001[Music] 30 seconds oh my god [Music] all right everybody welcome to tonight's board meeting i just want to confirm we are streaming live online um so everyone is aware uh and prior to this meeting we did have a reception and tour of the new facilities we sit in so i will call this meeting to order at 6 30 p.m a note for the audience board chair maureen wolfe is on an important call this evening actually advocating for school funding but she will be with us shortly so first dr ricky smith are there any changes to the agenda there are none all right board members is there a motion to approve the consent agenda i move to approve the consent agenda as presented motion was made and seconded i don't know if folks could hear that
002online but the second was director emerson uh and with that the motion has been made and seconded we'll do a roll call vote um all those in favor please signify by saying aye those opposed say nay uh direct mercy [Music] she says i director fox i director zerschmid and i will vote i for a vote of four to zero the consent agenda is adopted and with that i will hand it over uh for recognition and good news to director tracy rose good evening everybody my name is eric nessie and i'm the bond support administrator for tiger defaults and helping to manage and oversee all the projects that are happening across the district including the project that we're sitting in right now that's been recently completed quality middle school and i want to recognize a whole
003bunch of people that have been invaluable to this project uh coming to fruition and so i'd like to invite a handful of people up if you just join me uh can i please have sean christensen rebecca grant levi patterson jennifer mcdonald jose vergara kevin montag and anybody on the quality staff come on up please all of you to be recognized right up front right up here with me what a great looking group this is fantastic so as you are probably aware this uh this beautiful new building uh like i said came to fruition through the generosity of our 2016 bond and couldn't be more excited about how this building has turned out and it didn't happen by chance it happened because of a lot of hard work and effort and blood sweat and tears on
004behalf of a lot of people and so really excited to be able to take the opportunity to recognize these folks first and foremost the quality staff and we've only got a fraction of them here right now but the quality staff has demonstrated truly incredible grit and perseverance over the last three years and when we said goodbye to the quality staff at the end of the school year in 2019 and waved goodbye and started to demolish this building they spent the next school year in a temporary facility templeton elementary and 28 portable classrooms that sat on the field down below where we're standing right now and that was not an ideal situation for middle schoolers to be in nor the 75 or so staff members and the grit and perseverance that all of you demonstrated was
005amazing um you know i i just i know that when kids run into hard problems we ask them to demonstrate grit and perseverance and all of you did that so amazingly staying kid focused and just couldn't be any more proud of the quality staff so thank you they were under the leadership of gwen stover and andrew curl most recently as the assistant principal and principal here at 12 you want to thank them and i also want to take take the opportunity to thank levi patterson and rebecca grant from the ibi architect group who listened to feedback rebecca if you could wave and leave by right next to her um took the vision that they heard from the district and turned it into a reality so thank you for that on the district side we had
006a ton of people being involved in stewarding funds and making difficult decisions when we need to make reductions and so there's a there's a bond leadership team that includes david moore to my left uh darren bernard to my left kevin montag who's in my shadow here overshadowing me maybe would be a better way to say it and um sarah marezbada marianne escriba lots of folks who have participated and really helped this project come to fruition i want to thank all of them for their hard work work the brains of the operation is our project manager sean christensen and the quality staff they are rightly rightfully so giving her a round of applause because um detail-oriented and helpful and has jumped in with both feet basically become part of the staff and you know just can't
007imagine having done this project with any other project manager sean has been just absolutely tremendous and before i let these folks go i want to have one two special recognitions for two folks that really in my estimation or have been really the heartbeat of the project and that's jennifer mcdonald and jose vergara head head secretary and head custodian and um broad shoulders broad shoulders um when any of these folks have a crisis it becomes their crisis when it's time to demolish a 60 year old building and move everything into a temporary location there were two people at the tip of that sword taking care of all the details and i just i'm proud to have worked with the two of you it's been a just an amazing experience i really appreciate your hard work the
008work ethic and i know the quality staff just thinks so highly of you so i appreciate all of those efforts so thanks for the opportunity this building is amazing um the last part of the project to be completed is the new turf field which will uh be to my right down below it's going to be a new addition that we're really excited about and can't wait for students to return in mass five days a week in the fall i see a lot of head shaking and just uh one big last round of applause to all these folks for all their efforts thank you we're going to get some pictures i thought you were going to sing for us or something all right board members do you have any comments or questions for mr nessie or
009the staff i just want to say you all look like you're about to do like the chorus lines so you know feel free um now i just want to say thank you for putting up with really difficult circumstances for the last year and a half and this fabulous building you deserve it and so enjoy it and never have to turn your lights on because there's so much natural light and do great things for students hi i also want to thank you um i'm actually your neighbor down the street and so i've come up here many times and walked around the old track um i just want to thank you all too but i just i also want to ask you what's your favorite thing about if you could just tell me what one of your
010favorite things is about the build i'd love to hear white hallways indoor bathrooms that's a plus not being affordable you said you had been in one for seven years is that how many years 17 years awesome anybody else yes yes i'll do that before it wears off thank you all i'm thinking that um some of you here might have been on the design team too as staff so thank you for the many many meetings that you put in to come up with these great ideas that got put into place and i am very thrilled for you to have this space so enjoy it and teach those kiddos i just want to say um i went to quality and i remember when um we i was in eighth grade and we started the process and they
011actually had multiple meetings include student voice i presented in front of miss waddell and i remember studying miss what else portables and hearing about the rats it was it related to the plague that we were studying so yeah so i'm really glad i got to be in this building and see it come to fruition so thank you so much well thank you i i just wanted to honor um speaking of mrs waddell she was telling me about you can't you might not be able to see it on the live stream but there's a piece of the old gym floor leaning against the sidewall that's signed not just by current staff but also former staff and apparently there's even a staff member who taught here back in 1980s retired in the 80s 85 and came back
012because they were so proud of their experience here that they wanted their name on on the gym floor um so i think that speaks to the sense of community that's been built and as principal carl said in the before the tour um you all deserve this this building as teachers and we are very grateful for you so thank you for being here one more round of applause for them and we'll transition all right we will now move to student representative reports and emily from 12th and high school at the far end of the table so we will kick off with you is it working okay um not a lot are happening we have three and a half three yeah and a half weeks left to school two and a half weeks after school and so
013classes are um three and a half oh because you're graduating yeah weeks left of school um and uh we had track stay at oregon city on friday and saturday and this week we are having a fun a drive for period products so the entire week and then on friday if students donate they will get um cookies and that's with the period chapter at 12 in high school i don't have much else to add for seniors we only have uh two weeks left i think this was the last monday in person for any hybrid students so that is exciting sad both at the same time otherwise i think this wednesday students have the opportunity to uh go pick up their chords if they have any chords for graduation and i don't really have anything else i
014have uh introduced that was rowan from tigard high school our other student representative and we will get to resolutions about those folks later in the agenda but for now we're going to move on to superintendent and board communication dr ricky smith the floor is yours okay there we go all right thank you so much vice chair uh government uh my comments this evening uh begin with expressing how excited it is to be able to return to in-person meetings again this evening uh where we can once again welcome the community that we serve and it is especially fitting to host this first in-person board meeting in one of our recently completed bond projects quality middle school uh earlier this evening we had a small celebration uh to celebrate the completion of this facility and we were
015joined by several of the key stakeholders that have brought this building into reality and they include our bond election committee our long-term facilities planning committee our bond oversight committee as and a small but mighty group of retired quality teachers we wanted to extend a special thank you to architects ibi group for their beautiful design for this building and contractors trippit wilman for the finished product that we all are enjoying this evening joining us today from ibi group is rebecca stucker and tim mccullough if you're here please raise your hands we can see you nope okay they've moved on i also share our gratitude for the continued stewardship of our partners with days cpm debbie pearson and sean christensen who have been instrumental in this project as always profound gratitude to our community at large for
016their support of the current bond that made this possible and just a really quick shout out this evening to our tigered sros officer imus who serves trolley and officer nunn tiger high school welcome we're glad that you're here uh and you want to raise your hands gentlemen are you yep there they are in the back great we appreciate you being here and it has been a long and challenging journey from our last meeting in person on march 12 2020 to today and this is just the beginning of a return to full in-person district operations uh beginning in the fall as i showed you the last board meeting one of the things my favorite times this is one of my favorite times of year to have the opportunity to highlight some of our outstanding students in
017tiger college and school district so two this evening um that have been highlighted in recent kgw stories are jake dearing a tualatin high school sophomore a current member of this year's varsity men's golf team despite the fact that he has struggled with significant physical challenges his entire life jacobs faced each challenge head-on never giving up when things were hard always seeking to motivate others jake shared show people what you can do don't be afraid try everything you can have fun you only live once he epitomizes that and living his life to the fullest and as many of you know i would be remiss not to highlight ryan lumbar a quality eighth grade student who is changing the world one painting at a time her current work is in support of marginalized communities encouraging our community
018at large to be accepting kind and do good works that create a community of care for all one hundred percent of the proceeds from the sale of her posters photo packet pride program to ensure families and students don't go hungry ryan would like to see your posters all across america so that all students feel safe and accepted and i am my remarks this evening board with the pro for dr lisa del pitt a favorite of mine a nationally recognized scholar and education leader whose body of research has focused on best practices for closing opportunity to learn gaps for students she notes the power to close gaps as well as stretch student achievement rests in teachers as warm demanders who expect a great deal of their students convincing them of their own brilliance and helping them
019reach their full potential in a wealthy yet structured and disciplined environment given the recent interest of some in our community in the website portland child soldiers it is difficult for me this evening to respond to an unsubstantiated media story based on anonymous sources where the author chose not to reach out to the district as other media outlets typically do to verify this information i will however confirm that the tiger tulsa school district is and will continue to practice culturally responsive teaching also known as crt which simply means our teachers are warm demanders with the dedication and focus that every child that they serve has value and worth and strive to provide an equitable opportunity to be academically and socially responsible this is the obligation of a public school system and that is the mission of
020the tiger 12t school district to educate every child this evening's read first read of the board's equity policy affirms that commitment and holds the office of the superintendent central office operations are school administrators teachers accountable to not just close opportunity gaps for some but to stretch those students who are advanced learners so that all will be learning at their rate and level and that that's what's addressed in the classroom instruction my job and the standards for which each of you aboard hold me responsible is to ensure that every child that walks through our doors is successful and has every opportunity to excel to sacrifice the advancement of any student to advance our dedication to equitable outcomes is in my opinion the definition of counterintuitive and as a reminder to our community here and our community
021that has joined us this evening if any ttsd student is impacted by teaching that has left them feeling ashamed or uncomfortable in any way i ask you to bring it to your students principal's attention immediately as that will not be tolerated you can anticipate that they will work with you answer any questions or address any concerns you have among the many board policies that direct and guide our work with students policy gbcg staff conduct responsibility leads with this statement essential to the success of district opportunity operations and the instructional program are the following specific responsibilities of which there are aid which will be required of all personnel and the first one is placing the needs and welfare of students first thank you thank you dr ricky smith um very well said so with that board
022members now as a board member reports so who would like to go first [Music] director emerson director fox director zerschmidden um so i just wanted to uh reiterate what dr ricky smith said about how amazingly cool it is to be back in person and seeing all of your faces again it has been so strange to be sitting at my computer holding a board meeting for the last year and a bit um and this is what it's supposed to be and so thank you all for coming tonight and and let's keep going and doing great things um in terms of a report i just wanted to state uh two weeks ago was avid's graduation which was a virtual event and it was amazing i don't know how many of my fellow board members shouldn't was there
023as well um it was such a need even it's always an inspiring event to see these kids um graduating it makes me realize that we are just like a week away from graduation weekend and i don't know quite where the school year has gone um so yeah it's the silly season but it's going to be fun so that's it just a couple notes first i do want to note we've got at least one graduate from that ceremony in the audience that i wanted to um shout out to um i also wanted to recognize that um our three new incoming board members are here with us this evening and i want to congratulate them and also all the folks who put their names out there and decided to run for the school board not an easy
024thing to do so thanks to the new board members for being with us tonight um along the lines of what dr ricky smith mentioned earlier i do feel an obligation as a board member to say that dr ricky smith and her cabinet implements board policies and it is not appropriate for people to target and threaten cabinet members and administrators based on actions that the board has taken the board welcomes criticisms and comments via email but targeting cabinet members which we have seen is not appropriate um and i just wanted to make that clear and then on a happier note some of us were able to uh attend the art rutkin elementary school groundbreaking ceremony um which was a pretty cool thing for me um as someone who came through this district my middle school assistant
025principal mr nessie was the school board members who were school board members when i was in elementary school were there um and members of mr rutkin's family were also there in attendance at the ceremony and it was a pretty cool example of community much like our ceremony this evening so uh very soon we'll be welcoming children into the our rutkin elementary school and it was it was great to be up there uh last chance directors all right with that we're gonna move to public comment um so we received i believe 19 folks who indicated they would like to provide public comment at tonight's meeting and i wanted to be upfront the policy for public comment is we're going to allow 30 minutes of public comment during this section and then after the last person within
026that 30 minutes has finished their remarks we're going to stop public comment and then at the end of the board meeting if folks are still here and would like to provide public comment they will be given the opportunity to do so they may also submit their remarks in writing to patty roberts our executive assistant and those will be reflected in the minutes of the meeting um some rules for public comments so we're all on the same page public comment will be limited to three minutes i'm going to ask director zerschmi to be my timer to make sure we are fair for everyone speakers are allowed to offer objective criticism district operations and programs but the board will not hear complaints nor praise concerning any specific district personnel so if i do hear a name used
027in public comments i will interrupt you and ask you to stop um [Music] yeah okay with that did i miss anything director zurich meade or dr oh yes and when you start your remarks please include your name or a title that identifies you or the public record okay with that i'm going to call up our first public comment i'll note that it's 6 55 so it's 6 25 we will move on uh first public comment is tony goybern mr goyborn go goyburn perfect there's a microphone on the table you'll just need to press the power button until it's green and that means you're live thank you i'm going to moderate my comments because um tonight seems to be more of a celebration of being in this beautiful fantastic building and everybody that participated in in
028making the so i have three children in this district i had one at uh i'll tell albert ryder and one at this school that didn't actually get to go to the school that participated sort of in the in the little cubicle buildings out there and one that did part of that and then went to uh was a freshman at 12th and high school and so those at conferences in the in the portables that was uh that was a wonderful dance of uh organizational skills by the school so um my my my two children that are going to be here next year are really really excited and i'm really and this is a fantastic facility having experienced the other one which we'll never will never speak of again of the old building and especially the gym
029my i'll just make a general comment because like i said this seems like a celebratory night i really want to make sure that my voice and voices like mine are heard that the school board and the superintendent's office isn't spending a huge amount of resources on programs and systems that are for students whose demographics in the school districts are very small um i'm all for helping people achieve um i support all all kinds of people doesn't matter what their skin color is what the religious preference is but it seems like there is a push to create programs for very very very small group of people in our school district and i would oppose that because i'll invoke the starfleet federation dr spock's words that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
030the few have a lot of needs but we're a school district of a majority of us are white we're white people um we we don't see ourselves as racist we don't see ourselves as sexist we don't see ourselves as um as anything but contributing members of society and my three little kids don't understand any of that that you guys are talking about at school they don't understand any of that's in the media they don't they get up in the morning and they talk to all their friends as if they're just they're friends they don't care what color they are they don't care what color their hair is they don't care about any of that and if the school district is going to create programs that emphasizes [Music] a special treatment for people i would be
031opposed to that i don't know what the i don't know what the outcome of some of these programs that you're wanting to create or that you are creating is your outcome equality or equality of outcome well that's your that's your time sorry i'm gonna have to cut you off there thank you um and per board policy um the board will not be uh responding to public comments that we receive this evening uh next on the public comment list is jessica reiser is that better hi guys my name is jessica reiser i am a tumulton high school mom and i wanted to bring a parent's perspective to the board tonight of the article that was released in the city journal this past week um i am familiar with your equity team i've served on some committees
032with them and i'll note that they start nearly every meeting they host with reading the art community and you guys are certainly familiar with those concepts but if not everyone here is um it's in the materials for the board meeting tonight um and i think my experience with your equity team is the art of community and what have i seen them teaching our children um at the elementary school letter level a simplified version of the art community i've seen them focus on teaching our children not to make assumptions about one another to ask questions about each other to be active listeners to um develop all of those life skills that we want all of our children to have and that all of our children benefit from um i'll be honest with you at the high
033school level i haven't seen much programming um and i actually don't think that's a reflection of the lack of initiative or effort from the equity department's group i think it's reflective of the fact that they really are trying to be slow and thoughtful and responsive while they develop the materials and the programming for the equity efforts in our district and so as that's my experience with your equity team um our equity team in the district and so then to read this article this past week was just really mind-boggling to me to see them accused of teaching hatred of america and racism against white people and to say that they're creating um a school to radicalism pipeline i i have to tell you my experience with them could not be further from those statements um and
034so i just want to send a thank you to them i thank you to their for their efforts um i thank you for persevering because i will tell you as a parent i don't think they deserved a word of what was written about them so thank you for listening i appreciate it thank you all right next up yes director zurich mead would like me to remind folks giving public comment that when there's one minute left she will lift her phone up and wave it just so you know you have one minute remaining on your remarks next up we have aaron bettis oh okay sorry like i said like you said my name is aaron bettis i had a more detailed statement prepared it's trying to explain to you why so many parents are pulling their
035kids from the schools um i'll mention a little bit it's because of your lack of focus on academic excellence elimination of advanced classes uh most recently eliminated elimination of math advanced uh math seven for sixth graders at the middle school now it's impossible for for my son to to reach to finish the ib calculus program um also a focus on on identity politics my kids value is based on their skin color their sexuality and their gender and the oppression they feel in school depression of their ideas their ideas are not valuable because they're not one of the protected minorities instead of giving you the rest of that statement uh because you mentioned the article in the city journal magazine if it's not true i challenge you to release documents to the public that the author
036references so that we can all see i i i hope that they're false i would like to see that for myself that's my statement for you all right next up on public comment is dylan mccann there we go okay again dylan mccann i choose seventh grade here at quality pride that is what i feel when i speak the work that you're doing here at ptsd when i come to my classroom each day i get to feel that pride in knowing that i am working in a district that hears those voices that have been silenced over the generations it's not about guilt or feeling bad about the privilege that i've had over the course of my life but it's about seeing how our systems have not been set up for the success of all of my
037students and what we can do to change them we live in a society that has been designed and cultivated to ensure the success of one demographic more than others if we were to walk into any classroom in this district and look at the population of students then compare it to the demographics of the teachers in front of them the administrators leading them and all of you sitting here making decisions that affect them the representation of our students of color is lacking though it may not have been from a conscious series of decisions being made it does not change the fact that our students of color being pushed through a system and is not designed for their success so it's up to us as their white allies to look at this unbalance and be representatives for
038their voices last year i was co-leading one of our affinity groups i mean i promised my students that i would use my voice to stand up for them when their voices were silenced by the system we are on our trip to osu to learn about the cultural heritage of the school and community while on the bus an issuer arose between the students and the bus driver who was white and nail his approach in addressing the students came across as threatening and mean and the students felt like their voices were not heard and the culture was not respected without our focus on culturally responsive teaching and the equity work in our district it would have been very easy to dismiss this as just another situation to forget and let go but i made a promise to
039my students that i would see them and use my privileged voice to stand for them i heard my students in order to better understand their perspectives and engage in dialogue with the bus driver though it wasn't comfortable for me to stand up and speak to the driver about how my students felt and the message how the message was received by them i remembered how uncomfortable it must have felt for my students to be shut down from being themselves as a result of my conversation with them and with the bus driver my students felt like their voices were heard and i let them know that there are people in this school that will stand with them the ride home was significantly different there was space allowed for the students to interact in a way that was
040culturally normal while maintaining safety precautions on the bus the work we do around this and more with our students know they have allies and know that they are working for a chance of success the fact that our district is focusing on recognizing and thinking critically about those systems means that we are telling our students that they matter because they do so many of them are falling through the cracks in our traditional education education system we as a district have declared that all of our students and community members that we are not okay with any of us falling through the cracks and we will rally around our members that need us we will not settle for going back to the way it was because the way it was wasn't working that is why i feel pride
041because you as a school board and we as a community are telling our marginalized adventures all right thank you very much next public comment is from michael rooney good evening my name is mike rooney and i teach eighth grade at quality middle school before joining ttsd in 2018 i taught high school in portland and southern oregon for the past three years i've participated as a member of the equity leadership team at quality the equity leadership team is made up of teachers and staff who meet weekly to consider data reflect that our practice and provide support for professional development equality equity work at quality is based upon building our capacity as a school community to understand and dismantle the barriers to learning all students at the core of our equity work is the concept of culturally
042responsive education sometimes referred to as crt i have taught for more than 20 years in a variety of schools and communities i've tried a multitude of approaches to reach students who strive to make meaning out of the information that bombards them in school every day a few things have always been true [Music] teachers set the tone for learning in the classroom and all students benefit from good teaching the culturally responsive educator approach and emphasizes the need to increase students capacity to process information and become effective learners that is a good outcome that benefits everyone if our schools do not foster independent learners then we cannot expect to close the gap between those who make meaning out of the information and those who simply fill in the blanks and check the boxes to earn a passing
043grade we cannot afford to ignore the data that continues to expose who is not thriving and how we are failing them the school has a responsibility to provide an environment that is both physically and intellectually safe so the brain can be free to focus on learning think about the best learning experiences you've had in life for me it has been when teachers established authentic connections that build mutual trust and respect becoming a culturally responsive educator is not a quick or simple process for teachers to master we need time to build upon skills we already have and to examine practices we employ that may not be working for some students but do not that may be working for some students but do not consistently build the intellectual capacity of culturally and linguistically diverse students culturally responsive
044education is about creating learning environments where all students are ready for rigor and independent learning what is an independent learner independent learners have cognitive strategies for getting unstuck they have learned to retrieve information from long-term memory they rely on the teacher to carry out some of their cognitive load they regularly attempt new tasks without much hand holding those are great qualities and i want to see those in all of my students of course there are many of my students who rely on the teacher too much to do the thinking for them they are unsure how to tackle challenging new testament thank you thank you all right next up it looks like we have laurel fisher and dr kd topple it looks like you're signed up together you can both come forward and you'll have three
045minutes each perfect and i'm also as you're getting adjusted gonna hand no i'm not i'm gonna continue cheering and chairwolf will join us good evening i'm dr katie topple and tonight i am speaking on behalf of myself and my colleague laurel fisher we partner as staff pillar leaders for the district's equity work additionally we're both teachers in ttsd parents of elementary age children and have been part of ttsd's equity work for over a decade there are four pillars which are the foundation of our equity work they are staff students families and community the structure of the pillars was created because all of these groups are important stakeholders within our district all of our equity initiatives and work have focused on one or more of these pillars and the work includes the voices of many equity
046work is a collective effort we led a group of eight educators to work on adapting conversation protocols to support critical conversations in our elementary classrooms in addition we curated a diverse book list focused on children's literature that will help our students feel seen and valued in their classrooms and school community all children should have exposure to quality literature that serves as mirrors and windows meaning books that reflect their own identities and books that help them understand the identities of others we shared this project with the ttsd community and parents families and community members were invited to take part in previews of the project prior to teachers learning about it in professional development settings the feedback from teachers and families has been overwhelmingly positive this year we also hosted a voluntary book study with staff members
047across 10 elementary schools to read the book being the change teachers volunteered their time to learn more about cultivating classroom communities of care for all students our equity work spans across the four pillars of stakeholders in our system we encourage those with questions to ask to seek more information and get involved in decision making we value all voices including students staff families and the broader community being in community with care is a normalized expectation from our equity and inclusion department we'd like to thank our current board members for their support of the bias incidents and hate speech policy adopted in august of 2020 and the racial equity and social justice policy currently being drafted we stand in solidarity with those doing the equity work in our district we welcome our new board members and look
048forward to furthering our collective equity work we are proud to work in partnership with the equity and inclusion department in ttsd and support the equity policies professional development for staff and teaching practices aimed at achieving our ttsd mission which is educate every child thank you for your countless hours and contributions and work toward a more equitable education system for all of our students thank you right on time and we will move on to rob harness very thankful that i don't have to figure out how to turn this thing on um a little less than a year ago we were in a meeting and we had a student representative who happens to be sitting right behind me right now who if we were in the same space would have looked all of us dead in the
049eyes and said which side of history are we going to be on and i'd heard that phrase before but it hit me a little differently obviously our society was in in the throes of chaos but i was very very proud that day to work for a district that seemed to be so responsive to our students and to their families and i can say that i know that equity work is difficult i know that equity work is uncomfortable as someone who's grown up with virtually every single kind of privilege that one person in this society can have it is difficult to de-center yourself and practice empathy and perspective taking when you have not been asked to do so and luckily because our district cares about our students and listens to our students and listens to our
050families that need that empathy and need that perspective taking to happen we have started to make positive changes why do we focus on our populations of color why do we focus on our students with disabilities why do we focus on our lgbtq students our students with trauma because they need it that is where our resources need to go because they are telling us we are asking them what do you need and that's what they're telling us they need they need our ears they need our hearts they need our minds and do i believe that we should be doing more to support our staff in our equity work absolutely should we be doing more to support our uncomfortable students and their families absolutely we are thinking of ways to improve every single day i can speak
051to that myself as an equity coordinator i am constantly reflecting on how i can bring more people into this work but we cannot stop now we cannot stop they need us they demand of us action they demand courage and they demand that we continue to listen and be responsive can we do that in culturally responsive ways that bring in more people absolutely i if you are opposed to our equity work or maybe just are not quite aware of what our equity work entails i want to work with you i want to hear your voice and bring you in but we will not stop we can't not now too many times people have stopped fighting for underrepresented populations when things have gotten difficult and i've been very proud to work in a district where i do
052not feel like that happens at least we make our best efforts to not do so and i certainly hope that today we will reaffirm our commitment to all students that we care about their education and we will work accordingly thank you thank you next public comment is matt kingsley my name is matt kingsley and i'm a reading teacher and building equity coordinator at balloon middle school i've worked in the district for 16 years and i'm proud to be working in a district today that is prioritizing equity work i'd like tonight to express my gratitude and appreciation to the board cabinet school administrators and school staff members for working to improve the lives and outcomes for all students this is not a new goal we've been struggling to improve these outcomes for years but it is
053only recently in my opinion that these efforts have received the backing needed to create change here's some examples of changes before there were no affinity groups students of color and other marginalized groups would have no time or space to meet an affinity with each other now many schools have a large offering of affinity groups these groups do not divide us but help promote a greater sense of belonging to the school community which leads to increased school success students tell us they value this opportunity to be together before there was little meaningful outreach to families of color or communities in the margins schools reached out to families only when there were problems families did not trust the school system or feel it was designed to help them families did not feel valued today we reach out
054to our families in the margins to bring their voices to the table and learn directly from them about their needs and concerns instead of making assumptions we listen better to feedback and are more responsive and families feel more valued because of it before there was little to no partnering with community organizations for better outreach and understanding resulting in insufficient resources and services for families today our amazing culturally responsible liaisons have partnered with community organizations like the gay lesbian and straight education network and immigrant refugee community organization and the reap multicultural youth leadership organization to help reach out to all students and communities represented in our district these partnerships provide much needed services and resources to families and help us gain a better editor's understanding of our diverse communities needs before as a predominantly white district
055we didn't know how to talk to each other about complicated topics like race or implicit bias but we didn't know how to reach out to families that didn't look or sound like ourselves today we use protocols that bring people of all identities together to listen to each other and engage in meaningful conversations that promote respect and understanding of each other before there was no district level policy we could refer to when condemning racism hate speech and bias in the absence of policy there was lack of consistent practice and there was confusion the district has adopted now that now the district has adopted an anti-racist resolution and a hate speech and bias policy and we'll shortly be discussing an educational equity and racial justice policy these policies support and guide our work at the school level
056i've highlighted just a few examples of the inequities in our system that have been reduced thanks to our district's equity work and i believe we all stand to benefit from it that is your time thank you the next public comment is amanda giriak hello um hello board and fellow members of the community i'm amanda darachek i am a junior at walden high school and part of their student government and ib program i am here today to speak on behalf of the equity work being done throughout the school district i think it is important because it teaches empathy we learn when we learn about history and read books from other cultures and then have respectful discussions about these cultures and our differences it is easier to understand where they are coming from i think that having
057these types of deeper discussions keep us more connected and therefore stronger as a community it seems as though many of the arguments against this type of teaching are saying that while educating students about the truth of our country's racist history we are making white kids feel guilty and or ashamed of being white as a white student myself i understand that the purpose of these lessons are not to make me feel bad about myself learning about the injustices of slavery does not make me feel bad personally because i had nothing to do with this however knowing where we came from and in what mindset many of our systems were created has been a good thing for me because i can acknowledge that these systems have benefited me in ways that it hasn't for others this realization
058along with empathy for others teaches students how to work to create a society that can admit its faults but continue to grow and that's why i urge you to continue on the path of equity it benefits everyone also i heard something about tag classes and i would appreciate it if you kept those two because if i didn't have math seven in sixth grade i would have become a little bit bored and disconnected from school thank you for your time we're going to do one more because we're still not up for the full 30 minutes and we'll let the next person speak for their full time and then we will wrap up and i'll explain what happens next um next person is bayern lyons i said that right okay thank you um there are so many
059great things said i almost felt like i didn't need this um i uh hi i'm david lyons and i am uh i teach engineering and design uh the elective here equality um i began um i'm here to support uh the district's equity work i began teaching many years ago as a peace corps volunteer in west africa teaching math and science and um i got sold as a teacher i wasn't sure that's what i wanted to do when i saw how kids there embraced school as a as a way to a better future and i felt as a teacher i was opening a door helping to open a door for them to uh um a a brighter future um and a lot of um possibilities um so that sort of uh convinced me how important it
060was to be a teacher um i've since then taught at various levels from elementary all the way to uh post-secondary and uh now i find myself at middle school and people ask me if i'm crazy to teach middle schoolers and uh and the thing i love about middle school is because middle schoolers are like right at that age where they're they're ready to to take on um they're just sort of forming who they're they're gonna become and uh what's tough uh to teach middle schoolers is uh kids who feel that um that door isn't open to them and especially in the stem field um you know my job is to try to get as many kids excited about stem especially kids who are underrepresented in the in the stem fields and um you know i
061want to be there to open that door for all kids we need all kids to get excited we need for our country but just for all the the joy that in my mind uh being uh working in science technology engineering art or math any of those areas brings i think all kids deserve that and uh we need to keep working through equity equity work to make sure that that door is open to all kids all right thank you very much so that will conclude um the public comments section at this point in the agenda there are still eight folks signed up uh if you are still present at the end of the meeting when we finished our last action item we will reopen public comment and allow you your three minutes to speak otherwise you
062can send your public comment to patty roberts the board will review those public comments and they'll be included in the minutes for tonight's meeting and with i'm going to hand it over to board chair marine wall thank you all and my sincere apologies uh for me um i think i'm going in now first i want to thank vice chair bowman i'm sure he did a fabulous job in my absence and many of you know that i'm also the oregon school boards association president and i was had the opportunity to listen in as the governor is trying to sort through how we continue with these funds to support our equity work and our students that are are here in the margins and i i just am taking a moment um to just express what it's like
063to walk into this building and have asked so many of you to say yes in 2016 and right across the street is templeton and so many beautiful buildings and i walked in to listen to so many of you say yes to this equity work and i um i'm just overwhelmed and i just appreciate you all for being here and and sharing um your thoughts about the work of the district so thank you for that um and with that uh we will move to reports and discussions and i'd like to welcome director tracy rhodes for our student rights and responsibility handbook [Music] good evening in your board packets i provided to you the current student rights and responsibilities handbook this is a handbook that has had a very minimal updates over the last two years this
064is a standing agenda item at this time of the year for the board so i'm here tonight just to simply update you on where we are this is not um a first read this will be an update on the work that we had hoped would be accomplished this past year however that would have meant a lot of convening and we know that we weren't convening this year so we will um pick this work up now starting now and we hope to do quite a bit of it over the summer and be able to come back to you enough to the board in the fall to review a handbook that is more reflective of all the work that's been done over the last two years it started out with a lot of policy review that had
065the pleasure of sitting in on with some of you but even more just reflecting back on the year and everything that we have done since march of last year and making sure that is reflective in the handbook the other piece i think that was really valuable for us is to learn that the handbook is really applicable at the high school level not necessarily at the elementary level somewhat at the middle school level so we're going to take um the examples of some of the other districts that we've seen and have a levels appropriate handbook as well as one that meets the needs of our parents as well so if there are any other questions i know i answered some earlier today board members any questions emily i hope to engage with you as we do
066this work all right thank you tracy thank you um okay jumping uh quickly to um the second and last report and discussion item um it is strange to do this with math i'm sorry i'm just gonna digress a little bit um okay thank you um so many of you know uh the board started actually in a process um several months ago with our facilitators john munson and tara cooper to really think about our equity work we've traveled through a book discussion and really landed as kind of the culminating activity of really thinking deeply and reflecting on our work to we had an equity policy that was in place several years ago but to really look at that and say what really represents the work of the district today and through that process we started um
067really with a work session with the board what are the key things what are the things that we care about and built a framework in an initial draft from that i want to do a shout out and thank director un she ran several listening groups i see some of those that participated in those and gave us feedback um on what they felt about the policies i think that information has been included in the board pac packet and then from there vice chair bowman and i worked to again revise the policy to lift up that thinking and then that was what was included this morning or the this evening's board packet so the thing that i want to say first and foremost is educational equity and racial justice this policy is absolutely about educational rigor and
068it speaks through the preamble committed to academic and personal success this commitment to educational equity means that student success should not be predicted or predetermined as those items listed in the policy despite this commitment we understand that the opportunity gaps persist so we want to stay grounded in what is the purpose of this policy to lift up our students and define the areas where we want to see things differently and then hold the district accountable for those actions and make that um as your part of that engagement uh the one thing before um i'm really going to open it up and i'm actually vice chair bowman would like you to add any thoughts you would like to um the one recommendation is while we talk about resources voice workforce diversity um to really lift the
069equitable access to high quality education as number one because that really is job number one and to lift that up and ground the policy there but all these pieces are so incredibly important in the work that we do as a district and we heard it from the groups that gave feedback to director on and so we really want to change or enhance how we do work here in the district and i just want to also do a tremendous shout out to our superintendent ricky smith has been such an advocate for this work and really is stepping up around the accountability to ensure that happens at the district level so i appreciate her work as well and with that i'm going to hand the mic to vice chair bowman and let him add and then from
070there we'll facilitate conversation with the board thank you um i'll keep it brief a couple thoughts first we looked at the equity policies of almost a dozen districts across the state actually across the country drew inspiration from many of them but really wanted to create a document reflect community and the school district so we took our best shot at it and we probably didn't get it exactly right and i don't think that this is the type of policy that is supposed to be adopted and stay the same for forever i think this is something that we'll have new board members who i imagine we'll have new perspectives to bring to this conversation um new teachers new educators um all of whom will have more recent training and understanding of the work and that's a good
071thing it's not a bad thing to have a policy that can grow and adapt over time i also wanted to reiterate i think something really important that chairwolf said which is this is a policy about academic excellence there's a misconception that equity work is somehow unrelated to academic outcomes the reason why we do equity work is to pursue academic excellence for all of our kids in this district that's the point um and i would direct folks to look specifically at the accountability section where i think this is a first of its kind policy where we are directing and i will say with the support of our superintendent to conduct an equity audit to look at specific outcomes including academic outcomes enrollment in advanced courses and programs special education identification well-rounded educational participation including athletics and
072arts discipline and referral data and racial and linguistic workforce diversity measures including employee retention those are academic measures those are measures of a student's educational experience that's what the policy is about um but it's about that for every kid in this district and not just students who have historically succeeded um so i just think that that was an important point that you made that i wanted to underscore and i look forward to the discussion from our i want to start out by can i take this off thank you i want to start off by thanking both of you i know you put in a lot of hours and director um i don't think she's here tonight but thank her and all the um participants that contributed to this um just so that so that those
073of you know where the rest of the board members so this is the first time we've seen it this draft um so initially we got together and kind of um covered kind of the key things we wanted to see in equity policy and um and then uh the two directors here uh wolfe and bowman created kind of a first draft so um anyway i just want to say good great i'm this is a great start so thank you um and uh i think a lot of this is just gonna be kind of clarifying what we mean and i really appreciate the fact that we're emphasizing academic rigor and i see a lot of the themes that we had talked about in our meeting work way back a couple what six weeks ago or so so
074um yeah so i look forward to this conversation and also i just i guess i also want to ask i guess we can see how it goes tonight but um i'm hoping just to kind of listen tonight and that we'll have more opportunities at later time [Music] so i think uh director fox what i'd like to suggest is um definitely want to address all the questions and comments i do encourage you to share those so we'll circle back with you when we're at the end because i if there is a sense that we can move forward to a second read at the next meeting in june that is our plan and that's been the timeline so uh i think we'll just do consensus at the end on a sense of how we're progressing and what
075board members feel is still needed between now and on approval and emily and rowan obviously grab a mic when you're ready and please share i'll start because i did make some written notes that i was gonna share i think there's four there and i'll get one for the students um because i had been part of a few of the groups that were listed and heard some of the feedback firsthand but definitely went back through the abc protocols to see if we really were capturing everything that was requested because those were the people that have been doing the work that some of them testified tonight saying that they've been doing the work for years and these are the kinds of things that they want to have in policy so it can um strengthen their work um
076so this the beginning part is just little things i bolded the things that i really care about it's um [Music] more like typo kind of things um so i won't go into those but the bigger thoughts that i had um i definitely would like to add a definition for historically marginalized we have received confusion about that term and i think it has a place in the policy and would like to add that what i realized in looking at the um the protocols was that we are not addressing um voice of our staff of color specifically and empowering that voice we mentioned students and their families um but i'm hoping that we can add something into the work diver workforce diversity section that calls out their voice and um how we would incorporate their voice into
077into future policy i do think there's some fed talk going on in the policy um the word pedagogy always makes me feel because it's just a funny word um and i don't know if we want to consider um more common english as opposed to red talk but um maybe that just means more definitions um and then the last thing that came up in the in the comments um was curriculum grading practices and assessments and having um looking for unbiased assessments having equitable grading practices and definitely the curriculum we've heard and i know that we kind of addressed that in another policy um but i felt like it had a place here and then i also thought there's a lot in this policy and so maybe it's enough for now knowing that it will be more
078of a living document and maybe those things can be added in the future uh thank you director emerson i think those are really good um that's good feedback um we should talk we should have a conversation and what should and shouldn't go there that was something um director wolf and i struggled with what do we include in a definition what are we not so um point taken i think you're right about that um really liked the catch i think it was inadvertent that um staff was left out of the voice section so thank you on that um ed talk for sure we we could work on that um the curriculum grading practices and assessments is an interesting one that was one that i think was originally on the spreadsheet of potential topics and where we
079landed was because we have a specific policy for curriculum um that we should probably review that because uh we some of you may recall the conversation we had uh about that last time and i think it's worth revisiting um but i'm i mean if if there's a way to make it fit here and maybe cross-reference the other policy i wouldn't be opposed to it so i'd be interested in what other folks think um but that was the conversation why we decided to leave it out of this version director emerson thank you and the only thing that i would add to dr bowman's comments is now you know it's funny you have all these revisions and then you realize what you forgot that you started with and as ben mentioned the policy around curriculum was identified
080and i think in the cover sheet where identified the evaluation policies should be reviewed i think that that should go in there and i don't to vice chair bowman's i wonder if there's a in that audit you know or that policy review that there's priority pile uh policies that are reviewed and include that in there um but um great feedback and we'll see how to address that so that it's flagged if it's not here that it's a priority in the coming years because i completely agree it's a good addition so um director research did you want to go next yeah um i want to reiterate what a couple of things that director emerson pointed out um given the number of emails we've gotten from members of the community who are confused about what terms mean
081i think that going overboard on defining terms in this policy is probably a better thing than doing too few and so historically marginalized i think is one that i flagged that i would like to see to find also um in the equitable allocation of resources section there's a parenthetical um about equitably which does not mean equally and that seems like a very um [Music] it's varying a fairly important point the difference between equality and equity and i would say that that requires a definition of its own in the glossaries because that's important um rather than just a parenthetical aside um i share uh director emerson's concern that there is a lot of ed speak um specif especially with a policy that's going to be i'm sure read frequently by members of our community um the
082more we can make it in lay terms rather than edu speak i think it would be stronger policy there's one section in particular that i've liked is the last sentence of cultural competency where it got to uh it almost felt like buzzword bingo to me um and i'm even after reading the sentence a couple of times i'm not entirely sure what all those words together mean i know what the intent of them is but if i were a member of the community i would not have a clue what's being said there so um i think just going through with a an eye to uh who our audience is for this policy it's it is our teachers but it is also members of our community and i want to make sure it's accessible to people who
083don't have that degree um that being said this is a phenomenal first draft and a really impressive piece of work and i want to say thank you for the really hard work you've put into this [Music] rowan and emily do you guys want to go and then we'll follow up with director fox you guys are good all right i kind of have some larger questions and picky stuff um but i wanted i agree with i think most of us here that um we want to be clear on what we're commuting and um i'm not sure who said this but my husband was telling me about it this morning i can't remember who the person was but it says communicate to be understood but not to be missing don't communicate to be understood but not to
084be misunderstood and i think that i agree that we need to be really clear about what we're talking about um and so i i wanted to ask some questions about um use of turns because they're different than what we've used in the past and i just want to understand what we're trying to convey to them so if you guys wouldn't mind bearing with me and we don't have to answer these today but i just think it'd be helpful to maybe have a discussion or clarification um and again be patient please this is some some of them are kind of nitpicky or some some are more important than others but um we talk about um in the first paragraph that this commitment is anchored in the belief that every student has the right to be equitable
085educational opportunities and a school experience that's safe welcoming and respectful and i just wanted to clarify i'm sorry validating empowering and just and i was just wondering um what that what the difference is because in the past we've always talked about safe wealth being respectful and so what do those i'm sorry what do those what those mean yeah first paragraph first paragraph uh let's see second second sentence it says um this commitment is anchored in the belief that every student has a right to equitable educational opportunities in a school experience that is validating empowering unjust and i was just questioning in the past would use terms like self safe welcoming and respectful so i just wanted to understand what we're trying to convey so that was you don't have to answer that okay okay okay
086[Music] and i will make a comment and then i'm going to hand it to vice chair bowman [Music] and i i guess for me um for me when i think about this i i don't know that i wasn't sorry thinking about the language that we've always used in the past and i i think validating and empowering are two words that i think most people would understand and and not feel that they need a definition to him but i'll say for me when you're validated you feel like your your presence and your work is important in in people teachers um peers support what you're doing and your presence is important in the room um empowering is that you are given that space to stand up to speak and that people expect you to be part of
087the conversation just like everyone else and to me just is um that it's right and uh so for me i feel a preamble is aspirational and inspiring and that's visionary to me and what i want for experiences from students and i hadn't really thought about what i would say to that so i appreciate the question but that's what i want for each child and that's what i believe those words mean to me and for that i'm gonna hand it off to them i think that was well said i will just add for me this section was i was thinking about our listening sessions with the students and and the parents um from over a year ago um where well testing uh safe and respected is a is a bare minimum um and not sufficient i
088think i think this is stronger language than we've used in the past but i think that's intentional um validated feeling validated and empowered is more than just feeling safe in a classroom it's um telling you that who you are is not just safe here but it's welcomed and valued and appreciated and then the just piece i think is about just fairness and how recognizing that it's not just to encounter racism it's not just to encounter racial slurs it's not just to experience the disparities in the system that are laid out later in the policy so that's kind of my my two cent thank you that was helpful um so along the same lines i think this is my next my next question is um we use in the second paragraph we use um empow empower
089instead of other words like so that sounds like that's along the same lines it's just you're using stronger language so the third paragraph it talks about despite this commitment the district's persistent opportunity gaps between white students and students of color remain and my clarification there is are we talking about um white students only we're going to include asian students are we just focusing on i'm just curious what the rationale was there too because we're talking about opportunity for academic achievement gaps or i'm sorry third paragraph per sentence [Music] good question um i'm trying to track the paper copy versus okay yeah so despite the despite this commitment the district's persistent opportunity up between white students and students of colors remain i think candidly that's because when uh in most situations where opportunity gaps are discussed
090it is the gap between white students and students of color i think that's um i agree that um that's that's a sort of simplified version of opportunity gap for sure there's other opportunity gaps um but i think for our purposes but specifically yeah so and just to clarify so this is opportunity gaps which isn't achievement necessarily it's and this is where i start getting the terms so opportunity gaps are necessary opportunities to help us help students achieve academically right so opportunity gaps what you're saying is that um it's when we have discussed that it's mostly whites and students of color so i just want again trying to clarify and you know dr ricky smith i mean i know kind of at the front end when we started these conversations with you and and with cabinet
091we talked a lot about the opportunity versus academic those terms so i thought it might be helpful if you kind of gave your perspective because i thought that was an important one for you thank you i think the the issue is uh we have historically not just gtsd but nationally have the conversation about academic gaps and as we dig deeper we understand that those academic gaps many times end up being created because of the opportunity to learn and you've heard a number of public comments related to that today so the the concept here is the opportunity to learn do does every student that walks through the door how they in in is sitting in the classroom have the opportunity to learn at their rate and level so this also means what i appreciate about this
092this policy this also means that we are looking at those students who are we are looking at students who are advanced learners we are looking at students who have not yet reached their full potential simply because potentially they haven't been stretched or provided the right instruction to really help them reach that stretch goal and that's where back on april 26th when i showed you the the current assessment tools um that have been approved in this district is that they literally call out stretch goals for students for that reason because as i looked at our data when i first came in as superintendent it's not just that you take a look at your historically uh at those students of color and other demographics that have have are not moving but you absolutely take a look at
093your tag in advanced learners and when you don't see them achieving the same potential that's a that's a flag that we need to uh really understand each and every student by me by name and by me i'm hopeful that helps okay thank you for your patience again that was helpful okay just because a couple things came to mind when you were talking about that just now um specific things because i'm the example i think a great example of an opportunity that we are addressing is pre-k that not all of our community members have been able to have a pre-k experience and so that is an opportunity that i look at that is something that we're closing and then also the mention under um well-rounded education um mentioning barriers to participation and there's many diverse and
094they might be uh specific to individuals but any kind of barrier like that would an opportunity that they're missing out on okay um so the next sentence just to clarify again in pursuit of creating an equitable and racially just system the district commits to the following and i just want to clarify that statement so um where are we are is this does this statement imply that we're looking at racism because is that causing the opportunity gaps are we just saying um that um that we're trying to create a racially just system by looking at all kinds of different causes benefits that make sense um jill said she thinks it's a ladder and i do too um we are pursuing an equitable and racially just system and because of that we are committing to doing this
095because i think we'll be in tact okay might be good to yeah clarify um and then okay so then um uh oh for equitable allocation of resources a couple of questions i had about that is um so we have i understand what we're trying to achieve with allocation of resources some students need more than others but what i wanted to clarify is so a couple of things who decides and are we saying the superintendent is ultimately in charge based on the paragraphs later about what that who decides what the needs are of students is that we're is that ultimately who we're delegating this to and what at what point does the board make those decisions so [Music] later in that paragraph director fox it says um that district and school administration are directed to invest
096resources using an equity lines yes that's what i'm asking the board is are we delegating that responsibility completely or do we since we ultimately approved budgets i'm just clarifying what the intent of that since how is it different from what we're doing today i guess is what i'm asking i don't think it is different from what we're doing today i think we're codifying what we're doing today in this policy is everybody else yeah sharon [Music] i appreciate what director zurtsmie said i think it is calling out in the policy as we look at all these pieces these are the things that we're committing to so as a budget committee member as a board member we should be using an equity lens we should be thinking about this policy as we make budget decisions did we
097do this in a fair way that really acknowledged resources need to be at a higher level for marginalized students or is the intent of this policy being followed i also feel that that also comes back to the accountability right we said that we want resources equitably allocated voiced empowered a workforce that reflects our students pd that matters reflects cultural competency and then we create an equitable high quality curriculum or education and then we're going to hold it accountable and make sure that we have our community involved to check i mean and and i think at a policy level that's what this is wanting to accomplish chairwolf if i might um i think what you've done here is uh reaffirmed what this district's been doing for over five plus years relative to the smartest school spending
098spending process so you know you all know well you have three charges as a board the governance of this district by a policy the hiring and evaluation of the superintendent and then the management of the budget so to your concern uh director fox i don't see any you know first and foremost the budget is set by that process and the board evaluates that director moore and others we have just completed that process out in schools taking her out in with our community taking a look at what programs are effective what programs are not who do they serve how well are they behaving so i see this as really more my take of this is more of a reaffirmation of what we are already doing and then the superintendent and the district as you are agents
099then follows through with those priorities okay i wanted to chime in a little bit because i i think it's more than just affirming the status quo um i think it's that but also to me one of the important parts of this section is that and the last section is about accountability and we're going to have this report that says here are the disparities in our system refer back to equitable allocation of resources that's where we can shift our levers as a district to close the gaps that we've identified in the audit so i would just add that context that's helpful because um like jill had said in the myth director searchment had said that we're just codifying what we're already committed to doing this past these past couple of years i just wanted to clarify
100so thank you i know director wolf i can tell by the pitch in your voice [Music] let's see so um going down to oh just a couple of definitions um and this gets back to what director emerson talked about under professional development critical self-reflection is there a more is that a more formal um process or is that just you know kind of like what we would use oh i'm gonna think about that so i wanted to ask that was that does that refer to something um a program or a method that we're talking about or is that just i'm sorry um professional development the very last three words on that paragraph opportunity for critical self-reflection just wanted to clarify well for me i go right back to the book that we studied right and thinking
101about our own critical selection so i don't know if that should be a term that needs to be defined by chair bowman you can add as well but i went directly to if i'm an educator if i'm an administrator you know what is my role am i community focused and my asset based lens am i looking at all the opportunities for the student and what is my role in assessing um my own performance in support of those students and that's what that means to me but then i don't know if we want to get over defined but i think it's helpful because we did go through that process of um discussing that as a board what that means i don't know just something to think about if we do want to define it to be
102helpful so that people know what we mean okay and then um what do we mean by in the under cultural competency um at the very last sentence we talk about professional dispossessions especially what is that what is professional disposition [Music] very very last few words under cultural competency the paragraph the very last few words are um and professional dispositions especially so i was just wondering what professional dispositions well what i would offer is what i shared my comments earlier before which is the the idea and you've heard it this evening in terms of uh public comment from our teachers who see themselves as as warm demanders so again it is not so much a canned specific program but um attributes of what we expect to see relative to teachers holding high expectations for students teachers
103believing that every student that walks into their classroom can and will learn regardless of situation um and so i i really uh at this point um you know that's traditional disposition do you believe that every child can learn or do not do you behave in a way that demonstrates that how do we know how do you teach how do you measure how do you respond to data when the student is not learning um versus when the student is learning um and needs to be stretched so all of those are professional dispositions and i think that um that phrase the phrasing was actually pulled from um oregon's framework for evaluating administrators disposition is yes that is correct and those um going forward uh will be some of the standards that you know based on uh when
104when this this policy is put into implementation we will then go back through the evaluation standards for teachers and administrators and call those about those standards that align to this language well i really like that explanation by the way that was real that's very rich and meaningful i know you've said that before but i love when you explain that because it's just very rich i know that it it it sounds as though it is more complicated it's not it's just about great teaching but i think it's nice to have it laid out and i know you'll do that in the standards anyway so thank you okay i'm almost done oh the only thing i was going to say under accountability um we're talking about that first paragraph by the way i really like that paragraph
105um but the first sentence where it talks about the superintendent will annually lead the completion of an equity audit which will systematically review existing policies programs professional available budgets student outcomes to ensure so we're not i mean what does that look like because we're the descriptions actually down below right in terms of what we want um because when i first read that i go whoa that's a lot of stuff to report on but i felt better as i read further down we got more specific so i just wanted to clarify is that what that intended is kind of the overall versus the specific down below because that seems like a lot and so i just want to understand what we're actually asking for so we don't overwhelm our superintendent yeah i think um so we're
106not asking for an annual review of literally every single policy but we're saying that the audit should review all of these different components of our district as they relate to the disparities that get identified before and with your interpretation you know and i agree vice terpene and even as we think about policies right i think you know if if that's and i really am looking to the future board right how and certainly to dr ricky smith um as superintendent um in terms of what are the specifics what is the community committee accountability what will this look like what does year one look like and i think you know already there's some really meaningful and meeting policies to have a conversation about but i think it just creates a lens um or um a decision point
107that says yes we're going to hold ourselves accountable um even in the meeting that i was with on the governor's call on funding it was talking about community engagement with sia and what a great process that what have all our districts close the loop and come back to the community to say this is the sai dollars this is what we're and i think this is what we're trying to accomplish here it's that close the loop back um to our community and to share what we've been doing i like that a lot and so i just hope that we codify that again and this covers that in this paragraph because i think we put a lot of thought into this as a board and so i just want to make sure that comes comes across as
108understood can you clarify um real what specifically do you would you like to see codified in the language basically just the explanation of all that we just discussed we can go back and watch the video i don't have any specific suggestion investment you're asking um i was just more of a question and maybe it's something to mull over um before the next one about whether it's conveying what we've said yeah because my only comment was going to be i don't know that i would change the words based on the conversation i don't know that's what i'm um kind of trying to get really specific here uh so but i appreciate the question so this gets to audience if the superintendent and the cabinet feel that this is operationalizable then that's that's our goal that's my
109that was the audience i think i was writing for when we were crafting this so i would kind of use that as our standard but that's my preference so um before we wrap up the first reading i did want to get a sense because i assume next steps will be we will huddle bring back a revised version for second reading potential adoption um uh director emerson is written down um historically marginalized as wanting a definition jill has called out equity and equality um as needing to be defined are there any other definitions that folks want included in that glossary possibly um [Music] cultural responsiveness and i know that we have competency there but there is a slight difference and especially if we're going to address director fox's question about critical self-reflection since that was culturally
110responsive leadership the critical responsiveness would be reflective of the critical self-reflection that that would capture that were you and that that should be another one i think i'm more and okay got it okay i really appreciate the conversation i feel this is incredibly doable to move forward and we will move forward with a second read at the first june meeting if there's any other and karen i appreciate you putting it and writing for us on some of the adjustments and then certainly uh dr ricky smith if staff have given you any feedback um certainly forward that to vice chair bowman and myself so we can address that but um many of you that are still here that participated in the feedback process i'm really grateful for your time and commitment towards this policy and i
111think then with that we will close a report in discussions and we will move to our action items and the first one is student representative resolutions yes we are going to take a five minute recess and it's 8 13 so let's just say 8 20 we'll do um seven minutes and thank you all [Music] okay hey so wow okay um uh okay um all right okay your fault at this point [Music] all right if we could get people settled back down we'll begin with our action items [Music] so we will begin this evening uh with our student representative resolutions and um my uh board book is not loading so i can't see it but i know they're there and i um first want to recognize i don't think that eddie is with us patty is
112that correct okay um so i i do want to uh director emerson is going to read the resolutions for us so i will hand the mic to her before we get that far though i'm certain that directors arts me director bowman and director fox would like to share but rowan and emily you have been just outstanding student advocates and really went toe-to-toe in engagement conversation thought with us and i am just so grateful for your leadership and i think uh i hear that there are quite a few candidates for next year and i think that's also a reflection of the engagement that you've done and that that's been modeled and they see it and see the opportunity and i certainly am not going to leave vice chair bowman out of that leadership piece but truly
113um if you uh show what the potential could be and i'm grateful for that so thank you and i'll hand the mic back and forth and then i'll have director emerson uh read the resolution so and i hopefully if you've figured out how to combine them uh just a couple remarks i and i mean this sincerely i think you have set the standard for your positions um and what they could be you it's been remarkable to watch the level of confidence you came into this role from the very beginning standing up to board members myself included pushing back on our position standing up to our cabinet and administrators when you disagree with them respectfully always um but that's what student voice is supposed to be about not just when you agree with what's happening but
114when you're representing a different perspective and genuinely think that the way you've approached this role is unique from what i've seen historically and i just have so much admiration for that rowan is headed off to duke congratulations to rowan uh and emily believe it or not we get another year of emily in ttsd um though i don't believe she's applied to continuing her role um you've done a fantastic job so i just wanted to say thank you both and for kind of alluding maureen alluded to this but i do think you've made it cool you've made it um uh you've made it some you've made it appealing for people to engage at the school board level in a way that again is is new and i just think so exciting for ttsd um and i
115think as maureen said that the pool of applicants that we have to replace you is reflective of that so you should be very proud of yourselves and we're all proud of you thank you well vice chair bowman stole my line about i really appreciated how you have grown and matured and um gone toe to toe with us gone toe to toe with me um it's it's refreshing it's invigorating and it's great to be challenged by my students because then i know that somebody out there is teaching you right so we're doing something right so thank you for being such phenomenal representatives of your schools and uh and emily next year come back and give us public on it anytime you want [Music] um i just want to say that you came you came at a
116you know it could have been a worse year the amount of growth that i've seen and all of us really i mean honestly all of us but um you two as well and i just want to commend you on just learning along with the rest of this through this year and that's part of the fun of being on the board is learning you know and growing and learning from each other so i appreciate your contributions you guys have some really good questions i have to say so thank you and you are respectful and that's our part of the civil discourse process of learning how to have discourse um but i wanted to ask you guys a question if i can if that's okay and that is um what are your takeaways what what have you
117learned um that's that's i i definitely have to say that i know a lot more about how the school board operates thankfully additionally i know more about how the district operates and kind of how i can try to get something done not just in a school district but i think that will go with me as i go throughout the rest of my life just how to interact with people in a way that you try you can collaborate and get something done that you might not think is possible initially but i think it's been a really great experience to collaborate with everyone here and definitely something different from any other experience i've had so that is very very valuable to me i would say the same things i've learned um differentiating the pathways to which we
118can make change and um whether it be like at the cabinet like if i need to talk to cabinet or knowing that i need to talk to the board or how to tap into the different resources that our district provides so that we can really like make change the right part of what we're trying to change which is hard for um sometimes hard for community members to um distinguish just because sometimes the processes are murky and so that's something that i really appreciate from all of you and um as well as like i think linguistically like the process of writing policy and assessing them is just like something you don't you don't get to do in any any other position and so i really appreciate that and lastly i just wanted to bring up i
119definitely did learn the difference between policy and ar specifically thanks to uh superintendent dr so thank you for that that did take a while but i think i think now i i want to chime in and say thank you very much for your engagement all this year um when we were looking at our squares we knew we could always count on you to be there and to share your thoughts um i've been fortunate enough to sit by the student reps all four years and i have loved every minute of that so i'm thrilled that i finally got to sit next to you guys tonight i'm sorry that that was our first chance um but that was something that was always special to me so i'm glad we get two more we have them come to
120both both of them i hope you'll come to two more meetings so that i get to sit with you again that probably went over the microphone um uh russ i just saw you sitting there and i just wanted to do a shout out to addie because uh just so appreciate again how we ensure we have voice from all our high schools uh incredibly thoughtful student really appreciated having him and i know patty has something of appreciation and gratitude from the board and look forward to having student participation next year so please tell convey to eddie how much we really appreciate his participation in how important it is to have that from creekside so thank you so very much um and so i think with that uh director emerson i'll hand it back to you and
121you can read the resolution okay tiger tualton school district 23j resolutions 2021 15 16 and 17 recognizing the outstanding contributions of school community relations of emily huang tran rowan kelleher and eddie agrion reincome whereas emily rowan and eddie have served as the tualatin high school tiger high school and creekside community high school student representatives to the board for the 2020-21 school year and whereas they have been excellent liaisons between the students of the wallet and tiger and creekside community high schools and the tiger tulton school board of directors and whereas their reports about the activities and events at tualatin tigard and greekside community high schools and the achievements of tiger tualatin excuse me achievements of tualatin tigard and creekside community high school students and staff members have been informative and articulate and have addressed issues
122of concern to both the students and the school board and whereas the outstanding manner in which they have done their job this year and the leadership skills they have shown have made them exemplary representatives of the tarleton tigard and creekside community high schools student bodies to both the school board and the community [Music] and now therefore be it resolved on this 24th day of may 2021 by the board of directors of tiger 12th and school district 23j that emily huang tran rowan kelleher and eddie aguian rincon be commended for their outstanding manner in which they have performed their responsibilities as tualatin tiger and creekside community high school representatives and for the contribution they have made toward school community [Music] relations i move to approve the resolution as read motion was made and seconded to approve
123resolutions as presented any further discussion okay since we're all together we'll just do choral response this evening um all those in favor signify by saying i i opposed motion carries and congratulations again and thank you both the next item on our action list middle school 6 8 science curriculum adoption recommendation director robson test test okay daddy thank you for chairwolf members of the board good to see you this evening in person um it's a different thing um rowan and emily i like to say congratulations also well all done this year um what we want to do this evening is take you through a presentation that brings forward a recommendation for amplify science which is a 6 8 science curriculum exciting piece about this especially tonight is that this recommendation would put us in a place
124to have a k8 very cohesive science program with the recent adoption of our twig k-5 curriculum as well so they play off of each other very well and in terms of how that curriculum spirals and moves kids through the system so exciting in that regard i do want to introduce tonight elise cohn our k-12 math and science tosa she is new to us this year as of about a couple months ago um when ashley thomas who was in that role made a move to another district um based on a family need that they satisfied and so we were really excited to be able to um bring elise on board and so happy to have her adrian ash science teacher from fowler middle school is here this evening as well um one of the reasons we
125absolutely want to hear her voice this evening is because she is one of our practitioners who is using amplify and has been an integral part of the committee uh who worked us through the process here to come to a recommendation our newfound torres was also slated to be here um a teacher science teacher at hazelbrook and fowler he's actually doing duties at both schools and he was unfortunately not able to make it this evening and then lauren loney will give us some audio she is a team member from amplify science um who if we were virtual would have been here with us um but uh is not able to based on distance uh and uh but um added audio to a couple of slides that we really um we really appreciate that because one of
126the things that we expect when we go through these processes when we come to recommendation is that we take on new teammates this is not just a publisher um in and out situation but we will look for those folks who can team with us uh and stick with us throughout the life of the the adoption so that said um patty if you go to the next slide just a review of our science committee process we uh had committee creation um oh i'm sorry gotta have jumped ahead one i think um so just a reminder we had go ahead and go to the next level thanks yeah thank you i jumped ahead go go back one patty thank you um hold tight there for a second um but we had not only our tosa our tnl
127team but then we had representation across our three middle schools eleven uh teacher representatives um from sixth through eighth grade uh we had administrators who sat with us on this committee and throughout we also have our board curriculum represented using director emerson and director zirschmied who have always been diligent about being a part of these processes as well as as a part of our community conduit through these processes so patty if you go onto the next slide now just want to review the science committee process so these bullets here really summarize how we move through a process that includes the creation of a committee a building a foundational uh guiding philosophy uh specific to um science we did it specific to k-8 science because we had science teachers k5 through these processes sitting alongside initially
128with our sixth through eighth grade science teachers the power behind that is that those are deeper conversations that really draw out what we what as a team and a group of practitioners strongly believe is wrapped around instruction that followed by some very cohesive clear statements uh instruction that and then also assessment that and so those guiding that guiding philosophy then was grounded us throughout our work uh as we move through the process we aligned ngss standards um and we looked at prioritizing those standards so another awesome opportunity through our processes is that when we come together alignment of standards is key to moving forward through this and making sure that we do have that alignment and the beauty of that is that we have folks in the same room k-8 in this situation that were
129able to um look at that vertical articulation where now you're talking not just about colleagues who are in k5 if i'm elementary at grade level or 6 8 if i'm in middle school but really looking at the progression of priority standards throughout k8 and then we come to a gap analysis through looking at our current resources that we have looking at those prioritized standards and saying do we have gaps and what kind of gaps do we have and the result of that gap analysis leads us to ask the question do we need simply more supplementation or excuse me actually um kind of an initial is do we just need more more teacher training do we need to focus on some training with the current resource um to wrap around pedagogy um that uh you know
130in in best practice and or two do we are at a place where we need to bring in some supplementation some different materials alongside the current materials we have alongside also supportive teacher training and then finally the third decision then comes to based on that gap analysis do we need to move through a full adoption and that's where we landed with the gap analysis that we did so we moved through that process and we then move into our current reviews and are through that vetting of and rating of curriculums that come to the table then we're able to get to a place of curriculum consensus and then recommendation next slide penny thank you so just as you click on these patty um to bring up a few things this i just wanted to share this
131um as you click go ahead and and do that it will start to build the timeline and i just wanted folks to see that we started this process in october of 2019 and as we move through what i was describing in terms of the process we get ourselves to a place where we were so up to december 3rd 2019 we had um we've developed a rubric and um we were at the output ready to then start rating our curriculum as a part of that process in january yeah keep clicking it's kind of funky that way um but we got to our final publisher presentations um we collected and analyzed the results we did some activities that really brought to the surface where our where our committee was in terms of teachers were in terms of
132um the the ratings uh that were coming forward in in terms of the curriculum curriculum curriculum being presented and then we got to a place of recommendation consensus actually with amplify science and then what's been consistent throughout our processes has been that we um our committees have really wanted to dive a little deeper even though we were landing at amplify science it was an opportunity to say but can we also dive a little deeper into a unit or two with a pilot and so um it's we found that to be a great opportunity and so we were we actually moved on that and we trained um our teachers uh around a unit within amplify science to go a little deeper and then something called a pandemic rolled around so we had a shutdown and unfortunately
133um you know we had to wait on that a little bit however that the impetus of the the pilot was really wrapped around a lot of wanting to understand even further the technology behind amplify science and the ability there's a lot of technology components that were intriguing and strong on paper and hearing that but one folks wanted to grapple with those a little deeper so cdl comes to play and those who were trained and the combination of having options with florida virtual and amplify folks were able to at different varying levels really continue to move down the path of using amplified so that was encouraging that led us to then be able to pat if you would move to the next slide to come to a place of bringing our teachers and our communities back
134to the table and wrapping around a debrief that was more intentional having had additional opportunities for folks to use amplify and uh and get us to this place of recommendation so elise i'm going to turn that over to you so here we have um on the right is the philosophy statement and as todd mentioned this is one of the grounding documents for this process we're looking at how curriculum instruction and assessment are playing out for the curriculum and then using that the rubric is really closely tied to it and it helps to identify those priorities such as culturally responsive practices that are then rated for the different curricula that are being evaluated and it allows particular resources to rise to the top next slide and so ed reports is another um data point that was
135considered it's an independent nonprofit that evaluates instructional materials and they review middle school science curriculum and this well they review other things too but for middle school science this is the only curriculum that um met all of the expectations in the different categories so it was the most highly rated uh next slide uh so in terms of debriefing wanted to add this slide this is similar to when we went through our twig our k5 twig science adoption as well the debriefing we wanted to point these out because you know the rubrics are important to understand in terms of the committee themselves really digging into making sure we've got the right components to that uh curriculum that comes through the door uh and then um the these the activity that you see their number two um
136the evaluations spending my dollar was another way we've done some similar processes through the sia process and when we look at budget and that kind of thing but it's an opportunity for folks a couple different variations to really talk about why they like what they like coming off of the evaluation and use of the rubric and it gives us some hard data that really shows where the committee is specific to the curriculum that is rising which ones are rising to the top and then through those processes amplify science rose to the top and all of those exercises that we put forward and then the the curriculum the other piece of that curriculum comparisons then um you know once those were narrowed um that data itself really was the determining factor um based on all the
137vetting that took place uh and uh and then we went through consensus processes especially coming back from the debrief after we've moved through cdl regrouped and really dug into making sure we were on the right track still with amplify science after having that kind of extended interesting situation that we found ourselves in so um and so we had um 86 of our committee um who um was saying yes this is this is the choice um let's go down that road we as a smaller group of 11 one one of our committee members also then said um which equates to 14 and said um i am absolutely in favor but i do have some more questions so it opened up the opportunity for some questions um and so we went down that path so we were
138very confident that yes indeed we have come to that recommendation next slide patty please so there is a curriculum um overview website that is just part of what we want to be able to do is to have folks dig in uh and take a look at the curriculum we opened up a two-week window as we do and and provided a community with an opportunity to look at take a virtual tour of the curriculum ask questions provide any perspective as they've looked at the curriculum itself and that's always really helpful because it just gives us a sense of what's out there for our community and gives folks an opportunity to dig in it also includes other teachers in our district the ability to do that um patty next slide if you would and um so this
139is where at least i'm going to hand this to you and just kind of let you do it sure so we had invited our amplify partners to come tonight and they were all on board and then we realized that we were in person so instead of being able to be here with us um lauren loney who um was one of the team put together some audio and in the next two slides we're gonna hear a little bit of um about amplify from amplify team so if we could equity diversity and inclusion we know the importance of dei to the tiger tualatin school district amplify is proud to have dei as a major focus in designing high quality instructional materials thank you for allowing me to share what amplify science has done to increase awareness of
140equity diversity and inclusion we know the importance of dei to the tiger tualatin school district amplify is proud to have dei as a major focus so um in designing high quality okay okay decision is proud to have dei as a major focus in designing high quality instructional materials to that end amplify science is built around three key points when it comes to dei all right thanks all right so our last part we um wanted to share with you some voices from teachers who are using um amplify with their with their students in the classroom and so we have today adrienne ash who's going to share her experiences thank you aj hello so um i kind of would just second what the amplify representative just said the things that she mentioned are things that i have
141seen as i've been using this i used it last spring because i had access as a member of the adoption committee i've been using it this school year i also checked in with our new voltors today to get some of his feedback to include in this and the thing that i've really liked about this curriculum is it is focused on the ngss and the ngss next generation science standards are very phenomenon based and this is designed that way every unit the students have a first generation diverse representation problem to solve amplify science to real world meaning like why is australia have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world or what exhibit would a newly discovered fossil go into in a natural history museum so that it's accurately displayed and as they move through
142the unit they are the learning centers around that question it comes back to that question every lesson has a question that they specifically investigate that relates to that bigger question and as they do the work in that unit they're really focused on evidence they're looking at what evidence can we collect to help us answer these questions to make this bigger decision that we need to make for this unit and they do it with a variety of sources there are hands-on activities videos really robust engaging simulations that they can gather all sorts of data from and that they really enjoy i have had students tell me these simulations are fun i've watched them play with them just to play with them even though we weren't using them in class so they really love those simulations that
143are part of this there are readings that they do that are up-to-date readings that have a lot of things built in to help students understand the reading it's in english it is in spanish it can be read aloud to them it has embedded reading annotation strategies that they use and a lot of student discussion around the readings and the evidence that they've collected as they work to answer these questions vocabulary is also distinctly called out it's posted on the wall it's revisited to help them learn these terms that they're not familiar with they have built-in self-checks for their own understanding there's a new unit check that allows the teachers to see where students stand in their understanding and differentiate them into activities that allow them to either bolster their understanding if they need it or
144take it further if that's the place that they're at and they all get to end the unit with a socratic seminar that allows them to use what they've learned and apply it to a new related question that goes along with the unit that they've been doing it also has engineering internships embedded throughout each grade level where they're using their learning to help solve an engineering problem such as designing an emergency supply drop to deliver aid after a natural disaster after learning about force in motion or developing a drug to battle malaria after learning about natural selection in addition to all of that robust material that it has for the students i have never seen a company so supportive of the teachers that use their materials they have a lot of great supports already built into
145it they have a very responsive system they even have a chat available that we could chat with them right there in the middle of class of the issue came up they listen to teacher feedback they adjust as necessary as necessary they've included activities that teachers have suggested before they also this year because they knew people would be online design slideshows for their teachers to use for their distance learning so they're really there to support the teachers to in turn support the kids with what they're learning and one thing our newfound wanted me to point out as the tweet teacher who has been using this all of the materials for both the students and the teachers are available in english and in spanish which provides a really robust support for our tweet program there is no
146need for the tweet teachers to translate anything everything videos simulations reading all of it is available for students to use in spanish as well as in english so this curriculum is a lot different than anything we've ever used before at the middle school level in ttsd but i am incredibly impressed by what it does i feel that by the end of unit students have a deeper understanding of the content and they're also learning throughout the year the idea of collecting evidence analyzing evidence and using that evidence to support questions and support statements that they're making and i really think that this is going to do a lot to have a really well-rounded robust science education for our middle school students in this district thank you agent fantastic um i think at this point with questions
147[Music] uh well powerful endorsement adrian thank you for being here to share that perspective i think it's really helpful for us um my question and todd you alluded to this at the beginning in terms of alignment um with curriculum at upgrade levels sounds like a really excellent company the ratings seem really stellar where are we at adopts get for um science curriculum across the board so um um so twig k5 we recently adopted last year so well a little before before the the shutdown um so we are at a place right now we have this year um done some training with our k5 teachers with twig to get them ready and and moving into the summer having had that experience so in the fall they'll be using it as our science adoption uh and then
148this assuming hopefully that we we move forward with this particular curriculum um this will be again uh our efforts will be to continue to train and bring our teachers on board so next year without a doubt in the fall folks are are using amplified through and through so that's the k-8 scene in terms of our efforts at the high school level 9 12 next fall we actually jump into pulling our biology chem and physics teachers in building a process for for those curricular areas so we hopefully mid-year if all goes smoothly through the process we'll be at a place of recommendation for 912 science as well so thank you thank you thank you for the presentation um i just had a clarifying question when you talked about consensus you were talking about on the committee
149um what was what was some of the input from the other because the other middle school school teachers my understanding is they didn't participate in the pilot they had a chance to have a chance for input the input realistically from other teachers who are not part of that process comes it can come through a pilot so teachers have the opportunity to dive into a pilot that you know it's not just the committee um so we do have some teachers who have experienced uh amplified to the degree that they have through that process the quirkiness of it all realistically with the shutdown was that it didn't make it a smooth kind of uh process overall that way to get more people kind of hands-on uh in that sense however that opportunity throughout um you know adrian
150and colleagues on the committee also speak for you but you know are are talking to their colleagues throughout the process uh and um you know feedback runs through the committee um and then also that two-week window where we say listen we've got a recommendation here they get communication from my seat um that goes through a committee as well that goes out to teachers and then they've got some opportunity to dive into the the um online experience to go through the curriculum asking all questions as well so as much as we can getting folks in the know around that especially from a science colleague perspective for sure thank you and then just a follow-up question that about um i know it's been tough to get parent involvement during the covid pandemic but was there an attempt
151to or was there an effort to get parent input through this and so yeah that was much like twig because we were still in that we were in that virtual setting when we were doing the where we ended up doing an online google form virtual tour that we put out to everybody and said during this time frame dig into it take a look do you have questions do you have comments um we haven't historically in those processes even when we've done uh you know in the same room kinds of opportunities through our adoption processes with not only um um you know viewing the curriculum but then also having what we've uh put forward as a parent night where we've actually had not only our publisher colleagues come but also then teachers that who walk through
152the curriculum we haven't had that opportunity through the virtual so it's been really specific to that virtual tour that folks have been able to do and providing feedback that way and mostly positive yeah yep yeah we haven't we we haven't historically received a lot even when it's been face-to-face folks have come it's it's been very positive across the board so it's been exciting okay if no fellow board members have any other comments i moved the board approved purchase of a three-year adoption of amplified science curriculum for grades six through eight and including professional development supporting transformational instructional practices in an amount not to exceed 256 thousand dollars as presented a second motion was made and seconded to adopt the implied science curriculum as presented further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed
153motion carries and thank you both for joining us tonight and it was really powerful to hear the feedback from the classroom thank you um and we will move to um new course proposals director robson gets to stay put um and i think uh russ will be joining us um or maybe just listening i'm not sure uh new course proposals quality middle school and creekside high school director robson and welcome russ [Music] yes thank you again uh board chairwolf members of the board we have we're shifting now to a new course proposals for 12 middle school and creekside community high school and as a part of our process just as a reminder that we generally shoot for kind of a first go round effort around january as the year has progressed and giving folks an opportunity
154to understand potentially what they want from uh mostly from a secondary standpoint obviously our middle schools as are represented here tonight chime in and have some ideas around new courses but for the most part our high schools or who we see come forward but that said this year has been a year again as i mentioned the last time we were here in working with our high schools our two larger comprehensive high schools they didn't have any in fact purposefully said we're not going to move on any new course proposals this year we're going to really focus on um engaging our students and currently what we have um as we move through this virtual world we were living in so but with that um we did have our twee new course proposals the last time as
155we roll into um high school and and hazelbrook eighth grade uh and uh and then in the interim um creekside and swally both said hey we've got a couple of awesome opportunities here that we'd like to make sure we get forward in the month of may here and uh absolute thumbs up say yes let's um let's vet those and let's go through that process to see that we're ready to go so appreciate them being here we'll start off with creekside community high school and i'll hand the microphone over to russ but we do have a creekside um or in a creekside community action squad that must be talking about this evening so russ welcome thank you todd and i'd love to introduce uh heather paulson who's going to be our new coordinator of equity centered
156instruction at creekside next year who's been helping me put this proposal together so i want to start three years ago the staff of what would become creekside community high school took a really close look at culturally responsive teaching and in that we identified uh all of the trademarks of learner dependence identities in our students uh and if you're not familiar with that concept it's basically learn dependence you know you you find success by jumping through the hoops by completing the assignments by keeping your head down by getting through and when we talked about that and saw that we came at that with some sadness to know that these students had so much more to offer the world and to themselves and to their families into their communities and so we set out with this purpose
157of how do we shift that with intention to learner independence to identities filled with agency and a sense of possibility uh so i asked my teachers how are we going to do that and we formed a structure that we call collaboration for innovation teams if you've been following our sip plan you've probably seen that in there over the years and those folks named four potential areas one was we got to figure out how to develop deep relationships community and trust not only between us and the kids but between the kids and each other so that they can truly and authentically collaborate take risks and step into their growth song the next one was project-based learning and there's a lot to be offered there in terms of reorienting away from assignments and towards doing something the
158next was individualized competency-based assessment which shifts from a completion of assignments to how do we focus on the learning that happened and not only that how do we lead a process by which kids can reflect and think about their own learning and measure themselves and their own growth against all these things that we think are important and then finally and this is like the fourth and most important one for me is social and emotional learning how do we overcome obstacles when working with others in a meaningful way solve problems and face the music when it's time to make decisions together despite those potential obstacles and conflicts so we need socially and emotionally responsive environments and kids with skills all of this led us to what we call the emerging model of learning at creekside and
159i think that rowan said it great earlier he said uh you know he in this process he learned that he could do something that he didn't know was possible and that's what we want for every student to learn that lesson so to put that into a structure so we can do it every week all the time and then work at a grassroots level together as a staff to see if we can figure out how to aim that high for every student in creekside we came up with this idea of community action squad so maybe i'll let heather give a quick overview what that is so hi oh this is han okay uh i'm not used to being on a microphone also this pitch of voice is not um always to be amplified so just let
160me know uh anyway um so we are wanting to have students be able to work collaboratively to identify and solve a problem we really want them to be looking in their own communities for problems that feel authentic and relevant to them and then to work with their team to research those problems and come up with some type of action so that can be a school community it can be their greater community but it is looking at something that feels real um and relevant and important to them and asking them to go through the entire process from research uh to implementation they would be engaging in this every wednesday and they would be working with a consistent group and a consistent teacher leader uh in their implementation of projects and the idea is that these really
161come from student initiatives and that teachers are there to coach but they're not there to leave that we are really looking at students to be making decisions collaboratively on what they would like to do and that the teacher is there to support them to help give them tools that they might need to execute or to reach their goals so the teacher is not setting an agenda every day for the students that the students are going to be working to set those agendas themselves we feel like this is going to increase students belief in themselves their own agency and also provide that with some real world skills that you really need once you get out of k12 education to be able to set your own goals to create a plan and be able to execute it
162nice uh and i wanted to talk just a little bit about assessment methodologies because this one is just a little bit different than probably a lot of what comes across the new course proposal this is a course and it's a cte course that fits into our community leadership pathway and there are standards as you can see in this proposal that relate to the kind of 21st century skills you might call them soft skills social and emotional learning skills that how we work and how we move towards a goal ourselves and together but in addition to that we have an endless possibility for earning specific subject area credit across the requirements for oregon graduation we do that by having school-wide competency rubrics in all of these areas with standards attached that align to all the things
163that we need to align to that we can have students collect a learning portfolio every quarter and they'll be doing guided reflections throughout they'll be choosing to focus on certain elements and areas of the project based on what they are interested in but also what kind of credits they want to earn then they'll be able to sit down with a group of teachers to do a reflection conference look at that collection and then be able to decide what makes sense in terms of additional credit we are doing this not uh not as a requirement for graduation but as an opportunity to go beyond what they'll be able to earn in all their other classes so this will be sort of a benefit of bonus um it's it's free credit so to speak if they want
164to go out there and earn at this point we'd love to hear any questions that you might have [Music] not a question but a comment because i was loving um you're talking about building community with the advisory group but to me it was like an opportunity community-wide because there would be something like hey what are you working on oh i'm working on this oh that's really interesting i don't just seem like a really wonderful opportunity kind of like our elementary schools that do one school one book or something along those lines where it's just kind of a conversation love it for that now i would just add that doing my best with this yeah to talk about the kinds of projects that folks are working on to be able to cross pollinate good ideas and
165ask for help from those people that have additional we're also going to dedicate part of our kind of our our version of a school newspaper to sharing the good work that's happening across the school through this program [Music] so i'm curious if you have um talked about this proposal with any of the current students and what ideas they might have for what a project in this curriculum might look like sure yeah actually it was uh eddie who came up with this name so you know him and yeah we've been talking with students about this for sure and we do have a couple of project ideas that have been kicked around i think heather can share one um so we had talked a little bit about students interest in houselessness and also in food insecurity and
166so we had sort of briefly done some brainstorming around what students could do and one approach to designing a project is to look at what resources you have available to you creekside is really really lucky to be working with superfresh and also to be uh housing a culinary arts program and so that is a resource that we could lean on uh to kind of utilize and be able to address that problem students were i think enthusiastic about that idea um and then another approach would be to find community partners who are already doing really good work in areas that students are interested in and then have students reach out to those organizations and think about how they can be excellent supporters of some good work that's already going on in the community [Music] thank you
167okay can i oh can i make i just i just wanted to make a comment and um you guys never cease to amaze me in your innovative ideas and um just the observations you have around you know how to improve our teaching of students and so i just want to thank you for that your reflectiveness um but i also you answered my question but one of my first questions was it was kind of the name actually i thought where's the rigor because it sounds kind of action squad action figure but um but thank you you did answer my question around that so i appreciate it but this is um sounds really great [Music] right one more group yeah so thank you guys we'll we'll have quality come up and then we'll refer back to the
168board yeah gwen hey hello hello all right so um gwen i will hand this over to you you've kind of seen the process here but just give you an opportunity to share um the outdoor explorations idea that's coming yeah i i feel like i'm coming on the heels there's a lot of synergy between um the science curriculum the concepts around the science curriculum you just heard and the the course at um creekside because uh this outdoor explorations uh course proposals an elective course proposal for seventh and eighth grade students no prerequisite it's an opportunity for us to use our makers new maker space to invite middle school students to explore math and science concepts within the context of real world problems that involve construction engineering sustainability and also enviro their own environment so we're going
169to be looking to find community partners that'll come in uh to work with us whether it be in the architecture field construction water treatment in some ways there's a cte component where we are exposing our students to a lot of different careers bring them into our school to think about how to do project and place place learning within the context of our campus and our neighborhood so one of you know obviously in the one of the things we'd like to do is build a garden we're not going to do that overnight we're going to start with inviting our students to think about the problem of design of a garden in our space here and have them work in teams to construct designs that we will consider and that might be our the first stage of
170of course like this but um other units that might involve is think about building your own composting and how that would um that would work and in the process it's a lot of fun hands-on learning activating science math and engineering concepts in real world ways we're going to have them give them opportunity to use the equipment in the maker space and build confidence around using that to build and construct together and share ideas so that is what all the outdoor explorations is about um it is grounded in the next generation science standards as we were discussing with the science curriculum and it fills in a suite of elective classes that we have around introducing students to engineering and design concepts at the middle school level yeah any questions on that want to come dig in
171the dirt with us [Music] yes okay yeah all right come on out for joel um i love this idea i want to take this class i wish this class had been offered when i was in middle school um and yeah i'll be one of your parents i'm actually very serious you can come play with us i would i love to dig in the dirt and the idea of worm composting is just oh yeah there's gonna be worms [Music] it just made me think that i guess we had some flooding type issues out here we're looking at director bernard wasn't there some flooding here at quality yes these students are going to analyze that real world problem and we're going to bring in bernard and we're going to solve it together i just wanted to say
172thank you for being here and presenting this this is the type of course that i think um has the ability to help student potential career um and feel passionate you know we talked about this at a board meeting about women in stem and how it takes experiential opportunities sometimes for people to imagine themselves in a certain path and that's why i find this so exciting so thank you for being here to present it emily you're going to come back to quality and dig in the dirt yes definitely um but this reminds me of um there was a girl in my sophomore a sophomore year class and she really wanted um for us to be able to turn some of our lunch um food into compost and i think she goes to creekside now but i
173would love to see this uh continue into high school because it would be great we eat so much we waste so much as well um so i'm really glad that this is a thing thank you i move that the tiger twalton school board approved the following new course at quality middle school outdoor explorations and the following new course at creekside community high school creekside community action squad as presented a second motion was made and seconded to approve new courses as presented any further discussion just to thank you gwen as well i didn't get to chance to say that and just outstanding creative courses to bring forward so we'll excuse you todd for being late i'm sorry oh no well they can they can walk back and we'll vote we'll be efficient here as we try
174to wrap up um all those in favor signify by saying oppose motion carries um and with that we will move to uh director bernard a redefining learning and technology person purchase and welcome back dr mccall and director bernard i brought a friend so that we could transition to the next topic very smoothly so i i don't want to interrupt you in seven minutes i'm gonna make a motion to extend the meeting to 10 o'clock but i think after night you have to do it after 9 30. no we have it it says we do it at 9 30. so i'm excited and even though the agenda says can i still have to take a vote on it something you guys can look up in boardmanship 101 but i do think it's 9 30 and you're
175supposed to extend it so on that i think a motion was made to extend the meeting to 10 o'clock do i have a second uh motion was made and seconded to extend the meeting until 10 o'clock further discussion all those in favor signify by saying i oppose motion carries good evening board care wolf members of the board um this is my third visit and final one this year to request for approval for purchasing with bond funds um i came before for some student devices and we just this one is for the program labs and so we don't have labs at our elementary schools anymore we have labs that are associated with classes in our secondary schools and so the purchase request tonight with bond funds specifically is for our middle school programs um bayard lions
176is would be the recipient that you met earlier um here at quality and we have a program lab at um both the other middle schools as well additionally once a year because we have landed on a process for purchasing equipment so that we can um try to right-size both the equipment and get purchasing efficiencies we buy once a year and so we have our it warehouse and we stock our warehouse in the spring and we ask people to hold their funds to try to make purchases in the spring or estimate what they might do for the next year so both for support and for rollout efficiencies we also have some items in the purchase request tonight that would go into our warehouse we have some measure 98 funds that are being requested to be used
177we've got some title one dollars and uh uh excuse me teachers can also buy with their path and so from time to time they buy some ipads or something like that out of the warehouse so it's a combination of devices that i don't know what happened with the apple quote um and this year amongst all years apple decided in their infinite wisdom to put colors with their imacs so there are an odd number um as director emerson noticed that there is not an even number of imacs because some are going into the warehouse and there are a variety of colors so um it sounded very exciting to our middle school staff so we were trying to appease the rainbow of colors in our labs are there any questions that you may have around the purchase
178or what's on the list there i moved that the tiger twalden school district board approved purchase of program lab and computer purchases with district funds including 194 217 in 2017 bond funds and authorized the district superintendent or cfo to sign the purchase order to apple inc in an amount not to exceed 420 869 as submitted motion was made and seconded um to adopt emotion as presented any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed motion carries thank you very much and we will move quickly into our k-12 online school proposal uh dr lisa mccall and director bernard i'm thank you good evening board chair wolf uh vice chair bowman board members and reps so tonight uh this is a follow-up from our presentation uh at the last board member board meeting and
179so what we're here to um discuss is our proposal for a k-12 uh virtual academy for ptsd next slide patty and the why so we have learned a lot during this covet pandemic and we have tried very hard to be curious about the uh lived experiences of our students and our families and what this has shown us is that some of our families uh in the fall uh went to um other various online schools a little bit of about 203 of them and then um in the spring 5100 of our students remain in cdl and so we were curious we surveyed families in april and 64 of those families based on a survey requested an online option for the upcoming school year and so really the why is that give our families an option uh
180to keep their students online while keeping our students and ttsd and that's the purpose of lifting up an online school and so um director bernard is going to share a little bit about the data next slide please patty last um board meeting there was some conversation some questions around some of the data and the students that um would potentially be attending the online virtual academy as we are leaning towards calling it um and so the data that i'm showing here is based on the um hypothesis that of those families that were surveyed that responded that said yes we would like to come and do an online presence we were able to connect that with the students that potentially could be coming so that was also part of the data that i showed last time how
181of those families that indicated they would like to come this fall it was pretty similar demographically language race ethnicity and grade to what our current um comprehensive schools look like so um next slide please patty so i took a high school i believe it was um tiger actually no this is both high schools so if all the families that said they would like their kids to come this fall continue to to remain want to stay online this is the grades of each of the individual classes that those kids are taking so one of the concerns we had is um which what students would be attracting and it appears the data that's shown from the students at their grades is it seems to be that most these kids are being successful online by and large they're
182a's and b's um the ng is the group that we we didn't do fs so no grade or they were extended um some time to be able to finish up their courses so by and large these were not students that were not being successful online um at our high school so is it a guarantee absolutely not is it a window of the response to the families that we're looking for this type of resource come this fall anyway um it's a bit of a window um next slide please and then similarly taking a look at the attendance specifically at tigard high there was 92 students associated with the families that responded and with our current definition of chronic absenteeism four of those 92 would have been chronically absent and they were across two families so they
183were siblings so it gives us an opportunity to knock on the door and say you wanted to stay online what is it that didn't work this year was it network connectivity was it how you know what was it that didn't work so there was some kind of pattern that made it a little bit easier to follow up on so if and as dr mccall will be discussing um the supports that we would have in the comprehensive online school would be able to help those families in particular next slide so here's our proposal for a comprehensive online school so it would be for grades k through 12. the bill schedule would mimic our current uh bell scale at this at each level and again back to questions that um uh director bowman mentioned about like what
184kind of supports will students get that would be similar to the supports that our students receive in brick and mortar what that means is that if the student is struggling teachers assess they get together they look at the data they communicate with the families and they adjust and provide what we call multi-tiered systems of support and so that would also exist in the online school students who need uh counseling services would receive that as well as fed services er services and uh differentiation based on rate and level next slide and so talk a little bit about staffing what would it take to lift up a virtual academy well it would be similar to staffing and elementary school with about 600 students it would require an admin a principal and if about 24 teachers if we're
185gonna target um or if we're going to provide enrollment for at least 650 students it would require about 24 teachers support counseling from our existing staff and you might ask a question so for those teachers well we um those teachers would be existing teachers in ttsd and we already have uh we plan to survey interest uh from our current teachers if they are interested in teaching online next slide so here are the next steps upon board approval so we have an application that we included in the board packet that we would submit to ode and then we would uh post uh positions for a principal and a secretary we have a timeline for communication and that is communicating with our staff surveying our teaching staff as well as putting it in our ttsc community newsletter
186and then uh we have a plan to open registration and enrollment in addition to that we will provide an information night for family and that concludes our presentations for our ttsc virtual academy thing is this one on okay so i just wanted to thank you both um i feel like uh you were very responsive to the comments and concerns from the last meeting so i i will support the proposal um i i i wanted to say that i'm the older the student gets the less nervous i am about virtual i am worried about having a lot of students choosing an elementary option that may or may not be best for them full virtual so i guess my ask is that if we could have a report in a year um and review comparing outcomes from
187this school across um grade levels i think that would just be a helpful thing for us to be able to make sure we're on the right track absolutely it's already in the world how are you planning for that excellent you know in fact if i could request that we have not just an end of year but also a mid-year how things going what are the problems we're running into what are the solutions we're using to overcome those that sort of and then i just have a few questions so if the student is part of the online school then would they still be connected to another school for things like if they're graduating would they walk with same students in their class and certain things like that would they be connected or would it kind of
188be separate that is an excellent question and through the application process with the oregon department of education and what we've learned from from our neighboring districts like hillsboro and beaverton when you get an um an id from um oregon department of education typically what happens is you get a diploma from the online school now um as far as participating in some [Music] you say extra-curricular activities or yes that would be possible at the secondary level so i just want to make sure that the paperwork form has been updated to indicate that it will be a k-12 not a k-8 and the diploma will be awarded yes okay thank you i just have a couple quick questions one is um uh staff are they going to be working from home are they going to be i'm
189just curious if they're going to be in a building someplace or what's what's the thoughts there well certainly our staff some of our staff were in cdl they're working from home but some of them feel comfortable coming into the building so i'm imagining that what could be the case as well so that hasn't really been decided whether it's going to be like a location yeah because i was wondering like when the kids come in for supports and stuff where do they go i mean do they go to their school they would have gone to if they hadn't chosen that you got nothing yes there's not going to be a separate location for virtual kids they're just going to be integrated into the current services that is correct okay and the second question i have is
190this is this um application is this considered a pilot are you are he's going to kind of take it one year at a time based on your assessment next year um or is this intended long term or you just don't know i'm just curious again the reason to assess how it's going is kind of like when we use improvement science we plan we we do we study and react so and adjust as well so we anticipate at least two years but again that's why we assess and see what we need to do to make any changes all right well thank you it's been great that we can make something out of learn learn what we've learned this year and apply it to something new so i'm excited to see what happens so i want to
191go to that board meeting here um another question i want to ask is the 650 student capacity is that locked in once we submit the application or is that up to us if we want to lower or raise that number um year after year it is up to us there is a tipping point hence the boundary calculator um that there's a impact on the other schools depending on when you hit a threshold a percent when you're pulling students from other schools so it depends on how and if the school grows if we're pulling kids back into the district that left or if we're pulling them out of a current school but there is no hard cap on the school as it stands just one more quick question because you just said boundary calculator are we
192using forecast five for that does that forecast five um no but i'm sure david would love to help me with something [Music] um so i just a comment just appreciate that um you all been so thoughtful in this application just listening to other districts with the same concern but not necessarily having the ability uh to create this opportunity for their students and genuinely concerned about where they will head in the fall so and love that they can still connect to their home school if you will if they want to do extracurricular um or engage in that way but meet their needs as a family and a student so and uh like vice chair bowman said appreciated seeing the grades and a sense of understanding about who would likely be those students so thanks to both
193of you and if there's another questions um i'll take a motion no it doesn't it does i move that the tiger 12 school district board of directors approved submission of an application to the oregon department of education to create the ttsd k-12 virtual academy and upon approval to implement and open the ttsb k-12 virtual academy in fall 21 by second motion was made and second except the application for online school was presented any further discussion i'm just really excited about the the opportunity this gives to families that are nervous about bringing their kids back into the buildings i think it's really nice that we can provide all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed motion carries thank you both and we will now move to pre-k curriculum purchase update dr mccall and crew okay
194good evening again and so i have with me here is uh early learning team susan sakihio and christina kurtz and we are going to share with you our recommendation for an early learning curriculum next slide patty [Music] so about a year ago the fall of 2019 uh actually my first year in ttsc we convened a work group uh to look at um pre-k curriculum and content content areas literacy math theme social and emotional learning with the explicit lens of on culturally responsive instruction as well as the needs of dual language learners and so based on that collaborative work we're going to make recommendations for curriculum to be adopted and i just want to share how collaborative that process was next slide so we convened and sought out um not only teachers at the elementary level
195but also support staff as well as each of the 10 elementary school principals along with other district staff because what we've learned through a process is that you only see a little bit of the area that you're close to so in order to get a more comprehensive understanding of the needs of our littles is that we need to seek out that collaboration and this team did it over a year and based on that collaboration um we wanted to vote next slide we really wanted to focus on the importance of aligning our pre-k to third grade and based on research we know the high leverage move of having uh that alignment brings us closer to narrowing uh the academic gaps and or opportunity gaps for our littles and so here um susan will talk a little
196bit more about that alignment and the criteria so based on early learning research we started by developing a set of criteria for an effective pre-k curriculum oh uh next slide please for um an effective pre-k curriculum in tiger tualatin uh we quickly realized that um there were there are a number of great pre-k curriculum that would meet a lot of these criteria so we started with the two hardest next slide please which were having research-based demonstrated academic outcomes and articulated alignment pre-k through three now we we want to emphasize that pre-k itself has great outcomes um students who have a pre-k experience are less likely to use special education services more likely to graduate less likely to use substances more likely to have economic stability when they're adults really wonderful long-term outcomes in addition to
197that we were looking for short-term academic outcomes that would support us towards our district goal of every student reading by third grade so um thankfully there are organizations who've done much of its work for us next slide please one of them being the early childhood learning and knowledge center who evaluated evidence on the major pre-k curriculum um there was there was no evidence on many of the curriculum that we would normally have considered that doesn't mean that they're they're there weren't that they're that that they weren't effective in many cases it just meant that the studies hadn't been done um on a large scale uh next slide please um there was there was some evidence for or curriculum and there was moderate evidence for um opening the world of learning which is owl um al
198does not appear to be currently supported we couldn't even actually find a place to purchase it so um that that was kind of out of the running um moving on to math um the national center on quality teaching and learning evaluates pre-k math curriculum they found solid high quality evidence based on large-scale research studies with similar populations to our priority population or pre-k mathematics curriculum which again did not appear to be well supported and oh um next slide please [Music] and um and building blocks which which um is very active and very well supported by mcgraw-hill next slide please and he has very good research behind it including research done in the boston area with their early pre-k curriculum that showed quite good outcomes next slide please um there was one very new curriculum that
199was interesting to us called connect for learning it's um it was developed by national experts and it was an integrated literacy uh math science and um an seo curriculum um the there were small pilot studies that looked quite promising so we did um investigate that further and look at the curriculum in a hands-on way next slide please and the um the other really nice opportunity is the twig which is our k5 adopted science curriculum very much hands-on very pre-k oriented has a pre-k version um and um their units align really nicely to what you find in the brigade classroom there's storm chasers and ocean adventures and space exploration um so we we like that that nice potential synergy next slide please so we really ended up looking at two options one was connect for learning
200which is kind of all in one curriculum and one is what we're calling twig plus which which is using twig for science and stem and using the unit structure to build out language and literacy kind of in a way that's really natural in a pre-k classroom because you don't you don't just teach a literacy block you you infuse it throughout the day using building blocks for math and continuing with our our um current social and emotional learning programs and uh exploring um another one that we're really interested in which we'll talk about later but we did a pros cons list next slide please um connect for learning was had some really highly promising pilot studies um we like that it supported inquiry um pilot studies with dual language learners were very promising um the cons
201were that that they were only pilot studies um it wouldn't articulate with anything we were offering k5 um it um and some classrooms have three and four our preschool promise classroom has three and four-year-olds so they would have had the same curriculum twice because it's pretty prescriptive uh we didn't find it as strong in seo um as we we would have wanted and if it's done to fidelity it takes up a lot of of the two and a half hour pre-k session and it didn't give us as much room for scl as we would have wanted um when we looked at twig it articulates nicely of course with with our um k5 science it um allows a lot of flexibility we could build out our literacy curriculum based on journeys and um early reading intervention
202both of which we're already using um they could both be scaffolding and it would would allow more time for social emotional learning which we thought was really important the cons were that we there aren't yet effectiveness studies on twig and we'd be building our own literacy curriculum uh we then looked at opportunities for alignment uh next slide please and as you can see there there were lots more opportunities for alignment with the tweet plus option so um next slide please so um on balance considering the pros and cons and the alignment possibilities the group is recommending the tweet plus option um what this would mean next slide please would be purchasing the twig curriculum for pre-k at a cost of about eleven thousand dollars we would build out our own um language and literacy curriculum
203which um we've got ptosis on board and interested in leading we would purchase building blocks for math at the cost of about ten thousand dollars and we would use our current social and emotional learning resources and look at adding some more i'm going to hand over to to christina to talk about how we're going to implement so immediately starting this month we will uh with a keen eye on alignment in our kindergarten classroom work we are currently building out a literacy sequence and pacing using our existing resources journeys and eri oh sorry patty can you please advance this life and while we're doing this work we are referencing the oregon early learning and kindergarten guidelines which is really a guidepost for most of our work in pre-service this august we will have our pre-k team
204receive pd on building blocks and meet the meet to put the final touches on the literacy rollout and our literacy especially will need support from our new pre-k instructional coach and we'll use the whole of next year to continue building it out with our pre-k team that includes district literacy specialists and pre-k teachers can you please advance a slide so we have already visited leap in action leap is learning experiences an alternative program for preschoolers and parents um in practice and we are inspired to immediately and and have been implementing several key elements in our pre-k classes it's explicit instruction on social interactions most successful when coached and used peer-to-peer we'd like to take more staff to see it in practice and would like to revisit the pps and david douglas classrooms there are exciting
205implications for using this practice and alignment pre-k through five next slide please we'd also like to see seal sobrato seal is sobrato early academic language program we'd like to see it likely in the bay area our hope is to take away key strategies that we can implement in our work across all our pre-ks including in our turweight immersion bilingual pre-k it is however a very expensive curriculum coaching model so we plan to build a relationship with this work that will show us how to implement pieces such as what we've done to leak with sleep to date next slide please yeah and um we were uh planning to visit boston in april of so what we hope to do moving forward is to reschedule that trip so that we can see their early learning classrooms with
206an eye again on their alignment work specifically so that brings us to the end of our presentation and just as a reminder as we are a pre-k to 12 district as we continue to expand our preschool classrooms in addition to the ones and the two high schools as well so is there any questions for us last slide so i have one question so you're asking for about 11 000 for the science and about 10 000 for the math um and then you say that the language literacy will be done in-house is there no intrinsic cost to having the staff do that are they doing it on extended contract or just in their spare time they will be doing it on extended contract we we um have some professional development funds we were unable to use
207this year um in the ways that we planned so we would redeploy them for this effort [Music] so then that's known additional dollars it's just redistributing dollars that we had already budgeted yes i just want to thank you for answering my questions on email i have to say i was fairly ignorant about curriculum for preschoolers because i pretty much think they learn how to behave and count and stuff so thank you for your patience and asking my question thank you for asking [Music] i move that we approve the adoption and purchase of the twig science next gen for pre-kindergarten and mcgraw-hill building blocks curriculum for use in the tpsd pre-k classrooms as presented [Music] motion was made and seconded to approve the purchase of the curriculums as presented any further discussion um i want to
208thank you all and susan i think i haven't said anything i think you're retiring here shortly and i just can't thank you enough for all the years and amazing service that you have done so so i just wanted to honor you and take a second to thank you for everything um so with that um all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed motion carries thank you all okay our last um item on the agenda and you know i um i will uh we as a board i think will be succinct in our evaluation of our superintendent but i'm not gonna cut it short to three minutes for the sake of a time and so i'd like to extend the meetings so we can uh truly have a conversation um without that interruption um oh
209i suppose that we extend the meeting to 10 15. second motion was made and extended seconded to extend the meeting to 10 15 any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying i oppose motion carriers so the last item on the action agenda is the superintendent's evaluation and um this process um i will just brief framing uh dr wiki smith is evaluated on five standards for superintendent around visionary leadership policy governance communications community relations management of resource personnel and instructional leadership along with that dr wiki smith set superintendent goals for this year as with everything unique and truly focused on covid19 ready school safe learners framework from ode and really how she modeled the year the process for getting feedback was a 360 uh survey and feedback from her i think her peers cabinet
210students and then of course the board evaluated directly on all five standards and then as the evaluation was presented in the board book is our summary of her performance so um so first and i know all of you will be sharing your personal thoughts but dr ricky smith um we can't thank you enough i'm just going to slide back for a second um this year um yeah i um you know no one could have anticipated the length the amount of um decision making changes uh the requirements to continue instruction in multi-modes um with constant change of direction um a continued equity lens on the work that we found as priorities a year ago and you stayed true to that and how we continue forward with that work um 12 000 students with parents with different
211lenses different needs on how we communicate how we connect how we educate and doing it all with screen in front of our face and even just sitting here tonight i mean just gave me a sense of appreciation with the lack of connection and and leading through that so i just um as an overall performance we found you exemplary and we want to thank you for your service cabinet i can't say that to dr sue without looking to all of you and just taking a moment to say thank you um because this district would not have moved forward without you and so i just i know that that's her job to tell you that but i think for on behalf of the board um i i just have to take a moment to thank you all
212as well um but i think uh just on a couple highlights and then i'll stop because i'll let the rest of the board share you just never stopped advocating for district or students statewide we were fortunate with your public health background to really dig deep into the science really understand the impact um and your care and concern absolutely for students and their instruction and their safety vet for staff and i think you held that true to your heart and this was not an easy year i i did not envy any superintendent this year uh and i just uh wanted to say thank you and i'm just going to stop because the evaluation is in the board book and i just want to give opportunities for fellow board members to share so thank you for uh
213this year so can i kind of go see you right now um i also want to second that and um gosh i mean what andrew was talking about this year and i thought oh yeah i forgot about the fires i mean you think about all we've been through this last year i mean it's crazy and um anyway i just want to thank you because you always had grace and and what i appreciate about you is you you know despite like all these things happening you always try to look at the positives and try to create vision for everybody in a positive attitude which is hard to do when you get beaten down so i want to thank you for that your vision and your enthusiasm despite just overwhelming um circumstances um and the grace in
214which you handle you know difficult things um and also your ability that you you listen and you receive you get feedback and you act upon it um and i appreciate you bringing the rapid cycle which i'm a huge fan of um so i i just i can't thank you enough and and i echo um doctors what maureen said about um the cabinet so thanks to all of you and it feels like we've been through um kind of shared a box hole together this year this will be hard um maureen took the advocacy one but um that was something that i definitely noticed that any time there was a opportunity to let our legislators know at the federal level state level county level city level if there was something our students needed or teachers needed uh
215you were writing those letters and sending them off i definitely appreciate all of that work appreciate all the communications that were so regular and so complete again that overlaps with some of our wow [Music] cabinet members but at the beginning of the year when we said get us through ready school sleep learners oh my god i'm gonna miss this because it's been so much fun [Music] it has but what i was going to say is that we said get us through get us through the year and that was definitely the highest level goal but as we had meetings i was so amazed how the staff was still doing all of the other things that needed to happen to keep that work going and not just saying we're going to put it on hold for a
216year not to mention all the all the planning for next year which had just as many questions involved as this year of will we wear masks can we do it will it happen [Music] i appreciated your responses to the many emails we received that you viewed them as opportunities that is not how i viewed many of them but you did i totally appreciate that ability the other thing that i want to call out and i don't i don't remember when we called it out or not but the fact that our district did not make headlines this year with the threat of a strike the idea of a strike or anything less than was nothing short of amazing because it was just such a difficult year or nobody could agree on anything we all had different
217opinions on everything and you were able to talk through the issues and collaboratively get to some solutions that everybody could live with and i really appreciate not making headlines for for that oh and i am i will definitely miss this thank you so the most important job the school board does is hire the superintendent um the budget and the policy falls into place under that when we've got the right person at the helm and three years ago we went through an excruciating process to find superintendent and there were times when i knew the four of us thought we were never gonna find anybody um and then we found you and i knew at the time you were the right superintendent for this district and with each year i'd become even more sure and after having
218gone through a year like we've been through um i cannot imagine how we would have made it with anybody else and so thank you from the bottom of my heart for being so good for our students so good for our teachers so good for our community at a time when nothing was good um i would echo much of what my colleagues have said but i wanted to add a couple things myself um i think on a broader level i first just wanted to appreciate the um i think sober view that you have brought to i just so appreciated um the reflection this year we didn't meet this goal we did meet this goal we partially met this goal um and saying here's what we're going to do next year and walking into your office last
219week and seeing here's our goal for next year already we're not even there yet and i just see your laser focus on that so i wanted to acknowledge that and then a couple of specific items policy and governance was mentioned i do think you know you're a phenomenal superintendent when it comes to advocacy but there's more to policy and governance than just that as you know and what this board has done on a couple different occasions this year is created policies that don't exist in other districts so you couldn't call a colleague and say how do you guys do your hate speech bias incidents policy our new equity policy is not going to be something that in the superintendent affinity groups you'll be able to compare notes on and and you've never once asked us
220to slow down and in fact you've said let's speed it up on several occasions and i think that matters a great deal i also wanted to acknowledge in the policy and governance section that your colleagues have acknowledged your skills here and elevated you to the aasa committee which is the superintendent's group which i think is very exciting and then a final note that i wanted to mention because i think it's important is the level of and it was alluded to in other comments but i'll be more direct uh there's not there are not very many women superintendents in oregon and we've had discussions about how uh that number might actually be declining and we saw over the last year in particular why that might be and i think about some of the public comments including
221the frequent flyers who are consistently demeaning and condescending um and sexist and your response has never been anything but respect to those people which i have a lot of admiration for and i also feel some guilt as a board because as we've said before in any other professional context that would not be tolerated it would be sexual harassment um and yet it is a regular occurrence in your role so um the way that you are able to confront that and um as director emerson noted treat it as an opportunity is really profound and i think it reflects very well on our district the way that you um interact with our patrons uh so yeah that's what i wanted to share and just say thank you and i'm very excited about um the next two years
222that i'll have to work with you on this board and appreciate all you did over the last year and i just also i wanted to say thank you just because it's been great getting to be able to meet um on a monthly basis as i said before i was able to learn the difference between policy and ar and there are many things like that but also when emily or i um when andy was with us if we wanted to make any changes in the district or we wanted to get any support you were very helpful with that and then it was always just a great process to be able to say oh well this is a problem that students have brought up to me or i've noticed this and it was immediately oh how can
223we address that who should i talk to and so that was always a really great process and something that i didn't really think would happen but it turned out to be great so thank you for all of your work with that okay um i think part of working with dr ricky smith is she is so reassuring and throughout the whole year when i was talking to students i was always reassured and by the fact that she has this background in public health and i always felt like i had a lot of trust and students had a lot of trust in the fact that we had somebody who knew the data and who could read it and you could apply it correctly to our district and throughout all the major challenges that we faced this year
224i was always really relieved by the communication that it gave to us which was always really clear and understandable and recently we had a resolution about our budget and you explained it to us so clearly in the budget in our meeting and it makes me so appreciative of the fact because we get to engage in community and community relations it really shows to me that you value like the i don't want to repeat words but it really makes it clear that you know you really value that the community knows they can make changes and communicate to the board um so thank you so much for that and i'm so glad i get to work with you for another year thank you all and i i would be remiss if i didn't acknowledge the first man
225over there um uh and jeff and thank you i i can't imagine the level of support and what a crazy year to be um a partner in uh this experience and so many things that then just called out and acknowledged i mean um anyway just appreciate you and thank you and appreciate sharon saying hey let's let's do a shout out to jeff for sure because i'm just really grateful to have her back and be there as a support uh in a uh just hellacious here um so i think with that uh dr ricky smith you're certainly welcome to say something if you [Music] and patty you too i like lean to cabinet i didn't like do a back then to you so thank you for your support um i want to say thank you once
226again to the board um you are you are only as good a leader as a support system that you have and the fact that you have stood united and strong through not just this year but the last two years as well has helped us get to where we are today which is back in person and we are one of the few boards that are meeting in person um in the state this point in time so thank you um thank you for your steadfastness thank you for your direction thank you for um asking me critical questions that make me think um um and either affirm my my beliefs or [Music] cause me to reflect further and make sure that i'm making my decision um i cannot say enough to the cabinet that is the subject here
227they have seen me at my best and seen me at my worst in the last 14 months and early on when it was clear that we were in this for the long haul i said to my spouse this will either go to hell quickly or we'll dig down deep and we dug down deep and we're able to produce some things that you have already identified i have a cartoon that i inherited from my father who was a state and then private university president and it is an old far side cartoon that shows a man wheel bear pushing a wheelbarrow through hell and two devils looking at each other and looking at him and saying to each other i don't think we're getting through to this guy and that has how this year has felt um
228is that bring it all right we're going to make it through because i know the quality and the tenacity and the grit of this community and i know how deeply they care and at the end of the day for me it is and always will be about our students first so thank you for the opportunity to serve it continues even in the midst of all of this to be an honor and a privilege thank you we still have extended uh public comment um we need to extend the meeting but public comment is in person and um so i want to just raise your hand if you're so okay too okay so then we need to extend the meeting i moved to extend the meeting to 10 45. motion was made in second and text and
229until 10 45 um any further discussion um all those in favor signify by saying i uh post uh motion carries in um i also move to approve the superintendent evaluation is presented further discussion all those in favor signify by saying aye opposed motion carries and now we will go back to public comments and um if the two of you would like to come forward and um director roman i'll well actually katie and i'm sorry i'll just have you introduce yourself you've been signed up to then i'll give it to vice chair bowman because i don't have that really okay we will just read through the list um to ensure if anyone's here who would like to present public comment that they have that ability uh so caroline for cirrus kevin robinson katie mckee oh i
230think i've got it my name is katie mckee i'm a social studies teacher at tiger high school i wanted to address the concern that was raised by the inflammatory article that has appeared in the online publication called city journal the author asserts that we are working on a marxist agenda to influence our children um what he opposes is the development of our district-wide emphasis on equity where we intentionally are working to increase awareness and instruction at all grade levels about both the history and current situations involving women people of color religious minorities sexual minorities and others who have traditionally been left out of our lessons as a teacher with a degree in social science and graduate studies in history and social science economics i can say that we as american educators have primarily taught the
231history of white european men and their descendants with a periodic footnote about other regions and other peoples if i may allow me to list just four representative examples as a white female of northern european descent i was taught about people of european descent including my own ancestors who traveled across the north american continent and settled the american west but i was not taught about the cultures of the people who already lived here and how their cultures were disrupted and eventually erased in what was politely called assimilation as a district we have followed a curriculum that has not included in-depth lessons of african nations and cultures which results in my students whose families fled to the civil war in somalia may be hearing about it from their family members but they and the rest of my
232students do not hear about it in the classroom right now there's an uneasy ceasefire between israel and the palestinians but most districts do not teach about the six day war and the seizure of the gaza strip the west bank and the golan heights so students have no background to drop on when they hear the reports on the news and then today after a lesson about lgbtq plus issues and the leadership of harvey milk one of my senior students asked why were we not taught about this before now as a social scientist it's very important to me that those who are alarmed by the accusations made by the author and the nameless teacher he says he talked to would instead take some time and talk to real social studies teachers and other educators who are willing
233to go on record about what we want to accomplish with our emphasis on equity we are not engaged in promoting a marxist blueprint for erasing white history rather we want to expand our students exposure to a wide range of people's experiences they want to learn and we owe it to them to teach them as much as possible rather than limiting the lessons to the history of white europeans and their descendants there are so many more people out there and our students need to know their stories as well thank you katie uh next caleb walksmith perfect caleb has submitted uh written comments that will be forwarded to the board um brian or katie foss ryan submitted an email that will be forwarded to the board sarah joy brown so i think this is on um i
234have a unique family situation i have four kids ages 18 12 8 and five so i have spanned all grade levels of this beautiful district i have had the privilege of interacting with staff from six of our schools including various staff in the special education departments of three schools one high school and two elementary schools as well as the teachers at the preschool level i have been so incredibly impressed by every staff member i've met i'm very grateful for their impact on my children's lives while i am grateful for the various staff at our schools i want to challenge a few things that i feel have been glossed over and a few things even that were said tonight i received an email about a week and a half ago that greatly saddened me it was
235that there was finally going to be an affinity meeting for families of children who are in special ed i couldn't even attend the one affinity group that was available to me this year but one meeting of it because my son had a baseball game and my husband happened to be out of town it is my understanding that there have been affinity meetings for other groups that have been taking place at least all year if not before i am not saying that those affinity groups need to stop or even that the equity work that you are wanting to do needs to stop what i am saying is where do the children with special needs fit in you're calling it education equity but the children with special needs are being left behind you are looking so hard
236at race that you're not including the children with special needs um one of the things mentioned here tonight was the idea of reaching out to families on the margins the only time that i am aware of an email or any communication going out to special education families as a whole for the district this year was a survey sent out in december asking about our desire for affinity groups and once we had responded we were told that because of the transition to in-person learning the affinity group was not going to happen i appreciate that this year presented so many different challenges for everybody i'm not saying that that transition was not valuable i just think that we are losing some focus on our on others that are um marginalized as well thank you the last person
237signed up is taylor kevin we also have we have her written comments perfect okay thank you vice chair bowman and i believe that those that were written comments will be included in our record for this evening so with that um i think we have come to the conclusion of our agenda this evening and so um we'll adjourn and truly thank you all for hanging in there for the final