001good evening if you'll please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance of America good evening thank you for joining us tonight we've got some special guests in our audience we're excited to get this meeting started but first we're going to start off with our land acknowledgment I was reading that first this evening director Witherspoon Evergreen Public Schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinooken peoples and the calitz tribe they have lived on and cared for this land in its Waterway since time in Memorial we thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgment to open the space of recognition inclusion and respect for all indigenous students families and staff in our community thank you all right next up on our agenda is to adopt this evening's agenda so we'll entertain a motion
002for that the move adoption of this evening's agenda is presented uh so we moved in second in all in favor say aye aye opposed great thank you all right we will go ahead and move on to special recognition and we are going to celebrate our district bookmark contest winner and up to the podium is Michelle Annette Cascade Middle School librarian welcome thank you for coming this evening uh so normally every year the Fort Vancouver Regional Library runs a bookmark contest they have now switched to every other year so we as teacher Librarians got together and knew that how much our kids loved this so we decided to organize it ourselves we had support from parent groups at different schools to create prizes in addition to that we there was an offering from the Secretary of
003State to do some professional development around the joy of reading which is a recently published book and so several of our secondary Librarians along with teachers in their building have led PD around this so we decided to make our theme for this year's bookmark contest the joy of reading so I'm going to ask all of our K2 winners to come up and Tanya Marshall is gonna call out their names hi I'm Tonya Marshall I'm the librarian at image Elementary and we have all three K2 winners so third place goes to Rianne Singh and he is a kindergartner [Applause] the second place winner in the K2 is Danica fam she is a first grader congratulations and then the first place winner is Penny Ralph and she is a first grader oh so I forgot to mention
004that uh this was on the district public website and all members of the community could vote I think we had around 600 votes in each category so our three five winners third place from Ellsworth Elementary Eileen first [Applause] you want to do a second place okay the second place winner is from image Elementary fifth grader Andre vishnavitskia and he's not here tonight [Applause] and this year's first place winner from Pioneer Elementary is Talia C Garcia fourth grader at pioneer foreign [Applause] I'm the teacher Librarian from Frontier and middle school and we have first second and third place our third place winner from Frontier is Victoria McBride is Victoria here [Applause] our second place winner is Adelia perov seventh grade [Applause] lose two the lady thank you and our first place winner is Brooke Curry from
005why East Brook can I take a picture with her or is that allowed you want to do high school good evening I'm Scott Tomlinson teacher librarian at Evergreen High School all right so our third place winner is Aaron Noble from Evergreen High School our second place winner is Tay Nguyen also from Evergreen High School Tay was feeling pretty tired from a lot of theater work recently so she said she wasn't going to make it and our first place winner is Evan English from Mountain View High School Evan perfect thank you great thank you very much congratulations to all the winners any remarks from the board about the great Artistry we have some amazing artists at every great level these are so detailed and thank you guys for putting on the competition for them this year
006just beautiful beautiful creativity and the use of color and the messaging that you're putting out on those bookmarks and I have a little two-year-old grandson that's going to get one of those because I know he'll love it because he likes to read so it just good job all right thank you again all right next up is special recognition it's Asian American and Pacific Islander month and Craig is going to share some information with us this is the board video that our board of directors put together to recognize Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month hopefully the volume is okay as part of our commitment to celebrating diversity and fostering an inclusive School Community we as a district and School Board are participating in Heritage months celebrations throughout the school year this month we honor Asian
007American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month this recognition was set in May because it's the month in which the first Japanese immigrants arrived in this country in 1843 and when the Transcontinental Railroad was completed in 1869 thanks greatly to the Chinese immigrants who took on the dangerous back-breaking work that connected the country to the West Coast other aapi groups came to this country as refugees from Wars in Korea and Vietnam and as immigrants chasing the same dream that has drawn immigrants from every corner of this planet our native Hawaiians endured and experienced a mirrored that of Native Americans with their land taken over by colonists throughout the month our schools and students will honor Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by reading books watching films and creating art that will help them learn about their history students
008will learn about the difficulties they have endured from being excluded from land ownership to Japanese Americans being interned during World War II from native Hawaiians fighting to regain land that is sacred to them to recent hate crimes against Asian Americans who were nonsensically blamed for the covid-19 epidemic our students will also learn about and celebrate the countless ways Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders contribute to the tapestry of our country and business government culture Sports and so many other ways please join us in celebrating Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month hello thank you Craig seeing that video reminded me that director gone Walt is not feeling well this evening and will not be joining us all right we will go ahead and move on to the board consent agenda we'll Entertain Entertain a motion for
009approval I moved to adopt the agenda as presented second uh it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you and again we'll do this for the superintendent consent agenda I moved to adopt the consent agenda as it presented moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed all right we will next move on to a presentation which is the Evergreen Public School strategic plan I'm going to turn this over to superintendent Boyd yes thank you very much we're absolutely thrilled to be able to present to you today our very first public um public event where we're going to show you our strategic plan it's the culmination of two years of work through two covid spikes a levy failure a two budget big budget reductions and the boards continual insistence
010that we get this thing done and I can tell you that we have something that's not just going to be window dressing but something that is we feel is going to impact students positively for the next five years from the classroom to the boardroom and we're absolutely excited to present that to you today we're going to start by having Dr Tammy Campbell our fearless guide on the side that's helped lead us through this very deep and profound process is going to start us off so Dr Campbell I know you're remote I'm here good to see you superintendent Boyd members of the board I've had the opportunity to work behind the scenes to see firsthand the product and I can tell you the way this strategic plan is framed uh it really is going to be
011student-centered it really will drive Improvement at our schools it's probably one of the better ones that I've seen I couldn't be prouder of the team and I'm just going to hand it over to them because you know in the beginning it's more or me facilitating and then it's we do the work together and now it's the district does the work so I'm going to hand this over and let them share the incredible incredible structure that is now going to drive continuous Improvement both at every classroom across the district as well as at the central office foreign Dr Campbell do you want to talk a little bit about your guiding principles yes so we made some commitments that the first one was that it was not going to be done two or four it would be
012done with and I think we held to that we wanted to um when it was done we wanted you to be able to say you had broad stakeholder participation and I think when you look at the data inside the Strategic plan you'll see that we talked about having student-centered goals and you will see that your full four goal areas are all driven by student-centered metrics and then we have foundations that are called out to build on the work that was already done in your previous partnership and one of the things that a superintendent Boyd wanted to be sure that we had were metrics and outcomes that could actually be measurable so that you can ensure continuous Improvement and then the last component is research when we pulled uh you know over almost 100 folks together
013to identify the strategies for your goal areas research drove the the sort of the creation of those Strat energies and so I feel like we lived by our guiding principles and ultimately when we do that you have a better product so I'm going to hand this over now to superintendent Boyd go ahead and go forward or am I clicking forward I can do that huh so we start with a just a quote related to our strategic plan you can see up front our tagline is belonging for each and success for all and those words really encapsulate what we're all about in the Strategic plan so a just cause is a specific vision of a future that state that does not yet exist a future state so appealing that people are willing to make sacrifices in
014order to help Advance toward that vision and that's from Simon sinek and from Dr Tammy Campbell just cause is about our future the world the school we hope to build and that's from Dr Campbell and thus and the scholar first see if I can get the next one whoops it's not advancing forward there we go to the right one more okay so I want to start with the board has operational expectations for the superintendent and the district leadership team one of the things that you asked me when I first took this job was you wanted me to continue to be a leader for Equity you wanted to make sure that we had good um our we kept our finances straight you wanted to make sure that we had that I was an instructional leader and
015you were really clear that you wanted us to continue with our strategic plan and as I suggested before through a lot of superintendent change a couple covet spikes some challenges with our Levy and budget it's taken us a little bit longer to get this done but I feel like we really were able to take the work that was done prior to my arrival leading into last spring and then turn really put the meat on the bones of the mission and vision and the pillars that you created with your strategic plan here and you will you will be assured that Equity is red threaded throughout this plan and that it is really focused on students focused on instruction focused on learning and focused on having improved outcomes for our students keep going the wrong way and
016then just a quick little uh slide here to show how this interacts and intersects with our operational expectations I talked about Equity it's an opportunity for us to share and show our community that we have a plan that we're working towards continuous Improvement and Equitable outcomes for our students we are in the process Jennifer Jacobson is in the process of creating a a way for us to with a group of folks look at our finances and align those to our strategic work as well so that'll be a vehicle this will be a vehicle to be able to accomplish that obviously this is completely intersects with the learning environment in instructional programs we have 12 operational expectations and this absolutely intersects profoundly with six of them I keep going the wrong way here I'll get it
017so this is the beginning of our plan and again belonging for each success for all this is our strategic plan I love this picture it kind of encapsulates what we're all about belonging and success it's aspirational I really do need to thank our Communications Department for putting together a very beautifully beautifully graphically designed plan um you'll see it starts with the table of contents and again this is not just a plan that has a mission and vision but this is a plan that has a mission a vision we have clear goals and metrics and outcomes that we're aspiring towards and we have the theory of action which shows everybody's job within the organization and what we're supposed to be doing from the district from The Boardroom in the district to our principals through our teachers
018uh in for our students lots of people to thank and I started with thanking the board for your persistence and insisting that we get this done for our our students and you you were the ones that commissions and started that so I really need to thank the board for making sure that you held us accountable for getting this thing done but as you can see we had many many people over the two-year period that we've been engaged in this process 623 Community participants almost 7 000 student participants 33 committee planning sessions 16 committee participants and 11 Community input events so there's been lots and lots and lots of interaction with our community to get to the point where we can go out and get this get this plan now in front of you and for
019in front of our community so lots of folks to thank and then I just want to start with all of the folks that were on the in any part of the strategic planning process can you stand up please they're here today yes yes this represents the inner team of District leaders that showed up Time After Time and and convening after convening to take the input from our community hone it down winnow it down into something that's actionable and that is powerful for our students so I want to thank everybody that participated all of our district folks here and the board again for your persistence and in keeping us on track to get this done and of course we couldn't have done this without the incredible support of our facility facilitator Dr Tammy Campbell from The
020Scholar first I'm going to turn it over now to Clarissa Hightower who led us through many aspects of this so Clarissa thank you superintendent boy good evening board um a particular song comes to mind for me as I am thinking about our strategic plan actually when we first debuted this strategic plan to our building leaders uh actually had a a playlist up but playlists come to mind for me because there's a soundtrack to my life on a day-to-day basis the song for this one um is one from Sam Cook and it is uh it's been a long time coming I was gonna sing it and then I I digress so um and and and I I likened it to this idea of us nurturing and nourishing a bundle of joy right this this strategic plan
021for us has um been something that we've been working very hard around and looking forward to and so it is almost as if we are bringing our bundle of joy to you all to present um and so as I tap through these components for you you are going to notice a couple of things you will notice some items that are familiar to you from last year's work with education Northwest um so the what's and then the how is what we partner with the scholar first and Dr Tammy gamble with to put the meat on the bones as John alluded to and what you see here before you is our Evergreen Public Schools vision for equity and excellence um this the statement below um the actual Vision itself was something that was crafted on last year
022so it is one of our what's and it reads each person in the Evergreen Public Schools Community is a welcomed included and empowered member of our school district and we work together towards Student Success okay that's our what the meat or the how that we added on this year we began our journey by talking to kids and we asked them what helps you feel like you belong and what helps you learn and we took that input from our students and we crafted what we hoped each student could say after having their day-to-day experience at their schools and you would ask them about what was your what was your experience today we would like for them to be able to say these things and so this is the vision for Student Success I want to read
023them not because I don't think you can read but because of how powerful they are and how they guide our day-to-day um since this is what we want all of our students to experience and they say I am my true self at school and I am loved we belong we are seen heard and empowered I see myself and others reflected in our learning and in our school I am an independent learner who is eager to learn set goals and work towards my dreams and we Thrive academically and this is our vision of what we like for our students who experience on a day-to-day basis in our buildings okay the work from our year one efforts is the mission statement for this that you see at the top so this is our mission statement came out
024of our first committee's work it reads 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 okay the meats that was added this year are our core values these will be our guiding principles our Compass if you will what do we come back to as we make decisions related to our students that's our core values and those are at the top of the list Equity inclusion and belonging Excellence through growth empowerment through learning keeping the students centered and excellent through learning as well these core values don't just apply to our students they also applied to the adults in our district as well all right this entire page is actually from uh our efforts on last year and these are
025our promise areas or our pillars I don't know if you all remember I know you do I shouldn't say that I know you do because you were involved in our efforts to go out to the community and show these to them and get their input on them and these are our promise areas to our community what are we going to focus on in this strategic plan we wanted to make sure we had the what down before we started building the how and so the what's are teaching and learning school environment family and community and employee Employee Engagement so these will be our focuses for the Strategic plan um what you are going to hear a little bit later on with my colleagues is focused on the very first two promised areas which are teaching and
026learning and school environment and so our work with Dr Campbell has helped us to operationalize both the vision and the mission via these two promise areas and uh we will continue to work on the following two um in the coming years on next year we'll begin that work but we had to make sure we had these two ready to go and so the descriptor or the indicators underneath each of these is what my colleagues will be expanding upon so for teaching and learning we will support all of our students our classrooms will be will be safe places where students feel a sense of belonging and are motivated to learn every day and then for school environment everyone will feel safe welcomed and valued for who they are anywhere in the school and we will create
027spaces that allow all students to learn and you're going to see what that looks like in in a moment I'm going to tell you after we talked about what our whats are we had to think about the how and when you think about how it gets you to thinking about goals that you have to sit what goals are we going to sit for ourselves to reach these house and here are our goals we have four goal areas that we're going to be focusing on the graphic you see before you you have three columns the first one shows you each of the goal areas the first being a culture of safety and belonging I'm I'm you I heard a lot about that prior to this um it is one of the prerequisites um for sustained academic
028success is the culture of safety and belonging then we have foundations for success as our next goal area followed by growth and Mastery of grade level standards and then of course post diploma ready all of our schools will have two goals every school will have the goal of culture safety and belonging and then based on the grade level of the school they will pick between goal areas two three and four so for our elementary schools for foundations for success that's for Early Elementary growth and Mastery of grade level standards is for later Elementary and Middle School and then post diploma ready is for our high schools as you can see we have already identified metrics that we will use to see how we are doing we have to inspect what we expect and that is
029our metrics we'll be using um youth truth and discipline data and attendance for our culture and safety belonging our Watkins assessment smarter balance and Wida which is our language acquisition assessment for foundations for success grades smarter balanced again unit assessments and youth Truth for growth and Mastery of standards and then finally transcript analysis and our HPV which is our high school high school and Beyond plan sorry today and so those are the metrics we'll be using for post post diploma ready the follow following column that where outcomes live I'm going to allow my colleagues to go a little bit deeper into that but for each of the goal areas there are also outcomes that we are working towards and those are those are articulated in that last column and you get to hear a lot
030more about that as we dig deeper into each of the goal areas which all include an outcome strategies and phases and my colleagues are going to come up and talk with you a little bit more about those three things and we're going to start no we're not first there's one more component it's actually really important the next component talks about how this all connects from our students all the way to District level leadership I'm including yourselves so Dr Williams is going to come up and talk about that it's been a long a long time coming I'm excited I'm I'm excited so she brought it up it was in my spirit and um tonight we are truly celebrating just the the manifestation of two years of work and your insistence As Leaders as the board of
031directors um in this in this process and so you'll notice you know with plans we have mission and vision and all of that is beautiful but we now have a theory of action and you've insisted to be a part of that theory of action so if you'll notice if you look closely at this theory of action it goes from the classroom with our Scholars all the way here to the boardroom starting with if the board and district will do these things and then principles will then educators will and then all of those beautiful things that Clarissa just described around our Scholars experiencing and believing that they can be their true selves and they can have the success that we have articulated in this plan those things will be manifested so we present to you tonight
032our theory of action and in just a moment I would like to um I'm clicking too fast I'm going um warp speed here because I'm excited but now I just want to say the next few slides and the next few present presenters who come before you represent the work side of this so I want to pause just a moment and thank Craig and Aaron Winter's song for the beautiful documents that you've just witnessed in terms of the the cover page the mission the vision all of those things and so can we just give our Communications team a round of applause because now you're about to see what it looks like when we roll up our sleeves and put together some action plans and and steps and strategies and so the slides that you are about
033to see are things that we are continuing to do in collaboration with our stakeholders you're going to hear how community members and different um different uh people in different positions in the organizations contributed to the work that that will allow us to execute this plan over the next few years you'll see things in different colors so in each of the phases in each of the goal areas you'll see different phases we've identified three phases because one thing we know as wonderful as it is to have all of these research-based strategies we also have to follow um best practice when it comes to implementing change we can't do everything well all at once so you'll see a green phase the green phase is going to be what we do and phase one with all of our
034schools across our system and Clarissa articulated that every school will have goal area one culture of safety and belonging where they will have to articulate a plan how are we going to make sure that we create that culture in our schools and then based on their grade level they'll pick a goal area two goal area three or goal area four and you're going to hear a little bit more about what that means so without further Ado and without any more singing I'm gonna bring um Jamila to do cultural safety and belonging where are you all that um good to see you all so I'm gonna talk through the goal area of culture of safety and belonging and so I'll give you a minute just to like look at the document in front of you because
035I know we just went through quite a few materials and so this goal area um if you Orient yourself there's three columns we have outcomes building strategies and District strategies so I'm going to talk a little bit about the different parts but first I want to talk about process and so we went through a process and I would say this process to define the school area didn't start this year it really began with the findings of our Equity audit in 2020. Clarissa also has been engaging with the district advisory the district Equity advisory committee over the past few years to get their input about the shifts that need to happen in our system and so when Clarissa kale piland who's the director of Athletics and discipline and myself convened our planning team of over 25
036people in February we already had a little bit of an idea of a purpose and how we needed to really think about culture a culture of safety and belonging so we took research articles in that group and we started to look at the evidence-based practices on safety and belonging and this is where we started to identify the strategies that you see listed in the columns so our hope is that safety and belonging really is the foundation upon which transformation will flourish in our district and so goal area one is going to be critical for all the work that we do and so on the left side you see the three outcomes so each student feels safe in their school Community each student is empowered and each student feels culturally accepted welcomed and encouraged and and
037an encouraged part of the community and so I also just want to name I know superintendent boy named this earlier but the operational expectations and I want to particularly name the one around removing barriers found in the student experience and so I want to highlight one of our strategies where we're really thinking about how we really put action to that so what does it mean to really remove barriers found in the student experience so in the phase one building strategies you see um two green boxes create ongoing opportunities for student voice with an intentional focus on students farthest from educational Justice to inform School Improvement and provide students with leadership opportunities with intentional focus on students farthest from educational Justice inside and outside the classroom so our work in this goal area is not just
038for us as adults to come to students and tell them what we're going to do to fix what we or shift what we need to shift in our system Our intention is really to leverage our student voice to have our students talk to us about what the barriers are and so we will continue to grow structures such as our board rep structures and having students on our school board will continue to grow grow are safe for students advocating for Equity structures we'll continue to build additional use of equity teams and Equity transformation cycles and all of these are ways for us to really put to action and listen to student voice and really center student voice that's one of our core values is to be student-centered in our decision making and so this strategy is
039what we're asking our buildings to put into their school Improvement plans and really start to think about that which we actually just launched with them today which is really exciting and we're going to talk more about that process here in a little bit so before I hand it off I just want to name I'm like got lost in my notes so excited okay okay um so so one I just want to name that we're really trying to put the humanization into this process as we talk about curriculum as we talk about instruction as we talk about strategies and practices we really need to remember the people that we're working with and so in order for us to create a culture of safety and belonging we have to start by really centering the people and centering
040their perspectives and voices um so we're really confident that our Improvement is going to be centered in The Human Experience we're also really confident that our leaders and staff are committed to student voice and to Growing strategies in this area and then you'll see on the right side there's a set of District strategies and there's a whole set of things that we're going to be doing in the district office to really create some structure in order to support our schools to do that so as you may have heard Clarissa say before diversity in our district is a fact inclusion is the act and so this goal area I'm like it's Church in here but um but the goal area here is really describing how we get to that how we put inclusion into action so
041I'm going to hand it now to Bobby and she's going to talk to us about goal area too with our early learners thank you Jamila good evening so nice to see all of you we are going to transition to foundations for success and I had the privilege of working with my partner Scott Monroe along with Galen Mills and many of our early learning members across the district from community members to coaches to classroom teachers who have a strong lens and passion for our early Learners and that includes our Pre-K students our our birth to five students and so we leverage this work through the lens of social emotional Readiness through kindergarten and bridging our PK to kindergarten supports as well as our academic Readiness through third grade we also focused our an outcome on our
042multilingual Learners during this process and most important only when we think about our Bridge from PK to kindergarten is those Community Partnerships and so really looking across the board in Evergreen of what we have available what services and supports we have with our Partnerships and how we can bridge the gap of our families and students who don't have access to Early Learning opportunities so that will be part of the work we do in the through the lens of our foundations for success and then we will also look at our family Partnerships what does that look like once we get into our kindergarten second third grade experience and how do we look through the lens of an asset-based opportunities for our students and how do we work with our families to let them know how we
043are connecting with each child and we have um building strategies built in Within These foundations for Success that look at the student narrative the student portrait and looking at them through the lens of the whole child and what makes them successful on a day-to-day experience both academically and through the SEL lens um and I mentioned earlier that we specifically created a multilingual outcome we feel that it is incredibly important to provide strategic support and outcomes for our multilingual students and so we are looking to create strategies and supports for our students who need language opportunities within the classroom setting so we are um super excited about targeting our early Learners so that they are ready as they transition into our intermediate to Middle School experience thank you and next up is Tilly okay good evening
044it's nice to be here I just wanted to say so this this is goal area number three and its growth and Mastery of grade level standards and I I had the honor of working with with Greg Brown and Carrie fansler as facilitators in this school group um I wanted to also say that this was co-constructed so we as as was said before we had stakeholders across the district um in in different various positions in the district and co-constructed so we met many times to work on on building strategies and think about you know how how we're going to implement this across the district so you can see there that the on the left hand side we have the outcome so there are two outcomes each student demonstrates growth toward Mastery of grade level priority standards
045through multiple pathways and then our second outcome is each student understands their strengths and a pathway for growth to support their desired future so I I want to also emphasize here if you take a look at the metrics there you have grades SBA unit assessments and youth truth and so we have a student voice component in this as well I want to highlight so as you look you you heard about the phases so green is the first phase and that we we know that phases can last it may take a year it may take a little bit longer and it may be a little bit shorter than that but that's why we named them phases so I really want to highlight the green area that you see there so there are two boxes there under
046building strategies and those those are common those two are common within goal area two three and four so that's the first phase that we're going to begin with the first one has to do with guaranteed and viable curriculum we believe that that's that's where it needs to start so that we're implementing that with fidelity and then alongside that we have embedded that we call it the EPS High leverage practices so that's another strategy so as we think about that as we think about the district strategies that go along with that we want to make sure that at the district level we support the buildings and what they're doing so ongoing teacher I'm learning through District professional development so things like job alikes PLC are coaching our coaching structure is really important to take you know
047to be in the buildings and work with our leaders and our teams to make sure that we're implementing the strategies that we're talking about so I don't want to confuse you here but as you look at those two green areas so it says embed EPS High leverage practices so that's one strategy that contains so the practices are there are 13 of them in one document so so as a group stakeholders met and we co-constructed this we looked at research and decided from different Frameworks all around here are the 13 practices that we believe in the teaching and learning cycle are important for teachers to implement in the classroom teachers know about these already it's it's it's not new but we're just naming that and then making sure that we're acting upon these to move our
048kids forward so there are 13 Strat practices I don't want to Interchange those words practices and um I'm just going to call them the baker's dozen 13. so you remember that right so they're divided into four areas so there's planning instruction assessment and evaluation and I don't believe you have a link to that right now but those 13 are in those particular areas things like clear Focus explicit instruction feedback those are some of the practices that we're focusing on so in the buildings we know that in the teaching and learning cycle those are things we focus on on a daily basis we we don't isolate those those are not in isolation so buildings will be focusing on those and then through data points that they have they might determine that hey we need to shore
049up a little bit more on feedback right we need to shore up a little bit more on clear Focus whatever whatever the the piece that they find from that data they can do but always remembering that those 13 practices are things that we do daily and we don't do those in isolation so that's what I wanted to really highlight here is that we have those two strategies in two three and four and that's what we're going to be focusing on um in the in the first phase you also see some other areas there you see the yellow and the blue we're also in in the second phase going to be focusing on data protocol and on um also another protocol for conferencing and those are coming those are things that we as a district are
050going to work on but right now for phase one we're going to support buildings in GVC guaranteed and viable curriculum and then in the embedded the high leverage practices so there you have it for for goal number three good evening board of directors and student board of directors and superintendent Boyd I'm here to discuss with you did I do it right correctly our post-diploma ready goal area four and I'm going to talk to you more about the process as to how we got to where we are so to complete goal area four the director of ccte Justin Birmingham and I sought to bring together a diverse group of voices that would provide us insight and expertise into the many facets of what it means to be post diploma ready the group had members representing career
051guidance Specialists building administrators counselors teachers District level staff special education multilingual Learners and parents A continuing priority for us in the district is a focus on preparing students for College and Career Readiness yet the measures of what it means to be toast post diploma ready varies widely thus it was the goal of group four to read current research about College and Career Readiness and identify two to three outcomes that when implemented with Fidelity would move us closer to ensuring every student who graduates from Evergreen Public Schools is college career and life ready the three outcomes this group agreed with were most critical to Preparing our students and providing students rigorous academic experience oh excuse me are providing students rigorous academic experiences you could only see one of ours on here not all three and um
052yeah the very well oh you just made the very top there um so providing students rigorous academic experiences having students sustain on-time credit attainment starting in ninth grade and providing opportunities and content areas for post-secondary opportunity visioning it was important to the group to refrain from isolating our outcomes into grade specific bands rather we focused on envisioning outcomes that address the entire High School experience and our strategies are designed to adapt to phases of a High School student's career culminating in a student who graduates from EPS being prepared with the skills and tools needed for whatever path they choose you will notice not on here but on our other documents you may notice that our third outcome is still in progress which is the post-secondary visioning within content areas and classrooms because we want to
053gather more information from our stakeholders to determine how the district office can support this meaningful work that takes place in classrooms so it's really about content embedded work where students can think about what they want to work toward After High School and thinking about really intentional ways of doing that and so we're going to come back to our stakeholders and get some more information and then revise the strategies for that that unfinished aspect of goal for speaks to the importance of the work of the Strategic plan and how it is responsive rather than directive and success and goal four relies on the three goals that come before it to prepare students entering high school for Mastery of academic content in relevant and rigorous courses aligned to their identify graduation pathway from their high school and
054Beyond plan it also illustrates the interconnectedness of the Strategic plan goal areas and how they help us realize our district mission to remove inequities by supporting affirming and growing each student to prepare them for Success while they are with us and after they graduate thank you thank you yes okay so as you can see a lot of work a lot of collaboration a lot of back and forth with stakeholders to make sure that we are doing the work to meet their needs and to be responsive as an organization one thing that we've been committed to all year is that the documents we create like our school Improvement plans and so forth aren't just things that sit on shelves but that they live and that they actually inform our work and you see that beginning with
055this strategic plan as well so as we begin to tie this up I just wanted to highlight how we're building this through line in our work so you see the Sip alignment piece where we're tying it all together so now we've revised our school Improvement planning documents because sometimes the question is you have a strategic plan you have a school Improvement plan how do they all connect right and so what we have here is our school Improvement plan and you'll see in the blue the goal area that we're focusing on from the Strategic plan as well as the green strategy that schools are focusing on this year so earlier today in this very room we had all of our elementary principals interacting with this document and pretty much grateful that they didn't have to draw
056the connections they didn't have to go to a strategic planning document figure out how they were going to embed it in the Sip we Ruth and team have already done a lot of the work for them and embedded High leverage practices as resources for them to select based on their school context so just wanting to show that we are really trying to thread things together in a way that's user friendly I've had the privilege of partnering um with our TLA tle team and one of the first things that they said when I got here in July is we we really need to develop some key performance indicators we need a report card and so we enlisted some support from Stern analytics uh Paul Stern and he's gone back five years as you can see in
057this Draft report card to pull data now that we have our goal areas so that we can begin to track the trends and patterns and to see if the the goals we set and the work we are doing are having the desired impact so you'll see I'll point a couple things out to you on the left you see elementary middle and high school milestones and then you'll also see in a little slim column G1 G2 G3 G4 and what we have done is align those scorecard indicators to the goal areas of the Strategic plan just another way we are trying all of the pieces together so when people are going to say well how do you know how well you're doing well this is one of the tools that we'll use to inform us this
058you will see has the attendance data it has our exit data that our students aren't living necessarily in our Yale services that we are exiting them from program you have our SBA data for Math and Ela are I ready and so on so this will be a place that we can populate as the years pass to evaluate our performance and be transparent with the impact it's having and here's the timeline of all the things we're here tonight you see board presentation we're excited someone that you see some May June dates and some dates you actually see um listed on there um we'll have a sit down with the superintendent opportunity for our leader to convey to the community once this is approved what what is in our plan and what to expect from schools we'll
059partner with schools to do presentations we have we already have a date for the street strategic plan Summit where our leaders and teachers are coming together to really dive into those strategies to ensure that we have we are calibrated and that they have the resources that they need to begin implementation will continue in the fall we'll launch with our staff and Community presentations we'll have some resources that I'll share with you so that again our staff and Community have a place to go to to know how we are supporting them again this is just an example we have canvas which is one of the learning tools we use with our leaders to relate information and so this will be one of the vehicles um Nathan Lee has already begun to populate a website with all
060of our strategic plan elements so that again people know where to go for resources what we mean in terms of our goal areas and strategies and again the documentation of this process and all the work the the contributions that have gone into this plan and so our next steps upon approval we will begin to implement the balance of the socialization plan we want to get the word out that we we have a plan and we want our stakeholders involved and um and and helping us working alongside us as we implement this work we'll continue our website and module development and other resources for professional learning and as Clarissa alluded to earlier we'll begin to flush out the family engagement and employee engagement pillars but we knew that it was critical given our needs around instruction
061and academics to really prioritize teaching and learning in school environment in this round and that's what we did so with that I just want to say thank you thank you for trusting us with this um amazing work I want to say thank you to a scholar first and how um Dr Campbell just got us together with all the different groups and we had a steering team District leaders we had a host of teams and peoples helping us we had a major core strategic planning team that some of you participated in and again we appreciate the leadership of the scholar first in the in this process so Dr Williams might I say something briefly yes board members I hope you listen to what's unique about this particular strategic plan when you heard the presenters talking you
062you should have noticed it was all about students student outcomes student work focusing in on students as opposed to focusing in on what I would describe as what the adult activity is it's focusing on outcomes for students so that's one Hallmark of the process but I hope you also heard the ownership and the expertise and the work that all of these leaders across your districts your District now have they own the plan this isn't about anyone else now but them and that's the other sign of a good process is when the the folks who are actually doing the work now own and can lead the work so thank you team awesome job thank you and so we'll open up for any questions well while they're waiting for questions a special thank you to Dr Williams
063who uh quite evidently and obviously LED this process um incredible job of pulling people together leading in a way that is actionable powerful and is going to direct our work for years to come so thank you thank you thank you for all that you've done to support this thank you thank you you've laid a good foundation this one I wanted to Echo what Dr Campbell said about student-centered that's what the one theme I saw through the entire presentation um and I've seen it with the work that's being done with the student board reps and how you've gotten the principal from Legacy to work with the students to create the structure for next year to make sure that there is representation from each High School the way work you've been doing was safe which came out
064of the equity advisory committee two years ago I think and how that's grown throughout the district um you've been doing a really good job with getting students involved with this process so that they know it's about them and for them so thank you go ahead be careful I think what's most striking to me and I think should be of um it's a word I want to use um achievement and and hopefulness about everything that we're looking at because we know our kids can achieve great things and what I love about this is about Excellence for all it's not about everybody doing the exact same thing at the same time trying to either dumb it down so everybody succeeds or it's about everybody being able to excel to their ultimate potential and I think that's the
065piece that is really important to acknowledge that that vision for all students being able to be successful and clearing that path for them to have that happen so that when they walk into school every day it's about I'm here because it's exciting I'm learning new things and I know people here recognize what I can do that's I think this is the least we can offer a child thank you for that work well I have a well I'll make a comment first but I think it really ties together everything that um you know the board envisioned in the beginning because I know for me like having some of our key performance indicators was really important and tying it back to um you know just the importance that every student can be successful and giving them that
066belief right because that will build culture and then all the other things will follow um so I really like the plan but I do have a logistic question so it said first reading and we talked about it mean to be approved so next board meeting we're bringing it for second reading that is correct okay is there anything that we need to do this evening for that or just bring it back for a second reading do we need to vote we wanted to give you an opportunity to see it and comment and ask any questions before we actually brought a final draft to you to approve so okay thank you for this work it's been a long time coming and it it just well the way I've been describing it to people is that this kind
067of coherency in um District leadership and planning and execution it's the first time in evergreen's history that it's been this clear and coherent we know that all of the elements were there we have always had key performance indicators for as long as I can remember um and everybody in the system has been so sincere about student safety student achievement um student inclusion so having it articulated in a common way with that many stakeholders that's a heavy heavy lift to me I appreciate that I think the board will have some work to do now to uh look at our own policies our results and expectations and our governance culture policies to see if there's a way to align ourselves with the good outcomes of this work and I'm happy to do that work with you so
068yeah having been a participant in I guess was the large District group and the development of those uh the statement of values and the statements of identity and and it was a it was really encouraging process throughout uh to and uh really I guess trying to pick the right word maybe I shouldn't be so but it was it was exciting okay that's the one it was exciting to see these ideas begin to gel together and uh it was good for me to participate in the process and I'm I'm grateful for the inclusion that everybody extended to us all because I learned more about the uh the sincerity of the folks who do their work and and uh got to know them a little better too so thank you thank you so much all right thank
069you do we need to take any action or we just come to come back for a second reading next time we want to allow our student board reps do you have any absolutely any comments I don't have any questions or anything like significant but I'm just like so thankful that I get to be a part of this and like learn so much about this and just like this whole experience has been like I've just learned so much and I'm really thankful to be here and I'm thankful for everyone here thank you um I'm just gonna say thank you for your hard work fantastic thanks so do we need to move forward and vote for a first reading this evening are we just bring it back for a second reading back for a second since it's
070not policy that we can just all right thank you that's great next is superintendent report superintendent Boyd yes and I'll be brief here we had a long um strategic planning uh presentation there uh bittersweet news suite for her and tough for us as Clarissa Hightower has decided to resign her position and at the end of the year we'll be leaving us we have her until June 30th and uh more to come on that more celebrations about her incredible job that she's done throughout her tenure here to build a foundation and actually found our diversity equity and inclusion department and Usher the department through some amazing transformational work that we're all benefiting from here so just a huge uh thank you to her for that and of course more to come we do have Nick Hansen
071at Crestline did resign his position took a position in a different District so that the first thing that I do is I email current principals and ask if anyone is interested in a transfer before we decide next steps on that job so I'm in the process of that so Crestline Elementary is open had some great events that I attended in the last week one at Mill Plain they brought OMSI in and had students do various different stations for um in the scientific little activities that was phenomenal had a chance to serve pizza there and serve popcorn at Covington for some reason they see me walking in the door and they put me to work serving food I'm not sure what to make of that but they had a phenomenal open house for incoming sixth graders
072to help those students get comfortable and acquainted with the school so that's a couple of great events our esdf Gala is coming up we have 320 people that have registered the biggest number that they've ever had so I've been personally getting involved with that with esdf they've got great leadership great vision to move forward and it's particularly important right now when we're having budget challenges and so that's going to be a great event hopefull hopefully folks can think about going to that and I think there's still time and uh yeah we're having a on um May 24th where we've invited folks that have expressed concern about the budget to engage in a conversation about the medication plans we have and that's from 5 30 to 7 30. uh we'll have information in the board update
073and packet from there so um that's my board report for you great thank you John all right next is a department update we're going to call Dr Williams back up to make the introduction we're good to go so for our tle update we're going to have a presentation by Karen Fox and her team on the heart program so we'll have them come up and they're here good evening uh good evening student board of directors and board of directors and superintendent Boyd um thank you for letting us share a bit of information about our heart program the first thing that I want to let you know is that we just received some academic data that was important enough that I wanted to revise the presentation document and so I've shared that with Lori and what you'll
074see tonight highlights a little bit of that new information and then you'll have full access to that in case you'd like to look at that in more detail um so the heart program in 2020 we combined three programs Under the Umbrella of heart because they had overlapping purpose of trying to meet the needs better meet the needs and remove barriers for our students and families who were experiencing particular challenges and barriers to their academic success and so we combined Our Family Resource Centers and our foster care program and our McKinney Mento program Under the Umbrella of heart to and then Enlisted the help of a couple of our students to help us design a logo that symbolized the purpose of the program um so tonight I'd like to introduce you to kind of the heart
075if you will of the heart program and minus we have one person who's missing tonight just um had some conflict that um we're unfortunately not able to have him here with us but I do want to allow them to introduce themselves and then I'm going to turn it over to the team to share some highlights very briefly about two areas that's Family Resource Center and foster care and then spend most of our attention tonight on mckinney-vento program which is the program that supports our students and families who are experiencing homelessness and so first first introduction is Matt Young and Matt is not able to be with us tonight so I do want to let you know that he is also part of our heart core team and Matt supports students who are unaccompanied by a
076parent or guardian and high school students good evening my name is Michelle Gaskin and I am the mckinney-vento and Foster Care liaison hi my name is Nathan Shubert I'm the unaccompanied youth coordinator for middle schools evening I'm Shea Shira and I am the mckinney-vento heart tutoring tosa hi I'm MAC English and I'm the unaccompanied youth coordinator for high schools hi I'm Katie Greer and I am the McKinney vinta support Clerk and for the program hello I'm Melanie green and I oversee the Family Resource Center Program next slide please run here okay okay all right so we currently have uh Resource Centers at 24 sites 22 elementary schools plus Legacy in Evergreen high school and we help build connections between families in the school so we assist with many resources and provide a lot of Service
077Coordination to enrich our student experience and also help connect and engage our families so we do that through connecting families to basic support needs you see a lot of that in pantries and just those critical items that help support our families meet those basic needs we offer some housing assistance referrals through Housing Partnership programs in conjunction with Council for the homeless we also have a lot of community resources available to us in by leveraging local organizations and non-profits that actually bring Services into our schools that we can then offer out to our families and Community we do a lot of student enrichment opportunities that support students before during and after school including buying lingual preschool we have some summer opportunities we do a lot of clubs and coach basketball and soccer and do a lot
078of fun things to help provide those opportunities for our kids and then we also engage families through many different school-wide events and workshops including financial literacy nutrition parenting we coordinate those Omni events that you attended they're a lot of fun for families and just do a lot what we can so we can open our doors to our families and community and bring them and invite them inside so I'm going to turn over to Michelle thank you okay so I'll speak real briefly about our foster care program we work really closely with department of children youth and families to identify students in our district who are in foster care we currently have 170 students in our district who are in foster care or have been at some point this school year um some of the um
079important requirements and services that we provide for them are continued enrollment in their school of origin which includes transportation to and from school all across our district outside of our district just to keep school as their stability while they're moving around while in foster care and then we also provide free tutoring for any student in foster care who either who reports they're interested or who qualifies based off of some criteria that Shea will talk about in a couple of minutes and then our mckinney-vento program McKenney vento is a federal law that ensures stability for students in school who are experiencing homelessness that includes families who are couch surfing in hotels in shelters those who are literally unhoused and either camping or Sweeping in vehicles um the main requirements that we provide or that we um
080are required to provide our continued enrollment in the school of origin just like with foster care um again transporting to and from school um all across the Clark County Portland metro area about a third of our mckinney-vento students we send buses outside of our District boundary to pick them up we provide food and the general basic needs for them we waive all of their school fees and fines so that they can participate in all activities like any other student would be able to free tutoring and then we also work with families and work closely with counselors and family and community resource coordinators in school to help families navigate Community Resources as well so just a little picture of what homelessness is looking like in our district we are currently at 1 325 students who are
081who have experienced homelessness at some point during this school year which you can see is a pretty drastic increase from the last couple of years um and we we've attributed that to just the rising housing costs in our area as well as the Fallout from the eviction moratorium ending and all of those evictions finally going through um leaving a lot of our families without housing so a big success that we are really excited to Spotlight within our mckinney-vento program is the support that we're providing for an accompanied youth um you saw two of our coordinators here tonight and they work really closely with students in our middle and high schools who are experiencing homelessness but on top of that are not living with a parent or a legal guardian so some of them are Couchsurfing
082with friends or living with other relatives sometimes they're completely unhoused and living alone out of a vehicle or at a Youth Shelter so we provide just really um you know intensive case management support for students to be that just that connection to school and be a safe trusted adult in their lives so that looks like transporting them to and from medical appointments or accessing benefits throughout our area providing basic needs and resource navigation through all the different systems and that are really complicated to navigate um providing housing resources and referrals for our older students as they're graduating high school when when available ongoing support with food assistance and access to EBT food benefits and food pantries helping them get set up with health insurance access to all their Vital Records but they might not have
083access to anymore so that they can obtain jobs apply for college all of those things and then I missed the the highlighted part at the very beginning so 23 of all of our students experiencing homelessness are currently unaccompanied as well so a little over 300. um some really positive outcomes from Staffing are three unaccompanied youth coordinators we've been able to re-engage students who are unaccompanied and um withdrew from school or who stopped attending like around covid and didn't come back to school and so reaching out to them to get them re-enrolled and re-engaged in school providing a lot of advocacy and mentorship help just helping that bridge between home and school and working with counselors and teachers and other school staff to help students feel comfortable improved access to getting tutoring if they have missed
084a lot of school and need to get caught up and then we are seeing increasing graduation rates as well since pre-covered in the 2019-20 school year is a little harder to measure just because that's when we went into distance learning and so graduation requirements were a little more flexible during that year but we're still seeing an increase overall and hopefully we'll be able to share with you after the end of this school year an even higher number of Youth in our program who have graduated high school and I'll turn it over to Shea to talk about our tutoring program good evening I am going to Spotlight our elementary Reading tutoring program our heart program and our heart tutoring program is currently providing before and after school tutoring for any eligible mckinney-vento student in the 2021-22
085school year we served 46 students with our tutoring services and during this current school year we are currently serving 144 students we have a 111 trained tutors in our district currently and they are all consistently putting tutoring efforts in at every elementary school so you can see here in our graph that every Elementary School currently has tutoring services we've had many positive outcomes this year with our mckinney-vento heart tutoring we've had academic growth in reading and language development for all participating students we've had multiple elementary students at or nearing grade level in Reading and our tutors are reporting that there is an increased connection to caring adults and the school Community for our tutoring students and our tutors are also reporting that they are having more professional growth being being tutors this year in the
086following slides you're going to see just a story of what some of our winds are in our mckinney-vento heart tutoring program as you can see here over 52 percent of our current tutoring students have made three or more levels of reading growth we have 11.7 percent of our students who have already met grade level Benchmark rating and we have a very diverse population this is The Wraith race and ethnicity of our heart with Kenny Bento tutoring students and lastly we are currently serving students in every grade level so that is a little bit about our McKenney vento heart tutoring program Karen just before I I say a couple of thanks words um I would like to add regarding the tutoring data that we have we have point of need and referral tutoring that has been
087happening for for years um and over the last two years we have made the addition and that's what Shea was speaking to of a systemic and systematic effort to um seek out the students who are needing the most support um in their reading development starting with reading first because we have the system set up for that and we have intervention resources in place the intent is to grow it not only through our K-12 system but also to grow it across math content as well and then the last point about that academic data is that one of the ways that we prioritize for offering tutoring service excuse me I've got a little tickle one of oh I apologize one of the ways that we prioritize for our tutoring services is reaching out first when we can
088reaching out first to students who are potentially three or more grade levels below in their current reading development and so when we see that we have 11 of our tutoring students who are now at grade level I I just want to point out how profound that is that's a celebration when a student is just almost there it's a larger celebration every time we're able to support students who have a little few steps to go and also many many steps it represents a lot of hard work and really good systematic efforts so I just wanted to make sure you were aware of that as well and then lastly we'll leave you with just a shout out to staff in general in in many ways every adult in our system in our system in EPS supports students
089who are receiving supports in the heart program and we've just captured a few highlights here this team again listed and then also naming a few of the points of contact in our schools that help us to create that strong Network and with that we would love to also share a little bit more in depth maybe in the fall about some of the about the other two program supports that Encompass the heart program great thank you do we have any questions for the team I was wondering you said you have a 111 111 trained tutors who are they are they volunteers are they staff can your staff staff okay yeah we do have a few substitutes um most of the tutors are currently contracted employees and they're probably already in the buildings where the students need
090the based on that graph where it was spread out throughout the district ideally um not not always Jay are you able to speak to to that so our all of our tutors are either para Educators certificated substitutes classified substitutes or certificated teachers and yes most of them are at the building but then we also have a full-time virtual tutor who provides those services and then in addition we have probably a handful of tutors that are willing to travel and are traveling to multiple elementary schools as well thank you so are are the tutors compensated for their time or is this a volunteer Arrangement they are compensated for their time is it a supplemental contract or imagine it's extra time yeah okay thank you any other questions thank you for the work you're doing it's really
091important we can't believe how much that number has grown on our homeless students it has grown a lot and we have really tremendous tremendous efforts this team and Beyond So yeah thank you for your time thank you thank you all all right next up is board comments these are comments by the school board do we have anything this evening I want to say that I went with uh John to sensitive Elementary to do empathy interviews with fifth graders and it was really timely with the Strategic plan because you can see how important that work is going to be to these students and how important belonging and safety and just so many of the threads touched on by the Strategic plan are to the students it was really a singular experience sitting there and talking to
092kids and just asking them how are they doing how they feel what their wishes are what their fears are I I just wanted to talk a little bit about one of my most favorite activities every year is the children's culture parade Rob and I were there with John and you know I've been doing it for a long time and those every year it's just so fun and and what I love about it is the the kids being able to to celebrate where everybody's from you know we all have have our um our DNA and and where our you know what cultures were from and what um what parts of the world that we all kind of stem from and it's fun to see the kids really delve into that and celebrate who they're with and
093some of them had costumes some of them had fun art projects that they um showed who they were with and it was fun all the high hellos or highs we were getting in foreign languages from kids in all the different countries that they were coming from but it was it's always a fun event and I never get tired of it yeah and it's actually a culminating event and there's a lot of work that teachers and buildings do to you know share each other's cultures to really delve deeply into what it means to be a global citizen so it's a it's an outstanding project that culminates in a fun thing for the students and it it's a pleasure to to experience that would have been my item nope sorry no but uh just to add that
094um you know we were accompanied This Time by the entire Vancouver Board and got a chance to interact with them and that was um that was good for us all right but yeah Aaron how many how many students were there it was like over two thousand fourteen hundred I think 1400 students Shout huzzah in the in the Green Space inside the fort is an experience that is not to be missed thirteen hundred third graders in one space yeah the uh number of parents and Educators who were along to make sure everybody got to where they were going and return to the school safety safely uh it was it's always a sight to see it's always just wonderful to see how the community supports kids all right thank you so a couple things for me um
095just a reminder that next Wednesday is our region six wasda meeting it's a canvas is hosting it um and then of course John already mentioned the gala and thank you to everyone for uh donating items for our board basket to help raise some funds and then I also wanted to give a shout out to um and acknowledge that it's teacher appreciation week and nurses week and the community relations Department's doing a fantastic job of showcasing all of our people in our schools sometimes we'll read proclamations in the past but I think it's so much more fun to see all the people in action captured on social media so if you have a chance please check that out all right anything else before we move on all right next is future agenda items do we have
096anything that we want to add I do want to point out that in board Workshop tonight we're going to talk about board retreat topics we already have a list started and we want to see about adding to things for our summer planning meeting I do think we need to get on the books of workshop for the student rep planning with the principal schoonover and the student reps are going to come up with a model for us to sort of see how we're going to move forward next year yeah correct do we have that scheduled for next Workshop perfect same connection with the comment I made during the um during the Strategic plan presentation I would like us to spend some time in Workshop identifying those pieces of our results and operational expectations policies now that
097the Strategic plan has been interpreted in terms of that whether or not there are modifications to our policies that make sense and help us better align with the Strategic plan that was developed I imagine it as something that we could do in the fall or in the retreat as a start okay all right anything else all right we'll move on to our student board representative report I'm going to go ahead and turn it over the two of you hi good evening everyone um tonight we will be sharing some good news from across our district last week the solo and Ensemble state competition was held in Ellensburg Washington at Central Washington University uh there are multiple performances from uh fans choirs and orchestras from all around our district and notably Union choir and Mountain View band
098made multiple placements at the competition and another recent competition was the skillsusa state competition in Tacoma Washington where Heritage High School earned the more better scholarship and Evergreen High School made multiple placements uh congratulations to all who competed and all who placed [Applause] hello everybody um so I have why is middle middle schools Mesa theme who is like going to State and Mesa which stands for mathematics engineering science achievements the competition will be held in Seattle good luck and then I have Mountain View science Bowl team which finished in top 16 out of 68 high schools in the nation when it competed in the U.S department of Energies National Science bar funnels last month in Washington DC they won one thousand dollars for the school program and then I have that's all she did [Applause]
099we good thank you thanks for sharing that with us good stuff happening out there especially as we end up the end of the school year oh one more thing too we have the uh art show that's happening right now right or not quite yet the 15th through the 27th Cascade Park Library all the art will be on view so make sure you have a chance to see our students art okay at this time it it's time for public comments any Community member wishing to address the board may do so during the designated time on the agenda for public comments as long as the comments are not Personnel related or about an individual employee or student and are not legal in nature each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board comments are to
100be directed to the board of directors as a whole and may not be addressed to India in any individual board member member of the board the administrative staff or the audience please state your name and District affiliation if any first on our list we have Chuck Kepler if you want to come on up check good evening hello my name is Chuck Kepler a long time parent of Evergreen Public School Kids four who have who have graduated four currently in high school still here to talk to you guys about the current budget budget proposal my understanding is when the board voted move forward with this proposal that everybody on the board or at least a significant portion of the board had said that there would still be communication and negotiation on this budget that nothing was
101permanent that there was still time and opportunity to adjust but the things that I've witnessed happening in the schools says that you're either lying or ignorant of what is actually happening these cuts are not being discussed they're being implemented people are being reassigned now athletic directors have been removed from their positions and principles are taking over ad responsibilities now Family Resource coordinators have been giving been given their new caseloads now Adam Matheson was told that there was no job for him at the school that he's worked for for 16 years the new A.D at Mountain View has sent out an email to every coach that is currently coaching at Mountain View saying that if you would like to continue to coach you need to reapply but you've also failed to tell the public about the
102other cuts that are happening that you're making but haven't been talking about coaching stipends are being cut across all Athletics you've cut at least one stipend from every sport is my understanding and how is this keeping your word that if the levy passed programs like Athletics would continue without cuts you expect these teams to operate with 40 or 50 players and one or two coaches why do you continue to lie and deceive there are currently 200 empty Elementary School classrooms in our district that equals about a total of five full elementary schools that are sitting empty and you can easily redistrict School boundaries closing the oldest school in the district and then repurposing another the savings from that alone would be five million dollars that and taking district employment down to a level commensurate with
103our enrollment would take much of the pain out of these cuts that would allow EPS to keep their ads their at-risk Advocates their family resource coordinators their budget secretaries their Librarians their academic interventionists para Educators and media assistants to be honest I was shocked to see your faces when you saw how many homeless students are in the schools because the people who are in the schools know this but the people that were just up here talking about the heart program what they can't say or won't say is you're cutting their feet out from underneath them one Family Resource coordinator in the district's new caseload has 180 homeless students that means that they spent one day with only one homeless student to do all of the things that they would need that that's all that they
104would be able to accomplish why is this that not the direction that EPS is going why aren't we considering other ideas that would keep us under budget but make the students the highest priority and the real reason is is because this is the model you want to go to at least you could do is be honest with us I come up here passionate and excited but I'm saying facts and I just want to leave with this quote from C.S Lewis one of the most cowardly things Ordinary People do is shut their eyes to facts all right thank you Chuck next up is Lisa Swain okay it's Lisa Swan it's okay it's a tough act to follow man all right one out of three Americans can read at a basic reading level 54 percent of adults
105have a literacy below sixth grade level you know it can help with that keeping educated Librarians in our district that's a basic thing our district should have and we're looking to cut them you know you talked about uh several things that I'm just could automatically say how Librarians could help you with reading scores with testing in your schools you know we've got a librarian of the year that just went to Vancouver Public Schools for job security that's sad to me you know the average person thinks oh a librarian just checks out a book they have no clue okay Librarians they're reading reviews which are super important with challenges and political things getting brought in to books these days you know with struggling readers they've been educated they know that large print can help with that
106an average person probably doesn't know that they can find exciting titles that a struggling reader or a kid that could care less about school a homeless kid that's got a lot of going on at home they could Escape in a good book and a librarian could really ingrain that in them and help them with that um you know ask your teachers at every site how much they lean on Librarians when you adopt new curriculums it's the Librarians that are partnering with your teachers in every in every site helping them align books that will support their new projects will help support the project that they're working on that'll make it a little more exciting you know your average and Excel students that Excel maybe they don't need it so much you know but you shouldn't have
107to have a student that's struggling to care you know you should have empathy towards the kids that are homeless or that are struggling that don't have two parents at home constantly not that the parents don't want to that they're trying to afford rent you know and Librarians have such sorry I'm trying to look at your time they have such a strong influence over kids it certainly starts in elementary school my daughter started kindergarten at the height of the pandemic boy we put her Library into work God bless her she would meet us on the curb to give my daughter books she helped her set it up to where she could check out a book online I mean I just don't think we give Librarians enough credit heck I had I went to a pickleball tournament
108at Cascade Middle School I love pickleball she I can only imagine how much money she raised I had to pay 40 bucks to play you know what she did she didn't use that for personal use she gave it to your students I just saw a bunch of librarians come up that that local library didn't even do that bookmark anymore your Librarians did it on their own time just to make give something else to your students to love school so in your strategic plan you even put in there that you want to listen and value input from the community don't just listen put it to action okay our students deserve the basics of having a librarian not just a random person that comes in there an educated librarian that can truly make a difference help your
109scores just overall help them good humans I just think you should really consider keeping them and not just getting a random person to go in there that'd be like taking all your teachers and get a random person to just figure it out it doesn't work like that we need librarians Thank you Lisa all right next up is uh Jenny bertiska hey Jenny hey hello again school board and superintendent my name is Jenny vertiska and I have two students in the district I spoke at the school board meeting on March 28th and expressed my concerns about the proposed budget and Staffing Cuts along with the change in school start times I didn't know if my words were going to make any difference but I had to do it so I could tell my kids that I
110spoke up for them I was encouraged when several school board members said they were voting yes on the proposed budget but only with the understanding that changes are permitted until August which would allow more board member discussion workshopping and opening up a dialogue with the community I then received an email on March 30th from the school board thanking me for sharing my thoughts stating that you heard me and that you would like to continue our conversation I was encouraged once again that the board seemed to be listening to the public I was directed to a Google formed sign up to participate in the budget follow-up Workshop upon reading the introduction on the form I immediately lost hope when I came across the line this is not a session to modify which reductions are made this
111is a session to share and receive feedback on our plans moving forward with the current recommendations I submitted the form but have not yet been invited to participate I am very curious why you are asking for our feedback if you are not going to modify the reductions this does not feel genuine I have heard plenty of community feedback at the previous school board meetings to indicate that the public is not happy with the proposed reductions you still have time to engage with the public and make changes that do not impact the students I understand that budgets require Cuts but it should not be the students paying the price it was also mentioned at the March 28th meeting that legislators like to hear stories from the students and we should encourage them to contact our state
112representatives why are we having our children beg for a quality education and for the jobs of their teachers coaches Librarians and mentors we are the adults we have the responsibility to them the children we should be the ones brave enough to stand up for our children's education these students are the future and deserve all of the support we can give them it will benefit us all to give them a quality education and a positive Public School experience please truly listen to the public and modify your proposed reductions thank you thank you Jenny all right next up on the list is Gary Wilson good evening Gary evening at the last board meeting Chuck Kepler spoke during public comments that he had information he had obtained from a public records request showing currently the district office staffing
113is at 215 employees and in 2016 at the highest student enrollment over 27 000 students ESD had 221 district office staff looking back to when the enrollment was below 23 000 as it is now district office staffing was at 179. it was also mentioned that the proposed budget showed District staff to be cut by an 11 and a half so that would be going from 215 to 203 and a half the point he was making was when in the past when the enrollment was at our current level we had 179 district office staff and even with a 19 million dollar budget cut it appears we'll be at 203 and a half district office staff almost 25 more staff than when we were last at the student enrollment level I'm not here to say this is
114right or wrong without more detail an actual 2023-24 detailed proposed budget to review it's hard to make any knowledgeable suggestions I believe transparency with this proposed budget would help the damage control you're currently in rather than just say here are the cuts we're making let's see the actual nuts and bolts line item by line item so we can all understand better where these Cuts should be coming from I'm looking forward to meeting with superintendent Boyd later this week and wanted to review the proposed budget with them but I'm finding that that is not available it's just a proposed budget which can be revised before your final vote in August so let's be transparent with your district and let's see the budget that we can all come to a better understanding of where these cuts are
115most needed line by line also I'm curious how the Sip programs effect has had since its implementation last October not just flowery words but is it actually going to raise the current 25 percent of ESD students meeting ospi math standards I want to add that only 38 percent of ESD students are meeting English standards and only 35 percent are meeting science standards per ospi that's a 33.1 percent average in students meeting the three academics only one in three ESD is the lowest performing School District in the nine Clark County School Districts while next door campus is averaging 70 percent of their students meeting ospi standards in the three academics 33 compared to 70 percent I've mentioned several times in the past to this board for well over a year now why not do an analysis
116of the teachers and what percent of their students are meeting standards to identify those being successful to glean from them and put their best practices into place and also identify those not successful to get them more training at the last board meeting oh excuse me lastly I just want to thank Kimberly Warren who spoke at last month's board meeting about her concerns with the comprehensive sex ed flash curriculum she was correct and I've also asked this board about check the facts more family-friendly sex ed curriculum and it yeah just check the facts check it out if you want to know why you're losing students as I've said before flash curriculum is one of the reasons thank you thank you Gary foreign at the time of 7 22 the board will now go into recess where
117we will sign documents a workshop to review an astronomy resource for adoption and instructional materials committee applications discuss board retreat agenda items a legislative update followed by an executive session to discuss potential litigation expected to last approximately 45 minutes thank you very much thank you [Music]