FGSD School Board Meeting

001okay good to go mark okay all right we'll get started here it's march 29 2021 work session will get underway here it's uh 5 31 pm and two items that we have on the work session this evening item number one is that diversified workforce um i think kevin noreen is uh presenting on that one with uh with um some other folks joining him and then the second item for the work session is that is uh district equity work and that is uh that will be osvaldo um garcia contreras um with that uh with that piece this evening so uh with that we'll uh i'll turn it over to uh mr noreen and um all right good evening chair everett good morning good evening board members uh i just want to thank you for inviting us

002tonight to talk a little bit about the work that we're doing in the forest grove school district on diversifying the workforce again my name is kevin noreen i'm the director of human resources and i before we get started i have some panelists that are going to be uh co-presenting with me tonight so if i could have each of them just introduce themselves uh right now that would be great maybe start with marina afternoon folks my name is marina alvarez not kevin moran i am the coordinator for the diverse educator pathway program through northwest regional esd and i'm kate eckert the school and community partnership coordinator for pacific university and my name is anita zeideman's boudreau i'm the director of the school of learning and teaching on the forest grove campus excellent and so they're going

003to participate and co-present and so i'm going to go ahead and share my screen and get into our presentation as i said uh tonight we want to share with you some information on our work uh here in the district regarding diversifying the workforce uh this is a photo that was taken uh at the 2019 oregon association of latino administrators conference known as oala and we every year take a large contingent to that conference and really have a great great exposure for our classified staff certified staff administrators and administrators so um so we'll kind of get started here so when we're talking about diversifying the workforce our goal is to recruit hire and retain a diverse workforce that matches the ethnic and racial diversity of our student population we have developed multiple pathways to do this

004for our bipoc population or black indigenous and people of color population and again we're going to share with you some details tonight about those different pathways and then also to share with you i'm also in the process of participating in a program at the esd about reviewing our current hiring practices and hiring strategies and see what if any adjustments we need to make in order to meet our goals so the oregon educator advancement council has been producing uh the oregon educator equity report for the last couple of years that address the need to hire and retain a more diverse workforce particularly in regards to our licensed staff so i want to share with you the next couple slides just some data from this report and again the educator advancement council empowers supports and diversifies oregon's

005educator workforce through local educator-led networks and statewide resources to provide the quality teaching and learning that oregonians desire so the first uh set of data that i want to share with you um first of all in the report it calls out and and looks at districts who have 40 percent or more students of color and so this is just a snapshot of a few of the districts and i'll explain um how i got to showing you these uh five districts here so again our goal right is to find a way that to hire retain that diverse workforce that matches our ethnic and racial diversity of our student population so we're looking at and and i created the column on the far right which is to look at that difference between what is our population of

006percentage of students of color and then what's our percentage of of teachers of color so for the 1920 school year we had 27 percent teachers of color which is the second highest percentage of teachers of color in the state of oregon woodburn is first with 34 uh teachers of color and then our 60 students of color is tied for 11th highest percentage of students of color in the state so then what i did is i i pulled together the data and looked at okay who is the closest to meeting that goal of having your percentage of students of color match or your percentage of teachers of color match your students of color and we actually come out as the fifth um highest or i guess the the the district that has the fifth smallest difference

007between our percentage of students of color versus our percentage of teachers of color and then the next slide here is talks about administrators so it's the same looking at the same percentage comparisons if you will and again we had 36 percent percentage of administrators of color which was the second highest percentage in the state of oregon and then we have the second smallest gap between the percentage of students of color and administrators of color behind portland public so the next slide just shows some trending data that has been gathered by the state and so you can see that the students are in that yellow line at the top the green or the administrators and then the blue are the teachers um so you know in in looking at this at least over a nine year

008period we we are trending up we've had a couple little blips where things have um gone down for you know various reasons i can't pinpoint them all for you uh tonight um but just wanted to give you some trend data to show you know where we are and obviously we want to continue that trend going up and and shrinking that gap between the students and the administrators of color and teachers of color so the next thing and this this will become obvious with having our co-presenters tonight is that um at least from my philosophy in terms of how are we going to continue to diversify our workforce um really relies in in partnering with our post-secondary but also with our other districts so tonight marina is going to talk a little bit about the partnering

009ships that we've developed with the northwest regional education service district by the way marina is a forest grove high school graduate so just uh want to put that out to the team that we've got already that great connection there then you'll see that we've partnered with some of our other washington county districts like tiger tualton hillsborough beaverton and sherwood of course we have our strong partnership with pacific university and again anita and kate are here to represent the partnerships that we've been developing and culminating over these years and then portland community college we'll talk about that a little bit later in one of the pathways portland state university is a partner of ours that we partnered with on a grant and then western oregon university so at least from the standpoint of how we're trying

010to be effective and grow and develop i've really found that it's been very very important to have those partnering entities out there in the region so that we can work on this together because it's not something that we can just do solely on our own so uh the three pathways that we're going to talk about that we've developed or that in conjunction with some of our partners we have a pathway for our current classified staff we have a pathway for people that live in our community i'm a firm believer that we have future educators that live in washington county live in the forest grove area live in cornelius um and so that's another pathway that we're exploring and working and developing and then our current high school students um and marina is going to talk

011with us a little bit about what we're doing and how we're doing to develop that pathway so i'm going to talk first about the classified staff pathway so two years ago we held our first meeting as we were starting out our partnership on the diverse educator pathway program with the other washington county school districts i listed on the previous slides along with the northwest esd and we held this meeting uh this was a this is a photo from our first meeting two years ago and it was really great uh first of all we had a great turnout um but we also invited and had current teachers of color in our district who started as classified staff and so you know our classified staff who came to this meeting i think that really helped kind of

012hear from teachers that are in our district now about well how did you get onto this pathway what were kind of the the things that you needed assistance with or had questions about we also had some of our administrators of color you can see osvaldo there on the left hand side chelsea aion on the right um so um and that night was really just about kind of listening and learning to folks to find out what type of questions do they have and how can we better help support them on their pathway we actually already had staff two years ago that were already in teacher preparation programs and two years ago we started our first summer program with three of these folks called our future teacher instructional assistant position where we have them work side by

013side with other bilingual teachers teaching in our summer school program ultimately two of those participants have since been hired as full-time bilingual teachers in our district so we've already i feel like have you know had some some good success there so this year we had another meeting um with our again with our classified staff and had about 20 people attend or contact me and say that they were interested so we have a good pool of classified staff that we're going to continue to support and develop and help answer their questions on what they need to do and resources to become become a teacher so now i'm going to ask kate and anita to talk about our community member pathway thank you kevin um and i have to mention it's been such a pleasure working with

014kevin on all of this pathway work it really um we have quite a group uh working together on this and it's just it's every time we get together and hold one of these information sessions it it means a lot um to the community member participants the classified staff participants i'm sure the high school participants as well um just that these opportunities exist and we're reaching out to bring teachers in um so for the community pathway um as kevin said believe the culturally and or linguistically diverse teachers that we need already exist in our communities um either as classified staff or people we want to be classified staff to help get them classroom experience to become teachers so our hope is to reach out make connections with community members and help them with each step of

015their pathway towards teacher licensure so candidates receive individual mentoring and resources to help them with what they need whether it be transcript evaluation or translation help obtaining a ged or help gaining english language skills we also provide onboarding support with school districts either as a volunteer substitute or a classified staff member depending on their needs to help them gain this classroom experience and onboarding support with pcc and pacific we're finding that community members might have been burned in the past with poor advising and misadvised and we know the community college systems are complex so we're trying to create a clear pathway with a web of support around community members who are interested in being a teacher um so our group started meeting in december 2019 in march 2020 we held our first round of information

016sessions um here are pictures from the one we held at pacific hillsborough campus um and on our flyers we're trying we're being mindful of accessibility to these so on our flyers which were in english and spanish we included public transit informa information we provided child care we provided food we provided translation services um and then in february 2021 this past february we held two more information sessions on zoom this year for covid one in the evening one in the morning um we also reached out to community organizations to help us advertise news outlets as well there's a nice kgw article about our information sessions shout out to narsay for helping spread the word through her edi committees or communities rather about these events um so at these events we have a couple presentations including some

017current teachers of color who talk about their stories their pathway and explain why we need the audience why we need you to become a teacher in washington county and we try to save as much time as possible at these events for advising stations so um each individual candidate can get answers to their questions and specific information for what they need um hey i think that's everything i wanted to say anita and kevin anything you wanted to add on yeah i'd be happy to add a few words i think one of the things that's been really powerful for me in being involved with this partnership is that groups that you might typically think are uh in competition with each other like districts and they were the collaborative nature of this work has been what has been

018the power bringing together districts who were all in the same boat looking to try and open up pathways into licensure for groups that the literature shows they tend to find a real bottleneck between high school and university and so having the community college pcc at the table has been hugely important it really helps open up opportunities uh having northwest regional esd and even although we're the only ones here pacific today we also have other universities that are involved too so we've taken a very collaborative um let's work together we all have the same problem and let's try and really improve uh you know options for people of color statewide not just within our own little community so that's been very powerful and i i think a really strong point uh for for the work that

019we're doing um that's just really other than that i think kate and kevin have covered uh everything else all right thank you so that covers our community pathway next we're going to have marina talk about our pathway for our current high school students so marina thank you kevin so as kevin mentioned i get the amazing opportunity to work with our bipoc students um within all the school districts we partner with that want to become educators right so we offer a lot of one-on-one individualized support for all our participants and we recognize that working with first-gen students is unique right they need a lot of individualized support that other folks might not need and i'm talking also from personal experience um i like to share a story of when i was in high school and my

020trio advisor right she took time on a saturday right like on her weekend to take my mom and myself to western right and she gave us a tour and she connected me with an advisor had my mom really feel comfortable knowing where i would be living right and why i needed to to be there and and ever how everything worked so this is what we want to provide for our participants we know that there's a lot of barriers um for diverse folks going into education um so we want to provide the resources available for them to make that transition easier for them the first one is going into higher ed you know i think anita made a great comment right now and in how we work together it's important for us to connect all our

021participants with folks that are going to be their community of support so knowing kate knowing amita knowing folks at western or whatever university or college that our participants want to go to is crucial right having someone that's going to explain financial aid and not have them feel uncomfortable or scared so building all these relationships with our participants and for them to build this support and also building that support and that connection with the school district right we want our participants to come back to their home districts you know who better to be the educators than them they've been through the schools they've been through the system they know what needs to change so we want them to come back so i get to collaborate with kevin right and do awesome things like our community gatherings

022where he was able to get folks um to come and talk right educators of color at forrest grove school district to come share their story and our students are able to listen to what their journey into education has been like because there are so many pathways right so many ways for you to become an educator and getting to that point so we're able to have them build that relationship with their school district and that makes it easier for them as they come back they know people right these can be their future mentors and they will be they will feel supported when they come back right and we want to retain them here so those are some of the supports we provide um we've um also provide paid internships for them so again how can we

023best support them to come back to feel comfortable in this journey we want to provide them with paid summer internships that will help them afford college right pay for everything because it is very expensive but also gain experience in a classroom right if um so we want to provide them with the diverse options and experiences for them and we were lucky enough also this year to get awarded a grow your own grant so one of the initiatives with that is being able to hire connectors at all our school district um partners so we're going to you know increase the number of folks who can do the work and support on participants going into this field and another big initiative through that grant is that we are providing a free credit bearing summer course so again

024this is open to students but also all participants um going into the dep community members and classified staff as well so you know this is a growing your own program heavily based on relationship building it's grassroots so all these collaborations between all parties here right is important so um thank you kevin for inviting us and yeah excellent so as you can see right i mean these three ladies are amazing to work with but they've got their passion but they also know uh what our folks need in order to move this uh forward and help diversify our workforce so the first thing i'm going to say about this photo is i need to do a better job of cueing people especially myself when i try to grab the screenshot because i have a horrible look on

025my face and i didn't tell marina to look at the camera so i'll have to laugh and laugh about this a little bit but if you can get past the funny expressions this was um our first meeting with our three high school graduates these are first year students at western oregon so andrea is up in the top right anayeli is right below her and then vanessa is in the bottom left and so i asked we had two of our teachers alvera alcantar and lourdes medina along with oswaldo and mariela morales come and just meet our these graduates meet these first-year students and answer any questions and just share and talk and start cultivating that relationship like marina talked about so our plan is to carry out and continue to have meetings with these three ladies

026as they go through their journey stay connected with them as marina said we're working on building in some internships and some you know some opportunities in our summer school program to really teach and work side by side so i'll just hit a couple of quick um um a couple more quick outcomes that will keep meeting moving on so with our classified staff um pathway you know we've been as i said able to hire three of our former classified bilingual staff into dual language teaching positions currently we have three bipar classified staff enrolled in teacher preparation programs and then as kate alluded to we've had uh two years now in a row of community members where we've gotten to meet with some folks and start building up kind of our um our pool of applicants of

027people that are and then uh with marina helping us bring these three ladies to western oregon university and starting our first uh cohort uh we're really really excited about that again as just i i hit on a little bit earlier about some of the practices that um i am working on in human resources along with the district first of all i talked with you about you know i'm i'm in this group with the esd with other hr directors about transforming our human resource practices and really looking at our practices and seeing are are there things in our current ways of doing business that are barriers or they're creating unintentional barriers um and osvaldo's gonna not trying to steal some of his thunder tonight but we've established affinity groups for our bypac staff members um and

028that is also something of the oregon educator equity report that they talk a lot about with trying to do everything we can to retain our staff of color um and then also also mentors right for our newly hired i buy educators and marina uh alluded to that with our connectors right with our staff that way so recruitment um you know something that i've brought to the district since i started here was making sure that we bring a diverse team when we go out and recruit at our job fair so we want to make sure that we have teachers and administrators of color to show that you know this is important to us and this is who we are in forest grove and then the last thing i'll just hit up and then we can take

029some a little bit of time for questions um we have successfully partnered with three grow your own grants um so one of those marina talked about already that's the second bullet down about working with hiring current staff to mentor our other future bypoc educators in our classified ranks we partnered with portland state university and we have two classified staff who will be receiving tuition reimbursement um based on our partnering with them for that state uh grant and then the third grant that we participate in we're successful with our is called the teacher connect and again that is another program that we're involved with our partners here tonight from pacific along with portland community college and some of our other washington county school districts and really just the the niche there that we were really trying

030to identify and we've talked about with the three pathways is that community college student you know and maybe maybe maybe right when they graduated from high school when marina has been talking with them they're not quite decided yet are they going to be a teacher but maybe i'm going to start at the community college level and so that's what we decided to do was to write this grant with with pacific pcc and our other school districts to say can we get somebody embedded in the at the community college level that can help reach out and contact and be a resource for students at the community college level who now say oh you know i never thought about being a teacher but now that you mention it i'm ready to go and where are the resources

031and who can help me and the final uh highlight that i want to bring up tonight again is our partnership with pacific and with pcc uh and we're also partnering with hillsborough school district on our critical educator of color pathway and again we take more questions uh kate is very involved and been working on this and again basically we are creating a program and looking for future teachers who are interested in teaching ethnic studies that's going to be a curriculum requirement in a few years from the state and so we're partnering with with these partners on the screen and developing and and getting people to apply to this program we're going to start it off with just a small group of people where they would take classes at pcc and ultimately matriculate and move up

032into pacific to get their teaching licensure and come out and be ready so we're recruiting in fact kate and i sat in on some interviews and met some amazing classified staff from our district and from hillsboro that we think are going to just be great contributors to this other program so so with that i appreciate the time tonight and we'd be more than happy to answer any questions and i'll stop sharing my screen but we really just wanted to share with you the work that we're doing here with all of our partners so i i'll just ask the first question so um do you find it i mean teaching is hard anymore is it do you find people who are are you finding people who do you have to twist people's arms too much to

033get them to go down the road of teaching kevin or or anybody on the committee just because i you know no i i don't think so mark i mean one of the things that um i had a kind of some questions that i asked when i first met our most recent cohort of graduates i asked them i said why why are you choosing to go into teaching and i mean mark and for the rest of you that have been working in education and know this like i mean it's it all comes from here right they all all of them said you know what i wasn't able to have as many teachers of color in my experiences and i really want to be that teacher in front of the students right and be able to connect

034with families um to talk you know in the spanish language you know and just have that conversation and be very um just a resource but they they all three of them just gave amazing answers that just you could tell from their heart like this is why i want to go to teaching it's what i hear all the time when we interview teachers or people that are trying to become teachers in our district so the other thing i i would add to that too is one thing we've noticed from the university perspective working with the grow your own programs in district is that people who are coming through classified positions they know what they're getting into right so um i think that just really you know sort of works with what kevin was saying too so

035i i don't see i actually see this is a very positive way to recruit and retain uh future teachers thanks because um just wanted to say thank you to um kevin marina cade and anita for a wonderful presentation i i had a couple of questions but they were they were all answered throughout the um throughout the presentation that you all did i'm excited about um osvaldo garcia looking at the affinity groups and the retention also of our bipark within the district so i'm really excited about that i also just want to say that um in one of the particular slides that you had kevin that have the one that you said the faces look a little funny so i just wanted to make a comment here because three of those particular teachers were my daughter's

036teachers um and these were they were in elementary school middle school and high school so uh we had miss mireles and i think medina and then uh osvaldo garcia so all of my daughters uh two of my daughters uh have gone through the forest grove school district and something to not take for granted is that all of the role models are women of color and um one of them is 23 and one is 20. they're both pacific students and one just got accepted into the graduate program in teaching here at pacific university she got accepted at arcadia university at a university of boston and she chose to come to pacific because of the um because it's home and also because she likes to give back and dr garcia has been also an amazing male role

037model for many of our um of our students and then the other thing i wanted to share was the ethnic studies so i think it would be good for us in the future to invite uh dr sarah phillips and dr matt towne from the college of arts and science because they're right now in the they're in conversation about what does ethnic studies look like at pacific university and um one of the things that i do i think we have an opportunity for is that the i worked at portland community college for 18 years and there was a lot of foundation work to get their ethnic studies program going so what we're already seeing and experiencing from our students that are transferring from portland community college in particular the rock creek campus because we used to

038do all the zip codes and see where our kids were coming from and they they were from cornelius and forest grove and hillsboro and when they get to us they're already feeling some disappointment because they're ready for the 300 level ethnic studies and where we haven't packaged that well for them yet so i'm just putting in a plug and also holding us accountable um here at pacific university so i'm picking with i'm speaking with my pacific cat right now not necessarily as a board member but i'm also going to put pressure as a board member at pacific university to do that um as well so i just wanted to share that how important it is for us to prepare for that ethnic studies um here and i just want to say thank you um i've

039had the privilege in my career to um actually lucinda gilad who was part of that little box she was my student when she was a student at portland community college wanting to become a teacher so i love teachers i work with the portland um with the bilingual teacher pathway program at portland state many years and also the portland teachers program at um at pcc and also psu so thank you thank you thank you thank you for the amazing work you're all doing oh and marina i think the trio who was your advisor for trio was it vicky eduardo who was it i think it was vicky i would remember more if he gave me her last name no anton says i don't think it was vicky um or maria lannis maybe i think her name

040was maria um she was oh and beaverton as well so i know she like split time between both skates right the reason i bring that up is because dr parker is working on trying to get hopefully we'll get the trio back to forest scrub school district so yeah and where i it's funny because i was going to bring that up when marina mentioned it we're um we pushed out their they're re-upping their grant we pushed out our letters of support it looks like we fit into the right um situation so if they get the grant then we'll see we'll be able to put trio's um mentors in the high school and at the middle school and so that's looking pretty good i'm expecting to hear between now and the end of may whether or not

041it's going to happen but that's again just another good mentor um program for us and our students any other questions okay hearing none thank you very much for the presentation uh that was really informative and i i think we all appreciate it very much thanks thanks everyone yeah so uh the next um uh the next topic is um roswaldo is uh talking about district equity work and so i'll uh turn it over to oswaldo thank you good evening everybody and uh really would like to appreciate the opportunity uh from the school board to really inviting me here in my new capacity obviously my name is osvaldo garcia contreras and [Music] most recently was the principal anil armstrong middle school and right now um i have been uh given the responsibility to be the coordinator of

042ell services migrant services and also um the district equity work it's a long title but i gotta tell you i enjoy it i came to the forest grove school district in the year and uh i i still love the work i still love that equity work that was one of the things that made me come from portland power schools to forest growth and it hasn't changed so one of the reasons why has happened is because the level of support that i have gotten from the community and that here is nazi from the kids look at all these kids you know who have been my former students and now they are giving back to the community that keeps me grounded and also from the institutions i mean the the district itself and also the school board

043who has always been supportive of the equity work that we do as a district so thank you uh so i'm gonna go ahead and share my screen and try to go through uh you know this little presentation um in which i'm gonna try to you know share um the equity work that we are currently doing and the direction in which we're trying to go as a district as far as the equity work goes so obviously it takes a village to raise a child and but it also takes a village to uh you know execute the equity work with efficiency um it is really important that we remain together as a community and that's what's happening here in forest grove and that's why i love this responsibility however we need to understand that diversity includes knowing

044how diminished we all are when voices go on hurt us we you know address the issue of equity not only um in the individual schools but also as a district we recognize and we all agree uh on a number of things there is already an achievement gap there is an opportunity gap there is an accessibility gap there is a worthiness gap and and there is a need for social and emotional learning and interventions nationwide especially in the middle of a crisis that we're living right now and and some of these gaps are really well known and there are some that we haven't really spoken a lot about like the worldisness gap which is what kids experience after they have internalized you know that they are not worth the same as older kids there is a

045real reality that students you know they do not have the same access and as you take a look at the picture at the bottom of this screen we have evolved a lot in the equity world growing from for what we consider a reality in which not all kids have the same then going into equality in which we give every kid the same and then we're trying to move the equity work into equity which means giving every child what they deserve to be successful and even going forward which is bringing the kids to the liberation stage in which we not only give each one of them what they need to be successful but we also remove the fence which symbolizes removing all the barriers so equity in education requires putting systems in place that ensure that

046every child has an equal opportunity for success and that requires understanding the unique challenges the barriers faced by individual students or by population of students and providing that additional support to help them overcome those barriers and we all understand that yet [Music] well let me stop sharing for a second something happening here so i'm gonna share again yet we have you know the data that is right there in front of us the data that you're taking a look right now that's the last s back assessments and you can tell right there in orange the students of color continue to perform at lower levels as their counterparts and this is in forest growth so even though you know in spite of all the effort in despite of the acknowledgement and the awareness we still have some

047work to do so that's that's kind of what grounds or work so today i'm gonna present four bullet points to you uh in how we are addressing this issue the first one is going to talk about the actual plan for the forestry school district equity work the second one is going to talk about the structure of the foreign growth school district equity team because this work cannot be done in isolation and cannot be done by one individual there is a system there is a community that tries to execute it the third one are the main equity experiences and trainings that we have provided to all staff members and the last one is the current focus what we're trying to accomplish right now so here is the action plan there are 11 main uh you know

048points that could describe that component the first one developing a comprehensive uh district equity policy that will serve as an anchor of the equity work district-wide we have been working on this equity policy for a while and we are almost there i know that we are in contact with the school board with some members of the school board to take a look at it so we are very excited about that that we finally arrived there number two providing equitably equitable access to culturally responsive teaching strategies and curriculum that is essential that is something we have been working for a while and we continue to educate our teachers on that number three addressing the social and emotional learning including pairing equity standards and sel which stands for social and emotional learning standards this is something really

049new that we are really advancing on the next four examining policies programs and professional development with the equity lengths and through the cultural cycle which is the work that we have been doing with dr stephanie freiberg for the last four to five years number two here on this slide committing to diversifying the school personnel to enhance equitable representation which is what uh you know our director of human resources and the team uh presented a few minutes ago the next one ensuring that our schools are safe and there is a commitment to identity safety the last one on this page including the voices of our community especially students and parents who represent marginalized populations we are also working diligently on embracing and supporting both multiculturalism and bilingual education we gotta bridge the accessibility gap we need

050to eliminate the predictability of social and educational outcomes especially based on race and then maximizing the academic achievement of every child by intentionally allocating resources equitably so that's that's almost our mission and vision that's that's the plan and here is the structure of the equity team that is trying to execute it so we have a top layer of what we consider the district equity leadership team this is led by our superintendent and that's one of the things that i appreciate the most is hiring or superintendent you know at the forefront of all these initiatives then the new equity coordinator which is me and a few district equity leaders and that includes administrators and also you know some teachers and some other staff representing a variety of schools and grade levels then below that we have

051the district equity team that district equity team is formed by about 50 individuals and that those individuals are coming from the different schools they get together they receive training and they are the ones who come to uh the schools and execute the work at the school level or site level those 50 individuals are divided in five specific committees one committee is addressing the expanding cultural toolkits which is the work that stephanie fiber have been uh you know leading for us and i'm gonna talk a little bit about all these categories in the next slide but i kind of wanted to explain that a little bit the number b would be diversifying the workforce and affinity groups um the diversifying the workforce committee has already been presented by kevin uh the affinity groups we can tell

052you right now that we have five affinity groups right now currently working in the forest grove school district we have two bypak affinity groups one that is open to any uh bypass member of the district and one that is only for the equity district leadership they also have their own bypass affinity group we have two white staff members affinity group one for male and one for female and we also are in the making of having an lgbtq plus bypa sorry affinity group that will also meet um these affinity groups are meeting at very least once a month in addition to that we have a coalition of white educators and they are called the barwi that stands for building out the anti-racist white educators we have a couple of those teams one is an ems and

053the other one is being former echo shot or by echo shot leaders that are trying to get that work rolling also in other parts of the district and then finally at the very bottom we have the district side teams and these are the schools because every school has its own uh equity team that executes the equity work at that level so going into details uh expanding uh the cultural toolkit what this is talking about the main work here is that the understanding of culture is important in order to teach the child in an equitable manner i mean understanding the growth mindset understanding that we have to rely on the asset that the student brings rather than the deficit mindset that we need to exercise interpretive power that we need to not only be independent learners

054but also interdependent learners and a number of other important components that come with this fiber work b we already talked about diversifying the workforce and the affinity group so it is important to develop this framework that supports the social and emotional well-being of all staff specifically taking into consideration the needs of the staff of color those who you know with either visible or non-visible identity markers the third one is the equity professional development we have a team that is in charge of collecting resources looking around and finding what is a great workshop that is needed what is the speaker that we could bring into the district uh how to collaborate internally uh how can we use our own uh brain power and skill sets that we have in certain buildings and utilize that to provide

055services in our buildings the next one we also have a committee uh and the type the name of this committee is the school board and community development you know the the importance of this one is is to do what we're doing right now which is sharing the why of the equity work making sure that the superintendent is able to lead this work and communicate not only with the school board but also with the community you know all the cultural experiences that are authentic and that are currently happening within our district and then the last committee and also part of the vision is the student and family voice i mean we cannot continue to work in isolation thinking what is best for our community or what is best for our kids without listening to the kids

056or the community so here are the main equity trainings and experiences that we have provided to our staff and some of them are either uh trainings that happen secretly during the year or throughout the year and some of them are in specific training that have happened in certain buildings so we can talk about the work that uh dr fiber has done which is expanding the cultural kids we have taken a number of staff members i mean at this point we're we're probably more close to a hundred staff members who have attended taking it up uh we have taken staff members to beyond diversity also coaching for educational equity sifi we have sent there a number of staff members including almost 100 of our our administrators uh we have a couple of staff members who have

057been trained with the national equity project including myself we every year take a number of staff members through the aoala conference which kevin uh referenced a few minutes ago we have done extensive work with microaggressions implicit bias ace or adverse childhood experiences teaching for social justice teaching culturally responsive teaching gender equity and inclusion and we have already talked about affinity groups restorative justice and then white fragility white privilege on the marriage or based on guilt versus responsibility it's not anybody's fault what happened but however we have the responsibility to make a change i mean we have been talking about um the importance of educating and supporting not only the staff of color but also white stuff because they they also care about our kids and they need to be supported and empowered to do the

058best job possible under the circumstances that we are in nationwide the statistics are that forty percent of the students are students of color and seventeen percent of them seventeen percent of of the teachers and administrators are teachers of administrators of color uh we are uh as kevin uh mentioned earlier above that so we we should feel good as a district that we are doing better than national statistics but still we need to continue to grow in that area so what is the current focus what we need to get done before uh you know the school year is over or hopefully before the fall is we need to make sure that we finalize our comprehensive uh district equity policy we gotta bring the affinity groups uh to to a conclusion uh and and examine the learning

059and see how we can continue to grow in that area depending on the experiences that we gather from the five affinity groups that we have currently working this year we also need to continue the anti-racism uh you know work that we have been doing in some of the schools we got to make sure that we complete uh the the pairing of the equity and sel standards which we have already working we have already started working in that area there is even a grant that we are applying for that is going to be supporting uh that initiative we got to continue to work on identity safety on gender equity we need to continue to work on you know empowering our teachers with the understanding of culture and the importance that he has in in being you

060know in having an effective instruction and then obviously the cultural responsive teaching and the teaching for social justice which is something we need to continue to work on so in pursuit of equity these are the 10 main topics that we recommend challenge the normalization of failure speak up for equity embrace immigrant students and their cultures provide students clear guidance on what it takes to be successful and also show what does success look like for them building partnerships with parents based on shared interest align discipline practices to educational goals rethink remediation while focusing on acceleration implement evidence-based practices and evaluate for effectiveness which is all these data analysis process build partnerships with community organizations and empower inclusion of bipac success and teach the way students learn best according to their cultural experiences rather than expecting them

061to learn the way we teach so this presentation continues but uh i'm going to stop right here because uh whatever i have following this slide are probably answers to potential questions so i'm just going to stop right there and allow the board to ask the necessary questions they have in mind thank you and my plan here would be to have oz come back this was meant to mostly just be a an introduction um there's a lot of work going on in the district and i just wanted to make sure folks knew a little bit more about how it was organized and in particular that one slide that kind of talks about how we've organized the work that to me is the really important slide because um in most of the districts i've been in equity

062has been a very much a top-down kind of endeavor and this district when i got here had a really decentralized um way of dealing with equity and it's one that we've tried to keep as we've begun to build on it so i just mostly wanted odds to come and provide kind of an introductory of here's how we're organizing the work there's a lot of work going on and begin to give you we'll come back with more details if you need but then i'd throw it over to questions just a quick question and it sounds like um thank you osvaldo for a great presentation that's a lot of that's a lot of information um so i just one is i kind of like to see where and you did mention in one of the slides about

063the data collection but i guess i would like to um maybe dig a little bit more in regards to what does that data look like in dr parker and i've had this conversation in regards to collecting uh a reporting system that our students are and our parents and actually any stakeholder within the school district could have and how to report a bias how to report a hate incident within the school district so the mechanism of actually putting policies and procedures in place to have that take place because we don't necessarily have that um sorted out yet you know in regards to something a lgbtq student might be addressing second language special ed so forth and so on um and then the other thing was the when you refer to evidence-based practice so i wanted to

064know maybe not at this time but maybe later on does that evidence-based practice is that in relation to the ethnic studies um what is that going to look like what's the plan for that for the district because that will be something that will be coming our way so it for me is mainly processing procedures that would actually change the culture of um of the of the district to make it better so i don't need answers this particular time i just wanted to put put it out there is something that i'm very interested in i appreciate that you know and um on the i'll talk about it when i talk about the my report on superintendent goals um we'll present out more data to you the um next board meeting around it'll be close to when

065you have to fill out my evaluation so i wanted to make sure you had some data i have oz work with john a little bit around seeing our data is really sketchy right now because we don't have all of the you know all of the data that we would normally have but we're going to bring you what we can but i do think this idea of making sure that we're breaking it um up so that you can see how different groups are performing but all that's going to come this next board meeting we'll bring that but i also wrote down um this idea i will talk to oz around the issue around hate and bias um reporting and then the ethnic studies i'll have john put together a project on how what how are we

066moving forward with that and i'm sure oz was going to be involved with that too but i wrote both of those down um thank you very much the presentation was very good when you're putting this together um and i've talked to dave about this um when you talk about culturally responsive teaching um social justice are you looking at also adding classes um because i see the students um i think that we should have more information about um how to debate pro and khan how to debate with kids regardless if it's race or social justice and that because um kids don't have the they don't have the extended families like they should to to to do that and and um and if you can take an argument and and debate it whether it's pro or con

067regardless of what you think so i'm looking at are you going to from all of the work you're doing recommending beginning with kindergarten you know debate and how do you how do you have a discussion and also um well that thought left my brain i think the other part of that was was some civics right which is living right yeah i i think in the culture that we're in right now i'm i'm really concerned that we can go forward with a lot of equity but i also think that we have to um we have to do help help where we're at right now the children because they don't have the tools on how to discuss something without you know having misinformation or calling names or or just not understanding so um i would like to

068see some curriculum flow out of this to help the children yeah okay oh sorry no i want to say thank you very good presentation i just wanted to say that you are absolutely right and uh and i know for fact that uh uh in some elementary schools definitely i'm neil armstrong the middle school and the high school teachers have been empowered with those tools especially in in schools that have advisory classes and and in the context of the election and all that there have been a lot of you know debates going on but you are absolutely right that we have to teach kids how to how to have conversations how to debate their points without being disrespectful and or offensive to one another and and it has been a very good experience in those schools

069that we have put it into practice so how how to bring it down to you know lower levels that's something that we could discuss and i'm pretty sure that uh your intuition is right that we can you know sometimes we don't give kids the credit and we if we teach them the skills they will learn the skills so i appreciate you bringing that comment because i know it has happened but i am certain it has happened at the you know with the older kids i'm not really sure we have done the best job possible at the elementary level and i would just say thank you uh you know osvaldo thanks for the presentation was great um and you know that last slide that you showed the the i maybe it was ten items that you

070can do it was really kind of nice it kind of encapsulated quite a bit of quite uh a lot of things that just are just you know real quick one not one line things that people can you know that you can throw out to focus on if you're going to uh if you're going to you know for folks that want to address this right and all of us and so i i really appreciated that was your last slide tons of information but that that one was great so thank you i was told 20 minutes so i tried to stay stay to the clock i don't i think that mr i mean brad had a question but i'm not sure i i think i'm i the only thing i would say uh you know when you

071looking at the strategic part of that plan is to be able to think about we know what whenever you put a strategy together think about how to quantify that strategy and then baseline that strategy about where we are right now so it's not so it's so it's real concrete and not soft you know what i mean yeah so i've seen our work over the last 20 years and it's kind of moved from person to person and it's nice to see something that's that's quantifiable concrete and that it's real clear on what success looks like when you implement that strategy this is what we should see and it and it's even more effective and it's when you articulate this is what we should see from our kids um so at some level that would be my

072suggestion oswaldo thank you i appreciate that okay i think thanks osvaldo i think uh i think with that we'll we will uh close out uh the work session for this evening and and uh move into uh the school board meeting so um we'll close the work session i don't know looks like it's 6 38 p.m and i think we'll just go right into the right into the school board meeting so um called uh the march 29 2021 forest grove school district board of directors meeting is called to order at 6 30 8 p.m uh we'll do a roll call of board members present mark everett ward chair president uh kate grandusky president uh brad befero yes marseille rodriguez president and valerie ingram here and then also miley vernon here miley miley's here well okay let's

073uh so the board the school board will hear public comment for unscheduled public appearance received through the designated email address which is public comment at fgsd.k12.or.us and is on the district website comments will be read by district staff at the appropriate time on the agenda and will be limited to three minutes at uh let's see this time would you join me with the in the for the pledge of allegiance 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 of audience and staff can i uh can i ask the audience and staff to introduce themselves here this evening john o'neill assistant superintendent kevin marine director of human resources kim scheer director of

074student services david warner communications okay i think that's everyone okay um let's see what she left there i think we have arnold okay teacher at the high school karen o'neill principal of high school okay okay great thank you i'm sorry um what's the approval of tonight's agenda um i move that we approve tonight's agenda as written second file second okay it's been moved and seconded any comment hearing none we'll uh call for a vote um marseille rodriguez yes val ingram yes brad buffaro yes kate yes as well okay so the next item is a student representative report and i don't know riley was here earlier today because of spring break and everything but our athletics committee they are doing their own they have all the games on our viking nation app class competition they always

075do competition of the month and for april that's our sophomore is doing it and they're going to work with outreach and most likely do a hygiene drive but they're like they're pretty positive about that clubs and connections are finalizing freshman orientation and preparing for that they're also working with social media to make the asb website and just make sure that's up and running they're also working with unified in our asb to make sure everything is good with them and just doing day weekly checkups and they're thinking of doing sometime this week or next week a unified check-in with all of them just to make sure everything's going okay our legal group is doing asb elections and appointments which elections are going on right now our outreach team they are working with working on doing meaningful

076mondays and i'm pretty sure they have that all done and then also they're working on their monthly project um for productions um they are working to do an asb training on the student council and so they're working with our legal team and then our asb president right now to make that they're also finishing the transitions and putting more resources on our mental on the mental health video that they're creating um for publicity and recognition they're partnering with renaissance for this drive-in thing i'm not positive what exactly it is but it's a dive in to something um and then they're also doing yard signs for the senior hall of fame and just getting those polished up and ready to go off to our seniors um but they're all and then they're also helping with the mental

077health video with outreach um social media they're just getting information out about elections spirit weeks and then our the scavenger hunt that renaissance is putting on um they're also just making sure and putting more links onto the asp website our spirit and rewards they're planning the spirit week planning a spirit week and planning one for the april 5th through 9th and then they're figuring out how to get things ordered and figure out what they're going to order and then our esports group um they're brainstorming advertising for esports and getting more players and more people involved they're also doing maintenance and just making sure everything's going smoothly and planned out and then they're also figuring out streaming and then i didn't get anything from renaissance today but i know that they are probably getting the scavenger

078hunt like polished up and ready to go which is going to be on wednesday and that's all i have today thank you that was actually quite a bit miley so you're very thorough in your report so thanks uh there's there's a ton going on so thanks very much okay moving on let's see correspondence and celebrations calendar notes recognition and the superintendent report uh mr parker thanks i'm gonna again i'm gonna do a return to school updates i'll save a lot of my kind of current comments but the first thing i just wanted to talk about today was how great it was to see cars in the school parking lots today and to know that today was pre-k six teachers began to move back into their classrooms and the schools had meetings and met there's some

079training that's going on and also just um seeing the schools be reinvented it reinvigorated it was um i called all the principals today at one time or another and talked to most of the elementary school um late in the day just to find out how their day went and everybody said the energy was great just having folks in the building several of them reported it felt a lot like in-service week in august like lots of excitement kind of getting going lots of questions around the latest changes in the ready school safe learners i'll talk about that in our presentation but all in all it was a um it's good it's starting to feel like school again and um we're just excited to welcome students back to our our schools soon so that's about it okay

080okay thank you thanks um okay next item is unscheduled public appearance the board appreciates community members sharing information during public comments public comments should be submitted through the designated email address and will be read by district staff public comments will be limited to three minutes as is the protocol during in-persons board meetings public criticism or complaints about school district personnel is not allowed at this time are there any comments that have been received no no comments okay thanks very much moved on to the consent agenda the consent agenda is made up of routine non-controversial items to be voted on under one motion are there any items within the consent items a board member or the superintendent wishes to discuss separately okay hearing hearing none is there a motion to approve the consent agenda a move

081that we um approve the consent agenda as presented right second okay it's been moved and seconded uh do a role call vote here so i am a yes uh brad befero i'm a yes marseille rodriguez yes valerie ingram yes and kate randusky yes okay that motion passes thank you we have two presentations this evening uh the first is superintendent goals uh from mr parker and then a re return to school update he mentioned earlier also so i believe the first one is a superintendent goals update mr parker perfect let me share this and then get my screen set up here so this starts um hang on this starts kind of the next three or four board meetings um the superintendent of evaluation this time around i'm going to give you an update on where we're

082at with the superintendent goals this year um the next board meeting i'll give you kind of my self-evaluation and you'll be i think giving me an executive session the feedback from the surveys you sent out so we're we're starting into that process and this is kind of the beginning of it um you know last march and in the summer as we began to kind of figure out what my goals were going to be it's interesting as i started to try and write this up and give you some some feedback on how i did this year with these goals it's just amazing how much has changed in this year originally we had three goals the first one was development to implement plans moving the district from comprehensive distance learning to the hybrid model and then returned

083the school district to in-person instruction at all schools and that was back in september and um thinking at that time the way that we envisioned kind of how that was going to happen a lot of a lot of that's changed the second goal was update and implement the strategic plan we suspended that back in november just because of we could see the writing on the wall that we weren't going to get to that work with just what was going on the last one is enact systemic change for our historically marginalized students i think you got a good indication of kind of the work that's going on um from osvaldo what we're doing as a district earlier but i'll go through kind of what we wrote up and talk through what we've achieved before i get

084there as i was starting to put this together i was trying to figure out um you'll see in a second when i go to what we wrote up in september like some of it is moot it's um the things changed on us and so i began to as like okay i need to figure out how many changes we've had this year since march and so i started writing up all of the different changes that happened to us this year i'm not going to go through and read every single one of these but you know in june we were um we were often we had done kind of the spring cdl and we were often rolling on developing hybrid plans and we spent the month of july very um intentionally with blueprint committees coming through and

085kind of creating these hybrid plans and then at the end of the month um the governor and oha um through one of the first big changes at us which is okay we're everybody's going to cdl okay we start school in four weeks and you have to be ready for that um in july um coveted cases began to surge and so through august and september we began to see this very large surge in cases we received new executive orders we began to meet weekly with the washington county soups to try and make sense of the changes in the speed that these things were coming at us in september we deal with the wide wildfires um some as close as cherry grove and then we have the beginning of an even larger wave of coven cases coming

086at us in october the state announces that they're going to re-examine the metrics and then october 30th if they release new updated metrics and then they change the way in november the way they calculate those metrics the positivity rates and had to change them again december the we ant um the governor announces on december 23rd that all of the metrics are advisory they don't they aren't mandatory anymore and then in february she announces that those metrics are changed again and now they are mandatory you must um follow those pieces and i'm kind of i mean i it's i see people smiling and i think it's just a recognition of kind of the year that we've been in and how much change we've undergone and it was even last week when um cdc made it through

087looking at science they're not it's not an arbitrary decision that they made but they've changed um the the requirement around social distancing from six feet or 35 square feet now to three feet and there's some reasons but again that came on us during vacation when no one was at school and um so again it's just been a real challenging year with how many times we've stopped and started so this was goal one goal one was basically get a hybrid plan developed and get our schools to enact it and we had created at the time kind of five or six different parts to it first ones can convene a team to finalize hybrid planning so this was completed but again it evolved which is instead of having that kind of blueprint committee doing all of the

088work over time we kind of evolved i mean we just changed the way we did the work in the end as we started to move back towards the hybrid we brought together about 50 licensed teachers who were k through 6th grade and they did a lot of the initial piloting and kind of looking at what that instructional model was going to be like but the work that we did during the summer we kind of just took it and continued to go with it as far as like the systems and the schools that we needed to organize and that bit so if while that made sense when i made this i'm not sure at the end that's kind of how we did the work create a plan that outlines the metrics and timing for transitioning to

089hybrid again at the time this felt like a really important goal but in the end the metrics kept changing so much that it wasn't really um we just had to follow basically what the governor put out where i'm going to go through it when i do my reporting but they've changed the metrics again with this last order and i'll explain it but boy it's been a challenge right to create a plan that keeps changing communicate the hybrid transition plan to the staff and the community so what i would say here is is that i think we've completed that we've done that through our board i've communicated weekly every week since march trying to keep everyone up to speed with um kind of what we're doing and in in hindsight i think there's probably some different

090things that i might have done but um all in all this has felt like the best way for us to make sure that everyone knows where we're at at this point i think we've been pretty honest about um i mean we've many times announced what we were going to do and then announced that we have to change what we're doing um we might have waited to announce but that still didn't always feel like the best move here develop measures for evaluating progress on students in the cdl program john um we're going to come through and present to you i think in the next board meeting so that you have some data with which to analyze my performance but also tell you that our data is very challenging right now because of we don't have a

091lot of different pieces to um to analyze so but we'll present that the next board meeting communicate the progress on cdl and how we are doing we've done that in some some extent with um attendance but again i think that's been problematic for us that wouldn't be one that i feel like i have a strong that we've had strong performance on convene a team to finalize the in-person instruction for all students again i think the vision of this change we did do this by bringing together teachers and actually having them try out the different modes of instruction that we were looking at um create a plan that outlines the metrics and the timing for transitioning to full in person we're still i we're still kind of working on this one the way it's looking right

092now and i'll talk about it in the next places certainly i'm looking at the fall as being full in person instruction i we're going to wait and see where the right transition place is um between now and that beginning of the year certainly if we can get kids in school pre-k through six i i don't know there's there's some challenges still i'm going to wait till my other presentation to talk through that communicate the in-person transition plan to staff in the community we did this to the board meetings in our multiple week-long i mean our friday communications that kind of thing but that's goal one i don't know if you have questions here and then i'll move on to kind of the equity piece i don't have any questions dave other than the comment that

093uh i i i think all of us recognize the just the number of changes that there have been this year and how you know how difficult it it has been to i mean it's almost which goal which month um or should there be a new goal i mean it's changed so much so um so i i that's just my comment i i will say the positive part here i was having a conversation with um a teacher um last week and there's some really there's lots of positive things coming out of this too which is our use of technology and some of the things we're doing and how are we going to move forward so i don't want to say it it's all negative because i think we've overcome and adapted but certainly it's been a

094challenge to manage the process brad i just have a comment david regarding i mean the this process that we go through on it for evaluation in this situation i would look at this more of a reflection on what worked and what didn't work and what did we learn from it and if we you know as a superintendent if you ever had to go knock on wood if you ever had to go through this again i mean you would be better you would be you would be more apt to follow a path that you've and and learn from it than you were at the beginning of this year and i and i think that's a positive piece of going through a process like this just the ability to reflect on on the things that you've done

095the things that worked things that didn't work and what would you do different next time not only as a superintendent but as a district that would be my only comment um and i'll be writing that up for our next um for our next meeting with my self-evaluation so i'll take that i'll yep um the other thing i would say just um coming off of that is is just you know one of the things that we realized as we've gone through is all of the various like my washington county superintendents folks we meet weekly and um in these times of change collaborating has been the real blessing and our principles meet weekly to talk through because the problems and the changes are happening so quickly that being together to collaborate around it that's a real that's

096a real positive thing um and hopefully we won't have so many changes and we won't need those meetings but um that has been part of the strength in goal three these were kind of the action steps for me and trying to lead this equity movement especially in this time of you know in the pandemic and everybody's via a screen how do we continue to move forward our equity work um the action steps for me i'm sure all educators have an understanding of the role we play in systemic racism this started last spring with actually before last spring we were talking about this but specifically in the work that we've been doing each of the schools meets with their staffs monthly so their school equity team meets and works on these basic elements this is one

097of the things we tasked them with in the fall it's something that we'll be working on that we have worked on and that we will continue to work on is making sure that people understand there is a systemic racism issue here and we have to create systems to fix it um i'm really proud that um i oz was here um getting someone he's already been invaluable to me which is my attention gets split in a lot of different ways and just having oz there to continue to lead the process forward and make sure that we've got an agenda for the meeting and things are moving it's already been really helpful um i mean i have a pretty good vision for what i'm looking for and i know again like i said i came into a

098really decentralized organization as far as the leadership and equity so i don't i don't really need to do there's plenty of people in the organization who are much more skilled at this than i am i just need to put them in the right spot to do the work district equity teams expand the knowledge of identity safety interpretive power and how the culture cycle which are the three base um pieces of knowledge that we're using to kind of um connect it's like how do we create classrooms and instruction that are going to um teach equity and what this is the work that stephanie freiberg dr freiberg and the university of michigan team um i think there's some one of the researchers there is from stanford too but um this is the work that we've been doing

099for about four years now when it's it's how does equity show up in a classroom how do we teach identity safety how do we give kids interpretive power um i'll bring oz back to actually this is all information that we need to present to you i wanted to give you today kind of structure but the next time around we'll bring in some of the other folks from the equity team to talk a little bit more around these these three subject areas but again our monthly equity school meetings this is where they're doing that work where they continue to talk about these subjects create a behavioral health and wellness framework that supports every student this is interesting because it feels like if you didn't know the work that we were working on like you'd look at

100that and go why is this in this goal why is this sitting in the equity goal well part of the reason is both cassie kenny and oz as they began to talk through the work that we're doing on social emotional learning and the work that we're doing on equity there's a huge overlap and it's not that we're doing one or the other it's we have to do both at once and it's kind of some new work in walla the the main keynote speech was around this idea that you you if you don't think in terms of equity when you do social emotional learning you can really do trauma to our students of color and so it's important that when we create the system that they're both there so this is actually moving ahead um well

101we've got the behavioral health and wellness framework coming together oz has been working with cassie to try and um get some overlap there and they're going to do this as we begin to create equity standards they're going to actually kind of co-create social emotional learning and equity standards together so that's just one thing for us so it's been really exciting work um kamina team to begin to look at systematic systemic underperformance and put together suggestions what systems need to be changed to provide positive impact this is still work to be done there's been some conversations i think it's some of what the work that you're looking for narsay but as we begin to really dig into our um systems we need to identify which ones are working well for us and which ones aren't that's

102still work that i think is really out in front of me and that's questions that i can answer on that goal dr parker uh thank you for sharing his goals he's in the the one previously are there any cost association with all of these just just wondering um there is i mean i have a um currently the money sits in my budget um we'll be moving it to oz's so that he has um he has money surrounding kind of our equity efforts typically we've used it's forty or fifty thousand dollars that we have for um paying for teacher time to do the work um if we do any kind of trainings the affinity group work we've brought in some some outside facilitators to work with our facilitators so that we can build capacity in the

103organization but we didn't have that capacity originally so we wanted to both build and support it but we have those resources um that we're using i'll need to continue to kind of build these resources we've got money sitting in hr to do some of the pathway work that we talked about in the first part of this board meeting because again there's some costs associated with um some of those pieces um yeah did i answer that question i thought i was headed that way but yeah i think so i'm just trying to um engage the support that will be needed to do this work uh and it does take dollars in particular if there's any software systems that might need to be purchased um from technology and possibly others you know just just wondering the software

104part will actually be the one that we've already purchased so the um panoram panorama which we'll be using for our behavioral health and wellness will also provide us the data that we're needing to track this behavioral health and wellness peace thank you another questions all right um let's see school opening update i guess i wanted to just kind of um next monday at this time we'll have been through our first full school school day for pre-k through fifth grade um wanted to kind of give you an update of where we're at um you kind of heard what the basic plans are um wanted to give you kind of where we're at covet wise and i they haven't updated their graph yet but basically the last two weeks have been 89 and then i just got

105news before we came on to this board meeting that we're at 89 again so i think we're pretty much we've leveled off here over the last five weeks and there's maintaining a good um a good um area this um this graph is actually the old metrics which show us to be in the from basically in the yellow from 200 and below and i'm gonna show you in just a second those metrics have changed and again the 200 line here is what's going to change everything below it is basically going to be green and i'll show you what that what that is in a little little bit and if you have questions as we're moving along go ahead and ask away so here's kind of where we're at portable air cleaners which was the purchase from

106our last time around those are we've purchased now we're just trying to get them all delivered there's um deliveries coming in tomorrow and we're still kind of checking through to make sure that we can still make all of this happen um k-6 april 5th is the target they've changed the cohorting requirements so that the 100 doesn't really matter anymore the metrics have changed this is the new set of metrics and basically what it says is below 200 you have to offer either fully on-site or a hybrid option i met with most of the washington county superintendents and i think everybody is basically planning on opening april 5th with the plans that they put together over the last two months and so i don't see anybody because of this change in cohorting and then the change

107in the social distancing i don't see anybody who's moving quickly on that we've spent a bunch of time getting a plan together to make a change um four or five days in front of the opening just doesn't make any sense at this point um but basically to go back to our graph here it's 200 or less you need to be both elementary and secondary should be in a hybrid or fully at school and i think you can see we're still we're long ways away from 200. so i think this is good i mean we i i want to see kids back in school so i think this is a move that's positive for us um the six foot social distancing guideline has changed the the basic just you know the science that i presented the

108last time around that talked about the key factors in a classroom in inhaled dose and the key factors there are one the mask it has 84 of the removes 84 of the risk and then the air flow is really those are really the big factors and the number of students that are in it what and um i have a task at the on the very last screen here i've actually attached kind of a link to their science so if you want to see the different scientific articles that they're exciting here but the basic gist is the number of students in the room doesn't seem to be as big of a variable as the airflow and the um the mask and so that's why they're making the change to go back to three feet they're not

109seeing the kind of transmission in school it doesn't mean that we're not going to see coveted cases in our schools i think we will we already are and we have been it's just that they're coming from outside what they're not seeing is the spread happening inside of the school if we've taken the precautions that we need to take um there's a lot of writing here but i wanted this is them explaining their three-foot role and the basic gist is um elementary schools must be maintained three feet of physical distance between students to the maximum step possible so that's in all cases so basically even if you went above the um 200 you would still you the three-foot rule in the elementary school still is okay at the middle and high school if you are below

110200 then you have a three foot rule if you get above 200 then it goes back to the six foot rule bigger bodies i think is what they're basically talking about there but um the problem is not written down here what we're hearing so far and where we're struggling right now is even in the middle and high school where you could have three foot of distance between kids when you get into the hallways and into lunch nutrition spaces they need to be six feet and so that's gonna that's gonna be some some thinking on our part about how to manage the passings and some of those types of things so kind of my next steps here k-6 teachers are continuing to move into their classrooms today tomorrow the next day principals are fine-tuning the systems

111at their school we've um still how we're working with washington county health is changing because we have a lot more people in our schools now so our contact tracing and kind of working through all those systems is evolving i'll start to reconvene our kind of our negotiations with our licensed and our classified groups moving to a three-foot space is a change in the working condition so i'm going to need to renegotiate um and so i'll start meeting with them and talking finding out what what the issues are and start moving towards this i would like to get to a place where um we're getting kids in four days a week um i there's still a lot of challenges that are still in front of me with the rules that we're up against to make that

112happen but i'll start meeting with those groups to start figuring out how to move forward for us um we'll continue to kind of monitor and learn we've got something new we're going to try out here next week so i'm sure there's a lot of learning that can happen there um dave what i would hope go ahead what about busing for the kids and how are we managing that busing is still a challenge for us um in the rules that we're given right now which is um feet of space and only kids in the same family can be in the same seats and i don't know i and eileen probably has these rules a little better than i do but the basic just is this we're not able to transport a full bus of kids and

113so we're already kind of running up against some capacity issues of trying to get even the kids that are coming back to school to school so we've got some real challenges there and i'll just again airflow um i think we could host more kids in a bus get the windows open with the windows opens like close to 15 air changes per hour with a mask i think those kids are actually less of an issue but we we've got some challenges i see eileen coming on the screen so she she probably has a couple of thoughts for us yeah that's a great question kate um we there's recommendations in the rssl that we have you know one kid per seat and maintain the distance but it's not a requirement um with us in routing what we're

114trying our goal is to ensure there's one kid per seat unless they're the same household and then siblings can sit together or members of the same household can sit together so that we maximize that bus um we have some buses they just finished routing and they're working on trying to balance them we do still have some buses that are going to be you know one student per seat and siblings are sitting together um and you know it's it's going to be challenging to maintain that especially as students start to continue to come back you know if families you know are saying they're maintaining in cdl right now and then they continue to kind of filter back in then we might have to make some busing adjustments um eileen how are we communicating or to the

115parents and are are we asking them are your kids coming and i mean that must be really logistics uh a nightmare um to figure out what parents are sending their kids and what parents are not yeah um it is the buildings are working really hard on you know contacting all the families and um trying to find out who's maintaining in cdl and who's coming back into a hybrid um and then those that are coming back into a hybrid we are going to route them as long as they're outside of the walk boundary um and then just encourage you know if if families want to bring their kids to school instead of ride the bus that's you know just ensures there's more capacity for others that can't thank you question about uh what does lunch look

116like go ahead well i was gonna say currently there we're we're not really doing lunch um so that's part of this issue to get to the four days it's we've got to figure out kind of how to manage that space do we know what other districts have done for lunch in terms of number of students in the building so most of the districts are doing kind of the grab and go or they're doing the half day like beaverton's running half the students in the morning the other half in the afternoon because of this this lunch piece is kind of in the middle john do you have any yeah part of the lippy hybrid pilot group was to pilot breakfast in the classroom which was um very um [Music] a point of nervousness for some teachers

117but we've identified best practice in how to eat in the classroom so a tom mccall will be doing that um in terms of lunch it's grab and go so they get their they'll get two bags one bag in the morning for eating in the classroom when they come on campus in a second bag for grab and go so eileen correct me if i'm wrong but on tuesdays they would receive the dates that they are not in person attending school and so kids would receive multiple breakfast and lunches on tuesday that are part of cohort a and on friday they would receive multiple meals as well um for those that are in person um but kate to answer your question about transportation and those kids every school has um put out a parent survey in a

118parent presentation and at tom mccall we called every parent in spanish or in english to follow up to see what their choice was and even those that said no we wanted to go ahead and follow up as well so we're expecting about 60 percent coming back and what's interesting is over spring break we had multiple messages left for the staff that called prior to spring break saying parents have changed their mind they want to go ahead and experiment with you know hybrids so we hope to see more and more students returning also we are um going to and have started already tom mccall reaching out to those students that have left for charter school online charter school programs let them know that we're going pivoting to hybrid and inviting them back and that we're excited

119to get them back um this cut you know for the remainder of this year can i clarify something real quick about the meal service um as far as meal services since students are only going to be in the building two days a week and we can provide um meals for multiple days throughout the week what they're doing instead of they're doing more of a meal box so if you go to school two days a week then you get to pick up a five-day meal box um but parents actually have to come and pick up those meals and they can sign up for a recurring every week um so students that come on monday and tuesday their families can pick up a five-day meal box on um tuesday and then thursday and friday groups can pick

120up the five-day mailbox on friday and then those that are staying in um cdl those families can pick up the seven-day mailbox on wednesdays so we're trying to spread that out a little bit but it's a full meal box it's too much for kids um to take home especially if they're walkers or you know just even on the bus that's that's a lot of food that would be taken home so it is gonna be on a sign up um today i think was the first um cutoff date for uh the seven day mailbox starting next week and so they'll keep um keep getting families signed up for those so so right now we are going to be in in uh on on site kids are going to be on site well at least 60 and

121most is that most buildings john or is that just yours that's just ours um but uh we we've really done a conscientious effort in terms of reaching out to parents and um for our spanish-speaking parents we have employed osvaldo martha ochoa and other bilingual staff to reach out and answer any questions or any misconceptions as well as our english speaking staff and dave was gracious enough to allow our cni staff to come over with me to tom mccall so um julie adams uh my secretary and others have called the english-speaking parents just to follow up for those that have said no or have asked for undecided need additional information how many hours are they going to actually be in the building yeah that's a good that's a good question um in terms of it's about

122um three and a half hours for tom mccall we at every level exceed the state blueprint instructional hours per week and our middle school high school and tom mccall far exceed them okay thank you john what about elementary are the kids there all day or are they only there for a half a day therefore they're there for a reduced day um and they're going to keep the same start time bell schedule but um the idea was to provide that grab-and-go lunch at the end of the day and then they go home and they eat their meal and then they join classes counseling groups asynchronously in the afternoon so when you add all that up together our kids are getting some real instructional minutes so guess the issue that i see is that if you have

123kids like pre-kinder through fourth grade that that really breaks up the day for the parents you know if the parents want to go to work who's going to pick up those kids at the bus stop um yeah i i it's a logistic problem um absolutely yes i'll reshare um the presentation we gave several weeks ago that have these schedules in them just so you can get a look out of them again but kate i will tell you that moving to a four-day model would be a better thing for us down the road so i'd like to try and solve some of the challenges we have to get to that place that's what we're going to try because of getting our kids in in person learning is a much better place for us to be yeah

124i i agree i i i know some friends of ours that live up in seattle and they've just um decided not to send their kids back because by the time the parents drive they don't have busing and by the time they drive them to school then they have to turn around and go pick them up at lunchtime to bring them home and they just said they're not gonna do it and um and and you know they work you know so it's it's um it's hard i mean it's it's just it's just yeah it'd be nice to have the kids in school all day yep any other questions that i can answer kind of about our return to school we've got you know the one thing i didn't talk about is um we've got a bunch

125of tech resources that we've purchased that are going out to schools they're in the middle of delivering lots of that now there'll still be monitors and stuff coming in the rest of this week so it's been really busy out in our buildings but those we still look to be basically on schedule with that and then also i just need to give a big shout out you know to um enrique pinon in the technology department i'm not sure he even sleeps um but he has done a phenomenal job his entire team you know eileen clew with uh food service and custodial and kim with all the health protocols it's been a real team effort kevin was staffing and dave you know taking point this is unprecedented times that were seen and it's been a real team

126effort and kudos to our teachers and staff we're excited to get the kids back next week we can't wait thanks john thanks everybody okay thanks um next couple of items or action items on the agenda this evening um the first is a return to school date adjustment and uh and then the second one is uh it looks like a purchase of a piece of equipment for forest grove high school so the first one is uh uh mr parker yep um when we approved the changes to the calendar to re get our kids back into school we we didn't change we we approved second through sixth to start on april 12 and and now with the governor's order it has they need to start on april 5th so we just need to make this motion to

127fix that one part of what we were doing so that both pre-k through six starts on april 5th you want me to make the motion mark yeah i move that uh that we make the adjustment to the calendar starting school as described by mr parker on april 5th i'll second that and we'll do a vote i'm a yes kate grandusky yes brad brad yes okay nursey yes and valerie okay that motion passes thank you uh this is uh the next uh action item that's forest grove high school cnc machine purchase and uh looks like karen is gonna speak to this yeah so um we're here to request approval of um the purchase of a cnc machine for our um cte woodworking um class specifically our cabinet making class um just to give a little context

128um when we first started looking at measure 98 funds and how we would spend those funds we did a variety of things one was looking at our existing programs and which of those programs we could really expand and enhance we surveyed kids to kind of see what they were interested in looking at as far as career options and just really aligning our programs to industry standards and providing our kids with some college and career readiness skills and career opportunities so a critical component to this particular program what we want to do when we started out is make on develop a program specifically cabinet making um that would that would really mirror our viking house program where you you build a product that you sell and those proceeds go back into your program so you're eventually

129you've got a self-sustaining program um and so um arnolfo martinez is the teacher of that program and um he is here to kind of explain he's done some amazing research and bargaining he is definitely um a barterer in getting the the best price he's also a former forest grove high school graduate and viking house member um so it's awesome to have him as part of this program so but i couldn't tell you i couldn't tell you half of what a cnc machine does so he's here to answer some questions and and kind of talk to you a little bit he did like i said a lot of research and a lot of looking into the the equipment because it is an expensive piece of equipment but it also allows us to expand our program and

130build cabinets a lot more efficiently arnolfo hi everyone so um what can i say so the cnc is a it's a computer numerical control is what it stands for and what it allows us to do is take a drawing from an autocad program which we are also teaching at the high school and cut it out on the machine on a cnc so the cnc the software writes a code for the machine to cut it out and that software piece is something that you have to buy every every year and i don't want to do that because it costs money so when i was looking into what machine to buy that was one of the biggest things for me to do what can we buy and i have to purchase software every year and that's where

131national builders hardware they have a machine called an sem and there is roughly 200 plus of these machines in the portland metro area styles machinery is another one that is also a very good machine and when i first started doing this research i was all about styles and after looking and talking to everybody um because i actually went to a couple uh places that have the styles machine talked to the operators and i also went to a couple places i have the scm machine the biggest feature that the scm machine has is the safety feature that it has where it's it's basically a machine it's a router that holds a tool and it spins 24 000 rpms um and it's all enclosed so the big safety thing goes to the scm machine um and that

132to me is worth right now on the piece of paper that we have uh for the purchase it looks like the scm is super expensive compared to the styles machine when you add it all up together the cost because styles is on here without all the accessories that we need we're three thousand dollars off for we're getting the mo we're trying to purchase the most expensive one but in the long run it's the better one because we don't have to purchase software every you year have questions about that i'm really nervous because i'm not around kids right now [Laughter] hey what um so i'm assuming since it's here it's over 50 000. what's the cost 87. 87. that was gonna be yeah that was going to be my question or no for the why we

133weren't getting the one for i think the other one was 77 or something so you know here's sorry you kind of answered it there yeah i mean you didn't know the only thing about the 77 000 one is when i was talking to the guys in newberg about because they have the sales machinery the operator said hey we used to have a bc american machine a machine don't get that no and i'm like okay done deal i don't even do any research because if someone's telling me not to get it because their support is inadequate why even look yeah okay thanks i have a question i do know about these machines believe it or not um [Music] because my husband um that's his job so um quick question so i'm sure you know you want

134the the best how does this machine align with uh possibly um with the machines that are used to portland community college in particular if our students want to transfer to the community college for a certificate or a two-year degree and machining go ahead somebody was i was just gonna say i wondered if you consulted with them just to make sure that this kind of the students get used to uh what what's being used out in the community college um and then um what's used out there in the industry as well just curious so as far as the community college at pcc i'm not exactly sure um here's what i know as far as the the machine the cnc that i'm looking at um i've never used this particular one i've used a combo they does

135the same exact thing so there's going to be a little bit of training for me to figure out how to use this particular machine uh the the sales guy sounds bad because he's gonna tell me whatever i want to hear but he's telling me since you have experience and you know some of the background it's very comparable there's gonna be some limits limit switches that we have to learn about because the technology on this machine is newer than the one i'm used to but for the industry if you're in my class and you've used the machine you'll be able to go tell somebody the cabinet shop hey yeah i have cnc knowledge and if their software is a little bit different it's you know maybe a week of training and they're going to be able

136to get it as far as a certificate uh i don't think pcc has uh cncs for woodworking i think they have them for metal i'm assuming they're they're similar this except for one cuts metal and cuts wood so it's a different bit um i know that the cnc that we're we're trying to get i know that stone manufacturers also have it it's just a different bit and it has water instead of um no water so it the alignment is going to be very comparable is for um i assumed it was metal but it's for for wood so it would be for building construction correct yes okay same same idea um just one more question curious about are there additional fees on a yearly basis for possible repair or ongoing so with a repair i guess

137it's like anything if you have a any piece of equipment there's going to be some kind of repair at some point i know with the scm machine they're even though they're like worldwide they have a sales guy here in portland and he also services the machines easy to get a hold of as far as like tech support they have it if it's like something that actually broke on the machine we'll probably have a cost that goes with that i'm assuming that all three of these machines have um one to three year warranty for manufacturer defects hi this is valerie i have a quick question you mentioned that if you would have bought the styles machine that you would have to spend more money buying accessories to get the same amount that you're getting yes so

138the i'm looking at this um what's it called it's just like a report and the three quotes that i have are the national builders hardware bz america and styles the styles machinery price has 69 990 and it doesn't include the accessories like the hsk tool holder the tool package the course so you can get so i can get trained the surge protector the transformer and the freight whereas you gave me uh here's the whole package this is everything you're gonna need um and that was my fault i didn't relay that information to eileen so um for this national builders hardware the one that you would like you're not going to have to buy anything else no that i mean includes the the ducting the connection to her dust collector john at the sales guy he

139was really thorough he was like you're gonna need this this this this this i mean things that i didn't even think about um the only thing we have to do on our end would be hook it up to power and then they can install it correctly okay great thank you and this is paid for by measure 98 money yep okay any other questions all right thank you uh thank you for thank you is it a big piece of is it must be pretty big isn't it is it a big piece of it well we need um 15 by 8 feet okay i mean we when we planned the the woods three shop or kind of making a shop we kind of planned everything around it just in case we were gonna be able to do

140it yeah yeah okay okay so uh let's see is there a motion to uh approve i'll make i'll make a motion mark okay a move that um we approve the purchase of the cnc machine as presented specifically the national builders hardware company won for eighty seven thousand eight hundred twenty four dollars and thirty three cents utilizing high school success measure 98 funds i will second it okay um let's see we'll call for the vote here narcy yes uh valerie yes brad yes i'm a yes and kate yes okay that motion passes thank you guys hey i hope you get to use it next fall yeah crosstalk i think we have to wait like six months because there's a shortage of steel apparently oh okay okay yeah ouch that hurts better get you better get it

141ordered yep okay uh let's see last uh last items here for this evening future action items and 20 21 22 2022 school calendar i don't know if kevin has any comments on that one just give you a quick update so uh thanks for val who is serving on the committee we've had one uh meeting and i'm working diligently on trying to get another meeting scheduled probably for next week just checking with people's calendars so we have um we looked at a preliminary draft uh one of the things that were we needed some more feedback that i'm going to try to get this week from the administrators particularly the elementaries is to look at the calendaring of the dates for the conferences um we tried and had a different model this year and so we just

142need to get some check in so i'm going to try to facilitate that so that we can get that back to the committee just so you know preliminarily right now the the first day of school would be after the labor day holiday uh so that would start on the seventh with a finishing date of school of june 15th so that's the current draft that we're working on the thanksgiving week would stay in the same model that we have this year so no changes proposed just to keep that consistent with what the board approved last year and then the other part and i've been in discussion with the cabinet and val knows this from our first discussion was do we build the calendar in kind of a hybrid model that we ended up shifting a lot

143of our friday pd and grading days to wednesday so that it didn't impact um you know or try to minimize the amount of impact to student contact days um and in our conversation today and cabinet the recommendation was now let's go ahead and build a calendar um as if we would be back in full in person five day week uh next year so i just need to make a few of those adjustments get some feedback on the conference weeks and then hopefully we can bring you a draft this month to take a look at anything else now that i maybe missed or you want to add to no but i'm relieved to hear that we're going to make it based on being back full-time because that was the hardest part was you know not having

144no no student days on fridays but if you're in hybrid then that cohort's missing a bunch more days so i think it'll be a lot easier to make the calendar going back full time okay thank you um so that'll be uh that'll be in april right kevin that you'll bring it to the board gonna work as hard as i can to get it to you in april absolutely yeah okay all right and just so you know that's that's actually really similar to most of the other districts around us we're all kind of scrambling to try and normally we would already had this but mostly other districts are in exactly the same place we are yeah okay okay last item future board items or board discussion is there any uh if you look at the future

145board items there is any any comment or any discussion that needs to happen around those this evening okay i don't hear any so um i think with that we are uh we're gonna adjourn for this evening the time is 7 48 p.m so thank you everybody thanks thank you