001good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's regular board of directors meeting it's March 25th the time is 5:31 please rise 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 liy and justice for all all right director boeger is going to read Our Land acknowledgement thank you Evergreen Public Schools resides on the traditional lands of the shukan peoples and the Kat's tribe they have lived on and cared for this land in its waterways since time IM Memorial 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 all right next on our agenda is to actually
002adopt tonight's agenda um I need to make two changes we need to postpone item number eight the asset PR preservation program presentation and item number 11 the student board rep report those both will come back on our agenda for April 18th unfortunately excuse me yeah April ail 15th unfortunately uh they were not able to be with us tonight entertain a motion move adoption of tonight's agenda as amended second right director Perkins did you get that okay okay all in favor I I any opposed all right next is our performance we'll go ahead and call forward Ken armston to introduce tonight's performance for us [Applause] do you want what what's what's the name of your song we're playing okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] not [Music] tropical [Music] [Laughter] [Music] for [Music] Fore for [Music] El noo B
003[Music] speee [Music] [Applause] do you have any questions for the group I do have a question so well first of all I want to say the young man that was singing you have a very powerful voice excellent job um and then to all of you so uh when you were introduced it was the group was formed this year does that mean is this a class or is this like a group that that you formed outside of all of your other band classes cuz you it's outside of class kind of like a club I guess so all of you just got together and decided you are going to play the this kind of music and get together and that's awesome it was perfect with the weather today so thank you that's amazing you guys did a
004great job and thank you for taking time out of your evening to join us was a great thank you I have a couple of questions I would like to know the name of large instrument directly to your right this is called a guitaron guon neat and uh what was the song called again de Mara dear I mean near the ocean oh okay oh Mar okay beautiful I just enjoy mariachi music so much it's just some of the greatest music thank you for coming in thank you thank you all thanks for having us and happy um March is music in your in your in the school's month so uh we're excited to get to play during this month of March for music so thanks thank you okay next am I on yep next on our agenda
005is public comments seeing that we have none signed up we will go ahead and move on to the next item our board consent agenda entertain a motion I move to approve the board consent agenda uh second we have first director banega second director Wilson all in favor I any opposed carried next is the superintendent consent agenda adoption go ahead Gary oh I move adoption of the superintendent's cons agenda second right moved by director Wilson second by director Perkins all in favor hi hi any opposed okay sorry we are moving through the agenda so fast I need to catch up with myself actually I just go up there okay the superintendence report that's easier all right good evening um I've been out in schools and at different events activities hosting several listening sessions over the last
006couple of weeks and I'm involved in a wide variety of community outreach as well um I have scheduled for you tonight a very informative teaching learning and Equity department presentation this evening so for the superintendent report this evening I'm going to share on three different topics uh regarding Staffing staying the course and spring okay notice I did the literation there with the s's okay so Staffing we are in the season of spring but if you're in education particularly in administration we common refer to it as the Staffing season okay the team in HR and in fiscal have been working very very hard and based on projected enrollments we have now allocated Staffing to all of our schools I attended each of these three Staffing meetings with principes as they receed their numbers this week principals
007then go back to their teams and begin to think about how to create a master schedule based on allocated FTE or Staffing um with student choice because students have had to choose courses that they're interested in taking they have the musthaves and then they have their elective courses this is very hard and complex work and takes hours and hours I've been a principal myself for many many years and it is complex okay it lasts not only through the spring but sometimes uh uh looking at your master schedules and Staffing will continue through the summer and then even we have to make changes sometimes in the fall when more students show up or less students show up physically in our classrooms so we monitor that very closely I would like to especially thank uh Joy HRI
008and Jessica Howell from the human resource department they manage these incredibly complex Staffing spreadsheets and so I got a little glimpse into their world when I was at the Staffing meetings the other day um but that is a humongous task and they have to be so detailed and precise to make sure that the right staff person is assigned with the right certifications to the right courses and we fulfill their requirement of their contract so if they're a point2 or they're point8 or whatever that may be and so there's lots of things that go into and I've only touched the very very C Surface of it okay for the second s um staying the course if you've been watching the news lately you may have heard about several executive orders Andor dear colleague letters that have
009been coming out of our federal Administration lately I am in constant communication with local superintendent our local Education Service Department 112 and attend bi-weekly meetings with our state superintendent Chris reall in fact on Friday he came in person to the esd112 to speak and answer questions from the region superintendent here in Southwest Washington here in Evergreen Public Schools we will keep the main thing the main thing we are going to follow our mission statement Evergreen Public Schools removes inequities by supporting affirming and growing each student to prepare them for Success while they are with us and after they graduate we will also stay true to our core values that are listed in our strategic plan the core values are Equity inclusion and belonging pursuing Excellence through growth building empowerment through learning staying student centered and
010creating Excellence through learning every child deserves to feel value valued seen heard and be provided with the supports and skills necessary for them to be successful in a postsecondary opportunity and we will continue to do that in Evergreen Public Schools and it will continue to keep the board apprised of things um that may possibly impact or won't impact Evergreen Public Schools as we work our way through this season so spring the 3D s has sprung the sun is shining as you can see from outside spring sports are in full swing literally that pun was intended because we just had a huge multi-district I think it was called baseball Arium tournament I hope I'm saying it correctly um this last weekend managed by our own assistant director of student services Jason Castor I want to make
011sure I call him out um and my first pitch was rained out I was supposed to do the first pitch with Dr Heather Fowler but there was so much rain so they postponed it so we'll get to do a first pitch at a different baseball game later on this season um as and spring uh Springs students tend to be full of lots of energy this time of year and staff and administrators are working really really really hard to support our families and our students in education March is sometimes considered one of the longest months so a spring break just around the corner I'd like to encourage all of our staff to take some time to relax and rejuvenate over the next week I would want them to continue to spend some times or find time
012to spend with friends and families and maybe just take some time for themselves when you're in education finding balance between your professional and your personal life is hard but is very very important because we enter education to take care of others to serve students to serve our community and sometimes we put ourselves on the back burner so I do want to make sure I acknowledge the hard work that our staff and administrators are doing on a daily basis um and encourage them to take some time so I wish each of you a very happy and relaxing spring break stting next week thank you wonderful thank you all right next is a budget presentation from Chief Financial Officer Jen Jennifer Jacobson hi good evening everybody and uh happy to be here tonight get this plugged in
013all right so I've prepared a financial report for you we have a few different sections I'm going to talk about um first I want to just give you an update on our annual audit report um next I'll talk about the 2425 projection so we can see where we're at this year we're now halfway through the fiscal year we go through August and so February was our halfway C off Mark so it's a good time to to assess and look at where we're at um I'm also going to talk about two different scenarios for 2526 so as we're sitting here with the state legislature out and um a lot of things going on right now I think it's it's important we kind of weigh the different scenarios um and then I'll end up with just a
014slide on our federal funding because I know there are a lot of questions out there about what you know how much do we receive and and from where so um that's my plan here let's see just give you a few seconds to read this so the state Auditors uh they are committed to uh examining our use of public resources to ensure there's no misuse or misappropriation and they also evaluate whether we're uh you know sticking to our regulations and our EPS policies and procedures so they come into Evergreen for about 8 to 10 weeks every single year uh we transmit all of our transactions to uh Sao they take a couple weeks to put together risk assessment and decide what they're going to examine in detail about mid January we had our entrance conference and
015they were here for about eight weeks and had our exit uh mid um March so that just wrapped up about a week ago I do want to mention I've been at smaller districts and districts like White Salmon hackinson the state OTS only come every other year and they only come for one to two weeks so we're fortunate we get this 8 to 10 week uh in-depth examination here at Evergreen because of our size we're very large District so for 23 24 these are the areas the Auditors decided to examine in depth um ASB activities are always at the top of the list because we have a lot of students and advisers and a lot of fun raising and and cash handling so they want to make sure they've all been appropriately trained and all our
016checks and balances are in place so I'm happy to announce that um a little over a week ago we had our exit and we had a clean audit with no findings or management letters to report so since I've been in the CFO role for about three years we have gone three years now with no findings or management letters and I want to just call out my fiscal service team and our HR and payroll teams because they have done just incredible work they run really tight ships around here and they make sure we have all the internal controls and checks and balances in place so that we can pass these with clean audits so I also have listed uh where you can go on the Sao website to see the official audit reports those were just
017posted I think on Friday so you can see any school districts audit reports City County they're they're all out there all right so now on to the 2425 financial status update so far this year we have been following right along with budget as planned except we have had a couple kind of major deviations from that budget but otherwise most all of our programs are proceeding as expected these are the two real major deviations we're see seeing from the budget so we do see an increased enrollment and that is primarily running start Dropout re-engagement and at our skills center Cascadia Tech Academy um so all of these programs are kind of their own cost centers so these additional funds generated from enrollment really goes and stays in those programs so for instant running start we have
018about 50 more FTE participating in running start than we budgeted for so that's I mean that's fabulous we've got you know we're serving more students here than expected um however those funds will come through our state apportionment and then get sent off to Clark College to pay for those credits so that's just a flow through it really doesn't help our bottom line um the second area is our special education so as the district continues to decline in enrollment um we expected to see a decline in the number of students we would serve through our special education program and that has not been the case we've had an increased special education enrollment um and and needs increasing and so we've been continually adding certificate and classified staff throughout the year um to address these needs uh
019we have also contracted out for par Educators to try try to fill those we've been very aggressive about getting those uh those ser and classified staff in the classroom for that help um but that extra contract was was about 1.5 million if those 30 spots were filled for the year um so we are seeing uh a lot of issues across the state with our special education programs um all of our neighboring districts are struggling we know there is a large gap there from what the state funds to what uh you know the actual costs are of the of the program and I also wanted to just mention at the bottom because we have had a few questions about our food service uh spending um we have definitely a food service Reserve set aside it's about
0203 million of our fund balance is specifically f for food services so those are funds generated from the USDA for that program and they can only be spent on that program so we have gone through and did an assessment we're replacing freezers and stoves ovens and we also realized the Evergreen cafeteria really needed to be updated so that is part of our spend down plan for that Reserve so you'll see that as well so for our projected Revenue I'm going to stay really top level and not get into the details here uh we are following along with kind of what our projections were for Budget um State support you will see an additional about 4 million so that's those additional running start funds Cascadia Tech Academy th those enrollment and some additional special education funding
021so those higher enrollments drive more State support so our budget was for 428 million we're coming in about 425 million on the revenue side on the expenditure side we anticipated spending about 432.32 have been um it's primarily because of the increase in our enrollment for special education The increased needs the increased Staffing there um you'll see a little blip in basic Ed but that's what I was referring to with running start the additional funds coming in and going out to Clark College so our other programs are are tracking along with budget um we will need to come to the board for a budget extension in the next several months so I know um I haven't done one of those in a while so um my director and I are working on that but uh right
022now we only have approval to spend 432.32 million deficit this year um because of these increased costs we're going to actually incur about a $10 million deficit this year so so our ending fund balance is looking to be about 22 million when we get to the end of the year um our board policy is that we keep our unrestricted fund balance portion at 5% of the previous year's expenditures this looks like we will go down to about 4% this year um I did reach out to esd112 to ask um what do we need to do in order to um you know we're we will be in violation of our board policy so what types of things do we need to do to um make this okay and he said that as long as we have
023a plan to build it back to the 5% it is okay to miss it for a year or two so um so that that's part of the process all right so for 25 26 projections we expect FTE at 21 510 that's about four to 500 students less so we're still in this enrollment decline we know we'll have at least another year to two of enrollment decline according to our U flow analytics projection so my scenario one is what does the projections look like if we don't receive any kind of additional State funding and we make 5.2 million in reductions for 2526 and I do have a slide in a little bit that I'll go into more detail on what that 5.2 million in reductions looks like um our scenario two is Project uctions if we
024were to receive an additional 5 million in state funding plus uh take on those reductions that I spoke of so the reason I chose five million is because we've now received yesterday the Senate and House budgets that have come through for approval um if the Senate budget was to be enacted we would receive about 10 to 12 million more dollars next year if the house budget came through it's more like $3 million next year so we realize one is quite High one is low and we're hoping they will collaborate and meet in the middle I feel like five million is a very conservative estimate for that and so um I I thought it was important we take that into account when we look at Future years so my first scenario is if we receive no
025additional State funding we would be looking at a$ million deficit next year it would bring our fund balance down to 16.7 million and that would bring our unrestricted fund balance down to 2.7% so if there was no additional State funding we would be looking at some another year of large budget cuts going into 26 27 trying to get that back up to the 5% so what does the scenario look like with uh the additional State fun am I going too fast okay with the additional State funding um with five more million dollars uh we would have basically a balanced budget budget for next year we would still be down at the 3.9% fund balance but now we're starting to get our feedback under us and on the ground and I think one thing I need
026to stress is that our full Levy amount isn't coming into play quite yet so for 2526 or 2025 numbers are still the old Levy amounts we're only capturing those new Levy amounts for the spring of 26 as we go forward into 26 27 we will receive the full Levy amounts so I went ahead and projected one more year out for 2627 and with bringing in those additional dollars through Levy and with the 5 million in additional State funding we would be able to work our way back up to the 5% projected fund balance so any questions at this point I've been covering a lot giving a lot of detail here so um so I want to give a little more detail on that $5.2 million we're talking about for 2526 that's kind of what I'm
027recommending we do because it's I think it's a nice balance because we're still in declining enrollment we know we can't just keep status quo we still have to be looking at reductions um we already have a reduction of our teaching staff of about2 million so we know next year's enrollments down um we're fortunate we're not going to have to riff at all this year year we have enough retirements and movements and people leaving that we can just take that reduction through uh that format um we are also implementing a zerob based budget process for all of our departments um I think I did this over at Vancouver it was very helpful and so I thought we would try it here we're going to be meeting with all departments and we are going to start at
028zero and we're going to look at what is essential to reach the goals of your department um and what are the wants what are the need needs um and it really is helpful to think of it in a different mindset and find new efficiencies you can find things across departments um and so I this is we also are aligning this with the Strategic plan how do these resources support our strategic plan so those is the first steps we have in trying to align Resources with that so I I'm hopeful that we'll find some efficiencies that way we're of course going to continue to examine all our contracts like we have been for the last couple of years we're looking at the ABM contract we're looking at you know those that depend on our student FTE
029should be um reducing because our student ft is reducing so we have you know we like to negotiate those different prices for contracts um and then we're going to continue to proceed with an in-depth special education review recommendations and monitoring so our sped team now is just doing a fabulous job of digging in and looking at um where the the Staffing is um the needs are and trying to get a good lay of the land so that we can kind of start getting special ed under I don't want to say under control but making sure we're meeting the needs of all of our students and in the best way possible so I feel like we've already um had a couple positions here at ASC that we're not planning to replace or we're trying to um
030distribute jobs you know loads a little differently to help let up some of this 5.2 million um we have some other things like we froze curriculum for a year um that was about a million dollars so we have some other things we can do while we wait for the state to figure out how much money they're going to um to allocate to us next year I think um we have just I've never built a budget where I'm waiting for to see where State funding is before uh but I really feel like we've just been through so much in these last three years of reductions that I think it's important that we hold off for now and see where we might land before we keep going deeper and deeper um so that that's my uh my
031feeling about it is it's it's been pretty rough these last few years so we'll just put a hold on it for now we'll see how the state comes out and then we'll have to reassess for the following year um I did just this one slide on our federal funds there's a lot of talk about whether the department of education's going to be uh reduced or eliminated um right now our total federal funds this year are about $ 23.7 million so that's about 5.6% of our total revenue um a big bulk of that is for our Child Nutrition Services Program about 9 million comes through Federal USDA funds so those uh are separate from Department of Education um and we're hopeful that those will continue um so that we can feed all students breakfast and lunch
032it's a fabulous program um special education we have about 5 million that comes through that safety net and um through some other uh idea funds and that does go through the Department of Education um and then our title funds this year we we're receiving about 8.4 million in Revenue through title so these are areas we're you know keeping an eye out and trying to be very diligent and careful in our spending and planning of these funds so my last slide uh one you've seen before is from Flo analytics when they did their enrollment forecast so I think it's important to back up and look at the big picture and look at the enrollment decline we have experienced and the reason that including uh inflation why we've been in budget reductions for the last several years
033um in 23 24 they uh gave us this forecast for 10 years their black line is really kind of their probable line for what they think enrollment is going to going to look like um the red line is their you know optimistic uh expectations and then the blue is their low um forecast and so for this first year we are right above that black line just a little bit so it's coming in it pretty good we do see there's a couple more years of about 40000 reduction and then things should start evening out so we had uh some really low birth rate during covid and that's kind of reflected in our kindergarten class that's coming in um but then we see birth rate starting to go up again so we are hopeful that we'll kind
034of plateau and have some stability and get out of this you know reduction uh cycle that we've been in for so long all right that was a lot of information so do you have questions or comments or on the uh title funds from the federal government uh which one of the titles is the largest amount is it Title One title one yeah I believe it's about 6 million okay uh what are the other titles for do you know um title two is learning assistance and it's often spent on professional development I think that's a couple million um I know title three also funds uh some people up in our dual language Department title 4 funds uh some people in our security department so there are a lot of lot of funds you said six you
035said six million for title one yes yeah that's the bulk of our funding and um and then the 5 million for special education is is that connected almost entirely to the safety net um uh no there's a portion that's the idea funding and then safety net um this year we're uh expecting somewhere between 2.7 million to 3 million it depends we we won't find out till August yeah any that part okay um and then the last question has more to do with the financial statement uh but I can I ask you that now instead of later sure okay on uh on the financial statement for February uh the 8,000 series of revenues is other agencies and associations and it's coming in at uh 231 per 232 over budget what's the one I can pull that
036up so could you talk about what other agencies and Associates means uh who are they so I believe that is uh when we um provide services uh to students from other districts through I think Hollingsworth some of our um other types of programs and then we Bild them and they reimburse us so I believe that's for those funds now is that reflective of the much higher need for special education well I know it's not a great game Cher uh in terms of Revenue and it's is it just passed through yeah okay yeah okay I just want to understand that a little better thank you yeah um and it you know we're halfway through now uh and if you I noce if you look at our actual for the year down the line we're right in
037line with budget if you just double those expenses until you get to the special ed yeah a total of 38 million um so that was unanticipated and we're going to have to figure that out sure will I just have a couple comments uh congrat congratulations on another fantastic audit thank you it's really amazing for you and like all the people that work in that area because I know that I haven't wasn't involved in the process this year but I know that in the years past that the Auditors have always complimented our crew on how well and how Cooperative we are while they're here so thank you for that because a large District like us it's U not easy to get perfect Audits and that's something to be really proud of um the second thing I
038was going to comment on was the zero down budget approach I think that's why you called it zero Zer based budget zero based um I think it's a great idea because then it really has everybody in the system looking at like their areas and what they can what they absolutely need and what they can maybe do without yeah and so I think it's a great approach as we as we look at in the past we've always used status quo uh you get what you got last year and then we look at you know we might ask for you to all take 5% reductions or things like that but this is a new approach new way to look at things great idea kind of opens up um some some creative thinking and working together I agree
039yeah on the um fund balance is there a threshold where if we go below that then it could have a negative effect on like credit rating or I can't think of the exact term I'm looking for but um Bond rating I think the Bond rating right is that right we we did have a downgrade in our bond rating a few years back um a lot of districts did across State um I don't anticipate uh that being an issue for us um we aren't going to be issuing bonds for a fairly long time now um so I don't think that'll affect probably my only concern about uh the finan or the um fund balance are is the cash flow implications in those months when the revenue is quite low uh we will have to keep an
040eye on that and and there could be a a brief time where we have to do a in fund loan from our capital projects fund to cover so I know you mentioned it was a month or two ago that the state usually catches up at the end like July and August so in fact I saw that in a in a bill that's gone forward today is uh right now they have 22.5% is um allocated in July and August they're talking about now moving it up to 25% in July and August so they're even trying to push more of our allocation into next fiscal year for some savings at this state level so um that's going to cause more cash flow problems for districts so I have one more comment I was going to say that
041in kind of response to Gary's question about the fund balance um I appreciate that you showed us kind of the projections the next two years out so even if we have to go that low for the one year that it shows us how we'll recover within a couple of school years yeah um especially based on the amount we'll collect for the levy yes next year so thank you for that yeah and we we do need a a plan in place so we'll we'll have to um develop that and especially with the uncertainty yeah of funding for us yeah a little scary yeah it'd be you know the federal funds aren't for sure thing at least going out into 26 27 so something to keep in mind as well you're conservatively estimating about 5 million additional
042funds and do we know would that be would know the actual amount the end of April like okay yes towards the end of the legislative session yeah so I'm hopeful it could be higher um we'll keep our fingers crossed do as much advocacy as we can now so all right thank you thank you thank you okay next on our agenda is a teaching and learning and Equity update and we're going to get that from Chief academic officer Brian Fox okay great well good evening members of the board it's great to be here again for the teaching learning and Equity update this evening we have three topics all supporting an equity-based mtss which is what I spoke about quite a bit uh two weeks ago um that will include guaranteed and viable curriculum audit um anti-bias
043and anti-hate modules and family engagement report but first can we talk about those student musicians please yes uh and you asked some great questions of the performers I thought I'd provide a little bit more detail for you the Mariachi Ensemble whose name I didn't write down I just wrote down Maria Maria Ensemble off to get that from them tomorrow uh at Mountain View High School is a brand new Ensemble which just started this year it's a student Le group and they created the group recruited the students for each part and have scheduled weekly rehearsals after school they do receive support and direction from their Bandon Orchestra directors Mark Clawson and Sam Orson these students have been fortunate enough to collaborate with local Mariachi musicians uh nurturing connections with our within our own Community this is
044the first Mariachi Ensemble to compete in Regional solo and Ensemble competitions and recently they received a high enough score to qualify for state competition uh we're so pleased to see this group of students find such joy and success in learning and Performing together and speaking of uh the regional solo and Ensemble competition Evergreen students have won 31 of the 43 categories that means they took first place in 31 of the 43 categories for our region these students will represent the Lower Columbia region at the WIA State solo one Ensemble contest in Ellensburg on April 25th and 26th something for our students and our staff to be quite proud of at your last board meeting I shared this graphic from the OPI website representing the five components of a multi-tiered support system the state is committed
045to the implementation of mtss as the approach for aligning our systems and priorities to tackle persistent opportunity gaps as shown using the five icons in this graphic mtss is a framework for enhancing the adaption the adoption and implementation of a Continuum of evidence-based practices to achieve important outcomes for every student mtss involves team-based leadership continuous database decision making student family and Community engagement and the delivery of a Continuum of evidence-based instruction and support previously I detailed the Continuum of support using this graphic and defined each tier as noted on the screen tier one is the foundation for additional layers of support in tier one instruction every student has Equitable access to Universal construction and supports that are culturally and linguistically responsive and differentiated to meet their unique needs tier one in instruction is where our
046guaranteed and viable curriculum or GVC lives our GVC is a structured framework that ensures all students have Equitable access to Essential Knowledge and Skills regardless of their background or School setting it includes a clearly defined scope and sequence outlining what is taught and the order and timing in which it is taught it is important that the GVC is implemented with Fidelity and this evening executive director of instruction and Leadership Bobby height along with director of curriculum and instruction Tilly Meyer will share evidence of GVC implementation across the district's 22 elementary schools remember that the Continuum of supports is not always AC ademic focused the support could be related to behavior and the mtss model moves away from treating academics and behaviors as separate areas instead offering a tier's approach to all interventions and for this
047reason I've also asked director of student equity and family engagement Dr Jamila Singleton to share about teaching modules recently rolled out to all School administrators focused on how to respond to bias and and hate this work also lives in tier one instruction and across all the tiers of instruction because it is the responsibility of us all to interrupt hate and bias and harmful language you can see that much of this evening's tle update will focus on the Continuum of support component of mtss however since family student and Community engagement is one of the five components of an equity-based multi-tiered system of support I've asked Dr Singleton to share about the efforts of our EPS family engagement pillar advisory through the United States Department of Education the elementary and secondary Education Act provides financial assistance to
048local school districts to improve education programs to meet the requirements of what is known as Title One Part A we must identify strategies for building capacity coordinating programs and providing meaningful opportunities for families and remove barriers their children and other children experience Dr Singleton's presentation will focus on ways we train all School staff on effective parent engagement and how we are developing systems for communicating in an accessible manner to families so let's begin with the GV GVC walks and the audit and I'll I'll ask Bobby and Tilly to come forward good evening board of directors as Dr Fox mentioned we're here tonight to share the important work happening in our elementary schools to ensure we are delivering a guaranteed student experience for every child who gez touchy hold on don't look okay all right this
049is the second year of our elementary guaranteed and viable curriculum or GVC audit to better understand curriculum and instructional practices across our classrooms we sent two of our amazing curriculum instruction Specialists Leanne over here is our literacy specialist and Marina over here is our math specialist they went out to every every Elementary classroom in Evergreen Public Schools together they visited over 660 classrooms spending more than 280 hours observing instruction and an additional 130 hours analyzing and compiling School level data the findings from each visit were then shared through detailed debrief sessions with the school administrator administrators and either myself or Alex and Griffin joined those meetings as well tonight we'd like to take a few minutes to to share the results of this year's GBC audit highlight the progress we've made and outline our Direction
050moving forward so Tilly Meer director of curriculum and instruction will walk us through the findings thank you good evening let me move this forward okay so the classroom observations consisted of numerous student and teacher indicators that resulted in an overall placement on this scale solidifying as you see here in green is where we want all of our teachers to be as it is the foundation for our mtss tier one system the data comes from our most recent GBC audit and literacy implementation it highlights not only percent es but also the number of classrooms and students a number of classrooms were not included in the audit due to factors such as substitute teachers assemblies counselor lessons assessments and other scheduling conflicts this side by-side comparison and literacy shows just how much progress we've made from last
051year to this year it's really exciting to see more green on the chart meaning more classrooms are solidifying their practices with an average literacy Improvement of 15% it's evident that last year's data had a meaningful impact as schools refined their implementation and strengthened literacy instruction across our system the percentage of growth toward solidifying her school is calculated using the 2324 and 2425 data to compare it provides a clearer indicator of instructional instructional alignment and growth than the bar graph alone turning to math this data just like what was shared for literacy also includes percentages the number of classrooms observed and the total number of students represented in this math data comparison you'll notice a significant increase in green with within the solidifying category a positive trend worth celebrating on average math improved by 7.8% demonstrating
052that last year's dat data directly informed efforts to strengthen classroom support with a targeted focus on implementing effective math practices so here is a closer look at the elementary math progress across all schools this side-by-side comparison of math and reading focuses on pacing this is not just about following um District scope and sequence but also the daily pacing of teaching and learning both reading and math curricula offer ample opportunities for student thinking so that teachers know how to respond to student needs as as well as see evidence of progress over time now looking ahead to 2025 26 last week we had the opportunity to share this data with our elementary leaders we want to recognize the incredible work of our principles coaches language Specialists teachers and staff what they are doing every day to strengthen
053instruction and positively impact student outcomes across the district teams are focused on providing Equitable access to high quality learning for all students this Collective effort is vital to com to creating a rigorous aligned student experience that Fosters academic growth regardless of classroom or campus working together as a system remains key to our progress and we're excited to continue this work into the 2025 26 school year thank you and now we are going to transition to Dr Singleton I get to say that thank you tyly all right well good evening members of the board um thank you for the opportunity to present today my name is Dr Jam Singleton you might notice a little bit of a shift I got to shift towards being a doctor in February so I'm excited about that but um I'll
054be sharing updates on our strategic efforts related to anti-bias education and how we are developing the family and Community engagement pillar uh for our strategic plan so first I just want to start with a 2-year road map and we're starting with expectations around anti-bias education to ensure that we can really establish a supportive and inclusive environment with more consistency across all 38 schools we are using the speakup at school strategies I just handed those to you in front of you and these strategies are used to help interrupt bias and we're using them to train administrators on how to facilitate and monitor um how to interrupt and then also we're doing trainings around restorative conversations so over the next two years we will launch um additional anti-bias lessons in K through 12 classrooms and we'll offer
055funding for continued professional development um with courageous conversations and we're hopeful that with with a comprehensive strategy we'll be able to develop the culture of safety and belonging we Aspire for in our strategic plan so to St sustain this work we will need all staff to interrupt bias here is an overview of current anti-bias training modules our August 2025 Equity PD day will reinforce these practices we are also increasing the number of Staff certified and courageous conversations about race and establishing a cohort of experts in restorative practices shout out to Casey lions and Shannon shamba for their efforts in seeking input and designing these staff modules so what is biased language so our module one Focus um addresses biased language and this is a foundational piece of our work um to make sure that our
056staff and students recognized what biased language is and so when we talk about this we're talking about words or phrases that disparage or demean a group of people reinforce stereotypes and marginalized individuals based on race gender ethnicity religion or other identity factors addressing biased language starts with awareness and we are committed to creating environments where students feel and Staff feel empowered to challenge it so as you can see the four strategies here which are on your cards in front of you are uh strategies that we can use consistently across our 38 schools interrupt question educate and Echo the goal is to stop harmful language in the moment encourage reflection build build awareness and reinforce positive interventions these strategies will be embedded in our training and resources for educators over the next two years in addition
057restorative practices are also Central to this approach when addressing incidents of bias we focus on Dignity learning reflection and accountability it's critical that students understand the impact of their words and actions while also having a path to repair harm as one of our counselor tosas has said Jessica Greenwell without repair these issues don't get better and students are less likely to report or cooperate incidents in the future our commitment to these anti-bias efforts and restorative practices is not just about addressing incidents it's about fostering a culture where every student feels valued and supported this aligns directly with our district strategic vision of belonging and academic success where students are seen heard and empowered but to truly create lasting change we also must extend these efforts beyond the classroom and into our Partnerships with families in
058the community just as we focus on safety and belonging with our schools we must also ensure that our family engagement structures reflect the same values that's why our next focus is on how to strengthen family and Community engagement so our Community promise is a pillar to our strategic plan and we're using this to really ground the work that we're doing in the family engagement advisory first we started by doing A needs assessment so on the left side um you can see the results of that assessment and we're working with the technical assistant we're working to get technical assistance from the Washington family engagement Center to support our Improvement efforts so OSI as well um guides us to do this in ways that Center the voices of the historically marginalized Foster collaboration build trust and innovate
059so this is the context that led us to into our work as well as taking an anti-bias approach we want to make sure that we're braiding this anti-bias approach into family engagement strategy to ensure that our families also feel valued and included and that we address hisorical marginalization this includes equipping staff with tools to recognize bias ensuring that multilingual and cultural responsive communication occurs and making sure that we're analyzing engagement data to identify gaps and Implement accountability measures to address concerns so our two-year road map starts by building upon the community Promise by setting standards of practice of what meaningful family engagement looks like to support this we also intend to conduct walkthroughs and provide checklist to our school leaders so that we can provide them with targeted feedback to strengthen their school and even
060our district engagement plans we'll also be developing a catalog of workshops and resources to support our parents and caregivers and staff uh professional development this ensures that our engagement efforts are sustainable and effective at both the school and District levels so the family advisory the family engagement advisory sorry the family engagement pillar advisory I'm messing up there's so many words I need to figure out an acronym for that but The Advisory Group is meeting to build upon um each of so we're meeting each time to build upon what we've started and so the standards of practice are where we began and we are doing this to make meaningful improvements with the input of over 40 people at each of the meetings including around 18 to 20 multilingual families in summary we are expanding family engagement
061opportunities to be more flexible and inclusive of diverse cultural norms and accessibility needs for example when we take a more culturally responsive approach to two-way communication we go beyond simply informing families to truly connecting with families and so this requires deepen trust and building upon shared responsibility so that we can support the success of students oh in summary we're committed to strengthening our anti-bias initiatives improving family engagement structures and building capacity across the district thank you for your time was that you supposed that yeah thank you for your time good because we've taken a lot of time tonight but this is important stuff our hope is that this evening's tle update has helped make some connections between the mtss structure and some of the specific work being done in EPS to support student achievement at
062your next meeting we'll take a closer look at the tier three support at the top of the pyramid intensive interventions which are very individualized to meet student needs so the focus will be on special education director of special services Dr Matt Bennett and I will provide a summary of the findings and the recommendations from the Wasa review of eps special services and Dr Matt Bennett will join me for a presentation on inclusion and some specific areas of focus within the special services department in addition we're going to be able to highlight the Evergreen School District foundation and so we'll have a foundation president Jason Huggins here as a guest and that's on April 15th do you have any questions or comments for any of the presenters of the tle update I was wondering can we
063get a copy of this sent to us the the slides absolutely is it in the agenda as a PDF yeah very good than you there was a lot of information there I'll have to form my questions later it might be why you want the copy of slides for yourself so was this is tremendous to me thank you so much for giving us a copy of this yes thank you Dr J Dr J all right well thank you thank you Dr Fox next on our agenda is our good news report executive director Communications Craig burbach will bring that for us good evening board of directors superintendent Maloney thank you as always for letting me present the good news and we do have plenty of it um I'm going to start uh with community building events Heritage
064High School hosted their second annual noce cncs sorry for the pronunciation uh this science night was full of fun stem activities uh what they do is they uh specifically invite their feeder Elementary School students to come to this event uh we went uh as a Communications team Aaron wintersong went and took a bunch of great pictures and um they also had some great pictures taken at Heritage and Heritage sent us this awesome video that uh somebody put together it's only about a minute or so so I encourage everyone to watch it and I want to make sure we give credit that we did not do that the school did that um Henrietta LAX uh High School had an annual culture fair and they celebrated the diversity of its community and it featured some amazing things
065there was uh traditional clothing there was music there was dance and something I've never seen at one of our culture events and that was fencing Scottish fencing no one was harmed it was a a demonstration but as you could see very very cool these events are just growing um and we see just awesome uh cultural representations Board of director gwalt mentioned this that uh Dr Maloney and uh director gwalt was were a judge at the um Chartwells Discovery kitchen Cookoff our partner great partner Chartwells puts these together it's Elementary School students uh they go and basically it's Top Chef for elementary school kids so that has continued um they were able to use the wonderful kitchen at y East um and have just wonderful facilities and great Partnerships and help as they cook some wonderful
066meals Awesome event at columia Valley Elementary School it really concentrated on reading but it also had games um and the celebrities there are the union football team so the union football team comes and spends the night they don't sleep over I I want to make sure they did have tents but they leave uh but they they play games with them and they read with them and uh I talked to the associate uh principal the next day and said it was just an amazing event the kids obviously love it and the Union High School football team um they feel like Super Bowl champs there with with the uh with how the elementary school students treat them uh unified basketball has uh continued throughout our our district but Pacific and Shahala Middle School had uh their game
067and uh where they played uh against each other so they've had events where the pacifics had an event for unified basketball and Shahala had an event for UniFi basketball but at their schools with their students they brought it together and played an actual um game so that's wonderful some recognitions um I want to mention Nancy Brown was huge surpris at Pioneer Elementary School and uh president Weatherspoon was present and it was kind of funny because there were people in the lobby including uh president Weatherspoon who knows Nancy Brown the counselor and she walked by and she said you know hi Jackie and uh this is given out by the foundation and I told the foundation president Jason I'm like yeah that's who we're giving it to he's like oh no I'm like she still doesn't
068know uh um Dr milone was also there it was a wonderful surprise you could see from this picture uh it was funny she went to the side of the room she had no idea that this was about her and like you could see her face starting to realize oh this is about me and then someone helped Pusher closer to everyone it was a huge crowd from the foundation uh Dr Maloney um uh board president Weatherspoon there um this will be honored At The Gala the Foundation gala which is uh this Saturday hila High School had two seniors that were finalists for the Marshall Awards and while they didn't win the award I will say there were six finalists and two came from hila so I think that's something really to to focus and celebrate cyop
069armor and Raquel Nelson were the finalists um and then uh we ended um with re Across America um this year was a new partner Reed Northwest as everyone knows beaches um they they retired closed their restaurant U Reed Northwest had the guidance though of the Beach's owners and many of the same volunteers so as a person that went to almost all these schools I will say it was seamless um the exact almost the exact same experience there were now Reed Northwest volunteers um haded some music to you know some dance uh it was really great so uh there's about 220 pictures to look at here from all 22 schools but uh it was a really nice and I do want to mention WellPoint Washington who works with our foundation as the uh book sponsor because
070every first grader also gets a book to take home uh we went with a a local cus bookstore this year called bookish and the books were uh phenomenal we got really good feedback on the books being um really of high quality so that's my presentation if there's any questions awesome thank you thank you Craig the next item on our agenda is for information and only purposes our February financial statements and Jennifer kind of covered all that earlier next is board comments comments open for the board I just um enjoyed the family engagement event last night and had a good elbow partner and then uh today visiting Riverview Elementary it was really a special time I I really got a great feel for the how well the staff and the students just relate to each other
071and there's I would say a lot of love there I mean and the kids are so well behaved I mean we got hugs and just it was special so they're doing a good job there so I uh since we're not having a workshop today I was asked to um do a short short uh legislative update maybe you can help along with that uh with any information you have I'm drawing this uh primarily from the uh in session uh newsletter that wasda publishes which any of us can subscribe to um and I have to apparently get it back out um bear with me for that second there okay here it is um we know uh the way that Jennifer was talking about uh the the Senate and the house budgets uh having been released now um
072it's worth noting that both of the budgets contemplate additional taxes uh but the form of that um is not clear there are lots of suggestions on the board and as you as I'm sure you know watching legislatures who knows what will happen uh it'll be a compromise in any case uh I make you aware of the two bills that uh are part of our priority uh one is the materials and uh operating cost Bill MSO uh number 5192 which had a hearing uh with some testimony by wda leaders uh in the Appropriations Committee House Appropriations um last this uh previous Wednesday uh as well as 5263 uh for special education um and uh there's some notes in that newsletter about uh inviting us to watch how they did that testimony and uh and who did
073it it was uh mostly officers right um of wasda who uh coordinated their testimony in strong support of both of those bills uh so Folks up there pretty much know that uh wasda and the directors around the state are behind those two proposals um let's see yeah budgets okay budgets came out this this newsletter came out Sunday so I'm kind of skipping the parts that I don't have to talk about um but I think it's I think that's the basic thing is that the two bills 5192 and 5263 are uh in motion uh 5263 was uh scaled back I think I talked about that last time but it was scaled back from the original proposals which would have almost entirely funded special education for us uh and relieved a lot of worries uh so the
074comp the compromises and and the adjustments uh and the adaptations to the revenue forecasts are are definitely in progress um but I feel confident that the passage of those bills would cause us to land uh in between those two extremes of funding increase uh that uh Jennifer was talking about um and as before they're working on their budgets uh those two numbers are 5167 for the Senate budget and 1197 for the house budget uh and there are hearings open or there were hearings open they took place today uh shortly before we convened uh so those are the four bills that are worth watching um meantime there's a lot of uncertainty about what's going on and what will happen at the federal level uh and some talk about that uh so it was good on for
075my part to hear about the amounts uh for the federal uh contributions to our revenues uh they're uh that are uh they're actually smaller than I thought uh we could stand to lose um but there's too much uncertainty to know what's going to happen and uh I don't really have any anything else to say about that do you have anything to add microphone you did a great job director Perkins um with all of that yeah we'll just continue to watch like I said we're going to continue the course um and focusing on educating our students and we're being very cautious when we look at federal grants or applying for Grants what are the requirements around those grants and um just want to make sure that um they don't conflict with our our values and what
076we stand for as a district excellent um I'll repeat my gratitude for this kind of work because I remember in my board comments one time last time or the time before talking about uh this needing to happen and I'm so glad to see uh that folks were working on that in the moment that I was uh kind of expressing what I felt was a community um ask and a real need out there so uh that and I think that's all I have thank you do you have anything Julie uh just wanted to say thank you to Gary and Rob and Dr Maloney for attending the region 6 meeting last week I thought it was really well attended it was kind of nice to be able to collaborate with some of our fellow directors from across
077the region um the meeting topic was leading with purpose and so I thought it was really well done I was uh sorry to miss that but unfortunately my college student's home for spring break and I had to go pick him up um the only thing I have actually it's a great thing in uh in addition to Craig's presentation we actually had the Cookoff finals last Wednesday so I was able to attend the finals and um we I guess Chef crowned the the winner and that was a a great experience to be able to watch the students compete um and cook and see all the skills they learned and at last week's uh the final competition we actually had two students from Cascadia tech there as judges from The Culinary um portion of uh Cascadia Tech
078so it was great to watch the students judge the students and they were the older students were great in giving suggestions and getting them all hyped up so that was a great experience and actually the finals were at Frontier Middle School so we were able to use the frontier kitchen as well oh was a winning dish oh it was um sorry I had to think about that she made uh homemade noodles fetuccini noodles and made like a fetuccini Alfredo from scratch she rolled the the dough she cut the noodles and yeah so it was it was impressive I can't do that but I'm not a cook though either so it was very impressive and that's those were our fifth ERS yeah so it was I mean like it's our fifth graders they got a nice
079career ahead of them if they so choose I remembered I had one more thing to add and that's how thrilled I am uh and how happy I feel uh to see the Spanish language surfaced twice in this meeting uh the mariachi group was just so inspiring uh and it makes me wonder whether there are uh small groups or ensembles that could be offered uh to perform at the wasda conference I'm sure that we'd have some takers there are a lot of really good musicians in this system and um not a lot of knowledge Statewide about just how good they are well this year's conference they choose from a Westside School to perform because we're in Seattle you get the timetable for that and encourage them you may know somebody's on the wasda board yeah somebody
080might have the the conference planning committee does not decide on the music sorry I can't help I would love to have students from our district perform at wasda so if we can make that happen and we're in Seattle this year so it' be much easier it'll be worth the expense yeah it was 31 of 43 competitions we yeah I mean they know it among each other but really bringing them forward to the state at that level maybe I'll send a quick email up to the person that took over for TR uh doing the conference playing just ask her what the process is yeah and we can put our our you know name in the Hat there and thank you Julie for facilitating the area 6 meeting so it was good sorry I forgot I'm leading
081this I can't just put everything away all right with that it is 6:50 and I'm calling this meeting adjourned [Music] Jed