new band director. I think this is year three and she's really been growing the program and um and it was really exciting to see a large group there and they were very excited to go on their first competition. So, um, I also was able to testify at the Salem Ways and Means Committee on April 16th. I think the Ways and Means Group legislators have been going really across the state and having I think two to 300 and sometimes even more people show up for testimony. They've been able to take about 50 people um to testify and then everybody else online or in the room will be submitting. But you really heard from across the state the amount of need and people advocating for programs that they really need to see funded. And it really highlighted

077um how many different agencies, we've talked about this in the budget committee besides just education are are really looking for ways to get their word out of the need and and advocate. And it was just it was pretty inspiring actually and also uh very sobering to understand where our state budget is and how that remaining million or two is going to be allocated across all of those programs. Uh, tomorrow night is the town hall being sponsored by HA, FTA, I think Neton Education Association, and I can't remember if there's I think there's one more that is going to be um at Hill High at 5:30. And that's uh going to be attended by Senator Sman and Rep. MLAN and several other local area legislators as a listening session to hear from teachers and community members

078and parents and students who are also advocating for uh increased fedcap funding and just funding the CSL and making sure our levels of education are where they need to be. So really appreciate all of the teachers who are planning to go to that and have their voices heard. And um I'm also planning to be there as well. And then um Friday is is also a legislative policy committee meeting for our whole legislative body across the state. We have been meeting every Friday to get updates on where bills stand and we've been really active in connecting with legislators around um a couple bills in particular when and I've shared this with the board and some of my testimony at Salem was about the bills that are unfunded mandates and we were able to be very specific

079about what those bills would be and uh the fact that in districts like ours without the funding support to support those those are not great ideas and that testimony was really well received by many to be honest. Um, we're also we're also advocating for a couple other separate bills that again without funding to support are are not going to beally feasible for our district. So, um, and I'll stop there. There was one more slide I wanted to share. We'll see if we can come back to it. And for right now, I think I'll pass it over to Dr. West. Okay, thank you. Um, in the absence of our student advisor, I will highlight a few events, several of them at the high school. Um, on Saturday, we have the Latinos and Action Children's Day event

080at the high school that begins at 11:00 a.m. I have not yet attended this. I plan to be there on Saturday. I've heard it's a tremendous fun. So, if you have little ones, you might want to bring them there. We also have on the 1st through the 3rd of May and then the 8th through the 10th of May our annual plant sale at the high school. That is also something that I've heard is quite spectacular. So we look forward to seeing a bunch of people there to support our MFA group. Um and then the second and third of May, our unified theater is going to present 2D talent. So that should be tremendous fun if you're looking to pick up a show. And then there's many sporting events taking place right now. U most notably

081track is in full swing. If you go to the high school or the middle school website, you'll be able to find the schedule for athletics. Um just a couple of things to report out. Uh when do you want to pause and go back to this recording? Is it up on the I see it's up there. Is it up on the screen if people are watching repeat? Yes. Okay. All right. We we will pause and come back. We were hoping to do this at the last meeting, but we wanted to um move so I can see it a little bit. Um we wanted to honor Mr. Hansen and Chris Hagen Moffin from Forest Grove High School had had posted this. I reached out to him to with to get his permission and the family's permission to

082be able to highlight it at the meeting, but I am going to read it um because this is a person who had a tremendous impact in our community. Bert Hansen passed away March 31st at the age of 82. He founded the Viking House program and completed the first house 50 years ago. He reached out in 1998 when Dwayne Miller handed the program off to me. He offered his support and encouraged me to put my own stamp on it. I always felt a responsibility to him to not let it flounder. It was exciting when he visited the job site, usually at the open house. This photo is from 2022. It was also very gratifying and I appreciated to hear him express his enthusiastic praise of the crew's accomplishment. The founder approved. Dwayne and I had hoped

083to unite with Bert next month in celebration of the 50th year of the program. I am grateful that he lived to know that we made it this far. Rest in peace, Mr. Bert Hansen. Your legacy lives on. Just wanted to take a minute to honor his legacy as we all have seen the impact that that Viking House program has had on not only our whole community but outside of our community and all the kids and families that lives have been changed by that. So, thank you. you know, thank you, Chris, for posting and being such a a great supporter. All right, we'll turn it back. Thank you for picking that up. Thank you for that. Just a few more things. Over the past several weeks, I've been visiting schools, and that is the consistent joy

084in my professional life. I love visiting schools and visiting classrooms. Um, if you read my newsletter last week, you know that one of the highlights last week was frog dissection. That is pretty awesome. So got to participate in that at the middle school. Um but also played with kindergarteners and was able to visit a couple of high school AP classrooms. And so those experiences where I can visit directly with young people and hear from educators about how things are going are certainly the highlights of my week. I want to highlight alongside that that we are going through our budget process right now. And as part of our budget process, if you listen to the budget meeting that we just had an hour ago, we shared that we are in a position where we need to

085reduce about $1.8 million in funding. So, we're going through a very careful budget process to prioritize keeping resources as close to kids as possible, but also thoughtfully reducing with a budget reduction in front of us of of 1.8 8 million. And with staff being the largest expense that we have, we are going to have to look at some positions in the district and ask ourselves, do we fill these vacancies? For example, that is part of our process and there'll be no way to get around them as we look at reductions. But we are being as thoughtful as possible because we don't want to impact our young people and we don't want to impact people that are currently positioned. Um, we are very lucky to have a fiscal department led by director Clint that has very

086carefully stewarded us through some tumultuous financial waters so that we are in a position to ride out the next couple of years with some thoughtful reductions and hopefully have a soft landing which is different than what we've seen in many of our neighborhood districts where they've had to go to furlows mid year or let people go mid year. So just know that we are engaging in that process right now and for everybody who participated in the feedback that we were um solicited earlier in March we thank you for that we are paying attention to it using it in our process also want to share if you would please thank you as I have been doing I wasn't able to do this in our last board meeting because we made a a last minute agenda change

087um we are still declining in a moment The slide that you see there right now shows enrollment broken down by grade level compared to budget and then the variance. Right now we are about 137 137 students below what we budgeted. So that is our variance. Equating that to state school fund dollars that's more than a million dollars that we would expect to receive less next year than we have been receiving. So that is part of our reduction calculus. as we go through the budget process. Really encourage anyone who is interested in that to tune in to the meetings. We have three meetings coming up in May and you'll have an opportunity once the budget growth is made available to see the areas that we are continuing to invest in as well as those areas where

088we're hearing back. Okay. And then the last thing I want to share if we switch to the legislative update please. Thank you. In the first slide, we are in the middle end of the long session, I would call it. We're on a downhill slide. We've reached the halfway point um in the session, and there are a lot of bills in the new legislature that impact education. I'm going to highlight just a few, but these are really just a few. There are many that will have a direct impact on the way we do school if they are passed. I'm highlighting these few because they are part of the legislative priorities that we identified before the legislative session began and because they have significant impacts on schools. Starting with House Bill 36, I'm sorry, Senate Bill 916.

089This would be unemployment benefits for striking workers. Um, this is a concern. There is a provision within the bill as it currently sits that school districts would be exempt from double payment which was a risk brought up early in the process. Um but even as it is currently written if there were a strike and employees were paid unemployment benefits the reconciliation that would have to occur to make sure that we weren't double paying employees is a employee by employee process. in the manual process that we have to go through. So, it is a very laborious um administrative cost to us if this bill comes to pass. Um and I have Senate Bill 916 on there twice, which is an error. Um the second one there, high cost disability, should be House Bill 2448. This bill

090proposes $200 million of additional monies to be allocated to the high cost disability fund. We support this for our school district. If we were to be fully reimbured at the cost of high cost disability, we would receive about an additional $2 million per year. That's substantial and it will help us to help students significantly. House Bill 3652 is class size bargaining. If this becomes a mandatory subject of bargaining, the risk that it presents is that mandatory bargaining subjects can also be subjects that are initiated strike. Um, currently as it sits, class size is only mandatory subject for school environments that receive title 1A money. So, this would expand it to all school environments. Um, so want to point out that there may be costs associated with that as well. Next slide, please. Apparently, I really

091like Senate Bill 916 tonight because it's on there quite a few times, so I must have been stuck in my head. Um, the school accountability reform bill, that's House Bill 20009. Um, this bill would establish new performance metrics for us. It's been a big deal. It's been all the news. The governor has very publicly said that we will not see additional school funding if we do not pass this accountability bill. So this is something that we need to pay very close attention to as a school system. The new performance metrics, the tiered intervention systems that would be required would all have costs to us as a district. We may have to purchase new assessments depending on what the state mandates our assessments be. that would have a cost to us. The annual progress targets would

092change perhaps. In fact, I'll get to that in just a little bit when we get to our integrated guidance. So, while there is a lot of momentum behind this bill and it most certainly will become law, there is no funding associated with it. If anything, it is a threat to funding the way it's currently written. So, we're paying very close attention to this um and mindful that there will be some costs to the school district that will not be funded. Senate Bill 317 would lift or at least raise the special education cap. We're very interested in that as well. Having special education funding capped at 11% is tough when we have a school district where nearly 17% of our students are receiving special education services. So we would love to see that pass and that

093would bring in extra resources for us. And then also the governor's proposed budget of 11.36 billion that has not yet been passed. The co-chairs presented their budget using the same number again tied to the accountability bill. So it is likely that we will see that amount but it's not yet come to be. We are using 11.36 billion as our planning principle for our budgeting process. And that is it for me and my updates. Okay. Um my understanding is there is no FGA report tonight and unscheduled public appearance. None. So we'll move on to consent agenda. The consent agenda is made up of 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? No. Seeing none. I move to

094approve the consent agenda. Second. All in favor say I. I. I. Thank you. and we'll move on to presentations. Number one is community alternative learning center name change. We welcome principal Graham and team. Yes, please. [Music] Good evening. We're here tonight to discuss and propose uh we changed our name at Calp. We're going to be outlining those uh rationale and reasons for that. Um and uh three years ago, we uh the school district made a very large investment in our school, the community alternative learning center. Um, and early in that year after I came on board, I presented to the school board and I don't remember which board members it was, but several board members brought up the idea of a name change if we were going to be changing a lot of our structures

095and who we are as a school. Uh, and during the last three years, there's been a lot of change at the school. The reason I asked uh these four people to come present with me is they have been here before and after the investment and they're wonderful educators. Uh I couldn't have done it without them. They uh the work they did before and after is amazing. I'd like to introduce them real quick. They're going to do most of the presentation. This is Michelle Coleman. She does language arts and about eight other things. This is Steven Bernard. He does soul studies and about three other things. This is Melissa Horns. She's our registered secretary and principal babysitter, which is a full-time job in itself. And then Jonathan Loving is our math teacher. And again, does about

096eight other things. Being a small school, we we wear lots of hats. Um and uh some of the the changes that were made three years ago is the the entire building was remodeled to make room for additional students. Um I was hired and brought on board to be a school principal. We hired in three years we've gone from a staff of six to a staff of of 15 and we've gone from about 3540 students to where we peak out at about 185 students. So there's been a lot of change uh and we're pretty proud of the work we've done. So we're we're going to go through and step by step talk about some of the changes and some of the things that have gone on. The first is we uh went through the process of

097uh becoming our own school through Oregon Department of Edge. So in the eyes of the Oregon Department of Education, we are our own high school, part of the Forest Grove School District. Um I'm going to back up a little bit. I did want to acknowledge that a long time ago, this was was John's vision and without John and that vision, we wouldn't be a school. We wouldn't exist. So thank you, John. My pleasure. You guys have done Where's the number? Is it the arrow or is it the Oh, I got it. Okay. So, uh, one of the things we've done as we became our own school is we've decided how are we going to measure our success and we've spent some time with our our districttosis uh, with our Turo and with the staff and

098what we've come up with is the first thing we're going to be monitoring and measuring is graduation progress. So we we take the stu we measure where were the students when we received them the percent ahead or behind that they were when we received them and where are they after we've had them over a period of time. So that's to us a very important measure because u most of our students come to us behind in credits often because uh one size does not fit all and for and school is not fit for them. So, we try to create a school that does fit them, but we want them to come in and start earning credits and we also want to make sure that we we aren't giving away credits. They have to come and they

099earn credits. It's hard work, but we create a an atmosphere where they can earn credits. Um, this allows us to track what students are being successful in catching up with their credits or getting ahead in their credits. It also allows us to to monitor that. And so every six weeks we we do grades and we do credits and we update that every six weeks and look at it as staff. The second metric is attendance. Again, we look at where our students are when we get them their average attendance in the year before and then our goal is to improve that attendance when they're with us. Social emotional learning is a big part of Cal and we are going to be using a student survey throughout the year to measure the growth in their social emotional

100learning and their well-being. Lots of different measures. We've been working with again districttosis to create that measurement. And then each of our classes u u in math and language arts are going to have the beginning of the uh class assessment and the end of the class assessment that's based on our district curriculum. And so we will measure them at the beginning of the class and the end of the class. So they'll be measured in these assessments six times a year. With that I'm going to turn it over to Michelle Coleman who is going to present on our mission statement. Good evening. Um, I noticed on the screen it's a little bit different, so you'll you'll just have to go along with me when I get to the the last line, but on March 12th, we

101came together as um as a team and um I had to write this down. We came together to discuss our vision of pursuing project-based learning as the core and culture of our school for the next year. And with that, we decided, well, we need to look at our mission statement. And um it was kind of fun. Actually, we had a fun time. We got together in groups and um I had them workshopping a mission statement and then we looked at each one together and then kind of pieced it together as a puzzle. Um, so this is what we came up with and you'll see that we have our new name that we'd like to change it to in our mission statement. And we came up with at 12 Plains High School, we empower students to

102become collaborative problem solvers and innovators by offering project-based learning that promotes critical thinking and real world application. We provide a safe and supportive environment where students develop confidence in their abilities and are held to the high academic and behavioral expectations. We encourage creativity and collaboration to build a strong foundation for lifelong learning. I'll pass it on to Stephen. Uh this is my 12th year at Cal and there's been a lot of changes over the years. Um and all of them have been I was think trying to think of any one that was bad and there was no no bad changes. They're all good changes. Um but the the building itself is really changed a lot in terms of the physical inside appeal of it. used to be just one long hallway, a couple of rooms

103off either side, uh, and then one big room out at the far end. Um, one of the rooms was affectionately called the box car or or coffin by some. Uh, it was long and narrow and from one end to the other was was, you know, hard to hard to maintain a good eye on students from one end to the other. Um so when the board approved these changes uh and um things started changing it was really emotional for those of us that were you know saw it the way it was before. So I remember walking into the commons upstairs once with the first student that got a lunch and went up there and was eating it you know at a table that was made for him eat there. Uh it was just really cool to

104see. Um and so yeah, as a continuation of this and looking forward to a new name, um I think the term alternative education uh has a connotation with it that that's the bad case. And even the first day I came to work here in the district, uh there was a community member in the hallway out here and they asked me where I was going to work. I said, "Oh, I'm going to work at Cal." And I like, "Oh, that's where the bad kids are." And I didn't believe them. And I still I still don't, but uh it was kind of interesting. It's like, "Oh, okay. That's the perception there." Um, so I think kind of moving away from the alternative alternative word in our name is is a good one for us as we can

105move forward and all the changes that kind of matter. Yeah, I think I covered everything and Tim covered some other things that were on this slide. Good evening. My name is Melissa Horn. Um, just to kind of piggyback what Jonathan said, um, we kind of came in together, um, I think it's year number 13, really. Um, but I've been in the district a lot longer. My son's actually a PE teacher in the district as well. I'm aging myself and I was on the old or the new booster club after the old booster club started doing the scholarships. So, um I've been around a long time in the district and ironically our our our boss then or our lead teacher just popped in a week ago um on Friday and came in the door and she

106did not recognize our building and she walked around. She walked upstairs, which we weren't supposed to be there upstairs, and we would make music on buckets because that's all the only space that we had, and she literally cried. She was like, "I can't believe that you guys kept it going. I I this was the vision I had, and you guys kept going." And she was grateful to Tim and she was grateful to the staff that we did it. So with that being said, our staff committee uh had voluntary staff committee was formed to engage in discussions regarding a potential name change. Objectives and timelines were set to achieve these goals. We had parent involvement engaged parents of both current and former students to convene with the staff committee seeking validation and input regarding potential ideas

107for name change. And we took that into the community as well with uh engaged members, worked with our staff, um received input regarding potential ideas for a name change and then we took it to the students. Um student voting actually we we did two uh iterations of student voting. One at the end of last year and then one earlier this year with the results being uh to plan High School. You got it. So with that, we would like to request that the board consider our proposal to change our name from the community alternative learning center to Quality Plains High School. I said let's do it. Is that it or procedurally? This would be a sure and real. So, this is your opportunity to ask questions. I do have some questions. Um, you do. I do.

108Brad, do you want to ask questions first? No, you're good. Okay. Kate, Mark, questions. Uh, no, I don't have any questions. So, um, I have a comment. Um, I am really glad you're changing the name of the school and I love the name. I I think it just reflects our community and and also the um the Twitin Plains represents the Native Americans in this area. So, very well done. Thank you. Well, I'm gonna add that I really love the presentation and I love the reason to have anyone come and get your faces on camera because I think that school and as we know in all of our schools, teachers just quietly over there doing their work, you know, building gardens, doing all kinds of things that you only would know when you go inside and

109and see just a glimpse of it. But um you can you can feel the joy in the pride in talking of the I to hear the history of where the program's been and to see the the joy when you're talking about it. I mean that is the feeling you get when you go over there and I know that we all know that's the feeling that kids have when they are there and I'm just so grateful. Um, my question is where when the discussions happened about the names, what did that look like as far as like who who who was throwing out different things? Was there a close vote between one and two or what what did the conversations look like um at the staff and and student level? I can answer that. Um, and I

110I didn't mention that um Stephen and I came in at about the same time too. This is my eighth year. I believe it's his seventh year. So, we were um we were one of the tried andrue six that started with just the bottom floor. Um and honestly, like they kept saying it was going to happen. It was going to happen. And you know, I just didn't believe it until finally I think it was Mark was showing us the plans and we were like, "Oh my gosh." And it's just a beautiful space. It really is. Um, so we we did uh first we pulled the students. We're like, "What kind of names would you like?" And gosh, we had probably we had some silly ones, but um we had probably like a good 10 contenders. Um

111we got it down to West Valley. West Valley, right? West Valley High, Quality Plains, and I feel like there was one other Um, I know that was a two in the end, but um, so so we took the the initial 10 after we took out the silly ones and we put it back out to the students and we wanted to see um, what they came back with and um, we we dwindled it came down to it was very close with West Valley High and and Twality things. and then I'll let Stephen talk about his interaction with the community regarding the name. I appreciate um hearing school board member talk about uh honoring the Native American legacy here in in our community. Um we had a a Pacific University muralist class come in and do some

112work in our building. It was new. those white walls and we wanted to put some some art on there and and uh uh part of the mural design had a historic map uh from early settlement and the area was called quality planes and was right there right in front of us the whole time. So uh I feel like this is a good way with Senate Bill 13 um and with our social studies curriculum and and how we're we're uh weaving in uh echoliteracy into the curriculum. I appreciate you mentioning the garden that's all scratched up from that today. Um it's just a lot of exciting things happening and I think that the name um is is reflective of our historical roots and and with the agricultural legacy in our community. I was going to say

113working with Howard. Oh, and uh Howard Sullivan also uh who's seemingly everywhere in this community and his has uh been uh involved in education I believe Pacific University grad before he got into education here. Um he's also involved in um endeavor called Twali Plains Outpost if you're not familiar with that and and we've heard rumors that that might be near a potential future site for our school and what a cool opportunity that would be for us to have a little corridor to connect and and uh um he was really helpful as far as giving us the history and the background and and who we should talk to and and uh to try to kind of come up with a naming convention that that um or process rather that that solicited input from a wide variety.

114Anybody else? I think the kids were all good with it as long as it didn't get shortened to TP. I did think about um Okay, thank you so much. Is there a plan? Should this be approved for some sort of unveiling or or celebration at the school? Have you guys talked about that at all? So the next step in my mind would be get together with David Warner and uh him help us create a process for for uh the the presenting this to the community to the students and then the process for uh you know publicizing it etc. So we have an expert on that and I I'm going to tap into that. All right. Thank you so much. Thank you for the time to my presentation. And speaking of it is integrated integrated guidance.

115I know you can go up here with a microphone. I'll be presenting with Dr. West. Sure. Yep. Do you want this to drive? Okay, I'm going to go ahead and get it started. Two years ago, the original integrated plan was brought from the school board. Again, the integrated plan is a process dictated by the Department of Education. effectually written into statute, the Student Success Act, that we need to go through a process of braiding funding to support specific student outcomes and um student programming. The graphic that you see here are those aligned programs. Um down below there are six grants. That's the breaking process. So, high school success, student investment account, EIS, the early literacy grants. Um, we have career and technical education and then federal school improvement grants as well. Our district does not

116receive any federal school improvement grants. We do um through our consortium get a little bit of career and technical education grants through Perkins that is run through a consortium. The top three programs are accredited programs. So, these are programs that throughout the state they're embedded in our regular improvement processes, making sure that student attendance improves, that we're connecting students to careers, um, and that we are engaging in a continuous improvement process. As I mentioned before, there's a real move around the state to school accountable. uh that accountability movement is somewhat dictated by the fact that some people in the state do not feel that they're seeing the progress they want to in our metrics. Um we're going to get to that in just a little bit here because there are metrics tied to this program.

117But this gives you an overview of the aligned programs and the goals that we are working towards within the integrated plan. Next slide please. There are limited uh expenses that we are allowed to incur with these grant monies. Um during our budget meeting, I spoke just briefly about restricted funds. These are restricted funds because they are mostly state funds. There is some flexibility in there. For example, when it says well-rounded education, that's a broad category. But there are some things that we are not going to spend these resources on. For example, we are not going to use SIA funds to repair our HVAC or buy toilet paper. Um these funds will be dedicated towards well-rounded education, reduction of class size, um increasing instructional time, the time that students are in school, and attending to the

118health and safety of our students. Slide, please. So we went through a process in this district to create our integrated plan. The vision and purpose of the integrated plan, it's built on the belief that every student deserves a supportive, inclusive, and engaging educational experience that leads towards a choice filled adult life. The graphic that you see on the right side should be familiar. This is a graphic from our strategic plan. the phrases that you see inside there and then the words uh that build the outside of the circle, those are our anchors. So, as we are building our plans and we are aligning resources towards these goals, we're making sure that our plans are helping us develop students who are resilient and critical thinkers and that the structures in our system allow our students and

119our staff to adapt and grow. We inform the plan through surveys, meetings, data reviews and that outlines our strategies for student engagement growth and then of course postsecary readiness. Um the plan is anchored in community priorities which we have identified as mental health, culturally responsive enrichment and then career connective learning. Thank you. There we go. Thank you. There are three overarching priorities that sit within our plan. One, we want to reduce academic disparities while reducing achievement for all. If you were to look at our student focal groups right now, you could predict the outcomes for those student focal groups. And we want to eliminate the predictability of those outcomes. We want to meet students mental and behavioral health needs. This has certainly emerged as a priority area since the pandemic. But more importantly, we know

120that if this basic need is not met, it is very difficult for students to learn. So this is one of those foundational efforts that we believe is important to the overall student experience and their outcomes as they metriculate through our system. And then lastly, students are literate in one languages. This is also one of our foundational priorities. Next, please. Okay. Data and community input. So to inform these these goals um which is a requirement obviously we would want to do it even if it wasn't a requirement is to engage with our community and our stakeholders. Um in so doing we did that through a variety of ways. Uh once one we used a digital survey to to go out and we had the opportunity to inter interact with our students, families, parents and our staff

121through a digital survey. We also were able to convene a couple of evening meetings with with our families. We had an opportunity to meet with families at Neil Armstrong Middle School and we did one also at the high school. Fairly well attended. Had good robust robust conversations uh with families there. Um we also were able to uh push into one of our uh migrant parent advisory committee meetings that they meet quarterly throughout the year. They're very well attended. We were able to work with the staff to come in and present some some information and and gather feedback at one of their already scheduled meetings, which um was is going to be something that we try to do more and more as we move forward is meeting families where they are rather than trying to convene

122meetings outside of those already scheduled meetings uh to get a little bit better uh interaction. Uh what I thought was a highlight and Dr. West can, you know, debate that, but I thought the student interactions were really good. We're seeing kind of themes as we go on in our different meetings tonight that students are never shy about sharing their opinions and I think that that's fantastic. Um, as these funds are going to directly affect them and their um in their education, we want to hear what they have to say. So, we had a great conversation at the high school with a good u swath of representative students. Uh we also Dr. West had the opportunity to meet with our Latinos in action um representatives uh at the high school. Finally, uh we had a good

123meeting with our community partners that was with Pacific that was with um Adilante and and Centro and others uh some of the church leadership throughout the community. So we had another good meeting uh with community members to review where we've been and where we're going. So that that was kind of how we uh reached out and did our community outreach. And again, we're starting to see those themes and those are reflected in our goals. They're not reflected in there we go in our little clicker here. Um this was just a little bit of a summary of our engagement through the survey. Um we asked a series of questions on you know where do how do you view these um uh student improvement areas? Did you strongly agree you know on down the line of a

124continuum. So then we took those responses and then tried to gather some themes around those. Again we're starting to see some commonalities here. Um you guys can read this at another time. Just wanted to highlight a few. our academic rigor. We want it was came out that that students, families alike want to have access to that rigorous curriculum. Uh advanced courses also want access a little bit better access to those. Um student support again, mental health supports, um and then language programs as Dr. Wes already talked about is we want that um we are making a greater effort to improve our dual language programs and have uh greater access to those programs. So that that's kind of the summary from our engagement uh the survey as as well as our in-person uh meetings with with

125our community of students. Okay. In terms of our objectives, um, again, I won't read all of these to you, but our plan is organized around these specific object objectives. So, we shared earlier what the goals were. We break those goals down into objectives. Just to highlight a couple, we want all students graduating from high school ready for civic life, college, or career. Um, we have a strong focus on our underserved populations within our plan. Again, trying to erase disparities in outcome data. We certainly want overall attendance rates to improve. That was a topic of discussion during our budget meeting just an hour or more ago. So, that is also a focus for us. And then, as you saw as one of the themes that was highlighted yet again in feedback is equitable access to advanced

126coursework and college level opportunities. So that's a just a high level summary of what's included with plan. Next one back in terms of how we're expending our resources. Again, the plan is braided. So it's not just one funding source that we utilize to achieve these objectives. We utilize many funding sources. And you can see the breakdown there for each of the grants. They amount to 17.7 million in total. High school success is 3.8 million. Student success act SIA in other words is 12.8 million. The early intervention system is a small amount of 34,000. And then the early literacy grant is just under a million dollars. Those resources are graded in ways that allow us to achieve what you see on the pie chart there where we're allocating about 5.4% of the resources overall to the

127early literacy effort directly. About 35% fall under the well-rounded education category. About 3.4% are what we would consider administrative costs. Um there are costs associated with administering a grant and we do recoup some of those costs through the grant. About 14.3% are for your technical costs. About 30.8% are devoted to health and safety. So this again it's not everything that you see in the pie chart there but it gives you a brief overview of how we allocate the resources as we braid them with all of those different resources. As I mentioned before, there are metrics that we are held accountable to with this integrated plan. Two years ago, when this plan was brought in front of school boards across the entire state, the plan, which we've just outlined right now, was coupled with longitudinal performance

128growth targets. Those longitudinal performance growth targets were co-created with the Department of Education. So the plan and the growth targets were brought to school boards separately because the plans have to be submitted to the department of education by the end of this month and then we'll go through a review process. The longitudinal performance growth targets were co-created with the department all the way into the summer when we did this the first time. So they were brought back to the school boards for approval at a later time. The only part of the integrated plan that requires approval from the school board is the co-created longitudinal performance growth targets for this year. The longitudinal performance growth targets, they were just paused by the Department of Education. We are not going to go through that co-creation process. And

129the reason for that is with the legislation related to accountability, there will be changes to what we are held accountable to. And the Department of Education, rightly so, said there's no point in creating new goals this year when we're just going to come back next year and ask you to create a bunch of additional goals and change the goals that you have. So, I appreciate that a little bit of common sense was exercised there and they said, "We're going to pause this year." So we won't come back with those co-created longitudinal performance growth targets, but the growth targets were originally created all the way through school year 2728. Um so wanted to just briefly show you how we're progressing on our metrics as they exist right now. Attendance and early engagement are measured. Our current

130attendance rate is 66.2%. That is a slight increase over the prior year. So that is good for us. But you can see down below that our baseline goal for 2728 is 75%. So we have a little bit of work to do to get there. And then we also have for each one of these metrics what's known as a gap closing goal. The reason we identify a gap closing goal is that we have underserved student populations, again the predictability that I mentioned before, that have not seen the same level of outcomes, the same level of tune in in our system as the majority white population. So this gap closing goal is intended within a 10-year period. We haven't reached that 10-year period yet, but gradually over 10 years to close the gap between our historically underserved

131students and our baseline student group. So that's why you see two measures there. We have some work to do to close that gap, but we are seeing some moderate improvement in attendance. Next slide, please. Third grade reading is another metric. Um, we saw a drop, a decline in third grade reading. We've talked about this in this boardroom already this year. We dropped from 32% to 26% students reading at grade level. We have a lot of concerns about that, but we also have some early indicators that our new literacy program is making a difference. Couple things that I want to highlight here that will always be a challenge for us when it comes to assessing students in English. 33% of our K5 students are English learners and 37% of our learners are learning in two languages.

132When we ask them to take a test in the third grade, knowing that it takes five to seven years to develop cognitive academic language, we are setting ourselves up for a metric that will never be truly reflective of students literacy development. That doesn't change the fact that we are still held accountable to it and we still want to see improvement, but we we need to measure Spanish as well and report on Spanish as well to get a true picture of how students are developing in their literacy skills. Next slide, please. Nth grade on track, our current rate is 85.9%. This is quite good. This is above the state average. Our baseline that we're striving for at 2728 is 88%. We're very close to that already and our gap closing goal is 85%. Next slide. And

133then four-year graduation. Our current rate is 82.9%. As principal Brown pointed out, this rate for the first time includes two high schools. Previously we had reported just on Forest Grove High School because our alternative learning center was not its own school. So this is a combination of the two schools. A couple of metrics that I want to highlight. CTE participants graduated at 91%. So this is certainly a program that we want to continue to invest in. And then I've talked about this as well. Students who acquire English proficiency before high school graduated at 85.8%. That's greater than our district average and it's greater than the state average. There is something about the multilingual brain that gives a an academic and cognitive advantage as students metriculate through the system. It is the right investment for our

134district to make. Um, what we see in our data and what I have seen in other districts I've worked in with strong dual language programs is that those early metrics like third grade reading, you don't see the benefit of that play out in the state outcome. But as students metriculate, you see by the time they're in middle school and certainly by the time they're in high school that they actually achieve at rates that are greater often than their white monolingual peers. Next slide, please. And then our fiveyear graduation rate currently at 86.4%. Our five-year graduation rate certainly our peers or colleagues at Cal are big part of us achieving this. But in addition, our high school staff never quit. So if a student doesn't make it at the end of their fourth year, the high

135school staff hangs in there with them and really works hard to make sure that they make it by their fifth year. And then you can see our baseline goal there at 90% and our gap closing goal at 88%. There's just one more slide I want to show and then we'll be done with this presentation. [Laughter] Just one more um [Laughter] open for questions. Sorry. Um throughout our plan, we prioritize our effort to achieve equitable outcomes. Um there is a lot of conversation across the country right now about whether we can use the word equity or not. Yes, we can use the word equity. Equitable outcomes means that we are giving students what they need when they need it. And we are doing that so that they have the same opportunities and the same options for

136a choice field of adult life as any other student that is participating in the high school. So for us, our equity commitment is that we prioritize language access and belonging. It's aligned with House Bill 3499, which we've had some conversations about. It's aligned with our district equity lens and it focuses our support on English learners, students experiencing poverty and emerging bilingual and historic administrative population. So that will remain a core principle of our planning process. So I'm done. What questions may I answer? I don't have any questions, but I do like the way this is laid out. is really clear. So, I appreciate that even the last slide. Okay, Mark, any questions or comments? No, I would just echo what Brad said. I I like the I like the the layout of it. Um, yeah,

137I um also like the layout and I like to see the the graph showing the the gradual um increase. Um, very well done. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Dr. West. We're going to move on to science adoption recommendation with Arteri, director of teachers, teaching and learning and thank you for waiting so patiently. Good evening. Um we are excited and proud to share uh seven months worth of uh tremendous work by over 30 staff members that include uh teachers, IAS, administrators, TOSAs throughout the district um in working through uh a recommendation that we we are bringing to you tonight. So super proud of them. I want to thank uh Lisa Spearing who's here beside me, our our our esteemed Tossa, Leah Henrikson, um uh uh teacher, elementary teacher at Cornelius Elementary, Ashley Flood, who's here

138with us, Tom McCall teacher, Brody Everett, the NAM science department head, and Mory Miller, who's here with us as well, Worst Grove High School department head, who were who made up the leadership team, who helped guide u this process. And uh I also want to make an extra special shout out to Lisa for her leadership um throughout the entire time working with the leadership team and facilitating all these meetings. And so we are here today uh to share with you that hard work and the recommendation of um the committee. Next slide. There it is. Okay. Um so we are going to share with you tonight uh what led to our goals and priority priorities used to guide decision-m um the actual evaluation process um the rationale for recommendations and the the implementation timeline and I'm

139going to turn it over to these great folks. Uh next slide please. Oh thank you. Um so the very first time we um as an adoption team were all together was in this room on I believe it was October 7th. And when we got together, uh the very first hours spent were really grappling with the idea of what is NGSS? The those are the standards in which we're um held to for science and what does that look like in a classroom? More than just checking boxes that an administrator might go through and say, "Yep, that's that's a good lesson. That's a good lesson." but what truly makes something stand out as unique and different and um a great learning experience for students in science. So, we grappled with that. We we've um spent some time

140in just a check the boxes lesson and in a NGSS 3D aligned lesson and we all felt the difference. Um through that, we were able then to write this goal and I'll read the goal for us. It's that we aim to provide our students with a coherent K12 aligned curriculum that meets the NGSS and is rooted in our district's values. In doing so, we will create a rigorous and relevant learning environment that engages all students through inquiry based practices and real world applications. Next slide. So then over the course of the next few um times that we gathered, we needed to get our priorities aligned and make sure that our priorities were in alignment with the district's priorities. Um and so we um did a lot of discussion about not only the um NGSS, the

1413D, but we looked at um different initiatives that were occurring here within our district to make sure that everything that we would be looking for in a curriculum that was an OD approved curriculum would also be able to speak to those priorities as well. Next slide. And all of those were so important that um nothing could be crossed off a list. But we we also couldn't put I didn't count how many were on that list, but like nine different rubrics in front of um our leadership team when we were going to screen over 20 different curricula. That would take a very long time. So what we did was we did group them together into four different rubrics. Um and so they had very long descriptions underneath them. And as um our leadership team looked at

142the curricula that the state had approved, we looked at it against our um district's priorities and said, "Is this something that would score highly with um and be in alignment with us or is it something that wouldn't?" And in doing so um two elementary curricula stood out and two of the secondary stood out. So we uh decided to move forward with a pilot of amplify and twig for the elementary pilots and then we move forward with McGraill and Savas for the high school pilots. So, hi. Uh, so for elementary, we are recommending twig science. And here's a picture of a couple of my students doing an experiment in our watersheds unit. So, um, TWIG is an excellent science curriculum that meets the needs of our diverse student population. uh we noticed that it had great

143strong uh Spanish resource that resources that supported our dual language pro programs. It also had a lot of um great supports to support English learners and Spanish learners which we thought was great. Um, there were also a lot of suggestions for differentiation for our ELD students receiving ELD supports and special education services. And there were also extensions for students who need a little bit more challenge. Um, and students got to use their workbooks, which were called their twig books, their science journals, and they got to read passages about water around the world. They got to annotate the text, which will help them in their language arts classes. and they also got to take notes in their workbook next to the articles um which was stood out to us. Um I teach fifth grade so in

144my fifth grade class this was our watershed experiment where students got to design and create their landscapes after learning about we learned about our local watershed and other wersheds around the world. Um, and they learned about water scarcity around the world and how humans, animals, and plants can survive on limited water and how there are different environments than what we may have here. Um, and in this experiment, they had to uh spray food dye and soy sauce onto their uh landscape. And then they used a spray bottle to simulate rain. and they got to see where the food diet and soy sauce which was the pollution where it would go and how fast it spread. So, um they had to analyze and think about how did that happen? Um and then they also had to

145work together because they had to build it. They had to decide on who is going to do what role. Um and yeah, so overall we really liked Twig and I just I haven't seen my students that excited about science in the three years I've been there. It was great. And I'll speak to the middle school pilot experience. Uh in in having conversations with um the NAMS teachers, they um were pretty clear about um the students as they're coming to NAMS right now are not um coming with a extremely strong level of science. What they were excited about to see in TWIG is that they saw that K12 alignment that potentially a student who starts in kindergarten would have that experience of being a scientist and learning science to a high level through literacy, through um

146data collection, through graphing, and be able to transfer that knowledge to the middle school to where they're not starting at the at the ground zero. point once they arrive at middle school. They're starting on a very strong foundation and then building being able to expand upon that which then would only help our K12 alignment once high school um was in for or once the students were um moving into the high school. They um also mentioned to me the uh problem solving approach and the real world applications. the very first day um it was getting into the lab um with this curriculum day one of it and I was there we barely had gotten everything out of the boxes and we had these drink umbrellas it was amazing these little drink umbrellas and they're like okay

147what we're what we're doing is we're building mangrove forests so the drink umbrellas kind of imagine umbrella getting caught in the wind blown back all of these um roots got turned upside down then um buried in the soil. And in that being able to um then test out the strength of a mangrove forest being able to prevent erosion as opposed to the deforestation if you were to remove some of them than what would occur. And all of this happened through the lens of literacy through the lens of data um day one out of the box. So, um they um are excited about the opportunities for the students to collaborate, have critical thinking, and have way more things for them to be able to do than they would ever even be able to try to accomplish.

148There's there's a lot to unpack within there. So their recommendation was to um so at the high school level um the pilot team decided to go with McGrael after going through all the uh different curriculum. Um the one of the biggest reasons was it's very accessible for our students. It's written to a level that they can understand but without watering down the content. And so I think that's very important that they can access the materials but at the same time they feel confident with understanding them. Um at the same time it has lots of good multilingual supports um available for students. Um and then another reason we decided to go with it aligns with our new freshman uh physical science course. Um, and we're going to go back to a traditional freshman physical science course

149that's earth sciencebased with uh physics as well. Um, that way we can hit a lot more NGSS um throughout the course. And then the third reason is it just has lots of hands-on activities where a lot of the other curriculum just didn't have as good a quality hands-on activities for our students. Excellent. Uh there were a few opportunities for community and parents to give feedback. Um we had tables set up at each of the spring conferences at all of the schools um in which there were QR codes um that they could review the materials and then uh provide any feedback on the QR codes. Those were not widely utilized. Um, so we did offer another curriculum opportunity to provide feedback or a community opportunity to provide feedback. And so on April 9th, um, we had

150that here at, um, the district office. Um, it wasn't attended like we didn't have a ton of attendance, but we were able to gather some feedback. Um and the feedback that we did get for Twig and for McGraill were very positive and in line with what um the teachers saw as they were teaching it. It was a parent of a student and then also a community member who um teaches at the university and was looking at the science um the high school science to see um if it was in alignment with what they would expect to be seen as um as kids leave high school going into college. So it was kind of the perfect person to come by and then be able to have quite a great conversation with um and provide feedback. So

151those were the statements um that she was uh willing to let me use. Um and so that is for today's so the recommendation in terms of implementation with those two curriculums is similar to what we did with math. Um the K4 level we would have a partial implementation for next fall. meaning we'd identify five to 10 teachers that would implement the curriculum, allows us time to develop the report cards. Um, if you recall, we had a delay in math and so we didn't want to stack them together. They're just going to be a year behind in in this partial implementation. I there's there's also a key point here. Um, we got to develop the report card, but we also have to address these time constraints that is a growing issue for us. We know that

152we're not in compliance with PE minutes. This is at the K4 level. Um that is a challenge for us. Um we know that our math curriculum has demands of 75 minutes for that curriculum. Literacy minimum of 90. And we're we're we're up against it. To be honest with you, the biggest question K4 teachers have is this is great. We love it. Um we're excited about it, but when are we going to do it? And how are we going to do it? And so that's something we're going to circle back to next year with the board and explore what are possibilities there. Um so that that's continues to be a challenge for us. Um so so that gives us a year to kind of figure that out um for our elementary teachers. Okay. Um and as

153I mentioned earlier, just kind of it helps with the math adoption full roll out next year. But at the fifth or 12th grade level, we're we're full we're full goal. um full full implementation of twig science uh next fall and and for uh McGra Hill uh this this coming up fall as well. So we'll be we'll be going strong. Next slide. And in terms of estimated materials costs um we're looking at $1.1 million uh estimate right now. That is just on the materials. We kind of talked about it earlier about uh generally speaking adoptions that are about 1 million. This does not include the professional learning plan. This is just what we'll bring to you in order uh for approval in our next meeting in order to purchase materials um over the course of the

154lifespan of the of this adoption. Um and so we'll be taking that out of portion out of this year's budget, next year's budget, the following year's budget. As we mentioned earlier, we're kind of spreading it out over time so that we're not just having to pay for it all all up in front. So, um, yeah, next slide. Any questions? I don't have any questions. I just appreciate the detail in the explanation of the lessons and then also the process. Um, it's helpful to see how you got there. Kate, Mark, anything? Um what do you project as the um estimate cost for professional development going forward? Top of my head. Not ready to answer that question. Yeah, I I can't think of that top of my head, Kate. I mean, we definitely know that we've got

155to frontload the the 5 through 12. Um and so we've talked about trainings that'll means trainings this summer um so that they have it ahead of the fall implementation um and then ongoing training especially at the front end next year giving time mostly for collaboration and planning. Um I I'll get back to you Kate on that if you don't mind so that I give you a truer number. Okay. Thank you. Yes. All right. That's it. Thank you everybody for staying late. if you had to, but thank you. Appreciate it. Um, number three, we are moving on to action items. Um, we're going to start with health adoption postponement. Again, Arturo is with us, director of teacher and learning. He's just saying bye. Thank you. All right. I'm back. So, speaking of adoptions, um we are

156here tonight to um ask that the board um approve the post postponement of the selection and use of adopted materials in health for next year. So, this this year is the year that we uh our health is up for consideration. We brought a leadership team together. Lisa did and uh made up of of teachers, counselors um as well as TOSAs and um we looked at materials that was around December. And after lots of discussion, there was excitement on materials and adoption, but just feeling like we can't do a pilot this school year. It felt a little overwhelming with everything else going on and just felt like we want to do this right. Let's wait till the fall. Let's do a pilot in the fall. Let's go all in in the fall so we can have

157a training plan in the spring and then implement the following year. So, there's a lot of interest, intrigue, but just feeling like the timing wasn't right um with with adopting for this this coming uh school year. So, we want to postpone it for one year. Correct. Yeah, we're asking. Correct. Any questions, Kate or Mark? No. No. No. All right. Do I have a motion to approve the postponement of the selection and use of adopted instructional materials in health for the 202526 school year? So moved. And I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. Thank you. uh network switch purchase our technology manager Enrique Pil. Good evening. Um the first item before you is going to be the network switch uh approval. What this is for is for the bond projects. We are

158putting in the new um dark fiber network in the district. So these are the network switches that were basically helped run the network over that new fiber. So we took proposals from uh to different vendors through -ate uh and the vendor that had the uh best cost and the best engineering district came from CDE technologies at a cost of $51,76642. Um and this will be purchased through bond funds. Uh so the recommendation for the board is to approve the purchase of the Cisco catalyst switches from CBE technologies utiliz utilizing bond funds for a total cost of $51,76642. So just any uh questions Kate or Mark? No. No. So well done. Here we go. Do I have a motion to approve the purchase of the Cisco Catalyst switches from CBE Technologies utilizing bond funds for a

159total cost of 51,76642? So move. I'll second. Any discussion? And all in favor say I. I. I. I. I. All right. Motion passes. Borch Grove High School CT computer. Uh the next item before you is the refresh of the CTP lab at the high school. Um the lab the computers that they currently use do not support Windows 11. Uh Microsoft is deprecating Windows 10. They will no longer support it again in October. Uh plus the new CAD software that the high school uses, it requires better hardware. Um, so, uh, we went out and got bids on some workstations that are basically certified by the CAD software manufacturer. Um, and we settled on a Dell Precision uh, workstation and uh, we're purchasing off of a contract uh, pricing agreement that Dell already has and negotiated. Uh

160so the proposal before you was to approve the uh purchase from Dell for the both the workstations themselves and the monitors uh for the CTE lab at a total cost of $87,680. Um and this will be purchased out of the general fund um out of monies that we've set aside for the refresh. Uh and this actually will help us offset any need to use that money in the next school year uh for this next budget cycle. So, the recommendations for the board approve the purchase of the Porsche High School 1521 CT lab computers and monitors from Dell uh utilizing a pre-approved 2425 general fund budget for $87,680. Any questions? All right. Do I can do I have a motion to approve the purchase of the Forest Grove High School 1521 lab computers and monitors from

161Dell utilizing the approved 2425 general fund budget for $87,680. So move. I'll second. All in favor? I I I All right, moving on. And another one. Uh I'm pulling the Eileen show tonight. Um the next item before you is to approve a new phone services contract for the school district. Our current current phone services contract is through is with Ziply. Um it has expired, so we're currently just going on a monthto month. Uh we did go out and put out an RFP to ask for proposals uh for new phone service. We got um responses from Comcast, Ziply, and Zo. Um and after reviewing all the proposals, we did actually in fact first got RFP didn't get any responses. So they went again actively went out and sub requested proposals directly from different providers. Uh and

162again Comcasto and after reviewing all the proposals uh the one that was deemed to be in the best interest of the district uh is with Comcast. Uh so the recommendation to the board is to award new three-year phone services contract to Comcast pending successful contract negotiations. Uh with the phone services contract basically we already got like pricing information. So now it's a matter of and Comcast would come out to be the lowest cost. We just negotiate the details about the little longd distance services, number of circuits, whether or not we want to have failover or have um inline services. So those little things once we negotiate that then we'll have a final contract. So is there a top range or any kind of range in there or we just approve the uh the estimated cost,

163not adding on add-ons, taxes, services, and fees. Uh it'll be about $2,000 a month. That is about a $4,000 a month savings from what we're currently paying. So, we're currently paying over $6,000 a month and now we're going to be paying around $2,000 a month. The final cost be that much of a difference. It's a difference because we're switching from a PRIT1 service to a SIB service. So basically whatever that is I don't know we're basically moving I'm putting it more simply we're basically moving from more analog system to a more digital system kind of leveraging the uh kind of u work that we're putting into improving the network uh both the dark fiber and the services. So now this is going to be more of a digital phone service that we'll be switching to.

164So there is some savings there. So in the recommendation there's no cost. So but you just said 2,000 about right now we're estimating at about $2,000 a month. So I can come back and obviously I can work with Eileen if we need to come back once we have a an actual contract and report back. That might be as long as we need something first. Okay. That might be easier. So pause on that. What? Or just You say up to Yeah, I I think we may need to pause on this until we have an actual contract. We'll bring it back once that's right. Or could we say up to X amount if you know it? This is to get it through on action. Well, let let me ask a question that maybe I should know the

165answer to but don't. Is there a concern that we will not need the budget cut off by delay? Uh no. It'll be three year. So that's what's causing it to be over 50,000. Yeah. Can we just move it to the next? Yeah, we'll move to the next one. Okay, done. That's fine. Good. All right. Cornel student Chromebook purchase. Yes. Last one. Uh so this next item before you is to approve the purchase of new uh Chromebook for student devices for the new Queen Elementary School. Um so we went out and uh basically demoed uh different uh Chromebooks from different providers and then settled on one that we found to be in the best interest of the district which turned out to be an Acer device Acer Chromebook their latest education line Chromebooks. Uh and we

166took proposals from different vendors AWG SHI and ECW. Uh the best the lowest cost came from DCW at $164,500. Uh so and this would be through bond funds that we've set aside for the view elementary school to outfit them with new devices. Um so the recommendation is for the board to approve the purchase of the 20 school student Chromebooks from DCW for $164,500 utilizing funds. Okay. Do I have a motion to approve purchase of the elementary school student Chromebooks from DCW for $164,500 utilizing bond funds? I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. I. All right. Thank you, Enrique. And we are going to move on to direct clue for Dilly Elementary School. Good evening. Um, tonight I at least am not the one with the most items. So, um, Dilly Elementary

167is the first one. As part of our 2022 bond promise, our commitment was to ensure that every elementary school had a classroom that was designed for a preschool and capacity for a preschool if and when we are funded for it. And so Dillian Elementary School, we are designing and adding a classroom onto the back of the building where the current garden is. And then we will renovate a classroom up close to the front office into the preschool. And so that gives us both the prek classroom and capacity for prek um at that building. Um because of the simplicity of this building and this construction project, we went out for a hard bid procurement process. We did receive four bids from Buildscape, Inline, FiveStar, and Ross Builders. Based on the proposals, we are recommending to award

168it to Buildscape for a million28,689 utilizing the 22 bond funds. Any questions? Do I have a motion to award the project to Buildscape in the amount of 1,28,689 utilizing the 2022 bond funds? I'll second. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. I. I. All right. Nutrition services. All right. So, the next one we have tonight is also part of the 22 bond uh payments and this is our phase two of three. Um this upcoming summer we will be doing Harvey Clark, Fern Hill, Tomol East, Tomol West, and Joseph Gails uh nutrition services equipment replacement. Um and this depends and varies between building on what equipment is being replaced. Um but it's everything from combi ovens to dishwashers, walk-in coolers or freezer replacements. Um based on the needs list that was completed pre-bond. Um, we

169did receive quotes from Curtis Pitman and Roses. Based on the quotes and their ability to be able to provide both freight and installation within their quote, we're recommending um to award the bid to Roses for $299,260.73. Do I have a motion to award the purchase of nutrition services equipment through Roses for $299,260 cents utilizing bond funds? So move. I'll second. Any discussion? No. All in favor say I. I. I. I. I. All right. Harvey Clark. All right. Last one I have is the Harvey Clark construction GMP. We have already brought to the board the process to use a construction manager general contractor and we have already selected fivestar builders through the board as awarding of that contract and now we are to the phase of awarding the um maximi maximum guaranteed price. Uh, FiveStar has

170been able to go out and bid all of the sub projects throughout it um through a competitive bidding process and that is the maximum guaranteed price is [Music] 5,771,789. Um, this does exclude the two classroom addition that will be for the the prek capacity and the classroom edition at the end. That project got started a little later. So, that will be a change order brought to you um in a future map. Do I have a motion to approve the procurement with FiveStar Builders for $5,771,789 for the Harvey Clark seismic and renovation projects to be funded with the 2022 bonds? So, moved. I'll second. Any discussion? No. All in favor say I. I. I. I. All right. Notice Bethany put a nice little thing. Do not read these. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and

171adjourn at 8:17. Thank you everybody. Good job. Thank you. Thank you Kate. Thank you Mark. Yep. Yep. Same trouble.