001there we go a couple more see we're waiting for a paulette any moment now just takes a minute for the internet to get down from lb speeding down the wires now angelina is that you i see i only see the top half of a face are you with us today i'm here yes i am do you see me i yeah i can see your full face now thank you so good to see you you're welcome yes i missed you guys okay we got one two where where'd matt go he was here a second ago that's on i see him oh okay oh there you are i apparently don't have ever there we go okay well uh anybody uh or everybody else set to go okay then let's call this meeting to order at 703 in
002stanfield facebook to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay man oh my maya i want you to all meet my this is my new service dog this is maya maya paws up close up can you see her there see there we go so i i've been training with her all day she's my new service dog and she does about 50 commands by voice and uh i never had kids that could do 50 commands by voice so i've got my minutes up uh so i would consider any changes or additions to the agenda okay seeing hearing none uh move on to the consent agenda i would consider a motion to approve the consent agenda as
003presented second all right moved in second in any discussion on the consent agenda all right seeing and hearing none uh all in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi all right all opposed please signify by saying all right consent agenda is approved on reports and presentations we will hear the eatonville transition plan wow that was quick we moved really fast okay they've told us we have 10 minutes so we'll try and be real uh as short with as we can and then give you a chance for questions don't worry have we got the um steve if you've got the there we go okay well basically um what we did was uh the transition plan is a plan under the americans with disabilities act and um we were asked by the district to kind of
004review the facilities next steve can you turn the next slide one moment and we did want to really give some special thanks to john fisher um he knew every nook and cranny in every building uh that we went to and that really helped us a lot the transition plan is part of what's called the self-evaluation and they are really separate that the transition plan looks at barriers to persons with disabilities in buildings and the entire self-evaluation process also looks at policies and procedures and equity and all those kinds of issues and uh next steve one of the reasons that we do the transition plan is that many of the school districts um if there are civil rights complaints filed they tend to do with facilities and so the purpose of it is to prevent litigation
005save money by coordinating the modifications with alterations in other words let's say you've got to do wheelchair parking you know you can do that at the same time in the summer and it also allows for effective planning so uh different kinds of services can be coordinated next um the other thing is it's not you know we're not making a list of everything you have to do we made recommendations and you've got a copy of the entire document there we made recommend recommendations and you can really pick and choose what you want to do for instance you may focus on older buildings or you may say we really need to fix our playground areas or um what do we get the most money or the most bang for our money when we uh are spending money
006um buildings don't need to be fully accessible but programs do okay steve and these are just some of the things that we looked at when we looked at facilities we really try and work it from where do you get to the building how do you get into the building how do you get around and so we looked at first entrances and parking and then we looked at what's called a router travel and router travel is just your way finding through the building uh look at work areas looked at signage how easy it is to find if there are some entrances that are accessible and some that aren't uh we also really look at safety and security uh it's been interesting because in the past security has been such an issue in the last few years
007and now some of the things that they're saying about koved are changing a lot of the security issues so we also looked at sinks and showers here are some of the pictures that we took that are accessible uh you can see a lower desk and then office area uh real proactive things like a wheelchair lift for the pool uh grab bars in the showers even had an eyewash that was a safety issue that was accessible you've got accessible drinking fountains and if you look at the sinks in the bathroom they're lowered mirrors so you can see them and also the pipes underneath are wrapped next we look at low cost barrier removal sometimes you may need to have a lower locker so that simply means assigning a lower locker and you may need a different
008kind of lock system on it a lot of things like the middle picture and the in the top were just issues of clutter you've got an accessible sync if you move the stuff out from underneath it um drinking fountains you can make that drinking fountain in the gymnasium area accessible just by adding a cup dispenser the greenhouse really an important part for all students to be involved in but it's got a lip in it all you've got to do is just simply place a small ramp over that lip um and in the bathroom you've got grab bars in there but if you'll notice uh the toilet paper dispenser is so close and tight to the grab bar that you could never use it couldn't slide your hand along it and then the other is a
009shop or again where things just need to be less cluttered so you can get around and move from point a to point b next um we really found that columbia crest had the most challenges probably for the older buildings but uh for instance there really no the the front entrance doors are really not very accessible or really not wide enough and are really very heavy and the gymnasium doors are not wide enough to get a wheelchair in i think the third picture over there is the admitted back of the administration building is that correct steve yes yeah that's yeah and we needed that we needed a wheelchair parking there because i'm assuming that lots of uh parents and people come there that uh might be from off-site go ahead yeah and uh i wanted to
010say that the report that you have in front of you uh is divided into sections the first section will give you an executive summary uh by by type of challenge whether it's a reach or protrusion or this kind of thing or ramping then there's a section in there that gives our thoughts on priorities and cost and a crosswalk of challenges by school and then the rest of the report you'll see a picture of each instance of best practice or a challenge area for each school so we wanted to say thank you to you especially to allow us to look at the wildcat trail for its accessibility uh we felt we thought this was a very high value project to the community and to students especially during the time of covet 19 where uh one of
011the few options to get together at a social distance would be outside uh you know it is a wetland and so currently there are there would be quite a few uh things that need to be done to make this trail accessible such as uh the pontoon bridges and and uh compacted uh uh walkways and so forth uh there's quite a science to making a trail accessible uh you need to keep the slope under a ratio of one to twenty uh going up or down the cross slope needs to be less than one out of forty eight uh and which means uh you need to look at hydrology and drainage very carefully uh the trail is typically made wider than you would normally make a trail you start out with a 48 inch trail bed that
012you would then mound up and and uh you would wind up with a 36 inch trail bed and of course you need to add signage and and accessible parking um one of the uh biggest complexities is uh two things to consider is the type of trail surface and the report has a long discussion of the various kinds of trail service options and uh and everything from using volunteers to contracting with professionals to to do the work we also wanted to say thank you for uh allowing us to take a look at the at the burwash gelstad farm this is quite a a jewel um good asset and uh we do think it can be ramped uh this would be probably a bit more expensive project than the trail uh we would start the ramp over
013here at the base of the stairs as you approach the building and it would come up um halfway and then turn and go behind the building and here's a picture of where the trail would where the ramp would come up behind the building to the platform on the far side of the building which would need to be expanded to a 60 by 60 platform one of the advantages of this is uh currently if there were a fire emergency in this building it would be very uh it would be kind of dicey to have all the kids come out of these stairways this would give you the added benefit of having a grade on grade egress from the middle of the building directly outside this property also has a large garden where kids put socially distance
014outside but it also needs a pathway for accessibility we also took a look at the asteroid take a look at the the bleacher situation currently as you see in the middle picture there we looked at the possibility of cutting cutting into the stairs but we're concerned about structural integrity and we looked also at the possibility of seeding down below the stadium and i felt that was somewhat isolating for people with disabilities uh what we came up with is the idea of and you'll see the picture on the right of building the uh the main platform out by 48 inches at one or two locations uh and the reason this will work is uh as you'll see in the middle picture you have accessible uh entrances from the street provided that you uh negotiate uh some
015parking there with the city uh and uh and then uh people in a wheelchair can come in and uh and be right with everyone else and be able to uh to see to see the game uh so that was our best guess there and we think that this could be done with regular construction techniques and and uh and volunteer or contractual labor uh although we saw a lot of uh very good accessible features inside the various school buildings the playgrounds were a little bit more of a challenge many playgrounds had curbs that were inaccessible they did have uh low to the ground um play features uh but getting to them was uh pretty much of an impossibility in almost all the playgrounds um there are two standards that uh that the ada refers to for
016playgrounds um [Music] one of the standards has to do with uh safety in case of a fall so of course you have material that that so that if a child falls they will not be injured but the other standard has to do with a material that you could actually move a wheelchair over if you were a parent or a child and you're a wheelchair user there's about a dozen different options for material and playgrounds and they all have their costs and their benefits some of them are you know everything from from pea gravel to wood chips to rubber matting um some of them are higher maintenance but but but more accessible some of them are it also depends on on how they're kept up but currently uh most almost all the playgrounds in the schools
017do not meet accessibility standards uh we're out also to look at a potential proposed admin site this is across from your current admin building and we felt that this building was what would be extremely difficult and extremely expensive to bring up to accessibility standards probably impossible to have an employee who is working on one level of the building be able to interact with and circulate with employees on another level of the building most of the doors were too narrow but even if all of the internal structure were gutted and rebuilt uh there's still the uh the grade change issue and i'll turn it back to uh steve um what we really want to talk to you about now is where we see the district going from here and what we tried to really find out
018was what kinds of resources are available if we'd been just a little earlier on this project we probably could have got quite a bit of money from the state uh they are offering ada funds and uh steve and i actually reviewed all the all the projects for the state and graded them and we could really help the district write a proposal and you know it obviously can't guarantee anything but most of the grants are around a hundred thousand dollars to do ada improvements and i think with the kinds of changes we're looking at we could get an awful lot done with that um we also could work with like on the trail with the community volunteers and we also want to help plan long-range capital improvements uh if that comes up we think the thing
019that really needs to be done now and this obviously is something that the board needs to decide upon is to complete that self-evaluation and look at policies and procedures and those are primarily human resources kinds of issues job descriptions newsletters the district puts out to make sure that there's equity in all of those and um uh so that would be our suggestion the next time when that could be done in the next anytime you would want but um we think that's really important i do in just in closing want to say that for a small district like yours to be as proactive and to at least get this transition plan done is much more proactive than i've seen many many other districts so congratulations on that so now i guess we're open for questions if
020you have any questions comments you know i think that was that was a pretty good presentation uh steve's that uh i mean i feel at times a good footing to uh to understand and see where we need to go and i think in 10 minutes you you just you nailed it well we practiced make a comment um i was i'm very grateful for um how you really looked at how our community could support this and really started off with some things that we could do right away and that uh even with the current financial situation or uh current state we're in i really am very very grateful that you brought those really common sense things forward thing that i hadn't thought about that we could start on right away and that was very very appreciated
021on my behalf and really you know whether you hire us to do the rest of self evaluation or not i'm not worried about that uh we will be glad to uh and i've talked to john and i've talked to kim knight and uh certainly be glad to uh get you connected with the state on those funds that are available i also think with volunteers the community has sweat equity and i think when you do that you take care of you take care of facilities better um when i work with large districts like tacoma or kent um you know we see a lot of vandalism in some of those areas and it really makes you feel bad when you they've done a lot of money to modify things and things have been vandalized so i think
022that you know uh tying the community in is is really crucial in something like this i was just going to say i would say for the student advisor there we did go through the high school and every one of the students that we met was helpful and polite and it was it was really a joy to meet a lot of the young folks there that's right we we met the uh the student body president and uh so was that yeah and helped us uh helped us look at some of the facilities he shook her hands back with me nice nice gentlemen thank you i'd like to thank both of you i am the superintendent creston barr and i have not met you yet but i definitely will be following up with kim is not here
023this evening and i know that she wanted to also say thank you very much and john fisher um just spoke highly of you so thank you for helping us think through i was really excited that you looked at the farm and our wildcat woods and especially our playgrounds and so we will be connecting with you and thank you so much for a wonderful presentation and all the information thank you thank you too that those you know those are the kinds of things that make eatonville unique i mean who has a nature trail like that that can really really be useful to students you know who has an old barn like that that while it needs some work i mean it i think we need to one of the things that as a college professor that
024i think we really need to do is put more effort into vocational education not everybody's going to be into videos and technology and so i think that the vocational ad is just as important if not more important than some of the other kinds of things we actually yeah let's let's put our heads together if you guys have some good ideas for that barn that maybe we can get a fantastic and we need money for what and just to kind of brainstorm on some of those ideas about that thank you thank you very much uh yeah thank you well i want to really really appreciate your your presentation and the way you put it together and um the amount of time and energy that you put into it and giving us like like uh rhonda had
025said practical things that we can do we can get started doing and i know i know that we would appreciate any ongoing help that we can get in for funds or for whatever it is just thank you so much nice we thought we i would uh it's possible the washington trail association uh or someone like that could help you with that uh with that trail because they do volunteer work uh throughout washington state on trails and are very interested in um in inclusion work very good okay all right thank you bye drive home yeah thank you gentlemen okay okay so we're on to financial report all right so you have me this evening kim knight is not here so i have a report kim's not on correct i want to make sure i told she
026is on vacation but she keeps jumping on so i wanted to make sure uh this is for september 24th let's go ahead and read it aloud the preliminary ending fund balance for currently is 4.3 million this will still fluctuate as carolyn processes the remaining invoices for the fiscal year krista hearsink is closing out all of the 1920 grants and finalizing all claims and i have to tell you they are working very hard we have a really good team but they have been working really hard to tie up a very strange 1920 school year we did receive notification from pierce county that the district will be receiving a flow-through allocation from their cares funding for pierce county the grant parameters are identical to that of our esser cares grant through ospi the district is currently working
027on a plan of expenditures in response to the remote hybrid learning necessitated by the covid pandemic krista has made an initial claim against our esse r grant and there will be a test on acronyms no there won't and we did make a small claim through fema which also flows through pierce county tech equipment necessary for both in-person and remote learning has been prioritized for the capital learning expenditures building administrators identified their teachers biggest need and frustration as failing equipment and for those of you that know our teachers they do so much with so little but we have we have equipment that is dying it is at the end of its age currently working on getting numbers swapping out our aging projection equipment with a tv document camera combination for every classroom and i know that
028he was in schools this week like all ed tech there is a significant lead time in procuring the cameras due to the pandemic so there is a backlog the district has committed to running our summer feeding program until the start it was a winter break but i believe just yesterday congress passed so that we can feed students all this year up until the fall of 2021 that is good news and we do want to thank congress for that this means they did get something done this week so that was good this means that we will continue to feed all children ages 1 through 18 and special education students up to the age of 21 free of charge we are currently working on the challenges presented by a possible transition but really we are not worried
029about the transition anymore because that has been extended through the school year in human resources kim's other hat the mouss were finalized i think that you did receive an email but both pse and eea for our remote and our hybrid learning uh we have filled two temporary it help desk positions thank you for accepting them we have fantastic sandy doyle and kathy bloom working really hard to providing additional both parent support and student support so they are available and they are working really hard they are under uh byron's um department as well additional special education para education positions are being added for hybrid learning to assist with maintaining social distancing and masking and kim did let me know today that we have gone through all of our call back for our para educators and now
030we are adding positions so that is great uh we have all of our people who who were able to and wanted to work i'm hired back so that's amazing all paras will be recalled to their full hour when we switch to hybrid in-person learning our bus drivers will be recalled to run all routes at that time since we are not having in-person instruction on wednesday our bus drivers will still be partially furloughed for that day only but all are eligible for the shared work program and pam and kim have worked um on getting that program up and going so the significant there is a better payout for our employees than regular unemployment and at the same time it is a federal program that does not hit the district's unemployment rate for future contributions all right
031and then i will just jump to um make sure that you look at our enrollment please know that things are shifting and changing when we have made the announcement that we are going to hybrid for elementary we have some students and families that are opting to our online programs so they may be increasing our mrpp is as large as it it has ever been in fact i don't see it on this list but i believe that we're like 63 students strong that's the largest we've ever had in mrpp and i we will be reporting out once the dust settles once we get into the hybrid learning okay that's it for me unless you have any questions hey thank you very good thank you kresten all right so we got that and that wrapped up okay
032we have no unfinished business tonight so we will move on to new business and we will uh begin with uh considering the approval of the junior wrestling program donation uh of 3352.69 cents yeah who's that from creston you know it says that there's not a name on here so i do not see a name it says that they did not want to be anonymous oh okay um but there's no name on here so uh i can find out for you i can have kim send you an email but i do know that our junior wrestler oh it is from junior restaurant oh okay yeah and thanks to the junior wrestling program for the donation of here we go to the wrestling team so those are our younger students donating to our they're they're um seeding
033their future wrestling careers some better maps when they get there yeah thinking very good okay so i would consider a motion to approve the donation from junior wrestling uh in the amount of 33 152.69 seconds all right we've been seconded um any further discretion okay uh all in favor please signify by saying aye hi hi all right please signify saying all right motion is approved thank you junior wrestlers that's outstanding uh so uh b we will consider the approval of revolution 719 which is uh my understanding just replacing last year's suspension of policy so that is correct okay so i would consider a motion to approve resolution 719. don't move [Applause] don't move move the second into any discussion on resolution 719 now we will uh consider approval of wasda policy changes um 3122 excuse
034and unexcused absences so jeff unless there's questions on any of those uh really those are language changes that was done um and they're really more semantics validation so if you wanted to bundle those all three together unless you had specific questions uh yeah so real quick creston uh on the the substitute employment one i was just i'm just not really sure what to think about uh substitutes being required to implement all uh health plans uh iaps and 504 plans when they're not even going to know those are in their classroom when they take the assignment over the phone at night you know how how are we going to support that language well that is a good question um you know some of that is by law so whether or not a student has a teacher
035that um does you know follows their iep that is the non-negotiable and the 504 and so um each of and especially in the age of kovid right now there has been we have made a commitment to through our cba for our teachers union to continue having substitutes because we know that that um that will be even more important as we kind of navigate through the the covet outbreak so we will be working through that really is under kim's jurisdiction um so if you would like um to table this one we could talk about it at the next board meeting if you feel more comfortable um i would want for kim to talk about you know how through employment um and and human resources we will be addressing that if that is the other way you
036could pass it and then we could go you know through the explanation if you wish whatever no i don't want to hold it up i mean i i kind of expected it to be most of it is is the law and we have to do regardless but um uh having a close personal relationship with a substitute teacher on occasion uh they they just they get dropped into some pretty untenable situations so absolutely so and as you know that language is very specific about the administrator being responsible for making sure that the substitute would know that right so okay well that satisfies me so uh anybody else have any other questions okay then uh so i would consider a motion then to approve the three wasa policy changes to policy three one two two five six
037one zero and six five one two second okay moved in second in any further discussion on these policy changes okay sing and hearing none uh all in favor please signify by saying aye hi all right totally signal the same name okay policy changes are passed so let's move on to d discussion regarding dei committee request take it rhonda and lisa all right i'm going to take the lead on this one and i will have my co-partner uh director litzenberger to uh kind of help me with some of that discussion that we had with our community uh last wednesday so the district uh consists of superintendent barr diane hurst her director litzenberger and myself had a privilege to meet with our community uh passionate community members of ethanville on that diversity equity and inclusion the discussion
038was uh very intense very um it was a really eye-opening and um really overwhelming passion uh statement from our community uh engaging in uh this conversation about diversity equity and inclusion a couple of things that they had what i really appreciated in that meeting is that they were well very well prepared they had uh created an agenda for us to kind of uh talk about and i'm not quite sure if debbie was able to provide that agenda to you jeff um paulette and matt but um sarah opened the the discussion about the role of uh diversity equity and inclusion in meeting those schools um she shared that some of uh the lack of um perhaps conversation dialogue on uh in talking about the diversity equity and inclusion in our district uh the lack of training
039perhaps those are the things that they're concerned and they wanted to bring that to our district um awareness of that that concerns the the biggest thing that two takeaways and i and for me my personal opinion and i'll give it to rhonda after this is uh they would like a statement of support uh from the district uh state uh the statement should say that the students uh that we let the students know that they will be supported and that eatonville is a safe place um another thing that they talked about is the belief statement that we have in the district the one that we have that one we created and how is that being actualized and how are we really modeling that and they would like also to have that front and center in in
040our uh website and any of our discussions and our practices um another thing that they talked about is a creating an advisory uh uh council group that would kind of help and i believe that that what they have used the word that they use is advice and um advice the district or advise the board on certain things about the curriculum about the professional development so on and so forth um surprising bar did uh say and i i from what i can remember is that and i have also reiterate that the importance of partnership instead of the word of advice that we work together um in collaborative space uh to to build that district um that diversity equity and inclusion into our district so i hope i covered some of it rhonda yes and i think
041uh one of the things i my takeaway was that this was a passionate group that wanted to make sure that all students felt welcomed and safe in our schools and i believe that this board also feels that way and um i know that the work that we've been doing pre-covered as a board really trying to receive some professional development and learning on our own as board of directors around diversity is really important and that we will um continue to do that work covet has stopped a lot of the things that we've been able to do we know that we are have been committed and um are hoping that as a board we can draw a consensus that we will continue this work and reach out to um professionals who have best practices with uh our
042education partners puget sound education puget sound esd that we will continue to do that work as a board um i know that right now it's hard with covid but i know that we can navigate those waters and i'm feel confident and i was very honored to be a part of the conversation and very honored to see that we have passion in our community and i think it really lends well the fact that we had an inclusion presentation around the ada today speaks to part of the community that needs to be represented as well so there are so many facets to this and i'm looking forward to reaching out to community members of all in all different aspects that can be a part of this group this advisory group and i think it will be really
043powerful opportunity for us to partner with our community members and voices and to just make eatonville a better place i also would like to add that as a reminder that this is a work it's a lot of work that needs to be done um and it's a commitment from both sides the district and the community it's not an overnight work there is going to be some uncomfortable conversations that we're going to have we need to be prepared for that and i think one thing that i did remind everyone is that a more space of feeling safe if we are being uncomfortable and vulnerable um and at the end of those conversations really is keep in mind it's it's about the students so outstanding thank you ladies um you know i absolutely support all of this
044i i love the idea of a community committee dealing with this um one concern i have i don't want to replay our our bond levy community committee mistake and at the end looking as to why the community didn't support it you know many people pointed out to me well your community committee had nothing but old rich retired white guys on it and that's the plan that was put forward so if we're going to have another community committee i want to make sure that we have a diverse community representation and it doesn't become you know like like a club like the bond committee kind of did so i'd like to speak to that and i think that's why it's very important that we reach out to puget sound dsd to have professional guide the community conversation
045around this and help us reach out in appropriate ways and really evaluate who we have sitting on that advisory panel to make sure that voices are heard uh from an outside perspective i think that's really important especially in a small community i think it's it would be very valuable and important work yeah i agree let's see we did let them know that preston knows a lot of people and that she can she can get us the right the right people to navigate us to this work would you would you like me to speak to that yes please all right well i also i want to reiterate the fact and i'm sure that we have many families um that are represented that are watching i hope um i just want to thank them so much for
046coming forward with a passion for children a passion for um um feeling heard a passion for making sure that all of our students are seen and respected acknowledged for who they were i have notes down here so i'm these were notes that i took um and that is seen through textbooks and websites we had teachers represented we had families and we didn't have students but i know that we will have students um represented looking at diversity in curriculum i think this uh earlier today we heard um access and opportunity um for making sure that we see all of our populations but most specifically you know we talked at that meeting about really looking at race and privilege and vulnerability and um speaking um both your truth and being accepting of others and and i have
047been involved in this work really for my entire life my prior work and i'm very excited and i know that um this is difficult work and it's it's it requires all of us to lean in and be where we are in our journey and to be accepting of others and to be curious and to be accepting and so through that um i met on monday um with uh felice i don't have her last name right i want to say it's peralta and brad brown from puget sound esd and we had a really long conversation and um they also were able to view both the notes from the meeting and brad actually transcribed so he watched it and then so we had common um information um and so felice really was excited about working in a
048small town and um making sure that um these were her these were her kind of next steps which she'd like to um think about is training when the central office do this all together around the building capacity for racial equity and that already exists and so that would be something internally that we would uh be doing but starting with the board with this group and the central office together and really starting the work with the board uh and to translate the desires and goals because that's what we were hearing we were hearing we want to see this we want to see that and like a statement a strong statement i heard that throughout the letters and that is created after there's common understanding there's common language there's common experiences that people go through together i
049guess you could put out a very strong statement right now but my curiosity might be will that be the statement and will that be the understanding as you go through the professional development for yourself as a board for the understanding i asked that question of them and they felt very strongly that doing the work first is the most important thing being the leaders of that work in the district together so that would be one of my first um you know recommendations and then shortly thereafter not not long but shortly thereafter and i don't have an exact time frame and i would want for you to talk with them about that but then thanking the community and recognizing the community is so important in the work and then starting that work with the community as well
050in addition to that i think i was pretty clear at the meeting that we had many staff members that came forward and creating safe places for them within their schools is something that we can do now i can do with the board's support moving forward and allowing the principles to start shepherding that work as well there was a request for pretty significant um professional development and that comes at a cost and it also comes as a at a work cost so my concern is having enough support around this work as well as the udl work as well as the teaching and learning and making sure that there is sufficient adequate and really um this is the right work to do and within a pandemic so my mind goes right to monday we open up in
051a hybrid with the elementary this is a really this is a a year unlike any other and so the amount of work that has to go in and i'll talk about that in my statements this this work is absolutely important and what i would ask of the board is to think about what that support might look like for both the teachers but also the community and for yourself to do it justice in a time of pandemic so right on well this is certainly even in a regular year this is the work of years to get this done i think that's important um one question i have in the immediate short term do we have a genuine lack of or problem with our diversity training i'm sure we're probably meeting all the state standards i would
052imagine what do you think about that you know that's an interesting um you know in terms of professional development i know that we have really committed um certificated staff as well as classified staff that really want to do this work is it happening really richly in pockets i can't i can't say that exactly i do understand that there are some book studies that have started and i know that the work is being done within classrooms around students but as a formal professional development option for cultural competency or diversity equity and inclusion i would say no we have not done that now we might do have done that in pockets i think certain buildings and building principles but as an overall arching district um under our whole child initiative as a separate being very explicit about
053that i would say no we have not done that and that really does need to happen okay follow up on that um well i live in a world of state requirements and standards i have to take required i mean required by law diversity workplace training every year do we have that requirement in school yes there are safe school yes there is training that is done in safe schools and that's an online program and then it's checked off that staff do that um but is it a robust conversation um i think that we i think that i think this is the work that i would i would hope that you would sponsor and i think that this is the work that absolutely needs to be done and i appreciate those that step forward and i appreciate
054they're putting their hands out all of those letters i appreciate each and every one i know i did not personally respond to them because they did come to the board and you know all of us so i do want to make that noted that we did receive them and read all of them and appreciate them so much and really look forward to embracing all of our students especially because that's really why we're here right we are here for the students of eatonville school district we're not necessarily here for the grownups although the grown-ups are you know shepherding the students and um but i would say i hope that your direction to me is around support of moving forward i also want to add that the the online safe schools um it's almost like just a
055a compliance or a check box right it is really truly a matter of really practicing that in in a real space and and i think that's where i i as a board member of eatonville school district would love to see creston lead that that work with with our staff um and provide them that the right training the good training to really embrace diversity equity and inclusion in our district right okay um one other thing i'd like to ask everybody for your opinions um lots of them have been demanding a strong statement of support immediately from the district i completely support everything that they're trying to do and want to do i'm happy to take on that work i'm not real happy about putting out a statement right away i just i feel like that would
056be almost disingenuous i feel like i'm jumping on the bandwagon that's going by right now i really would rather get this process up and going and work on a more meaningful long lasting you know statement from the district rather than something one or two of us just you know cobbled together to make them happy and stick it out there um but i'm just curious on anybody else's thoughts on that i think i agreed jeff i think that we would um it would be wrong it would be perhaps more harmful because it we don't know exactly you know we got to be able to support it fully and how to go forward for a long time and it's got to be a continual work but the statement itself has to has to say what it is
057you know and i don't know that to put out a statement right this moment would be the thing to do yeah so could i make a suggestion absolutely right now i i do want to clarify though i i cannot confirm that safe schools has diversity training that is required by all all teachers so i want to make sure that when i say that that i can stand behind that so i will be checking but i i i am questioning that so i do not want to go on record and say that it is and we should and i don't think back to lisa's comment i don't think it should be a check off no i do know this board and i know that you love children and that you want equity and diversity you do
058have equity in your values and you do have diversity in your values and those are stated so i do not think that it is a stretch that you want children to feel safe you want them to be heard you want them to be welcomed regardless of who they are and where they came from whether that's you know a variety of different things and i think that bringing in puget sound est to help you untangle your conversation may get you to a place where you would feel real confident but i think as a board my recommendation would be and you do not have to take this but my recommendation would be is to engage in the conversation at the first level with this group you will find them very very likable they do this group all
059over uh king county and pierce county and they are um they want us to be successful and they want you as a board to be able to stand by um your beliefs in children so i do not see those as opposing jeff i think that some of the language is uncomfortable at times and the wording is uncomfortable at times and i think that going through that we have tried this a couple different times the board has engaged in a couple different opportunities for professional development and not found the right people and i think that i would like to bring you these people and then if you choose not you know if it's not a good fit or you want to try something else i would recommend that jeff i wanted to to kind of share
060with you about the statement of support i agree with you and paulette it is a we have to have a thoughtful process in creating that statement of support and that's what rondae and i was we're explaining to them that we are a unified school board we she and i are not the only one that can make those decisions so we wanted to let them know to share their their passion about creating this statement of support support um immediately but in in my personal opinion i'm with you i support what you had said and paul that it is a thoughtful process we have to make sure that we are not in a rush just to meet the demands this is about our students and we need to make sure that we include all voices not just
061our voice we include everyone's voice so thank you i also share one thing i did actually have a side conversation before um you met lisa and rhonda i did have it with our student advisor or student um board of director members um and so um i just want to express and i won't speak on behalf of either one of them but they were very excited they were really really excited and i'm excited because you know it student voice is really really important and so yeah very much i think you will definitely find an eager group to have some really honest conversations and i'd like to add on to that that's one of the things that's really important to me that as a board we do have two student representatives that need to be part of
062that conversation and help with that work and so they're new to our board and we haven't had the opportunity to really do any of this work it has to be meaningful it has to be something that is going to be lasting and impactful so uh angelina so excited about you know having you and um kalina be a part of what we're just i think really important work we're going to be moving forward yes no slacking angelina yes i agree with everything everybody's saying i'm really looking forward to kind of uh going through some of this together as a board with the community and with our students and really making sure that we're able to do more than just say yes we support diversity equity inclusion because of course we do but really kind of learning
063how we can become better but do that uh all together as we all grow as a board so yes doing for the students so i think we're all on the same page here outstanding yeah yeah i mean this is something maybe even rather than just a statement you know weave this into a reworked belief statement because even that belief statement is you know i think we did that in your first year creston um yeah i think it was the first year and i think when matt came on we looked at it and you i yeah so it's time it's time it sounds like you're all ripe and so i'd really like to work with um a couple of you to look at some calendar dates and some professional development opportunities i think we could do
064it zoom um for the board and then maybe uh pencil in after we talked with puget sound esd how and um so the community um uh with the dei group and what that could look like and then and then really um internally what that could look like for the school district as well i'm excited thank you for doing that and and i do thank the members for bringing that forward yeah there's certainly room there for improvement and the more we get involved the better product we're going to get so okay any other discussion about that okay then let's move on to superintendent comments well i'm just gonna start off with saying with brene brown she always says she's not here to be right no she's not here to get it right she's no she's not
065here to be right she just wants to get it right get it right i think i'll get it right oh my goodness i blew that one you know i have to say this has been this has been uh quite a week um both from the state level and certainly the local level um so i'm just gonna um kind of talk through uh you know i had that really great meeting on monday around um diversity equity and inclusion work um especially around systemic racism so i'm looking forward to that definitely but all things covid and i just have to have to do a shout out you know i have to give john fisher kudos one thing that he absolutely has done for our district is i was in a well i was in a meeting this
066morning and there were districts that did not really have it down and had not ordered ppe so that's protective something equipment masks not the proper mask for teachers to be around students and so we have sufficient kn 95s which is the appropriate mass to have around students enough for almost all year i believe i know we have tens of thousands um and if you don't know what they are parents if they're watching they cut you'll kind of see when you show up at schools that when children are around we they they look like a duck um they're not very attractive and they're not colored they're just white they're just unattractive however they're very very appropriate for um safety um so we look forward to that and i want to tell john thank you because really
067it is igniting concerns throughout the state and we ordered early in this in the summer and so that was because john has been so involved with pierce county emergency management so i just have to thank him so much that is one thing that we don't have to work worry about john has been working really really closely with heidi mccoll michael mckelly as our nurse boy this is a night for me um and making sure that we have the answers and questions you have seen multiple pieces of communication coming out this week almost in waves both for parents today there were bus transportation for the ab for the elementary school and that communication has been led by allison shu principal of cc also as our communicator as well as lindsay and i want to thank them
068a shout out because we hope that we are communicating well and often but this is a time where parents really really want to know the specifics um also i want to do a shout out for our food terri high and our transportation clay jamerson they have been working and burning the candle on both ends to make sure that we are ready for next week um our maintenance and our custodial and our grounds people are just preparing preparing preparing as well as our amazing teaching staff they have started in a remote setting they have done amazing with kind of faulty at times equipment they are going above and beyond um and in you know really you know they really have embraced the google classroom and the ability to be able to be remote innovators and i'm
069just so proud of them we are such a small district and they are simply amazing i mean the the level of expertise that i hope that our families understand um you know we have always known that we have great teachers and now you know i know many of the parents are being able to see the teachers actually in action and that is simply fantastic so um i just want to give them a shout out and it's awkward you know it's it's a learning curve it's different it's certainly different than the spring the spring didn't feel as high stakes as this and i know that the teachers are above and beyond trying to make sure that each and every child gets what they need connectivity is a huge issue i have spoken with the fcc director
070i was on a podcast with four other women across the nation and we were talking about rural connectivity byron adams connected with dennis smalls today maybe it was yesterday i don't know um around uh rural connectivity i know rhonda and i have had conversations about rural connectivity and we are going to just keep pounding that because regardless if we come back in hybrid we know that this pandemic is at least going to be a year before there will be really widespread vaccines if and when they're ready for children i mean we're hoping and for adults and i don't want to speak about that because i know that people have opinions about that however we do have to plan for the long term and so connectivity will continue to be an issue i want to thank
071the parents and the um the grandparents and the guardians that are sitting with their children especially our elementary children um doing the work with them helping support and reaching out to the teachers unlike anything i've ever seen in my 36 years and so we are so blessed to have our wonderful parents um and our wonderful community we really really are blessed i listen to other superintendents in other areas and we just do not have those that communication that's going from from parents to teachers is it perfect absolutely not i have advocated for in-person education and instruction that that really really is the optimal and in a pandemic there are you know so many barriers to that we are embarking on monday with our ab schedule hybrid for elementary we have planned and planned and planned
072for every avenue with department of health with aligning with all of the requirements with appropriate l i requirements and department of health the cdc guidelines change a lot and so i guess i'm just uh relating to the fact that i want the board to understand that this is the most uncommon time for principles to get a school up and going in a in a manner such as this all of the people involved from every step from food service to our paraprofessionals to our custodial staff to our you know i.t people i mean every single person in the system is working harder and in ways that we have never had to do before and i want to thank the board for supporting us i want to thank you for your continued um focus on children and
073just know that we are so excited to open up our doors as well as you know it's a different feel we need to make sure that people are safe and that goes for children and staff and everyone connected to school so we are doing our very best and we want the families to know that whatever your decision was whether you're homeschooling all this year or you're on our online programs or you're in our in-person hybrid that we will do our best to serve your needs um and we're a small community i mean we are only two thousand there's not a lot of us there's two 000 children actually 18 58 this year and um but we're strong and we're committed and one thing that we can do is we can turn very quickly and do
074what's right for children so and then lastly i just wanted to thank both of the steves um for really highlighting um access and the attention to inclusion and thinking broadly and not not just so narrowly um i think there's some really great partnerships i was already thinking of some of the people that rhonda seems to know across the community that really really would you know we do have students in wheelchairs we do have students that have a variety of of needs and you know we want them to be outside and to access our playgrounds that's one thing that i think surprised me more than i thought and i had not thought that so i'm really really um grateful that john brought them in and i look forward to working with them more so with that
075unless you have any specific questions oh and the last your board of distinction was shipped off i did want to say thank you to debbie for typing all that up and making sure that we've got that done i don't know why those have to be so long but so i want to thank you guys did a lot of work last year i hope that you had an opportunity if you did not read it please go back and read it because it's quite stunning i had forgotten that we just went out for a levy last year and just passed it in february it seems like years ago so with that i'm done it's a good thing i couldn't put it down i do have a question i have a question is that transportation part of this
076hybrid we're transporting kids yes yes so the hybrid so what we'll start on monday is all of the bus routes have been rerouted and so we're running full buses okay so they're going to come in the morning and they will go as we add students so the a group will come half day on monday the b group will come half day on tuesday and then wednesday you know is the planning time and the individual students and then on thursday and friday of next week we'll start with the b group we started with the b group i know that some parents were wondering but when you look throughout the year the bees actually if we didn't do it that way would meet three days less we did have a teacher that figured that out i did
077not figure that out miss painter thank you you're way smarter than i am so um so that's how it will go so we will have half of the students elementary students on those buses any one day will there be deep uh cleaning schedule for the custodians for the classrooms every every day that they're in class and then what about the transportation bus is there going to be a deep cleaning as well and is that part of it yes and it will be aligned to the cdc guidelines as well as the department of health um we can go in depth if you'd like to with the next meeting no actually i mean it's fine i can invite clay and john to talk about that but absolutely that has been absolutely that is one of the reasons
078so that parents know that we did not go a b a b we decided to do both a a and then there's that wednesday to do extra extra cleaning okay and then bb so that was one of the ones it is a requirement for elementary school students to be cohorted and when we look at middle school high school i was on a phone call today with a department of health for pierce county i asked them if they were going to mandate that for secondary and they said they are not going to mandate it is recommended so that is one of the differences between elementary and secondary so all of the protocols for covid are very much aligned so if if you wanted to report out at the next board meeting with my covid team my
079group um that would be very appropriate we could do a short you know 10 minute this is how it's going because we'll be in it for one week right so it might be good for us to be able to report out to you what our findings are and i was on a meeting yesterday with a group of people including the governor's office and i told them i said you know we've put together all these guidelines if you want to come out and see it on monday we're going to actually institute it and i always think that's important when people are planning on paper for them to actually come out and see what it actually looks like boots on the ground so i have many many prayers i'm going to be asking for you to say
080prayers and we know that children will be transported safely and we know that once they're in the building that our teachers and our all of our staff they all say they're just so ready for them so ready and the last thing is ppe stands for personal protective equipment okay thank you i need my acronyms in front of me thank you okay um so angelina is there anything that uh you would like to share with us in board comments um not much just if you guys have any questions for me if you guys want a student view of how things are going then i guess i can answer any questions you guys have um that's why you're here just tell us everything we need to know about the student point of view okay well remote learning
081is actually going pretty okay i feel like it's a lot more structured this year than it was last year so like i applaud the teachers on that um obviously because they had more time to get everything together but they're doing a really good job of like implementing everything and making sure that we stay connected with them and then at least my teachers are at the high school and i feel like everyone else is on board the other students and kids that i've talked to um i have two little siblings that are going to the elementary school actually so they'll be starting monday in the a group so that's exciting um yeah my my family's pretty okay with it i guess their only main concern is that like once because they're in the a group right
082and then you have that little pause like what's gonna happen when they're doing remote learning and the teachers are busy with the b group kids like are they gonna be able to get extra help after school are they gonna be able to get help in school like is there a system for that um i don't know if you guys can answer that but that's really just what creston isn't that a big part of wednesday is yes available for communication right so angelina when they come on monday their teacher is going to review all of the you know the this is how we do things right this is how we do things this is you know how we go outside this is how we um but they're also going to go through all of that as
083well and really teachers have been super creative about what they are doing um and they will continue to have work in the google classroom so we have to keep that remote you know uh ability but um really it it really depends on the teacher right yeah okay that's good my parents will be happy to hear that but they'll know what they're doing yeah and you know what if they have specific questions they can always email their your uh sister both your sisters are they sisters okay sisters yes yeah so your sister's teachers um and ask those questions yeah other than that i'm just super jealous that the elementary school gets to go back that's all your day's coming angelina i'm hoping so hopefully yeah i'm sure it'll get here okay awesome thank you i know
084it's uh it's kind of hard even from the student perspective since you are stuck at home it's hard to get the pulse of things but thank you for that um and i will open up the board now anybody have anything they would care to say i want to first um angelina are you part of the asb have they invited you to be part of their leadership team and their meetings and that sort of thing because that should be happening if it's not or you're part of it no it no it has not i have not been a part of the asb or anything i didn't know i was supposed to be i've not been invited at all okay so um we need to reach out to mr sturdivant and make sure that that happens with
085the advisor because um that is was part of our new transition into the program is that our student reps are part of esp so um yes okay i will i'll email mr event tonight perfect thank you for really on that and if you touch bases with kalima as well you know make sure that you guys are communicating both part of that thank you very much got it thank you for sharing um a concern that i think a lot of parents are having so this is the benefit of having a student rep i also wanted to um thank our presenters who really showed us some of the important work that we need to do for accessibility and inclusion in our community because we know that our school is really the foundation of our community we're the
086biggest employer of the community and multi-generational here and well-supported schools are supported by this community so we want to make sure we have access uh physical access for everyone and i loved their really common sense solutions i'm just super happy that and excited to start tackling some of that work and thank you to john fisher for being an important part of that thank you to all of our teachers for the great work they're doing for the parents or really really really stepping up to the plate and doing hard things in regards to balancing work and child care and being you know your child's educator it's all hard work and i'm so grateful to families for hanging in there in these really unique times uh thank you princeton for all that you do we know that
087debbie may have typed up our um our application your board of distinction but we know that you did the hard work on it so thank you for the hours on top of everything else you have going on so grateful for that grateful for the community input i know that in the midst of everything that's going on we have some hearts that are really tender and passionate about many things uh diversity equity inclusion is one of them i was honored to be a part of that conversation i'm very grateful to the equestrian team families who have been reaching out to us and um sharing their passion and helping us learn more about things that are going on and i'm grateful that we've had the opportunity to hear from so many and we're as a board um
088jeff i've talked to uh director lucas and uh we're hoping to be able to convene a conversation a group of people to get together and have deeper conversations around that so um looking forward to that work that we will be doing in the future also and thank you for being a fabulous board who cares so much about kids because i know i can speak honestly when i say that this board really is not in about any agenda not any one agenda item we are all about kids 100 and community and i'm so honored to be a part of this work so thanks okay anybody else or anything well i just like to share something that um an experience i had recently i interviewed a young woman who has a kindergartener in the young school district
089and part of her of our conversation was well um if my child is not back in school i don't have anybody for her so i would have to bring her with me and um that's you know as an employer that's a question that i hadn't been approached with before and um i'm willing to give it a try i'm having a little push back from one of the cows in my office but um you know she brought the little girl with her to the interview and she was fine she's pretty self-sufficient actually and it might be interesting for us to have her there but um anyway it was just it just brought me a different light of from the difficulty that some parents are having this lady is out of a job and she can't she
090hasn't she can't afford daycare you know so it's a dilemma you know for some and and that's something that you know i my heart was out to them and i've talked to several you know and in my heart was ultimate but to have one walk into my office that applied for a job has really brought it home to me and i know how much this board cares about every every child and every student and every family and i um i can't say i agree with ronda 100 and i can't say um when i talk to other people about boards and i hear complaints when we go to conferences and stuff and i'm so proud to have a board like this that i that works so hard together and really does like each other it's really
091important it's important work we're doing and i feel so privileged to be a part of it so and thank you creston for all the hard work that you were leading and doing in all the meetings you sit through and and do i know it can be tiring and wearing on you and i know that um we just want you to know how much you're appreciating that's all i have okay all right anybody else okay well i think between the two of you you certainly touched on everything there was to speak about so i'm happy to leave it at that i thank you all and uh let's adjourn this meeting at 20 25. good dinner all right thanks everybody see ya thank you thanks guys bye-bye bye bye you