001Good evening. It is May 13th, 5:30 p.m. Welcome to our regular board of directors meeting. Please join us for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Our student board rep has our land acknowledgement. Evergreen public schools resides on the traditional lands of the Shenikin peoples and the Kowitz tribe. They have lived on and cared for this land and its waterways since time immemorial. We thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgement to open a space of recognition, inclusion, and respect for all indigenous students, families, and staff in our community. Thank you. First item on our agenda is to adopt the agenda. Is there a motion? I
002move to adopt tonight's agenda. Second. Director Boken moves that we adopt the agenda as presented. Seconded by Director Grwalt. All in favor? I. I. Thank you. Our next item is a very special item. We have special recognition tonight. Um, can executive director Bobby Height, there she is. Hello. Finish making your way. Good evening, President Weatherspoon and board of directors. It is my privilege to be here tonight to recognize many of our Evergreen uh employees who are retiring from service. And I'm going to have Grip and Payton come up and assist me and Alex Shiwi come up uh to support this process. For those of you who are here tonight, um we have certificates for you and we ask that you stay so at the end of this presentation we can get capture a photo with
003you all and the board members. [Laughter] So, um, like I said, uh, we just are so appreciative of all of our Evergreen public employees and whether they've been here for 40 plus years or 5 to 10 years, they've put in, um, and have been committed to our students. students and we just wanted to take this opportunity this evening to recognize um the work they have done for our students. So, starting at 35 plus years of service and like I said, if you're here, you're going to come up and get your certificate and just hang out with us for a little bit while we go through this while we go and recognize everyone. We have Jean Lamp, Robert Proph, Dixie Trenery, Raymond [Applause] Whitmore. Should be 31 to 35 years of service. Stephen Anderson, Judy Bower,
004Beth Baldra, Michelle Haveramp, Barbara Henrikson, Lorie Hetman, Scott Monroe, Lisa Pac, Alice Rolene, Linda Zarovich, [Applause] All right. All the friendly faces serving 26 to 30 years of service. Sandra Barlo, Lauren Bradley, Bev Dobler, William Draper, Ivonne Gaylord, Devon, David Heisman, Lonnie Hucklitter, Don Johnson, Denise Lroy, Paul Luchen, Carmen Schlawitz, Renee Thuruggood, and Amy Vandermas. [Applause] serving 21 to 25 years of service. Clay Brotten, Kimberly Kazzy, Carol Doctor, Melinda Lockach, Kim Roberts, Elizabeth [Applause] Summers, Serving 16 to 20 ers Leslie Bernard, Maria Brown, Denise Ellis, Lorie Haymon, David Lmberg, Michelle Mat, Malgo, Mal Gorata, Platt, Ruth Sanchez, Stacisa Sierino, Kathleen [Applause] Zornick. serving 11 to 15 years. Linda Beldon, Sherry Krishnner, Deborah Fowler, Nancy Henry, Patricia [Applause] Russell, serving four to 10 years of service. Gina Arthur, Carol Drews, Carla Karuks, Carol Little, Karen McDonald,
005Cynthia [Applause] Meyers. All right, these are all of our recipients. Let's give them one more round of applause. We're coming up. Which way do you want? Maybe we need a second. My goodness. I'll figure it out. There we go. We need to get up just a little bit. A little bit. Does anyone else get all All right, I got everybody. Thank you so much. [Applause] way out. Does anybody want to I guess everybody's leaving anyway. I thought we were going to maybe say we were going to say something nice, but [Music] a comment. [Music] Do you have extras of these? Uh, I don't. A couple. I'll wait for the All right. Next item on our agenda is public comments. Any community member wishing to address the board may do so during the designated time on
006the agenda for public comments. Comments are to be directed to the board of directors as a whole and may not be addressed to any individual member of the board, the administrative staff, or the audience. Although the board will not engage in dialogue, the board chair may ask a speaker a clarifying question or follow up at a later time on an issue raised during public comment. Each speaker has a maximum of three minutes this evening to ensure we hear from as many voices as possible. Our first person up is Katherine Fertic. Good evening, Catherine. Good evening. Uh hello, my name is Katherine Ferdick. I have three uh students graduated from our district and one soon to be graduating, which we're excited about. Um I'm here tonight because I know and I've observed over a period of
007time how much you all um value the arts in our district. Um and as parents, we do too and our students do. Um, I've observed a really concerning and disturbing trend, um, with our theater classes. Um, they're getting cut. Um, lots of reasons that are given why, but, a lot of them, um, we're really not quite sure about. Um, our theater, um, it's a safe haven for our kids. There's a lot of kids in there um just like with band and other things that don't quite seem like they feel like they fit in a lot of um places um in school and they find their spot there and they find um belonging, they find safety, they find security um and we talk a lot about connection for kids um and the sense of belonging, but
008it feels like uh we're doing a lot of um things contradictory to that um contradictory to connection, belonging, safety, security. Um our kids need the consistency and passion of caring experienced teachers. Um especially with theater that provi are provided um cutting drama classes creates a barrier to kids that can't participate outside of school hours. And I've seen this um actually shared in a um comprehensive needs assessment uh group u from Evergreen that where they looked at the barriers to um certain groups um that had the lowest attendance and most behavior issues and they they noted that in there um that a lot of the kids can't participate in a lot of things after school hours. Um so it increases intention attendance, it retains enrollment and if kids have no connections, they will not attend and
009they certainly won't stay. Um there's been such a focus on the sense of belonging, youth truth surveys and yet for all that the very things that contribute and create uh the sense of belonging and connection are getting chipped and ripped away. Our librarians, our theater opportunities, um the kids that stand to benefit the most um from them obviously uh lose the most. We lost tech classes um at Evergreen High School. My daughter um was a district tech. We are losing those opportunities for our children there to uh get trained uh for that position and have an equitable opportunity. Um I have so many things I wanted to say and I'm running out of time. Um this has been on my mind for a long time. Um how do you illustrate the concept of belonging? we
010we get it in numbers, but um yeah uh we if we're going to ask hard questions, we need to face the answers for them. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Corey Tob. Good evening. Hi. Good evening, uh members of the school board. My name is Corey Tob and I'm a theater student at Heritage High School. I'm here to ask that you reconsider any decision to cut our theater class electives in the 2025 and 2026 school year. For me and many of my classmates, theater isn't just an elective. It's a safe space. It's a place where we can express, create, and grow freely. Theater has helped me find my voice, not just on stage, but in my life. It's where I've learned how to work as a team, speak in front of others, and how
011to handle both success and failure with grace. Cutting this class sends a message that the arts are disposable. But for many of us, theater is the only place where we feel seen, valued, and capable. It gives a voice to a quiet student and a platform to the passionate one, and a community to those who may not find it anywhere else. For many people, theater is the only class we genuinely look forward to each day. I personally struggle to stay motivated in my other classes, but theater gives me a purpose. It makes school a place I want to be, not just a place I have to be. There's a reason theater kids are known as a close-knit friend group. It gives every student a space full of inside jokes, games, and memories that last us a
012lifetime. I've never known any other classroom that felt like such a family. I want to talk about something important, something we don't always say out loud. For me, theater didn't just help, it healed. I walked into theater class freshman year carrying anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideiation. And I walked out feeling like I had a place I belonged. The first step to suicide prevention is creating a community where depression doesn't thrive. Creating a community that listens, understands, and relies on each other. And that's what theater is. When you're in a dark place, having a reason to get out of bed in the morning means everything. Theater gives us that reason. It gives people who care and are passionate a safe space where we're accepted and loved as we are. And those moments of joy remind us
013that life is worth living. Every day, I know that part of my class schedule is going to see my friends and laugh and learn about something I love. I know without a doubt that for me and many other students, this has saved lives. I'd like to close with something said by Dne Ford, a senior who joined theater this year. Before actually being a part of theater, I was genuinely terrified of it. I wanted to do it for the longest time, but I was just so scared. Once I finally joined, I realized I've never had so much enjoyment doing anything. I'd never felt successful before theater. I had no idea I would be able to talk to people, make more friends, finally be able to overcome these troubles I've had my whole life. I just had
014never really had any motivation to do anything until I joined theater. And now so much has happened. I've made an ungodly amount of friends. I've made so many memories. Mr. Jackham got me into it. He got me into it. And I just want to say it is possible to change your life with one class, one teacher, one friend. I know these decisions aren't easy, but I'm asking you kindly to see the value theater brings to students and keep this program alive. Thank you for listening. Thank you, [Applause] Dana Tob. Good evening. Good evening, board of directors. I'm Dana Ta. I am a parent of three evergreen students. Two have graduated. My last one is my daughter here. There's been a lot of things over the years that I've seen. Um, we've been 13 years in
015the Evergreen School District. There's a lot of things I want to talk about, but this one is the one that's bringing me to the podium. My daughter's success in school has been because of theater. You just heard her. We have struggled. We are now at Legacy High School online because of what's happening in classrooms. She can go to theater. She can go to drama class. she can be at Heritage with her friends that she's been at school with since elementary school. She came here as a kindergartener. So what do we do now next year? She doesn't have those friends. She won't go to Heritage. She won't have that elective class to be there with her community where she belongs. So that's what I'm facing as a mother is fear because of drama class being cut.
016Second, I'm also a voter. I'm also a homeowner and I pay property taxes and I voted for a levy. My money is going to enrichment programs. I'm I'm told, right? Theater enrichment, arts, these are all very important things. Let's talk about the arts. Um there's floral design, right? I don't know you guys cutting floral design, you cutting pottery, 3D digital art, you know, what are you cutting in the arts? Those are great skills. That's creativity. There's art there. I'll go back to floral design. You can Yeah. create a business. You can learn to sell things. You can build a product. There's a lot of skills. There's a lot of skills being built there. However, theater teaches soft skills, confidence, self-esteem. Uh my daughter was sharing with me they share about feelings. They talk about characters.
017They have character development. Boys are talking about their feelings in drama class. They can be silly. They can be witty. They can make mistakes and they come home and they laugh about them. It becomes an inside joke that they share. We had closing night. We had so many parents wrap around these kids. We raised more money theater booster group that we came together and now we told that they don't have a drama class. Sure, they have theater, but where are they going to get the kids from if they're not exposed to the classroom? If they're not put in there because another class was full. Some of these kids come out of there going, "I never thought I would be a character on stage." Please, please bring drama back. Don't cut it. Don't make it the
018thing you cut. Thank you for listening. Thank [Applause] you. The next item on our agenda is to adopt the board consent agenda. Is there a motion? I move to adopt tonight's board's consent agenda as presented. Second. Director Grwalt moves to adopt tonight's agenda as presented, seconded by Director Perkins. All in favor? I I. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is to adopt the superintendent consent agenda. Is there a motion? I move adoption of the superintendent's consent agenda as pre as presented. Second. Director Perkins moves to adopt the superintendent consent agenda as presented. Seconded by Director Wilson. All in favor? I. Thank you. Next item on our agenda is our superintendent report. All right. Well, good evening. As you can imagine, um, in miday there are a thousand things happening. And if you have children
019in school like I do and I know some people out here as well um you have lots of activities, lots of lots of endofear um celebrations and um tomorrow I have a track meet I'm going to be heading to in the afternoon. So there's lots of things that are happening. Um so I want to highlight a couple of things that um I think is important for not only the board to kind of hear. I know those soup reports for the board but also it's nice to be inform the audience as well on a couple of things. Um, first I want and foremost I want to start off with um last week May 5 through 9th was National Teacher Appreciation Week and I want to start with that. Um, so to our evergreen uh school teachers,
020thank you so much for choosing to dedicate your time, your effort, your energy to educating our community's greatest treasure, which is our children. And thank you for educating mine as well. Thank you for dedicating counselor's hours to plan engaging lessons to take time to communicate with parents and families and to establish relationships with students. And that is so important, the work that you do day in and day out and minute by minute during the day. So, a huge thank you to all of our Evergreen School teachers and I want to make sure we said that. Okay. Um, I also want to talk a little bit about uh an an event that uh President Weatherspoon and Director Perkins and I attended and uh this was the Mountain View High School and I'm hope I pronounced this
021correctly. If not, I'm sure somebody can correct me on this one. Is um Cay Prade dual language graduation class celebration. Is that close? I got a thumbs up. All right. Okay. For this graduation celebration, I was actually asked to give one of the introductory speeches and I have a special connection with dual language. Um, even though I personally do not speak Spanish, my mother is fluent and she was the first bilingual uh teacher in Grand View, Washington for kindergarten of the whole program has started. I actually found the article the other a couple of weeks ago in some of my mom's uh files and uh shared that with with the group and I talked about how by being bilingual for uh the students that were graduating is a superpower and unbeknownst to me in the
022uh program that was uh beautifully done by the way um by our staff um Yasa if I'm did I say that word correctly? Yas. Yasi. I did not say that correctly. Okay. Um, she actually wrote in her, uh, short biography that being bilingual was a superpower as well. And I thought that was a great connection because it is, it opens the world. Um, you can share your story in two different languages and bridge cultures. And, um, they are going to go out and do amazing things, these students. Um, so I wanted to make sure I also acknowledge our dual language coordinator, um, Adriana Garcia, and our director of multilingual learners, uh, Veronica, uh, Mag Yanes. um they did a incredible job with this um event and there's many many other staff members who contributed their
023talents and their expertise to help make that event very special for their families and the graduates. So that was the first graduation of a long series of events that we'll be doing um at the end of this school year. I want to draw your attention to the Washington School recognition program. We have seven schools um that have um received recognition on their performance of the SBA for the 2023 24 school year. So not last not this year but the year before. Um so we had five elementaryaries, two middle schools and one high school. And they're being recognized for closing gaps um for growth andor achievement. And I'll be receiving banners for these schools um this Friday at a meeting I'm heading to to pick those up. And we'll have more information to come and more
024details for the board so that we can celebrate the great work that those staffs are are doing um for um the kids in those schools and all of our schools are doing great uh work with our kids but these ones were recognized through the Washington state school recognition program. Okay. Uh great news for Emerald Elementary. So the great emerald flood that we had uh we put in for a waiver and that was approved. So just want to let you know that. That means that our Emerald Elementary staff and students do not have to come back for an extra day after everybody else is gone. So, um they will be able to um end their school year with everybody else in the district. And um creating and maintaining safe school environments is something that is definitely
025close to my heart and I've talked about this in a variety of different uh superintendent reports um previously. Um but on last Thursday um myself and I believe it was 12 if I counted correctly other district and building administrators we got together down at the ESD12 and we participated in the Clark Regional Schools reunification exercise. This was hosted at ESD12 like I said and we were joined by other Clark County school districts, the Vancouver Police Department, Clark County Sheriff's Department, fire, city officials, Cresa and other pertinent stakeholders. This was a massive event. We filled that conference center. Um it was facilitated exercise that included um district level tabletop discussion with a coach that was assigned to us, large group functional exercise, a regional framework application and a facilitator led debriefing of the whole event. It's
026really really important that we are prepared and we practice our uh what we need to do in case there is a large-scale emergency. And for us, the scenario was a a train with a chemical um on board that was released chlorine gas. And we needed to evacuate not only schools, but the surrounding areas as well. And so, how would we communicate to each other? How do we uh communicate across entities and make sure we're all speaking the same language? And we have a plan and reunification sites that are um already identified. And um I want to commend our uh safety and security department. They have done a phenomenal job helping lead that work. And so when we went through our exercise, um we felt really good about where we're at. There are of course always
027things that we can improve, but that practice and the preparation really does help us respond to help make sure that we keep our staff and our students safe in the event of a large-scale emergency. So that was quite an undertaking to have that many people in a room going through that practice for emergency. Um and the last thing here is um Evergreen Public Schools and I found out about it just recently. We have 60 plus years of this tradition. And I wonder if you can guess what that is. Children's I'm putting you on the spot. Okay, I I'll I'll I'll tell you. It is track meet, elementary track meet 60 plus years. I had no idea. That's amazing. Um and so um Dan Mertz and his wife um I actually met met his wife. She
028does a lot of the the background support of this as well. Um but he is our um elementary PE curriculum coordinator and our Harmony elementary PE teacher and he helps kind of coordinate and run all of this. So um he's been doing that for 27 years. Okay. Sent me an email said, "Hey, you want to come check this out?" And so I d I dragged my husband out. Didn't have to drag him. He was actually kind of excited to go. And um the amazing So there are five track meets that he puts on. Did three last weekend to this to this current weekend we just had. And so I went to one of those track meets and the kids were were just having a blast and uh parents were there and they were volunteering and
029the the pride in the ribbons and the participation that the students showed was just amazing. So it's a great event. So if you ever get a chance to drop by that um event next spring um I'll make sure that you all know. So that was a wonderful thing that they have going there. So um those are just a couple of the highlights of what's happening um in my world right now. So thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is a human resources presentation um with senior director Tracy Thompson. Welcome. Good evening, President Witherspoon, board of directors, and Dr. Maloney. I'm make sure I push the correct thing. In compliance with state law, Evergreen Public Schools is committed to providing the public full access to records concerning the administration and operations of the
030district. I've linked the policy procedure and the form for your convenience. Of course, it's not just that simple, right? There are exemptions to the P to protect privacy. Identifiable record can sometimes be difficult for a requesttor to articulate or might produce thousands of records in an email search. While the P is intended for transparency, it is not intended for districts to create records that don't exist or to interfere with the administration and operations of the district. It is important to note in our own district policy in compliance with law. The board has declared by formal resolution that trying to maintain a current index of all of our public records or calculating the costs trying or calculating the cost of producing public records given the multiple types of records and fluctuating cost of supplies and labor
031would be unduly burdensome. That being said, P has had an impact on school districts and we wanted to provide the board with an overview of the impact of the P on Evergreen Public Schools. So, who makes public records requests? A wide variety of uh groups, individuals make public records requests. It's important to note that uh it's non-furpa requests from parents that it falls under a different law and a different policy, policy 3231, and are tracked differently than um the public records requests. The district tracks public records requests from September 1 through August 31st each year. As you can see from this chart, there has been an upward trend in the number of requests. The chart shows that the year-to-ate number of requests have already surpassed last year's total number of requests. Another way to look
032at this is the monthly average. Typically, we have 22 or 23 work days in a month. The rising average requests per month has an impact on district resources. For illustration purposes, if a record request took one day to process, which most of them take a lot more than one day to process, last year it would have taken just over half of the working days in a month. This year it's taking threequarters of the working days in a month. Again, this is to provide a rudimentary illustration and not actual time for completion as most record requests are much more complex. This slide gives you a sense over the last two years about who are requesting the records. When you look at the number of records, I'm going to go back a couple. When you look at
033the number of records um from 20 1920 which was 33 and 2021 which was 59 and then you look at this grapher by type you can see that there's a an increase occurring in the individual and group requested rates in the last couple of years. So, it's simple to say the district has to comply with the Public Records Act, but who does the work when we get a public records request? The district's parallegal has been identified as the public records officer for EPS. It's important to point out that the parallegal's sole responsibility is not public records. The parallegal position is also responsible for managing district insurance information and claims, incident reports across the district, court orders and parenting plans, etc. These other parallegal responsibilities are paramount to support schools and to ensure school and student
034safety. The increase in public records requests has had an impact to the time and responsiveness to these other paramount responsibilities. What impacts the parallegal's time beyond fulfilling the request itself? Not all requesters understand how to request an identifiable record. So there's often clarification needed. Certain records must be reviewed for exemptions under the P and the record may either may either be exempted or redacted. Legal legal clarification is sometimes needed from our attorneys. Some requesters don't want or need the actual document, but would like to view the public record or records, and the parallegal schedules time for those in-person viewings. During that time, the parallegal is not able to respond to other record requests or do her other parallegal responsibilities. In-person sessions can take several hours at a time. Other resources are used as the IT
035department. We have a couple of employees in IT who work with the parallegal on public records requests involving email searches for example and they were unable to do other work while the reports were running. It was um jamming up the computer uh system. So the district had to dedicate an additional laptop to each of these employees for purposes of running reports so they can remain productive during cycles when the report is running for public records. Fiscal services recently sent two employments down to records and it took them hours of looking through boxes for invoices related to a public records request. We've cut positions at district office including in the fiscal department. So this time away from their desk is impactful on other employees, other departments etc. And as I highlighted with the parallegal position, it
036is important to note that when our principles, assistant principles, deans, security, and teachers are required to produce records for requests under P, it takes time away from their responsibilities directly related to teaching and learning and student safety. November was the first month we started um having legal fees separated in the billing for um public records requests. Legal assistance has been required to support the district's compliance with the P in response to the increased number of requests. HR has also been impacted by position cuts and we cannot distribute the increase in the parallegal workload to others in HR as they have already taken on additional responsibilities due to the reductions. So what's the trends going forward? This year, the trend has been there's been more anonymous or unchartered groups that are requesting records than individuals. For
037September to April, comparing 2324 and 2425, public record requests are up 52% for the same time period last year. We are on track to receive 106% increase in requests this year over the 23 24 school year. These uh comprehensive and vast requests also take more time. So for example, fewer requests are just for a specific record or specific invoice. Um it's more records are for things like all records sent or received by X for the months and years um to the blank months and years or all records related to X for certain months and years containing key search terms. It can be an employee name, it can be a school name, it can be an educational term like school improvement etc. So what is the impact for the district for these continued trends? These trends,
038these upward trends and these larger requests will result in larger volumes of records to review, redact, process, longer response times to complete production, and increased time employees will need to dedicate towards requests and away from other responsibilities. I know we have a busy schedule tonight, so thank you for your time. And I think if you have questions, I think we're having you give them to Lori. Thank you. Thank you, Tracy. I just wanted to say thank you for your years of service with us. I tried to get away from it, Rob. Well, you know, thank you. I appreciate the work that you've done. The next item on our agenda is our teaching and learning and equity update. Dr. Fox Thank you, Dana. Good evening. Good evening, President Weatherspoon and members of the board. This year,
039I have been bringing to you regular updates from teaching, learning, and equity, demonstrating our commitment to core values outlined in our strategic plan. Specifically in our core value of excellence through learning, we say quote, "We set high standards and hold ourselves and our students accountable in order to provide the highest quality equitable educational experience for every student. Well, in teaching, learning, and equity, our aim is to create systems that serve our schools, classrooms, staff, and students. And clickers are supposed to serve the presenter when you push the right button. But I am unsuccessful at this time over here. There we go. That one. All right. Push harder. This year you've heard from uh directors in all of the TLE departments and hopefully you remember this graphic and hopefully you are seeing our effort to work
040collaboratively and to support schools towards student success. I kind of view our our team TLE like a puzzle where each piece is an important part of the larger picture. And this evening we're going to focus on assessment and accountability and how we communicate with our community regarding student progress. And so in a moment Dr. Fowler will come to the podium to talk about the EPS data dashboard. And she'll be followed by assistant director of student services Jason Castro who will bring an update on improved attendance across the district across the district. So Dr. Fowler, would you get us started on the data dashboard? I'll click the button for you. There you go. You're not gonna be my van. It's the one on the right. Okay. I'm glad that you got that figured out for us.
041Good evening, President Weatherspoon and board of directors. Henry Kissinger famously said, "If you do not know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere." His words underscore the importance of having a clear vision and direction because without them even well-intentioned actions can lead us astray. That's why we've developed this data dashboard. Oh, it worked. To bring clarity and purpose to our efforts and to ensure our direction is visible and shared. Designed by our talented graphic designer Aaron Winterong, the Evergreen Public Schools data dashboard is more than a collection of numbers. It's a visual representation of our journey toward continuous improvement. Each metric displayed serves as a mile marker, helping us and our community see where we are, how far we've come, and where we still need to go. These highle indicators offer a
042snapshot of our organizational health and anchor our work in evidence, not assumptions. Our goal was to transform complex data into a clear visual format that supports meaningful interpretation by all audiences. Through multiple iterations, we focused on answering one essential question. How are we communicating our progress toward the goals that matter most for student success? Each section of the dashboard is directly tied to a strategic plan goal area, offering an overview of our progress and overall success in achieving district improvement goals. While this dashboard provides highle view, it is just one way we track our ongoing work. The data represented here reflects the culmination of year-round efforts, planning, adjusting, and responding to the needs as they arise. As a team, we rely on a wide range of data points, both qualitative and quantitative, throughout the year
043to help tell a more complete story and to guide our daily work. As we move forward, this dashboard is more than just a tool. It's a reflection of our commitment to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement. It ensures we are not just collecting data, but using it to make informed decisions that benefit our students by aligning our actions with clear goals and openly tracking progress. We're not just hoping for improvement. We're planning for it. We're measuring it and we're learning from it. In doing so, we ensure that every step we take is purposeful and every road leads us closer to the destination that matters most, student success. One of the most immediate and measurable ways we can see the impact of our efforts is through student attendance. So, I'm happy to invite up Jason Castro, our
044assistant director of student services, who will provide an update on our attendance endeavors. This button also works. Good evening. I have the privilege to report districtwide that our attendance rate is up 8% from last year to this year. I thought I would pause for a fact. 8%. As a reference, we measure the percentage of students that attend school 90% of the time or more. Um that is what the percentages that you will see on the upcoming slides mean. First um as we look at individual races when you examine attendance by race as a district we have improved in six of seven categories. The one category that we did not improve on is still sitting at 75% of attendance rate which is 25% higher than our district average. When you examine attendance by federal program, as
045a district, we have improved in five of seven categories. I would also like to point out that in the gifted category, we remained the same from last year to this year. In our March celebrations, this is what we do monthly. 28 of 32 school buildings showed improvement from last year to this year. These numbers again are from March, but this has been a consistent trend all year long. And what does this mean? By far, the day that my team and I look forward to the most is the Alpha Attendance Award Day, aka Big Check Day. Okay. And the big check day goes to the school with the highest percentage of attendance improvement for that month. Um so this was a picture from Marian Elementary School just this past month. Um we have presented at assemblies.
046We've presented at uh in during passing time at a high school. Uh we've presented um at a staff meeting. Um whatever pertains best to to the school that's that's um that's hosting us. I added the video up there if if you are curious later um to see the the full video of the presentation. I also wanted to with our attendance website. This is what my team and I have created districtwide as a attendance website. Um it is also linked to this slide. Um but in the name of time I just took a screenshot. This is the top of our attendance website where we are keeping track and and celebrating each of the buildings that are showing the most growth. Um, and these are a couple of our big check photos. Um, I guess in closing,
047I would just like to highlight a few of the many tier one attendance supports you see in nearly every building. When you go out from building to building, whether it's elementary or high school, you see sandwich boards with the daily attendance rate listed outside the main office. You'll have grade level competitions, whether it's a March Madness bracket or color competitions. Um, you have just some friendly competitions going in the buildings about who can show up more than somebody else. Recognition letters are sent home for improved attendance. kind of a cool thing getting a letter from your your school saying positive things. The big three identifying at least three adults that each kid would connect with. Um as well as attendance teams and collective consistent messaging that's going out to families. This gives you a little
048snapshot of what's going on and what's actually being responsible for this this 8% improvement. Um, thank you and I look forward to returning and giving the the yearly full picture of of our total um, improvement. So, thank you. Thank you both Heather and Jason for helping with the TLE update this month. It's important that we monitor our progress, the progress on the goals that we've set. And we believe the EPS data dashboard will help us and our community remember our goals and monitor our progress. With increased attendance rates, we can expect to see increased student performance. So, that data point is really exciting to us as well. And in Evergreen, we value student voice as an important data point as well. Research tells us that student perceptions are directly linked to academic outcomes and student
049well-being. So, we use a tool called youth truth to gather student feedback data which can inform decision-making. At your next meeting on May 27th, Dr. Jamila Singleton will provide a report on student perspective youth truth data for spring of 2025. and we will also share data on the focused interim assessment block for math and we're looking forward to that in two weeks May 27th. This concludes the TLE update. Thank you. Thank you. The next item on our agenda is policy development board superintendent relationship. Recently at a workshop, we reviewed and discussed our board superintendent relationship BS SR1 single point of connection policy. Um Rob is going to I'm sorry, Director Perkins is going to discuss and explain the revisions. All right. Thank you. Um the first item we have to discuss is uh board superintendent
050relations one a single point of connection um in which in the workshop we reached a consensus to strike uh the text that you see struck uh on the screen there. Um and my recollection of the reasoning behind that is that it makes uh the policy far less ambiguous as to um who the single point of connection is. Um there was some ambiguity. We discussed whether that meant uh that we had a connection through members of the superintendent's cabinet and uh and decided to just make it clear. Um so at this time I recommend the board accepts the revisions for BSR1 single point of connection as presented uh for first reading and move it forward for a second reading and approval. Um and I'm happy to bring the motion u as I just described it. Do
051we have any comments from the audience? Seeing none, um you've done a motion. I move that the board accept uh the revisions for BSR one single point of connection as presented. Second and for the first reading and then move it forward to the second uh reading and approval next time. So, director Perkins recommends the board accepts the revisions for BSR1 single point of connection as presented for the first reading and move it forward for the second reading and approval. Seconded by director Growalt. All in favor? I posted. Thank you. Uh is there are there any questions from the board? All right. Our next item is our next um BSR BSR2 single unit of control. Director Perkins. So BSR2 single unit of control again the consensus was to make the policy clearer uh and also to
052recognize that one of the phrases unless the board has specifically delegated such exercise of authority uh was not something we'd ever done or or planned to do as a board. Um and that's with respect to uh the board assigning one of us uh to um give directions or instructions to officers or um to the superintendent without uh the rest of the board being involved in in a formal action. So again, this makes it clearer uh is my recollection from the workshop. And um I'm going to recommend that as before, let me see if I get this right, that we accept those revisions uh for BSR1's or BSR2 single unit of control as presented for this first reading and move it to second reading and approval. Are there any questions from the audience at this time?
053So I move that we accept the revisions to BSR2 as presented. Second. Director Boengra moves that we um accept the revisions to BSR2 single unit of controls presented for the first reading and move it forward for the second reading and approval. Seconded by Director Grwalt. Are there any questions from the board? All in favor? I opposed. Thank you. Our next item is BSR5, Superintendent Accountability, Director Perkins. Thank you. um the only revision to BSR5 uh that we reached a consensus on we my recollection is that we all thought it was fine uh but that our um summit of evaluation of the superintendent uh has for years uh happened over the course of several months like with a mid-year review and then discussions with the president and so forth so that we have our summited evaluation
054um annually rather than pinning it to each May and that's the only change is that uh we're going to make things more flexible for ourselves and the superintendent uh with respect to accountability measures. Um and I recommend that we advance this change for uh approval and uh and go to second reading. Are there any questions any comments from the audience? Is there a motion? I move that we accept the revision to BSR5 as a first reading. Move to a second reading. Second. Director Bokenra moves that we accept the changes as presented for the first reading and move it forward for the second reading and approval. Seconded by Director Growalt. Any questions from the board? I think just the comment that uh uh if members of the public are um learning about this for the first
055time that there are two weeks uh and that they can call into the district offices or give us a call uh with questions about uh or comments uh that we can review at the next meeting before approving it for a final u adjustment to the policies. Thank you. All in favor? I I opposed. Thank you. So, all of these will be brought back for a second reading on May 27th and a vote to approve. The next item on our agenda is informational. We have our financial statement for March 20 of this year and we have anformational item on our highly capable program. Next, we have um board comments. I'm going to be really brief tonight. I just wanted to point out that I was lucky enough to go to the children's culture parade um recently
056and I've experienced it as a parent. So, this is my first time actually, unfortunately, standing in front and having to sing and walk at the front of the parade. Um but it was a lot of fun and the kids were amazing. They had really wonderful posters and each school seemed to approach it somewhat differently and the kids just were super into it. The parents were super happy. We had the most glorious weather and I really appreciate everybody who was able to attend and uh Dr. Fox gave an impromptu speech and he did a great job. So, thank you. I uh want to add to that that it's one of my favorite events. It's like the month of May is just a celebration month. And I'm so glad that uh I was able to go once
057again uh to the parade. Not to march in front of it. That's uh not my favorite part. Uh but to watch the kids as they come into the fort uh to listen to the Covington band who brought a choir this year, which is the first time I think uh that the marching band has included the choir in a parade uh in my memory. And mine goes back all the way to the 80s. So, that was really unique. It got the mayor singing along because she knew the lyrics to the song that uh the kids didn't. Hey, Baby. Yep. Hey, Baby. Uh but it was uh so much fun to have that music just right behind us and and to listen to how good they are singing and playing um and how much fun they were
058having, too. Um, I enjoy the parade because um we get the kids to um shout huzzah. And yes, I have a recording again, but I'm not going to play it this time. Uh, but also that this time we didn't we didn't have a color guard from an ROC unit uh for our district. Um, and so the kids gave the pledge of allegiance and a student held up the flag uh on the on the podium or roster or front porch of uh the Mclofflin house. Um there's just something remarkable about hearing 1,000 third graders say the pledge of allegiance almost in unison. And uh I got a recording of that, too. Uh so those are good memories uh for me. Um I also want to uh point out and give my thanks to a couple of
059the retirees because I so four names um that I recognized from our our retirees this year. Uh, Linda Zarkovich was my three of my kids kindergarten teacher at Burnbridge Elementary. Uh, Mrs. Z always made a safe space for them and I really appreciate that. Scott Monroe as you know uh, and my gratitude for his uh, years of quiet um, inclusive leadership. Uh, and Lonnie Hawk Halter who saw all my kids through middle school as an associate principal and Lauren Bradley who's uh, one of our leaders. Um, I'm gonna miss him. Well, I'm and I'm going to wish him all the best. And that's what I have to say. I want to thank each of the members of the community who spoke tonight. And um, the theme there was theater. And I don't know if I
060should have known of any prospective cuts coming in the next school year to theater, but I off the top of my head, I hadn't heard of any. So, um yeah, it's something we need to consider uh your feelings there and the impact. So, thank you. And also, um thank you for the look at um the public records requests. I I know I just happened to have asked to look at two of our um Stevens Clay invoices and for a particular month and one of them I noticed was all it was $31,000. It was a February invoice and it was all looked like it was all related to public records requests and I didn't or didn't realize that we had that much of an expense in redacting public records requests and maybe we can look at
061down the road possible you know what the um our legal a parallegal person can do in in that respect or but yeah it it was a little bit shocking there of how much that that cost. So, um yeah, hopefully we can find some workaround or but thank you. I'm going to be heading to WASDA board meeting this weekend. So, I'll do a report back our next meeting. And then I also wanted to say thank you for um doing the recognition of our retirement celebrations. That was really fun. It is now 6:34 p.m. The board is going to go into a brief recess and then we're going to sign uh to sign papers. We're going to have a workshop on curriculum presentation, legislative update, board protocols, and calendaring followed by an executive session. Good evening. [Music]