6.8.21 School Board Regular Business meeting

001okay we have everyone here um this regular business meeting of the edmond school district board of directors for june 8 2021 is called to order first we'll have our land acknowledgement dr balderas would you please administer the land acknowledgement yes thank you president kilgore we acknowledge the original inhabitants of this place the snohomish people and their successors to tulalip tribes who since time immemorial have taken care of hunted faced and gathered on these lands we respect their sovereignty their righteous self-determination and we honor their sacred spiritual connection with the land and water by acknowledging these homelands we commit to working with tribal nations to further the education aims they have identified in our classrooms and schools thank you next we have our flag salute i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of

002america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you next we have approval of the agenda would someone like to make a motion this is ann i moved to approve i second it it's been moved and seconded to approve the agenda for this evening are there any amendments yes so thank you president kilgore under a new business it's uh item six it's it's not a single read approved high school general chemistry and science materials it's actually a first read we apologize for the for the error that is a first read this evening not a not a single read so would someone like to amend tonight's agenda is that that's how we would do it this is ann i move that we amend the

003new business item number six to have it be a first read as opposed to a single read i second that it's nancy it's been moved and seconded to amend the agenda as discussed um is there any further discussion on the amendment hearing none i'll call for a vote on the amendment all those in favor of the amendment to change the single reading to a first reading for the chemistry curriculum please indicate by saying i i i any opposed say nay any abstentions the amendment passes we have now have an amended agenda uh is there any discussion hearing none i'll call for a vote to approve the agenda as amendment all those in favor of approving the agenda for tonight as amended please indicate by saying aye aye any opposed say nay any abstentions and the

004motion passes and the agenda is approved uh next we have approval of the school board minutes for may 18th our study session and may 25th our business meeting is uh do i hear a motion i move to approve the may 18th study session minutes and the may 25th business meeting minutes a second it's been moved and seconded to approve the minutes for may 18th and may 25th is there any discussion hearing none i'll call for a vote all those in favor of approving the minutes for may 18th and may 25th 2021 please indicate by saying i i any opposed say nay any abstentions the motion passes and the menace i apologize yeah i abstain as i was not present at the may 25th business meeting thank you and so that for the record okay so

005the motion passes and the minutes for may 18th and may 25th are approved and next we have our public comment section the public comment item on the agenda is an opportunity for citizens to address the school board items brought forward during this portion of the agenda will not be acted upon by the board at this time questions may also be referred to the superintendent or staff for examination and later response i believe that we the number of comments we have can be read in the time allotted so i'll go ahead and start us off with a few and then pass it on so our first uh our first comment comes from nicole harold and this is on uh inclusivity policy and support our students as they celebrate pride thank you for your clear and open

006support of pride month in the edmond school district as it says on the district website we encourage our schools staff families and students to show their pride and allyship throughout the year and recognize june as 2s lgbtqia plus pride month i am grateful that the district is engaging in this work and is quote is committed to supporting students and families as we navigate the persistent institutionalized norms that impact our 2s lgbtqia plus students families and staff and that's a quote from the webpage as we continue to grow in this work i encourage you to stand up for our students and families as they express and celebrate themselves this month and thank you again for your support as we celebrate with students and families and schools our next comment comes from brianna valencia and this is

007on pride support dear members of the school board dr balderas and dr vergara vergara thank you for your clear and open support of pride month in the edmond school district as it says on the website we encourage our school staff families and students to show their pride and allyship throughout the year and recognize june as 2s lgbtqia plus pride month i am grateful that the district is engaging in this work and is quote committed to supporting students and families as we navigate the persistent institutionalized norms that impact our 2s lgbtqia plus students families and staff and this is also from the website as we continue to grow in this work i hope that you will stand up for our students and families as they express and celebrate themselves this month our next comment comes from

008bridgette halfaker health acre half acre i apologize if i've mangled that um who also expresses support um i am going to go ahead this is exactly the same comment as the previous two so i'm going to go ahead and mark that for the record the next comment comes from maria scott and this is also on pride week members of the school board i got an email from a coworker today informing me of the pushback the district is receiving from supporting pride week i am hurt that this community that was so supportive of blm is pushing back against our lgbtq plus youth and normalizing these conversations as an educator i recognize that many of our students come from very different religious backgrounds i recognize that some people believe a person chooses their sexual orientation but science

009tells us that our lgbtq plus community members didn't choose their orientation it's just how they are just like we as a district have been working to educate ourselves and our community about blm we are now in the position of educating ourselves and our community about lgbtq plus by doing this work we are celebrating our diversity and hopefully making the world a slightly safer place for our lgbtq plus youth thank you for your clear and open support of pride month in the edmond school district as it says on the district website we encourage our schools staff families and students to show their pride and allyship throughout the year and recognize june as 2s lgbtqia plus pride month i am grateful that the district is engaging in this work and they once again go on to quote

010the website as we continue to grow in this work i encourage you to stand up for our students and families as they express and celebrate themselves in this month and thank you again for your support as we celebrate with students and families in schools uh this where am i six this comes from kevin sang who writes on the topic of remote versus live meetings since the beginning of the pandemic zoom has become the face of online work in school meetings for the past 15 months now that the vaccines have been rolling out and distributed the pandemic i'm i'm actually quite sad about how it appears that 90 to 95 percent of the district will be doing away with zoom next year and beyond or essentially gone i think it should be retained at some capacity

011as it can reduce the transportation and location burden with zoom no need to drive 6 miles or 15 minutes to edmonds e-learning academy for live one-on-one help for five minutes with a sequence and ser sequences and series or matrix problem just make an appointment and hop on zoom and done too sick to go to school or otherwise absent and unable to attend just join class virtually on vacation stay in touch like joining class virtually i heard of students joining class from the bahamas and egypt even when having the assignments available online i think having the live instruction time is absolutely essential or even necessary for all the point is i hope the district i.t department could find some way to preserve live virtual meetings options to some capacity uh the next comment comes from julie

012hill on lgbtq um thank you for your support of pride month and lgbtq rights exclamation point and i'll read one more the next comment comes from annika holder support for pride month dear edmond school district board members i am reaching out as a community member wife of a teacher in the district and member of the 2s lgbtqia plus community i appreciate you using your space and platform to support and teach about pride month this student thank you for your support however i was appalled to see how many hateful comments were left on this content on your social media platforms yet just yesterday the comments were left up for quite some time and the only initial responses they received were from other community members taking a stand in fact it took community members directly calling for

013you to remove them for any action to be taken when you create these spaces it is also your job to ensure they are safe for everyone especially those you create for it however because of these hateful comments this space has been removed we now have no space to express our joy i'm frustrated and angry that the district has not taken a stronger stance against hate speech instead letting community members do it for you the lack of action speaks volumes i'm incredibly grateful to the students teachers and staff who created the wonderful pride content you have shared on your page please take a stronger stance to protect them and others in your spaces both online and in person without your support this work is falling on our teachers parents and community members who do not hold

014the same position or privilege thank you and would someone like to take the next comments uh i'll go ahead and read them thank you janet bowers um on policy 4218 says on august 25th 2020 located on page i submitted a public comment addressing some of the challenges in utilizing a language line as the primary means of communication when an interpreter is required at individualized education program or iep or evaluation meetings having worked in a few schools and districts in california prior to moving to washington i was able to experience the common practice of having the same liaison or interpreter to utilize at iep or evaluation meetings when my families did not speak english when i started working for seattle public schools in 2013 their system at the time allowed families and special educators the opportunity

015to work with the same liaison or interpreter who would also be present for iep and evaluation meetings when i started working for edmond school district in i was surprised to find out that we utilized a language line for family communication but i was very disappointed to find out that we were discouraged from requesting the same interpreter for iep and evaluation meetings while policy which is family language access plan appears to be heading in the right direction there is still room for improvement as we continue to discuss matters of equity equality inclusivity and family slash community engagement please consider looking at policy that will improve our communication efforts specifically for our families who have children with special needs requiring interpretation services such actions would also benefit our special educators and having a more authentic means for

016family engagement it makes a difference brynn ward leaves the next comment and it's on topic of age inappropriate curriculum good evening school board and fellow parents i admit that this is the first school board meeting i have attended since our children joined the district in 2013. when we chose our home we specifically sought out the edmonds area for its school district it was well respected and received great reviews from friends i assumed and believed until recently that the edmond school board superintendent and teachers had the best interest of our children in mind and did not feel as though attending meetings was necessary recent actions by the district and board have led me to believe otherwise last week i hit my limit with the read-aloud of call me max the reading of this book and the

017agenda to spread transgenderism within the school district is unacceptable to her young elementary kids should not have should not have to even contemplate gender roles sexual identification and sexual orientation the subject is complicated and not understood by even the most educated mental health professionals while we can teach kids to be kind and accept one another and be kind it is not necessary for them to get a lesson on transgenderism in elementary school as a parent this is a conversation i get to wade through with my child if it ever arises the school does not have the right to tell me how to parent and how to approach the subject there should be a distinct separation between the values of parent teachers their own children and what they learn at school schools are meant to educate

018academically parents exist to guide their children through life it is not necessary nor age appropriate for elementary children to understand the ins and outs of sexual orientation and identification whatever happened to kids being kids while i know there are legitimate cases it seems as though it is becoming a popular trend that is driving tweens and teens to change their gender identity without having any prior propensity or gender confusion in addition teens are not entirely brain developed and cannot fully conceptualize their decisions there are many cases cited where teens made a decision that was propelled by schools and social media only to regret their decision in adulthood and that's the end of the comments thank you next we have our consent agenda do i hear a motion remove to approve this is karen a second thank

019you it's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda for tonight is there any discussion i just wanted to make one comment on the personnel actions um i noticed under the retirement a number of people who i've had the honor and pleasure of working with over many years who've done wonderful service to the district and i just without naming names wanted to wish them all a wonderful retirement and thank them for their service to the district are there any other comments okay and i will call for a vote all those in favor of approving the consent agenda please indicate by saying aye any opposed say nay any abstentions emotion passes and the consent agenda is approved next we have our celebration and it's a very special one take it away so thank you board

020of directors and student advisors and tonight's uh like to really congratulate our student advisors for all their commitment to our district to our board our community and want to call out bandia kai ritika isabel and zarelia for on the call for all the work that you've done to help support and provide feedback that's so valuable from the end user as i call it you the students that's why we're here why we're here is because of you and to be able to hear from you in terms of how decisions and dialogues that we have really impact you as students and uh it's been incredibly invaluable and i would like the board to really weigh in as well just and i do have tokens appreciation they're in my desk so i will be meeting with you at

021your school sites and providing that when when opportunities but really just want to thank you for your commitment to our district and wish you the very best and um for the summer so and glad to have you here so turn it over to president kilgore and the rest of our our board of directors well i will go ahead and speak first um i just can't thank you enough for how much you how much insight you gave to us this year how much how much you showed up how much you uh were able to help us navigate this incredibly difficult year and to lend the student voice which is so important when we're making decisions and i wish you all just the very best in your future endeavors as leaders and and wonder kids going forward

022oh second debra's comments said your guy's been great um so it's such a difficult year and really unfortunate for you people that um you had to intend attend an entire year of school board meetings on zoom because it's certainly not the most ideal way to do a meeting but the fact that you guys have been so willing to speak up and and give us your comments and opinions on things i'm totally amazed in this zoom culture that that you've been able to do that so well and i just appreciate everything you guys have done so thank you so much for being board reps i'll give that a third you guys have been fabulous all five of you have been at every meeting you've you've participated you've made great insightful comments you've given us your perspective

023during a really difficult year that's so um unusual and hope we never have one like this again and let me just say if you ever any of you need a letter of recommendation for anything i am more than happy to write you one i write really nice letters and i would write you guys great letters i wish you the very best in your future you're obviously leaders and you're going to make a huge difference in making this world a better place mrs ann just wanted to again say thank you i i sure hope that whatever the future holds for you wherever you're going whatever you're going to be doing that you will consider maintaining involvement in um in civic endeavors you know whether it's on a city council or a library board or a parks

024board or or whatever because uh we need people who are interested in the community and are willing to put themselves forward and um and you all have had really great comments you've you've backed it up uh your perspectives uh and it's been a pleasure working with you and i just i i hope this was a good experience for you and something that will motivate you in the future to continue to be out there let your voice be heard and join in the community in whatever way in the future uh you find to give back and and we certainly thank you for giving back to us um in the edmond school district you know all of i'm echoing all of everything that my esteemed colleagues have said and i really want to express my gratitude that

025you have shown us those things in in your comments what's working and also speaking truth on when things are not working so it's very powerful for you to continue and i encourage you to continue to speak your truth and and i'm just so thrilled and i'm actually very sorry that we're coming to an end because i always look forward to engaging with you on zoom also so um please continue to come to our meetings if you wish and thank you so much president i wonder if the students would like to make any comments as well you are invited to do so uh i just want to say this has been a wonderful experience for me this is the first year i've been on this board and i've definitely learned a lot about how to be

026honest when uh in high pressure situations when answering questions that really do matter for the students so i've had a great time and i really appreciate all of your comments and letting me be a part of this team so thank you um yeah i agree with what kai said thank you so much for having us and on this team and really listening to what we have to say like it feels so good to know that i mean our board members are really listening to our students so thank you and i really hope i can be a part of this group next year again thank you yeah just to add on to that as well um it's been an interesting year with all the different ups and downs of and all the different changes in the

027district um but thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to be a part of the board and give our insight it's really been an amazing experience yeah to echo my fellow student advisors it's been a weird year of extremely whack year to be able to do all this over zoom and just everything that you guys have done to adapt and i know that for the board as well that it has been a crazy year to try to navigate and to have so much on your folders but um i just appreciate the candor the honesty the conversations and just like allowing us to have that voice at the table because i think one of the most empowering things that a school board that is designed to be helping the students can do is really

028bring those students in and and truly listen to them and and give them a voice at the table that they know will actually make an impact going forward and i definitely saw that this year throughout the time that we had to work together and i'm looking forward to what comes next because i have one more year fortunately with the district and um just looking forward to seeing what what else comes out of this and i'll certainly be following um everything that's going on so thank you guys for everything um and yeah i agree with my fellow advisors i thought it was fascinating and really interesting to see like the behind the scenes and like really gears that shift our district i really learned a lot including leadership skills and presentation wise and yeah thank you

029so much for letting us have this opportunity to speak thank you students and i'm i agree i didn't think of it but i am also available for um letters of reference along with probably any of our our good communicators on the board okay thank you this is the student presentation and we're going to have a presentation on chess 16th lake community garden by principal silver and student jackson and nico so i'm gonna if i could if i can introduce principal silver and he can uh lead this presentation so thank you for being here present sean thank you dr balderas and thank you for having us my name is shahan silver and i am the principal of chase lake community school and i'd like to introduce two upstanding students who are leaders and stewards of our

030garden max eldridge who is in the sixth grade and nicholas nico aguilar who's in the fifth grade max and nico please turn on your cameras and remember to unmute when it's your turn to speak max you are first up six years ago beth black a retired third grade teacher who was beloved by so many at chase lake wrote grants to fund art to fund our garden after the garden was funded she organized work parties for families and our community met partners to build our garden into what you see today for many years her work supported our garden by making it an outdoor classroom with a goal of giving access to clean nutrient dense and healthy produce across our entire community each grade takes care of a certain section or raised bed in the in the

031garden they are responsible for planting watering weeding and harvesting when all the planting is done the flowers have bloomed and the vegetables are ripe we work to distribute all of our all of the produce among our community this is an area where we see the most potential we hope to grow our capacity to bring fresh delicious culturally responsive and produce to our students and families in addition we hope to sustain beth black's vision for decades to come thank you so much max nico you're now up over the years we have established and sustained strong community partnerships in support of our garden we have worked with the snohomish county master gardeners edmonds floridan garden club edmonds lutheran church farmer frog and the snohomish county league of women voters you may also have heard that our garden

032was featured site on edmonds in bloom tour guests were treated to live jelly music and garden fresh appetizers all of these community players help us build maintain and eventually expand our garden looking forward we really hope to strengthen our community partnerships and continue to be an inclusive resource for all if you're ever in the area please don't hesitate to stop by the garden and harvest something nutritious delicious and grown with love we would now like to share the video so you can see er so you can see our garden and hear from some of the students who will take care of it we get the radio up that we could just a moment thank you sir excellent presentation thank you students i'm anxious to go visit the garden what what section what vegetables do you

033um grow does your grade grow this year um i we grow kale beets and i think some green onions i know there's some lettuce in there too so are you both in the same grade no no what great what uh section of the garden does your grade have this year um i have we did the tomatoes my my grade i think we did the candles and we did a little work a lot of reading though a lot a lot of reading i know about that did the master gardeners give tutorials or were they just just more like consulting um you mentioned that that in in some of the the work with them did they um give any input that was helpful to you um they're pretty much advisors they just told us they told us

034what to do and how to do it okay here we go here's the video [Music] three hi i'm miss khalil i'm the fifth grade teacher here at chase lake and i'm in charge of our wonderful community garden the goal for our garden is really to teach our students about resiliency and ways that they can grow their own food and not only grow their own food but bringing it back to their communities last summer we had a great opportunity in being able to share all of our amazing produce with families that were picking up meals and we hope to continue that as we continue moving forward with our garden expanding it and making sure that we're offering foods that are culturally relevant to the families that we serve what do you like about the garden kate

035um i like that the garden has been here for a while so it's like you can plant something a while ago and then now it's grown like all the way nearly and so it has sentimental value excellent thank you so much if you came back in 10 to 20 years what do you hope will change about the garden um i wouldn't want much to change but maybe to grow more fruits because now there's a lot of vegetables why do you think this garden is special to the chase like community um i think it's special because it's something to do other than just learning all day and it's something that we get to do ourselves rather than having a teacher do it we get to do something awful three hi can you tell us your name

036my name is carly hi carla and can you tell us a little bit about what you planted this year in the garden well today what i planted today is um i planted um some seeds in our in our garden over there next next to our class excellent and what is something that you really love or like about the garden here well what i like about the garden here is that is that when i see the plants and naturally grow um the days where i come here with my family i really i would really like to pick up some plants your name hi my name is rocky hi rocky uh can you tell us a little bit why you like the garden i like the garden because we can come up here and it's nice and

037we grew it and no one else knows what farmer do it you know tastes like grew it excellent thank you and if you came back to this garden in 10 or 20 years what do you hope is different or better um i wish the plants were a little taller so we can see them what they would look like when they're fully grown and last question why do you think this garden is special to chase lake and our community because um it's quiet and if we want to come out here for extra recess and not have it so loud we can come out here and work on the garden and for the community we can harvest it and enjoy the food what is your name my name is mia hi mia can you tell us a

038little bit about what you planted and how you planted it in the garden we planted seeds we still don't know what they're gonna be but my teacher said they could be flowers they could also be like like vegetables and we planted them by making like we first needed clay and then like some soil and then we like like made it flat like into a pancake and then we put seeds on top that we don't know what they're gonna be and then my teacher said roll into a ball and then we rolled into a ball and then we went outside and then my teacher said roll it into a ball one more time and then she said at the count of three we're gonna throw it on the ground and we throw it at the ground

039and then like then she says like spread it all around yeah are any of your favorite vegetables or fruits here in this garden i like the strawberry and the corn excellent can you tell us your name my name is max eldridge i'm at chase lake elementary school 6th grade my school is class awesome and what does the garden mean to you max um what the garden means to me uh since my grandma has a garden at home uh i used to always just play in there and help her there so it's kind of like bringing a little piece of my childhood to school that's awesome thank you so much what do you hope happens to this garden in 10 or 20 years um i hope it sort of carries on a legacy and it's still

040here in 10 20 years we could use this produce and give it to the cafeteria instead of buying from farmers markets which is still good but we have another alternative which is the garden oh that sounds like such a great idea and why do you think that this garden is so special to the chase lake community and what makes it special to you um like i said it makes it what makes it special to me is the fact that i can bring like this is basically a little part of my childhood and it what's special to the chase like community is well it it just it's like an experience it's like you can you can use it as like a science experiment you can use it for learning you can use it for so many

041different things than just food and this can provide other families with you know food with tomatoes romaine beets kale anything that we put in here hi what is your name my name is lydia awesome lydia and can you tell us a little bit about why this garden is special to you it's special because it's a way that i can like interact with other students and a way that i can do something special for the school excellent thank you and if you came back to this garden in 10 or 20 years what do you hope to see i hope to see that it's bigger and healthier excellent and what do you think makes this garden special to chase lake and our community because it's a way that we can help the neighborhood by like donating food

042and because not a lot of schools get to have a garden sergio what do you like about the garden uh it's not just for some people it's for everybody excellent what are you excited to eat out of the garden later this year um sugar snap peas replanted because i've never tasted it hi can you tell me your name uh my name is nico awesome nico and can you tell me a little bit about why you like this garden um well i just like to work outside in the garden excellent if you came back to this garden in 10 or 20 years what do you hope for it um maybe you'll get more planter boxes so it can be bigger excellent and why do you think this garden is special to chase lake in our community

043um so people can get outside and just look at it and see what we've grown hi man what did you plant in the garden this year sugar snap peas are you excited to eat them yes can you tell me why because they grew out of the plants and how to do it excellent thank you hey what is your name my name is owen guzman awesome and what does the chase like garden mean to you uh it means to me that you can go outside and i really like to garden because i garden with my mom and i think it's a great way to like go outside and escape the classroom excellent and in 10 or 20 years if you came back to this garden what do you hope to find i think it'd be really

044cool to like see a lot more of these planter boxes and just to see a lot of growth in the garden to see like what new things are being planted excellent and why do you think this garden is so special to the chase lake community why is it special because like it brings people together because like i personally really like to garden and when i go out to garden with my class i find other people that like to park and it's really cool to like make connections bravo that was wonderful now we can continue with our questions i know we have many i have a question so a couple of you talked in the video and talked about how this brought your childhood and things you've done at home to school i'm wondering if you

045or other kids that you know started doing gardening at home as a result of what you were learning here at school in terms of creating a garden yeah um my mom and me have started a garden out in the backyard and got some planter beds and what have you what have you been planting in it um some lettuce rhubarb um blueberries all sort of stuff sounds great thank you do you guys know other kids who've done that as well um i usually whenever i go to my grandma's house i just help her with just around the house in general but mostly in the garden usually rototilling um or putting fertilizer in there or maybe even picking berries we usually pick raspberries potatoes they're not berries but yeah um a lot of blackberries too we use

046we whenever we get marionberries we usually make marionberry pie it's one of the best pies i've ever had that sounds great thank you i would love to have you come to my house and do a garden for me i have reasonable rates i have a question about it you're definitely going to be a success i have a question about harvesting and distribution does everybody get a chance to try something from the garden how much how much do you distribute every year since uh the boys have an unmuted i'll just say that um you know during the the lunch distribution uh this year at school when we had the the the drive-in lunches um we were able to pass our produce and um you know our garden doesn't have a fence around it so it's open

047to our community so if our neighbors want to come in and get some herbs or pull some vegetables we really welcome that off school hours of course and [Music] we historically in the past too we've harvested for uh to make a soup in the fall for our back-to-school night well you know i love the name of the school and i do live just up from chase lake and uh and the school so i'm going to be coming down to check out your i just want to add um i had the pleasure and honor of working with beth black over the years that she was she had worked in the district office as a tosa for a while as well as um when she during all of her teaching time and i think this is an

048amazing memorial to her a wonderful legacy thank you for sharing that nancy um this garden wouldn't have existed without beth black and we planned to dedicate it to her i think it's wonderful i didn't know she had helped make the garden but it doesn't surprise me at all it totally is her and um i miss her like everybody else well thank you so much for sharing your garden with us and and all your hard work and um i am sure the next time i'm over at chase lake i'm gonna take a look at your garden thank you so much thank you thank you nico and max you did outstanding you really did thank you and nancy's hiring all right um next we have our reports um first is our re-entry update dr balderas so thank

049you president kilgore get that up here again as we round up the remainder of the school year which i you know we have graduations next week and we have uh roughly 10 11 days left of school here uh we're we're running landing down on our re-entry update for this year but we'll continue to do so we do have a board meeting in july provide an update for the board regarding where we're at status up for the fall and also give you an update on summer school as well next slide please and we're in stage four and we'll complete this current school year in stage four next slide please so here's our intent uh forum final results i'm not going to read them to the board but they're right there in front of you so roughly

050um again the most important piece well they're all important but to prepare this gives us a good idea of what's needed to be to plan for as we continue our negotiations regarding working conditions with our associations but we do have a good chunk of kids wanting to come back in person and a reminder that we will be in person uh five days a week uh in our brick and mortar schools on our campuses as well as we will provide a an online remote option for those students that wish to have that option an opportunity next year so excited to have almost 91 percent of our kids wanting to come back to our brick and mortar and guidance continues to change from the department of health and we'll continue and we'll work with the information we

051have at that time when we do open up in september so next slide please turn over to uh greg schwab who's been working diligently with staff regarding graduation ceremonies and i know that this is a shift and again we're excited because this happens next week and hope to see a lot of your board a lot of the board directors at these graduations and just look forward to seeing the kids crossing the finish line that's one of the best parts of the job so yeah this this is very exciting that we get to plan for this and so again i just wanted to update you all that we're in the final planning stages we've probably uh redrawn our graduation plans about 15 times um but we're we think we're closing in we know that the expansion

052to 50 seating capacity means that we will now be able to make sure that each graduate gets four tickets for the family members to attend in person uh we we will have family members who attend ceremonies we will need to assign them seating uh and and we will be required to wear face masks during the ceremony and we may need to complete an attestation prior to the ceremony for all of our spectators we're checking on that um to see if that's in fact what we do have to do um there may be some we may have a way to do it a little bit differently that won't require an attestation but we are planning right now to do that we also know that we will be able to have our abandoned choir perform live at

053our ceremonies we were initially thinking that we wouldn't be able to do that and so now we know that that will be able to happen and finally all of our ceremonies will be live streamed we're continuing to plan to do live streaming for those families that are not able to attend even with the expansion to four tickets for students so uh again we're very excited the graduation ceremonies begin next thursday night with scriber lake high school and everything will happen at the stadium outdoors uh i've checked the weather dr cadems and it looks like we're going to be and we're going to have decent weather next week so my uh my plugs to the weather man have paid off so i'm hopeful that that'll that'll the weather forecast will hold but um again just excited

054to be able to do this for our students because again this is uh it's been a long year and it'll be so great to be able to send our seniors out on a positive note so that's all i have for uh graduation updates next slide please all right i'll go through this pretty quickly some of it is similar to our last board meeting so uh we do have some department of health updates again to dr balderas's point we will be open um for in-person learning five days a week next year face coverings for all students staff and visitors will be required uh social distancing of course is still required with recommendations of three feet um to the greatest extent possible six feet elsewhere and so it's really um there's been some parameters put around that

055that i think the department of health is looking at is it's really critical that we're able to get our kids anyone who wants to be in person is able to be in person um a piece that's been added today we found out from the department of health that governor ensley has a press conference scheduled for tomorrow i don't know the time it hadn't been posted yet but there could be a potential update that affects um graduation ceremonies so once we that comes out tomorrow or graduation ceremonies or perhaps many other things so once that comes out tomorrow we'll get that information out to our community and then lastly from the department of health a possible pfizer vaccine approval for six to eleven-year-olds by july which is very exciting and our next slide the snohomish county

056picture we've kept a close eye on this for for many many months now so some good news uh continued good news we are continuing with a downward coven 19 positive trend um 103 cases per hundred thousand is the average over the past 14 days uh six percent positive test rate um for all the tests that are that people are taking only six percent are coming back positive i believe two weeks ago it was uh seven percent so that's a great trajectory as well 328 positive cases in the past week that also is down in the district we have at all of our school sites and all of our buildings we have the curative tests which i've talked about a few times and we're doing 7 to 12 of those curative tests a day so it's

057really been fantastic because anybody who has any kind of symptoms and you know that list of coveted symptoms um you know is wide and varied so it's been a really nice thing for people to be able to take that test and get results within 24 hours and rule out that it's coveted the positive test rate of all of those tests that we're doing is less than one percent our school trends statewide for us in snow state wide and snow bridge county of course are down um across the past two weeks our our edmond school district trends are also significantly down we have far less cases in our schools the exception is seniors and across the state and also in snohomish county they're seeing increase in seniors specifically as a class in positive rates and it's

058probably because of end of year events one piece that is important to remember is quarantines directed by um doh and snohomish health district will still apply to end of year events so if you are quarantined because you've had a close contact you won't be able to attend any end of your district events um it's been 504 days since the first confirmed case um and one in 20 residents in ames county have have been in a reported case of covert 19. and our next slide well if you look very closely here you're going to see someone who is on our screen tonight that made an appearance saturday at our vaccination clinic thank you dr catoms for being there and helping tirelessly and thank you to all of our volunteers who helped on saturday on june 5th

059at meadow del high school we had a vaccination clinic that went from nine to about four o'clock there's a partnership with salem visiting nurses in doh 669 community members were vaccinated which is incredible and it was pouring down rain and we had volunteers that stayed and helped and got all those people through the vaccination lines it was mostly younger people and we may have our next on-site clinic we have a tentative plan for august and that is really contingent upon the pfizer vaccine being approved for 6 to 11 year olds if that happens we will try to host again a mass vaccination clinic um sometime in august we're already working on the tentative plans and um so if that gets approved we'll move towards that to give our community and um an opportunity really closely

060to go get those vaccines so a huge thank you to our volunteers and they are listed there and there's some of the pictures of people came out and gave up their saturday to um to help us get through this pandemic and get people vaccinated so thank you and thank you dr kingdoms and next slide rob summer learning good evening everyone rob von gardner executive director of student learning we for our summer learning update are providing an enrollment update we thought this was important information to share with our directors as well as our community as you can see the numbers are looking really good we of course are not able to hit our full targets we know that there's certainly more students that would benefit from some of our programming but as you can understand finding

061staff to teach in those classrooms uh is is challenging um but we continue to recruit and uh we're actually very pleased that um as of this time we have about 800 students in our k program and as you can see so far 720 students enrolled in our high school program those numbers for high school will continue to grow we are working closely with counselors and other vehicles of communication to get more students to access uh the credit recovery opportunities available this summer so we anticipate those numbers changing one a couple places that i did want to direct your attention are programs that we haven't spoken in great detail about at these updates and the first of those is the third bullet under k-8 and it's actually not a k-8 program it's an early learning program

062which is our ecap which is our early childhood program here in the district and we're fortunate that we were able to receive additional funding through our county partners and are having a summer program for 40 of our students uh in that and it's really targeted at our students that will be entering kindergarten this year so it's really exciting uh that will be held at lindale elementary and the outreach with those families is well underway we also have a multilingual summer program as well and this is an exciting opportunity where we are putting together programming at all of our sites that will specifically target those developing multilinguals that are in our system and those students that are often newest uh in their road to acquired english and this will be a great sheltered experience where they'll

063get lots of opportunities to practice language and we wanted to also include just a brief update that our special education esy is extended school year programming and this is just additional support that we can provide for students receiving special education services through the summer that will mitigate any learning loss and also support them in preparation for the upcoming school year so so very exciting about that and in our next update uh we'll continue to report on those numbers and and let you know how things progress um next steps ahead for us are finalizing our hiring putting together our staffing plans for each of our sites and we'll also be putting together curriculum and then of course a training opportunity many training opportunities actually for our staff that will be doing that work this summer so

064really exciting and uh just hats off to all of the staff across the district that have really been doing a ton of outreach with students and their families um definitely teachers course office staff and our building administrators as well as the administrative team we put together for summer school so lots of hands involved in getting this project underway hey rob real quick since we're hopefully fully opening next fall are we going to be able to bring back any of our jump start programs this year the plan right now is that we will do in-person jump start programming so um you know uh we last year there was so much going on in august that we really were unable to um pull off a remote uh k jumpstart and it's probably one of the regrets we

065have about things that we should have done but we're definitely having plans to do an in-person jump start program this year and the sort of addition to that will be that if we not if when we have a k-6 online program we'll also have a jump start program for them which that one of course will be remote so those are things we can look forward to reporting in on in more detail upcoming that's great thanks so much any comments from the from other directors or student advisors you know we're doing re-entry um this is ann i was wondering on the the numbers report 3.3 leaving edmonds at our current at our 2019-2020 um census of of about 22 000 kids that's a that's a little over 700 students leaving the district that we know about

066for next school year um how does that compare with them with a quote normal year that's a great question in and of the two-thirds of the the number that was reported i believe two-thirds of those number those students have have either moved out of the district or plan to move out of the district in terms of a physical move if i recall correctly i'll turn over to a staff to be able to walk uh the board through if i'm if i'm incorrect i believe that's correct this is harmony communications manager for the district i also know we have um chris bailey here with us from technology who um pulled together all this chris do you mind filling us in a little bit more on the numbers yeah um i guess briefly i can just validate

067what dr balderas shared that roughly two-thirds of the respondents that indicated they will not be attending in the school district next year uh it's either because they've already moved out of our service area or they intend to do so other remainder it was those options that you have seen in the past either homeless school or another um non-edmond school program uh as far as how it compares to a typical year that's something that dr balderas had asked for i've been working with lydia to try to explore how we can capture that in a way that's meaningful so that's something we'll continue to work on circle back with you i'd like to add also that that number doesn't take into consideration all the move-ins that will happen over the summer so there's that number could could

068evolve a little bit as well uh one quick thing um on the kind of the community feedback um i know that still when i talk to people uh it doesn't happen as often now but the distinction between remote learning and uh what you know in person means some people still are under the assumption that like remote learning means what we've been doing this year which it absolutely does not mean and i think like i understand kind of where the confusion comes from because i know that like even among staff that wasn't really as clear in the beginning and it was buried in the email and we all know that at this point everyone is emailed out and technology out if that's even the right word um so that um anything that we can do to

069clarify that because i know the intent form is going on again in august of families but if people don't know what remote learning versus the in-person means and the fact that remote learning is absolutely not connected to your school um then that isn't gonna really change the intent survey so i think uh better communication on what elearning and what that remote learning really looks like and then also communicating that um that remote learning is nothing like what we've seen this year uh where it's associated with school is really important because i think that might change a few few of the intent uh answers so yeah i just want to bring that up thank you very good this is chris bailey technology director again uh i just want to say i know that i've worked in

070partnership with harmony to try to ensure that we are communicating in as many ways as we can in ways that will be clearly understood by the community but we welcome any feedback that you or other members of the board may have on how we can ensure that we're doing that in a way that will be easily understood i know that we've got some plans in place for the august communication already but certainly want to make sure that it's crystal clear to our families and our students what they're committing to as we think about the kids who i'm sorry as we think about the kids who are going to be the move-ins um i'm wondering for new kindergarten kids as well as new kids moving in are they to register in person at their schools uh

071i know there was a time that they were in the past that they went to the cent district office i'm just wondering how how do they go about registering so how do we as a district find out as well as being able to give them the information they need that's a great a great question dr catoms and the good news is it's all online um online enrollment i mean where there are paper forms available for families as well but um it's very exciting i know in the world that we've been living in for the last 15 months most of us are used to doing everything online so um we're hopeful that it makes it easier for families um to to be able to do that so yeah there's links to that on our website um

072we shared that as well in our newsletter that went out in um april or march um a link to it as well for enrollment so trying to get people excited about this digital option for enrollment i'll just add to what army shared that we also revised our new student online enrollment process to incorporate the informed questions so the families that didn't get an opportunity to provide their intent through our process that wrapped up at the end of last month we'll be able to provide their intent through that new student online enrollment process online or through their school if they're going through the paper process for army instagram that's great and if they don't if people don't have internet access um but they call the school or is there like a phone number that they can

073reach to i mean is there another way to do it and or in other languages as well absolutely so we'll work with families i know in july schools and maybe helen can dr john can add but i know in july schools are closed but the district office is we are operating and so we'll be able to support but helen did you want to add anything no i i think you added what i wanted to add so that's perfect thank you harmony and our families were directed to call their schools we felt that families connect to their neighborhood schools more than central office and the office staff more welcoming and understanding and all of that so families are more than welcome to reach out to the office staff and they will direct them um so very

074excited about the online forms and there are paper copies it takes time to completely go over all online so knowing that this is transition so we welcome also the paper copies i was wondering um if maybe next time we have a report on students choosing remote versus um [Music] coming back into the buildings if we could have that disaggregated as we did uh for students this year so we could see for instance you know asian asian american african-american and so forth um because we saw a little bit of uh difference yeah absolutely i will work with the team to get that information with the hopes to include in a future board update from dr garrett thank you any other questions board okay thank you for this report are we finished with this report okay thank

075you next we have our business and finance report who's going to provide us our monthly report here for april thank you good evening and uh cherelle if you could turn to the next page so we're reporting on april um this evening and this is the time of year that we start uh using a lot of the current year data to help inform the budget which is happening at the same time so looking at the general fund at a high level we started the year at 8.3 million increased fund balance over the previous year currently we're down about six to a 6.1 million dollar increase so just a slight reduction of 2.2 which is um much better than our original projections so the general fund is holding strong i wanted to point out on the asb

076fund that the ending fund balance for april is basically identical to the year before even though revenues and extended expenses are substantially less on the capital projects fund you'll see in revenue we're at 140 percent um received compared to budget and that is predominantly due to the land sale that we had in april on the debt service fund the remaining expenses are the interest payment that is due in june and then that will pretty much wrap it up for the debt service fund for the year on the transportation vehicle fund expenditures we did purchase six small buses before this you know at the start of the year and we have held off on purchasing some of the larger buses that we intended because sound transit is on our site um installing three pillars for light

077rail so and all our buses that are normally in the back of the facility are in front um so as sound transit starts completing their work we can identify um we'll be reconfiguring the back lot a bit and um getting that in place in order to house more buses on our site okay next page so a quick overview on this page um wanted to point out in state special purpose uh the legislature concluded and we are notified that we will be receiving additional transportation funds um which is being called a transportation stabilization funding since the state recognized that ridership is very very low compared to past years and but that many of the expenses still remain so instead of just funding us on ridership there stabilizing our funding and that will start with the new

078state fiscal year july 1st so our intent is that transportation will not need to utilize any other general funds in the district so they will be um funded uh at 100 which is which is great news in expenditures um in benefits um last year we were notified by our by the esd that we are part of the unemployment pool and since unemployment has been higher in the region we had a special assessment we paid half the assessment this year it was designated in last year's fund balance for this purpose a they are they have notified us that some of the bills perhaps are delayed they will reevaluate and our second assessment may not occur until um 21-22 so if if not spent this year we will keep um that set aside and fund balance where

079it's at in order to pay the bill um next fall okay next page so if we look at the far charts at the top please i'm sorry not the line grasp but the eyes lydia this is nancy can i interrupt you with a question on what you just were talking about yes i'm curious how how much is that that we are being assessed for the as to be part of the unemployment pool it was almost 2.7 million so we have paid the half that we paid or the total so half just over 1.3 million so either you will see again that will stay in fund balance or it will get expended this year but it's um was set aside a year ago for this purpose thank you absolutely uh so total revenues um based on

080um trends where we were projecting that we'd be at you know just under 64 and we're just a hair over 64 so that's really good news um local sources uh we're at 72.44 sorry new glasses um the projections would have us at 74.7 and that is all because of um local our local fines and fees are very very low which is just fine um because of remote learning so that's not concerning um state revenues are actually just a little bit above um where the graphs would show us to be and then federal sources are considerably higher and that is um all because of um sr funding uh when we did the budget a year ago certainly we knew about sr1 but didn't know about sr2 and sr3 that were forthcoming okay next slide so again

081time of year that we really start studying the expected ending fund balance and determining what categories those will land in so um this chart shows us targeting at about seven percent and of that seven percent some of those um dollars will be assigned um one for the unemployment pool schools carry over um our risk set aside inventory and we're coming in um above our minimum four percent and probably under five percent so between the four and five percent range which is which is really healthy the next slide so as of april our fund balance projection is coming in just about 25.5 million um so well above 1819 slightly below 1920 as expected if again if we don't play that unemployment um assessment this year fund balance will go up but it will contain a portion

082to be paid for this fall so um continuing to increase ever so slightly and some of that is esther and some of that is food service again so i hate to see the drop in march and april um the good news is may is identical so i think we have finally flattened out and have stabilized for the balance of the school year and of course um as we've talked about re-entry we're assessing the impacts of both remote learning and students who um [Music] maybe the one-third of students who have indicated that they're leaving and how that could be offset by new students moving in so we're keeping an eye on that and if there's no questions that is all i have for the april report any questions comments thank you lydia [Music] um next we

083have uh let me find what i'm doing uh next uh we will now recess the regular meeting and open a public hearing to accept testimony regarding resolution number 21-23 this is a resolution of the board of directors of edmond school district number 15 authorizing the sale issuance and delivery of not to exceed 20 20 million dollars principal amount of the district's limited general obligation bond to provide money for the acquisition construction and installation of improvements for instruction classroom and support services and so forth tonight's public hearing is for the board of directors to accept testimony regarding resolution 21-23 because we are still meeting remotely we have accepted invited and accepted testimony uh written testimony and i believe it's the case that we did not receive any testimony on the resolution and that holds but that's

084still true right okay thank you um seeing that there is no uh testimony concerning this matter the public hearing is now formally closed and now i will reconvene uh the regular business meeting uh our next item is unfinished business first or only unfinished business is a second reading to adopt policy 4218 the family language access plan do i hear a motion i move to approve i second it it's nancy it's been moved and seconded to adopt policy 4218 a family language access plan is there any discussion hearing none i'll go ahead and call for a vote all those in favor of adopting policy 4218 family language access plan please indicate by saying aye aye any opposed say nay any abstentions the motion passes next we have new business our first item is a first reading

085no action uh on adopting the i ready math assessment system is there any discussion and we had a report um last last time we met may 25th um and all of the the items from the report are attached for the public is there any discussion um i have some comments um that are mostly repetitive of questions and comments i made uh at the report at i think it was last week's or two weeks ago some tuesday some random tuesday um so you know uh i've said this before that my main concern has to do with um my belief more than my belief my understanding that uh this assessment is not developmentally appropriate for kindergarten in that it's a multiple choice online test that kindergartners um are most likely not to understand what they're doing and

086it is not something that is likely to gather valid information um for most of our kids particularly our low-income kids and our kids of color who come in less ready on technology than some of the more privileged children and for a number of other reasons i am very concerned about requiring kindergartners to take this assessment um i think it's possible to meet the requirements for ospi in more developmentally appropriate ways in in ways that are currently happening in the district for example in terms of the dyslexia screen which we're required to give my understanding is that they the district and staff have been giving the and i think it's called a cadence um dyslexia screen which i've heard from a number of people is quite appropriate its purpose is to do a dyslexia screen which

087the i ready test is not designed for that um people are comfortable doing it and and it seems to be working well secondly in terms of getting progress on kids over the year that's developmentally appropriate um i would suggest uh focusing on the use of the ts gold assessment that's part of what kids which is given to all kindergartners when they enter in the fall and then simply choosing the most appropriate subtests to do in winter and spring on those kids who are not kindergarten ready so for those who are kindergarten ready that's great for those who aren't they should be followed up since the purpose of this assessment and our assessment system is to identify kids who need special interventions we want to be giving this assessment we want to be giving an assessment

088that we believe will give us valid information so that the interventions we choose and the data that is recorded for each child is valid so we don't have invalid data following kids through their school career um that if for example the teachers were asked to the kindergarten teachers and i'm just talking about kindergarten right now continue what they do with what kids in the fall and for the winter and spring um continue to test those kids who are not kindergarten ready at each of the following data points on perhaps uh language and math or literacy language and math and maybe adding cognition you know the things that are most appropriate for the interventions that we're doing um and allowing kindergarten teachers to use i ready particularly the instructional piece as they see fit one of

089the concerns i have is that we have not been given the data that we had asked for last year and and it wasn't part of the 950 page report that we got which is disaggregating the teacher survey data by grade level the family survey data by grade level and the student data by grade level so that we can see what do the kindergarten teachers really think in terms of the usefulness of this assessment for their instruction because that is the most important piece we have received a lot of input from kindergarten teachers saying that they don't think i ready is useful for them as an assessment so i'd love to see that data i'm not ready to make a decision and i realize tonight we don't have to vote on it but um the next

090time it comes up we will and i wouldn't be prepared to do that without hearing from our kindergarten teachers in a systematic way and from our kindergarten families to know what do they think of this i'd love to see a survey given to the kindergarten teachers saying which would they prefer and what would be more useful to them i know that um dr baumgartner mentioned at the last meeting that the district isn't poised to do the why kids report the report card and and i understand that there's a lot of work to set up skyward and that kind of thing but this could be leading toward that and getting teachers ready to do it and having them gather information that really is useful for identifying what interventions matter the most for these kids so for

091me in terms of this recommendation that's a real sticking point is the requiring kindergarten teachers to give it i would also love to get information about the usefulness of the assessment of the i ready assessment for gifted kids and for kids in the um seventh eighth ninth grades that um where i did well seventh and eighth grade that were identified for higher level math for algebra and geometry is it do those teachers really find that useful because they've already been given a lot of assessments they know where the kids are and they're giving them very course specific assessments to keep track of how those kids are doing so i would ask about that at the higher end but my main concern is a kindergarten i also have a concern at one and two but i

092don't know that we have good alternatives for them whereas i think a kindergarten that we do so i i appreciate your your listening um and i'd love to see that data before we have to vote on it well we have those data and we'll provide those for you in the friday memo um you know this is um this is a different question than we've been asking all along and we have involved our kindergarten teachers in the process and so it's only at this stage that we're hearing that that this is a concern at a level that's come um at to this point um we we don't agree that uh there are the developmental concerns with the assessment and we're happy to provide an opportunity to for board directors to learn more about the kindergarten assessment

093um perhaps actually see what it looks like and and what the interaction looks like i it is not the itvs sit down and fill out bubbles um it's a it's a pretty as tactile experiences as you could have uh as an online assessment so um i just don't want that message out there without a little more context the solutions you raise are are definitely ones to consider but those those are not the things that we've considered at this point and so um you know we're happy to provide those data and um continue uh looking at this uh issue i really appreciate that and i certainly know that this is not the itbs on the other hand we did hear that the main issue from teachers throughout the the survey responses was the length of time

094that it takes to take so one of the concerns obviously is to have five-year-old kids sitting being frustrated spending a lot of time trying to make sense of what they're being asked to do and you know it it develops early that one self-concept about taking tests because this is clearly a test whereas while kids kids don't even know they're being assessed um that if they don't do well and maybe they don't won't do well because not because they don't know the math but because they don't really understand what they're doing on the computer it it very early on builds this concept of i'm not good at math or i'm not good at test taking and if there are more appropriate ways to do this um for kindergartners and to avoid some of those pitfalls they

095can be harmful for kids in the long run let's do it let's be student-centered and let's really think about ways that we can do what's best at the early childhood levels this is ann i noticed in the report uh you list everett evergreen north shore shoreline tacoma and the vancouver school districts as using iready do they all those districts use i ready uh k aider or um certainly if we're talking kindergarten do they use them for the kindergarteners and if so have you discussed with them their experience over i'm assuming that they've had i ready for at least a year or more how what their experience has been in the assessing of younger grade students because if they've already gone through this i just think it would behoove us to learn from their experience so

096i if i'm thinking about the same table director nick murray that you're referring to i believe it shows on there as well the grade levels that it's utilized in at those in those schools and if not get that it's table three on page 11 is the one that i'm i'm looking at and it says the school district and then district-wide common math assessment system on the right and it just for example clover park is map and star edmonds we don't have one uh everett is i ready evergreens i already marysville is star michael t with star et cetera et cetera that's the one that i'm looking at okay thanks so much yeah so i can provide the chart that also shows the information by grade level within those school districts and different school districts do

097require the assessment in varying ranges of grades certainly not all of them utilize i ready in particular for kindergarten and as far as talking specifically was with school districts about their experiences with implementing um kindergarten i ready we have not had extremely in-depth conversations specific to that to that question but with our our friends and colleagues in everett shoreline and north shore all utilizing i ready as their diagnostic assessment system we are certainly in contact throughout the school year to learn from each other about what has in general been going well and what hasn't and also just uh just to be clear um i personally am not really here to defend i ready um in and of itself really when i'm here is to defend the decision aid over the past couple of years by

098the task force in the steering committee um that did quite extensive and thorough research and planning throughout this process and so really what i'm putting forward is is the recommendations that they've developed throughout this time throughout the process yeah it would be helpful to to know of the districts that around us that are it was you know the large districts around us in the state that are using this what grade levels they're actually using it at and if they're not using it at the younger grades it'd be interesting to know why everett is using it uh i've been in correspondence with the superintendent today ian salsman they're they're in grade one through eight right now and they're gonna include kindergarten next year for his text message to me this afternoon we can certainly uh get

099answers to those questions um in time uh over the next week um but understand that you know this was not a concern that we were grappling with through the process this is something that has been entered into the conversation at this late stage so um you know which is not excuse me i'm i'm sorry i have to disagree with you last year when we were discussing this it was the key issue that we talked about was were we going to require it at kindergarten first and second this is not the first time that this question has been brought i can look back at my notes we talked about it a great deal and it should have been a question that i think you all knew was of concern to us because originally last year you

100wanted to require it and as a board we asked for it not to be required so and it's specifically for the outlier grade levels so i just i i'm sorry but i need to disagree with that statement well understand that my my takeaway from that was the question was requiring it for for any and we ultimately landed that we didn't require it for any of our grade levels we made it optional and so i apologize if i don't remember that detail as well so i look forward to receiving additional information particularly related to the surrounding districts and as we dr baladaris thank you for letting us know about everett um starting to use it on kindergarten and we'll get that information the next week thanks so let me add um i have a contact who

101works in the assessment office in everett and just had texted her um what is it used and the answer was it's all subject to bargaining still but we've never required math at kindergarten she doesn't say anything about next year well if if we do receive i mean i'm wondering where we go from here because even if we do receive the information between now and the second reading um what are we you know what are we gearing up to do um i still am pretty uh compelled by the the bulk of the report and i didn't read you know i admit i didn't read all thousand pages but i read the executive summary the first 25 or so i'm compelled that this will help our district um i don't recall personally having an issue with the

102higher grades you know kids by that age um you know we were hearing some good things i remember from from the committee about you know that that some of our secondary teachers were pretty excited about this um so i don't recall having any any concern about that um but if we determine that this is you know not adequate for kindergarten is that a potential uh way forward with this i i'm for me i'm concerned that we don't have a good uh robust system of formative assessment in our district we just don't and and we haven't for a long time it's not going to be the magic you know the magic bullet that improves our grad rates but it's it certainly seemed like an important one um so i'd like to see something happen especially after

103we've had what i thought was a pretty uh you know setting aside kindergarten you know in the early early grades the the report was pretty compelling to me that this was a good uh a good direction um or better than the alternative um so so what are you know i'm asking the board i guess what are our possible ways forward um you know just because i i i think that the disaggregated data the the data by um by grade is not going to change um much it's still going you know we're still going to see that there's a reason for concern say or some of us will feel like there's a a reason for concern in kindergarten um so what next so deborah i'll be really clear to to clarify i'm fine with the rest

104of the recommendation i am simply unhappy with requiring it at kindergarten there are other pieces that do potentially bother me but mostly from the information given by our folks that it seems that you know i definitely think like grades three through seven meets a great need it's not the be all and end-all and i do hope the district really does a lot of professional development on real performative assessment and it's classroom based but that being said i don't have a problem with the rest of the recommendation my whole problem is with recall requiring it at kindergarten because i've spent a lot of time doing early childhood assessment and it's simply not best practice well deborah yeah i i agree with you that um i think it's a system we need to put into our into

105place uh if there are problems with parts of how it's implemented i think that's kind of a separate subject then then approving whether we should have the system in our district uh by the way it is worded now it will be implemented in all grades i think that is fine because anytime you implement a new system into into an established system as our district there are there are issues with it and you when you implement you find what the issues are and then you address those issues and if they're if we implement it in kindergarten and it it actually is very difficult and it's not working our kindergarten teachers will tell us and it's what we do in the district we um react react to things and correct them when they need correction so i'm

106i'm all for implementing the program and then massaging it and change changing it where necessary to make it work correctly uh but we've we do have information from our kindergarten teachers we we had a good number of them i believe in in this pilot so let's hear from them let's see their their survey results and their comments separate from the others because we don't really need to be asking kindergarten teachers in other districts nor do we have to wait another year you have done a very comprehensive job guys over this three years of slowly building this in and getting it information from various people i'm just asking to see because i'm concerned a lot of kindergarten teachers have come forward to me and expressed that they felt they weren't heard they were on committees they

107didn't feel like they were being heard and that they felt like because they were the minority and in a grade level that is different in a lot of ways than other grade levels that anyway the point being i think we have this information i think rob you said you would be able to get it to us so um i don't know that we need to wait i think i think we have it we just haven't been given that we have those data we were given the questions uh at 3 30 today specific and we were not prepared to incorporate those into the report so um we'll get those um specific to what the the kindergarten teachers um did so we we do have those data and we'll get them to you you will find that

108there is um support among kindergarten teachers for it and there are people that feel strongly against it it's fairly split on some of the questions some of the questions it's more positive than others there are comments we heard from teachers at most of our elementary schools we did not get participation from every single teacher but if i correct brandon we had 42 kindergarten teachers that responded to the survey and that's not a terrible number particularly when we look at representation from all of our schools so we'll have those data for you and you'll be able to dig into them they also include comments i really appreciate that i'm also really pretty sure that not only did we talk about this last year but last week when we had this report i specifically asked to see

109that data disaggregated and i think i put it in an email so my understanding was that it was in the report so i i apologize for that that that's me not calling through assume i made the assumption that it was desegregated in those ways that was my recollection for the report i appreciate that then um i actually spent five hours reading the report on an airplane ride so what else do you do on an airplane right right um but that was a piece that i didn't understand why it wasn't disaggregated so i appreciate that you'll be getting that to us go ahead are there other other comments questions well just to the question on what do we do next well we discuss we're in the first reading a lot of work's been done there's still

110questions we're the school board and so you know we'll have the second reading and if it's on the agenda we'll discuss and make some decisions then but remember you know we are the the body that makes the policy decisions and so if there are changes that need to be made we discuss them if we need to have an option um for the whole board to be really comfortable on adopting i ready it's like is there an option to make it optional for kindergarten and what would that impact be i mean these are kind of questions you know that that i think we need to to discuss um and it's not the first time that the concern over kindergarten's come up so so we'll continue discussing between now and the next meeting or get some information

111and and think about how that may change a position or what's best for the kids in the district right for all of our students so so that's how you are asking what do we do now we keep discussing i mean this is what the first readings for so we can bring up these these these questions i was mostly asking to invite these kinds of solutions not to um well no but to stop people from talking you know i think this is it's a discussion is healthy making sure that um that we as policy decision makers are fully informed and all the questions are answered no matter how long it takes so i think we're almost there yeah and and from for me i just like to know if if we have surrounding districts that are

112similar in size to us similar demographics that have been using this system a while it's it's interesting to me to know what grade levels they're using and because it's possible i mean i know people in edmonds have great ideas but it's it's also possible that somebody down in vancouver or tacoma or somewhere else that have done this a while um might have something valuable uh to add uh along gary's point that uh that if if we implement and we find that there are bumps along the way it it would be nice to know and to be able to gain the experience of other districts who've been doing this longer so that we could perhaps arrive at a a a solution earlier than if we just kind of stayed in a silo in edmonds and hoped

113that we'd come up with the great idea uh i just i happen to believe that the educators across the the state uh might be able if if there's something we're struggling with perhaps they've struggled with it too and it might have a good idea that we could um possibly uh gain from so that that was my interest in knowing kind of what other districts have done and what what's the grade span that they've been using for i ready okay any oh please go ahead uh thanks president i am wanted to to make you know clear here and and it's in line with brandon's comments um you know our task was to address the um you know lack of a comment across the system a set of assessments and and and that was the task and

114so um we are not of the mind that kindergarten has to do i ready as the only means of assessing student learning and so you know it's this is the proposal that we're putting forth this is that represents the work of the team and um you know as i indicated last time we we fully expect to analyze the full implementation of this product next year and certainly would be looking very very closely at whether or not the the concerns about kindergarten um are are to the extent that that we're being um told by several of our teachers um we we are open uh to looking at uh different things and and as as uh director noble said we we will certainly evaluate um this was um this was an important step for our system to

115take um we believe that these assessments will be valuable and the the job that we do supporting teachers in using those data is is critical and all of this will support a successful implementation if in fact kindergarten needs to go a different path i you know ran in a nice discussions about um revisiting the kindergarten pilot the idea that we were looking at right when the pandemic hit which was replacing the kindergarten report card with the wah kids assessment um we think that is a best practice we think that is a good way to go um but what we we don't have confidence in is that i ready couldn't remain part of the full assessment package even at kindergarten and so those are questions that that we still have and would be important things for

116us to evaluate as we as we move forward so just hoping to to round this out like we are not putting a flag in the ground about kindergarten being part of this but um in terms of what we've been trying to accomplish by addressing this as system-wide as as getting you know a data system that we can use across k8 and and in some spots in high school um that that's been the charge and so um we will evaluate and make modifications as we move forward with this okay uh so i think we have two requests for information one is uh director katum's request for uh data broken out by grade and the other is some information from surrounding districts about which grades they um uh use this for and and if they do use

117it for kindergarten ask them a question about how that's working out for them um if you know and and that would be helpful so let's move along thank you all for your thoughtful um contribution to the discussion uh okay where am i next we have a single reading to approve resolution i'm gonna i apologize approve resolution 21-23 the authorization and delegation of limited general obligation bonds do i hear a motion this is the end move to approve this is karen a second it's been moved and seconded to approve resolution 21-23 is there any discussion hearing none i'll go ahead and call for a vote a roll call vote please and this is to approve resolution 21-23 director mcmurray aye director noble hi director chase aye director cadams aye director kilgore aye and the motion passes

118and the resolution 21-23 is approved next we have a single reading to approve the ospi study and survey for school construction assistance program uh do i hear a motion this is a move to approve i'll second it it's been moved and seconded to approve the ospi study and survey for school construction assistance program is there any discussion i always find this to be a very interesting report myself you can see our whole uh physical plant inventory in one place and see what condition it's in and i appreciate the work that goes into it is there any further discussion hearing none i'll go ahead and call for a roll call vote to approve the ospi study and survey for school construction assistance program director mcmurray aye director noble hi director chase aye director cadams the motion

119passes in the study and survey is approved next we have a single reading to approve project award for school uh spruce elementary phase two relocatable classrooms project oh am i looking at the wrong one i had two agendas open oh no i am i apologize uh yes [Laughter] yeah you're good i'm sorry i had a another a couple of agendas from prior nights open trying to find things do i hear emotion i move to approve this is nancy this is anne's second it's been moved and seconded to approve the project award for spruce elementary phase two is there any discussion i'm sorry this is phase two the relocatable classrooms project uh hearing none i'd like to ask for a roll call vote please director mcmurray aye director noble hi director chase director cadams aye director

120kilgore i and the motion passes and the project award is approved next we have a single reading to approve resolution 21-20 guaranteed maximum price amendment for spruce elementary phase ii addition and replacement project an increase increase in total project budget is there a motion this is ian moved your crew i said i seconded it it's been moved and seconded to approve resolution uh gosh where am i i keep losing my i'm sorry 21-20 um is there any discussion well this is anna you know i was just thinking about how great it is that we even have these on our agenda because of the support of our voters for the levy and you know i think about spruce and having just half of you know their first phase but not the second and then being able

121to look forward to having their school completely remodeled and what that's going to mean for those kids so i it just gives me a reason to be grateful again for the support of our voters i have to tell you i spoke with two parents of incoming kindergarten students at spruce just last week who are very excited about the new facilities that i guess their kids will will be able to use in first grade any other discussion hearing none i'd like to call for a roll call vote please director mcmurray aye director noble hi director chase aye director cadams aye director kilgore aye and the motion passes in resolution 21-20 is approved next we have a single we have changed this it is a first reading uh no action to approve the high school general chemistry

122and science materials adoption recommendations that's our um amendment that we had in the beginning of the night um so are the is there any discussion i'm really glad to see this going forward and us upgrading the high school science in these areas i think it's really important and essential that we keep our science curriculum as up to date as possible because it's changing so quickly and i know that you know the adoption cycle had gotten sort of pushed back due to budget things in the past so it's good to know that our teachers and our kids are going to be given the resources that they need i'd like to just share that normally we provide a board report on the first reading for any adoptions we had a little mix up with uh our prep

123for getting things on the agenda and so we'll include that report the materials are here included in the agenda but we'll have a actual live report on this before second reading at our upcoming general meeting thank you and i i was again you know i'm i'm lucky i'm happy to have more time to review the report i did take a look at it and what is really fascinating to me is how not just we but um i guess the entire science education community is sort of um clarifying um sort of how to teach around the ngss um standards which are so interesting to me it's it's really interesting and exciting um but kind of to me it seemed a new way of of doing standards because they're so intermittent interrelated and um cross-cutting i guess

124is the word so um i i'm just pleased to see a curriculum you know a book that that follows those standards other comments okay well we'll look forward to hearing more thank you uh next uh our final item is a first reading no action approve revised policy 5202 federal motor carrier safety administration mandated drug and alcohol testing program sorry that was a mouthful is there do we hear a motion first reading oh oh oh thank you i'm sorry you're right um this is the first reading is there any discussion i i had a question on it i just wondered how marijuana fits into this because it's a federally controlled substance but not a washington control summit substance all those as federal regulations but then it has the exception for a controlled substance that is medically

125issued by a medical practitioner so how's marijuana fit in with this policy both regular marijuana and medically approved marijuana so again the federal rules um this follows the federal rule so i double checked with wazda that the marijuana section had not changed um and we have not encountered the situation where a prescribing physician has prescribed medical marijuana so um right now we're considering it um not allowed and it could be that the first situation makes us consult with legal thank you anything else okay let's move on um love to hear from our students again can we have a gallery view you get one one more chance to weigh in isabelle hi um yeah i'd like to say thank you again to the board members and dr balderas and staff for giving like me the privilege

126of being on the student advisory to the board it's just been incredible and um on the student presentation about the garden i just think that it's like one it's really wonderful that these kids are being exposed to this to this experience that they might not um have access to at home and who knows maybe it'll like spark an interest in um like a career possibility in the future for them which i think is amazing and also i want to say that it's i have loved seeing how much pride month is being celebrated and how it has really like the improvement on how much the lgbtq community plus community is being respected and celebrated throughout these years thank you sorry hi uh it was wonderful to see how well spoken some of these elementary schoolers are

127it was really took me by surprise to be honest um and also i just wanted to thank you all for making this year's class of 2021 end of the year great because you know prom has been a go for many schools and in person graduation which is fantastic so thank you for all the hard work you've done this year and i can't wait to hear about what the edmond school district does next so thank you retica um first of all as my um fellow student advisors said uh thank you so much to the school board for this opportunity this year it's again it's been a crazy year and um having this platform to provide the student voice and to also see kind of um what's going on in terms of uh the decisions being made

128and the thought process behind that has been really enlightening and um i'm glad that you know as crazy as this year was that we were still able to have that experience um the presentations kind of reflect how important it is um for these electives and these extracurricular activities to be supported by the district because those are the things that ultimately shape our um students both at the elementary secondary and the secondary level um those are the things that you know we will remember uh maybe sometimes even hey you just muted yourself maybe ritika she's not muted i think um maybe it froze i was a little bit surprised when i was hearing conversations around that um before um like with people thinking that it was remote learning meaning like that they were able to you

129know zoom in and i don't think any of our teachers want to go through that again but um overall just thank you for everything and looking forward to seeing hopefully sooner rather than later what next year's plan is going to look like um and how we're going to navigate that thank you and i think uh our other students had to go do work so i'll move on to our board members uh director noble how are you well i'm good uh i don't have many comments tonight i want to get thank the student reps i i really meant it they they were a great set this year and being able to participate so much even though we're on zoom was fantastic and thanks so much for the the kids talking about their garden it was really

130refreshing and just to see how proud they were of their accomplishments so thank you very much and we'll see you in two weeks thank you director mcmurray well just again thank you to the the presenters of course um the student advisor has been just been great this year uh just so helpful and uh i just wanna um acknowledge the the heavy lift that um the district staff have been doing this year even before the year began having to switch what we were doing not knowing sometimes from week to week uh what what the conditions were going to be what we needed to plan for uh i i know how weary um so many people are when i talk to them just in all kinds of jobs and um just as you as we get closer

131to what looks like the transition out of the pandemic sometimes it's you all of a sudden realize how tired you are and so i just want to commend staff and thank you for the effort realizing you know it's it's kind of the final push uh to get people graduated but it's um i am so looking forward to in-person graduations to actually seeing kids walk across that stage uh in an unprecedented year and uh and recognizing the tremendous effort that it's taken of a system that has been stressed to the max to accomplish this everybody involved so just want to really acknowledge and say thank you thank you uh director chase you know i'm just gonna echo the previous colleagues comments that very very much looking forward to the graduations that are coming up um and

132i think that this district has demonstrated the resiliency um in this time of the pandemic with the continually moving targets and so it's great appreciation to all the work everyone's put into also thank you director kayden so i i just want to thank the student advisors once again and say you've been an amazing source of information and help this year and i wish we could have celebrated you in person so know that our hearts are with you i also i found the chase lake presentation to be wonderful the kids doing real life projects like that is so important you can see this will be something they remember forever and i think their tribute to beth black who was a model teacher in our district was particularly special um i'd i'd like to end by um

133both thanking everybody who's expressed their support and their appreciation for us doing the resolution for pride month um we really appreciate your letting us know that this is very important to you and for those who've been doing pushback in the community i think what that does is underscore the need for education of educating our students our families and our community about the science behind gender identity and gender orientation and perhaps what we need to think about as a district is expanding our equity training i know it's been mostly focused on race equity which is very important but maybe it's time we begin to think about ways to expand it to the other marginalized groups that we serve in our district so i appreciate all of the input from the people who have been supportive and

134trying to create safe spaces for all of our kids thank you director cadence and i uh i agree with everyone we've had some wonderful things to celebrate this year and tonight and um i'm so appreciative of our student advisors and i wish you the best um i also want to address um the social media responses to the district celebration of pride um i didn't have a chance to see most of the harmful comments um and i realized i'm not talking to probably any anybody but our you know at least will be uh recorded um but uh i didn't have a chance to see all the harmful comments but um and they may or may not have come from members of our own community but i want to urge adults to think before you speak because

135children are listening reading and watching and when you post on social media your thoughts are likely to find their way to some of our almost 20 000 students and you're hurting them each of our students is unique and precious and deserves nothing but care kindness and protection transgender kids queer kids they exist they're in our schools lesbian and gay parents they're they are in our families we have just a multitude of beautiful families supportive parents um active parents and um they all deserve to be seen heard and celebrated and i think every adult would agree that kids should not be harmed i think even those who are expressing uh anger and and and ignorance to other adults um i don't think you're you're in it to hurt kids um so i would just urge you

136to think about who's looking who's watching and every time i'm going to be here for the kids and i'm going to throw down for the kids they all deserve everything that we have to give each and every one of them so thanks i'll turn it over to dr balderas so thank you for your comments board and as you stated you know of the 22 thousand kids that we have in a normal year you know 53 of our kids or kids of color we're almost 130 languages and that's the asset that we have as a district that is the asset that we have as a district that we are such a diverse system that we provide an opportunity to uh have the educational engagement for all kids all kids no matter who they are we have

137a moral obligation we want all kids and as the board has stated is is we you know we hold up and hold hands with each and every one of our kids each and every one of our kids because we're only going to be more diverse in such a variety of ways which is such a beautiful thing for our district and our community and uh just want to really appreciate your comment as a board tonight and also uh as isabel kai ritika bondi and cerullia leave us for the summer just again great appreciation for what you've added to our system as uh we get ready for with the voice graduation or eight graduations next week is i hope to see many of you there and and i look forward to every one of those eight graduations

138because of the fact that we have kids crossing the crossing the stage and uh leaving our system with a certificate that with a diploma that they can always say hey they graduated from the edmond school district and and also with the memories that this is such a difficult year that we know and understand the resilience the resilience of our kids of our community and of our families has just been incredible absolutely incredible this this uh this past several months several months and i wish all the very best as we close out the school year we have two weeks left to school our our faculty and everyone that works in our schools but everyone also this supports our schools because again it takes an entire team and i really appreciate the board's vision as you've been

139able to help guide the district in terms of what we need to do this year and that's with great appreciation i i as i've stated to you individually no one signed up to do this but we've done this the best we can and we i believe we've done it as well as anyone else in the area so just to a great appreciation to all the staff that are on the call i know there's a lot of black screens but uh it's been a heavy lift by all but uh we've done this heavy lift together so thank you i know we have some other uh presentations or some discussions later on so thank you very much thank you um okay going back now uh our first we are at discussion topics our first discussion discussion topic

140is a continuation of the board meeting live streaming and archiving plan so thank you board of directors wanna just continue the discussion uh that we had earlier during a a retreat with the board regarding what to do with our uh with our streaming for next year as we planned for september coming back into in person and chris bailey's on the call as well as well as harmony and be able to have the discussion in terms of what we uh would like what the board would like staff to do in terms of what the experience for to the end user those being online next year because we do want to stream continue to do that i think that's been very valuable as the board has expressed regarding the the engagement of our of our board meetings

141and again just want to continue that discussion and i have chris and harmony here to be able to maybe if we could maybe provide uh a back ground in terms of some options for the board and then have the board maybe have a deliberation please so chris i don't know if you want to share the some possible options for the board to consider sure absolutely so chris bailey technology director wanted to um start by just recapping the previous conversation you know the board has had several conversations related to live streaming meetings over the course of the last several years and i think that culminated in august or september with an update from communications on some different options for how that could be done long term but we have leveraged zoom and youtube to get that

142done over the course of the pandemic and the communications team and technology have partnered together to explore different options we presented our recommendation at the may board retreat and there were some questions related to ways that we might be able to pair back the proposal using the swaget tool which as you recall is used by lake washington school district as well as more recently with the neighborhood it's an automated system that includes multiple cameras provides a very elegant and polished experience for the community members that are watching remotely so we went back to the vendor and we asked them what ways we could consider to pare down the proposal there were two ways that that we could continue to work with them again to have a very professional and elegant uh output or live stream

143that would result in reduced cost the first is in lieu of having a live transcriptionist that is essentially monitoring and encapsulating via text every um every spoken word there's a newer product that they also offered that is not unlike what we've seen with zoom leveraging automation to pull down the spoken words and to include those as text that option also includes having a person i won't say a live person but having a real person review those after the meeting to ensure that they are accurate so they commit to at least 95 accuracy in the moment and that they will refine to ensure it's 100 accurate after the fact i don't want to con i don't want to um i guess leave you to think that this is exactly like what we've done because what we've

144seen in other districts that leverage this capability is that it associates the spoken word with who said it and it's much more refined than what we've seen via zoom as far as the closed caption goes the other option that they've provided is a post-meeting closed caption it's a reduced cost it requires less labor per meeting as well as less hardware the biggest concern that the communications and technology teams share is the lack of accessibility of our meetings if it's taking several days after a meeting is published or is live for that accessible um closed captioning to be attached to it so that is a less expensive option but it's not one that we're comfortable recommending because our concerns about accessibility are um are much more significant with that option than with the 95 accuracy that

145swagger commits to with the automated closed captions they provide just as a brief side note some of you may recall that we have been working with the department of ed's office civil rights over the last four or five years regarding ensuring our websites are fully accessible that's a continuing effort of ours we attempt in every website that we own and publish to adhere to uh wk 2.0 standards which is a accessibility standard and we are confident in swag its ability with either the live closed captioning or the automatic closed captioning to adhere to that we have real concerns about publishing live video without uh closed captioning meaning going with the up to four days delayed option so that said those are the two alternatives that swag it proposes the third option which we also have

146those acceptability concerns regarding is leveraging something more akin to what you saw at the board retreat back in may where we leveraged a single camera with a built-in microphone i believe i provided an update via dr balderas that provided some feedback from staff members that were watching that i'm happy to pull that back up if you'd like as well but there were concerns related to both the audio and the video of that experience while it did meet the need at the time we don't see it as one that can be appropriate when we're not in a pandemic emergency sort of situation so it is not a recommendation i believe that's the summary that you're looking for if you have any questions i have to do my best to answer this is and thanks for that

147chris what's the cost differential on the two options you brought to us tonight one more one two i just need to find the right tab so the original proposal that we shared with you was uh using a real-time human transcription service and uh this is what we discussed back in may the hardware cost for that proposal is 70 000 that's a one-time cost it is a levy fund eligible expense and the ongoing fee which is essentially a maintenance for licensing in addition to the per hour meeting rate for both the video production as well as the um the transcription is 27 000 per year the revised recommendation which leverages the um the automated 95 accurate uh accessible transcription is uh the same seventy thousand dollar hardware cost um i believe i misspoke at our board

148retreat i was under the assumption that this new tier which they had just kind of um sent out brief marketing materials on that it would allow us to scale back in hardware costs and i was mistaken about that um so the hardware cost is unchanged the annual maintenance speed reduces to 23 000 a year the third option that swag it proposes which again is not a recommendation but i did speak to briefly moments ago which is to have a four day up to four day delay does reduce hardware requirements the tune of if i'm recalling accurately about twelve to fifteen thousand dollars there's a reduction in a video and quote encoder for that requirement so a substantial hardware component is not needed if we're not doing the live or close to live transcription um i

149believe the annual maintenance fee is fairly similar regardless um thank you for that chris um i recall when we were discussing this um at the study session or retreat that we if we went through with the original proposal we would only be able to use this equipment for board meetings is that correct we wouldn't have the access to make it available for uh additional meetings that were going to be held in that space was that correct yeah i think that's a good question and that's something that i can continue to um clarify i think one of the best ways i can do that is to learn from some of our peer districts and how they use this equipment when it's not being used for swagit but we will have access to the hardware so if

150we have a need to leverage there will be a video mixer within the boardroom that can be leveraged by district staff as needed the i think the point of clarification though is the per meeting maintenance fee if you will includes an estimate for the duration of our meetings so if for example the board decided that we're going to double our meeting length which i don't think is on the in the cars today but there would be a direct impact to the ongoing costs based on the number of hours we estimate we will be in need so similarly if we decided that we wanted to leverage the boardroom and to live stream other regular meetings aside from the board meeting that would also be a costing herd of providing so i get to do that and

151is there flexibility because often our board meets go longer which is unplanned so is there some flexibility into that meeting use or will that just be an additional a la carte added on like say we go an extra couple hours um for the month of july yeah the way it is quoted is based on an estimate that we provided so i believe there will be the ability for us to modify that midstream we'd be committing for a year at a rate and then we would do a true up at the duration of that term chris thank you so much for this is nancy thank you so much for all this information and for doing all of this for us we you know how important this is for us to continue making this available to our

152public it's been great so um when you talk about this what you were just answering for karen um it is the same thing that you said true for both of these two options both the the real time and the uh the real-time transcription and then the automated transcription in terms of the increase in cost if our time goes up yes the annual maintenance fee includes a per hour rate for the video production service essentially monitoring the um the streams ensuring the appropriate cameras when it's being displayed including the names of the speakers below them like you see on a news channel that sort of work there's a per hour fee for that work and in addition there's a per hour fee for the transcription service so my my gut feeling to this is that there's

153very little difference in the cost it's a four thousand dollar difference um in terms of the maintenance fee it seems to me that because that differential is relatively small the real time transcription seems better a better option since it's not that much more costly but i might be missing something in my thinking and so i'd be interested in hearing the other people's my colleagues reactions i'd like to briefly respond and i'd welcome any other feedback that i might hear um swaget when i asked about other ways that we might be able to scale this offering or this recommendation back they were actually very pleased to offer the what they called a ai driven or a intelligent automated transcription as a proposal the reason that they they actually recommend it today over the live transcription is

154not because of cough but actually because it's a quicker and much quicker transcription if you've ever had closed caption on while you're watching a live news program you probably have seen there's a delay maybe five to ten seconds and then it'll quickly catch up and then by the time it's caught up there's a new body of text there so you might have missed something where right it's also it's also tends to be fraught with errors that's true too so all that to say they recommend the automated actually in place of the other one after we had the follow-up conversation oh that's really helpful to know i switched what i said then i wasn't trying to get you to change your mind uh no no that was that was very helpful additional information go ahead no

155no i i totally agree with that and i totally agree with your assessment of closed captioning versus automated captioning the automated captioning that we have on right now is so much superior to live closed captioning on tv i'm surprised they don't use it on tv more this is ann i i i i like the ia option um ai option because um what i know is at my at my at my work um the technical improvements on voice recognition software is amazing and so uh i i i believe that with the with the automated um captioning the way that the technology is going it's it's 95 is great um i think it's gonna get even better uh and so uh i i really do like that um that's the i'm calling it the 95 100 option

156yeah that's the one i i have just one comment and one question uh one comment is that if you want to see how this works go look at one of the lynnwood city council meetings um it is kind of cool they have the captions on the side and and with the names so you know who's talking and um it is kind of cool um but my question i guess just to confirm you're saying that something virtually free the youtube video uh captioning just really isn't adequate to you know in terms of accessibility yeah that's correct um when uh we talked about this briefly at the border street but the lack of accuracy is a problem i think the value add that swaget performs is going back and validating getting to that 100 if there are

157inaccuracies and that is not a service that youtube provides so that's correct okay so i don't believe this was before the board for a decision to be made we didn't want to have the opportunity for the board to weigh in um so dr balderas i'm not sure if any of any questions it sounds that we will be proceeding with the recommendations for the ai driven transcription services with swagger yes he thumbs up so thank you chris and harmony for your work and thank you for the board for having that discussion thank you all very much thank you next we have a legislative update with uh director chase thank you director kilgore and for everyone for hanging in there um i'm not sure how much over our board meeting time as i'm just thinking about we're

158talking about the legislative and this how um how it's going to work with our new system um but be that as it may um this last meeting i did cover quite a bit of the legislative things that are happening but i want to bring a couple things first to everyone's attention is thursday june 10th the federal relations network it has has um secured appointments with their number of our congressional representatives and the link should be in your email to rsvp these meetings are open to all school board directors and thus far i believe we have senator patty murray um uh congresswoman jai paul um let me take a look at the list um we have uh susan del benny maria cantwell a number of these women and men that are representing us are going to

159be available to talk to us about um their education priorities and i think this is going to be a really interesting if you can attend any of these we have half hour blocks with each of them and i'm actually really curious to hear more about the electrification of these school buses which rep larson mentioned a couple meetings at a different meeting and then patty murray's office reached out to me with some information that i will share with you i've not had a chance to review it as one of the priorities so just think we can ask her live this thursday um so that link will be in your email so this could be really exciting um the other things that are coming up is the legislative policy reviews um are going to be once again

160this coming june 15th i have not seen the updated report so i don't have that to share with you but there are a number of policies that um that have been put forward that for um either approval or a recommend recommended to be approval and added to our positions at our general assembly our meeting that will be in november so i will keep you updated um as that meeting is next weekend um and then the final one on the 25th for this past legislative session which was um one of the longer sessions that did end many of our legislators who have given us reports say they kept their expectations really low but they're really excited at what did get passed in some of the research that some of the other associations have done we did

161pass 335 bills and so in a zoom environment that it's really good i think however it is the lowest number of bills for 105 day session since at least 1983. so we do know that everyone's been very impacted by that of those bills there were 100 that wasda was tracking for education purposes and of that 34 of them passed and 66 did not that does not mean that they will not come back up for consideration as we move forward they're in broad categories and there's a 7 to 18 page document that i shared after the last meeting but i will do so again that generally fall under education funding equity related bills health and safety related bills professional learning which includes training for us as school board members and high school graduation related bills as

162general categories on the bills and boards they have the descriptions the timeline for implementation and board policy impacts so this is what's most interesting for us and implications for budgeting curriculum and reporting and and so this 17-page document at least not 900 pages right um has some thorough information on that and there's a few that i'm just going to point out because in a variety of conversations um we've been discussing school counseling programs and there is a bill that has just that we have a by december 1st 2021 osbi must develop and distribute a guidance for school districts and implementing a written plan for comprehensive school counseling programs and i thought that was very interesting on some of the timelines because that one's coming right up excuse me that happens to be on page 17

163of the report there are a variety of them and i'm just trying to pull up the impact what i was really trying to do is go through the budget impacts but i think lydia has been quite up to date on that with a number of the transportation issues and gustavo also or dr balderas also on some of those that are impacting that um our budget [Music] um where we are and what i would like to do is talk about how we can more fully engage our legislative representatives off um when they're not in session we have um set up a few meetings but i would like this board to consider having an event where we invite our legislators and representatives particularly i would like to invite representative ortiz self who is a high ranking member

164in the house um i do know that we had some smaller group meetings with her and we have another one coming up with representative davis but i'd like to us to think about um doing something more formal with all nine of them um maybe not all at once but a couple events and just um i'm actually kind of interested in your thoughts on how we might do that as perhaps a breast breakfast or um a zoom event similar to how we've been doing these joint board meetings with the foundations and our colleges and i think that might be a more efficient way for us to develop these relationships because honestly some of these school districts around us that have really stronger relationships between their legislators and closer connections with the superintendents the board are um

165they have they're very well informed and they're more impactful on some of the um testimony in olympia when i testified on a couple bills down there and those that we had superintendents and school board members that had been working on these particular issues for quite a while um it was impactful and so just any thoughts here um what do we think about trying to set up something maybe quarterly or um because one of the reasons is is to have more than just two board members meet with someone we need to have an open public meeting and so i'd like to get that um into um as we start thinking about the next the upcoming year calendar how we can kind of bring that in so i like the idea of having a breakfast if we

166can get many of them in the room with us um hopefully that will that opportunity will open up more you know in the fall um one thing that i guess i i heard from uh i can't think of her last name sarah in in shoreline is that um that they're doing you know she's doing sort of more regular kind of tapping into her you know monthly even not not the whole board but you know i don't know how they're doing it but she was saying that they were trying to really develop kind of a long-term reminder with with you know jesse solomon and you could see that in the bills that he sponsored that he had a pretty uh you know he was listening to them um that they had specific asks and um and

167that you know i think she was talking about how they they were having really um frequent you know maybe every month or two having you know touching base with them she did i don't know she did a really good job on follow-up after when we we did um uh meetings and some good follow-up on regular phone calls and so and zoom meetings with um those legislators so she did a really nice job on that um and we could try to do something like that some of that has to do with capacity because we have nine of them right it's just not yeah you know and so and also the way the the way it um for instance in the 21st um representative ortiz self is the go-to educator and so right right so um as

168we have like um when we were actually able to talk with her in person with the whole entire delegation um her seat mates defer to her and so so that that is just kind of makes it easier we do have some um and that is actually who we had a meeting with dr balderas with too um and i do think that that's an excellent idea i wonder if we could have i mean i hate to say it but you know have our our pet legislator you know like like whether it's her you know sometimes i think that you know say jesse is thinking about shoreline and what's happening in shoreline when he is legislating and and lillian is thinking of much teo a little bit more who is our pet legislator who's thinking about edmonds

169well we hear that remember that that those legislators that serve on the committees so so lillian ortiz serves on the education committee so along with sharon tamiko santos and so we have strong ties with edmunds to them however they're that she's not our legislator however they are the um the chairs of committees so so yes we want to have our local support but also we want to be developing relationships with those folks in leadership and so so we have an opportunity to more fully inform the legislators in the 1st and the 32nd and the 21st of the specific needs to edmonds and so that's kind of what we're talking about right now the reason i keep talking about representative t self is because she is a chair of one of the committees and um and

170i speak with her fairly regularly but we have nine and so i think we should be talking to all of them so we need to think about how that's gonna go because that is a um that is something we need to do and so how do we do that without asking staff to help right and making sure that we're not that we have the capacity to do that with online and so that's why i think if we have a meeting then we can start developing how that's going to work with all of us so if i may maybe provide a suggestion i know that what's worked the breakfast has worked for me in the past but also uh having a calendar of meeting dates and being able to have some staff on board meet with

171a variety of elected officials with a common agenda but just it starts off as as director chase mentioned what is what are the talking points how do we share information and go back to the broader board so uh maybe also suggested i know the board's gonna discuss this more tonight but uh have uh director chase maybe meet with myself lydia selly and harmony to develop an internal plan that we can help support the board with as well because we would love to be part of that discussion and bill to support the board in this because it's so important for us to do so that sounds like an ideal ideal so let's just see get a time on our calendars that might work thank you and we'll do so quickly and i i appreciate you cultivating

172these relationships this stuff yeah it's it's a and we it's not just me right i mean we have a full board here that that um that we can all be reaching out and developing relationships and talking about those things that are impacting our district um and so getting the structure around it that like officially is a district and then as things come up quickly we'll have an ability to talk to the legislators it's not just defined by um a time that we're able to get them on zoom when they're in olympia i mean so i agree with you actually karen i think what you're doing is great um and i think your ideas are really important for us um and i working with dr balderas and and a few other key staff on setting up

173a plan because i think it's important for the board to have these relationships but and and input but it's important as a as a district because we're we're a team and so i i appreciate dr balderas stepping up and saying let's sort of do this together um you know i feel like uh having a regular schedule i don't know what it would be but with the key people with lillian it might be a problem doing a breakfast because once school starts she's back teaching so i think she may be more available in the afternoon but in whatever case it is um sort of figuring out of these nine people what are the key topics we would want to talk about with each group because i think there might be different agendas with each one you

174know our local versus more general or lillian for education i don't know but i think what you're doing is great and i really appreciate you taking on this leadership for us because i think it's really important well you know what i really missed is one of my favorite things about this is going down to olympia students honestly and it was one of the the the most rewarding parts of this whole um of being a legislative rep is to go down there with students and advocate and um we haven't been able to do it for a while so let's let's look at maybe 2022 is going to be the year right on so check your check your june 10th calendar it's fun to have these meetings right it's all on zoom right so so we should

175be able to if you can jump in i'll send the link again and and we can just sit in i assume they're i know they were having a planning meeting tonight and obviously we're not there so i'd be happy to try to attend if i'm if i'm available um but i won't have much to say this time oh you might you'd be surprised and do we have a problem if we have more if we have like three of us there when we're not really i mean do we have a quorum problem public meeting problem well let's just make sure that all three of us aren't there at once so we don't have to worry about it our repeat of the meetings i can always drop off so that but we'll just double check nancy there's

176sorry i just want to say there's there's several different meetings several different legislators to speak with so maybe we can organize coordinate a little bit go ahead oh oh gary looks like gary froze or don't either oh no no i i no i was just saying that i don't think it's an issue it's similar to going to a uh wasa meeting uh you're going to a meeting and yeah you have your colleagues with you but the the meeting is not to make school district decisions the meeting is to discuss things with colleagues and that's that's written on that's not that's uh not what the public meeting act is supposedly designated to control i believe you correct gary but um so there we go okay anything else okay meeting adjourned