001stand for the flex loop ready begin 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 agenda approval i'll make a motion to approve the agenda second consecutive i will go in order ryan hi bill all right kelly melody hi andrew is i visitors to address the board i didn't see any emails christy is that correct that is correct there are none presenting this evening okay um consent agenda the board on an individual basis prior to the meeting is reviewed all material all financial reports are available for review by the public in the business office board considers consent agenda items routine business and will be enacted by the board in one motion there will
002be no discussion of these items at the tide the board votes on the motion unless members of the board staff or public requests specific items to be discussed and or removed from the consent agenda i do actually have a question about 4.2 okay um so in there there's one portion of it says it's retro to a certain date and then the other section says it's starting at a certain date so did was that something we needed to catch or is it okay it should be effective july 1st 2020 okay um so then at the latter part of it it's not reflecting that it i did see that in the middle of it at the end it's like this starts on this date and it wasn't the same okay um we can cross that out and
003initial it and have the count the city counter sign it okay um and then i was just wondering if we know how many ftes we'll have or if that has been approved yet i think the contracts is up to two based off their staffing availability okay i thought maybe it was based on how many we were requesting we've requested two as as we have in years past yeah okay perfect no other questions for me i move that we accept the consent agenda stated i'll second all right move the second in any other discussion okay ryan i no all right kelly hi melody hi and trena's i new business miss c business report you are muted if you're talking i'm regressing and covid zoom meeting um etiquette it's been a rough interesting couple weeks sorry about
004that just pulling up the um attachment so i can share it so all right so um item on the business report just a shared document from ed leader and i'm pulling up the memo that was provided as part of the packet so um we you know five years ago entered into a new lease agreement with um copiers northwest and as i was preparing for leave just wanted to make sure that we had at least a plan for next year ready so that we could include those assumptions in the budget and then facilitate an agreement ahead of time so because that does require the this type of agreement especially um being long term requires board approval and as ed was working with various vendors trying to leverage cooperative purchase agreements or permissive purchasing agreements in his
005analysis with working with copiers northwest they offered to buy out the rest of our lease and start the renewal period in the spring and one of the attractive options about this was under the national agreement which oregon has a participating addendum in that we could actually realize better machines a couple more security features or document management features and actually have a lower lease and copyright and so you know just trying to allocate or use district resources wisely wanted to bring this to the board for your approval we would execute the agreement if the board approved to move forward with this um and we would start the new five-year lease agreement you know on the day in which the purchase order would be um issued so again um we have we provided in the summary memo
006the last five years of copier and printing usage you can the least does have two different components and actually now three um we have the copier rental rate and then we also pay an amount per black and white and color copy and then we're also utilizing some software to help us track usage so that we can machines or move machines around or actually you know follow up with departments or schools if we start to notice anomalies in printing and copy um you know numbers so um the other nice thing is that with the new copiers or rather you can you know you can order your item to be sent to the printer but with um our schools having a wider use of badges we can actually when employees approach the printer they can swipe their
007badge and have their items printed and that just helps because i think we've all been victim of accidentally sending something to the copier that we didn't want to so there are just some optional software features that we can deploy at the appropriate levels to help again just preserve district resources so um again just the high level this is what the least summary would be with specifically the pricing copiers northwest it being an operating lease for 60 months we're accessing this pricing through on the national association for state procurement officials contract 140603 with the participating agreement and these supporting documents are also provided in your packet and then using the same series of machines but upgraded models those will be deployed throughout the district so just again consolidating spaces going opting for faster machines our actual
008unit total is going down to 25 from 27 and then this was a a summary that copiers northwest had provided i'm just about specifically the agreement so that concludes and again more detail about the types of machines deployed at each school with those savings summarized so happy to answer any questions if there are any otherwise that would conclude my report all right any other questions does not sound like it moving on uh mr stockwell you sir are up fantastic well i'm going to pull up a powerpoint and kind of walk us through my sections i may go a little bit out of order um but before i start i didn't have a slide for our um agreement with the rainier school district the oswa cooperative sponsorship we've done this i think the last two years
009it's a good deal for our kids there's a student or two i think at rainier that wants to participate in golf rainier doesn't have a golf program so they join us and the way that works is then we have to count rainier's adm onto our adm and if we're close to jumping up to 6a then that might be a little bit of a concern but we're far enough away it doesn't make a difference for us so it's just good for kids good for community and good for columbia county so do you guys have any questions on that before i jump into my powerpoint that'll be something that we have to vote on and then i i send the minutes with the approval to the oswa so they can go forward okay i will start sharing
010my screen can everyone see that be a little bit of a thumbs up i've been struggling maybe i've caught well i haven't caught what jessica has that's impossible but i've been struggling a little bit with my zoom skills so if you could bear with me um so this is our enrollment here for march i think it's interesting you know as we watch um down at the at the bottom our total is um oops sorry as i said my zooming skills feel a little bit off i've got your pictures right where i want to look at the number dog on it that's better that's not any better over here there we go so you can see um following through on march we're down 106 but the important piece um for us to look at i think
011is this aspect right here and if you see here from the beginning of 2015 because i want to show you another slide here in a moment we've consistently dropped and this is admw right this is the weighted piece but what we get reimbursed for from the stake but we've shifted from about 3 500 down to about 500 and so this year's negative losses is a negative 5.5 i've had multiple conversations with other districts and what they're seeing trending is 10 to 15 percent down so you know i mentioned this before i really think we've added students um net gain if that makes sense um the students that have left for various reasons i'm quite certain and hopeful that they'll be back but most other districts are seeing a 10 15 percent uh decrease and we're
012hovering in it at negative 5 so i feel like that that positions us better for the future however i wanted to show you this and i'm showing you right now the adm are so those are the actual counts of students it's not the weighted piece the difference between 15 16 and 1920 remember was about 500 out of our general fund though if you track we've actually added students instead of reducing students and then in addition we have special revenue funds these are taught this is title um high school success and most recently um the student investment act where we've added staff to lower class sizes so you can see our total has gone up um overall yet the number of students that we have has gone down and so this is the part that's concerning
013especially with the one-time dollars that i mentioned coming from the federal government for code relief we're going to be watching this very carefully and being mindful on how the money's spent and hopefully we'll have students return but if they don't we'll need to regardless of funding make some type of an adjustment with staffing but over the next two years with the additional funding that we have we want to offer as many opportunities to our kids as we can as we pull ourselves out of the pandemic the other piece that i thought might be interesting for you to take a look at this is our virtual academy number of students and we have just over 700 and i think that actually makes saint helens virtual academy our largest school in the district so at the elementary
014level 209 middle 201 and just under 300 at the high school so i feel like that's been a pretty good move on our part it's kept students in our district it's also freed up additional spaces in our brick and mortar schools so when we go to hybrid we weren't as filled as we had the potential to be the challenge that we're going to have rolling forward and we'll be bringing this to you in the future is we're looking at solidifying a digital curriculum we've got a couple options we've been surveying families teachers and doing a lot of work with a number of vendors to make sure we land on the right the right digital curriculum and then once we've got a recommendation we'll bring that to you for kind of a final approval so any
015questions on enrollment okay hey i do yeah i i just was wondering are is there some way that we're um gonna be able to i guess survey whatever is to find out what we do have that's at least moved into the violet villas apartments and maybe even um the subdivision that was put in at the top of north frenonia just so we can kind of have some ideas where we might have because i i just guarantee you i have two daycare families right now who have moved into violence villa but they are actually finishing their year in scapus so you will have them in the fall you just don't have them right now right just an example but yeah i'll have to think on that melody because let me let me think on how best
016to work a survey and try to gather that information but we definitely want to um we want to bring in our our boundary committee beginning review and we should probably start that up here next month maybe in may begin to do some work and then plan on making some decisions in the fall of next year so people can be prepared for any type of changes that we need to make and that'll be something we've talked about that we need to do on a regular basis but gathering that information may be challenging but we'll see what we can do to find that out yeah because i mean i don't want to really move anybody or change the boundaries too badly if by the very following year the apartments are done across from walmart and those are
017over in a different school zone so just kind of know where we need to go from here so right in speaking with ed too we need an updated software program that tracks boundaries that connects with our student information system so we'll be looking into doing that as well the subdivision by the dmv is also going to be substantially complete by september there if you drive through there you'll understand what i just said and then um the other the other side of this is that virtual academy has made it such that we may not have to mess with boundaries um we've created open spots um i think i i i wouldn't get in a hurry perhaps i i'm i've worked a little bit with hillsborough and pre pre pandemic i believe they had 1200 students in
018their virtual academy and they have 28 30 000 students right around there so my guess is we likely will have more around the number of 100 rather than 700 students but could be wrong you know a lot of a lot of families tried something new and they may really like it one thing to mention is you know as we're going forward and planning for next year we've already had some pretty good conversation as a leadership team about what that may look like and i know a few board members have had conversations with me about opportunities for students to gain credit maybe split some at the virtual academy so with the high school additional credits maybe at the at the middle school level so frees up time for kids to move into the high school maybe
019focus more on a cte program or take science classes that they might not have been able to take if they're taking pe classes so we're looking at all sorts of options for students and trying to take advantage of this learning as we begin to work those plans out i'll make sure you know to bring those in front of the board i think it's i think we can have some exciting times as we come out of this mess that we're in right now other questions so i wanted to give you a quick update on the high school rebuild um not a lot of change here but we have had some changes in the area around the restrooms and multiple conversations this isn't complete but i did want to give you a little bit of an update
020because i know it's a turn has been a concern especially with um our new commons here we've got our two gyms here and here and then the auditorium we felt like we needed to increase the the facilities so they've moved them forward and over to here you can see this blue line here will be a gate that can be you know raised and lowered and there'll be an entrance right in front of the gate so if we're having a basketball game or or some sort of volleyball some event in the gyms or an event in the uh you know a play or a concert people can come out and use the restroom and have access and we can close down and keep them from entering the back side of the facility when you enter it
021here there'll be a family type family type stall and then the left will be for women's right will be for men's i'm concerned that we don't have enough stalls in the women's in particular so i've challenged the architect team to figure out a way to add some additional ones we've had a few conversations about different ways to look at it i was wondering if there's a way we utilize stalls very similar to what we have at the miller high school where they're essentially like starbucks type bathrooms or if you go to you know the fair they're just like porta-potties in a row where there's no gender on there that might open it up and allow for additional um use my big fear is we're gonna open up the school excited first big event and we'll
022have lines waiting to go to the restroom so that's kind of an update they're still working on it but i wanted to let you know there was some progress do you guys have any thoughts or ideas that i might be able to bring forward and share with the architect team how do these bathrooms um as they're currently kind of looking at uh relate to what we currently have stall wise i believe there's one additional stall in each so it's adding from what we have now i think there may be two more in the women's jessica do you recall i think i recall there's one one more than what we currently have at the end of the gym yeah and have we historically had any concerns about overflow or um too much traffic there with our
023normal attendance or like a high attended item or anything i i would say yes not so much on the on the men's side but more so on the women's so i'd have to maybe melody's been using those facilities for quite some time melody do you have any input for us well the one thing that is different than what we have had is when there was events over in the commons there were there's completely two sets of restrooms over there one up by the lewitt room and one at the bottom and we would no longer have both of them for the use now in this bigger commons so there would be definitely a loss for a big event in comparison to what we've had in the past right and if we converted it to kind of
024that concept of just genderless stalls where locking door floor to ceiling floor walls all of those things would we be able to realize more stalls by doing that i'm not sure if we'd be able to utilize realize more stalls but it'd be more flexibility for ones being used obviously i think the one way to to gain more stalls would be to push you can see that light blue area above that says tables and chairs that storage area so to push into that area with restrooms and forego this the as much storage areas there and am i seeing like a if you sorry kelly go ahead sorry i think my uh i'm gonna see if that works any better my internet's been a little unstable if you pan out a little bit isn't there still going
025to be the top of the screen i'm just wondering about not locking down the hallway as much and being able to use the bathrooms that would be down the corridor or will they not be added you mean down here back in or left correct i believe they've been shifted to here so there because before we had some lower and some higher even on this side of the building and building a so we're actually removing that or yeah kelly i i think we might have had some here but i believe those have been shifted this is now boiler room and this originally was the restrooms in here and then we have the restrooms back up here i have a quick question you know the blue area that's actually across from the men's area that's part of
026you know the whole kitchen and everything there yes yes could could that from there all the way to the left all of that cooking area could it possibly be moved to the left enough space to possibly put the whole women's restroom on where the blue area partially is now across from the men's i don't think so i think the serve this is the serving area here the kitchen i think it's tight as it is there there is an added restroom right here that's a family style restroom okay do we have any place else to put the table in storage that would be really easily accessible because it doesn't look like we really do no but i guess we don't have a storage area for the tables in our current commons it would be nice to
027have it so when we were using this but you know if we needed the restroom space and had to you know push the tables and chairs down this corridor i guess we could do it then it would take away this entrance maybe we'd have to go down here something would there be some sort of uh place to store them out on the the commons area at the outdoor commons area potentially uh here trade out to your left in this space next to the blue arrow yeah in that area there yeah the outside area yeah if we we would have to build an extra space there we could but then it's you know every square foot is dollars and cents sure well we'll keep working with them the architects and i'll keep pushing that we need
028additional stalls that's kind of what i'm hearing from the board as well i would feel like we need to find some more bathrooms and you're thinking even up in here is that right kelly well because we have them up in there currently and we have them lower so actually removing a whole set of bathrooms and in this plan yeah actually removing even more because the ones by the commons aren't the same anymore either so yeah i'll get a i'll get us a count for us for our next board meeting what i'll have the architects come and visit with us so they can they can confirm where things have finalized or you know gotten closer how's that sound the nice thing is we're at that point where we can make some of these adjustments so now
029it's time we want to do it plumbing just doesn't go back in easy later so we got to figure that one out now yeah absolutely okay any other comments on the restrooms i wanted to give you that update and then i'll go ahead and move on okay also wanted to give you one a little little quick precursor and you know as we as we know with schedules things certainly change i know we're still a little bit behind with our design development that's just kind of the nature of the way the work goes but here's kind of a projection of where we're headed um we're not at construction documents yet but we should be starting those hopefully soon permitting sometime in july we're hoping that that's still the case with bidding in august and then construction
030starting sometime in the fall and we're shooting for the school being completed in august of 23. feels like a long ways away but for the construction phase it'll take about 23 months almost two years of construction with the phasing and everything else that goes into that so that's that's about where we're tracking a little bit behind but that's pretty much to be expected okay so i wanted to take a moment to talk to you guys about our our recent or our most current situation with reopening schools things are going really well we're looking forward to bringing back high school kids here next week but i wanted to share a video that ode shared with us at one of our state meetings and i think it's a pretty good grounding and a reminder of where we've
031been and what we've gone through and this is from north salem high school they've done a really nice job of putting it together and there's a lot of talk right now about how are we going to close the covet gap how are we going to you know make up the time that these kids have lost and it's really time to start thinking differently and not necessarily you know what is the kids one of our children lost but what can we do for them rather than worrying about the loss and start thinking about it as opportunities so let me let me share this video here with you i have today declared that the coronavirus presents a public health emergency in the united states [Music] so [Music] after 23 years at north working with students i have
032to address the concerns that are being expressed by so many about the deficits the kids will demonstrate when they finally return to school it's concerning it's concerning it's concerning it's concerning that this is what concerns some in the face of a pandemic affecting millions around our country and it speaks to one of my biggest fears it speaks to one of my biggest fears for the children when they return in our determination to catch them up i fear that we will lose who they are and what they have learned during this unprecedented time what on earth are we trying to catch them up on the scope and sequence no longer apply the old assessments are no longer valid the plans have been interrupted we shouldn't forget that the scope and sequence standards and assessments were established
033by people not ordained by god they simply do not apply they simply do not apply we simply do not apply when we return to school you are retired in new history [Music] parallel in our times there's no assessment that applies to who we are or what we have learned our brains did not go into hibernation during this year they may not have been focused on traditional school material but they didn't stop either our brains have been focused on where our next girl's coming from or how to care for a younger sibling or how to feel the loss of a loved one we need you we should do studies we need you they need us they need us to welcome us back and help us write practice we need to surrender the artificial constructs and traditional
034notions of school as we knew it and greet students where they are not where we think they should be read them with art supplies and writing materials and theater and dance and so many other opportunities to help them express what has happened in their lives during this horrific year create us with stories and books that will help us make sense of an upside down world we must do they did not miss the test friend and one voicemail we didn't miss the work they didn't miss the homework i missed you resist the pressure from whatever powers that be who are in a hurry to fix kids and make up for lost time the time it was not lost it was invested in surviving an historic event in their lives in our lives the children do not
035need to be fixed [Music] they need to be heard being a teacher is an essential connection between what is and what can be our kids have so much to share about the world they live in and we can help them make sense of what for all of us has been unimaginable we have a tradition of coming together in times of need because our community is resilient united as a viking family in the excellence of not only our academics but in our commitment to one another this is the true north so i think that's a pretty good reminder of where we've come from what our kids have been through and you know centers us on what we need to do and so i'm going to kind of go through some of the planning that we have
036have ahead of us but we're also keeping in mind that these are opportunities as much as they are um anything else so the first thing is state assessments so oregon department of education asked for a waiver from the federal government we just now had conditionally approved the waiver initially was to completely waive state assessments the s back however the federal government pushed back and said no you're not going to be able to waive them you're still going to need to do assessments so at the elementary level three four and five we'll take one assessment um at the secondary level sixth grade they'll take one assessment as well but then seventh eighth and eleventh grade they'll take two assessments each so their the assessments have been adjusted they're not um as long as they have been
037they're really more focused on a multiple choice format rather than performance tasks and that type of thing but it will be taking out time away from learning which is a little bit of a frustration for staff but we're trying to look at it through a positive light and hopefully this will give us a good snapshot of where we're at and a true snapshot we're not taking time to study and and practice for tests i think that's a waste of time anyway this needs to be a good example of what we've learned and hopefully the federal government will be able to take take this information and sold the state and apply that to additional resources as needed and we can have a good measure of growth so here's the first bit of update with state assessments
038we'll have more information coming out we'll also make available for those families who would prefer to have their children opt out of the assessment um we'll make sure that those forums are available um the next piece is summer learning so we got an update and actually today there was a summer learning uh webinar we won't find out until we won't find out how much we'll receive for the fun summer learning until late april first part of may that puts us a little bit behind the ball when you're trying to plan for summer program um and we we understand that we should receive somewhere around 500 000 for a summer program the challenge is we need to get kids enrolled programs put together and we have april may and june to do that usually you take
039a full year to put these plans together so our focus isn't necessarily going to be on trying to get as much content into our students as possible it's going to be focused on finding some joy finding new ways to look at problems a focus on how to be a better student obviously at the secondary high school level we'll be offering credit opportunities but we're trying to look at summer school in a different way partnering with different groups partnering with our park and rec department so we can bring in um activities as well so it's it's an opportunity but it's a short timeline but we've been doing a lot of things in a quick order and we'll do some good work so i'm excited for it but i just wanted to give you an update on
040that um the other piece is with graduation we've had some conversations really pleased with the work that the high school's done we'll have the drive-through graduation like last year which i think will be fantastic again that will be on friday on thursday we'll have um senior assembly and that'll end with our traditional um format of a graduation out on the football field with uh families in the stands how many can be in the stands will certainly depend on where we're at with the uh with the the virus situation we'll have speeches some music and then all those students that want to walk across the stage receive a diploma they'll walk across the stage and we'll get them get them their sleeve and get their picture taken we really want to be mindful though because there's
041some families who don't want to walk across that stage and aren't do have concerns for health reasons so that'll be an option but it'll be exciting so i'm really pleased we'll have uh um either noelle or katie come and share the details of what they're planning um maybe at our next board meeting so you have a better picture of what we've got going on so i i've shared this many times um i just kind of keep this in my slide deck as we go through um we're trending in the wrong direction which i think most of you know we're the green and so we're up here right now the latest one was well over we're trending above multnomah washington county at this point and so same is the case with our test positivity rate what's
042important for our community and families to know is you will continue to open schools we're having some you know obviously we're having some success with the way we're going about it but one thing that'll slow down the number of families that will be able to participate in graduation will be this community spread and the higher this is the fewer families that we can have sit in the stands and watch watch your kids walk across the stage so just want to continue to urge people to make good choices wash your hands wear your masks social distance get vaccinated when you can and be very mindful the sun's coming out outdoor activities are fantastic but be real careful about getting together in big groups the new variants are much more contagious and i would hate to see
043our trend continue in an upward trajectory next thing i want to show and we've seen this um this is the in-person hybrid model for our elementary schools our times are from eight to noon we have four hours every other day with sync asynchronous learning on the off days for the students middle school kind of our transition they're also four hours with afternoon synchronize asynchronous lessons the unique thing about the middle school is students will stay in their class and teachers will rotate through and then the high school we have full days at the high school every other day and i know there's been conversation in the community and i don't think it's in our best interest to compare ourselves to any specific district but there are many districts with different models our models every other
044day we essentially have the same amount of time when you work out the entire weeks minutes there was a reason though why we stayed with the ab schedule we have a number of families who have made arrangements with daycare child care and we want to make sure we're able to stay consistent rather than force them to rethink their child care plans we also had a fair number of high school students that had selected to work during their asynchronous days and also some of them are cohorted so they can take care of their younger siblings so we cho made a conscious choice to stick with our current av model and also in the event that we were forced to close we wouldn't have to do a complete switch so that's the update that i've got i
045know there's been some conversation about the length and our schedules so i thought this might be a good time to have some conversation if there's any conversation that the board would like to have so with the scheduling that we have for all of the schools now we're going to be able to kind of have some flexibility as far as uh responding to unexpected things so with the maintaining of the synchronous and asynchronous we're going to be able to still get them as as much seat time or as much learning time as possible but still have the capacity to adjust just in case something our trend lines are going go south exactly it'll be sadly a smooth transition away from school but we're not planning on doing that and i guess i'm going to make my
046crystal ball projection in september i have high hopes that we'll be back full time each day um with kids in the in the brick and mortar school so i'm looking forward to that that's that's my my crystal ball projection right now do you have clarity on this schedule that's in front of us right now like i assumed that the cohort 8 was on schedule 1 and cohort b was on schedule 2 but i don't think that's actually the case you know i would have to lean on katie and she's not here so i could have her explain that that's my assumption too that we have an a b schedule i know the answer to this if that would be helpful that would be great neha if you'd like to speak up um both cohort half
047of cohort a is going to be on schedule one and half is going to be on schedule two and the same is true for cohort b and that's in order to divide the students into two different lunches so that there's smaller cohorts for each lunch so each student will be assigned to a lunch location and a lunch cohort and they'll be eating at the same location and with the same cohort each day so um there's four total lunches um does that make sense yeah that's helpful for me thank you so um so both both cohorts will have both options and it basically depends on um what their seventh period is which uh which schedule they end up in thank you neha glad you're here any other questions okay well that wraps up my portion and
048i feel pretty good about the next group that we have coming we've got neha who just stepped up and helped us out thank you very much neha if neja anna and michelle have done phenomenal work on addie's law or addie's act um and i'd like to just thank them for their good work it's important work something that as a district we've been working towards as far as um suicide prevention you know we've talked about this in the past and this kind of wraps it up into a plan and i'm just thankful that we've got a talented group of educators that can put it together for us so we can continue to try to help keep our kids safe so i'm gonna close off here and i will turn it over to neha anna and michelle
049hi i'm here and laurie yes and laurie um i'm neha herzog i'm the social worker at the high school for those of you i haven't met hi everyone my name is anna lastic i am the school social worker at mcbride lewis and clark in columbia city um and we're gonna go through um the guidance documents that our addies act team worked on um which also includes michelle tulik and lori thompson and anna's gonna pull it up on her screen there you go um so as some background this legislation um is named after addie staub who is a young girl who died by suicide in 2018 after struggling in high school with coming out as transgender um in the two years that followed her transition um addie both blossomed and struggled she went from being a
050straight a student to failing in school she suffered from depression and body dysphoria she lost some friends and while she always had unwavering family support through this she eventually made the decision to enter life addie's tragedy is unfortunately not an isolated incident in 2017 the oregon health authority's healthy teen survey reported that nearly half of lgbtq eighth graders have attempted suicide um the same was true for almost a third of oregon's transgender eighth graders and even among the students who aren't a part of these groups the overall rate was about about six percent but um significantly higher rates than that um thought about attempting suicide and um and were struggling with suicide ideation following this tragedy senate bill 52 also known as addie's act was signed in june of 2019 this bill requires oregon school
051districts to develop comprehensive student suicide prevention plans and places extra emphasis on at-risk populations including the lgbtq plus youth foster youth bypac youth and youth with disabilities addie's act works in conjunction with the student success act to help oregon schools have more resources to rely on in times of crisis and tools to help students feel safe and supported when at school so we're gonna in response to this we created a pretty comprehensive guidance document and i think you all should have have access to the full document as well but we're gonna um highlight um some pieces of each of the steps that that it includes um starting with step one step one which is more about the upstream prevention efforts um going through all of the awareness of the warning signs on what to do
052when a student is identified as having suicidal ideation having that conversation notifying parents getting them connected to mental health support and then what the follow-up and long-term support looks like as well as neha mentioned our first step emphasizes the importance of bonding connectedness and relational support and this component really focuses on that preventative work that we want to be doing prior to a student's mental health crisis research indicates that long-term relational support is effective in preventing students from becoming suicidal and acting on suicidal feelings and impulses which is an important component when it comes to ensuring the positive mental health of our students some of the steps that our district has already taken to address this component of our plan includes the incorporation of sources of strength and highlighting relational support at each of our
053school levels the second step is an awareness of the warning signs and symptoms that a student might be experiencing suicidal thoughts and one of the main ways that we're going to um address this is to train all staff in that awareness and that includes classroom teachers that includes a classified staff anyone who might be interfacing with a student in any capacity because often the the first person the first adult to notice this is not someone who's necessarily trained in in how to address it at a deeper level but might just notice that something is off with that student or that something seems different about them and the particular training that we're going to utilize is called qpr which stands for question persuade refer and it gets all adults comfortable with asking questions recognizing signs and
054then connecting a student to someone who can help them at a higher level and with that in mind we anna and i are going to be trained uh next month as qpr gatekeepers which means that we'll be able to do the training for other staff um and we got an oha grant to do that so we're going to be increasing the district's capacity to offer that training in-house at any time that it's needed rather than having to bring in outside providers to do that the third step of our plan is referral of the suicidal student to designated staff at the beginning of each school year each staff will be notified which of their colleagues have been trained and designated to complete the sra which is the suicide risk assessment that we have the designated staff
055will consist of our school social workers school counselors and administrators and in order to complete this assessment one must be trained in applied suicide intervention skills training and then as well be trained in our sra protocol and process so that they have an understanding of the form prior to asking some of those difficult questions of our students and an important component to this is once a suicidal student is brought to our attention we are to maintain supervision of them until they're able to be thoroughly assessed so the first step in doing that is to determine whether a full sra is needed there there are sometimes times when a student is brought to our attention and it turns out that there's some other explanation for whatever it was that that triggered someone to bring them to
056our attention um we've had situations for example where someone was doing research about a book for class or for a health project and it triggered our um our it's warning system that they were googling something um potentially concerning but after a conversation it became clear that the reasons why they were doing that and then if we determine that there is a need to complete an sra if the the student is having any suicidal thoughts um that is completed by um by a trained staff member um and then importantly after that that person consults with another trained staff member to determine whether there's a need for a level two and a level two basically means that we can't come up with a reasonable plan at this point to ensure that the student can be safe in
057our building so we need to refer them out for a higher level of um of support or a higher with emergency services or with crisis services something like that perfect following that risk assessment we are to immediately contact the parent or guardian to let them know that we conducted a suicide risk assessment and collaborate on next steps a support plan and whether or not they or their student would like to be referred to ongoing services in the community in the event that we do need a level two assessment of the parent or guardian must come to the school to pick up the student and transport them to an agency that's able to provide more of a comprehensive evaluation and documentation of that comprehensive evaluation is required in order for the student to return to school
058in the future as far as mental health providers we do have an agreement with the columbia county crisis line to serve as our backup if there is no trained staff member in the district who's available at a particular time or on a particular day so if no one in the district is available someone at the school can call the columbia county crisis line and they can come in and do that initial risk assessment um after the initial risk risk assessment we also have it as our goal to connect a student to some long-term mental health support um and the district has a partnership um with ccmh to provide school-based mental health therapists in our buildings those therapists are funded through a grant so that they're able to serve our students regardless of their insurance status
059and it also removes the potential barrier of transportation or navigating a parent's work schedule in order to get them connected to therapy um we also families of course also have the option of pursuing that therapy outside of school and we can help them find another provider in the community if they prefer to go that route and in all cases we also provide them with 24-hour hotline information so that if anything were to come up outside of school hours they would have someone to contact all right in our seventh and final step this is the post-function piece of things follow-up and providing long-term support so this is where we create safety and support plans with parents and students this would be where we make the referrals to community agencies for long-term therapy such as ccmh or
060wherever the family decides we make an agreement with the student to provide ongoing check-ins with the trusted staff member if that's something that they're interested in and then in the event that there is a death by suicide we have included the incorporation of a flight team which consists of our school social workers counselors any mental health professionals if ccmh is available to fly to the school that has been impacted by the tragedy and provide short-term counseling for counseling for some of the students that were directly impacted that is all we have if any of you have any questions we welcome those at this time thank you for all your hard work i do think you have a board that's pretty knowledgeable about this subject so that's probably why you don't have very many questions so
061one of the things that you know as i was listening to this your staff is also under a lot of stress uh various members and and and please don't forget your staff because they're not immune to this problem it's it's not like you turn 18 and this doesn't happen and they don't have those same ideations and thoughts um you have some staff members that truly struggle from time to time and and i think that i don't know how you do that i just want to mention it so that you know as you continue your work that um you include them too i think that's a great point um and i can definitely say that i've had staff approach me about getting connected to like help me helping them get get get connected to a resource
062in the community for their own support but i think it's a great idea to make it more explicit that that is something that we can help our staff with um in the postvention and crisis response plans too um part of bringing some additional support in from other schools from community agencies potentially from other districts is that the staff at the individual school is likely to also be affected so if we need people to relieve teachers or whoever else needs to not be in their current role at that at that time will have other adults available to to do that for them too so that they can get the support that they need as well for students of pretty much every level is there going to be an educational kind of discussion on how to reach
063out to these supports or to these different places i know some students have kind of their you know their safe educator or their safe person they may go to but is there going to be some way to kind of say you know if if you don't have anybody here's where you're going to go yep um we do that um at least at the high school we do that throughout the year um at each of the grade level assemblies we go into health classes um and do like mental health weeks and things like that and we're going to make plans to um a lot of these things are already incorporated at different grade levels um in some way or another at the elementary and middle school as well um but that is part of um what
064we'll plan to include for sure at the beginning of every year and then i think throughout the year as well in other ways is there still the safe hotline phone number on the back of their id card too um i haven't seen what what this year's id cards look like because i haven't seen any students but they were as of last year well i i again want to thank this team i want to make sure i include lori for helping pull them together and lead them anna michelle neha we're we're really very fortunate as a district to have as i said gifted educators that are compassionate and care about kids like you do so thank you so much for your work and um this is this is really good really good work all right any
065other questions before we move forward well thank you again for all the hard work that you put into this and i look forward to seeing um how it works and the implementation okay uh we are on to visitors to address the board which uh we have no emails so we will move forward to action items 7.0 uh 7.1 approved 2021 through 2026 copiers northwest district-wide lease agreement i'll second moved and seconded any discussion hearing none ryan hi bill kelly melody aye and i am an i uh next 7.2 st helens rainier osa cooperative sponsorship that was fascinating timing so ryan made the motion and kelly accepted it within nanoseconds any discussion hearing none ryan hi bill kelly hi melody hi i am also an i all right upcoming meeting input it sounds like we have
066a couple things that scott's going to put on the agenda for us anything else that we'd like to throw on there uh when we did discuss graduation i was wondering if there was anything of an ask or an offer to the 1920 class because we had said that we would do some sort of graduation follow through for them because they didn't get that chance so are we gonna allow them that opportunity i will i will ask on that one we'll find out any other input for the group i just wanna know if we have a guest down there at the bottom for any reason just making sure she doesn't get left out hi yeah this is andre shelhash he's going to be um attending board meetings and going through the budget committee process and sorry
067about that we introduced her at the um budget committee training but didn't reboot for this oh sorry nope so she's just here to see the flow of our meetings and get a feel for current events i think i've talked to her on the phone i just haven't seen the face to go with the voice yet does that mean we can put her in on the text message so she can listen all night to her phone tingling don't worry it's never about school but it's always fun all right i don't hear anything else our next meeting is the 28th of april do i have a motion to adjourn all right have a wonderful sunny 83 degrees saturday and sunday this weekend and uh enjoy the sun while we can have a good night everyone