Eatonville School District Board Meeting and Community Budget Presentation 5/26/2021

001romans [Music] on here so this is [Music] [Laughter] [Music] you're a big bird there's a coyote and i knew it was going to come back and get more i'd be more worried this is something that's just opportunistic it'll go off and probably come back here after being scared and trapped as of yesterday i just got accepted but it's monday through thursday it's uh four tenths i get done before for 4 30 so really it's a different position i wanted to change and i needed to make it so [Laughter] oh 1805 605 let's call this meeting to order everybody please rise real quick i pledge allegiance to the play 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 [Applause] kim

002it's all yours good evening thank you for the opportunity to present the proposed budget for the 2021-2022 school year this is the process that we actually started last december and has continued throughout the spring as enrollment numbers continue to move all over the place and as we evaluated the needs of our students next year so because of the uncertainty facing the district going into this current school year um we based our original budget on a flat enrollment from the previous year we just didn't know we were going to end up and it turned out that we took a significant drop over the year so we lost 144 students overall and that was a 7.4 loss in revenue for this current school year uh keeping in mind that that seven percent does not include the loss

003of transportation funding or any of the ancillary programs that is just our basic education and of course that continues to translate into next year so we are still facing the questions of are our parents going to continue home school well they opt for some virtual learning we had a very small kindergarten class last year we are extremely curious to see how many are going to come back for next year and uh and what the needs of those tinders would be so with all that in mind we decided that in budgeting for 2122 we would take the approach of a gradual return of our students over the next four years to our free pandemic enrollment levels so for 2021 our total ft was 1799 and for 2122 you can see that we have a slight increase

004our overall enrollment is predicted at 1861. and it is going to take the next four years according to this model before we return to that high water mark that we were at going into the tandem so in building the budget we really looked at three scenarios we looked at the worst case scenario which would be that the enrollment we have this year that's our survival rate for our cohorts and we were looking at declining enrollment for the next four years and then we had our best case scenario which is that everybody comes back next fall and we're ready to rock and roll and now we had a middle ground hybrid which was just basically an average of uh of the low and if we use the low but with our cohort survival rate that we

005had in place going into the year and it has been a vaguely result since we decided to go that middle ground group where how's our history surpassed that middle ground projection uh columbia crest is still at kind of the worst case scenario right now and eatonville l is kind of in between the two but we know that they are kind of notorious for getting that late surge of enrollment really close to the start of the school year and then so really the bottom line is that we probably will not know where we're going to end up until that first week of school special education enrollment saw very modest drops this year we had some students that transitioned out of needing service we had a few students that opted to go to grad alliance and a

006couple that moved out of district but we do have a large group of preschoolers from this year that are poised to go into that kindergarten class and so it really became a discussion of how do we best support those students going into next year and so to give our students and our staff the best support possible we are moving this self-contained classroom to edenville elementary for next year kim where was it where is it currently housed we actually have divided classrooms we have one of the eagle and one of warehouser and so those two teachers are going to teach so that they can really expand the horizons of our students so revenues because enrollment is sort of a guessing game revenues as well are influx what you can see if you look at 2019 and

007the state general revenue that is our apportionment that is our enrollment driven revenue and we were at 17.8 million for this year we are projected to come in at 16.4 and that does include some of the whole timeless money that came through so for next year will be actually just a little bit lower than this year because there is no hole harmless for next year we will not be back at our 1920 apportionment i would like to draw your attention to the fact that our levy revenues will be higher because as we know we are now allowed to collect that two dollars and fifty cents however with the loss and the apportionment and some of the other state special purposes which includes our lab funding which is also enrollment and poverty driven um we really

008do not come out with a with a large excess for next year if you look at the very bottom row other revenues that is our capacity our contingency think of it as we have been pre-authorized for a mortgage obviously we we're hoping that we can find a house that doesn't take all of that but if we do we're allowed to stem there is a revenue capacity that matches this expenditure capacity what we're hoping is that our fire enrollment does get that big surge in the fall and we do get more an apportionment that we are therefore allowed to spend that on our students instead of having to wait for a budget extension or another year to spend so um our expenditures are broken down into some account codes and there are some different categories so

009you can break it down by what program you're spending it on what activity you're spending or the object so your objects are your salaries your benefits and then what we call m socks which are our materials supplies and operating costs we are looking at almost a million dollar increase in certificated salaries for next year we have added several staff members we have been able to add speech language pathologists which we've never had in district before we've been able to add a mental health counselor district-wide we've been able to add a certified occupational therapy assistant which we've never had a district before so that does account for some of the higher salaries there is an offset decrease then in purchase services because we no longer have those contracts however purchase services have not gone down as

010much as you might anticipate mainly due to a large increase in our insurance costs we have a 25 increase in ensuring the district for next year plates to roughly 80 thousand dollars so that if you look at expenditures by activity what you're looking at is what do we spend on instruction what do we spend on serving meals to our students what are we spending on to and from transportation that transportation number that you see there does not include field trips it does not include our extracurricular runs taking our kids to their needs this is strictly to and from school transportation i do not anticipate that well i don't believe that the district support is going to come in quite that high i am hoping actually that our public activity expenditure is coming higher because what

011we have in public activities is our pool and we've been closed for a year we're finally up and running again andrea had some really wonderful programs in place before the closure and so i'm hoping that as she gets things rolling you're going to see a need for more lifeguards for more swim instructors and that's just good for our community so our fun balance trend i want to thank the board for last spring setting aside money in a contingency fund which meant that if our state funding came in lower that we had those funds earmarked to keep programs going to be able to continue what was in place we are going to extend a portion of those funds this year we are going to expand a portion of those funds next year as well i expect

012in year three as enrollment starts to really get closer to our pre-pandemic levels that the fund balance will level out by year four then we're on a slight upward trend again but for the most part we are in a very stable situation with our fund balance we are not going to take a large dip we are not going to expend the entirety i don't believe in that contingency but knowing that it is there meant that we are not in the same position as a lot of school districts this spring we did not live right now we are looking at potentially ending this year with 4.1 million in our fund balance with 29 million coming in in revenues roughly 30 million in expenditures keep in mind both of those numbers include our 2 million capacity we

013expect to end the year at 3.8 million which is roughly 13 percent this is the first year we've had a 2 million capacity instead of a 1 million capacity the reason for that is that i did not budget for the full expenditure of ester funds but as the year gets underway if mr neil and you aboard decide that there's a need for some instant interventions now you have the capacity to expand those funds and put things in place quickly in terms of where the money is will be at the end of the year we will always have a little bit of carryover from our grants from donations a little bit on our categorical programs cte usually carries over just a little bit title carries over a little bit the assigned to the contingency those were

014the funds that you offered authorized to have set aside assigned to other purposes is the commitment you made to the middle school staffing to stabilize that over the next couple of years it also includes all of our commitment to the teacher's idea fund that is stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement and then we have the unassigned to minimum fund balance policy our policy is to have 10 to 15 in the bank that unassigned gao will come in somewhere between four or five percent but overall we are still meeting your minimum fund balance policy we are required by law to have this lovely slide that stipulates how much we are going to spend on supplies apparently there is um someone out there that believes that they are giving us too much money for supplies and we

015then have to show that we're actually spending what they gave us as you can see we overstand what the state funds by almost 700 thousand dollars there is a large increase in the purchase services for grad alliance which is your program o3 three dropout recovery right now we are budgeted for 35 students in that program come fall and i would like to point out that the purchase services in your ale program o2 that is mainly your spokane virtual academy association that we have for our students as well as educating so as you know when they pass mcleary we are now required to put in a four-year outlook budget along with our yearly annual budget it was a mystery game at best going into this year and now we are all asking for our magic 8-ball

016so what you see on the top line again is that gradual return of our enrollment over the next four years and what that means in terms of our revenues projected expenses there are very modest increases budgeted in for salary increases step increases and inflation the projected fund balance will go down to a low in 2324 but again in a very stable position and then just a tiny increase and bounce back up in the final year our capital funds project thankful to have a community that was willing to support us as mccherry came out and really gave us some options both for technology and for building last year i would say 90 of this did go to technology the fact that we were able to make that happen last spring has been something for which we

017are extremely grateful the revenues that we collect then are from our levy they're from interest that we get on investing those funds until they're needed and in the past year we have been very pleased to be start uh receiving impact fees once again from pierce county that has been a wonderful surprise and it is allowing us to make some classrooms out of former technology rooms so we can spread out again next fall and it's allowing us to put some much needed ada facilities in for our preschool world we did not anticipate impact fees when we did last year's budget so we are going to end this year with a substantial amount still sitting in that fun balance it's a little over three hundred thousand dollars we have budgeted to extend most but not all of

018that next year the reason for that is that impact fees can only be used to expand instructional space we can't use it for anything else so until we have such a time where we have enough saved up that we can actually perhaps portable do some remodeling that money will continue to roll over so what you see in expenditures then is mostly the levy collections can we ask a question yes um do those funds have an expiration date do we have to use them by a certain they do i'm going to defer to krista um and so we will still end the year with 300 000 service fund can you go back to the uh or the capital project thank you um you are familiar with the ecf it's the emergency connectivity fund that for facilities

019which is 7.1 billion dollars um with that in mind um have we thought about how we're going to take advantage of that opportunity it is something that norman tyler and i have spoken of and that krista has also been a part of those conversations we did not have as many families as we thought but we're in need of those productivity pieces we still have the hot spots left over from this year and we are working with those families as far as who still has a need for next year we thought perhaps we could use them on devices but it doesn't look like the camera latest that came out from e-rate said no so we probably are not going to have a huge influx from that particular deal so the current lease that we have um

020from what i'm understanding is that you can actually um use this funding um for prior purchases is that something that we're thinking about to so our student chromebooks we've actually purchased out right we are not leasing any school all right okay do you have questions okay so debt service fund is only used to pay the principal and interest on our voted bonds we do not have any non-voted debt collections are levy collections we do receive money from the state in the form of a timber excise tax and again the investment interest you'll notice that we are dropping just a little bit of our fund balance each year we try to be very careful not to collect excess and what we need and to leave as much as we can in our community so principle and

021interest for this upcoming year is 2.3 million we'll be collecting 2.3 million we do have a little bit then that we have in bonds fees that we have to expand and we'll end the year with a little over 900 thousand dollars the transportation vehicle fund is funded fully on the state depreciation schedule we do not have a transportation vehicle levy out there and it garners a very miniscule amount of investment earnings it can only be used for the purchase of yellow buses we cannot buy motor pool vehicles through the transportation vehicle fund we cannot fund staffing for the transportation vehicle fund um because of everything else that uh porklai had to deal with this year he has put off purchasing any buses until the next year so that's why you see such a large carryover

022going into next year but he is looking at purchasing at least two buses in the fall the associated student body fund revenues come from clubs dues fundraisers gate tickets from athletics they took a little bit of investment earnings it has to be spent on activities that are cultural athletic recreational or social it cannot be used as gifts to individuals it cannot be used to supplement materials for regular instruction so it has to be outside of instruction ideally we don't like to see them carry over a lot they didn't have a lot of opportunities this year to do much with it on top of that they are dealing with the ramifications still of house bill 1660 and uh we expect that their revenues are going to go down next year and in the future and they're

023still grappling with how to deal with that and make things happen and then we just have an ending fund balance by school obviously the high school has the largest chunk of the fund balance at 171 000. the middle school has had a very solid four years in terms of their planning they're ending at 27 000 and columbia crest is adding at 9 600 again they have done a really wonderful job of counting in the midst of all the uncertainty are there any questions where where's eatonville and one household they do not have um okay thank you kim thank you so much [Applause] okay nobody has signed up to speak so uh unless anybody has any more comments we'll go ahead and adjourn our budget meeting yeah get in okay then we'll uh show adjourned at

0246 27. move back at seven for the regular meeting okay [Applause] oh [Music] here to answer our questions this one just it's just is he's kidding me uh i need to watch so much i'm just like hey is yes is oh just gonna be the good i needed um oh please yes foreign be honest now you [Music] okay okay seven o'clock we're going to call this meeting to order and everybody rise for the flake slip please 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 [Music] so it changes or additions to the agenda all right seeing and hearing none i would consider a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented second second any further discussion okay only

025favorite please signify the saying aye aye opposed to signify to say no okay consent agenda is passed let's go to kim for first i would just like to take a moment and thank you very so very very much for the opportunities and the trust that we've had over the last four years it has been a pleasure and i would humbly request that you pass the proposed 21-22 budget people hey if you're going to come in late would you please be quiet please while we're doing our business thank you please grab a seat go ahead kim so with that i do probably request that you pass the proposed budget for the 21-22 school year great thank you so we're going all the way down to new business then under five yep okay so uh we consider

026a motion for the approval of curriculum adoption for the 21-22 school year still moved second second into discussion um yeah i would like to say that i had the opportunity to sit in that curriculum meeting where we went over financial literacy i felt like it was a good representation from our community i'm very grateful for our committee and to ms pearson for um really writing and facilitating that i was really impressed by the openness that we had and the opportunity for the community to be a part of that voice and knowing that you will continue with that tradition and making sure that all of our curriculum is always given the opportunity to have a public eye as well as input from community and from that committee that was there so thank you mrs hearst think

027that you teach members of the committee that participated jeff i also want to thank him for the work she's done to give his budget for the next three years he couldn't have done it without your expertise and your knowledge of our budget here so my sister thank you for all the help awesome okay any other comments okay been all in favor please signify by saying um all right i'll post please sing about the saying no okay uh consider approval of resolution seven to six without the budget for 21 22 school year we've been i just want to say thank you him and your your staff for all of our work that you put into this and none of us were foreign to come in until seven and then it was gone everybody was walking in

028foyer but well what's your name paul stover i know there's probably a few others that like you you want me just to go close to the back i just want to thank you and your staff for the wonderful work that they've done the hard work in the last couple of years it's been amazing and we just can't we are so blessed to have you and we will wish you but we wish you well and we um we've gained so much by your being okay any further discussion thank you kim for taking the time to do the community um review that we had at six o'clock we appreciate that it was very thorough and hopefully told my speech then i wish you guys all in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye aye oh closely

029signify by saying no okay consider approval resolution 727 uh for assuming gary or signer movement seconded uh any discussion yeah seeing hearing none all in favor please 75 saying aye aye i'll post lead signify by saying no okay oh passes gary is our signer okay gary can you hear me yes i can okay let me find my folder can you hear me okay we've got you okay gary stand up perfect there we go all right raise your right hand and repeat after me gary uh i'm gary neal hi gary neal you solemnly swear or affirm to solemnly swear or affirm that i will support the constitution of the united states and the state of washington that i will support the constitution of the united states and the state of washington and will faithfully perform the

030duties of the superintendent secretary to the board of the superintendent secretary to the board of the eatonville school district of the eatonville school district located in pierce and lewis counties located in paris and louis counties state of washington according to the best of my ability according to the best of my ability all right very good congratulations mr superintendent thank you we'll see you at work in the morning [Music] we did okay so reports and presentations uh we have presenter now from risk management is yours sir they'll be right here please please i can talk loud i'm a lawyer that's all right so i'm not actually from risk management uh i'm an attorney actually for the email school district who is one of the attorneys that works for the washington school's risk management pool just so

031i have an idea of who i am um and one of the things that i've been helping school districts in the state of washington uh do since basically march of uh last year when all our lives changed is help them navigate essentially what it's been like to try and operate and continue to exist uh over the course of that time to the present time and help them also try and navigate the future as well and we've been trying to deliver i think the districts have i've been trying to help them in an imperfect world as best they have as all of us have been trying to navigate it and in particular my understanding is and i've delivered some things that are privileged to the district to kind of explain or talk about the mask mandate

032i guess is kind of the primary purpose but i can certainly focus my remarks if the board has any particular area they would like me to uh to address or start with or i can just do my steal okay beautiful that's good alternatives you have a very large audience here also speak to you the school district is subject to the laws of the state of washington you just heard the new superintendent take an oath of the constitution of the united states and the constitution of the state of washington um that kind of is the first and foremost thing the school district technically exists through the school board but is an independent body the body politic essentially is the superintendent the board sets policy and does various things and the board receives from the state of

033washington as well as the federal government as well as through impact fees and local delivery systems money to operate school and schools and educate kids we in the state of washington have a mandated basic education requirement for attendance for kids k through 12. you can opt out of it you can go ahead and do ale you can go ahead and go to a private school if you don't like the relationship when a private school is more of a contractual relationship for how they deliver instruction um or you can homeschool as well uh in the state of washington when the pandemic hit what happened as we all are aware is that the government came down and basically made a bunch of decisions that they believed were in the best interests of the health and safety of

034everybody in both the united states to some extent but really on local levels for the state and a lot of people didn't agree with it regardless of my politics on it they went ahead and they made the decision that they made now how does that impact the superintendent and the school district and you as parents and students in the state of washington well it impacts you because first and foremost the district has students and has a duty to supervise students the district also through schools has staff that have employment relationships so we have l and i we have occupational health and those components that dictate it and then when we have students in the hallways there's a new relationship and they do supervise and keep those students safe those decisions are made just by the

035school district how they do that every day they enter into labor negotiations with the unions they established kind of the conditions the pay for employment and that's what districts do and always have done well when the pandemic hit orders were handed down that talked about first and foremost we're going to shut down schools and we're going to make you go virtual and that was because in part and parcel probably because of all the other concerns about everybody getting together and basically you know spreading covet and controlling cove well once we went ahead and went through that process a lot of districts were left to make their own decisions they had to negotiate what they wanted to negotiate to bring people into the school and they also had to negotiate whether they were going to do

036hybrid models and everything else until the end of last year when the governor decided you're going to come back and you're going to do or offer at least a hybrid model a certain percentage of basically 30 was the requirement to give the option to students to come back because of the concerns over the impact well one of the things that has basically impacted in-person instruction in addition to all our lives everywhere else um and thankfully we're here in july so yesterday things changed as a matter of enforcement throughout the state is that we had a mass mandate okay so why does the mass mandate apply in the school environment well it applies in the school environment primarily because of the fact that it has been determined by the secretary of the department of health in

037the state of washington and local health authorities throughout the state to varying degrees of enforcement that you need to have mass to basically prevent the spread of covid among individuals at this point as of today i want to be very clear when i say this as of today that mandate is still in effect when it comes to in schools where students are present right now we don't know necessarily what the guidance is going to look like for the beginning of the next school year so the 2021-2022 school year we do not have an idea of what those mandates are going to look like well why do we care about those mandates well the department of health secretary department of health as well as the county department of health has the ability if there is a

038problem with essentially enforcing those mandates to come in and shut down schools in person instruction they've not done it to my knowledge in the state because no school has actually school district has gone ahead and officially departed from it but they have actually used it i can tell you based on my experience where for instance they have an outbreak among a bunch of individuals are participating in a sport and the school district didn't want to necessarily test athletes for those who have athletes in your family you realize there was a variety of wiaa and other enforcement relating to athletics that occurred as we started sports up at the end of this last school year well part of that was an outgrowth of for at least the enforcement purposes they wanted to have testing because they

039wanted to go ahead and keep sports going but they were worried about the sports if they didn't do testing because that was a congregate activity that it was going to come into the schools and prevent that 30 delivery of instruction from happening so they went ahead and basically said to these couple districts that i work with if you don't go ahead and test the athletes if you don't go ahead and do these things and we don't talk with wia about wrestling and other stuff and do that testing we're just going to shut you down which got the attention of the governor's office and the superintendent of public instruction right call because they had handed down that mandate saying for the mental health of kids we need to have at least 30 instruction and put kids

040in the departments of health i'll say that just generally both the secretary of the department of health as well as the pierce county is a health department from what it is right now exactly still it's clear county health department um has the ability to go ahead and bring that enforcement it's just an extension of the authority they have we don't really see them use that authority very often like for instance if if a school has a pool and you don't have lifeguards they could go ahead and come in and shut down the pool they've done that before if you had asbestos throughout a hallway or something spills something chemical that's going to hurt everybody or a staff member or some lawyer knocked something over in the hallway they can go ahead and come in and

041do that type of activity and shut each school down it is very rare that we have the possibility of shutting down an entire district but it is within their health authority it is within the governor's authority under the state constitution issue that orders he has whether you agree with it or not no one has successfully challenged that it is within the authority of the department of health on the secretary level and the county level to go ahead and exercise the enforcement of the mass mandate we are just along for the ride as a school district um in that regard now okay so what else can happen if you go ahead and why do you have the mask man in place one of those reasons is occupational for the people that work for the school district

042the employees of the school district there are a variety of uh i'm sure every administrator in the board and any school district instead of washington tell you the stories they've gone through to try and negotiate the process of bringing staff back into a school for the purposes of educating kids there's no wrong side but it's just a process of talking about the conditions of employment one of those involves the mask and social distancing testing you know making leave available remote versus in person all those things go to it the good news is right now is that we are seeing a lessening of the requirements for next year as we go through implants in primarily in the area of social distancing because we have this you know we went to six feet then nz said he

043could do three feet and that was actually really drawn in part because of the fact that a lot of schools couldn't put all the kids even if they cohorted them into a school with six feet in fact what happened when the six feet went to three feet is because a bunch of school superintendents went down and talked to inslee and wrightdoll and said there's no way we're gonna have in-person schooling the 2021-2022 school year if you don't move it from six to three and it's been really hard to operationalize that because we still have areas where they say 16 right certain locations certain times so at this point that's something that they've indicated will hopefully change for the next school year but where we are today is that guidance otherwise is still intact and that

044includes mass mandates um yesterday a lot of things happened there a lot of orders that were issued including one by the state level secretary of health that talked about where people could go and who has to wear masks and who doesn't have to wear masks one of the things that was laid out in that was that if you are vaccinated there are places that you do not need to mask if you go indoors you're working in an environment you're around other people that are also vaccinated what they specifically said in that is if you are around schools where students are present or are likely to be present regardless of your vaccination status you still have to mask up and that's impart driven because we don't have vaccinations below age 12. and there are process of

045of basically wearing a mask regardless of your vaccination status prevents basically the expectorate or the respiratory droplets or whatever term you want to use from being spread so right now as of yesterday the most up-to-date order by the secretary of health in the state of washington says anybody who's around a student or any student in a school regardless of vaccination status needs to wear a mask now that order was issued by the authority of basically given to him as the secretary of health in the state of washington the order also said that if a regional health authority so pierce county health district comes in and says something more restrictive than that controls and one of the things that the state will tell you is that from county to county some health departments have been completely

046heavily involved in school district decision making and planning other counties not so much there's some counties in the state of washington where the superintendent the principal and everybody have weekly meetings with the doctor that runs or doctors that run the county department of health and that varies i'm not here to talk about your relationship with the pierce county health department but if the pierce county health department changes the guidance and the secretary of health and the state of washington changes the guidance then that will go ahead and have an impact obviously on what the requirements are we are not at least i consist i am not creating obligations when i'm working with school districts so i know the superintendent and talking or other other superintendents i've worked with and other boards we are not creating

047obligations that are not being delivered to us by legal mandate from other entities this is not an agenda school districts don't honestly school districts don't want to be in this situation school districts need to be neutral and want to educate kids and just go back to work but there are a variety of interests that are at play so we have the health component we also have the labor component which is the employees of a school district regardless of the position of anybody individually hamas have organizations like unions like the washington education association or psc or there's various organizations that represent groups of employees in schools and they have the right to talk about working conditions and one of those working conditions is safety and they going to go ahead and negotiate what they think is

048a safe condition right now all the literature is saying a safe condition is being in an environment that has either people who are vaccinated which is a personal choice for public employees right now um and also to have related protective measures available to them including working amongst people that are masked and students that are masked the reason that they have that as part of the agreement when they negotiate this stuff is labor and industries requires it occupational health requires it and that's in addition to what the secretary health and what the county health departments are telling us so we have labor and industries telling us we need to do it as well then kind of the third component which is we have the office of the superintendent of public instruction which is chris wrightdahl who's

049i'm sure you've seen or heard his name but he's talking about stuff and he's worried about how school districts run and they go ahead and they create this guidance for us of how we're supposed to operate right now we have guidance on planning for next year that guidance is it mandatory for school districts they will tell you that it's up to a school district to make the decisions about what they adopt but what i can tell you is the guidance exactly mirrors what the secretary of health and what the health departments are saying they also are talking about what they think should happen for kids and that guidance has been created with the input of a lot of people including teachers lawyers you know custodians bus drivers para educators principals superintendents board members medical experts

050and so it creates this kind of understanding of the educational community i'll say this generally and they've endorsed the same practice the mass mandate when it ends will not end because of what an individual school district does it will end because the governor and ospi and the secretary of health go ahead and say it that's not something that the district is involved in um i can tell you i was involved in some negotiations to try and get uh some districts back with in-person instruction and one of the big things that was happening is i don't know if you read about it there were some lawsuits that were filed by organizations representing educators that didn't want to come back to school and they wanted a temporary restraining order basically to say we don't want to come

051back because it's not healthy those are all resolved because they negotiated under those contracts but there has not been any successful attempt that i'm aware of in the state of washington to prevent the masks being applied in a context where teachers teach and students learn um you know we're continuing to move forward with a lot of this stuff i can tell you right now what i think is going to happen i think one of two things is going to happen before next year either we're going to go ahead and regardless of your position on it i i'm not here to make any comment but if the vaccination numbers are high enough and the secretary help that's one of the things that drives specifically what he's going to decide if they're high enough then they'll probably

052see a lessening of the mandates i don't know if that'll include masking but we'll see things that will make it easier and have more normalcy to help schools operate if we can go ahead and if they decide and i'm not we have people that would decide this okay so i mean they aren't the people that decide this i mean they they realistically the department of health has to come along for the ride and make the decision but at some point there may be some decision making about vaccinated versus unvaccinated but right now we aren't going near it because that's not our job but that's that's not going to be a decision um made particularly in school districts uh private employers for instance can require people to be vaccinated school districts no one's touching that because

053they don't want to get into that business so um the one thing we have as well is i think everybody including the secretary of health as well as the governor and the regional health departments they understand that if they abandon the mass mandate in schools that they're going to go ahead and not get it back and i think they're really really weary i don't know for those of you who've been following what's happening in la county allen county just came out and announced yesterday they're asking everybody regardless of vaccination to mask indoor and outdoor because they're concerned about the delta variant now i can tell you right now cdc and the world health organization as well as the secretary of the helm faucet all these people they aren't agreeing with that but i can tell

054you if the numbers start going up with gamma or delta variants which are the ones that are highly uh highly contagious if you will compared to the alpha variant then we're probably not going to see a lesbian of the mass mandate but the school district is in a position where honestly and i mean generally the school district not just your district here but what i can tell you is the school districts we pretty much are going to blow which way the secretary of the department of health and the uh regional department of health go and they will take their you know to some extent some considerations from the governor's office but there are things that could happen that could impact that that i'm not aware of and i can't predict right now so literally i've

055been in a situation as i've worked with districts i can tell you this for the last year and a half where i am updating guidance literally almost on a daily basis because it's a moving target school districts including yours have done an amazing job to try and get kids back staff have done an amazing job to try and balance what it takes to be an instructor both virtually as well as in person it is literally one of the greatest like crises and education at least that that i've seen and we'll probably ever see in our lifetime right now and they are trying i can tell you that much and they're trying to win the storm as best they can and unfortunately a lot of these safety measures and personal protective measures and things that have

056to do with coven um they aren't within the authority of the school district and generally if school districts go ahead and and move forward uh with something that's contrary to that then we're going to be in a situation and as i said i work through the risk management or washington schools risk management pool like if somebody falls in a school or somebody gets hurt into school and i've been doing this i was a prosecutor for a long time and that i was a school attorney that organization hires me to represent the district and i show up and i defend the district that's what i do when i do that type of work anything to do with covet or anything to do with labor or say features come in and say we want to we're saying

057you're breaching the agreement we're going to file grievances because you're saying no masking or you're not social distancing or if the department health comes in and shuts the school district down or if somebody comes in and says something to the effect of you know department of health shut you down we want you to open up or if somebody comes in and you say i want to sue the school district over the mass mandate i've had a lot of conversations like this the last year that money to defend that case doesn't come out of any other body's offers except the districts that's something to get paid out of your general fund that's taking books out of classrooms that's taken things out of kids hands and that's just the reality of it that's just the way it

058is and there's a reason why honestly the teachers union and the other unions have not gotten in the massive dummy brooks in court because they're trying to realize they're trying to i would say personal in my opinion they're trying to balance how those assets are used in better ways than in a distance way and i don't know if something the board wants me to address further or i can defeat my dog who doesn't wear a mask questions from the board i guess i just wanted to verify one thing i know lots of people that are probably in this room uh have called to ospi have called to you know the state the governor's office the general's office they've called to pierce county health department and they've been told the same thing that they're giving guidance

059and that we're not obligated as a school board to follow their guidance that's being repeated to even myself when i've called it as an anonymous person that as a school board and as a local school we are not obligated to follow any other guidance but what we're seeing from the school board side is if we step outside of the guidance they'll shut us down potentially i guess what i'll say my personal opinion i think that's an accurate statement i think people that are saying it's what they say is mobile control they say it's local control these decisions are local control technically you are the deciders for the school district and that's a very hyper legal view of saying because they can't they can't tell you hey doc this curriculum do this do that consent agenda

060you know swearing the new superintendent realistically that's not accurate because it's one of those things where it's like you know it's like it's like you happen to know i tell my 13 year old son he's like well i'm going to go ahead and i'm going to take the car for spin i'm like for the keys right there go right ahead your choice i'm not going to get in the way of it now as a parent realistically community picks up those keys and starts walking out the door and like opens the truck well game over right i'm not gonna let him get in the car and drive it but realistically is that's a situation where i don't need to be like you know paternalistic about it but there's a reason ospi has published thousands of pages

061of guidance that school districts have to look through and operate with thousands of pages of guidance that have set the stage for all the negotiations with every union and set the stage for how we can educate kids the standards of how we go ahead and bring uh you know kids back and give them credit how they're graduating how to participate in the sports it's not up to the school board that's a punt in my opinion because they know it's unpopular why why it is my personal my personal this is my personal opinion it's not the this is not the adopted opinion of anybody else but me my personal opinion is it is it is everyone's experiences so at the end of the day it is our call as a school board if we decided we

062wanted to go in contrast but then we're opening ourselves up like you said to the pierce pierce county health department state health state health department deciding that they did want to come and enforce something so we'd probably be okay until there was a hypothetical outbreak and then we get shut down and we start to lose funding now the funding thing's been unpopular but the reality of it we just came out of a state or it came out of our budget meeting we have a 26 million dollar give or take revenue every year but you can also i guess at the point though is you can get it on for a labor practice by every collective bargaining unit you have the teachers say they wouldn't come to school and teach and they would be saying you

063violate them i'm just i'm just i'm just saying what i'm saying is of that 26 million dollars four and a half million comes from you the rest is coming from the state that we have zero control of all right four and a half million comes from the taxpayers locally the rest of it go okay no no got it so there's 26 million dollars total that we use to operate and we're on a tight budget every year all right that comes out of your local again so i'm not here to debate with you but if you look at the numbers and at the end of the day we can as a board who are stewards of your tax money decide that we want to go out there we want to stand in contrast to what's being

064said which will i'll speak for myself as an elected member because i can actually give my opinion because you can unelect me my opinion is that i am responsible for not only your tax money but for my children in this district and all of your children and every other child in this district and their best what their well-being and if i do something that causes our tax money to go away so that our schools get shut down guess what happens if our schools get shut down this board no longer has a say because what happens if we go bankrupt because we don't have money to actually provide the state required uh mandates to every student the state comes in and they institute their own board it's a it's not the community gets to come reinstate

065their own board who does what they want the state does it and we all lose our say you lose your local vote as to who's up here because the state controls the school district the other thing too is one thing as well is that every student is guaranteed basic education under this applause of the state of washington that was the mccleary lawsuit we heard about it kind of there was a funding issue a couple years ago is that if you have a failure or basic debt because the school board votes to go ahead and go against what is essentially the advice or the mandate from the secretary of health since they come in and actually shut down operations when the mandate for next year is right now or the guidance is every school should be

066five days a week in person then if you have a student who particularly has issues or concerns because of that or doesn't have an academic opportunity under the constitution of the state which is very very aggressive in defending uh the student's right to education they could bring a lawsuit as well for basically a failure to steward consistent with the laws and the authority under the state constitution i'm not saying that i've seen that happen but that's one of the things we're looking at right now we're watching all the districts about how basically kids have been impacted by this last year being remote for such a long period of time and so anything that gets in the way with kids coming back in person for that five days a week is something that i would at

067least for for my clients in the school districts i would say hey you got to consider this as a factor and concern so i would stand by we're going standby hella gum any other questions from the board up here well i do have a question we just got done with our budget report and our risk management or our insurance fees have gone up 25 this last year uh in your opinion how much of that is related to covid i don't think anybody's relative code right now that the common pit's coming later on i think that's based on what's happened i think i think right now honestly if like 25 years ago when i started representing school districts it was cheaper to be a school district nowadays because of the public records act because a lot

068of the details and all the a lot of things including loss i hate to say it but you know my brother got hit by a hit by hit by a pickup on a crosswalk it had like broke like his leg basically destroyed he got 35 000 bucks you go ahead and get in the crosswalk right now and you have a growth plate and your leg destroyed and you have like you're a good athlete active kid you get a million bucks it's just the time value of money and unfortunately that increase is there are people that won't come and watch we live in the great state of washington which i'm sure it's not great for a lot of us but um there are no caps on what you can do when you sue someone there's no

069immunities for school districts there's there's school districts throughout the us where you go to you can't sue them you can't sue them for anything they have a sovereign immunity they call it state of washington we have no caps we have no safe harbor we have nothing anybody can sue for anything you might not win but it's expensive so and so what i hear you saying is that if that our insurance could increase because of covid in the future but at this point i think it could but i also think that a lot of code and stuff is not even covered necessarily through your insurance because a lot of people aren't writing code right now i think because they don't know what it is lni has been expanded so l is other fees will be increasing

070i think as it relates to it um but i haven't seen like we were all worried originally about covet death lawsuits and things of that nature and i think it's part because we've been pretty consistent what the guidance has been um but we're still kind of sorting it out i think unfortunately we're still in the middle of this thing somewhat so so charles could you address the questions about vaccination clinics uh that you had mentioned in your brief to us well the school district wants to partner with someone to go ahead and do a lot of school districts have um or a lot of certainly with or other agencies like the tribes and stuff like that have been very proactive on it the the liability there's there's basically safe harbors if you have somebody else

071you know the medical professional doing that um and so that's meant to encourage that type of type of uh behavior originally the incentive planning to go ahead and say you get a starbucks card they kind of originally thought about that stuff and threw it out but then now we do lotteries so it's kind of anybody's angle on that but um it's not on the district in that area that that's one area in terms of making vaccination available or a back station clinic on district facilities you know the only thing i'm telling clients is honestly don't be the person i'm not going to go hey guess what we've got some cte kids we're going to train them up they're going to learn the vaccines and great experience though that no i want a medical professional someone

072with a license is doing that okay anything else yeah can i elaborate on one more statement here it says um that if we were to disregard face covering mandates we could um be in a potential situation of civil and or criminal penalties there's like generally right i mean we haven't heard it it's been postured a couple of places but technically under the governor's orders uh under a lot of like the state home and everything else and some of this stuff he has a criminal authority but he does it's like it does he hasn't exercised it uh what's basically happened i'll tell you with schools is where somebody's going ahead and primarily is having a lot of sports without breaks because some of the clusters of kids in sports where when it's starting to get in

073the way then it was partially possibly going to bleed into some schools my understanding is is that the governor's office is pretty in tune with that and come in and basically say hey let's deal with it or the department of health you know who probably the most important relationship i would say just in terms of navigating the pandemic for a school district is talking to the health authorities because they're you know i'm not aware of any school district that's an infectious disease expert on staff you know so yeah we do so i guess my last thing my last question here is what is our legal responsibility as an enforcement arm because you know as a as a school board and a school district it's not our business or our our job to truly enforce loss

074we have an entire enforcement like mechanism in our in our system of government and at what point is it our job to enforce i would say in terms of the specific enforcement um i think that ultimately it comes down to is is the school district has an obligation under state law to supervise staff in a safe working environment they have a duty to supervise students in a safe working environment and protect students from foreseeable harm and foreseeable arms dictated by what's out there and you have all this stuff saying there's issues related to covet and then uh the other part of it is like you said earlier the stewardship of public funds um so it's not you weren't doing things beyond your your fiat or mandate but you're very much responsibility ask but not of

075course kind of i mean we're seeing this with uh with businesses too that weren't forcing their customers or physically expelling customers now having massive fines levied against them and uh you know at some point i'm not putting you as you know on the spot with any of this but it's i i think i'm speaking on the frustration of a lot of people here seeing that you know small business owners now school districts are kind of being utilized as an enforcement arm uh under under guise of you know coercion a threat um of losing in funding and other things that were kind of being put into a spot between you know the people that elected us to the sport and the state government is really making the calls and and forcing us to be a rubber

076stamp form i use that rubber stamp thing a lot but you know it puts all of us in a hard spot where we don't necessarily agree with what's being said but we are responsible for public funds we're responsible for education we're responsible for following the constitution of the state and we're also stuck well not able to do what we're elected it's a good point but you know the thing is is that the money like you talk about the money the federal money that comes to the state that flows to the district comes with it with requirements the state money comes with the requirements uh and and the legislature can set some of those requirements but ospi can do regulations said that we're talking about something that we never contemplated which is obviously the health requirements

077and and the environment if you will the safety of the environment so it is it's one of those things that's certainly unlike anything we've ever experienced uh before i think the other other part of it that's uh that's difficult to go ahead is is that we're used to the way schools have been run and the opera operationalizing all this guidance is just a pain in the ass i mean pardon my french but it really is one of those things i mean it's like it's easy to say we're in a mask on a plane and then you sit on a plane for three hours and you're like my ears are on fire back here and i was like you know eating peanuts and stuff i mean it's it's just difficult to go ahead and put it

078in action and it's really difficult for schools i mean no i don't know anybody who's happy about this at any level since we've been in this meeting we've received an update changing guidance in an email so since we've been in this in this meeting that's how frequent is changing coming to us so i think it's important to note that ospi uh governs the schools and we have had to submit multiple plans both last summer had them signed off by by our board uh we had we just submitted for ospi they had to be accepted in order to open up schools for 2122 so as the superintendent and my staff we have all of these requirements and we have to check assurances that we have done x y and z uh that's why this local control

079thing is just frustrating yeah it was accepted which is good but it's just one more layer of requirements and we have to abide by the requirements that are listed in the doh and the cdc guidelines and the state of washington so if we didn't fill that out i don't know what that would mean correct and that would be irresponsible on my part as a superintendent well yeah he took the oath you've taken the oath i mean there's it's it's it's very difficult it's a very difficult situation thank you so much anything else from the board okay cool well thank you for that mr late do you do you mind if we ask a couple questions for that i'm not responsible for the the structure of the government so i'm sorry about that what my brother

080tells me barbecues so i'm fine i'm glad to go but i i reserve the right to say i have no idea so ask me a question everybody's back in school tonight so let's please raise our hand and uh mr late you want to call them people or call them somebody else okay yellow shirt there go ahead so you've done a great job explaining like put away your pitchfork school board i think for me as i listen to it the frustration is we would like well i don't know who i am how do we move forward to express our frustrations i get where the roadblocks are i i guess my concern is i'm not hearing any potential or resolution for our concerns it's just all the roadblocks for what we are not able to do here

081so do you have any recommendations like i would concentrate on like i mean honestly the the secretary of health on the state level you know the science i mean that's that's the stuff i mean one thing is i mean i know i don't want to plug vaccination or you know be smart and the other things you're doing but you know just try and be smart i mean it's difficult to go ahead and live your life in a time of code and personal protective expectations but i when i talk to clients and they say can i do this and can i not do it my big thing is honestly my hierarchy is okay you gotta talk to the regional health department and get them to say it's okay not i'm not reading the guide well you

082know the guidance says this but i'm not going to take the visit you'll be like no send them having sent me an email saying it's okay because i don't want them to you know i talked to one person there and they changed their mind i think this the state department of health those are the people that really really go with it and then honestly you've got to bring the people that work with the kids and then and then obviously parents or everyone's allowed to my kid i'm allowed to have just as strong an opinion as anybody else in my school district about the safety of my kid and i it's not the loudest voice everybody has an equal right to go to school and be safe and your interpretation you know it's safe and your

083interpretation my interpretation and her interpretation his intuition they can all be different but it's up to the school to try and reconcile that you know school districts get sued by people who've been legitimately wrong and school districts get sued by people that are just i don't know where they're coming from and that's just stuff just still costs money so but i think i think i go to hell people this i go go with those people because they're the ones that signed all the orders that came down yesterday ellen i workers and everything else in those orders they all flow from this the scientific agencies i'll call them medical agencies but that's all i concentrate on right there in front of everybody who are we supposed to talk to them do we called chances we've called

084we we've done all of those things so then we follow that rabbit trail and then we find out that it's not so then we follow another episode but all of us are here now trying to ask whose name do i write down and whose phone number do i call whose email do i call that we actually get listened to because collectively it's not happening so showing up in olympia or showing up to our mayor's office that's what we're asking so as the attorney who do i call okay well i'm not the attorney for well you're the representation of pool [Applause] we know who you are standing in front of us no no okay no i got it i'll build this one so we're getting the wonderful run around at every level because i'm getting the

085same one all right there's a there's a wonderful thing happening in the state ever since the emergency mandate came out where everyone points fingers um i'll take off my school board hat and say that i personally tried to challenge said uh mandates and what did they do there was a fence around the capitol so um there is from my point of view and i'll speak to the whole board speaking for me there is a uh there is an intentional deflection of responsibility and i can tell you from sitting here as somebody looking for the same answers as you i'm frustrated too um and i am trying to find the same answer as you are and i i'm so frustrated with it that i applied to and was just accepted to law school so i can

086try to figure it out myself so [Applause] and i'm already on the medical side of the house with an infectious disease background wanting to figure out some answers because what we're being told and what's happening to me it does not make perfect sense um however um we have a system of government that's set in the place to where right now um everybody's just kind of doing this and you're all frustrated we're frustrated too and we're seeing you know we're seeing school we're seeing board meetings get a little a little rowdier this is actually pretty awesome because it's nice to see our community here uh actually giving us input so we actually has a board to enjoy this but um i think that we have a shared frustration and as a board i can say that

087as a member here i think i can speak for everybody on this one we would like to get to the bottom of who can make decisions and hear your frustrations who can make actual decisions we would like to help navigate that process with it so can i add to that um there is not a superintendent in the state that has spent more face-to-face time with dr chen than our own preston bar he has worked hard and relentlessly i personally have been face to face many times with the health department each of our board members here have written letters and we are he's saying talk to the health department they really are the ones that put the screws to us and we are constantly i think more than almost any other district in this state we

088are advocating for our children and when matt says we're frustrated any other district in this state we are advocating for our children and when matt says we're frustrated that is a very nightmare and i can tell you that we have been non-stop working on this i hope that you guys understand that we really are under the dictates of the secretary of health and dr chen so if you want to start sending dr chen send it to him there's the name dr chen kerose county health department department of health that's who we've been trying to communicate but he doesn't listen to us either so we're out of we're at attraction okay this board the school district no school has done more to fight this and we're out of traction we've been talking to him so much

089for so long and and not always nice conversations i mean we're we're mad if we could get all you people that showed up here i mean the tacoma pierce county health department the department of health the washington state board of health you've got department l and i if we can get people like you to show up at their meetings they all have boards they all have meetings just like this and they need to hear from you folks because they're they're they're not listening i'll go with you yeah i mean so what way the corner there first frustration is the last school board meeting we can hear you but we couldn't see now we can see you but we can't hear we need to hear what we're saying my other frustration is all i've heard is

090we're scared of the department of health we're scared of the state department health we're here to cover we're scared of the unions we're here to the teachers we're scared of this i've heard very little about the kids we're masking out [Applause] that's exactly what i said in april 2020 they're not going to shut down schools [Applause] when we were kids the biggest problem with the lead model was putting all of us in the gym and making classrooms up they worried about the kids whether we were going to be able to learn how to just mess around okay we got one more question mr model so with all this look at different school districts and how everybody's negotiating to get kids back in class within our own state has there been any outreach to some of

091the states that are open and what happens to them like in texas or florida or wherever that goes into like north carolina those things i know there's a different political demographic than what our state is but yes there's still school districts they still have different you know they still have metrics that we manager up with they still have to follow the cdc guidelines right so i'm just kind of curious has there been any outreach to some of those places not not from my not from my perspective i mean i think it's it's one of those things where the the universe of the structure of the state because what they they pretty much do is see local control i i know other people who've been talking to other states about how they've been kind of dealing

092with it but i don't know what what form that that's taken um for at least in in my in my experience i don't i don't have any understanding of it there were a lot of people there a lot of cooks in the kitchen when we were trying to figure this out um just here in the skate so i think and they were under a timeline so that's a good question okay that's going to wrap up q a we're going to have time to get the comments here so thank you mr lakes for for coming out please uh raise your hand to you and uh so we're gonna start mr paul wait before we start um president uh would you be willing to give the community kind of the guidelines around public comments so that everybody's

093kind of familiar with the protocols so we're going to give you three minutes to speak to address the board it's really for you to make comments it's it's not so much a question and answer thing and we just want to hear your your thoughts your opinions and and add to our basic knowledge as we figure this out pneumonia tuberculosis meningitis amoebic encephalitis diphtheria legionnaires disease these are just a few of the pathogens found on children's mass after wearing them an average of 5.7 hours in a small yet eye-opening study in gainesville florida you will notice sarge cove 2 is not on that list as a matter of fact only a single virus on one mass was found and that was herpes virus one while this recent study was small it was also eye-opening it opened

094my eyes and the eyes of many that we are surrounded and come into contact every day with potentially harmless harmful pathogens which are almost overwhelmingly fought off due to our immune system it is also eye-opening to see that only a single virus was found present on a sink on a single mask and was not coveted in my eyes this study showed on average children have a very robust immune system while also showing a mass did nothing to harness or stop viral particles the last assumption is backed up by years of clinical data and studies i don't have time to get into all of them but there is overwhelming documented peer-reviewed controlled trials in operating rooms that shows mass make zero significant difference in the spread of viruses if they make no difference in a highly

095type in a tightly controlled environment like an operating room how much of a difference do you feel like they make in everyday life especially amongst children i came and spoke to this very group on may 26 and asked a simple question where is your line have you found it everybody i'm speaking to tonight has kids or has recently had kids or grandkids in our schools you can sit here can you sit here and look us all in the eyes and with a straight face and tell us you are okay with the continued masking of our children the continued social distancing of our children the continued pressure to backs our children and the continued mental and physical abuse of our children where do you draw the line and stand with your constituents and say unmask our

096kids and put an end to this madness rcw 4256-30 states the people of this state do not yield the sovereignty to the agencies that serve them the people and delegated authority do not give their public servants the right to decide what is good for the people and what is not good for them to know the people insist on remaining informed so that they may maintain control over the instruments they have created this chapter shall be liberally construed to promote this public policy and to assure the public interests will be fully protected this is just one of several unlawful violations perpetrated against our children sorry current guidance i have an entire legal brief if you'd like to review it now i know what we said mr pole you are pleading your case to the wrong people

097you need to speak to doh lni etc again i say no i am speaking to the correct group the elected representatives of this school district and the elected representatives who have been elected to given and given the authority to be the ultimate overseers and decision makers for our district many including myself have reached out to all the various state agencies and got the same answers from all of them we only provide guidance so which is it guidance or mandate rcw 28a 150 230 states it is the intent and purpose of this section to guarantee that each commons school district board of the directors whether or not acting through its respective administrative staff be held accountable for the proper operation of their district to the local community and its electorate do you feel forcing children to

098mask up six to eight hours per day subjecting their bodies and bodies and mental psyche to mandatory daily rail checks social distancing from the peers and being made to feel like a leper for not getting an unapproved shot is proper operation 15 seconds brad i'll go as fast as i can do you feel you in the district are living up to the standards of rcw 5630 we the people do not yield our sovereignty to the agencies that serve them do you feel the district is living up to rcw 49-60-30 which in short states the right of the right to be free from discrimination because of race creed color national origin citizenship immigration status sex military status sexual orientation disability what is creed freedom is a set of beliefs which aims and guides a person's actions

099creed is generally used in religious terms but not it can be any set of beliefs like i said to you a month and five days ago my intent and the intent of those gathered here tonight is not to fight against you but to work with you to make tough decisions we want to be the army behind you that makes you feel confident to be the leaders we elected we do not but please do not mistake these words for weakness we expect you to have only two things in mind when deciding the production of our district the impact good or bad of our children and the impact good or bad of your electorate and taxpayers you represent all right thank you brad i'm not done those two things should always be the guiding light decision making

100i could speak on this topic for hours but realize i'm already over my time alone and it's proven to give others time in closing today our governor announced full reopening of washington restrictions may apply this is evidence that the emergency is over yet his reopening did not include schools why is that i know you and many other districts are in a holding pattern waiting to see if guidance changes for schools next year but please ask yourself this what if it does not change what then will we be having this conversation in august what if any new guidance further harms or segregates our children will you force parents hands to pull their kids from school will you allow this to happen on your watch or you stand with us right now and declare our children no

101longer to be discriminated against based on their creed will no longer have the personal soft their personal sovereignty abridged by unelected governmental agencies and will finally after 16 months have their bodily autonomy back the choice is yours bravery is not the absence of fear but rather an action in the face of it [Applause] how's it going everybody my name is cole stover um i personally do not have any children in the school district but i have a girlfriend that has a couple i have family that has kids in here all of you so i want to be a voice for the people i want to be an example to step up for people who don't think that they have the right to step up to step up on this me personally through the last um

102year i have heard about um raised dwindling i've heard about children going into classrooms without their mass and going into complete fits bawling their eyes out thinking that they're going to kill somebody i've heard about depression and all sorts of other horrible stuff that children should not be subjected to so i want to be a voice for you guys and i have a letter written by a family friend nikki wise that was not able to come here tonight but she wanted me to share this with you our children and our rights are protected under the u.s constitution the highest law of the land no law is valid or lawful that violates that constitution no health order or emergency order and or state of emergency may suspend the suspend or violate the constitution period you the

103school board are representatives of the parents and you are you have a responsibility to do what is right to protect the children in your school to honor the right of the parents and to abide by the state washington state law and the state constitution that empowers individuals and not the state agencies that services that serves them and it is time to remove the unlawful and harmful mass mandates social distancing nova testing slash temperature taking and or of course experimental gene therapy injections known as covid19 vaccination certain laws show that the governor the secretary of health the department of health and l and i are operating outside of the wall and by continuing to follow their decision their direction you are too you should abide by the oath of office that you took and uphold the

104united states and the washington state constitution put our children first this representative misrepresenting the mask for using as an infection prevention or um reduction of or reduction is a despite is a deceptive practice under the ftc requiring children to wear a mask you are promoting the idea that the mass can prevent or treat a disease and or virus which is illegal deceptive in a legal deceptive practice it is unlawful to advertise that a product or a service can prevent a virus or disease unless you have reliable scientific evidence no no emergency order supersedes established law any any health order related to the mask wearing is unlawful and unforceable by law each and every one of you can be held personally responsible if you do not comply with federal law so pretty much like lawyer was

105saying earlier it sounded like that we aren't the people that we aren't in charge he made it in his little metaphor make it look like we were the kids stealing the car that's false the government is because they have to go by us we the people that's it thank you thank you hello i'm peter carlin and um i realized i bring a little different perspective to this conversation so i just want to start out by saying one thing i think that's gotten lost in this whole thing as it's become politicized is regardless of where we stand on this issue all of us i think want a few things for our families right we all want our families to be safe we want to send our kids to school we want them to be in school

106to learn in that environment right and we want our small businesses to be open right none of us none of us enjoy this last year and a half that we've kind of suffered through right um so i'm a family medicine doctor at our clinic in town and so i have a very different perspective than a lot of what's been shared so far i worry a lot about cobit i've been dealing with it every day at work when i come home trying to keep my family safe you know our since april of last year in our clinic we all wear masks all day long we take them off to eat lunch um but we have survived we haven't had anyone get sick at clinic we've been testing people um early on at the onset of the

107pandemic we've been testing people before we had vaccines so we've been at a little higher risk than some people right and so it's something i worry a lot about and i have my routine when i come home i take off my stuff and on the patio and i get in the shower and we did this for many months and then i got vaccinated and i feel much safer now but it's still a daily struggle for us at our clinic but i just want to remind people that um that we you may have different views you know where you land on this issue but i think we do share some really common core values and and i'm from evil i grew up in invil i'm uh you know i identify with this town i grew up

108here and i love living here um i have four kids two of them are in a werehouser and since the onset of the pandemic we've worked with you guys to try to help keep our kids safe and to try to get them back in school it um it surprised me a little bit um jeff what you said about how our relationship with the um with the health department that's not something i witnessed obviously you guys have those conversations but my experience working with you guys and working with our school nurse and creston is that you guys were able to balance all these really difficult issues very well right we all wanted our kids to be in school but we want our kids to be safe and you guys worked really hard to get our kids

109back you know you were a leader among a lot of school districts in this state getting our kids back and i know having four kids two of them being able to go back to school how valuable that was right but you also took kobit seriously and you you took these these things that you have no control over you took it you you basically had to comply with those things right um and you were able to do it and we were able to get our kids back so i'm grateful for that and i think i certainly hope going into the next year that you guys continue to take this health issue seriously because if we don't follow the science right we don't follow the guidance that we're getting from experts i'm a i'm a family medicine

110doctor i'm not an expert in infectious disease epidemiology we have to rely on people that do this for a living our public health experts that um that truly have the expertise to guide us through this really difficult time so of course we all have we have to like you guys said we can give our our input but ultimately what i'm hearing tonight sounds like the science and what what the state determines is safe is what's going to drive how things look in the fall when our kids return to school so i know i just want to make sure that you guys are aware too there's a lot of people that maybe aren't here that probably share my perspective and that would be very nervous if we went back to school and there was no you

111know no masking or no no consideration for these safety measures that have been taken to this point so um i just want to thank you guys too i know this has been a tough year for everybody and probably more so for all you guys and what you've had to do as public figures and leaders in our community so i appreciate that thank you [Applause] okay [Applause] hi my name is lydia collins i wasn't planning on getting up to sleep today but i had a question based on something i heard council say earlier as a nursing student soon to be icu nurse i never denied the reality or severity of covid i've seen it over and over again over my last year of clinicals what i haven't seen is children with it and you don't need

112to be a medical professional to know the statistics children aren't getting this in any significant amounts what i have seen is a huge spike in adolescent depression anxiety and mental mental disorders of many kinds generated by the isolation of the last year i understand you're in a very difficult place to be and i don't want to downplay that but my question is uh council said earlier that school admins were able to change the six foot distancing to three foot distancing by banding together and going to the governor um what is preventing the school admins of pierce county from coming together to form a coalition of sorts to challenge the current regulations and change them thank you goodness um i'm in the restaurant business and i've been in there for the last 28 years of my

113life um this last year was very hard for all of us we're running around the tables trying to get everything everybody needs with a mask on i can only imagine how our kids feel to try and play have fun keep it their own people and the mask is just too much i deal with it five hours a day running to tables it's horrible i had to come in and take it off and take a deep breath um i've had co-workers that still got coveted even wearing a mask i don't understand if if you want to wear a mask that's fine but the kids that don't want to learn masks and the parents that are okay with it i don't think they should have to i don't think how are these athletes trying to breathe and

114get what they need to get done it's not fair it covers their whole face you can't see their smile i have tables come to me and say hey take your mouse down i want to see your smile we're all behind a mask and it's disgusting honestly it really is i understand that you don't and you can't do what you need to do i don't know but i hope that you put some information out there so we know when the next meeting is at a health department actually i have the health department come in all the time i can ask them all the time um i'm just over it i pulled my kid out of school from school last year um i just one positive thing i want to say about the masks because i pulled

115my kid out is when i got him home him being a seventh figure he couldn't write a complete sentence now he's writing poetry his all of his apostrophe everything he is doing brilliant so everything happens for a reason so let's keep at it and get these masks off the kids i don't care if you want to wear wear and that's fine and another thing i'm a health major myself why aren't we talking about vitamins we can take what happened to eat vitamin c we're all talking about covering up let's put something healthy in our bodies to fight whatever is out there thank you [Applause] okay all right i'll be brief i promise no more than two minutes good evening i'm sami joe 30 acre my five children have either graduated from or attended school here

116in eatonville school district i was also on the school board in 2019 i'm here because each of you were elected by the people of eatonville school district and as such we want you to put the health and safety of our children first and then a strong rigorous academic and skills related education to prepare our kids for life after high school first i want you to declare that maps masks and vaccines are optional i heard the legal thing but i wrote this before i heard the look anyway our children are least likely to contact contract kova 19 as they are the least likely to die from it they're the safest demographic of all for this virus and we need to honor that these masks are physically harmful to their health and it's mentally damaging as well

117anyone can do the research it's all out there for us to review secondly we've imminent i didn't say the word vehemently oppose the teaching and or preaching of the critical race theory or cultural diversity equity [Applause] [Music] which i know is the mandatory training that you guys have already been going through because it was on that budget letter that you had to um we are against that teaching for our children this is a racist teaching that some people are oppressors and others are the oppressed and it's all based upon the amount of melanin in their skin something that none of them has any control over or any choice about this ideology devalues people it divides people and worse if there can be a worse it destroys their hope for the future they're being told that

118the cover of their skin is now the definition of who they are and that it is more important than the content of their character which is what dr martin luther king jr lost his life fighting for we fought this ideology in the 60s so why are we replaying it again we need to stop it third we want you to get back to the basics of teaching principles and tools to prepare our children for the future after high school whether it's the workforce college the military building up their own business attending a trade school i don't care whatever it is that they dream to do or dream to become they need to believe that they can do it or be it anything they desire if they work hard and that it has absolutely nothing to do

119with the color of their skin [Applause] thanks [Applause] okay that is the end of public speaking you guys haven't signed up [Music] yes um so i wrote this letter to you guys at the last meeting i'm not sure if it was run or not but i wanted all of you guys to hear it um um half of my sophomore year was taken for me and now school is almost out for this summer i am about to be a senior in high school technically i guess i am a senior already it's almost two years of my high school life dominated and regulated with mass and keeping distance from my friends that is no way for the kids this community to live we thrive off of social interaction with our friends we love playing sports without a

120piece of cloth over our face we want to sit next to each other at lunch without getting yelled at that we're too close as a 16 year old student i see this i see that this isn't normal i see that other states are allowing our kids just like me to go to school without a mask to go to school and have lunch with friends to go to school and not hate every single second of it we are teaching the future of our children to wear a mask because if you don't you will be punished for it children are not at risk at all outcomes decoded and neither are people under the age of 85 nearly 50 of the cova deaths were nursing for residents all life is filled with danger of contracting a disease that

121is a human condition there is no such thing as totally safe school or place of business any life worth living cannot be lived without some risk this is from an article that wouldn't be shown on the news or shared around the world why simply because the chaos and fear of the american people gets more publicity yet we locked on for cover 19 doing damage we have not even assessed yet wiping out small businesses destroying people's dreams and causing them immense economic economic harm we have isolated ourselves from the world from our families and from our friends as a student in the eagles school district i'm about to be a senior this is my last year of high school and the last year of my youth the last year that my parents get to see me

122as a kid we're all growing up and life flies by quick we only get one eighth grade graduation we only get to turn 16 once i just want all of you to put yourselves in our shoes to try and understand what it feels like to see other kids and other states live completely normal lives try to understand how we feel wearing a mask while we exert ourselves playing sports think about how much our lives have changed for the worst and how unhappy we are you stay at e05 for us but we don't see any of it we see rules being followed we see following the rules even if it means ruining our lives we're giving up because the only opinion that matters does not involve those of this community thank you superintendent comments last chance

123chrisman well i would i would like to thank the community um for eight wonderful years this has been the hardest year and a half and um i just want to thank you guys you're too pretty to wear one [Applause] i'll stand in here so you can hear just two minutes few minutes set me up so edenville community we have been eating bill strong tonight we're eating bill strong and from here we will make it through this i have been here for eight years we have changed a lot we have had kindergarten preschool grits program innovative green schools stem schools and amazing graduates over the last eight years so please please please as i leave please don't forget that this is an amazing community i heard that time and time again this pandemic will end this

124will be a bad kind of those years um and this is a wonderful wonderful school district i have been honored and so privileged thank you for growing me into the superintendent i didn't know what i was doing when i came here and i've learned so much and been so blessed by knowing so many of you especially the students i really want to thank the students for being kind and compassionate they are amazing amazing kids here and it's because you're amazing parents so thank you i know this has been a hard night it's been a hard few years but i just am so grateful as i leave here and go to another community for having been part of the edenville so thank you so mr neal can you still hear us yes i can all right

125let's let's give you your first superintendent comments okay well i i would kind of like to tackle oh wait wait that's probably his last can you see us i can't [Applause] okay if i break this i'm leaving tomorrow oh [Applause] until drew might get that back how did you like him yeah all right anybody have any comments what's that oh there it is okay are you back gary maybe maybe say something gary hello here we go here we go okay it's all you okay thank you uh well i i was just i don't have prepared comments here but i would like to congratulate superintendent bar director knight they've really done exemplary work in eatonville and you know they've built a sturdy scaffolding for eatonville and i intend to keep building and adding to that scaffolding

126so that our kids can continue to grow and have the best possible education um that they that they all deserve um i wish i was there tonight i was you know obviously there was a lot of energy in the room i would love to be a part of that but i'm not um but you know i also look forward to watching preston and kim um as they continue doing wonderful things for their respective districts that they're going to and i i've only been able to meet with them for a short period of time and the school board but i can i want to thank everyone for their their tireless efforts and for everything they have done for the kids of eatonville and the bar is way up there and i'm gonna i'm gonna go as

127high as i can to try to make sure that i continue this work and continue everything that's been done in this wonderful community that i'm so excited to be part of so thank you thank you gary sure let's go i wanted to um first of all thank you knight for the great work she's done on the budget uh and thank you superintendent for the great work that you've done on behalf of students things are first in all of our hearts particularly enormous so thank you very much um i also wanted to thank taylor our last speaker is one of our new student representatives and i think it's excellent that she has the courage and opportunity to come forward and share her voice and student voice is very very important and impactful each of us i

128can speak on behalf of everybody on this story i am so grateful for the attendance here tonight thank you all for coming thank you for sharing your your stories and your passion um we each of us um hear you and we are continuing to do the important work that we can throughout the summer um i can tell you that i've been on hours and hours and hours of meetings and while you are doing what um the people can do you're collecting you're using your collective voice we are also attempting to do everything we can do as elected officials to continue to move the work forward and making sure that we keep student and staff safety and fiscal responsibility at the forefront as well as listening and communicating with our community so thank you all for

129the time you can we we invite you back to every board meeting we would love to have this kind of feedback from our community at all times so thank you very [Applause] much okay i'm going to take kind of a side side trip here but it is still um it's all about education and you know we have the privilege of as a school board to have student reps on our board every year and they do just so much to help them keep us informed and encouraging us and um giving us information and they attend state conferences and things that can help them to grow as well as all of us by hearing it through students voices and through their views on it and so i think all of them are here tonight and if you

130would stand on and say your name so we can recognize you as our student reps for the 2021-22 school year taylor limburg [Music] jason campbell [Applause] and i hope i see this right [Applause] all right thank you all so much for you know your students for um stepping up you know it's adding to your responsibilities as students and being it's a different type of leadership position and we're looking forward to spending time with you okay um i want to echo everything that my colleagues here have said thank you all for coming out um we're very proud of the school district for for all of the students that are in this district and we love the voice that eatonville has collectively so thank you all for coming out this has been good to hear from you

131we want to continue to hear from you um all of us have had a unexpected and uh unpredictable couple of years i can tell you that when i ran for this position i had could never have even imagined what it would have been like shortly after i was elected to the scene and it affected my family greatly too as i had a daughter who refused to walk in her own high school graduation just across the road here over in the field um which i can tell you hurt my wife quite a bit not getting to get those photos but you know it's all of us have suffered in one way or another um if if i wasn't on this board i can tell you that my own children may be homeschooled right now um it's

132it's frustrating for all of us and i want you to know that your frustrations are being heard by everybody out there and we are listening to you and every email even the one that i haven't responded to yet because i have a long draft that haven't sent is read and is thought about and i know that i respond to every email that i get i believe that everybody else on this board does as well so we do hear you and i just want you all to know that that we all hear you and we appreciate your input and we we are trying our best to represent you in the best way that we can so thank you all for coming [Applause] so i thank you everybody else who had to say already preston thank you

133for a tremendous eight years this is a lot different school district than it was when you came here uh kim you as well you have done an amazing job and taught us more about money than we ever thought we needed to know so thank you both for for a lot of work thank everybody here for coming out tonight hearing from the people is the most important thing and more than just a school board like i said there's lots of agencies involved in this and they need to here too this board has worked really hard for a year and a half and we have affected some changes and we're not going to stop trying to make changes and the one thing i am absolutely certain of is that before next school year starts there's going to

134be many more changes i mean as matt pointed out we've already had a change during this meeting tonight so this is uh it's crazy times but don't think we don't care i mean most of us grew up in this town i grew up in this town with school in this building my kids are going to school in this building you know we understand what's going on and we're working as best we can so i know you know we don't have a lot of a lot of great answers for everybody but we appreciate you coming out and talking to us don't stop talk to everybody that'll listen to you and uh that being said anybody have anything else to say all right let's call it a night let's adjourn this meeting at 8 40. i don't

135want to break [Music] thank you okay you