001and we are live for our meeting on Monday March 204th 2025 for the Columbia School District March business meeting stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with Li and Justice for All Good News yeah some great news uh talked about this kind informally but want to officially congratulate uh our High School boys basketball team for winning her first state championship in school history so you'll hear a little bit about that so I'm not going to spend too much time on it they're going to follow up on that but I just wanted to make sure we recognize um those individuals um had an event and again you'll hear about that a little bit later
002but uh just really exciting news first time ever for our district so want to celebrate that awesome okay want to hold this we certainly can try it again next month okay so we'll pull the board reorganization we move that off to April board meeting board operating principal review um we do the board OD we do superintendent uh n will you do Administration sure will you do wall yeah okay establish strong and fair policies related to the evaluation of all Columbia School District staff serve as a role model to staff by evaluating the effectiveness of board oper operations and superintendent superintendent uh support board policies regarding evaluation and approach your own evaluation as well as the evaluation of those you supervise with the serious intent uh bo Improvement Administration serve as a role model to those
003you supervise through your own willingness to be evaluated all commit to being supportive of each other's need to be recognized and rewarded for achievements as well as being counseled and assisted with concerns about per concerns about a performance me to being proactive in your own education growth and development and be supportive of the growth and development okay to the agenda we don't have any changes tonight's agenda read out just your packet and agenda in moving on to the consent agenda four items a motion to accept the consent agenda I'll second it I would note that um I can't find it here I wanted to comment on this briefly find yes um it would be interesting I think we add up um four people who were leaving I'd say there's about 120 years collective experience there
004going away I don't have the exact numbers but yes I mean it's a vast y anyway that I just thought that was worth mentioning got uh several of those folks that have been here for many many years and we'll be this next year all of them moving on to retirement well though yeah served our district well second Michael yep a motion at second any further discussion hearing none all in favor I unanimous okay okay hearing of visitors anybody like to address the board today please we will yeah okay just help us understand who you are and yeah for sure so my name is y Escalante I have a niece who just started school here um maybe a couple three weeks ago and so the reason I'm here is because I haveen we haven't really gotten
005much results from an incident that happened not sure who's aware and who's not um she was being on campus um we do have a re protection order in place um so I'm just wondering like where like I'm concerned and for the safety of my niece and for the safety of other students who attend this school just because of the way things are being addressed in my situation so I'm here I just I want to know like what can we do or how can we proceed with the situation sure did I speak with someone you spoke with me yes um I would if there's specific things I could answer I don't want to be sensitive to situation obviously because we're talking about you know individual students and things like that and there's a board meeting being
006recorded obviously so personal information I don't want to get specifically into those pieces but um if there's something I could address that wouldn't be specific to students names or the incident I'd be more than happy to address that the other one would be I'd be more than happy to sit down and meet with you or any one of you uh to address that further I know we've talked a little bit but um I'd be more than happy to follow up on any of those pieces so so a general question if we have a restraining order or protection order in place with 500 fet how do you accommodate a student uh just based on that paperwork we follow that paperwork okay for the student who has placed a restraining order or for the students who have
007offended um it would I would have to look at the specifics on that paperwork but if it's specific and there's directions to the 500 feet we'd have to make sure there's 500 feet we're just ruled by the paperwork on that okay so to my concern I don't really feel like things are being followed by the paperwork so maybe after the meeting we can schedule a personal meeting so we can go over everything y um is your name and number and all that information on the signin sheet when you come in uh my name is on there but not my phone number I'll put it include that on there I'd be happy to more than happy and all of you I can give you copies of that okay thank you anything else help any yeah I
008yeah anyone else I mean that was that was all thank you we do appreciate you coming I do appreciate that so thank you thank you again for being here tonight discussions okay I'm going to hand the over to our student representatives for our March um presentation okay for the high school a lot of stuff going on boys are official state champions that is so exciting like it's just so exciting for everybody at our school like we know these people we got to go to school with these people like we actually made history and that's just it's really hard to Fathom actually it's really hard to grasp and like being there there too was absolutely insane I know the boys are so excited and our coaches are so proud and everybody just is so excited about
009it and ly Scott W athlete of the year and for wi and so did Mr Shoemaker he won coach of the year which is super exciting super proud of them um yeah it was just unreal absolutely unreal I'm so excited I got to be there and cheer for it it's really exciting opportunity um um our spring Sports have started so um softball baseball and Frack softball is doing so great we're cooking freaking butt and we're four and0 um our most recent game was against White Swan and we won the first game 20 to one and the second one 21 to one so we're doing pretty good our coaches um brt NY and Brian melaner and Brook and Cole they're so amazing and I love them and they're doing a really good job baseball struggling a
010little bit um they're one in four but you know what they're keeping their heads up and that's what's important you know um track has only attended one meet this season and those are all individual records so I can't really tell you all of those but I think it went well I didn't hear any bad stories so um we had a parade in honor of winning the state championships that was so much fun there was like fire trucks and a bunch of cars in line and we went all around Burbank which does not take long cuz it's not very big um but that was super fun and people little for an hour though it was freezing it was freezing um especially in our chair uniforms I was very cold I did bring a blanket though I
011was prepared um oh and Mr Curtis um fell off of the trailer and broke his tibia so that is a total bummer um sending my thoughts and prayers his Direction um I would say fell off he jumped off he did jump off he really he had a a restroom emergency and jumped off the trailer um he's just a very smart man um um end of the quarter is coming up continuing yes yes um moving on from Mr Curtis um end of the quarter is coming up on Friday that'll be the end of third quarter um I think like it went by really fast but grades are coming out that's a little bit of a stressful time CU that means School Year's almost over um and then we just had a meeting the sophomore class puts
012on Sadies every year and we decided it'll be on April 19th and then Junior put on Prom and I believe it's is it May 3rd or May 10th May 3rd May 3d it's May 3rd so they're kind of close together but we decided the SES themes would be pajama themed have a little pajama jam because promise right after so we didn't want to and then the theme for promise like disco dudes and something another I don't know it sounds fun sounds pretty groovy um middle school middle school spring Sports will start after Spring Break um not sports related things P put on a dance I heard it was not that popular um but when I was in Middle School no wanted to go to dances and so it's not the pto's fault um but the
013PTO is also planning a color run which I think will be their last like event for the school year um a group of students went to CBC for the association of Washington Student leaders middle level region conference which I don't really know what that means but um it sounds like a place where they learned some sort of leadership skills which sounds great ASB leadership activities yep um Elementary School the PTO put on Bingo night and raised over $2,000 from Miss Williams really exciting that's really great news and they're planning for an AR party um only one basketball player showed up to help which was a little disappointing but kayen Ross is a great guy he's a great guy um but it's not specific to elementary school but junior crout football is being put on um
014my parents took it over um it's seven on seven it's k through eight um they have a lot of like volunteer coaches some of them are high school so that'll be a really good for the community I think and we're hoping in the fall I'm hoping to start like a junior cheerleading program for the fall um and I think that's all I have for um there's not a lot going on with the clubs this far into the school year but um FAA just has their mully campus cleanups and still they're going they're on their way to State U they leave April 23rd and we'll be there for 3 days so 23rd to 26th a knowledgeable had their state competition on March 22nd they got Ninth Place which is pretty good I think that's pretty good
015uh Honor Society has students volunteering at the bbing range every Sunday very nice people Betty is Betty is very nice um the greenhouse is coming up so a bunch of Honor Society students are volunteering to help Miss Kirk do with with the pl plant help yeah and then they're hosting a campus cleanup during spring break uh we have the blood drive further into the year and then graduation which we volunteer all week to help the graduation with flyers and another campus cleanup and a bunch of other things I just recently went to the gr for my first time and that is no joke like it's a lot of work so shout out all the Honor Society kids who do that every week cuz it's really a lot um but they're really nice people that go
016to the Grange um somebody won the raffle and gave it to McKenna because there's just really nice people out there what it was a beautiful moment beautiful Community moment that's all I have to say about that it's 5 hours long it's hard to wake up that and it's hot and and then you like smelling food after a drama club and Dungeons and dragons are on the same thing since last month very busy uh FFA has our agme practice and they're very involved with the middle school they're trying to recruit their new me their new seventh and eighth graders for next year um which is cool I didn't know they went down there to do a presentation I think that's a good idea which I think I should present F feel FFA I think it's also
017having some sort of plant sale some sort of cactuses I believe all I know about that my friend got poked with a cactus that's how I know anything else for our student reps thank you guys uh look at enrollment and budget status as we move on into reports so enrollment um you see last month we were 743 we're at 7:41 slightly down um but you see our year end average 7 44 for the year general fund we're continuing to see that work its way down towards that estimated 1.6 by the end of the year but we're still at 1.8 million at the end of February capital projects we're boing $216,000 for capital projects debt services $262,000 for our debt Services reminder that'll come and go P off our debt um year ASB up to $186,300
018[Music] for some of those buses because we'll be looking to to purchase some additional buses as early as next year so just keeping that on your radar any questions on the financials not hearing any uh before I introduce Mr Miller who obviously you know um You're Going to Hear I don't want to steal all your thunder so I'm just going to make it very short but I appreciate um the work he and his entire staff have gone through recent recently you're going to hear something called accreditation talked a little bit about if you're familiar with accreditation you already know it's something that uh it's really we'll call it insurance for our high school students credits but it's not an easy process and I appreciate Kyle and their building team navigating through that process recently um
019he'll walk you kind of through that process but it's it's a lot of work and so I don't want that to seem like uh take it lightly as if it's something just you know check that box um it's weeks and weeks of planning with on-site visits and then he does another off-site piece to this so it's a pretty heavy lift that I don't want us to lose sight of so I'll let him tell you more about that but they have just uh completed a big bulk of that process he still has one St to do so Mr Miller let jump into your presentation thank you the first part I wanted to do I ready scores just for a minute or two um she looks like that I in the State University and only included the
020sophore this year because we have not quite a with them they first tested fall of 2023 and they just finished a test um at the end of January we've got a little over a year year and semester I guess worth of test to try and get SE PLS to there um and you can see there's growth you know mean score for that same student group from the from last fall to this Winter's growth sixth grade level seventh grade level and certainly would like to see higher caveat when you look at the high charts those High charts are in terms of on level almost on level the orange and uh they are targeted at that level so for example that 2023 on level means at the nth grade level 2025 one level means at the 10th
021grade level so you don't see a lot of growth but just inherent in the pie chart is a full years growth which pretty pretty clearly achieved uh top two are reading bottom two mathematics same scenario seem set up for the student two-year growth in the world of mathematics now a year ago when I presented I kind of mentioned some of our special population program kids and the one thing that frustrated me about I ready was if they are in that gray category they could have significant growth and they're not going to show up um and it was uh brilliant Mr O'Brien who said well I'd like to know more about what does the growth look like in those categories even if it doesn't get them to grade level right so we targeted those out um
022an English language learner and the students on IEP individualized educational programs or or special services special education um between the fall of uh 2023 and then this last January on average our English language Learners in Reading years worth of grow aage mathematics two years grow s cool uh students served by special education you've got second grade to fifth grade in reading and third grade to fifth grade in mathematics so better growth out of those kids than are our non-sp special population kids shows that however sadly all of them would still be in the gray pipe chart even questions on that and thank you Mr O'Brien that I'm glad you brought that up last year thing to take a look at maybe okay so Columbia High School accreditation and by the way what you have in
023front of you packet wise is our schools little bit about what is accreditation um me high school has been accredited continuously since 1971 have some suspicion it was accredited prior to that but not continuously accit now in 1971 when States watch State didn't make heavy dictates on what school districts taught accreditation was kind of a great insurance policy was having a national or regional accreditation meant that a school of higher education you what have you um was assured you offered certain things you offered multiple years of algebra you offered technical writing yada yada yada um since then the state has dictated more and more and more and more which is why a lot of schools don't bother with princip meeting I went to 16 18 of us from theak Eastern Washington Athletic Conference and South
024Central a Athletic Conference there 16 of us and of of those in the group three of used to it's consuming so isn't super cheap year that I was here we paid about a dollar per FTE for accreditation inome six seven um one of the things that they ask you to do is to have a leadership team I was lucky enough to secure some Stellar volunteers and leadership team specifically came up with this as their mission statement to guide the staff and students and guide their own en towards inclusion and grow that was actually written by Tye that I hope when I grow up I can be almost as good as and that's Mr Ally who leads our leadership team and that's them luckily we already had a pretty solid group of Volunteers in place for
025mtss and PBIS so they were happy enough um starting spring of last year to just sort of morph into this as well they going to do double duty with the mtss and demographic profile that is not turning up away I'm missing some stuff um but I think I can do it for memory different charts there um mentioned when I first showed up in this wonderful place we had probably choiced in or students choice in 10 12 times that now um our student population was about 95 96% Caucasian and probably the biggest discrepancy or the biggest difference between then and now Cheryl steal was our elll English language learner instructor dealing with our migrant and bilingual populations I believe we had four not 4% four four kids fast forward many years now 47% represents our Caucasian
026student population 49% um are Hispanic Latino 1% black 1% do you remember Kev I don't know I didn't pop over we have black no Native American excuse me is 1% and then 2% consider themselves mixed um ethnic backgrounds so our demographics have drastically changed another part of our demographics that have drastically changed is uh lch population it was 15 18% high schools are historically under reported for whatever reason probably because kids can go to the gas station and buy a burrito instead of getting school lunch but um we are uh pushing 60% for in reduced LUN now demographics have very drastically changed a variety of way one of the things that made this rotation of accredit of the accreditation cycle pretty slick was the center for educational Effectiveness survey that Mr hillberg um every so
027ofly um because we were able to use last year's Cee data for a ton of our our school Improvement needs and and a ton of the data we have to provide them additionally we do quite a few surveys freshman um survey specifically about acclimating to the high school counselor surveys po Annie and JY Jones all do multiple surveys on students for class Comfort Equity Etc uh in the Ed educational Pathways one of the things you'll see that they um gave us a lot of Kudos on is our efforts to find kids on Camp of our goals is all about Equity one thing we knew a dozen years ago is there are middle class white and um middle class and above white students went to running start and probably shouldn't have been such a shock if
028you have a car that your parents provide you and gas that your parents provide you a good started so we had over the course of several years stting a dozen years ago minority free to reduced lunch no special population students able to get dual credit wasn't an option for them because Transportation wasn't an option for um you all were wonderful enough to help fund the Dual credit of college and the high school on our campus um between what we partner with Easter what we partner with wal Community College and CDC even we have 15 dual credit offerings right on our campus that cost kids nothing and now believe the state actually picks up that bill you guys were kind to do that for quite a few years but that's in an effort to not only
029keep brightest on campus as much as possible but to provide for kids who can't have that option of jumping in by Mom and Dad and going into CBC every day obviously we have the other options up there that's just one highlight Equity piece that identified needs and goals um that's what we both things down to based on our survey student World bu Community connections promoting Equity access equity and access supporting freshman success and advancing student achievement some of those things you probably see on just about anybody's School inclement plan for success is going to be a big part of any High School unless of course they don't have freshman at the high school then it's going to be supporting sophomore uh next up we've got the different goals um probably won't go into a ton
030of detail on that we do have I do have in your pockets and they have the smart go with the action statements and the time lines attached conferences next year are going to be pretty stellar for parent communication I'm pretty excited to be jumping on the bandwagon of the conferen hope to do a lot of parents we hope a lot of our high school and Beyond planning as well student growth staff has been Stellar this year we had a goal that everybody gets distinguished student grow gos I was into this I hope safe environment yeah we obviously heard a little bit about the frustrating bullying incident that happened a couple of years ago that one dealt with pretty well attacked it pretty hard students coun that you all provide us bullying getting in getting along
031feeling confident feeling comfortable and feeling equitus uh that's been a huge role in getting us to this point so thank you for that commitment uh freshman transition you're going to see this pretty much any school because that's the most vulnerable group of kids you have the ones that just transitioned into High School crew program hopefully will'll be up and running and we'll get those kids all Mentor EV sessions have definitely made some positive connections and hopefully that KS on work done as well final smart goal inclusive diversity this was kind of a funny one because we we got really p pattered on the back I'll show you the accommodations and recommendations but we got pattered on the back for all the work we've done in inclusion diversity Equity Etc and then told you know in
032this day and age I don't know if those are words you want to use so you're proud of us or you're not proud of us which one all keep it the way it is just you know be careful if the Department of Education goes away you might have to change that this stuff's all pretty self-explanatory um how we're getting to where we need to be and I'm sorry K I told you I was gonna ask you to jump in and then I never asked you to jump in great um self- learnings I don't know shocked by anything that we learned through the surveying and compiling the process know where our challenges lie them but it's a great process if you are your staff meetings getting people board and finally that came out was the um
033ex superintendent for wallala MC Miller superintendent Finley and pres superintendent from Star I believe Lance Han and then Terry kessie who was a longtime principal of Chiana and a CTE person prior to that we met with uh they did quite a bit of investigating around the school and supplies materials cor Etc and then met with a group of parents met with a group of students and met with a group of staff I did really find the equity as being both a pat on the back and a be careful if things change you might want to an interesting one they had a lot of real positives some things that didn't even make it up on the list um facilities said wow this place is 25 are far more than 25 years old I think um broken
034tis and the like but in general that's a pretty stellar facility pretty amazing especially now that the r does leak after 24 years so thanks Mr Hill for that um a couple of the things that they have kind of pushed us to uh explore they they weren't fond of um the Singleton version of P PLC structure like Mr Switz um our music instructor to us to try and figure out a way to incorporate that into them into a professional Learning Community a little bit better tough spot kind ofed something like that like our CSS PBIS work and said continue keep going you're doing a good job uh smart goals I thought this was a funny one we talked about that quite a bit as a leadership team um I want better measurement at our smart
035goals but ironically we use their format so if we get a pass on that one uh consider language of one language of e equity in our plan if changes need to be made in the future I'm not sure if they're foreseeing the future or not and then intervention BG ticket it sort oftion every Monday throughout the day historically we've had it as a block set of time once a week seems to so that was a strong recommendation questions Mr Miller process this time um what is the Miss what's the benefit of the accreditation touch on sure getting out of it I mean you said it's quite a bit of resources time money all that time um again historically I think um back in the day where local control was Far bigger than it is today
036creditation meant quite a bit told institutions of higher education that you reached a standard that somebody said if a kid went to that school they could expect minimums of what they're capable of they've been exposed to MLA format they've been exposed to second year algebra Etc the state just dictates so much more now I mean our our 24 credits that we have today um are very much dictated by the state in 1971 State dictated 17 credits and other 17 schools could decide 15 of them decision stringent Etc what a credit in some ways I feel like positive for us is having been continuously accredited since 1971 I'd probably be embarrassed if we lost our accreditation chose to step away from the accreditation I'd be far less embarrassed but if we lost it i' one of
037our of our area schools they've never been accredited they never did it back in the day and at this point they're thinking why why would basically accredited by the state because we do what the state dictates it does put us some it did give us some great conversations about building smart goals to help our students in a variety of ways students help our pents help our community so that regardi process it's kind of redundant we have to do jum in the short version of it would uh with the accreditation uh it's it's uh for students that when they go on it's going to guarantee uh credits you know going outside the state um there's it's unlikely for it to happen but don't have that you can pick and pull apart certain credits and sometimes things
038won't transfer and sometimes things won't because you haven't gone through this betting process of what those credits mean and represent um I think Kyle and I will both say never seen it happen happen there's always that it could happen and with that your English 101 is an English 101 there and they guarantee with that accreditation that transfers and car kids get that is that just a short version just hearing that we're one of a couple within our league that does it I mean that's a question yeah we it's also frustrating and that what we pay for our accreditation I mean like I said 20 some years ago kid so it cost us $250 in it cost Pascal High School $2,200 in 2001 now we all pay the same it's frustrating thank you pay a lot
039more than we excuse me when we look at all of our all of our peers in our leagues that have that have gone away from it though what's their justification to go away way they don't see the value they don't think it's worth it they don't they don't want to do the effort combination of all of those plus the cost some of them look at us and say why do you keep doing it I heard that question folks what do we say because the amazing M scripture loves being just to continue that just to continue at this point I think that's wise what it is I've said we need to continue it so we look at that down in the future and we did we had a conversation about it and I said right now
040for the time being we're going to continue with this so we absolutely agree positive things come from it how long is the current accreditation good for sixe cycle so we will we have one more step to do we've already been told we' have this l we'll have to go up and do a panel at the state three years from now we'll have to do an interim presentation Pro that we are achieving some of the goals we've set excuse me and then six uh six years from now we'll have to start it over okay okay thank you m Miller thank you okay I'm going to move on uh reports are done so we're flipping to the back uh Board calendar review next meeting is April 28th we'll do our standard accounts payable budget enrollment status um
041Miss key Gant will be here for CTE updates and I will have new District calendars talking about those today Kev um tomorrow so we'll have some calendars for you to look at I'll give you an update on conferences and continue our business next month okay anything further for the good of the district Michael thank you e for