Board Meeting

001all almost 90th South and whatever that is e8th East just east of ctec um the one thing that they made a point of is that if you cannot attend the regional meeting for uh where we are supposed to be for the Salt Lake Valley you are welcome to select another site another uh Region's meeting and attend that I have a conflict on the night of the 23rd so I'm going to go up the following week to Park City and sit on in on theirs that seemed to be one of the closer ones to do so know that that's available um may maybe Amber can help me with this one a little bit uh they are looking to uh have people make suggestions of our individual board members that could be uh spotlighted through usba um

002and it's also the type thing that if you don't want to be spotlighted uh feel free to put in a request to not be spotlighted um if you're working on your MBA again your uh Master board uh what is that Master board award award that award that word that missed I missed that uh those are due December one so they can process that information before uh year end um nfba meeting uh for 2022 sounds so strange to say 2022 doesn't it um is sched in late April it's uh all I know is it's after the 15th which was good news for me um and it is in San Diego this year uh usba also made uh mention that if uh the individual districts need help complying with r277 d328 uh the equity deal that they

003are available to provide assistance to make sure that districts are in compliance with that new law um oh almost forgot next week that's it's the most it's the most uh it's the one that's coming soonest anyway next week on the 16th is the usba leadership academy uh up in Midway um and to me probably not the most beneficial but nevertheless still exciting is uh this year they are including a a golf tournament if you want to play 18 holes you be there at 11 if you want to play uh nine holes whoever want to do that I don't know it would be be there at one o'clock and the good news is uh between the homestead and zont they uh offered us a promotional rate of $50 which is a really really good right and

004Richard came to the meeting and says they found a sponsor and so the golf is being sponsored so if people are interested come up and you be there don't don't do this one o'clock crap okay 11 o'clock you'd be there I'm on okay hey M real quick so what time does all of the training start like on Thursday the 16th check checkin is at 4 okay and I believe the meeting's actually start at 6 okay and then we have all day meetings on Friday Thursday we have an evening all day meetings on Friday and we're there till noon on Saturday okay thank you and I can I just add something I just want to say m was on the committee that planned that and I think it's going to be excellent but his Committee just

005worked really hard and the schedule looks really good so I hope you guys can come and if people are interested with any luck at all we should be able to be done there and still be back uh if we choose to attend Pat Taylor's uh funeral um I I believe that's the oh that this week this Saturday oh I'm sorry you're right you're right I'm looking at that I'm thinking Saturday and I'm I I was off a week good thank you so we can make both thank you mon okay sure appreciate that update and everything that you do to represent us on the board of director there any questions board on that information you know one other thing and I thought it was very appropriate towards the end of the meeting and I can't even

006remember who brought it up you've got a better memory than I do the question was asked what are we here for and I think that is a very good question for all of us to ask ourselves as we come to meetings and we do what we do why are we doing this thank you okay yeah lots of good things coming up from usba appreciate that uh next item is item 1B District accreditation update I will turn time over to Cindy Hansen director of middle schools and Jesse henfer assistant director um of ISD this on yes can you hear me okay hello board we're excited to be here and just to be able to have an opportunity to talk with you a little bit about um where we've been so far in our accreditation process and

007where we're headed and the updates about our visit that's coming up in October um and we wanted to just make sure we were able to talk with you about some of the specific leadership standards that relate directly to your work as our governing Authority so we want to give you this little bit of an opportunity to kind of see where we are and see what questions you may have okay so first of all just kind of an overview purpose of accreditation so accreditation is typically something that's done in high schools um I've been I I don't know if I should say the number it's really big 38 years in education U most of that in high school so I've had about eight accreditation processes that I've been through in different kinds of ways and um

008it's it's the way that high schools are allowed to issue credit so that colleges universities when you look at NCAA requirements all of those things come from this accrediation process and so back in 2015 that's when we last did our high school accreditation um there was discussion about a system so looking at a system versus just high schools and so that's how we decided to move forward we wanted to have kind of a whole way for us to look at levels achievement gaps across our whole district and so this is really about monitoring our celebrations it's about monitoring our goals and our growth so the primary National and international accrediting body is cognia that's the one that usbe supports that's our state accreditation body okay so cogia is the um National and internationally recognized body

009so colleges and universities look for that stamp of approval when they want to see whether or not you have that accreditation so as we work with Coga we're going to be looking at feedback on our progress um we're going to be looking at all of the different growth that we've made and really look at what we want to do as we move forward so total system K12 all right so strategic planning um as we look at our systems over time it's a fiveyear cycle so when you do an accrediation you have five years to be working on those um goals and those things that you've identified that you want to improve and then you have um kind of a growth plan it allows you to be able to look at and really articulate where you

010want to move so in cognia they have when they come Jesse and I have been fortunate to do a couple of um evaluation visits where we were on the team that that did the evaluation and really they they accentuate areas of Celebration areas of growth and then they have a very specific report they send you on those specific areas um so it's implemented across all levels it helped support our mission our vision and move the whole work of the district forward so we're excited about that opportunity um so in the past so as I said after the high schools were accreditated accreditated accredited that's my so proud of that English teacher moment um accredited back in 2015 we really started our work in 2019 so Jesse and I were were fortunate enough to be the

011coordinators that were assigned to take part in this and kind of organize and oversee this process and so we have been in contact UM with cogy and one of the things we wanted to make sure was that we understood the process so that's why we went out and actually did the evaluations we're part of those teams so that we could really help serve our district as we were moving forward in this process um so past work also when we started we we weren't exactly sure how much schools would do in a system when you're at the high school level you do a lot of work and each High School is kind of doing their own thing and so it's really an amazing thing to be able to do this as a system so we had

012principles from each level meet with Jesse and I we reviewed the accreditation process we planned possible principal interactions and needs they would have and then we actually we're really wanting them to be Advocates and supports at their levels so that they could be another lens that understands the process um so we did a kind of a kickoff in December of 20120 where we went through the whole process with the principles we also in the level meetings with principles we looked at standard two which is the learning standard so that really is the standard that's most directly tied to the work at the school level and we had principles kind of go through each standard and look at you know where they see us as a district what their perceptions are at the school levels and

013give us feedback that we could then use to start creating our documentation and really understanding what data we needed to collect and we because truly part of this process isn't just about proving we're awesome which we are but it's also about really finding where we need to do better and and making that a a priority um we also did a system and School quality Factor survey it basically takes the standards and then asks for perceptions so we have data that shows what our principles and what their school-based personnel how they saw um our district in terms of these quality factors okay so current work I'm gonna turn this over to Jesse to talk to you a little bit about where we are right now yeah so as Cindy mentioned as we went into this one

014of the reasons we wanted to do it was to to um look at our district because at the time when we proposed it to you as the board we were I think at our 10year anniversary and so it seemed like this really great time to then take a look at our system and our district up to this point because we were new we've been creating and building so where are we at now so that's that's one of the other things that led to us doing it as a system but back to current work so what we had done is we put together District accreditation work team and this had uh directors and Associate directors and Specialists from different departments and the purpose of that team was to do that that heavy lifting where our schools

015had in the past had all of their personnel trying to pull the same data and duplicate data at different schools we were able to then move that work to District Personnel so that we could the schools can teach and and work with our students and that we could pull that that evidence based on the feedback our principles gave us and our teachers gave us in that needs assessment that Cindy talked about so our district accreditation team they collected evidence that we have all over the place from our dashboard to the documents that you have created as a board the documents that we have created in uh curriculum apps and so forth and we take those evidences and we align it with a standard and a key concept and that's our evidence to the visiting team

016on how well we're doing as as a district then they take that evidence and they review it against a rubric and based on that rubric they give us a rating and give us whether it's celebrations or areas for improvement so our district accreditation team was collecting that evidence and aligning it with standards and then uh Cindy and I as the accreditation coordinators we're currently reviewing that evidence in what we've called the accreditation workspace which is what we will eventually give to cogia with a list of all of the evidences that we have from our our district and one of the things that we want to make sure is that it aligns to standards and that the standards that are listed within cogm as accreditation we have data to show where we're at and again some

017of the standards we don't have evidence and that's okay that's that's part of that continuous Improvement as a district next thing we've been doing is the accreditation work team has been um writing standard and key concept SU memories uh because each of those standards we have a lot of evidence but to tell our story on where we're at and where we think we're at we we write a brief summary for each of those uh standards and we try to align it with what we think or where we think we are at with that rubric and then finally currently our student our school administration each school is writing their own School executive summary this is this their story about their school because we are a system of all of these awesome schools and the accrediting team

018wants to know not only what we do as a big system but what schools what what makes up our system as our schools and so they are creating these executive summaries to tell about their student populations and to tell about the unique things that are happening in each schools because some schools have for example dual immersion programs and they want to they want to celebrate that where others don't but other schools have other highlights that they want to highlight and these executive summaries from each of those schools allows each school to tell their story as part of our bigger Canyon school district system here's our next steps um so 9914 School administrators will submit those School executive summaries to Cindy and I in school performance they are and they're great they're they're great they want

019to tell their stories which they should that's that's a big part of why what makes Canyons Canyons is is our unique schools across our our community but they're they're uh giving their executive summaries turning them in we are giving them feedback if there's places we' seen needed evidence then on the 17th coming up really quickly the two of us Cindy and I will submit our workspace evidence to the cogni elite evaluator so that is that jump page or that area where they can as a team go in and look at all of the evidences that we've collected and align to standards then between the 17th and October 1st um we we want to invite participants to participate in accreditation stakeholder focus groups because one of the things that will occur and that will that will

020be coming up is the lead evaluator and their team will interview parents teachers uh students School administrators District administrators you as the board the superintendent they interview all of those groups groups to ask questions about Canyon school district and how it impacts each of those uh stakeholders and so they'll use that as additional evidence when they're giving us recommendations and celebrations so we would like to to build that um those focus groups between now and October 1st and also between now and the 17th our lead evaluator will communicate to the two of us anything that they see as missing or needed so that that evidence is complete as that team comes together to then give us recommendations and and evaluate where we're at as a school district then I will turn the time over to

021Cindy right now so the the visit October 18th through the 21st looming large we're we're excited um so it's going to be a virtual visit cogne is still not doing in-person visits so all of the things that they do all the focus groups everything is is through zoom and so we'll have different places here where we can have groups of people located but then they'll be talking um through the zoom platform and Jesse and I that's how we did the evaluations last year and it works pretty well that it's it's it's a little bit of a bummer because you want to feel the energy of the different schools and the district but but you do get a lot of information from those stakeholder groups they're crucial I would say that the student stakeholder group doesn't

022care that it's on Zoom at all we've interviewed 10th and 11th graders who have walked from one class to another with their phone also doing an interview so for our students it's not a big deal our parents some of them you know they do miss that face to face yeah and they can also come in from home they don't have to come to the central location but we will have things available um so what they'll do the team will look at our our workspace evidence and we'll show you an example um we kind of pulled out the three standards that are very specifically targeted to you as the board and so you can see that what that document looks like as we're working in it um the visiting team as Jesse said he meets with

023the superintendent meets with members of the board we have there's nine different stakeholder group meetings scheduled in those two or three days um so a lot of the time that they spend with us is in those stakeholder groups and then they will start as sometimes we started at 6:30 in the morning and went till eight or nine or 10 at night when we served on those teams so they do a lot of their discussion after they've had a chance to hear from the people who are most invested in this District which is is really great um and then also they'll provide as I said earlier they provide kind of an overview just kind of a review of those celebrations and the feedback when they when they give us that last little here you go and

024and present it to Dr Robbins and then they it takes about four to six weeks to get the lengthier full report from cognia because the lead evaluator writes up this really long report of things and all of the different evidences that we gathered so that's what the visit will look like in October so these were the three as we as we looked at the leadership so the the way that cognia is organized you have three domains so you have leadership you have learning and you have resources and within each domain you have a certain number of Standards so there are 11 standards in the leadership there are 12 in learning and eight in resources and so that's how they they organize and structure all of the different things that we present as data points so

025as we looked through um these different standards for the governing board there are three specific standards in the leadership ship capacity domain that apply to the work that you do directly so standard 1.1 says the system commits to a purpose statement that defines beliefs about teaching and learning including the expectations for Learners so a lot of this is related to Mission Vision all of those purpose things um that you lead us in um standard 1.4 the governing Authority establishes and ensures adherence to policies that are designed to support the system Effectiveness and standard 1.5 the governing authority adheres to a code of ethics and functions within defined roles and responsibilities so those are are the three that really say governing Authority very specific certainly your influences felt on all standards but these were some that

026we wanted to pull out and really give you a chance to to look at the data we've collected and see where where you might maybe there's something we've left off so there might be somewhere where you'd want us to add additional pieces so Cindy if we can have the um workpace evidence the one that look so this okay we had that and the rubric so those those are the other two so one of the um as as Jesse and I have met with the lead evaluator she's been great to work with in terms of looking at at the structure in the organization that we had put together as we were working with our district work team to gather our data and so she was was more than happy to utilize that particular structure and so

027it's been um we think a a userfriendly document where we can make it easy for the accreditation evaluation team to find everything thing I know as we've experienced um working with different teams sometimes there's just list and listen list and list and it takes you hours just to look at or try to find the data you're looking for so we want to make it somewhere where the visiting team can access everything in an easy way it coming up do you need us to resend it okay any any questions on that first part the overview while we're waiting Mrs nyow hi thank you for that overview a few questions as I was going through all of these documents in preparation for the meeting I began looking at um the process of accreditation and my first thought

028is was how are we going to involve the stakeholders so I was excited to see as you scroll down that focus group a question about that um we don't have in all of the documents we have CSD artifacts but and we have a a portion where we have domains of focus but I do not believe that is the same focus group you're including in the accreditation stakeholder focus group so can you can you Enlighten us a little bit about what you're looking for with who you're inviting to that and would the board possibly have the opportunity to invite some patrons that email us frequently or what are you looking for for those focus groups specifically yeah I think typically and Jesse can weigh in usually we're just looking for a cross-section of because it's systemwide

029instead of an individual High School right so so looking for elementary middle and high and then usually cognia separates them out so members of their evaluation team talk with like an elementary and then a secondary usually they put them in those two groups so they would do that and then I think we would just want to have principles we would want to solicit people who are interested in wanting to serve on those focus groups and try to get a nice cross-section of all of our different feeder systems and and the parents who are interested in taking part yeah I I think that's great I I think school Community councils is a great place to go for that and then just also even um when we're talking about different types of focus group groups and patrons

030looking for different concerns or interests if we're meeting the needs like kids with reading disabilities Advanced Learners all of that conglomerate so I was hoping we could get a little more specific with that even if you just broadly say these are some parents we're hoping to include in the focus group right one of our initial thoughts is uh you as a board had asked for constituents who are not often represented in one of your most recent um requests and I think that was for our strategic planning piggybacking on that could also be beneficial because it does give us a cross-section of students uh from families who are multilangual Learners to those who have special education needs to those who may be Advanced students and so that cross-section I think is is important especially when they're

031looking at an entire system we want to try to get as many US A diversity of stakeholders that that reside here so we we the the original thought was maybe piggybacking off of that but we could also work in another way so we've just barely begun thinking of pulling that together yeah I I love that idea and I'd love to see just a basic outline of what you're looking for with that yeah and I and I don't know about my fellow board members but I get excited about the idea of maybe giving opportunity to other parents when we had that that with the strategic planning we only got to give out four invitations I've got a list of like 16 others that would be and I know all my fellow board members do too so

032we're excited about that portion of it our groups that we have worked with have been yeah 8 to 12 the largest was our one of our parent groups and it was 16 uh and that was with a system accreditation that both Cindy and I took part in for our Texas school system so that's um after about 16 it kind of gets unwieldy sure because not especially on Zoom not everyone had an opportunity to to speak and so it was took us a lot to facilitate that so but up to at least 16 I think is is a workable group but we can also discuss that too great yeah and we were interested in in representing that similar kind of gathering that we were doing with the the strategic planning and I know um especially with

033parents and administrators you want to have administrators that reflect you know different schools different needs and it's it's interesting because if they were coming in person what they usually do with students is just grab kids from the hall like they'll maybe say give me a few but they really want to just pick kids at random and see what they think um so so they really are looking for that true perspective of what it means to be part of the school and part of the well and it's so vital because when we are aligning it to a standard and a key concept and saying are we accomplishing that how nice is it for us we know how we feel we're doing in our processes but then who were delivering it to exactly do you feel your

034needs are being met so I'm really excited about that thank you yeah absolutely um a quick follow-up question what kind of a time commitment do those participants need to make usually it seem were they about an hour 30 minutes to an hour yeah it's it didn't go any longer than an hour with that they tried to hold to that as and just a one-time visit yes and they they'll give us they've given us kind of a a draft schedule so so we can be you know starting to plan when those groups can show up and then if there's problems with some of the the timing we can switch some things around but but they usually start with the superintendent and the board and then they move through parents and students and district and school-based administrators

035so it's over the course of a two to two and a half days but they'll do them here's an hour and then they have a break and they process and talk through everything and look at the data and then and they go to the next group they it's yeah it's a lot but it's a one-time visit and in our experience they tried to work the parent stakeholder group into a time where more parents would be available uh because students are all in school we can pull them administrators and teachers you know we could pull them during the school day it was the parents that they we really tried at least in the two accreditation visits we did that we really tried to accommodate to Encompass more parents rather than those that would be just available

036at you know 10: a.m. to 100 p.m or something like that so that'll be something we we'll have to consider as well okay let's see um Mr Wrigley and then Mrs nbar great thank thank you I just wanted to get some clarification on this um and I've seen some of the documents more entailed documents when I worked with the Department of Human Services about every five years the legislative auditor got to spend a week or two or three or month with me uh as as the state auditor come in and look on a actual management audit um the question is is this appears to be more of a management audit than it would be any other type of management as far as how things are organized and how things are functioning and stuff like that

037uh sort of tie to our tenant on fiscal accountability that we every so often take a look I thought when originally when we put this forward was sort of innovative because we don't have to go down to kindergarten but we said we will go ahead and take a look at our whole system rather than not giving accountability for the K through nine we go the K through nine and that does this from what I understand about this they really don't consult at all on curriculum or academics or they're not telling us what curriculum items to do or they're not telling us if our academics are appropriate or not no it's standards based on you know the teaching the evidence of what we Implement so our curriculum our standards what we have and how we implement

038it and whether or not that's effective and and monitoring our data over time and and evaluating all of our own growth but no they don't dictate any programs so it's mostly the Fidelity of our system yes that we have our curriculum and what we're teaching and are we actually teaching that are we actually implementing what we're saying and is what we're saying actually working correct so that can come back to us and say well you've been doing this program for three years but we didn't see the evidence and I think what you said to me in another meeting is as we looked at this it's evidence-based so we may think oh we're doing really fine but unless we have evidence which is usually what we do in anything in education um then that goes with

039that uh there's been some concern about this particular creditation company is there others in the state that are approved no I and I double checked with the board um a board member that cognia is our state approved accrediting body so and it's it's the biggie like it it's that when you look at we did Advance Ed in our previous accreditation and now Advance said is part of cognia the Northwest Association is part of cognia so a lot of these other accreditation bodies are under the cognia umbrella so it's one of the primary National and international crediting bodies and it is one that the State Board um has for Utah but it sounds like they don't have their fingers in a lot of other things other than assuming what we're doing and checking that at for

040example I use Microsoft I use Google I use several that I don't agree with politically but I use them as a tool and the heck with their philosophies um so okay so it sounds like it's it's separate I mean now you're going be telling us just in a second about the questions and and I I assume that'll be open to the public and people could see those things as we go through and the standards yeah the standards yeah okay so thank you um so this is so one of the ways or the primary way that all of the data and the whole process of accreditation is managed is through this I3 rubric and the I3 stands for those three columns at the top initiate improve impact so those are kind of the progress that you

041make throughout this whole process and then you have the five pieces underneath so engagement implementation that's kind of your beginning step steps you have results and sustainability which are further along the path and Improvement and then the impact is really about those embedded structures so as the accreditation team looks at our data they're going to look at each standard all 32 of them and say okay where where does their data show are are this are they an engagement and are they a one two three or four is it most of their stakeholders is it many is it few so this is the tool tool that they use to assess all of the data and all of the documentation that we provide um so you you spend a lot of time with the I3 rubric when

042you're in an evaluation team so we wanted you to see that because when we look at our actual workspace document what we provide to cognia is kind of our own rating of where we see ourselves in each standard and you know they'll determine where they see us based on the data but it's kind of our reflection of our growth and where we are and and kind of that that pathway did you want to add as we've I mean as we've this is a process of continuous Improvement for our district that's that's what the process is and one of the things that we've noticed is as we've gone through standards and we've started find evidence some things that we thought we were much further on we actually don't have the evidence to show that it is

043embedded we're doing really well we're seeing results um and it's sustainable across the district but may not be embedded if it person leaved or a group left it may not be there and I think that's important and back to um miss neow your comment if you notice an engagement that's all about stakeholders and so it's not just the interviews that they're pulling that information out of they're looking at the evidence we provide and if we don't have evidence that shows that stakeholders are involved from students to parents to administrators then that's also something that they give us feedback on and and what could we do to improve getting more of that information to make the decisions that we make um do you have the the little chart Cindy um I think we have a couple

044of questions while you're getting that pulled up uh Mrs Oaks and then Mrs nbow for the presentation it should be on the board I mean it was one of the three things I think that we so I just to clarify so once the results of the accreditation comes back I'm assum that those are accessible for anyone in the community to be able to see is that correct yeah we should be able to publish what that is okay yeah so they can go through piece by piece and see what our standards are what we're aiming for how we're doing and all of that so it's going to be open and transparent to the public yes okay and then my other question is just to gain a gauge I know that they're really kind of the only

045accreditation body that we can utilize in the state of Utah what other kind of schools public charter private whole nine yards like are using cogia yeah so so if they are if they are wanting if they're a 912 institution especially that's that's wanting to get credit that's going to be accepted in colleges and universities you know then then they're using Coga and a lot of uh one of the systems we went to in Texas or that we visited virtually um was a private school system and as we get Jesse and I get lists all the time from cognia inviting us to serve on different you know um accreditations and it's everything private schools charter schools high schools you know not as many systems we're kind of leading out in that Davis and Ogden are the

046only two right now that have a systemwide accreditation so um but but if you want that reputation to go with you for that credit that you're trying to to get for colleges and universities to accept in Utah cogne as the body that you use so like schools like one one day ago or American Heritage down on American Fork some of those private schools would also be using it what about like the online high schools like BYU online high schools some of those yeah if they're if they're Sig signing credit that they want to be utilized then yeah process okay and and I I think it's important along those lines the standards that we as Canyon school district are meeting those are the same standards whether it's a private school or whether it's a series of

047charter schools or whether it's um an online school the standards don't change it's the system that they're they're measuring that against those standards Mrs nbar thank you um going back just briefly to the to the accreditation for the stakeholders focus groups I'm just going to make two requests first that we as a board be able to see what are your domains of focus just outlining specifically those groups that you're going to be pulling in for those for for that feedback such as you know students with learning disabilities parents with you know parents of advanced Learners multilanguage all of those I would love to see and then also um if we could have a little more time as far as those invitations go as a board bo uh I know this last cycle with the strategic

048planning we had to really hop on it we just had a few days and we were so grateful for the opportunity it would be wonderful I saw your timeline is September 17th through October 1st if we have you know if you're going to give that to the board to invite some stakeholders if we would could could get that notice here in this next week so that we have a couple weeks notice we can give parents and then it would be not until the 18th that they'd actually be serving on that group so yeah it just gives people two weeks notice some parents work in the evenings too and you know yeah we can do that Mrs shill okay so you guys just said something that made me curious so you said that you get invited

049to work with other districts I mean so who who is reviewing is it people from other districts that are reviewing us um or is it just cognia Personnel no it's it's people from all over the country country so um you you sign up to be a an evaluator and you have to go through a training process and they have cogni has modules and different things that you do to be trained and then you're on a a list basically and and different cognia reps we'll send you a a calendar here's all of the different accrediation visits that we have scheduled if there are any that you would like to join as a member of the evaluation team then you sign up and contact that person so we've worked with people from Indiana Texas South Carolina Louisiana

050uh Arizona so I mean Jesse and I were kind of a package deal we we went to represent Canyons but everybody else was from all over the country so your your evaluation team our lead evaluator is from South Carolina name is Carmen Pew Banks um and then we'll have and most they um District Personnel sometimes they're school-based a lot of them are still principals in schools that um serve on these committees and things like that so okay that's very interesting thank you for clarifying that Mr millerberg tell me when you serve on those committees what how does that benefit Canyon school district because I I'm assuming you're not doing this on your own time you're doing this on compensated School District time so I'd like to know what the benefit is to Canyon school district

051to have you go do that away from what your day job is right so we did two we did one Skyline High School we served on that specific we wanted to see um a high school in our area and how that would compare to our high schools and and the the way that that would work together and then we wanted to see a system so for Jesse and I it really helped us understand the process and helped us prepare for our accreditation to understand what this would look like to better know what kind of data um to better know how we're going to help support our principles what they would need to do because at first we had this idea that principles had to be in all these meetings and do all of these things

052but truly they're doing executive summaries that's the paperwork they have it's it's much narrower than it used to be so it really gave us the opportunity to learn from from the system to know how we could prepare our people and um be better able to to Showcase Canyon's District so that that was the benefit to me I don't know Jesse if you have other things I'd Echo that um that was that was the big big benefit this was such a it's such a large undertaking this is this is quite intensive for collecting the evidence reviewing it aligning it with standards everything that was involved um if we would not have gone through it at least once it would have been I would have felt less prepared when it came to our accreditation visit I feel

053at this point if the lead evaluator were to ask us anything and if we needed anything the two of us could support from you as the board to our principles in making that happen and we have that knowledge to to back that up would you share with us the time commitment that took to be uh on the evaluation team for Scott Skyline so so Skyline and the other system District was four days um and it was oh three but it was from about 6:00 AM to 7 PM for two of the three days for one of the systems and about 6 a let's see Texas was was odd but we were there for about 12 hours for two days and 11 hours on the third day for that so about 33 36 hours total plus

054flight time travel time all zo virtual all Zoom yeah all Zoom oh that's sweet yeah I was kind of looking forward to textas barbecue never really experienced that but it's all been Zoom yeah okay that okay so just just so you can see our um the way that our evidence is arranged so what we've done again I just Jesse and I just pulled out the three standards that we specified for governing board um because we really wanted to know what your feedback was in terms of data that we may have overlooked or things that you would like us to add as data points so uh the way that we've organized it is we have the standard the cognia standard is written above um and we're happy to make any and all of the standards transparent

055we just picked these three but but we we give you access to all 32 um and so we have here the kind of our narrative so an explanation and then the links to the document is the second column and then the I3 rubric and again this is our draft it's not uploaded to cognia yet but where we're seeing the the rating for implementation results Etc so kind of where we see our district in terms of um that particular piece and then our reasoning behind it so could you just scroll down Cindy so then you have standard um 1.4 and 1.5 so you can see in 1.1 because we're still in that process of strategic vision mission planning we're more in that kind of results kind of working through the process that improved piece um even

056though we had some very specific Mission Visions um plans prior to this new work that you're doing as a board when you get into 1.4 and 1.5 where the standard is about policy and about codes of Ethics um you can see that we're we're completely embedded so that's something that as a board there's very specific guidelines and structures and procedures that are followed every year and processes that are embedded as part of our district work um so we had just a few of those documents and some of the board Rule and and different things so um so our request would be just if there are things that you're saying ah you know we do this I know we had talked or I had talked with a few of you about um wanting more from your

057Awards and different things committees that you serve on nationally and on the state level that I don't necessarily have access to all of those specifics that those are things we could also be uploading as evidence so just looking for those opportunities from you to to get additional feedback on those governing board pieces oh okay sorry that so I I don't know what questions you have here that we could answer any more questions okay Mr Mr Wrigley and then Mrs nbow thank you thank you for your presentation help me understand this a little bit more um question of the different categories the standards that they they request of us it sounds how many people from cogne actually come into the state it sounds like there's a lot of other principles and stuff I mean do they

058have a large team or do they have a couple people that lead this how does that usually look for system our size they'll probably I'm guessing they'll have six to eight uh with the systems review teams that Cindy and I worked with there's been a lead evaluator from cognia a co-lead facilitator from cognia and then support from District administrators from around the country that have or schools that have been part of cogni accreditation as well okay so it's a relatively limited group that comes into the state um you've had the opportunity to go into the other states and observe and and witness what's gone on did you s try they any case where they trying to uh influence the districts on any particular thing that they had or or were they measuring them on those

059standards that they set no they're they're very we we stick with our standards we stick with the data the evidence that they provide and then we have those conversations where um we may ask questions you know about okay well you had this data point often even in the middle of the accreditation the lead evaluators reaching out after we've had a focus group and something come up they may reach out to Jesse and I and say this came up we didn't see any evidence of that do you have that data we'd really like to see that so they're constantly just trying to see what data you have as it relates to that standard but they're not trying to convince you of any it's all about your school your District's continuous Improvement journey and where you are

060and where your goals lie and how you can manage that progress moving forward so you're pretty indent with all the standards is there any standards that are specifically rated to CRT no is that something that we could release at least a a preliminary document because I know the whole document will be going out is there something we could release if there's anybody on board board docs but this is this is all of the standards and we we plan on communicating this at large anyway for the whole district and all of our stakeholders because this is our continuous improvement process and our does mean our students and our parents and our princip and so we we want to do a Communications push on here's here's what we're doing and and why and these are open documents

061this like I said this is this is similar to what um she has up there but it's just the standards so so that you can see that and I can hand that out okay I mean if there's anybody interested maybe leave with Cindy and they could take a look at it if there's a location you'd like us to upload that I don't know if you want it on board dots or on the web page or if there's somewhere those are the 32 so the three domains and the standards under each domain that we are and working I assume it's available on their cognia website yeah yeah but I think so I didn't know if you wanted it separate from that or we're happy to do whatever okay why just talking of open openness in the

062process and eventually that document will be shared with everybody so that the the public can I mean in all I think uh we've talked about this a couple times and just the being brave to do our ire system it TS with our tenants it talks about our efforts to be one of the best if not the best school districts in the state to be able to look at oursel critically and say where are we where we need to go and it ties in with the Strategic plan to say now that how do we make this happen right uh often too often in government I spent years in government we just sort of floundered um where I think this is might give that direction I'm not sure I'm excited about the company but as I said

063before I've not excited about several companies I deal with as far as Microsoft and Google and Facebook and everything else I just don't dig their philosophies you know I just want to I use their product so I assume at this point there's a pretty good firewall between us and the company and and that we're using the product and not absorbing whatever their political nature is no it's it's all just based on the standards and what we provide that shows how we are meeting that standard you've been very helpful thank you you're welcome okay um Mrs nbow and then I'd like to see if superintendent has anything to add okay thank you um bear with me I have quite a list here okay um to begin with i w as I was pulling up all these

064documents in preparation for tonight A lot of these documents would open up to a Google drive as a board member it would be awesome to be able to have these Works in progress before board docs you know a few days before so we can get through through it because there's a lot of depth and breadth here to go through all of it and feel like I'm very cognizant of of everything right to begin with in the leadership capacity standards under the board's mission and vision we have this Canyon school district artifact repository and I placed there I'm not exactly sure why it's placed there can you help me with that and then got some things at that so that was um that standard is all about Vision Mission Vision purpose right and so um when

065we reached out because we we have our the current Mission Vision the tenants those pieces and so it was there to be looking at the work that's being done in the steering committee and in the planning for the Strategic right planning so it was a a document that was related to that there are some documents in there that are definitely um the Board of Education um I was I I talked to Dr Robbins earlier today I was grateful that some of our committee um notes were included and there there was one missing on Innovation however there's other things in this artifact repository that I think are are misplaced to be under the Canyons Board of Education mission and vision because there's um a multitude of things in there that that wouldn't be necessarily linked for

066example um when we go to down to equity reviews planning for ED ational Equity analysis presented by Laura that the that whole document was I don't believe was board directed in fact uh it we have some definitions of equity which actually are in contrast to current usbe state statute um we have we have some we have a snapshot here scrolling down uh a snapshot of equity in Maine that's provided in here and I don't know that that that that would be something that really works in our repository the equity audit model from University of Southern Maine I don't know that Maine necessarily reflects Utah and so I think that that's kind of ill-placed and we need to have a different model there um some of these Concepts you know I I serve on the equity

067committee along with some other board members and as specifically the artifacts there in that Equity portion really don't reflect what's what we've been discussing in the equity committee so I'd love to see some updates on that and I understand this is a working document and so some of this maybe just needs a date on it and then we need more current in there because definitely some of these things in this piece are no longer would no longer be considered even within the usable to where we are yes um uh okay clean that up okay awesome uh as far as let's see just I'm trying to be quick um okay um we have some some things in here like the definition of equity redefining resource allocation some of those things that need to be looked at

068um the definition of equity does not mean equal um you know um we we need to make sure that this is reflective of we're we're looking to provide Pathways for every student at every school in Canyon school district right we're providing equal opportunities but we cannot predict or force equal outcomes right we're trying to do the best outcome um okay we have here on your on the domains focus and domains so if we scroll down here we have domains and the domain focuses we really need to look at that um the levels of focus we have sces race ethnicity gender gender sexual identity El status fed status I don't see anything here about you know Advanced Learners DLI Learners again like we're talking about that broad spectrum right of all of our patrons and and

069we're missing so many in that domains of focus that I would like to have included um let's see uh um in our statistics and I've mentioned this in board meeting before a lot of our demographics um when we look at at statistically speaking we're counting students two three four times because they fall in more than one demographic and that was something I mentioned to Dr rodri earlier if we could even include a final slide that shows where the overlap is because if you look at those tables at a glance if you add up all those percentages it looks like we may have 55% of our district when really it's 24% but those students have been counted represent multiple groups multiple groups and so that needs to be that needs to be on our table and

070in our in in our graphs um I have some other things but I'll stop there okay so board member oh I was just going to say I think the invitation was if we noticed anything we should them um moving moving forward and maybe this isn't the right place in your table for that artifact because this is under the leadership and the board portion of it and this is kind of here's everything we've been working on in the last few years and it's not all board directive no and we it doesn't need to be but it just needs to be in the proper place because I opened that and I was like oh my goodness to pull out the things that are more specifically for Mission Vision okay yeah part of it all right and superintendent

071would you like to make a comment sure um thank you uh first off let me just want Jesse and and Cindy to know how much I appreciate their hard work on this and uh being a former High School principal um I totally understand the weight of this process and uh just how intense uh it is and it you know at the end of the day I I think um in conjunction with the Strategic Vision process it it will be a very you know helpful process and um it you know it's it's adds uh to the deck and it just it's more inclusive I appreciate Holly's comments that's a kind of stole my thunder that's what I was that's what I was gonna point out um that's okay I appreciate her her comments on that on

072the artifact that sites the Equity review that's a working document that began last summer um about mid I don't know mid late fall uh I made the decision to put that on hold uh because I didn't believe it was in alignment with the direction that the uh board or the district would would want to go uh but those are uh only used as resources um there was never any board Direction on those um since that time uh as and we'll talk about this in my presentation but the state board has adopted uh an equity and education definition that I would recommend Canyons adopts and uh its definition is focused on the principles of diversity and inclusion and we've also uh contracted uh with sunlight works to to help guide our our work there but um

073I also just wanted to to point out what the obvious that uh Holly pointed out as well so I don't know if there's questions beyond that but thank you so I think board let's I'll try and summarize anyway this last hour sorry about that so thank you for all the work that that has been done I think um that we recognize now we're coming into the home stretch of a very long process and and we appreciate that and and so because it's the home stretch we're doing the kind of some of the fine-tuning to make sure that it's that it is accurate reflection of our district and what we're doing and then also it sounds like there will be some work done through these focus groups and um so we will look forward to more

074information and detail on that as far as any invitations that could be made to participants as well as uh you mentioned that the board would be also invited board members would be invited to participate correct so so and then um and then what gets turned in on the 17th is is the fine-tuned draft of this document that you all have been working on but then added to it will um the what comes from the focus groups and and the actual visit and then the final final document will be available not only to the board but to the to the public as well sometime November yeah 18 after mid October November after visit great okay thank thank you so much you have one yeah I I was just gonna see if you had any other things

075for us and then we'll move on an assignment from the board would be to propose or show share the groups that we are looking for that's one and the criteria the C the the categories I think we would want to be respectful of people's individual information yes just groups that were the categories yes all right thank you okay thank you thanks for all your work um next item is item 1 C process for compliance with Utah State Board of educ Education rule 277 328 equity and education um superintendent Rick Robbins thank you thank you president tiny um so this is a great segue right into this uh discussion so I'll I'll get through this and then if you have some questions after that feel feel free to do so um so uh the State Board

076of Education as we know if you've been following this uh over recent months recently approved uh rule 277 D 328 educational equity in school everybody hear me it's is that picking up right on the mic um and you can see there the intent to is to clarify concepts of diversity equity and inclusion that can be taught or not taught in Utah public schools and and I I first just want to express my appreciation to the state board for undertaking this task uh no easy one at that um but as you know uh working together um to really dive into topic and is especially especially as controversial as it has been um I I really tip my cap to the State Board uh for this uh undertaking and really I'm trying to provide uh guidance and

077Direction um considering all stakeholders I know uh talking to Dr Hart who serves on the State Board there for a while they were receiving thousands of emails and input on this topic so I really appreciate their their work on this so you can see there are a couple of things um that uh are set forth uh in the rule the first one is is is providing that definition we'll talk about that uh in the next slide but also it has some compliance pieces uh when it comes to training with Educators that the the district uh is to set and then it also talks about setting parameters uh around um that training and what that actually looks like as it unfolds uh in the classroom um and I I want to just highlight a couple of

078things um first off is the the educational Equity as mentioned before and I think this is very important uh this is not an assurance of outcomes this is an assurance of opportunity and I think as we get through the slides uh that will have more meaning as we put names and faces to what that actually looks like in Canyon school district and um I I just you know I I think that's that's very important to to understand U going as far back to our our founding fathers um uh John Adams and Thomas Jefferson uh even though they were uh political adversaries understood just how important uh education was to the the heart of our democracy um saying uh the whole people must take a on themselves the education of the whole people and will be

079willing to Bear the expense of it wrote Adams uh Jefferson later said the tax which will be paid for this purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to Kings priests and Nobles who will rise up among us if we leave people in ignorance so um even from the very uh beginning uh this is this has been a very foundational principle to our country and I'm speaking for me about this but uh I really believe this should be one place that is nonpartisan where we can come together uh as parents as adults as constituents as a society as a nation um to really believe uh in our future and unfortunately in my opinion uh this is school and education has become a very politicized Battleground and I I

080hate to see that I I hope in in my heart of hearts that I continue to pray and ask that people will be kind and respectful to each other uh in this process because uh as we know our our kids are the future and and uh it's not a perfect system there's no question about it our education system has its flaws uh but it's still in my opinion the best uh education system in the world as per the United States uh being the superpower that we are um when you relate this definition of equity to our uh Vision um there are very similar parallels every student who attends Canyon school district will graduate college and career ready this doesn't say some um this doesn't say many this says every student and um you know that

081sounds maybe like a a an assurance of outcome um but it's not this is an assurance of of opportunity we know that there are students that will take different uh paths in life and some may be more successful than others dependent on how how hard they work or how they execute uh their own plan but but this is something that's aspirational so isn't is it an assurance of outcome no is it aspirational 1,000% yes why would we not want to chase after perfection in the meantime we might catch Excellence but we should we should certainly aspire to every student um leaving College and Career ready so you can see that is reflected in the rule um providing equal opportunities based upon needs of individual students it goes on in the rule to talk about what

082that uh looks like um whether it's programs initiatives uh financing that we should always be looking at um how we uh allocate those resources to make sure we're meeting the needs of the students where they are let's see so what what does that look like exactly and this is not an exhaustive list but um I you know one of the things that I noticed when I first came to to Canyons is just the depth and breadth of um programs and services that are provided to our students to ensure just that that our students have multiple uh Pathways uh to College and Career and and Civic Readiness and and there's a few that are that are listed there um that have that have uh been born in canyons and continue to to evolve uh in grow

083and I I'm just excited about this um this Evolution I mean we're we're now just over a decade old and the fact that these programs are strong and we continue to build Partnerships um with with other uh institutions to to further that commitment to our kids uh rather it's on one end of the spectrum to meet students needs that are struggling or if it's meeting the new needs of our students on the accelerated end uh that are ready for Early College Pathways uh sooner than their cohort graduates so what do what does this look like exactly and what what what does a name and a face uh actually look like when it comes to to our graduates um when it's uh opportunity consider Alexander Chang who in 2019 captured three of the top academic achievement

084awards Utah's General Sterling scholar National Merit and presidential Awards it was a feat matched by only one other student in Canyon school district history his brother Anthony Ching who claimed the additional national title of Coca-Cola scholar they both excelled academically the two brothers had different interests Alexander's interest was in science he was working with Moran I Center to combat blindness and Publishing findings in scientific journals while a senior in high school Anthony was gifted in math uh both grew up in Canyon school district and found Avenues to explore their passions how about uh meeting record-breaking receiver seem foko who uh whose football career took him first to Stanford University and then to the Dallas Cowboys or how about our recent uh Star Quarterback Zach Wilson who at Corner Canyon who played at Corner Canyon and

085then went on to Brigham Young University who recently signed a more than 35 million contract with the New York Jets as the number two pick or countless other athletes tennis players musicians golfers swimmers actors the list goes on and on uh with achievements uh in sports the Arts or academics uh to postsecondary learning and career opportunities that might not otherwise have been open to them this is the face of equity or how about consider Abel hagos who at age 12 years of age fled at Tria a repressive and militarized country in Africa prior to arriving in Utah he faced a harrowing Journey that entailed swimming across a crocodile infested River and spending five years in a refugee camp but he found a home in at Hill Crest High where he worked hard to earn a

086$1,500 scholarship and is now attending Salt Lake Community College consider Hannah uh B BBE who refused to let her family struggles Define her with the encouragement of her teachers and counselors at Jordan high she buckled down to make up for l time to get the credit she needed to graduate and ear $2,500 in the rising star scholarship from The Canyons Education Foundation in 2019 she is now pursuing an education degree at Utah State University or how about Josh van Duran a Jordan High student who gained confidence through a summer work-based learning program for students with disabilities the on the job mentoring and other support he received have helped him secure his driver's license complete a w welding program secure a full-time time employment uh secure full-time employment with a a local quick lube shop and

087he's now on track to graduate this spring the these are just a few uh success stories that demonstrate uh what that commitment is to our students when meeting their needs so um how does this rule apply uh in action so you can see um a couple of things there uh that that really represent uh our uh foundational values uh in Canyon school district through uh rule 277 328 and I I also want to just share um my appreciation it's mentioned here uh our board um Equity subcommittee Amanda Mont and and Holly have been uh outstanding uh as we've continue to to look at best practice to look at what what can we do um a couple of things that that are noted there that I think are important to mention uh one is um uh

088looking at the uh I'm trying to see which that's talking about um in in our district in the training uh a focus on neutrality and in the rule uh you can see and and it's not listed here but but there are a couple of things that that I think are important to mention one is is that um these are May Nots right so these are things that that may not occur is that uh instruction may not promote or endorse membership in any other protected class is inherently Superior or inferior to another membership in any protected class determines the content content of a student's character um may not a student or character uh Bears the responsibility for past actions of individuals may not a student or educated be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment based on

089that membership or class these are the principles of inclusion that really uh in my opinion provide the ultimate psychologically safe uh environment for students to learn and it's and it's incumbent on our part that we really provide that space and and I know um you know that's not always an easy task we're in a hyper politicized environment um everybody has their own opinions their own personalities um but it's very incumbent for us if we really you know want and expect a place of learning that is impartial and is neutral and one that's not only psychologically safe but really provides a sense of belonging then this really gives us a road map uh to to follow and to make that happen when we started school uh I just want to share this was uh my letter

090my opening letter uh just a a part of my opening letter to our uh employees and I I hope it captures the essence of what is is in this rule because ultimately at the end of the day when it comes to diversity it it's something that we should celebrate we're all from different parts and walks of life but when we're here we have the same goals we're an alah Hawk we're a Brighton bangle we're a Hillcrest husky we wear the same color we have the same aspirations we have the same goals let's let those lines let's let those lines Define uh what those goals are instead of being uh divided we have more in common than than we might think and I think that when it comes to addressing some of these issues uh that

091we're dealing with in our culture those are the things that we need to rekindle that that's the passion and the fire that that we need to revisit is what is what uh binds us it's un this is uh a statement from my letter it's unfortunate that the pandemic has caused a division in our community fault lines seem to be deepening socially economically and politically as I have said before school must be a safe place for learning and growing School must be a place of peace that invites students and families into a sense of belonging and unity this year I'm committed even more to showing kindness and Grace as I try to understand the wide range of perspective perspectives that exist we can accomplish this goal by fostering spaces of neutrality and impartiality when we are

092in the capacity of our roles in the district we cannot alienate one group or another by imparting our beliefs or affiliations it should not be immediately clear to our students whether we side with one camp or belief system versus another education should be a Bastion for learning wonder and exploration a Marketplace of ideas and interests and aspiration ations as many of you know I'm a former athlete and college football player the concepts of relationship Unity sacrifice and teamwork resonate with me they are Timeless principles and values that bring us together we may have different paths to get here we have vastly different backgrounds experiences and talents and interests but we share a common purpose a purpose that is stronger than our differences and our disagreements or challenges we encounter so um I want to close

093with two quotes and I think they're very appropriate for the time that we're in as our country has probably never been divided as we are uh dating back to the Civil War um and as you all know um I'm a big fan of of President Abraham Lincoln he said this in his first inaugural inaugural address in 1861 we are not enemies but friends we must not be enemies though passions may have strained it must not break we must not break our bonds of affection the Mystic cords of memory stretching from our Battlefield and Patriot grave to every living heart and Heartstone all over this broadland will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature then in 1865 shortly before his assassination

094uh he he gave this uh quote in in his uh second uh inaugural address uh that spring with malice towards none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds to care for him who shall have been born the battle and for his widow and orphan to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and Lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations it's time that we heed President Lincoln's call once again our nation cannot withstand this this division as it goes on and on and I I think we all feel it we're all carrying that burden we see it our children see it uh we we have to

095find a common ground that we can agree on and that should be uh our our children's educations the these issues can be worked out there's no question about it I mean and as as we've listened over the last you know year and a half um and I think I I've heard all of you mention this at times uh we all love and and care for our children and their Futures I don't think there's anyone in this room that doesn't have that same belief system but we have got to find a way that weaves our efforts together uh that doesn't divide us uh any longer so uh with that I'll open it up for some questions on 328 thank you superintendent board questions and comments Mrs nbar and then Mr Wrigley no questions just a comment

096I wanted to thank you so much for that great message of leadership and inspiration you've just provided I'm grateful it's on public record and we have parents that have concerns I'm going to tell them to go to the board meeting and listen to the words of our superintendent really appreciate your leadership and your vision with this so thank you thank you uh thank you for your comments um as we move forward I think it's could be very important that when we talk about a term that may be controversial in nature that we clearly defined it with a bullet right underneath it or something because I think a lot of words are being hijacked words that I've used in the past I mean I tell a story of M when I was young I didn't wear

097flip-flops on my feet I wore thongs but now when I say that my kids go crazy I'm going my my my words been hijacked you know this is what I use information and the same thing on equity and you know it wasn't the old new thong with my generation the thong was a thong anyway but the issue comes in is the words are being hijacked and I think we need to clearly Define what those words are and maybe have someplace else that we talk about that um we've got a pretty conservative group up here to be honest with you that I've served with and we traditional Western values is pretty much what we've been wanting to do in the school district and stuff over the last couple years it's been very taxing on every board

098member we're spending more time putting out forest fires and responding to these definitions on Words and people are are right to ask us they have a right to ask us these things we have very little energy to move forward and and some of the stuff tonight we've been talking about us how do we move forward it takes a lot of energy as a board to move forward and I spend a lot of time on just telephone calls and I mean I've had people call me and say are you doing this in the district and I said how long have you known me and they say well 30 years I said did you ever in 30 years thought I would do that no then I said then why are you asking me that no and I

099explained it to him because they have a concern but there's a lot of time being taken up preferably for myself but somebody not in human services I dealt with a lot of people I would they call me up we get right on it we resolve it um and that's what I would really encourage people to do I mean we have a lot of employees if there's some things are going on with our employees we don't know know about we want to know about that and from every case we've had we've got right on it and we were responsive and got back to the public I don't think we tried to bury anything uh but it's really difficult I mean I've had employees in the past that did crazy things most of my employees did everything

100po possible it was great but anyway so I just to maybe encourage in the process that maybe we identify what our definition of a lot of these things are so people spell it out for people can know or we'll have to come up with a different word maybe we'll just develop our own word but then nobody know what it is um so anyway I really appreciate that Steve common language is is just you know absolutely key and I think sometimes you know including myself we're guilty of talking at each other instead of talking with each other and even asking what what does this word actually mean to you um versus you know I'm just going to talk at you and tell you you know what I think and so I I'm certainly guilty of that

101and I I think you know one of the the premises that attracted me to Canyon School district is that your relationship as a community between parents and the and your local neighborhood schools is so strong and so unique and so powerful that you know we want to keep that that that's it's it's not like that everywhere else and that's made Canyons a lighthouse district is that relationship piece but but like any relationship you have to work at it and and there's tough there's tough times and there's rough water that come along but we can get through this if if we'll continue to have open dialogue you know I I cannot control what's going on federally or nationally it bugs the hell out of me it scares me uh but I can and that's I think

102what the board's been trying to do trying to ensure that the kids within our district got a quality education and that somehow we didn't bring those within the walls of our sh our our schools and um we have to in that we have to act as partners with people we have to have rebuild trust and maintain I think over the last several years we've had trust until this thing came up the last two years we've been pretty good in a trust way I've had anybody whatever but I think this as we move forward this year and you deal with a lot of these issues and then more issues that are coming up uh I don't want to see us getting as divided and crazy as the rest of the world is now I want our

103kids to be safe in this process um was that possible I don't know but maybe by curing to doing this and dealing with people and building Trust um and communication we might be able to thank you U Mr millerberg and then Mrs Oaks you know Rick you made an admission that I didn't think I would ever hear you said you were a former athlete and a former football player I I'm gonna buy off on the former football player never never admit that you were a former athlete okay well you've seen me on the golf course so it's I think that's pretty accurate I will tell you and I honestly I look at double black diamonds and they don't hold the Intrigue they once to did but I will never tell people I the former fear

104okay um you know it's interesting that we've got this public education system not a private education system it's public and really that's why the seven of us are up here in front is because we are the ones that are supposed to keep the public involved in the education system and it's uh it's interesting when we have our constituents come speak to the board tell us how they feel I can't speak for the other six but I'll speak for myself generally when they come up they've got these concerns those are concerns that I share with them um and I most appreciate the people's willingness to come and share that information you can't the seven of us can't the whole Cadre of uh District administrators can't School administrators can't be in the classroom every day and listen

105to everything that's being taught and so when the kids come home and say this is what I learned in school today I appreciate the parents that will come and share with us what's going on that by policy is against what we want but it's still happening so I I very much appreciate that that happens to keep the public involved and this Spirit of cooperation that you're talking about I think is just absolutely key to get us where we need to be and if I could say anything we are not as you quoted uh Lincoln we are not the enemy for the the most part I think we're on the same team thank you so thank you for what you're doing thank you thank you Mrs Oaks thanks again um super oh sorry about that um

106I have a lot of thoughts on this subject um one is first off I love the letter that you shared with us I've heard it before and I think that the content of the letter is very important and I've been thinking actually for the last couple of weeks I wonder whether or not it has a place on our our website where people can see it for themselves and they can understand the message that is being sent sometimes we're hearing from constituents that come in and are concerned and I can hear their concerns I can hear and understand their fears they think that the message coming out from us is a different one I think it's important for us to be very clear of what that is um similar to the comments that Mon and and

107Steve made I also um hear people's concerns with regard to equity that word is is a difficult one it's important for everyone to understand and I don't think I really appreciated it until I got on the board how that word has been used for a very important purpose similar to what you outlined tonight for decades and decades in the education community and coming from a parent who has a child with disabilities that word is very important to me and I'm with Steve it doesn't necessarily have to be the actual word Equity but but the concept of fairness for each child in the in the education system is a critical one and I recognize that it's been hijacked um to become associated with other socialist agendas but to understand Equity as it has been used by

108the school system is critically important um I also I'm I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve on the equity committee I I will say I'm very excited for the opportunity to work with sunlight works and their focus um just as you mention on psychological safety to be able to break down those barriers and have real conversations with each other if there's anything that I have found incredibly disheartening about what has happened to our nation over the last year is that loss and I feel like I've mourned the loss of that a lot lately we're not giving each other the benefit of the doubt anymore and I I'm deeply concerned about that when it comes to our teachers I'm deeply concerned about that when it comes to administrators and principles or parents when we aren't giving

109each other the benefit of the doubt and the willingness to have the Dignity of a conversation before before we post people's names online or we do other things that can be inflammatory or even dangerous to that person's safety we really need to start rethinking things and I would just submit to everyone here and anyone listening that let's return to a place of kindness reasonability ask questions first before assuming anything just as Steve said I don't know anyone up here who's doing it for the money and if you are you are in the wrong place you need your head examined we're here to serve and from a place of very good intention and I know most of the people that have gone into education feel the same I feel very disheartened reading some teachers comments online

110talking about how they're reconsidering their profession because they've never felt so undermined or second-guessed by the community before and they wonder why they're doing this anymore in an era when we have n Nationwide teacher shortages that's very deeply concerning we want to have a quality teacher in front of every classroom students they all deserve to learn and that's part of this I want also to remind anyone listening and moving forward on public record for as much as it's extraordinarily tempting to project Washington Politics on a local level I would hope that we can remember that this board did not follow the national expectation last year and we got a lot of heat for it there was a reason our kids were in school in person and so and I really feel strongly that the state

111of Utah has a lot of good people who are trying to make good decisions for the right reason and and that we're here to help one another um so I I do look forward to this conversation I am also grateful like mt said for every parent who's willing to communicate with us for each one that comes in and respectfully approaches us with Civility and goodness and and that we have the responsibility too as a board to continue that conversation and um I appreciate everything that you said and what you what you've shared with us I personally believe there's a lot of good that Canyons has done over the years with Equity kind of like what you were outlining before we have a third of our kids on free reduced lunch we have over 2,000 homeless

112kids and when I stopped to consider what happens if we choose to not help that portion of the community the long-term impact of that is really scary there's a lot of data out there that can equate everything from third grade reading levels and where they are to how many prisons you have to build or how many social services you're going to be paying for education is great bang for your buck you put a little bit in and you get a lot out and so we all have a vested interest as a community as a society and making sure that every child has the opportunity to learn so that's all I have to say thank you thank you and I'll just add a couple of thoughts I thank than you superintendent for this um for this

113discussion and this report we we appreciate it so much and and as this is a a new rule that's in in effect I and I believe one of the components of the rule is that the district needs to develop training materials on these on this rule for our employees and so I I'm I'm guessing that sometime in the near future we will will see drafts of those training materials and correct and be able to to um provide some input on on those as that work goes forward yes that's correct and and the materials will be visible to the public as well that's required in the rule that's part of the rule yeah once they're developed yes and so yeah thank thank you for that and then just I I appreciate um all the work that

114is being done here and and the comments that that have been made by my fellow board members and I as I was listening I was thinking first of all this work is not easy it's not easy on any of us um whether it's board or educator or classroom teacher um but but it's kind of I'll say easy with that caveat that none of it's easy but to talk about every and all but where the real challenge is is to see each so when when referring to students every all and we have this High aspirational thing but it really takes an effort to see each student and what they need and I appreciate that you showed us some examples of some individual students and and um and how somebody saw what they needed and was able

115to meet those needs so anyway with that we say thank you and we'll um look forward to hearing more when we have some of the training materials available okay thank you president thank you okay um next is item 1D update on social emotional learning review um and this I'll turn time over to superintendent Robbins and uh BJ Weller director of responsive services and it looks like we will start with Mr Weller well good evening thank you for this opportunity to come talk about social emotional learning this is one of my favorite topics and I've had a lot of opportunities to talk about it the last several weeks and um just really to start I'm grateful that these uh slides are public because I think it's important to remind the public of the story of why

116we started with this uh historical data 1617 see some numbers with suicidal ideation office referrals out of school suspensions and chronic absenteeism uh during the 167 school year um there was a lot of concern I communicated with District leadership about just overall behaviors across the the district the alarming increase in the number of students who are reporting suicidal adiation was kind of like this uh Tipping Point like we've got to figure something out and so this District leadership task force uh is consisted of uh District administrators School administrators um some counseling staff and we really looked at the data across the District we we problem solved we we're trying to get feedback from from all different directions and the board ultimately decided right to create the student responses Services Department to kind of spearhead and

117and take these concerns ahead on what we didn't realize is that starting a department within an already existing system is challenging because resources are extremely limited so we started doing Equity audits um to identify where we are going to allocate our limited resources and so we started with a couple of social workers we added another nurse you know we did some of these small things I start doing some professional development with teachers to help them understand Behavior Uh trauma um you can see since our department was created some of the data um over the last four years and I should really highlight 1920 2021 as being impacted by you know the pandemic because that really has had another layer of challenges for schools um suicidal ideation you can see just it's shocking um I had

118a a phone call over the weekend we had another student um a sixth grade student attempt suicide over the weekend right that's an 11y old student right and and this is probably number uh seven since the school year started um office referrals um those are you can see a a huge discrepancy from 1718 to 1819 as we were doing our Equity audits we found that there was very inconsistent um tracking of data across the the schools and so we created the discipline dashboard where we could have consistent tracking so one person's not writing it on a notepad another person on an Excel sheet you know that that this was a a consistent system out of school suspensions that data is accurate because every suspension is required uh to be documented in our Skyward system uh

119I'm really proud to see those numbers decrease even though it was a pandemic year um we know that out of school suspension is not effective and uh often creates more complicated situations for students more likely to drop out of high school more likely to end up in the criminal justice system um alternatives to suspension have been created like the peer Youth Court which has been fantastic chronic absence is still a concern across the board um and then safe UT our our tips are kind of up and down but again Alta High School was one of the first schools to Pilot safe UT our district has been using it it's a good reminder for students and families that this is a resource uh that's available uh to to them um in the last two years we

120we started tracking these additional uh data points so individual counseling sessions mental health therapy referrals and home visits home visits specifically to help uh engage non-attending students or for families um who have other things that are happening in the home uh oftentimes we'll partner with Community agencies to get them the resources and supports that they need uh so their students can start attending school uh it's if I had the data already for this year uh for individual counseling sessions just initial reports are counselors are seeing more students this year than any other year for social emotional Reasons I'm just the anxiety the the emotional unrest that is happening um just the fatigue uh from all of the stressors is just too much uh for some of these students and their families and so I'm going

121to be really interested to see what this looks like um at the end of the year um we so the the mission of our department is to ensure that each student is safe that they're healthy and ready to learn but with the ultimate goal right that they're in the classroom learning with the teacher and we know that the relationship with teachers um is the most important um factor for students to learn because if they don't feel comfortable with their teacher if they don't feel like that's a safe environment they're not going to engage in the instruction So to that and I I always like to throw this slide out there to remind people that a 72 effect size when it comes to learning with teacher student relationships is extremely high and that's a it's a

122great reminder um so with the board approved uh curriculum we had schools who were uh already using the Second Step curriculum U we also had schools who were had created their own curriculum every school kind of kind of like the discipline tracking it was just inconsistent across the the board uh in addition um teachers were frustrated that you know they're spending a lot of time resolving conflicts uh reaching out saying hey help me figure out additional Behavior strategies and within a multi-tiered system of support you can't go straight to a tier three if you don't have a tier one and then a tier two two and then a tier three right like we have a system for reason any any system that we work within you have to have that foundational level and what we

123found is that we did not have a consistent tier one support which means that the teachers are teaching this uh in the classroom um I'm grateful for several board members who spent time uh going on field trips um looking at elementaries middle schools different districts who had already been incorporating the Second Step curriculum or team uh evaluated multiple uh curriculums before um ultimately presenting uh the Second Step curriculum uh to be approved um we had since since the adoption of that curriculum in 2019 and we've had multiple schools reach out and say you know we've seen a huge decrease the number of uh office referrals we've had teachers report excitedly that this is the first time that they've been able to get through all of their content because they're not spending as much time dealing

124with uh student behaviors um we've had several parents reach out and say hey there's no parent playbook out there right um these these weekly messages have given us a great opportunity to have conversations with our kids about a topic um whether we're on the way to volleyball whether it's at the dinner table whether it's before school um they said these are just great little reminders of basic skills and we we appreciate that second step is prioritize the family engagement component multiple curriculums did not have that component which is why we chose the Second Step um is it consistently being used that's a great question I don't know the answer to that um for that reason that we had asked the um instructional supports Department's uh research team to do a formal program evaluation um we

125asked them to do that over the summer because this is the first time that we would have all schools implementing it and so our our goal was for that to be accomplished by the end of the school year um we're not our request is not to put the program on hold until that program evaluation is done it's just I want to make sure that you understand that was already uh in the process um I wanted to show you also the schools um who communicated to us when they had planned to roll this curriculum out to their communities um I put could have been postponed with covid because several of those schools in the middle those three columns um those were at varying levels of implementation but the column the schools on the far right column

126those schools had planned to implement that this school year for the very first time we um three and a half weeks ago uh obviously there was a a concern brought up from a teacher at a middle school um who felt that the curriculum was controversial that there's been a lot of information on social media parents are concerned about it and I just want to publicly acknowledge that number one uh with with that particular Middle School we didn't follow the process of first communicating with the school Community Council the PTA uh communicating that officially with all the parents and let them come into to look at that curriculum that was done in every other school and I take full responsibility for that and I apologize to that community and to that principle because that really put

127them in a in a tough situation and then second um Second Step has updated some of their videos um which was also communicated to me but we did not have a committee uh established to review updated curriculum that you as the board had approved several years ago right and so learning from those situations um we recommend that we put a a committee together that's representative from each of the five High School feeder systems that consists of parents teachers administrators and SE social emotional learning staff which are like counselors social workers psychologists and you can see um our recommend recommended uh committee um we put the school Community Council parent because we felt that the parents on the school Community Council have been elected to represent the parents in their in their feeder or in their

128schools we don't have every school listed uh because the the purpose is to have a a comprehensive team not a extremely large team because it it's hard to get all that information and be effective when it's too large however we have created another option for parents if they would like to provide feedback um we will give them the template that we are asking um everybody to use when we look at this curriculum and they are welcome to give us their own feedback and comments if they choose to come in and look at the curriculum we've had a couple parents do that already and spent several days with us um I think we're pretty good friends by now and uh I might invite them to the next family reunion um great great parents and we are

129I mean I'm thrilled that people are taking the time to look at at this right we we want to do what's right by our kids just a quick question as I look at this the uh it appears to me that Alder Brighton Corner Canyon those that are doing the uh evaluation is part of the feeder system but at the last two it looks like you've got the Jordan feeder system doing Hillcrest and a Hillcrest feeder system you are correct is that by plan or is that that's a typo okay thanks thanks for pointing that out you're really good at those details right thank you yeah flattery will get you everything so um we will be reaching out um after this meeting after we presented this plan to the board to invite uh the individuals to

130start working on this committee we have information now from Second Step that outlines what has been updated from the original curriculum to today and the biggest thing are the videos um one of the interesting things about this curriculum is that after every lesson teachers can submit feedback to Second Step and give them feedback and a lot of the feedback that second step received was you know these videos are really outdated and it's hard for the kids to connect with them so second steps attempt to make it more relevant and um more timely for today's students resulted in in those videos um I think that 99.5% of the curriculum is great and I think there's point five that that we need to to look at and when I was talking to um a colleague about that

131I was reminded that 99.5% is a really good a uh in school and that there probably is no perfect curriculum out there um but the thing I think is most important is that families just know that that this is part of one it's legislatively required two it's making a difference uh in the lives of students and teachers it's improving the overall School climate and three that this information is for them like they have the primary responsibility to teach their their children um etiquette growth mindset goal setting you know emotional regulation and at the end of the day we're a village and it takes a village to raise a child I wish that I could say that everything that I've taught my own personal kids that they took that and then were Stellar perfect in school

132this is not the case these are kids and they're trying to figure life out socially developmentally and the the curriculum that has been uh introduced into the schools really is having a positive difference no it's not perfect but it's a really really great program and uh the communities to benefit benefited from it are seeing that so I just wanted to list all the state codes and board rules for people to look at on their own and then the last thing that I just wanted to share with you um well so this is the implementation checklist that I talked about at the beginning um which will be so when the high schools start to implement School connect this will be the process that we'll will extremely make sure I didn't even say that right but we'll

133make sure and emphasize please make sure that we follow this process you know we're not we're not trying to sneak things in we want to be extremely transparent um and again we we don't make these decisions lightly you know they're they're for a good reason and it's been overwhelmingly positive from schools who are saying kids are kids are back kids are struggling please when can we start this this program like we we are desperate we need help um the last thing that I just wanted to remind people that there is a curriculum opt out in the policy uh for parents um we will make sure that principles all have a copy of this waiver of participation um you can see the updated version on board docs the parent uh wants to opt their student out

134they can fill this form out and meet with the principal uh if a secondary student wants to opt out they can fill this out work with the principal I am concerned that um logistically what does that look like when a lot of students are opting out of a 20 minute lesson once a week where do they go what do they do that's something that we'll work through let's see I think Mrs shill and then Mrs Oaks and Mrs nbar okay thank you very much for that VJ I appreciate that review um my question well I have some comments and then a question about that committee is just going to review the changes to Second Step that's correct okay so they won't be doing anything with the High School curriculum so we have um we're going

135through every lesson right now regardless and matching it up against um the curriculum adoption like rubric so it's very transparent and then also against um like the health standards the portrait of a graduate so everybody can see and then any comments or suggestions from the team um we we're certainly happy to have anybody look at that as well but like I said there's there's no perfect curriculum a lot of our teachers have modified these lessons a little bit to make it fit uh for their schools uh their classrooms if there's an example that they don't really quite like they've changed examples and made it more appropriate for that class okay um then I also just wanted to say I think um so Butler middle was one of the very first schools that implemented this I

136think they piloted it right so they were even I think before what's on your correct Butler and M Jordan were the first two Middle School pilot and I I did attend SEC also went and visited watched it in the classroom at multiple schools and like over the years I've only heard positive and even since this whole thing's blown up I've just gotten positive emails so welled to the record um in the last four years that we've been doing this we've never had one complaint hundreds of teachers have been teaching this you know thousands of families have been impacted and received the family messages not once not once did we ever receive any sort of formal complaint any sort sort of hey this curriculum is teaching bad things hey get this curriculum out of here not

137once and also the um the school would send out to families what the topic was and I would try to talk to my son about it he wasn't he's a boy he doesn't want to talk about his emotions but um that was great I mean it was transparent to parents what the topics were so we could try to engage and um yeah so I just wanted that on the record and the SEC also I don't know if you remember this but they wanted to even pay for it with trustand money they because they saw the benefit um in the school and then we ended up adopting it and so they didn't have to do that but it has been a positive thing at that school okay Mrs Oaks and Mrs nbow thanks BJ I appreciate

138everything that you've presented um so I have a question as far as the committee is concerned so when they come together and they're reviewing the updated videos and everything um has second step have you been in communication with them about how flexible they are on changing things or is it just something that certain pieces if it's found to be objectionable would just be spliced out like how does that work I'm just curious so I I think that the committee will go through each of the lessons and then we'll make recommendations um there are some some videos so obviously there's two sides to the curriculum some people feel like yeah everything in here is extremely appropriate and in fact we should be doing more to to teach kids because of how much they're struggling on the

139other side we have parents who say we don't even want a teacher to have a relationship with a c with a child because they need to be teaching curriculum only right so there's kind of these two sides to it so I think the committee's recommendations could be that hey we we don't want we won't show this video in this lesson U but whatever we do our contacts with second up they're very open to the feedback and want to work with us thank you that's helpful so that leads me to my next question and and this is I think a larger question for the board that we need to talk about um it seems like in recent years especially as we have curriculums that are increasingly you know when we talk about Blended learning and we're

140using online content that when we as a board initially approve something and it's a static curriculum but then it can change over time because you have the digital pieces involved do we have a policy currently in place to be able to address that or review it to make sure we're staying current on top of that and that we're aware of what those changes might be we do not currently have that policy and that's something I'm advocating for as well to create a policy around a dynamic curriculum like online where it can have change okay so um I think that that's something that we need to discuss and I don't know what the best way to go about doing so that is so so just um polic our process usually when we want to look at

141specific policy when the board has things like this that come up is it usually is assigned to the policy committee to pull up that policy and take a look at it in light of the conversation that the board initiated the request for and then bring a report back to the board so that's that's in our previous practice thanks answers my question thanks Nancy okay uh is that all sorry okay Mrs nbow Mr millerberg then Mr Wrigley thank you okay to start off with I wanted to thank uh BJ for your presentation and and your humility um I I I believe that as we as we are upfront with whatever misstep that helps restore confidence and Trust I appreciate it and I think you're taking on some of this kind of heroically when I looked at

142Canyon's repository actually our process of curriculum has in their um focus groups with stakeholders but actually doesn't spell out taken to school Community councils I think that has been a habit and a practice but it actually is not spelled out currently and I found that today when I was looking through the repository so I think it's wonderful that you added that to the implementation and I think that's something we need to look at to establish uh you know succinctly is that is a process that we always take to school Community councils I know we have done that as habit it just isn't spelled out in process so I don't know that that would be solely on your shoulders uh for not having done that but I I'm happy that we can add that in um

143a couple of questions I have um I love the committee um that we're forming to review because this is a board adopted curriculum and our board is is familiar with with being assigned to committees and some of them are ad hoc and some of them are routine and and happen year after year I I would make a suggestion to my fellow board members and I don't know what people's thoughts are on this but I think it might be um a very good step to have two board members also assigned to this Committee just like with our other regular committee work since this is a curriculum that we adopted and there have been changes that we can be part of that process with reviewing uh another thought I have is we have five parents and 15

144total um professional Educators and I think from a social science standpoint that can sometimes be intimidating to parents I just recently attended a steering committee and I know a parent felt very overwhelmed and inadequate in the convers ations and she she kept saying I I'm not an expert in education obviously the parents that have been on the school Community Council hopefully they feel you know confident in sharing their opinions but we may want to consider including a few other parents and I noticed I think you've been very sensitive to the fact of including those parents where it hasn't been implemented yet my suggestion is perhaps to include a few more parents of of people like like a parent from Butler who has already gone through it um as a resource because it would be nice

145for those parents to say hey let me tell you how it worked as a parent uh one of my questions and suggestions and then Amber mentioned it I wasn't aware that we were sending communication while the kids were learning hey this week we talked about goal setting and this is what you know here's a conversation starter at home I didn't know we were doing that how valuable you know I'm so glad Amber mentioned that how valuable it is for those parents that are reviewing this to have another parent there that's saying I went through this three years ago these are all the things so just an idea there um I love that that we're providing a waiver I think a lot of parents a lot of the concern is the fear of the unknown right

146hey we're not just teaching math or science we're teaching these tools and some parents are saying are they tools or are they values because values can be subjective right and so we're being transparent right they're they're accusing us of trying to teach critical race Theory uh through social emotional learning well yeah and and and some of it is maybe are there political overtones and things like that right and so um and so I also like the idea uh along with the waiver of participation to have an informed consent that just actually outlines for parents I know parents can go online and see the chapters but not every par busy parent is going to take the time and initiative to do that if we have an informed consent here's the 15 chapters whatever it is the

147units there isn't 15 but you know the units these are these are what's going to be talked about so they feel like they they understand and know what is going to be taught I know we do informed consents for the Dare program you know it it it seems that it would make sense just to have a detailed informed consent one email one paper a parent can go to instead of going online and looking to say oh okay this is everything I need to know for this program so I thought that way um and then and then I have also emailed Nancy and Miss Oaks talked about it I sit a policy committee but I am very interested in in developing um new policy regarding how the board can handle these curriculums that are Dynamic and

148changing so um I think that's everything what are your thoughts on those I'll leave it up to the board to decide the committee um we are not sneaking in critical race Theory and I think an optin is unnecessary uh it's required that we teach it if an opt out works for parents I think it puts a extraordinary amount of burden on the the schools to try to get that from every single parent um and it could have larger impacts on um more diverse schools and um I think I mean we're we're transparent either way I think the better that we can communicate it I think that'll satisfy the concern okay Mr millerberg and then Mr Wrigley BJ thanks for owning the problem I don't know about about you but I know for me that's a

149really hard thing to do is to say yeah we messed up and take your take your licking so thanks for being willing to uh to do that um where we sit we don't see all the moving Parts but probably the the one thing that bothers me about this whole deal at Draper Park more than anything and I don't know if he was a great teacher if he was an okay teacher if he wasn't any of the above I don't know that I don't know if he's loved by the students or not loved by the students I don't know if he was loved by the parents or not loved by the parents I don't know that but I really hate to have it come to a point that a person has to resign their position to

150get a point through I think we need to establish something somewhere that can't we just talk about this you know um and I know that's a Personnel issue Personnel issue that we can't and we can't discuss it and I know that that's very hard for me not to say anything but to me it's just really hard because I look at that situation and gosh if that comes in on a person's resume that's really really hard to get past in an interview and I hate to see a professional educator in that in that box that's hard for me I'll just restate that hundreds of teachers have been extremely satisfied with this and happy yeah and so I don't know the underlying facts and so can't comment on those but it just seemed like a very drastic

151way to get a point driven home and I would like to think that somewhere somehow an individual can talk to their principal the individual can LeapFrog the principal and go to somebody at the district level and we can talk things out rather than having such a harsh irrational conclusion come out of uh of somebody pointing out things that I believe you said the program prog has changed and there's some things in there that we don't like so that's one point I have and again thanks to the patrons of the district for standing vigil on things and watching closely what's going on and bringing those to our attention so that's all I have thank you Mr Wrigley this last year has been a tough year because we've been trying to keep our kids safe from Co

152been very successful in that we spent millions of dollars in doing that we have not lost a kid but you pointed out the very be beginning we've lost seven kids so far this year not we have not lost a student there's been attempts seven attempts last year was how many students four last year seven this year yeah we had six students die last year and I think you said putting out another window like a thousand kids been looking about suicidal things on the internet that we've caught we have a suicide epidemic a mental health epidemic in our school that we need to try to figure out what to do and I think we've been trying as a board do whatever to figure that one out um I've had Parents call and say well let's use

153the social workers let's use the psychologist not have the teachers do that um possibly other than the teachers and the social workers send us letters saying we are overwhelmed with trying to deal with the kids's emotional issues we don't have time to put in five or 10 minutes with the kid one of the issues in the the program we tried to put into the school is very similar to what we done in elementary my kids went to Willow Canyon there were certain characteristics principles that they C on the thing and they tried to say this school does this this this this this they had a Common Language so when they talked about that you know will cat this or will cat this or El you know everybody's got what the kids are so they talk

154the same language one of the things we're looking in this is the how the teachers and the kids talk the same language and I I think that's why it's works so well in reduction of behaviors because the kid starts to escalate and you could say this is how appropriately we express our anger we don't beat up on the next kid or whatever this is how we appropriately do it so I think we've seen that come down we've also been able to take that that and and share that with the parents I had an opportunity uh to two or several of these different classes especially in the elementary that's a static CL those books have been used nobody's played around with them which has been nice I was sitting in a Kindergarten class I I substitute

155teach in in Granite and now just only Murray because enough time but when I go to the classrooms the kids do not know one another I'll I say can you pass this paper out and they're going in the middle schools and the high schools I'm brave and they go I don't know all the kids in this class I was in a Kindergarten class and we were sitting around in a circle where it's just sort of the process where we just sort of sit around and talk about you know what's going on on the life of the kid and and uh one of the little uh kindergarten kids as they went around they introduced himself and S of talked about what their thing was today and this Kindergarten kid said my mother came home this weekend

156apparently his mother left the family and he said my mother came home and he said all these kids just clapped and went up and gave him a hug and I mean you could see that they had that emotional support when his mother was gone for those several months that he had that emotional support he would not typically have that in a regular kind arle house um and so it allowed that opportunity for this kid to to have the support of his his his class members um you know so I think that's one of the thing we've been trying to figure out how do we do this where it's a common language as you said before we had we could regulate what goes into the classroom to some extent if we know what's going in we

157can't if everybody's developing their own social emotion program every single school it's impossible to keep that and we're finding now with a lot of kids uh that that's needed because they're having some regulation issues I mean I've taught on some schools that I would never go back to again because they were beating up each other in the classroom we don't have that here thank goodness but some of the Westside schools do I think we learned from this electronic uh curriculum which is big a big problem we'll approve a health book that's electronic and then if somebody sneaks something in that is then you g so whatever so I guess we this this age trying to figure out because Health books in Utah are different than health books in California and Florida and Texas we have

158the Utah version of the health book with Utah version of the of pretty much everything and so if we run a social emotional program we have to maybe use that whole thing and and for the record Second Step didn't sneak it in they they communicated with us that they were making those changes I just failed to go through and look at all the changes yeah so at this point they've been instructed if they make any changes to notify you and yeah they do either way and we can we can go through that process now I've had several parents and several teachers even petitions come to us to please move forward with this program because they're already starting to see the kids which are coming back to school this year emotionally rather traumatized wanting to do

159something for them we do not have the mental health capacity mental health in the county you can't even get into to see a therapist you know privately in the in this this County um so what is the plan then as we move forward with second step are we going to implement that and then what are we doing with the high school program and if we do Implement what are the safeguards that we have put into place to make sure that that that the parents have choice to get in to get this opt in and opt out's G to be really funny when everybody's talking the same thing it's like going to Willow Canyon saying I don't like four the five values that you put on the Willer Canyon board for this school that the Wildcat

160person's going to teach but but tell me about that so Steve do you mind holding on for that because superintendent will probably address those questions okay I will is there any other board comments yes Mrs Arnold did you have a comment it's just a little te anyone kind of so I want to say that I've been sitting on this board now almost seven years and I am absolutely positively sure that that all things were done possible to address Personnel issues in this district and that personal issues are not to be brought in front of the board and the people in this audience and with that said um I'm going to just go to policies and procedures because policies are driven by law and procedures are driven by us um more or less and so just

161one little thing about the participation waiver we will be able it will be on the district site when people register for school correct I mean that's where these are usually put I believe it is so that when when parents go on to register their student they'll be able to see that there's this waiver and they can sign in or sign up and it has a pretty good description about what this um program is so that they can make a good decision for themselves and their children whether they participate or not participate um I would also would encourage that if we can put it in other languages because we have a huge amount of students in several schools that speak several different languages if we could that would be I would be grateful for that um

162so that they have it in in those different languages um so that's just all I have to add everyone's thank you thank you superintendent thank you president I also just want to thank the board for your comments and guidance and Leadership on this I want to tell BJ I appreciate him and all of our parents and patrons over the last couple of weeks that have um shared their input uh and concerns and support uh for the program so I won't I don't want to rehash those issues I think that they've been well documented and spelled out here I appreciate BJ's initiative going forward with the committee review I think I think that'll be very helpful to Amanda's Point um as we look at Dynamic curriculum that that changes I think hly made the same point

163that uh we need to be dynamic in that as well as we go forward um I think a couple of points that I'd like to bring up and I know you're this is there BJ but making it more available is just the metric on curriculum adoption uh so the public and parents can see the metric that you're you're weighing that against and I know we talked about um alignment to State rule 328 the State Board is not encouraging that rule as a metric uh for seal curriculum however I actually think it does provide some guidance when we're talking about impartiality and professionalism and just you know where where that fits I think it you know to Overlay our curriculum on that can give us some guidance as well to some of the uh topics that

164that I made or or points that I made earlier um I would recommend that we go forward with K8 uh curriculum starting next Monday um we need to get the waiver uh installed ASAP so parents have time uh to figure out what is best for their student from now until then um I would also recommend to the board that we hold on High School uh School connect curriculum um I I still have some questions about that and I I don't feel at this time that it's um in that process that BJ laid out that those uh boxes have all been uh checked and its dynamic as well I think one difference with we know with Elementary it's worth mentioning again is that Elementary curriculum is static it's in binders it's not Dynamic on on the

165web uh so I think that that does uh create a little bit of a difference um at least for elementary but I would recommend we hold on on uh School connect at the high school at this point um okay other than that I I think uh that's all I had to say on that okay um yeah yeah no um just so Steve did you have a follow-up question and then Mrs Arnold so as we move forward on this I've had some parents ask in regards to being able to see the curriculum I know second steps is a Priory so I don't know how and and having to go down the school and meet at the school and see it's pretty disruptive for the school because they're trying to do a all the other kids so

166are we able to work on that somehow or what's the recommendation that you have on that so right now they're not giving us licences for public but we've informed every school our district office we've had parents come in we can show it to anybody we just can't post it on website okay so we still have that restriction as far as the licensing restriction okay thank you Mrs Arnold I'm hoping this is an appropriate time but um I'm sitting here thinking and listening and I think the one thing we're missing a little bit of um this 2020 was really hard but it's not over I see it with the teachers that I work with every day and the students I work with every day and I don't have a term for it but it's kind of

167like post-traumatic stress but a little different like their lives they felt was on the line all last year and um I'm sure there's a term I don't don't know there's probably psychologist and psychiatrist who can tell me what it is but they children and adults felt like their life was on the line and it's kind of like post-traumatic stress and it was every day all day in the stores out of the stores in the schools posted everywhere listening to parents and adults and believe me I I know us adults don't always keep our tongues when we're supposed to so kids don't have to worry about adult stuff but we don't always do that and I look at this curriculum and I know there's some pieces that people fill are inappropriate and and and there are

168some pieces that probably were inappropriate and we missed them and okay we missed them we're sorry but there are also lots of pieces that are very appropriate right now and more now than ever and like Steve said there aren't enough counselors out there and we don't have enough counselors in the school and teachers don't want to be the counselors but there are there are things that happen every day and you know like I had a child come up and and asked me if she could have a hug and I said yeah but you know then you have that thing in the back of your mind about whether you should hug her or not hug her but she said my mom passed away a long time ago and I've not had a hug for a long

169time so then do you hug her not hugger do do you teach them you know um it's okay to hug each other because we all need a hug today so back to the beginning of all this um let's be kind and let's you know be civil let's try to work through this together um I'm sure talking will help solve a lot of the pieces that we need to look at get rid of or keep but there are some things that just need to be kept because of people and where they are right now and I don't know how long it'll take to get over 2020 I I look at my own nine adult children and 22 grandchildren and our family is spread across the board to know vaccinations to oh God to have them are

170we you know and and um so as we go through tonight because I know there's a lot of people here who want to to express feelings and we're glad you're here and we're thankful for it but um let's just work together and figure this out because it's been a a long year and it doesn't seem to be getting much better thank thank you for that um I I know we're not talking about nursing but with when you brought up we've had a our nurses are in a precarious situation since they're the point of contact with the health department and our school district just ask our parents to really please be kind to our nurses um they they are really struggling with all the the hate and and the the meanness that's been happening granted yes

171we do have a lot of positive things happening but people are exhausted there's a lot of fatigue people are at their breaking point and so when we have that uh maybe reaction where we're emotionally upset just take a deep breath please and be kind before we speak so thank you for that reminder thank you um so just really quickly to wrap up so board it sounds like the policy committee has an assignment is that correct and then and then this Review Committee I I just want to um to clarify that curriculum content areas have a Review Committee in place right where they regularly review curriculum and those committees other than the the health Ed committee which is required by law to have board members but none of those others have board members on it and

172so I I would while I appreciate the suggestion I would like to recommend that we structure this committee similar to the other curriculum committees because ultimately the the work of that committee comes to the full board and I feel like then the full board has opportunity to vet that work and to hear and and make some decisions accordingly on that so that's just kind of a clarification and a recommendation that I I'm going to put forward for moving forward with the committee so comments on that Mrs nbow my comment is just with the nature of some of the topics some of the topics actually that are discussed in in in Second Step could could easily fold into a health curriculum there are a few a few units um and so in my mind that's why

173it also makes sense is because I see that this would be more aligned with a health curriculum rather its Mental Health and then there's some topics about you know what is harassment what is not some of those topics I don't believe we should do the same process we do for math science English reading social studies I believe this would be a committee work assignment that would be more in line with health this is mental health so that's my thought on that Bard any other thoughts I just think we're kind of overstepping into micromanagement and that's not our job our job is to tell them want to do and Trust they do their job and then come back to them if they don't unless I'm wrong any other thoughts or comments Mrs Oaks I can see

174Miss nar's point and I I can appreciate the idea of having um board members in there I'd be open to it my larger concern is making sure that parent representation is robust and consistent and um you know if none of us are on the those committees making sure that when the reports come back for us to understand the process that was used in order to make sure that that was the case that would be important to me other thoughts um okay Mr Haner yes come forward to the microphone Jesse H henfer I think it's just a clarification the sex education instruction committee does have have a board member on it there is no Health curriculum committee it's only the sex education instruction committee sorry got running nose to in my mask so um thank you

175for that clarification this nbow I I agree with Mrs Oaks to the current committee the ratio is 3 to one with three professional educators to one parent because there will be five parents and so I agree with a robust parent population in that committee and again just do feel that the mental health is definitely um would be in my mind a great place to have some committee work with the board I know as a board member especially in my community and I'm sure miss Oaks feels the same way the volume of calls and emails and texts we've received is astronomical with this situation at dra Park and um I feel whatever we can do to to help this process and make sure that parents feel very included I just think that's the best way I

176can represent my community and my patrons so with over representation from Elta and Corner Canyon um to balance that out because it's always better to have a few less than a lot more would you recommend that we have two from each school then we're happy to do that um yeah so where are we at folks um I think maybe um so board are you comfortable with doubling the amount of parent involvement on this committee and then let's let's maybe have the give a an an update once they're up and running and then we can address the other question the other piece of it I have a question though yes so the committee is not going to go through every little piece of the curriculum every chapter every no they don't they don't that's what I'm

177trying to clarify is that the committee does not read the whole book look at all the the videos and look at all of the and look at all the the pieces do we're looking at the changes but in the original you chunk it so that this group is working on these ones this group is working on these ones okay so it's piec mailed out to different people to come back and report about what they saw or what they did okay all right just making a clarification all right so is it reasonable to expect this committee to have something to report back to the board in two months oh for sure okay absolutely in instead of a number is there a ratio that you feel more comfortable with than three to one like half or what

178I just worry about the the size like a large too many people I think if it's if yeah I think half is good okay thank you okay yeah all right well thank you thank you very much for for leading us through this and for the report and all the work that you're doing we appreciate you and your team and we'll look forward to report soon okay um yes that concludes our study session oh I'm sorry don't we need to discuss whether we're going to follow the recommendation by the superintendent or not are we moving that to a different meeting um this is a study session and that was his recommendation so unless we want to bring it back for Action which we don't need to because it's already a board approved curriculum and program correct

179but currently since the curriculum was on hold and Dr Robins just made a recommendation don't we need to um it was an Administration thing to put so where does it stand right now from this meeting because Dr Robins made a recommendation to take the hold off for K through 8 so where does it stand is that hold off now or can we discuss as a board it was an administrative move to put it on hold so I'm recommending it's off on Monday for K8 and on and High School school connect stay on hold um so I to create an action item that would be a different conversation okay Mr Wrigley just a clarification on that uh the K through six or five you know we know that that's static is there going to be any

180modifications on the six through eight isue putting it back and we're taking the the stuff that's getting given to us in consideration as we move forward that or not correct yeah okay Mrs nbow so then I just have a comment I I feel comfortable I just want to speak to that I feel comfortable in the superintendent's decision to remove the hold from K through five where they're static workbooks but where there has been updates I I am not comfortable as a board member to take the hold off for the middle school leveles so I so I yeah the for me and I don't BJ can speak to this um I directed that the videos that were in question be pulled um more for their age appropriateness than anything else um I I didn't feel like

181you know they really exemplified what how or what we want our middle school students to it was an introductory you know video to Middle School um for for my own purposes looking at the rest of the curriculum I'm fine with that going forward with these Provisions in place that we're reviewing it as well as the waiver uh so so parents have have Choice um you know in that so I I I see it as an ongoing process I don't I don't see this as you know hey this is one and done we're you know we're this is ending tonight I my direction to BJ's team is that we're continuing to to look at it and one thing I've advocated for we're still working with second steps is a parent demo that you know parents can

182look at that anytime um as well as board members or you know or the public I I get there's some intellectual uh property right issues there but I think you know that's another aspect to Dynamic curriculum that just needs to be worked out that people can look at it any you know any time so this is not an action item at this point this is just a study session a conversation and to learn things anything like that would have to go back on another board meeting with another action item so we can move on okay so that does conclude our study session this evening and um I I um would like to give the board a f minute break and I apologize to those that have joined us that we are running behind but as

183you can tell we've had very good robust discussion and so if you'll allow us a five minute break we appreciate it and we'll reconvene at 7:20 I'd like to uh welcome you to the business meeting of the Canyons Board of Education today is September 7th 2021 and we are meeting at the district office located at 9361 South 300 East in Sandy Utah and I'd like to thank the members of the public and those that are here in attendance for their their uh patience and understanding as we are a little bit behind schedule starting this meeting and thank you all for being here and participating uh the first item is to approve the agenda for this for this meeting so I will ask for a motion okay I move to approve the agenda for today September

1847th 2021 thank you is there a second I'll second the motion thank you any discussion to this motion all right seeing none I'll ask for a vote all in favor say I I any opposed okay that motion passes thank you we will now be led in the Pledge of Allegiance by Mr Steve Diamond Director of Human Resources if the audience would please stand and recite the pledge with me I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you it's always such a privilege to say that with a group of people appreciate that opportunity um next we will have recognitions and we'll turn time over to Jeff Haney and ksten Stewart from the

185Department of communications president stingy thank you for this time that we you give us every board meeting to recognize the achievements of students faculty and staff in the Canyon school district and tonight for our recognitions we are celebrating the achievements of a Jordan High School student who is golden on the green counselors who are at the top of their class encouraging students to complete the federal paperwork that uh qualifies them for student aid and employees who have go have gone above and beyond even putting their own safety in Jeopardy as they responded to crises now those who are mentioned tonight will receive a letter of recognition from the board and the superintendent as well as a keychain and soon we'll start inviting all of those who are recognized by the board to board meetings so

186we congratulate them in person our first honory tonight is Preston Cheney who is a boys golfer at Jordan high school now we are rooting for this beat Digger Preston we hope that he gets a Hoin one at some of his upcoming tournaments and he's certainly well on his way not only is he a contender for individual honors and the Utah high school activities associations prep tournaments but he also has qualified to compete for a national title Preston recently won a regional attorney h held in San Diego this gains him entrance to the notab beay National Championship which will be televised on the Golf Channel don't know if Mr millerberg will be watching so at the August tournament a Preston's opening round included help me out here make sure I get this right seven birdies against

187two Bogies is that good okay and the okay in the final round Preston posted an even par opening nine before making three birdies and a bogey to finish in first place and land himself in a spot in the National Tournament Preston also has had a dominant start to his Jordan High School season he's won four of six Region 8 golf tournaments and has an eight-stroke lead with two tournaments left to play so congratulations to Preston and we wish him much luck as he heads into the final part of his golf season now we're going to stay with the Jordan beat diggers for one more recogition we're recognizing the hard work of the counseling staff at Jordan High School in encouraging students to complete the FAFSA which is the free application for federal student aid now

188each spring the Utah higher education assistance Authority outreach program offers a FAFSA cup it's a competition among schools to celebrate Utah counseling teams for the hard work and Innovation they demonstrate in getting kids to complete the FAFSA if you've never had the opportunity to complete the FAFSA good for you it is a very lengthy Federal document that students are required to complete it qualifies them for federal and state student aid this year Jordan high school's counseling team took first place in the FAFSA cup encouraging more students than all of the other schools to complete FAFSA I talked to some of the counselors today they helped 237 students complete their FAFSA which allows them to get student aid and pursue their post secondary dreams also as a reminder Utah college application week is held in October

189and we'll have many activities in our schools that will help students get those college applications done it it dovetails with the board of education's vision and mission of encouraging every student to be College ready at the time of their High School graduation and we want to help them take that next step onto a college a university or a trade school we also want to take a few moments and recognizing two employees who truly have gone above and beyond these employees are alarm responder Bill Bailey and Scott Mitchell Brighton High Schools school psychologist now throughout the summer canyons and local law enforcement agencies were working together to chase down suspected robbers of several Canyon's district schools now Theo of these suspected robbers was pretty much the same they would gain access to the school through the

190roof hatch they would snag whatever could be carried and they would run out the door and into the night and it was incredibly difficult to find and catch these people well bill seen to the here to the right had been working the graveyard shift as an alarm responder for less than a month when he received word from our alarm company that there was a Breakin at a school he followed the pro protocol of notifying Sandy Police and he went to the location he helped search the buildings and then he returned to one of the elementary schools to reset the alarm when he noticed by chance a man dressed in black standing near the building he immediately called Sandy Police he jumped out of his truck and he yelled stop put up your hands now he

191fibbed a little and told the guy that the police were coming with their police dogs and told him not to run but he was unarmed but he convinced the man that he should stand still and not run until the police got there he must be a quick talker and have a commanding presence because believe it or not the man just stood there with his hands up they were able to arrest that person and then arrest the person who returned in a car who was serving as the getaway driver and the police tell us that they then confessed to the robberies at the Canyons district schools so Bill quick-thinking helped police NAB the folks who had been robbing Canyon's district schools Mr Mitchell res deserves recognition for his quick thinking and actions when a student who

192wanted to enroll at Brighton High School became agitated when he was told he needed to go through the established intake process before getting a schedule and Mr Mitchell was one of the employees who jumped into action when the student suddenly attacked a school resource officer now this happened on the sidewalk outside of school that Scott and a parent jumped to the officer's Aid they struggled and pulled the boy off the officer and they did their best to ensure that the boy did not grab the officer's service weapon it was was quite a scuffle and attracted a little bit of attention but because of the actions of Mr mitual and several bystanders they truly helped contain the situation and deescalate so few people were injured so we thank the quick-thinking actions of our employees in these

193situations and the such incidents are certainly not part of their job descriptions but they didn't hesitate to carry out those duties all the same so congratulations to all those we have recognized tonight and thank you to our employees who have gone above and beyond so president T tingy thank you for the time that you grant us to recognize faculty staff and students and parents and we turn the time back to you thank you Mr Haney we appreciate it and we it's it's great to hear these wonderful things that are happening in our district and and we celebrate those individuals um we have now come to the patron comment portion of our meeting the Board of Education encourages public engagement and oh excuse me I will continue in a minute but we do have a few

194patrons that have joined us on the telephone so at this point we will unmute them so that they can also hear these instructions you are now unmuted [Laughter] thank you Cindy we appreciate your your help with that so welcome to those that have joined us on the telephone line uh we have now come to the patron comment portion of our meeting the Board of Education encourages public engagement and values input from the public while not required to do so by law the board often designates time and meetings to listen to the patrons of the district I will briefly review a few guidelines for addressing the board board and first of all I would like to express our appreciation to those that have signed up and for those of you that are here and thank you

195for for the um respect and the courtesy and the engagement that you are making with us tonight um we the patron comments are part of the public record of the meeting and Patron comment time is limited to Residents and taxpayers of Canyon's District students and parents of students and current employees of the district with when several people share the same opinion the board may ask individuals to select a representative spokesperson patrons May provide board members with written documents pertaining to their comments these documents must be submitted to the board secetary Cindy over here at the meeting or emailed to the office of public Communications by noon of the day following the board meeting time allotted for public comment is at the discretion of the board president tonight we have several individuals that have signed up

196to address the board so we will allow individuals two and a half minutes and those representing a group are allowed four minutes the board of education does not discuss matters which are not on the meeting's agenda nor engage in public comment on Personnel issues of a District employees character professional competence or mental or physical health if a patron wants to comment on Personnel issues the board requests that those comments be submitted to the board in writing if the patron determines to verbally comment on Personnel issues the comments need to be civil and refrain from personal attacks insults defamatory or slanderous comments about an individual and finally as we begin the patron comments portion of the meeting the Board of Education would like to quickly address some issues that have been raised recently in the community

197last year masks were required in schools by State Health order this school year there are no Health orders requiring face masks and a new Utah law restricts school districts from issuing mask mandates unless under order by the county health department and also to be clear critical race theory is not part of the curriculum being used by Canyon school district there are no plans to incorporate it into the curriculum or instruction in Canyon schools so so um with that we will begin the comments from patrons I will read um the first three names and then so you know when you're when you're when your turn is coming up we'll begin with Stacy Peterson who is here in person and then um Jennifer nazaro who will be joining us on the telephone and then Lisa Bruns who

198is here in person Stacy Peterson thank you it's been an education to be here tonight and to listen to all of you I'm a new at the public school system I an eighth grader at dper Park Middle School and I have a 10th grader at Corner Canyon High School uh became aware of this Seal program and I'm one of those that probably has bu BJ's office too much I've been there five days in the last eight business days trying to go through the curriculum I started with eth grade since I have an eighth grader and then moved into seventh grade in those five days I've only been able to do all of eighth grade and about a quarter of the seventh grade I've looked at every lesson plan that is given to the teachers apparently

199more than the curriculum committee from what I understand I've looked at every student handout that goes to the students I've looked at the each lesson that is given to the kids which is kind of like a PowerPoint they have videos and they have um slides and they have cartoons and things and I'm more concerned than when I started uh having looked primarily like I said mostly through the eighth grade district or the eighth grade curriculum uh there tends to be an over an overtone of social justice of racial undertones of gender validity the the handouts themselves are not bad and so if only the curriculum Department looked at that it's it's pretty easy to to look over some of the things that are there they do talk about power and privilege from race and from

200gender they do talk about um some some issues of harassment and things but it's the videos and it's the lessons and my concern is I appreciate what their um their group is trying to do and pick out the parts that are okay but it's everywhere it's in so many of them I probably looked at over 50 videos in all but one maybe two all but maybe two the white kid was the harasser the abuser the Buller the harasser what is that about um in in every video there was um maybe two white kids and several dark kids maybe 10 to two um there's it's just not necessary and it's not addressed when they get into the sexual harassment part of it versus the flirting part of it sexual harassment is defined as something that is

201of a sexual nature that's showed to you or brought up to you that you don't consent to well guess what they're 11 12 and 13 they can't consent to any of that it ought to be absolutely not allowed even if they're okay with it they can't be okay with it just all of that um I I think there was maybe two lessons that I went through and had really no comment to make all the rest of them had some issue that concerned me and that's why I was hoping I was so grateful that it had been put on hold until the committee could really look at this maybe when this was put into place and the curriculum committee approved it and you guys approved it maybe it was great we do know that in 2020

202Castle who makes this made a shift in their direction to refine their form of seal to concentrate on transforming and Equitable setting and systems promoting Justice oriented Civic engagement this is aimed at redistributing power to promote social justice that's a problem for me I hope that you will reconsider having the um the committee look at it first before it's taught and uh I'd be happy to give any of the information I found to any of you or anyone else who's interested thank you so much thank [Applause] you Jennifer nazaro will join us on the teleph then Lisa Bruns in person and then Connie Slaughter also in person Jennifer can you hear me okay yes um my family has followed all the guidelines to stay safe and slow the spread of covid-19 for the last 18

203months we've made many sacrifices because we understand that in doing so we're protecting ourselves and others so far sending my children to school this year has been the most high-risk choice I have made for my family and not requiring Mas in schools is the most careless decision our leaders have made for our state we have seen cases rise in our schools and Community yet nothing is changing we need a layered protection in schools including mask requirements of students and staff and enforcable and effective quarantines to slow the spread of co9 with school back in session the Delta variant spreading we're seeing a quarter of covid cases being those of children around 2,000 Utah children aged 5 to 11 tested positive for covid from August 15th to 30th this year during the same two weeks last

204year 240 kids of the same age tested positive death should not be the only Factor we consider when evaluating the need for safety precautions in schools such as masks we should worry about the unknown future effects of covid-19 we should be concerned that as many as 30% of children infected will experience long-term symptoms we should also worry about the strain this places on working parents with miss school days and trouble by the disruptions this causes and learning we should also worry that if you have a heart attack or get in a car accident right now now you may not be able to find a hospital that has a bed for you recent testing delays are preventing students from getting diagnosed before they spread it to even more children with days lost to scheduling a test

205then getting results then more time for contact tracers to confirm exposures report that information on school records and notify other families we are letting covid-19 spread recklessly through our schools and communities even once a positive case or an exposure is known quarantines and masking are merely recommendations something has to change our children deserve to be protected while they learn yet currently sending our children to school constitutes a high-risk Behavior every day that action is delayed is another day that children are packed into classrooms and actively spreading covid-19 and one step closer to a disaster for our community you have the responsibility to protect our children science and safety should not be debatable demand that the legislature change these irresponsible laws preventing you from making School a safe place insist that we Institute a layered approach

206to Safety in school during this pandemic including Universal mask squaring and enforcable home quarantines to protect our children and our community thank you thank you um Lisa Bruns and she's representing a group so four minutes and then Connie Slaughter who is here in person also representing a group and then um Adam Kota is on the telephone with us good evening board members um as you know I'm Lisa Bruns many of you have talked to me many times I've come in front of you many times um I represent at least 100 Canyons District parents for Utah parents United and um I've got a message for you t it was a different message I'm glad that you guys talked about the uh planning for equity and um educational Equity analysis document because I found the same one

207that Miss nbow did and I had a lot of concerns um so what I want to say is I know you're not the enemy I had to change my document what I wrote tonight um but the fact of the matter is is that we and I'm going to say we because it includes me and you we're being assaulted on all sides by lots of people that have a very pointed agenda and I think that's where the distrust and the worry comes in and it's it's completely founded right anybody who went through these documents for your agenda tonight and found this would be extremely alarmed um you know we talk it talks about um Equity not being equal um it talks about Equity the equitable distribution of resources um based upon individual students needs and you

208know what that is that's Marxism right Distributing redistributing resources um and dividing people in classes and in society is Marxism and that's concerning right um and then when we hear that you're working with cognia and while I know your options are very slim um this company has a very Marxist agenda and they say it the CEO in in in a video said they want to help institutions address the complex issues of systemic racism and inequities um that's concerning right because we realize as parents and and glad you're all here I believe you're all here for a reason um that you are our line of defense and I'm so grateful for the conversations and the emails that those of you who had them with me have had with me um and it makes me feel like

209I can trust you um but when we find stuff like this in the documents it's concerning and then when we see resources at the back um you know or and in the a whole ensuring equally High outcomes for all and and no I'm so glad that you said what you said um superintendent Robbins because um we shouldn't be trying to get equal outcomes it's impossible a lot of these kids have socioeconomic factors that the schools have no control over um it's impossible um and then these resources at the back you know you site Castle's transformative sccl definition I I know these aren't board documents who who created them and then we have belele framework right um listed as a as a resource um and that's that says building Equitable learning environments in this period of

210Crisis covid-19 is systemic racism that's critical race Theory tenants um to restore our Collective future you know every time there's a mention of systemic racism that promotes the tenant of critical race Theory and collectivism is a political Theory associated with Communism so this is why we get concerned as parents because without Sr 901 this would be the definition of equity equal outcomes for all so thank goodness for our legislature right thank goodness they changing the the equity rule for usbe and all I'm saying is we want to trust you we want to work with you we know you have your plates full you have building resources and you have covid-19 responses and and kids who want to commit suicide we get it but we want to partner with you and we want to know that

211you are going to protect us and protect our children because that's what we elected you for so please do so and we want to help you we want to be more resources for you so I appreciate you all thank you thank you Connie Slaughter and then Adam Kota on the phone and then Holly Mars Mars okay my name is Connie Slaughter I'm the mother of three boys and four grandchild educated for the past almost 38 years in Jordan Canyon school district I appreciate your time tonight last Thursday I was invited to participate in one of several focus groups we were told the goal of these focus groups was to allow us to give input and opinions about the future of our school districts these facilitated conversations were led by The District's partner at education El

212elements my first thought was who is education elements I went to ee's website and I'd like to share just three examples what I found there number one education elements will have a viral event um in October on Personal Learning re reimagined a couple comments on this as I've looked through their stuff it seems like they're using covid as a time oh we've got to hurry quick get this um this curriculum in and I'm I'm thinking are we testing this on our kids are we using them as and testing them the other thing education elements directed questions to District leaders superintendents and caos um and they said this they said you are or want to become an equity focused District or social emotional learning will be at the top priority for 20 21 and 22 okay

213the second person I'd like to talk about or is one of the team members and this is pervy Patel and she said the following quotes the deeply embedded INE inequities that exist in our school systems are not there by coincidence they are the result of intentional decision made by those with power and privilege pervy also said we engage in dismantling systemic R um education inequities at education elements and then she went on to say we also know and believe that any work around addressing inequity must start with oneself and a willingness to seed power depending on the Privileges one holds I love how they can make that assessment for me we provide she then said we provide resources so they can guide us in our finding out how we are on our Equity basis um

214we provide resources and guidance for leaders and teams to start with themselves to deeply analyze their own assessments and biases and offer strategic uh strategies for each of them to seed power to those without a voice at the table third and finally is another um person at education elements and this is Philip Phillip Kesler and on the website Philip States it states that Philip spends his time figuring out the ways to make 1 plus 1 equal three for Education elements end of quote is he joking no there's a movement in our country I was on the internet today and there's several um places I chose um lri rubel from Brook at college professor of math and she offered words of wisdom on Twitter and she said that 2 plus 2 equals four equation reeks of

215white supremacist um patriarchy last week as I attended education elements um focus group with 11 other parents I wondered how many other parents and looked into and read about E's ideologies I heard parents tell their real concerns about their kids education at Canyons I wondered how these concerns are going to be seen through education elements eyes are we really partner are we really in partnership with a company that espouses these ideologies I encourage you as school board um our school board and all of us to dive deep in education elements and to see what it really is we are constantly being told that there is no critical raise theory in our schools yet we are constantly seeing different ways that CRT is seeping in thank you thank you okay um Adam Kota then Holly Mars

216and after Holly Mars is Jessica Anderson Mr Kota I wanted to make a couple of points today about the district's data uh covid data and response and like one of the early callers to encourage you to do more to keep our kids safe at school um first I'm I'm concerned about the accuracy of the data in the district covid dashboards um I think it's currently Under reporting cases by about onethird I accessed the numbers of covid cases for kids ages to 17 over the last couple of weeks from the Utah Department of Health Ibis system aggregated those numbers up by school district and then compared those State numbers to the numbers reported by each district for Salt Lake City the number of cases reported by the state actually matched the district dashboard quite closely there

217were 72 cases confirmed by the district over the last two weeks and 73 reported by the state so about 99% of the cases reported by the state were also reported by the district for Canyons the state system showed 222 cases over the last two weeks that the county dashboard uh only showed 147 cases so about 33% fewer cases than the state had reported so I'm concerned that the canyon dashboard may actually be Under reporting numbers pretty significantly there's other districts that are worse Granite School District uh is seems to be Under reporting cases by about two-thirds um we then actually called the County Department of Public Health and they confirmed that Salt Lake City School District is doing a much better job of helping the county verify uh covid cases and doing contact tra facing

218um so Salt Lake City has a team is my understanding dedicated to helping the county with those verifications and doing the contact tracing so that um people can be notified as quickly as possible if they've had a potential exposure and to make sure that the numbers are accurate uh it seems like Canyons is not uh providing the same level of support and partnering with the district in quite the same way I I'm not saying that to point fingers I know everybody is doing everything that can right now or is you know certainly the nursing staff and others but it I don't know if it's on the on the county side or the district side but there doesn't seem to be enough resources to keep up with the case rates and as a result the data

219that we're all looking at is actually inaccurate um so if that's true and our cases are under reported by 30 to 40% that raises questions of how quickly parents are being notified of a potential exposure um and uh you know whether or not our case counts are under reported I really encourage the district to ramp up efforts to verify positive cases as quickly as possible and to really look at what Salt Lake City is doing my second point that I wanted to make um with regard to Salt Lake City is that I've also pulled the number of covid cases per capita per thousand children um between Salt Lake City and the rest of the county all summer those case rates were were marching in lock step they were very very similar between Salt Lake City

220and the rest of the county as soon as school opens the rest of the County uh is or Lake City is actually 44% lower than the rest of the county we know Salt Lake City opened up with a mass mandate I know that's not currently within your power but um I don't know if it's the mask mandate I don't know if it's the contact tracing but Salt Lake City appears to be doing something that coincided with uh with the opening of schools uh that is leading to 44% lower case rates than the rest of the district so I strongly encourage you to look at what Salt Lake City is doing if if we can reduce case rates by 40 to 50% I hope there's nobody listening to this that would disagree that would be a

221good thing um certainly the mass mandate seems to be part of that it may also be part of the the contact tracing but I strongly encourage the district to take that into consideration to look what they're doing and to model uh you know our our our mitigation efforts after what Sal Lake City is doing certainly the M mandate's part of that and the other part appears to be this contact tracing um and C we're all looking forward to getting back to a point where the the pandemic is behind us we're not there yet so please continue to dig in and help us lower these rates certainly Salt Lake City is showing that it's possible I will email each of you the analyses as well um so that you you can see the actual numbers and

222data thank thank you Mr Cota thank you okay um Holly Mars then Jessica Anderson and then uh Barbara Petty hi so I'm Holly Mars I was here a few weeks ago and the reason I wanted to come back today is because I didn't get an email back with my questions I left the paper with the secretary but then I heard the president say that if I just send an email tomorrow morning with with my questions then maybe then you'll reply back to that I don't know maybe it lost in the shuffle somewhere but I didn't get a response to my three questions that I turned over but I have something else I want to ask now first of all I really feel bad for you guys and I think you guys are doing a great

223job because I do know that all of you I don't know most of you are probably parents and you all want what's best for our kids and I appreciate that I appreciate the hard place you're in where you have accepted to use a curriculum that um is now maybe coming up as has some things in it that you don't like or that you disagree with my concern with allowing any of it with the k through eight right now that was approved earlier or was put taken off of hold is that once you start with something it's a lot harder to get rid of it you know I would encourage you I don't know if it's possible to put it back on hold based on what this other mother said a few minutes ago um the

224very first lady who spoke we keep saying that there's no CRT in the school district I think it's a state board thing that says there's no CRT but everyone that uses power and privilege they're just renaming CRT so I don't know how we get the legislature to get rid of the equity part and the power and privilege because Lisa said this great she doesn't even know who I am but I read something she said once um so in in America people aren't promised Equitable outcomes but equal equal opportunity under the law you know all men are created equal it's not all men should be made equal this is a land of opportunity we give everyone the same opportunity this Equitable thing that e does and castle and I don't remember the other name second step

225or something like that all of that is gearing towards making everyone the same which is communism Marxism whatever you want to call it it's not appropriate it doesn't belong in any school we need to teach our children to be critical thinkers and figure out what they want on their own don't teach them that they are overprivileged because of Any you know they're just born more P privileged than someone else and that's a bad thing for them so they're they've done something wrong we're damaging our children teaching these Equitable and power and privilege ideals um one thing I noticed too when we said the priv Pledge of Allegiance do you know what the last one of the last things I said is that one nation under God indivisible you know the whole purpose of America is

226to not be divided and these types of curriculums in these types of programs they are dividing us I know it's hard to go back on something but I really urge you to put that hold back on and really just start from scratch I don't know how hard that would be I don't I don't even know what that would take but by keeping it in the schools any of the schools you are creating division because one man's social justice is another teachers one teacher social justice is another teacher sense of irresponsible activism there's no way to you know static Dynamic whatever you need to take it out of the schools thank you thank you Jessica Anderson Barbara Petty and then finally Katherine Petty hi I'm Jessica Anderson and um I just want to preface um I'm

227a passionate person but I am very grateful for you guys and for all that you do um but I love my country and the rights afforded to me through the Constitution I love God and I love my family um and that's why I'm here today um I have three Elementary AED children that attend a school in Canyon school district and I've always wanted to believe and have chosen to believe that teachers always have their students best interests at heart that principles are promoting a healthy environment for Learning and that school boards are aware of what is going on in our schools but I have to say that I'm becoming more and more uncertain I come to you today concerned about what is going on in our schools I strongly believe that my children should be

228taught the basics facts math science language arts Etc and that there should never be any political or opinion laac indoctrination woven in or in between these core subjects um I was a little disheartened when I went to back to school night a few weeks ago and it was immediately following um the resignation of that Draper Parks Middle School teacher and I was it was put up on the board of my fifth graders um classroom what his schedule was but I had to continue to look around the room to find it wasn't on the schedule but it was being taught um which is very concerning to me I as their mom I want to know everything they're learning and I want to know that they're learning facts I don't I'm their mom and I know them

229better than anyone else I can teach them social social emotional things um so I was really concerned about that um I don't neither want my children's teachers get giving them an education on any other topics without my knowledge and consent period there is not enough transparency in our schools all program programs should be opt in not opt out I can respect if another parent wishes to have their child taught seal CRT sex gender identity Etc but all of those should be opt in with full transparency of what's being taught I would suggest that we start teaching math Ela and science all together in one long Block in our schools and then give parents the option of having their kids in school for that portion of the day only um if we're going to continue to

230take God out of our schools I want the opportunity to teach my children those other subjects with the religious morals I believe are necessary as their mother please let me know what I can do to help you as a board fight for our kids and their safety for too long I have naively assumed that there were pure intentions in our only pure intentions in our school system but as I research more and more I have come to the conclusion that that is not always the case if we can't work together um to provide a transparent education for my kids I will remove my kids from the system entirely taking those funds with me thank you for your time thank you Barbara Petty and then Katherine Petty good evening I am here to validate actually what

231most of the other parents have already said but I wanted to make a special emphasis on the fact that your anti-am is being promoted when you talk about other Generations that have not had to think about issues they face today that leads to conclusions that we're not prepared to be helpful and that teaching roadblocks keep them from reaching their goals and their calling the roadblocks other Generations like grandparents myself and parents anti family is not something we want to be taught in the schools they're also U teaching things that promote incorrect idea that hard work bravery and careful planning will result in success this is a fallacy uh the black life matter for example protest is biased it's prop propaganda and propaganda has no place in our schools there should be opt in and opt

232out always privileges for the parents M actually your citizens that you represent your T your our tax money pay for your salaries in the school district and to be up to be excluded from the planning and to be excluded from making these important decisions is not only inappropriate it's it's it seems IL illegal thank you for listening to me thank thank you Katherine Petty hi I'm Katherine Petty and I have raised six children I have three that are out of the home I still have three right now two at Brighton and one at albian and um you know I have been raising kids for the last 20 years and I have watched Common Core come in and didn't know much about it and I was so absorbed in my kids and handling all of that

233but now as I you know hear what's going on with the seal um the company that started Common Core also is involved with seal from my understanding and it's lots of people and different organizations that are involved that have started Common Core andal the problem that I have with common core is that they are teaching our children math a different way than what we learned and if you look back at that they're it's a divisive thing that they're doing so that we cannot help our children understand what they're being taught in school and I'm not okay with that and then when we talk about seal and some of the things that they're teaching in the lessons especially the videos that a lot of the other people have talked about um I am totally all for

234uh mental health and talking to Children about that but this is not the way we should I I want to get rid of the people and organization that have started Common Core andal because they do not have our children and us as their common uh they want to separate our children from us they're anti family and I'm not I mean we see that from Common Core how can I help my child learn math that they're teaching I mean it teaches kids not to rely on their parents and what it is is they're sneaking in and it's a wolf in sheep's clothing and it's really frightening to me um and also we know of the saying people have heard the saying the devil's in the details and I'm really quite quite concerned this morning or this

235evening um when I first came into the meeting which was a little bit late and I don't know any of you I have no biases um I'm here purely uh for the benefit of mine and our children and our well-being and our freedoms and especially our freedoms to to raise our children and teach them what we want and the big problem I see here is control is that our control over our children is being taken away our freedoms and that is really scary to me um I want to point out that I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right Claren Arnold said that there were pieces that are inappropriate that she said that they missed in the SLE seel program and she said but that's okay and it's not okay we cannot have have anything

236inappropriate being taught to our children there are children and if you're not concerned about the details then I have a problem with the board or whatever you guys are doing because I'm not okay with the the whole program um we as parents should be able to choose what our children are being taught and you ask us is it okay do you want Common Core do you want no we don't we shouldn't have to opt out it should be what they talked about us opting in um um Miss Petty your time has my time is up yeah okay thank okay thank [Applause] you okay that concludes our Patron comments for this evening and again we want to thank you for being here for taking the time to address the board next on the agenda is the

237consent items and so I will ask for a motion and then please in making that motion please list each of the items listed on that consent agenda I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda for this evening the approval of minutes for August 17th the approval of H termination reports the approval of purchasing bids approval of student overnight approval of join Jewel Mass T lawsuit and approval of foundation board members thank you there's a motion and is there a second I'll second up thank you there's a motion and a second any discussion to this motion seeing none I'll call for a vote all in favor say I I I any opposed that motion passes thank you next on the agenda is item 7A introduction of region 17 PTA board I will turn time over

238to Susan Edwards Community engagement coordinator thank you Madame President I have a a group coming with me thank you guys for coming up all right tonight I want to introduce you to our region 17 PTA uh these ladies serve on the executive board and they represent uh nearly 10,000 parents in Canyon school district uh director Terry Francis I know all of them very well but I'm still gonna cheat just in case associate director Liz Miles treasure Daniela doer secretary Sheila Armstrong I got it backwards sorry and health and safety commissioner Sher Robinson uh two more people serve on their board with them myself and superintendent robins and we get the honor of serving with them region 17 PTA oversees all 44 local school ptas they're divided into four councils a secondary Council for all secondary

239schools and then North Central and South Elementary councils the PTA structur is important to Canyons um as they provide training for the always rotating volunte uh in PTA they provide consistency provide fiscal guidelines and oversight and consistent policy guidance you all know the great support that our local ptas are to each of our schools and these folks here are a great support to us here at the district they uh they do lots of things including Betty's fudge and other treats for District staff um provide various activities and um events districtwide so when some when kids have like their Reflections art contest or battle of the bands that are region in nature they play host to all of those uh and Service uh do serve activities for all of our kids so we wanted to introduce

240you to them and I want to give just a minute to Terry to to say hi hi just kidding thank you Susan president tingy board members I appreciate this opportunity to speak to you and with it I would like to share some thoughts that are on my mind daily as I do my work in PTA and I'm taking the liberty of speaking for my team uh when I do this the PTA mission is to make every child's potential a reality by engaging and Empowering Families and communities to advocate for all children as we do this on a daily basis we support and guide our volunteers uh toward that mission we also work with other PTA leaders in the state and across the country and as I do that I have ample opportunity to recognize just

241how special Canyons is here we're part of a team here our voice matters in important conversations and here we collaborate as one unit to create the best educational environment that we can for our kidss and so I want to thank you president tingy board members Dr Robbins and District administration and Susan who has the answers to all of my questions I want to thank you for that I want to thank you for fostering that environment where we can do our work to the best of our ability thank you thank you thank you Terry and team and yeah thank you boor for letting us recognize him tonight yeah thank you we we know that the hours are many and the effort is great and the passion and the love is just beyond description and we appreciate

242all that you do and and contribute in our schools we're looking forward to a great year okay next is update on strategic planning and I'll turn time over to superintendent Rick Robbins thank you president uh we have on the Line Drew shant from education elements to update us on the focus groups Drew are you there Drew Drew can you hear us are you on the line uh we're not hearing you if you can hear us and we're not quite sure why can you hear me now yes we can thank you okay all right good evening everybody good to Good To Be With You virtually um just wanted to provide you all with a brief update on uh the strategic planning efforts that we have been underway with since the beginning of May um this past

243week was an exciting one because my colleagues and I were out um at all five of the high schools um to conduct a series of 26 focus groups with a variety of individuals from the district I believe we we engaged about 150 individuals across those 26 focused groups um to get their thoughts on the current state of the district as well as their their hopes and aspirations for where the district should be and will be in the future um took about a hundred pages of notes thanks to uh the the tremendous help from the communications team um at central office and we are currently in the process of parsing through those notes sifting through that data and then combining that with the the data that we've been collecting from the CommunityWide survey which hopefully um

244many of you in the room have received via email we've received just just under 3,000 responses so far um and are getting a really detailed and uh thorough look at the the ideas that folks have for the future of the district and where they want uh the the directions that they want the Strategic plan to go um so we are really excited about the fact that we just have so much information right now um our next steps are certainly to par through that and make sure that the information that uh the the ample information that was gathered is able to be presented in a concise and clear way to the steering team of the strategic planning process back um so that we can determine uh the focus areas for what the Strategic plan will uh

245will focus on um moving forward so we're uh our deadline for that is uh September 29th when we meet with the steering team again um and by that time uh by the time we are done with that steering team meeting we will have um anywhere between four and seven Focus areas that will really ground the Strategic plan and then set a course for setting goals and action items for um for completing those particular Focus areas and happy to take any questions or or any clarification that you may need um based on our stakeholder engagement efforts so far uh board questions for Drew Mrs nbow thank thank you for joining us just a few questions the first is you'll have that all of of the results of the surveys and the focus groups and things for

246September 29th will that also then come to a regular board meeting for those of us that won't be in that September 29th committee meeting yes absolutely so those results will be published um in a format that's accessible to the board as well and we want to be we certainly want to be transparent with all of the the information that we're parsing through and presenting so uh members of the board will be will have access to that information as well as the steering team great thank you one one other comment that may be appropriate to share here I did get some emails from parents that were filling out the survey um and they all had the same concern some of those survey questions were asking how Canyons does at addressing special education or these different aspects

247that maybe they haven't had any personal experience with and they couldn't say do not know and so um when we're looking at that criteria or that information of the survey I had um multiple parents emailing me they weren't sure how to fill out that portion if they hadn't had any experience with that particularly in our district so got it that's helpful feedback so I will go back and look at that question I I think you're correct in that there wasn't an option um to specify that they didn't know um and and I'm hearing you correctly right that that they they didn't have any experience with special education and there wasn't an option to to indicate that in the survey yes and there was a few other categories like that as well where if they didn't

248have a student that fit that mold they weren't sure how to answer because there wasn't a do not know or haven't had experience with this so just as feedback when you're parsing through that got it okay I'm going to make note of that um as we're reading through those results so that we can keep an eye out for that and then I in the meantime I could also make some edits to that question to make sure that I don't know um option is included um so that that folks who identify with that option uh can indicate as such you thank you Mr Wrigley has a question yeah I have a question for you it was asked tonight by one of our parents they wondering um in the focus group that she attended she was wondering

249how that's going to be reported out are you you just transcribing exactly what individuals said or are you interpreting that or how is that going to be reported back in in your report yeah that's a good question so what we we made clear to all the focus group attendees was that we were going to try to transcribe as best as we could um as best as we could word for word um how the conversation unfolded to kind of uh uphold the Integrity of of what was said through those comments but we also made clear that none of the comments were going to be attached to a specific individual while we did know who was in the room at the time we don't necessarily know who said what um and so our next step from here

250is to essentially um actually to back up for a second we had about five categories of focus groups um they were uh students administrators teachers uh parents um who parents of of students who are multilingual and then parents of students who receive special education services um so what we're going to do from here is essentially combine those uh those categories of focus groups together look for Trends um look for commonalities among among the comments that were shared um and then kind of put together a a section of our reporting out to you all that that's basically a summary of of what was across those focus group so we're not going to we're not going to zero in on a specific focus group or a specific um person who said a specific thing because we we

251honestly don't have um an accurate record of of who said what in a given focus group we're just going to uh kind of amass those all together and uh and do some synthesis as a whole um so that we can look at overall Trends across that uh that focus group category um and then report those out that just fine is that helpful yeah I think that's what the parent was seeking I don't think any of us know names and identify people but just wanted to be sure there was a report as accurate didn't go through filter thank you okay any other questions for Drew this is Oaks hi Drew so it's board member Amanda Oaks um we've had some parent concerns come up about Ed elements and concerns that perhaps the the Strategic plan that

252will come out of the district will be reflective of personal you know ideas or um thoughts about where our district should go um coming from Ed elements can you help us better understand how it Ed elements goes about making sure that a strategic plan coming out of a district is reflective of what the parents and what the community wants rather than what at elements want absolutely we if you look across all of our work work in all the Strategic plans that we have done across the country to date um no two of those have any kind of Ed elements um way at elements touch um what what we do is we guide districts through the process of creating the Strategic plan we do not focus necessarily on the product of what is said in that

253given plan um so if you look at um uh the Salam Mona school districts or you look at uh South Brunswick in New Jersey or you look at Belton ISD and Texas all of those plans which we aided in creating um are different and are reflective of those individual districts and their needs um we are not um we are not concerned with what is included in those plans we are concerned about how um how we can go about crafting those plans in a way that involves as many stakeholders as possible that is is ultimately a a responsive plan that can kind of adjust and adapt with with changing times and can be a North star and a Guiding Light for a district as they navigate um times of uh of complexity and really to to

254focus in on what is important for that District um in that given time so there is no education elements agenda for what should be included in a strategic plan um and you can you can kind of point to all of the plans that we've helped to create in the past and you can you can see that they're um they're very different and they're they're very reflective and unique to the districts that we support um again we're focused more on the process and not necessarily the product that result and just as a followup to that thank you J that really helps a lot um I just want to put it out there publicly for anyone who's listening or who will listen into the conversation the the decision of the board to decide upon a strategic plan

255really is to get feedback from the parents parents to get a reflection of the community of what it is you want for your schools it has no hidden agenda has no intent to bring in CRT or other leftist theories it's purely to be able to be a mirror image of what our district wants this is our way as a district to be able to hand over to you direct like the opportunity for you to give us Direction and feedback and so to me I actually think it's tragic that this is getting hijacked and light of other um political conversations happening right now because this is a phenomenal opportunity one that we haven't had since the district was formed for parents for members of the community for stakeholders to be able to say this is what

256we want ements is there just to be able to reflect what it is we want and if we recoil from being able to participate it's a loss and so anyone who's receiving that survey please fill it out we want to hear from you we want to hear from as many parents as possible 3,000 isn't enough we have 34,000 students in our district we want to hear from as many as possible okay um thank you I don't see any further questions from the board so I'll turn it back to superintendent thank you drew I just want to express uh my appreciation uh to you and your team um for your work on this and just to that point um you know depending on how you'd like to submit input you can talk to me directly uh

257on the superintendent listening tour I'll be at Midville middle school tomorrow night so this is a great little plug for that um if you'd like to be there at 6:30 to share your input directly to me uh if you'd prefer not to have been if you didn't have a chance to be part of a focus group or you don't want to do the survey and you want to uh talk with me directly you're welcome to do that and there will be a couple other opportunities before the month's over so there's multiple ways to participate and there there will be even more going forward so looking forward to that thank you thank you all right Drew thank you for joining us and for giving us that update absolutely thank you all so much have a good

258evening thanks you too all right bye bye bye okay thank you um superintendent update oh next is um C test and C Class evaluation update and I will turn time over to Steve Diamond Director of Human Resources thank you very much for allowing us to be here tonight uh our presentation is very short but I'd like to introduce you to you shond deas she is our Apple licensing and evaluation specialist for the district uh she comes to us with a wealth of Knowledge from she has worked at University of Utah BYU and most recently from the Utah State Board of Education for their office so let me turn the time over to Shonda well I just wanted to share with you as requested kind of a review of CEST and class evaluation systems uh to

259refresh your memory in 2019 and 2020 school year the newly revised CS evaluation system was implemented in August of 2019 everything was going swimmingly until the shutdown happened and of course as we know the State Board of Education just cancelled and and waved all evaluation requirements for that year so we weren't able to kind of see CEST through the good part about that is all of the Educators were Advanced to the next evaluation phas phase automatically um and so we started the year 2020 with our CEST evaluation and as the Utah State Board of Education waved the career Educators summative evaluation and left it to be formally eval formatively evaluated our provisional Educators were required to complete their Summit of evaluation last year but that was with covid modifications that were presented here and approved

260and the uh CA supported so we were able to advance Educators to the next evaluation phase according to their most recent Summit of overall reing whether that was that year or from a previous year for career Educators so that leaves us to this year we have started our year we're in the middle of administrator training and calibration and certification as well as begin begin to train our new Educators on the evaluation system so career and provisional educators will assuming that the school state school board doesn't change anything will be able to have a regular normal evaluation year there are no covid modifications in place so we are moving forward with the CEST system and with the class system as written as outlined and we're excited to have have the opportunity to see it all the

261way through and to do this for a couple of years so that we get the reliability data and the validity data that we're looking for before we make continuous res uh revisions to the evaluation systems so we thank you for your support as we move forward with that and give our Educators and our administrators a chance to experience it the way it was meant to be experienced thank you I don't know if you have any questions board any questions um Mr Wrigley and then Mrs nyar so we're still not totally back to normal I mean it's sort of weird if you started this process and you learn that it's just not working what do we do I mean if you say you know we still need to make some modifications because everything is still a

262little bit crazy we will come just like we did last year we'll convene our committee uh and we will obviously invite cea into that process as well well and that involved a a lot of Administrators HR um school performance things here and we'll do just what we did last year what modifications would be appropriate in the certain setting that we're looking at and then bring it here appreciate that because I know it's not a gotcha type of thing you want to have everybody do the best they possibly can but exactly it's been unusual times here last couple years continues to be thank you Mrs Nar thank thank you thank you for this presentation so um for clarification the Cs acronym is for Canyon's teacher Effectiveness support system right and the idea behind this is that

263there is an evaluation process to ensure that teachers are practicing that teachers are practicing the established public systems for Education right something along those lines yes yeah the the C the cus evaluation system is the Canyon's made evaluation system based on the Utah effective Teaching Standards so we do follow those standards and we do require our Educators to be effective at minimal in those standards and obviously we work and help and support and provide resources for our provisional Educators to get up to that effective level great so my one suggestion is given our recent legislation about um promoting neutrality in the classroom if that can be added to part of this because it's their application of of you know best practices basically right as considered by the state if that is also something um just

264promoting that characteristic of inclusivity you know um amongst their students and also um that would that would this be something that we would we would look at as well so there's already whole system written and it's given to every teacher exactly the same way to add or subtract from that process is another whole writing of the process at this point and that might be something you do at the end of the year or next year when you are looking at it and saying well we need to add this element or take this element away but with with kind of that explanation my question is kind of going along with Hol is um these teachers have not had a full evaluation with the dropin and seeing what's going on in that 15 to 20 minutes how

265are we reviewing and training them so that they know because we'll obviously have some that I mean like it's been two years okay I would have forgotten to and so how are we training and working with them I I'm not sure if you mean from the administrator side or the teacher side or both um the administrators receive continuous training and certification uh and so to to take in the data right right and to make sure that they are calibrated that they are and the teachers what are we doing for them the teachers for the provisional one Educators we offer all through this fall a monthly class where we go through in great detail what that is and then we will also be offering uh for lack of a better term a CEST refresher for those

266career Educators who have not had a summit of evaluation in four years now because some of them might have been up to the three years if they were a career three and and didn't have it in 2020 and then were able to advance to Twin to Career one yeah so we we have anticipated that and hope to mitigate any issues that might come up with that by providing the training and and of course the instructional coaches are also receiving constant training so that they can support them at the school level okay uh thank you um did you have another question yeah just really briefly so when you so will we be able to in a board meeting just see that brief um rubric of kind of that of this process of quick you can actually

267go online and look at the CEST ebook that outlines absolutely it is very transparent um there are some systems that you don't know how you're evaluated sorry there are some systems where you don't know how you're evaluated this lays out exactly the rubrics the expectations um if you would like to be highly considered highly qualified what are those expectations it's all laid out and it's easy to use you can key in a word and it'll pull up every single part of that book that has that phrase or that word so it's uh it's online and easy easy to access in fact if you'd like we can send you the link yes thank you this would be my first time going through this process as a board member since we didn't do it last year so

268thank you okay uh thank you my my question for you is and and I'm I'm with you I'm excited to see if we can get a year with with um that revised and and you know the current um evaluation tools that that are in place um but the board has um traditionally had a report kind of at the end of a school year that where there's been a survey given from teachers do you feel like that's something that would be appropriate to do at the end of this school year I'm I would I would say hopefully yes depending on on how things progress and move through the school year uh but but it would be really nice to complete it the way it was meant to be completed before reaching out and soliciting at the

269conclusion of and that's traditionally when the survey has been given and even if we could have a few years of it actually being facilitated the way it was meant to um when we conducted the surveys was to provide feedback to make modifications and we'd really hope that we can leave the system in place for several years to build validity and reliability and see at that point what we need to do but whatever the board would like us to do we are more than happy to facilitate that okay yeah thank you for that clarification and explaining it um yeah I think we'll just maybe ask you to come and report back towards the end of the year and you can tell us how things have gone happy to do so thank you thank you okay next

270is item 7D special education department and usbe audit report I will turn the time over to m d Suarez director of special education hello thank you for allowing us to be here tonight and share a little bit about um Utah improve program improve Improvement plan and what we've been working on I actually wanted to start with a a little quote there because um this system is super super complex and it really does take a team of folks to uh work together and analyze the data and and make some changes for our district so I have brought along Nate edilson who is the secondary program administrator as well as Terry Mitchell who is the preschool program administrator to share some of our goals we're working on so if this works here there we go okay so

271um I'll try not to throw a bunch of acronyms at you try to speak in some language we can all understand um so please catch me if if I'm throwing out too many acronyms um Utah Pro program Improvement planning systems is really meant to Monitor and Support Compliance state and federal programs within our district so um I am going to give you the basics of what that means and the basics are when every year we get a a report that comes out in March or April and it's a preliminary report and then they we make Corrections and appeal whatever we need to appeal and then we get the final report in the end of April so what that does is it describes um the progress of Canyon School District in every Lea in in Utah

272um there are 14 indicators to determine if targets were met within within that report and I'll I'll give you a peek at that here in a minute um outlines it it outlines risk factors and puts you on a scale of one to five to let you know where you are in those risk factors um the most important thing for us is we use all of that data to develop a yearly program Improvement plan for special education and that's really the data that we use there so here's a glimpse there are five upip program areas and I've just listed here's three of them in the next page there is the other two but I wanted you to kind of get a snapshot of what all of the topics are that we deal with in each area

273it's it's quite large um and for each one one of those we have to meet certain standards and write goals if applicable so there's the other two there um there's also other risk factors involved in this we get reports on how many how many dispute resolutions we've had that year um if we're meeting timelines if we've met fiscal monitoring if we've met internal monitoring which is our own system to make sure that we're in compliance with federal and state laws so there's this is a huge um really area so within those five program areas there are 14 indicators um some important things to remember about those indicators is it's two years behind so the data that we get and the goals that we write um we're actually it's a two-year lag so it makes it

274really difficult to write current goals because we we in a sense may have already addressed it and won't know for two years so we really try to um analyze data um pretty intently and watch the trends over over a number of years um we are assessed a risk score as I as I talked about State targets change every year um this this really as I mentioned it provides the data to write the program imp Improvement plan um this year's outcome was significantly impacted by covid we got n on a lot of areas because they they didn't test certain areas or other other factors were involved so it was impacted there so this next one is Snapshot there go there we go this is a snapshot and I know it's really hard to see if if

275this is something that you um really want to dig into I have a a chart that can that you can really see how we track this but I wanted you to see that this is six years of tracking data in all of the areas that we that we mentioned and this here shows what what tier we are on so there's tiers one through five and we are have been on coaching tier since 2016 um so there's the tier one is supporting tier two is guiding tier three is assisting tier four is coaching and tier five is directing um orange and yellow just to give you a sense of what this chart is orange and yellow is is the fours and fives um what what we really want to look for there is the greens and

276the blues I don't know what just happened there the chart overwhelmed it it really is it really is quite overwhelming um one factor of this is we had to shift some of the ways we track it because the state targets change and sometimes they they don't exist anymore so we take them off and try to continue tracking so what what does all this means um when I when I look at this it it's very clear that Canyons continues to make progress um in in areas of special education which is which is good this year Utah state has a Target as well so every every state has the same Target that like leas have and this year Utah State met their target with a score of 85 or I'm sorry 82.5% and that was up from

27763.7% and Utah hasn't met the Target in many years so we were pretty excited to hear that Utah met that Target which means that all of the leas made some progress to help the state meet theirs is what that means so what is going well with for students with disabilities um I listed just a few different things there um I I think one of the biggest bragging points was um least restrictive environments for preschools we were able to implement a couple more preschools so that we had um 5050 classrooms gen Ed and special ed combination classes and we even that out across the district which which allowed our scores to go from literally a five to a to a one so that was that took us probably three years or so but um it was

278that that's the planning that we're doing is over long term um we're pretty happy about improving graduation rates decreasing Dropout rates and and Nate will talk a little bit about that um um I think we we've we've really done a lot of things so here's here's just a snapshot um of some of those things so what what is our Focus so going back to that chart we have narrowed it down to two indicators that we are going to really focus and hone in on so that we think that's going to have the highest impact on on our overall scores and those two things are preschool outcomes and postsecondary outcomes so I am going to give Terry some time to talk about preschool good evening here we go so preschool indicator is measured by three different

279we have three different outcomes that we're measuring students of with disabilities young children with disabilities and in that we have two summary statements for each one of those areas so we have the positive social relationship the Knowledge and Skills the ability to meet their needs So within that context we are um looking at those that that entered we do entry data when they are eligible and we do exit data when they leave us so when they come in and they leave so by the time they leave we're looking at whether or not we've closed a gap or not that's the first summary statement that we're looking at the second one is that we're looking at is whether or not um those um that are leaving us are functioning at age appropriate levels because we know

280the sum will close the gap all the way and some we're still working on along the way so those are the two summary statements that we're looking at as we're measuring outcomes of young children with disabilities on average we transfer about almost we're close to 200 preschoolers that we transition with IEPs to their neighborhood schools okay so those are the ones that we're doing end of um exit data excuse me exit data on them at the end click so with that we are as we look at entry and exit data there's there's a lot of difficult um not difficult but there's some interesting guidance that we get from the state so our decision tree that helps us make those decisions often leads our teachers to using opinions rather than actual facts to determine um entry

281data and exit data so we're working on a more concrete rubric since this is is one of our area of targets that we're focusing on as a district to help make those decisions a little bit easier for teachers to make those decisions and more accurately for those teachers um we're going to continue monitoring for erors we do that consistently we do that on a quarterly basis right now and then we also continue to train our staff to make sure that they understand what that means so because we're Al we're looking at based on their age so when we do exit data we're looking at their age at three it or entry data age at three and exit data age at five so there's different intermediate skills foundational skills age appropriate skills that we're having to

282Monitor and adjust that way okay what's exciting to us is that our current our developmental observation tool that we do inhouse shows that our students are making great progress that they are able to be successful in kindergarten when they go to kindergarten so we're very excited about that despite the high targets that we're trying to shoot for from the state our day data internal data is showing that we're doing very well in early childhood in preschool any questions on that end indicator number seven great then I get to turn the time over to Mr Nate thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about indicator 14 click click done uh indicator 14 is about post-secondary comes uh what this means is that we have a well this year anyway last year we had a

283sample size about 172 uh students graduates or non-graduates it really is any student who had an IEP in effects upon exit of that High School cohort year and they measure the our success on those three indicators you see there that they are enrolled in higher education that they are uh currently participating in competitive employment which could be outlined as minimum wage for 20 hours a week or more and then they are involved in other post-secondary training or non-competitive employment so perhaps less than 20 hours or less than minimum wage uh employment and so clicked it there we go um that's indicator 14 it's actually broken up into those areas three of them indicator 14a and B are measured independently they don't have any impact on each other and um those are done through surveys and

284Survey research I get to in a second you'll notice that the state targets were set and again as mentioned these are graduates from a couple years prior at uh for indicator 14a Which is higher education participation at 29.75% and competitive employment which was uh set at 85.7% our results for that cohort year were 25.33% for participation in higher education and then 53.33% for competitive employment really good about our postsecondary it came really close to State targets we were just shy uh obviously our as you can see our our work is going to be involved in 14b and I'll describe a couple of the things that we're doing to address that the 14c is kind of a conglomerate of A and B and then all other factors I've mentioned previously that is the uh involved in

285some kind of employment and or post secondary training and so State Target was 99.83% it's a it's a very uh uh High Target we had 99.67% so we we did pretty well but I think as we focus on indicator 14 be the sub indicator I think we're going to really make some some big improvements so some of the things we've done in the past U well since the time i' I'm sure we've done more than this but that I can speak to about as the time I've been here is we've done a lot of increased training and support reports on how to write transition goals into IEP so every student who uh has an IEP from the age 14 up is required to have transition related goals to postsecondary employment postsecondary education and life and

286and living situations couple things like that that they have to have in their in their plans increase training for uh for providers our teachers uh resp uh respons service providers about adult agencies so we really try to increase their knowledge about what's out there for students and there's a lot out there uh we actually as part of that training we had an adult Agency information Fair we brought in all of these adult agencies to uh meet during one of our trainings with our folks so that they could make connections to the agencies and see what was out there um what robust things were out there we've developed on our website an online agency fair so there's vendors um that do all sorts of uh uh nonprofit work with students with disabilities and that's available for

287parents to get on right now in peruse and look through and we add to that all the time update those that information that's on our special education website uh we created uh this was a great new initiative we created a monthly inter agency meeting with Vocational Rehabilitation we keep adding different agencies to that we meet monthly to discuss uh number one students who we have communication to exchange we have a a form or permission from their parents to be able to work with or the student Guardian themselves to to train information what that is done for for us it is it's increased our ability to streamline applications for Vocational Rehabilitation and other services by being that Hub or that gateway to get that done rather than having to send them to the agency we can

288actually collect that for them and that's been a big help uh we repurposed our transition committee and started to Branch out there's lots of actual we call pre-employment transition services that occur throughout different departments in the district and in the schools School counseling being a large one uh work-based learning and CT being other we're working with all those departments to streamline our experiences for our students so that they can get more uh with with what's there uh We've provided transition lays on stiens uh employees at the school working together with work-based learning to uh make sure that teachers are informed of opportunities for students to engage in work-based learning and CT experiences uh we began to administer our own post High surveys in order to get better more accurate information our our response rate was

289about % we're trying to get that up to 70% would be the goal so we can get a better uh collected sample maybe more representative uh we're developing tools and goals around a more integrated approach with the Departments we have um some things that will tie really nicely in with the college and KET plans that are happening with school counselors to help support our teachers and counselors with advisement uh we began this this summer which I'm really proud of this we began a a pre-employment transition service employment summer program with uh working with uh Department Workforce Services we got a $102,000 subgrant for the next two to three years and we had 13 um students participate this year it's small right now we're going to grow it and we had some really great experiences we

290actually had three students that uh that were offered full-time employment from that and so that was really cool I think that's going to really help us um we created and this is at Canyon transition Academy we work with our students 18 to 22 who are still qualified for services and then they also get participate in that survey post um our program we created 13 indicators of success in which all of our uh curriculum and construction surround those indicators and we work with our PTA that we started a couple years ago to to really work with our parent group on that so it was a good experience there uh we increased collaboration at school between workbase learning and special education uh we have regular meetings with u the liazon workplace learning and this is another initiative

291we're starting this year we're working with Vocational Rehabilitation and High School principles to provide space for a vocational rehabilitation counselor to be at a school a few hours each week for increased access to students and also for information for our school counselors about um different agencies and adult agencies they can get U connected to so so that's some of the things that we've done um any questions I can answer maybe about indicator for or some of our efforts questions Mr rley Mr Wigley just really quickly um I'm encouraged to see you working at Voc Rehab what would you say percentage of the individuals that are coming out of our schools or attached to VOC re counselor before they come out that's a great question and I don't know that I have a percentage for you

292but I know it's lower than we'd like and so I think that's why we've increased this it's almost impossible to do that s system so I'm glad you're putting in some stuff I've had clients that just I have a hard time getting through the system yes um but yeah I mean that would be interesting because if they're able to get the pre-work and stuff through voke rehab then Human Services can take over as far as providing ongoing job support and we'd have them one of our initiatives we start Jackson who's the director of the South Jordan office is who we work with is we get vocational rehabilitation counselors out for our college application activities because we think that that would venue to have families do two one right so they can do they can go

293for fast for help but they can also meet with talk about services and agencies so that's something dialoging about how we that maintain confidentiality but also make those things accessible so that we're having a September n uh next week our our inter agency meeting in September we'll be talking about some of those initiatives um but those are great things bulk rehab is really crucial to what we do so we do need to increase that significantly yeah as far as job openings for individual it's especially starting jobs it's just unbelievable right now you can almost would be really important the other question is is the Utah State University has an exceptional autism program are we working closely with them to see about our kids with autism to get them over to college is that how elevated

294or no not probably not Utah State Utah Valley Utah State also does Utah Valley actually actually a better program yeah I think I think that that's probably the one the one hang up with we heard as we've been starting to promote that wolver the Wolverine's elevated is is the with Aggie's elevated they have on campus housing to support Independent Living whereas the Wolverines does not as far as I'm understanding so I think that's been a barrier for some of our parents in in transportation but it's definitely something we push the outcome amaz Independent Living uh Bob Morgan who is you over the utat 80% of their their outcomes for Independent Living up from like 30% so it's a really great program it's a lot of great uh a lot of great help so we are

295trying to parents be more aware of those programs okay I just found it with Utah Valley that even though they made out housing the transportation is free coming back and forth so sometimes it makes it easier for them and it makes it easier on the parents that Center kids to college and I love that you brought that up that's one of the reasons why for CTA we we're so insistent on public Transit is one of our things that we do because it does open that access gate um to be able to get to those programs and be able to access the community in that way so I and Utah Valley has uh disability counselors yeah so they have a whole section of three or four counsels that actually as what they do so anyway interesting

296to see what a relationship we we've done that in the past trying to move them together it' be interesting to see and I think also just to make comment on that and is related to indicator 13 the board um put in a policy and I really appreciate that our alternate diploma and I think that will actually help streamline some of that as well because those will be perfect candidates too for for some of that um uh to access so that'll be a great opportunity as well thank you Mrs Oaks so I apologize if this is totally out of your lane and really more in chanes but it does address vocational rehab so I really appreciate that you guys are utilizing that more I think it's an important resource I'm curious whether or not we're also

297utilizing it for kids with Force I love that you asked because we are um and it's been really great partnership um with prior to chansy now chansy coming in uh we actually had our Coy Jackson come and present to our 504 coordinators at the high school level started there but yeah we are we're encouraging a lot more participation in VOC Vocational Rehabilitation and our program the summer work-based learning program is not going to be open just for special education students but also be open for 504 students as well as we grow that program My Hope Is it's a it's a three-year it's a two-year Grant with a possible extension for a third year but my hope is to continue to be a provider long term I think districts probably need to look at this as

298something that they can do because with the ad added funding we are able to provide a seamless service right and that's what's really important is families need a central place to come for their help rather than having to it I mean I know it's hard but you know you want to have them go out and do all this stuff and we don't want to do too much for them but at the same time it it's so hard when you have to balance five different agencies and if we can help be that Hub that's what we really want so so along with that in in terms of the transition into higher ed um one of the concerns I have is that iips obviously are not available on the college level they do qualify for 504s and

299there are significant differences and how those function and at a university how are you making sure that parents that students are aware of how that functions like what the transition looks like what kind of documentation they need being able to go into University how to talk to or communicate with disability services at the various schools this a great question too and I think part partnering with school counselors as what we're working on we're trying to tie in with respons better to create a more seamless experience that's probably the biggest one but also uh making sure that parents are aware through a iy of um media and Publications uh to to get that information out there um we also I think one of the things we're looking at right now is the summary performance and making

300sure that we're working with our receiving agencies both Vocational Rehabilitation and universities so that those summaries of performance actually will constitute a launching pad for what they need as information based we spend a lot of time creating these summaries of performances upon exit for students students who are exiting due to graduation and we're not seeing as much intake from our receiving agencies about the importance of the summer performance so we're going to work with uh a panel we work with koi and try to get an understanding of what it is that they need for us to give them this wealth of information to help support some of that so it's a great question and I I think even um to to speak to that point here's one example and why this is so critically important

301for parents to receive the information they need I know of many parents that have gone to disability services at a university fully assuming that all of that information would be laid out in front of them and it wasn't necessarily like for instance they can the student can sign a waiver saying that they allow their parent to be able to access information for their grades or other things and there are some universities that will not provide that information or that form unless you ask for it and you insist that you know that that's available to them so I'm just thinking anything that we can do to be able to empower these parents and the student as they're leaving whether it's a kid with an IEP or 504 doesn't matter any kind of disability I think is

302going to be critically important for their long-term success yeah and I I think one of the things we are going to try to do um we have a contact at UVU um who is one of the disability counselors there and I think what we would like to do is get her participation on our inter agency collaboration committee as well so we can solit some of that feedback information and try to help understand what what we can control but what we can do to help help facilitate that so I think that's a great feedback and would love any thoughts and ideas you have on that so thank you Mrs Arnold so it's just a question but do we have access to the educational Talent search where they come in and help all the first generation bound

303students family bound students which are also usually a lot of our students who um are in resources come in and they like when I was served on it I went to 11 middle schools 11 high schools and I helped all those students do their phos phas I helped all those students go to different career places choices like I took them to beauty schools and to electrical schools and and things like that and then I had to see them through to H to the college and then pass them on to another college person who was in that same program do we have access to any of that it sounds like gears to me but I I'm not 100% sure sounds like gears to me it sounds like that's kind of the um so we don't have

304access to any of it as as I'll have to look into that it's not something that I'm as familiar with but I would be happy to look into it if it's a resource we can Levy I'm gonna definitely want to take advantage of it so okay okay thanks thank you did you have anything else or I'm happy to answer any questions but otherwise I'm yeah I think we've had the questions but yeah thank you so so you can see what's what's great um about this team is we sit and look at all this data and start brainstorming where our areas of need are and I just have to tell you Nate's always like I have an idea I have another idea well I can leverage this and this and this and this and all of

305a sudden Terry chimes in and says what about this it's just really um a great opportunity to work with a team that has um all the students at their heart and um personal experiences that weigh in to um assisting parents and and students to be successful so yeah so thank you for letting us come and share a little bit about upip a pretty complicated system really but we wanted to share a little bit about what that looks like and what we're working on great thank thank you very much for all that you're doing and we just feel your love and your passion for the students and the teachers that you work with and we appreciate it because it's so important and um that everyone gets that high quality experience and we appreciate all that you

306do thank you thank you okay next is item 7e update on Section 504 implementation in Canyon schools and although the agenda lists chance chany Lauren um we will she's asked to be excused and Mr BJ Willer will give us the report thank you for this opportunity to talk about uh 504 so we have um just included in our end of year report right there in the middle you just passed it um we have just over 900 students uh across the district with a 504 uh this is from our uh end of year data last year we started with about eight students in kindergarten and then by the end of the senior year 121 students had 504s so that's how many in each grade level you can see um we spike in high schools um and

307it's varied inconsistent by High School Corner Canyon and then Alta are the two um highest uh schools with 504s uh and then it just goes down from there um one of the great things that I'm excited about this year with chansy Lauren joining our team is just a a refocus um a re-energized look at 504 she has been scheduling um in individual meetings with every uh school team to review the 504 process um and then talk through um you know what are the gaps sort of the areas for improvement how can we make this information U more available to parents um she's talked with a couple Health Care Providers already um one of the challenges with 504s is that a family can go to their doctor and a doctor can hand them a paper and

308say hey your kid needs a 504 but in reality sometimes that's actually not the case like we're already providing the accommodations like in a tier one system that so there's no difference to then what they would need so just making sure that we systematically go through this process process um I would ask that we can come back um after these trainings um give chansy a minute to get her feet on the ground and really figure out um what this looks like she did a training already um at the beginning of the year with Jeff Christensen uh with legal counsel at Corner Canyon um and then Jeff Murray one of our um programmers uh administrations um he created in our dashboard system an option for teachers to be able to look at every 504 um on

309the dashboard so that's brand new this year as well so we're we're just working through you know those small little things that we've we've been able to identify but I think the biggest thing is one just refocus on this two uh training at every school and three we're working closely with um our legal department to make sure that we're doing that so this is Nar thank you quick question you mentioned that corner Canyon and Elta have the highest amount of students with 504s I know their populations are also higher but just wondering with the number of 504s that we get out give out how many of those are first directed by parents or instigated by parents would there be a correlation there why there be so so many more I think all of them are

310almost every single one is requested by a parent so maybe we can can look at ways we can help detect in uh in the other schools students that maybe possibly need 504s and maybe parents don't know how to advocate for or help or I think that's definitely part of it I think also just identifying appropriate 504s great thank you thank you uh Mrs Oaks thanks PJ you know I was going to ask you questions so um a couple things one I want to congratulate you and your team are chancy for um instigating the piece of the dashboard um in order for students to qualify for 504 services at the University level they have to have a paper trail but that's what they've been receiving it's also critically important for them as you know for them

311to be able to get testing accommodations so that's a big game Cher for them when they're going to take things like the act or an AP test makes a huge difference um so whatever we can do to make sure that that process is streamlined that when parents leave the high school system or they're ready to apply to a university that they have all of that all their decks in a row it's it's really important um another question I have is with regard to um the previous audit that we received as a school district and one of the findings of the audit if I recall correctly and I my memory could be um an error on this but if I remember correctly it said that our secondary teachers didn't have a very robust understanding or knowledge

312of disabilities in general that there was kind of compared to what we had at the elementary level there was a need for additional training on the secondary level and I'm curious about what the plans are for the district to address that because to miss night's point we have to consider that there are some kids that their disability isn't picked up on in K through five sometimes it really doesn't show up until they hit middle school or High School sometimes even I mean we still sometimes hear about kids that make it to college and they just finally get diagnosed and I cannot help but think that if teachers are more aware of some of the the red flags or the warning signs or or they understand how to help get that you know gar them in

313the right place that can be a huge game changer for our students and would make a big difference in the long run on things like our graduation rates yeah I I don't have an answer to that right now other than we're going to work with our leadership team to look at all professional development for teachers and figure out the best way to do that first Chance is going to every school team uh to identify where things are at and find out what's happened already and then when she brings those results back we'll we'll make a plan and um and one additional followup I agree with you that sometimes um the propensity of kids being able to qualify for a 504 through a pediatrician that might not necessarily be a mental health professional that can be

314difficult in dicey I've also had experiences with constituents coming to me and telling me that in the secondary level in particular when they have it like something like a a psychoeducational evaluation or a neuros pych evaluation something that's pretty gold standard attached to a disability that they still receive push back from um staff so I'm just I know that's not our standards as a district if that comes up like would you recommend that we put them in touch with Chancey I mean what's kind of the line of protocol there absolutely if they're if they're feeling like the school is not being responsive to the students disability and accommodations then for sure Chancey would be the next person to talk to as our district 504 coordinator um the the other thing I would just caution schools

315and parents right there you can print out um lists of accommodations for different disabilities online three pages worth of accommodations right so when you're really looking at what the disability is the the team and the parent need to work together to really identify what are the specific accommodations to help them have equal access not um more not like more competitive or more opportunity like it's equal access right I mean across the country people compare the 504s to the California College scandals where they're saying parents are trying to give their kids a Competitive Edge by getting getting them a 504 right before the AC and whether that's true or not that's what some parents are claiming across the the country and so we want to make sure that whatever process we follow is fair it's consistent

316and that there truly is a disability and that the accommodations that are provided are are the correct ones for that student to help them be successful so I understand where you're coming from just as a cautionary note sometimes I have met parents that have tried to get their kids accommodations before had a diagnosed disability sometimes from two or three practitioners approach their their school admin were talked out of it and it wasn't until that child really had Perpetual like walls that they were hitting with their testing because of legitimate neurodiverse issues but they really pushed to get help before they took the act or the AP exam so I don't think it's necessarily that's always an indicator that somebody is trying to work with the system sometimes it can be an indicator that they've come

317up against a lot of roadblocks and we would love to know if that's happening AB yeah this Arnold so my comments were along the same line as Amanda's like seriously in elementary school when we find that there are students that we see that might need some accommodations that it's more of a 504 than it is IEP we just go down to the counselor and we say we're looking at the student here's my information and my data and they go okay let's take a more look at this and we actually call the parent and say hey have you you know thought about maybe this accommodation and then we have our meeting middle school and high school I know that they have large numbers and it's really hard to spot some of those things in the middle

318school and high school but still we should be able to have our te teachers um so each of our schools have a student support team even our secondary schools and we're continuing to train and refine that process just so for exactly that reason if a student's struggling get the parent involved find out what's going on see what they can do to support the kids I mean like if they're the last one out of the building taking their test it should be giving you an indicator of something there that's going on if there so that's what I was supporting a area that we acknowledge we need to improve thanks one thing sorry um there is a Utah parent Center um liaison that we have Elise Merill she would be another good resource for parents just to

319help them through the system that we know can be difficult sometimes so I wanted to make sure you knew that thank you so I don't think there are any more questions come back after we have yeah yeah so I made note of that um do you think mid year or end of the year when would be can we meet with superintendent yes get the get timeline get that figured out and then just let us know we'd love to have you back thank you okay I'll make sure chy comes present she we'd love to have her too but thank you for for giving us this report okay thanks all right that that concludes um our items on the business section of the agenda we will now have um comments from superintendent and then um business administrator

320Mr will Cox thank you president uh Tey just a couple of things U First just want to U recognize and thank our PTA leadership that was here tonight um in the last couple of weeks uh had the opportunity to have our superintendent luncheon with our SEC leadership as well as PTA leadership and want to thank board members uh that attended that week I thought it was a very um informative and just um very collaborative again just to to meet and have lunch with our our leadership um also uh it it was in the consent agenda but just want to shout out to the board and congratul uh the board on the approval of the um joining the mass tort lawsuit uh against uh Jewel and uh vaping I I thrilled that we're sending a message

321of strength in joining other districts in in fighting uh vaping uh with young people especially we know what kind of devastating impact it can have and a Scourge that that has become with our young people so no matter what happens with the lawsuit I'm I'm just grateful for the uh board's uh willingness to step up to help protect our kids so thank you and then finally um just thank you to all of our parents and patrons that came tonight and shared their feelings it seems like during the pandemic almost every single board meeting uh is um has a lot of emotions and and feelings and tone um around some of those topics and it's understandable I think it was said you know we're we still are in a pandemic I think showing each other uh

322Grace and civility during this time um is much appreciated I think by all because of the weight that each and every person that's that's here carries so I just want to thank all of our patrons and parents um for their Civility and sharing their passions but also uh their kindness and respect to the process so that's all I got tonight thank you Mr Willcox yes thank you president Tangi I just want to thank everyone who's helped us get us through this first three plus weeks of school uh you know I've never seen anything like what the situation we're in with the labor shortage you know Statewide maybe even Nationwide uh certainly in our local communities I see restaurants having have to close down or closed inperson service is just because of Labor issues so I

323appreciate everybody who's helping us out we are short and bus drivers our maybe our biggest issue is are nutrition workers we're really struggling there but uh appreciate every all them who are helping us out in our kitchens every day we've heard Misty and her team speak we're short on par Educators and of course Steve is here and he'll tell you we're way down on substitutes so again uh a plead to our community to you know if there if you're available please come help us out in any of our areas we're just about hiring in any position but uh we certainly could use the help and so but we do appreciate everyone who's got us through these first few weeks and we're looking forward to continuing on that's all I have thank you thank you all

324right now we'll do some um board member reports and comments uh let's start with Mr millerberg I'm going to start off with the fun stuff um since we uh last met we've had the first day of kindergarten my gosh that is a good time that is a good day I uh walked across the street went over to a Mid Valley and I had the opportunity of uh watching two uh of the kindergarten teachers at Mid Valley uh welcome students for the first day I don't know if it's harder on the kids or harder on the parents the separation anxiety is for real you know you can send people to college and you can train them to be teachers but I really believe that some teachers take the craft of teaching and convert convered into an

325art form I spent some time with Ashley Bell and Vicky H who are two of the uh um kindergarten teachers and they are both teachers that have taken uh teaching to an art form and it was interesting to have those young kids automatically love their teachers in a matter of about two or three minutes um when I first came on the board of education they told me if you really want to make people mad talk about School boundaries so I'm going from the fun part to maybe even the stuff that could uh well what are they going to do fire me I guess I don't know um a year ago we started talking about School boundaries in the Midbell area and I keep waiting and waiting and waiting and I've got people constituent that keep

326talking to me asking me what's happening there and so you know Leon I guess you're kind of the one that spearheads that and makes it all happen I think we need to put some sort of a plan or some sort of an explanation out there what we are doing uh construction continuing uh in that area and I think we need to solve that uh before it becomes a major issue uh the other thing is at the same time well in subsequent meetings we talked about other uh boundaries that may be somewhat inconsistent or in congruent in the district and I would just like to see that happen I'm starting to get comments from people in your area want to guess [Laughter] who um about uh other boundaries that may be inconsistent as far as the

327feeder system is concerned um I don't know you know I think sometimes very very important issues get buried in the consent agenda uh you brought up one of we approved new members of the uh Canyon Education Foundation tonight um and I I'll I'll admit that sometimes I'm guilty of seeing the consent agenda and I don't really go through and read everything on those uh I would encourage you to look at the people that are on the canyon Education Foundation these are a group of really really good people we have people in the medical profession we have people in the banking industry we have people in the construction industry we have Architects that are sitting on that we have I probably shouldn't have started naming we have a couple of people uh that are uh in

328our state legislature and we've got some real quality people and I I really appreciate uh what they do you know we've we've talked tonight about providing you know with Equity providing opportunities even though we can't guarantee what the outcomes will be the Canyons Education Foundation is an organization that will help provide opportunities to our students that may otherwise well provide a pathway to to students that may who who may otherwise not have a pathway um that is a great organization they help our teachers with uh with grants showing Innovation for uh teachers that show Innovation can apply for Grant they receive that uh they've been giving scholarships to uh kids who otherwise would not be able to go to college to go on and so I would just encourage you to open that section in

329the uh consent agenda and just read through and see who these people are that are doing the best they can to make a difference in education on their own nickel and not only is their time on their own nickel but they're putting a lot more than their own nickel into that to make it happen thanks thank you Mrs shill okay I have been busy um so I have kind of a little bit of along list um I just want to start by thanking all the patrons for their comments for coming here in person and they were very respectful and civil and thanked us and that that was really nice so I really do appreciate that um I want to thank all the people that have emailed us because we have gotten a lot of emails

330and I know I read everyone and I think all the board members read every single email so we do appreciate getting that feedback from you um I want to thank the superintendent for having the CC luncheon and PTA luncheon um that was really fun to attend that and also I just want to thank him for doing this listening tour um I attended Nancy and I attended the one at Butler middle school last week and he did a really excellent job he um there were a lot of hard questions a lot of passion and he handled it just really well anyway so I just want to thank him um he did a great job um then so I attended the audit committee which is a board committee and we talked about an external auditor is that

331right and then and then we talked about we're going to do some Audits and so that will be interesting what audits we're going to do I think you guys will like it um and then the calendar committee we met and also I think that'll be coming on the agenda luckily there's nothing too difficult with the calendars in the next three years um so um that's good I also attended the South Valley Chamber um women in business and um they had a really great speaker and a bunch of students from our high schools were there attended and I think um the speaker was really good and so I just want to um encourage my board members to attend that if you have time um and then also Nancy and I have been going around K height

332city is really great and they um go and take a big basket of gifts to all the teachers of the year for the schools in colid Heights so that's been really fun um just to go visit the schools and we go in the classroom and the kids are all excited and we go with the mayor and he's like he he said I'm the mayor of Conwood Heights and what a little boy said I'm from Conwood Heights and then they were all like I'm from Taylorville I'm from go wh anyway it was just really cute but it's just really fun and I think the teachers appreciate it and that's all I have thank you Mrs Oaks I want to thank our patrons again for coming in and communicating with us I um even though there are

333things that can be difficult to Traverse and discuss and um we talk through things and we consider things and we discuss things at the end of the day the kids who have really involved parents are the luckiest kids they really are so blessed to have you in their court and to be involved in their education and it makes such an enormous difference and I would encourage you I'm just going to put a little plug in there fore Terry please come out and volunteer for the PTA be part of our school community councils be part of some of these committees that we have going on we need to hear from you and the more you're involved in the voice of the district the better we are um we need one another and I think this year

334more than ever I want to um encourage all of my fellow board members and I'm excited to see um some of you up at the USPA um Retreat that we're going to be having up in Midway I won't be able to go for the whole time but I will be go driving up for Friday for the majority of all of that training I feel like the training I received at usba was such a game changer and taught me so much about how to be a better board member and I really appreciated learning from people that have been doing this for a long time and um the concept of building a strong board is such an important one and um last but definitely not least I want to shout put a shout out to Rick for

335organizing that um small trip that we took down to Arizona last week to see what um Arizona State University is doing with online learning I um compared to where we were with online learning a year ago and we were getting so many frustrated emails from parents I feel like we've come such a long way and I'm so excited to see where we go ASU is incredibly Innovative and forward thinking and how to improve online learning how what kind of a teacher um like what they need to do in order to be able to reach and connect with their student in in a way that's different than what we've seen before and new and improved and I was so impressed by what that university has done to reach into the community from the K12 level feels

336like sometimes our universities are silos and like trying to bridge that Gap can be unwieldy sometimes and ASU has made it just the seamless transition from kindergarten all the way through their University and they're reaching out and really trying to close the gap of access where people struggle with that so I really am looking forward to it like I kind of like what Steve said some of these political issues that pull us off the rails from moving forward and really becoming Innovative as a district are unfortunate and it's um I hope we never lose sight on where we really really want to be I think that we can be a world-class District I know that there's wonderful things we have to look forward to I'd love to see us become um a real leader in

337stem education and and some of these other things with the Arts with so many different things um but I think this piece with ASU is going to be critically important for our forward motion and I'm really looking forward to that thank you Mr RI a couple good things here um first off I received a letter this week of appreciation for Sean Walker the principal at s Elementary um and I was really impressed because most the letters I get are negative and this parent was really positive and and going the extra mile on the parent and I I sent him a letter back because I'm encouraging parents to please send positive things to your teachers I sent him a letter back and I said or email saying thank you for giving me this positive thing he

338say I'm usually really grumpy but I had to go and and tell you something about this principle so that's really I really appreciate that and I do want to encourage I mean it's been as I've gone on talk with different schools and teachers people are really angry I mean the level is so high this year parents teachers are getting flipped off in the line and driving their kids off and and administration at the desk are getting yelled out so we really do need to try to help them feel loved and and and compassion on that um had an opport Unity to uh to also go to ASU we talked about the online but the the thing that I'm really excited about is the partnership we're trying to do with Jordan High School Jordan's really struggled

339it's down to 1900 1800 kids now it was what Elta was several years ago uh and we have the opportunity Now to turn Jordan high sort of similar as we've been doing with alah high into another actual coordination one the first in the state to do that um and I think that's going to be exciting have that opportunity to have actually colleges actually in high school teaching things that they can then miss their first two years and and and save the families lots of money and they so I that was an exciting program just to see that and to see that's happening at at that um the other thing and I sort of talked about a little bit earlier today I'm not really sure in in the over the first few years in the board

340or the last two years have really changed the first couple years in the board when everybody sent emails it was pretty easy to say okay yeah boundary issue yeah you got a lot of real good points and and yeah you know with this here but there was a lot of other people saying no I don't want that boundary yes I do want that boundary and they weren't arguing against each other over the boundaries they were mad at me over the boundary and I could deal with that uh the hard part lately is I will get and other board members too I'll get an email that's well documented well researched saying I'm on the right side or the left side I say the left side and now this is why you to do and if you

341don't do this then then I'm mad but then I'll open the next email up and it'll be on the other side well researched well documented with every there just as much love in it and I'm going so what do I do because if I go with this person this person's ticked off and they're not gonna be ticked off at me they will but they'll be ticked off at each other and then I'm going to have arguing going over because one is over the only thing I could think and I don't know is how do we come up with some kind of compromise for Unity sake and that's what I've been sort of looking at how do we how do we draw parents together so we come up with some compromise because that's what's happening in

342the government at the local and especially at the uh Nation level there's no compromise and we just we're red locked and everybody's mad so as we move forward I mean I somehow I'm trying to try to bring the parents together to say I understand both you've got arguments and they're well documented but if I go with one side then the other side's mad and then it causes all kinds of contention and then the next time I don't know it's a real difficult spot so as we go through we try to figure out so how can we get people together and sort of come to some kind of a compromise that people can agree on it's sort of like on the board we compromise all the time I don't always agree with bot he doesn't always

343agree with me so we have to come to the middle ground sometime and I'll give a little he we do all the time no that doesn't always happen anyway but so I don't know because that's it's the that's the unique thing that's happened over the last couple years is that both sides are right you know um they've got some well documented things they've got some good good things and I I look at both of the sides this I could I could go with either side I mean I I understand both things that are going on I talk with a lot of people I'm totally understand where you're coming from but to make a decision to go with one side versus the other and not to come together compromise I'm only causing more contention and causing

344more issues which then spills over to the schools which spills over to the students and because those those contentions spill over and then we have some issues so somehow we we need to try to figure out and all the craziness that's going on how do we get people together and really work with us as a as an entity um and I think that's all I really need to say for tonight I just uh am grateful for all the people that do come and give us information and stuff and and uh take all this time uh and and we listen to it you know um but thank you thank you Mrs Nar thank you Steve for your comments really appreciated them uh first off I wanted to thank the patrons that came and spoke the few

345of you that are still there thank you uh I really appreciate it um although it is a lot of time to read emails and and filled phone calls and texts uh the best decisions are made when we're well informed and I've met some very smart and well researched parents that are advocating for their children and really what a great opportunity to be in a district with parents who care that much and parents who are smart and parents that are researching and they're going to find the answers and they're going to find you know what they they can do to help their kids so I think although this provides a you know a buffet of opinions we're actually in a pretty amazing spot to have this type of parent involvement and if we can harness that

346what a great opportunity you know the heights we can reach and I appreciate the leadership and the humility that has been demonstrated this evening um by Mr Weller who somehow got the long assignment to stay in place of someone else um by Dr Robbins for his discussion with Equity I think one thing kind of percolates with me um I think as we work hard to establish trust and confidence that that that's how we can become United and come together I have a little real world example so um in my 44 years I had surgery for the first time ever this last week and uh I've had this knee issue for for decades and uh the surgeon's talking to me about the procedure he's going to do and it's called lateral release and I my mom

347happens to talk to me of course about this appointment she says oh that's really controversial people don't do lateral releases anymore look at it online so after some Google research of course I see oh you know there's differ differing opinions but what it came down to is I had trust and confidence in my surgeon he had done this he'd had all this clinical experience and I felt like he was going to do the right thing so a little bit of faith Trust on my end and and I'm I I'm sure my knee is going to be better than it ever has been but I think that um there's a point to this I think that in our society today we've got Google and we've got these search engines and we can all become experts and

348well researched and and then I really appreciated the patron that said I realize we're on the same team you're here as our line of defense and I trust you we just need to all be cognizant and aware together and I I worry about that for our kids because we've been talking a lot about mental health tonight and one of the largest factors for mental health is the social media that our children are participating in right and sometimes that social media creates these chasms and this major divide because um when we're we're in our social media element we may be in somewhat of echo chamber and so my concern is then Amplified by others concerns and I think this happens to our kids too frequently right in their social experiments as they're growing up and that

349and so as we move forward with strategic planning one one initiative I had when I ran for Schoolboard is I'd love for us to educate our children better about technology and what it means to be a good citizen online and how to protect your yourself and how to remember that this is a tool but that that the that our technology and our cell phones and things they should not dictate to us and interrupt our sleep patterns and our social patterns and our mental health so that's something I look forward to in the future um I was able to send my sixth of my seven children to kindergarten M mentioned that and watched that red carpet and that was really really a special experience for me I appreciate the kindergarten teacher who puts her arm around

350these little guys that need it um I I'm very grateful for the leadership in this district and I really appreciated what Nancy said when she talked about the terms every and all and how we need to think about each and one and I think when we have this discussion about Equity it's about personalized education and reaching out to The One and I'm grateful for those examples that Rick gave us tonight where we could put faces to these kids that we've made a difference for that's what it's all about so um in closing thank you to the patrons I hear you and I respect you and I understand your perspective and I hope I can do my best to reflect that in the decisions I make thank you thank you Mrs Arnold I really like being

351last because everybody's said everything that you can possibly even think of I probably should have asked Leon for a joke because the only thing that I participated in in the last week in a half was the audit committee the financial audit committee and that no it wasn't oh that wasn't really a joke it was it was really a good discussion the most favorite committee I ever sat on the audit committee well it actually was really really great we had a lot of really good discussions because the audit committee has changed some and we're the ones who are supposed to be directing you know where we're going and how we're doing and what we want to have um the audits rent on and so we had quite a bit of a discussion on what we feel

352like we need to really look at um not only just closeup but also in the future too and so it was actually a good discussion but with that I'll end tonight thank you and um I don't have much to report but I do want to mention that we are in the process of conducting School Community Council training and so those of you that have signed up for school Community councils please please try and find time to come to the training it's it's really helpful and even if you've been serving for a while please come because it's always good reminders and I've been involved in school Community councils for two decades and I still learn something every time I attend a training and so I I encourage you and and any board members too if you

353want to come and participate I want to add to that I did go Nancy is amazing trainer I learned so much from her and from Susan and from Alice and I really appreciated all the information that I got from that training because I thought I knew a lot about it but I learned a lot more thank you and like I said other board members you're welcome to come um and we'd love to have you um the other thought I just want to share and and there's been a lot of talk about the the um conflicts and the um uh divisiveness in our society and the the the just the the passion and the the polar opposite positions on things and all of that and and yes that's real and it's and it is affecting a

354lot of what we do here um in the schools but and and yes but by listening to all the different viewpoints it will make what we do here better but in in spite of all that and and I won't go into any details but just personally I've had experiences recently where the goodness of people has been overwhelming and um I I just as hard as it is when things get difficult and divided I know in the end people are good and people want to do the right thing and people love their children and as we focus on that we will be able to move ahead and move forward in very exciting and productive and wonderful ways and so with that if there's nothing else I will declare that the meeting is adjourned oh