School Board Meeting - March 14, 2023

001all right thank you and good evening thank you for joining us we're going to go ahead and start with our Pledge of Allegiance if you please rise thank you again welcome this evening there is the meeting will be broadcast out the lobby if anybody would wish to be out there for a little bit more room I think we do have some chairs set up out there if anybody would like to watch it from there we'll obviously keep the doors open as well all right next on our agenda is Our Land acknowledgment which will be read by director Perkins thank you Evergreen Public Schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinookin peoples and the kalitz tribe they have lived on and cared for this land and it's waterways since time immemorial we thank them for

002their stewardship and make this acknowledgment to open a space of recognition inclusion and respect for all indigenous students families and staff in our community great thank you Rob all right next on our agenda is to adopt our agenda we will entertain a motion I move that we adopt tonight's agenda as presented exactly uh moved in second and all in favor say aye aye opposed great thank you all right next on our agenda is a litigation update uh we are part of a of Jewel litigation we're going to hear from attorney Garrett Williams who will provide us information on that I believe he's joining us through Webb hello Garrett can you hear us I can hear you can you hear me we can thank you thanks for joining us yeah happy to be here so it's

003a very quick update for you and I am the bringer of good news which as an attorney I don't always get to be but the Nationwide mass action lawsuit against Jewel has reached a settlement with 1600 school districts Across the Nation along with a number of municipalities cities those types of things the total settlement reach for all groups is over a billion dollars 1.2 billion dollars the school district is going to receive almost six hundred thousand dollars of that so very good chunk of change that could be put to good use in terms of purchasing vaping devices and counteracting some of the negative effects of Jewel and vaping uh more broadly the money will be rolled out over a series of payments over the next couple of years with about half of it coming up

004front and then it being chunked up into 12 and a half percent chunks over the next three years uh occur each December the district has received the settlement information on that and I know that a number of the documents have already been prepared so I appreciate John and his team's efforts to get all of that underway but I think you know when we talk about the money is a great thing um but the second part of this lawsuit was really getting a nationwide injunction against Jewel to prevent them from advertising to kids and I know one of the things that we talked about the beginning when when the district signed up was that Jewel was advertising on places like Nickelodeon they were using cartoons to Market tobacco to kids they were also putting Jewel vaping

005Pods at a you know accessible level inside of a convenience store because it wasn't treated as tobacco as part of this lawsuit we got a nationwide injunction against that kind of behavior so jewel is now Jewel and you know some of their subsidiaries are held to the same standard as big tobacco so at this point you're not going to see Jewel marketing on Nickelodeon you know during a SpongeBob episode which is a what we signed up for um you know our our firm did this pro bono for the district and we did that because we felt like this was one of those Nationwide harms that we could really put some emphasis behind and so we're really proud of the work that we were able to do and getting an injunction and then also getting the

006dollars to the district that you know can be put to good use great thank you uh any questions for Garrett thank you for your hard work I was happy to do it was just questions just want to Echo the Gratitude especially in A Moment Like This all right thank you we appreciate you being here this evening thank you so much for the time okay so with that we have matters reserved for board action which is resolution number 6773 which is to approve the settlement in the jewel litigation of approval of resolution number 6773. seconded uh it's been moved in second it all in favor say aye opposed perfect thank you all right next is special recognition celebrating music in our schools we love this evening Corrine ormsen is here and I believe she's going to

007introduce some special guests for us this evening good evening members of the board and superintendent Boyd I want to start by acknowledging that this is a difficult time in our district and there are challenges that are facing many of the adults teachers and staff I am here today because March is music in our schools month and I would ask you to consider setting aside frustrations for a moment and focusing on our students we have a quartet of students here today to perform for you that are an example of the Excellence that can be found within all of our schools this group is one of about 40 ensembles and solos that will be representing EPS at the state contest in April so please help me welcome the Mountain View trombone quartet to the stage hello my

008name is Alex notarte this is venunne tamaklow Spencer Moody and Logan strong today we'll be playing trombone quartet by Derek bourgeois [Music] foreign [Music] hahaha [Music] hahaha [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] anybody have any questions for our musicians or comments nothing but that was spectacular well done how low was that bottom note I I did band in high school and I'm a musician now so which letter that was a low the bottom note a low g wow I can't even sing that that was so beautifully done thank you how long have you all been playing sounds like where it starts right fifth grade you must be able to hold your breath a really long time you were holding your breath a lot it was pretty amazing and you guys are really impressive and you

009should be proud of yourselves for your talent and perseverance to keep playing and learning more and and being so professional in your approach thank you so well done good luck in the competition [Applause] thank you Corinne all right next up is our board consent agenda we will entertain a motion for approval I move to approve the board's consent agendas presented moving second all in favor say aye aye opposed perfect thank you we'll now move on to the superintendent consent agenda I move that we approve the superintendent consent agenda second uh moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you all right next on our agenda is proposals for Action we have four policies that we are in a second reading on all four these have been uh workshopped and we did a

010first reading in our last board meeting and so this evening we're bringing it back for a second reading and uh approval and so I'm going to ask director Perkins to run through the four policies uh we'll do one by one because we have to vote on them separately the first one we're going to start with is policy 1400 which is meeting conduct order of business in Quorum and Rob's going to plug in so he can display these on the on the screen for everyone that's what we're doing okay there we are okay we're entering second reading is this time we're doing a second reading on policy 1400. and since we uh went over this in detail last time I think the only real question was whether there was any Community input um or comments uh

011between then and now that you know about John all right do does the board have any questions or comments on policy 1400 since the last time we brought it fourth for the first reading codifies what we've been doing his best practices for a long time all right since we are taking a vote on this one this evening we will ask for questions from the audience on this policy only so only comments obtaining to policy 1400 meeting conduct order of business and quorum anyone in the audience have a comment or question yes we state your name too please thank you uh Sean Gunder High School science teacher proud Union educator um I want to speak tonight toward policy 1400 specifically as feels particularly topical tonight um around the language in the policy on public comment uh

012I notice I I know that you as a school board are certainly within your rights and have clear rationale for having open public comments toward the end of the board meeting rather than at the beginning I know that the language uh provide a period to hold public comment is intentionally written to facilitate having comments at the end of the meeting and again I know the rationale of the board I would encourage you though as a board just as is recommended by wazda to hold public comments at the beginning of the meeting and coming up with other solutions for the issues that you might think have um you might think having comments at the end of a meeting addresses scoreboards are ideally democratically elected bodies trusted by the public to govern our Public Schools it's I

013think it's a reasonable reasonable to expect that any elected governance is representative responsive and well informed by holding public comment at the end of a meeting implicitly requiring full attendance as a prerequisite you're excluding many of our community members from participating I I would like my school board to be well informed I feel pretty safe in saying that nobody in this room knows their own job better than they do and who better to inform the board nobody knows our schools excuse me nobody nobody knows our schools better than students and the staff that work directly with them so who better to inform the board by setting time constraints You Are by deliberate action creating constraints for our district stakeholders and this is an equity and access issue education is a field majorly consisting of women

014many with children many that work the so-called second shift after work there are many people that would like to be here tonight that cannot because they don't have the privilege to take time away from their families and obligations to sit through a meeting and speak to the board these are people that we need to hear from the most with our history of Van equilibrium outcomes in schools and this can only result in ultimately having a less responsive representative and informed governance and in in reading this document what would be simple about holding public comments at the beginning of the meeting is that it wouldn't require mending or changing policy 1400 just in shifting order of business and so my urge would be for you to you as a school board to take this under uh

015serious consideration as your building agendas and conducting meetings and governing in the future all right thank you for your comments thank you all right is there any is there any other questions or comments regarding policy 1400 [Applause] all right and with that is there any other questions or comments from the board then we will entertain a motion for approval the only adoption of policy 1400 we've been second and all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you all right we're going to move on to policy 1410 executive or closed sessions again this is a second reading we've done it in workshop and a board meeting last time where we did a first reading okay this is policy 1410 regarding executive or closed session this is a modification of existing policy uh to uh in the

016first place add um an alignment with state law regarding what is permissible in an executive session so that it includes discussions of data breach disclosures if legal counsel is available so it's very constrained but it aligns with the law this way and as well um at the the other changes to insert the language the announced purpose of the executive session will be entered into the minutes of the meeting have there been any uh Community questions or feedback between now and then or then and now okay then I would recommend that we adopt this policy revision as presented all right questions for comments from the board policy 1410 questions or comments from the audience on policy 1410 all right CNN then we will entertain a motion from the board I move for adoption to the revision

017on policy 1410 seconded movement seconded all in favor say aye aye opposed thank you all right Rob policy 1420 proposed agenda and consent agenda this is policy 1420 um and I actually can't remember from our discussions was this a new policy or a revision do you remember does it say anything on the bottom of Heaven no this is new policy and this this uh puts in policy um some practices that we've always followed to make sure the public or the board knows about the meeting agenda three days in advance and that the public knows at least 24 hours in advance prior to the start of the meeting um and then it lays out consent agendas the way that we've just done it in this meeting and every meeting so this becomes policy rather than practice

018uh and uh adds a little transparency there have there been any comments or uh questions from the public between then and now not that I'm aware of okay then my recommendation is that we adopt the policy all right thanks Robin again this has been normal practice we're just putting a policy in place all right uh questions or comments from the board questions or comments from the audience on policy 1420 right C none will entertain a motion I move that we adopt policy 1420. second uh Moon second in all in favor say aye aye aye opposed Perfect all right the last of our policies proposal for Action is policy 1610 conflicts of interest again director Perkins thank you policy 1610 is also a revision some are calling it right um based on some recommendations from wazda

019that we place in policy something that aligns with the law and conflicts of interest we have in our workshop and discussions gone beyond that it is legal apparently for school board members to be purchasing agents for a district or uh to write a contract with the district for up to 1500 a month or something like that but the board in our discussions decided not to adopt those two Provisions one is for small districts and the other one is we would rather rely on our experts and try to be them [Music] so this piece here about not receiving any compensation for services rendered other than legally defined and authorized compensation refers to the stipend that has a ceiling of forty eight hundred dollars per year and uh incurred expenses for conducting our duties um other than

020that it is the same as the previous revision and my recommendation is to adopt the revisions great thanks Rob questions or comments from the board all right questions or comments from the audience on policy 1610 conflicts of interest all right I'm CNN we'll go ahead and entertain a motion I move for adoption of policy 1610 with revisions second moved in second all in favor say aye aye opposed great thank you all right next up is our superintendent report I'm going to hand this over to superintendent Boyd for his updates did we miss a department further down further down okay all right thank you and good evening I want to thank everyone for being here I do want to take a little bit more time than I usually do in my superintendent report to address everyone

021here tonight in our EPS Community as a whole let me start by saying that when I look out at this packed room and see the list of people who have signed up to speak I have mixed emotions first and foremost I know you are hurting and I know that we as a school Community are hurting tonight I'll be recommending to the board 19 million dollars in budget recommendations and there just isn't a way to make the cuts of this size without significant impact to our district this is especially true Following last year when even after passing the levy on the second try we had to face the harsh reality of making 20 million dollars in budget cuts now with these latest reductions some of our staff members will be losing their positions and our students

022will be negatively impacted because we'll have fewer adults in our system supporting them there's no positive way to spend 19 million dollars in budget cuts there's no perfect system to decide what to cut and what to keep so just know when you stand up to advocate for how losing specific position or a specific program will hurt our kids everyone sitting up here will agree with you the people that lose the people that we lose have dedicated their time supporting our kids the programs we lose have enhanced our students experience there were no easy decisions but it is my job and the board's responsibility to budget to balance the budget every year right now as a district we are not in a place where we can comfortably absorb these kinds of cuts we are not overstaffed

023we are underfunded we have to make important decisions now if we don't balance our budget now I can predict what's next and it's not good the bottom line is our expenditures have been outpacing our revenues for the last few years but thanks greatly to the fact that we received almost 64 million dollars in federal coveted relief otherwise known as Esser funds we did not have to make major reductions during the peak of the pandemic now with the federal eser funds expiring and our loss of student enrollment we no longer have the ability to avoid these difficult decisions we have to take corrective action now this is not an evergreen specific issue budget shortfalls are happening to our neighbors here in Clark County all across the state and even the country we continue to hope that

024our state legislature will decide to increase their support for our schools we hope they will fully fund State mandates fully fund transportation and fully fund special education an area where we are currently underfunded by the state by 12 million dollars right now they don't so when you so when you couple unfunded State mandates with the federal funds expiring are decreased student enrollment and almost 14 percent over the last six years we are faced with this budget reality so while I encourage you to use your voice tonight to advocate for our students I also encourage you to use your voice to contact your legislatures legislature to reach out to your politicians make sure they know that our kids need them to realize that the state's current funding model is not working when I look out and

025see how many people are here I have a sense of Pride and a sense of hope I'm proud that I serve and live in a community that is passionate about supporting our kids I'm hopeful because while I know tonight we'll hear from people who will voice their disagreement with some of the recommendations and decisions I have made I also know that we all agree on one thing we must pull together to provide our students with the educational experience they need yeah student board representative reports next for you all right thank you John all right I was wondering where you were heading but it's all good all right next on our agenda is student board representative report Sullivan and Covenant have a report for us Sullivan are you going to go first yes I'll go first

026good evening board directors and everybody here and our mission to represent all students with our decisions I attended breakfast with a board at Cascade Middle School and at this event I received lots of great insight and feedback from our middle schoolers as to how we can improve their educational experience and last week uh Covenant and I um with our team we met with the folks from youth truth to further discuss our project and we have made great progress hello hello everybody um last week we met which representative from the yield truth server who a partnering um with the district to learn more about how students relate to Matt we talked we also talked about setting up a meeting with students from third grade to 12th grade to get the advice on how we can improve

027Maths for students and learn more about how to make the server more effective the goal is to learn from the students more information that will be used in the National in the nation World YouTube server in the future thank you great thank you so much I know that Jackie and I've been able to be in those meetings with the um youth truth survey folks and I'm excited about the opportunity that you're going to have to kind of lead our student groups in that discussion any questions for Covenant or Sullivan before we move on to hear more all right next up is uh presentation the 2023-2024 Evergreen Public Schools budget recommendations uh superintendent Boyd is going to lead us through this thank you test thank you and I have CFO Jennifer Jacobson up here to share

028this budget presentation with me so uh board directors of Evergreen Public Schools I'm here to present some recommendations for Budget recommendations for the 23-24 school year I want to start with a quote the hardest choices in life aren't between what's right and what's wrong but between what's right and what's best none of these choices are good what we've had to do and what I've had to do is to look at all of the feedback and all of our guiding principles and decide what's best um I want to share our budget timeline to begin with and we've been talking about the budget reductions since October we had our first formal board work session in the open public forum and discussion of the proposed budget deficit in January we did some stakeholder feedback we'll talk more in

029depth about that in a minute February we gathered with District leaders and some others and developed some uh had some recommendations made from them I shared a letter March 7th with the recommendations to staff and on March 14th here we are today to discuss the recommendations with the school board and stakeholders on March 28th the plan is to adopt a resolution for reduction of educational programs that's required when you're making reductions of this depth and significance in April we'll begin implementation of the reductions a lot of work to do to figure out how to implement these reductions and in May 15th is the deadline that we have to inform certificated staff should we have a reduction in force otherwise known as a layoff in August we'll have a public hearing and adoption to adopt the

030budget so for stakeholder feedback we we did a thought exchange and a thought exchange is an interactive survey where people can rate each other's thoughts and we ask the question what are the most important things the district should consider in making cuts to the balance uh cuts to balance our 23-24 budget as you can see the participation up there and the delineation of which stakeholder groups participated and the uh the top rated thoughts we themed them and we came up with the four bullets of focused funds on students and schools not admin District Cuts should be furthest away from classrooms prioritize student mental health and safety and address learning loss and small class sizes the other thing we did while considering these budget reduction uh um recommendation was we pulled together some District staff and

031our district leadership and we through our Equity lens came up with some guidelines that we would we used in all aspects of making these decisions and those were to prioritize students who are furthest from Justice educational Justice strive to maintain a diverse Workforce avoid unintended consequences engage stakeholders thoughtfully to ensure feedback and accountability the other important considerations that we have to always do when we're dealing with budget reductions is we are currently at a five percent minimum fund balance right now uh going below that has some real big implications for us we tried to consider some proportionality among schools Services ASE departments and classifications to share in the responsibility and we have a lot of contractual agreements ospi guidelines Grant and legal requirements as you see some of these things are contradictory as you see

032there's a lot of things to consider when we're making these reductions so we had the difficult and enviable task of trying to follow our guidelines you know look at our parameters consider our feedback to come up with some budget recommendations I'm going to provide just a high level summary of our budget factors and then I'm going to turn it over to our CFO Jennifer Jacobson to go more into the details but over uh over the last six years we've lost almost 14 percent uh enrollment that's 3600 3660 students which equates to State funding of about 36 million dollars our Esser funds end in 2024. so there's 13 million dollar decrease decrease from 22 to 23. so we've been able to use those Esser funds over the period of the pandemic to keep our our staffing

033levels high that funding ends next year so we're in a situation where that's impacting our budget Levy Equalization is a tool that the state uses to provide funds for property poor districts our property values went up by 17 percent last year almost so we're no longer being considered a property poor District so we're we're getting a decline in revenues from five to six million dollars of course inflation we all feel that the pump we feel it at the grocery store districts are no different we have wage inflation we have inflation at the pump that we fill our 275 buses with and all of the inflation factors that for our recurring commitments and then again the fund balance of uh five percent per board policy is one of the things that's a factor in our decision

034to make 19 million dollars worth of budget recommendations to you today thank you superintendent Boyd I'm here just to discuss more about the financial impacts of those major budget factors we do have some good news here in that we do have an increase in Levy collections next year of about 4.4 million dollars so we do have a small step up in our Levy dollars both epno and our Tech Levy and we also estimate about 7.3 million dollars in increased State funding so even though our enrollment is in a decline we do receive some additional State funding to help combat those inflationary factors however as a superintendent Boyd pointed out we will have a loss of Esther funds next year of 13 million in this current year we plan to spend about 19.2 next year about

0356.2 and then the SR funds will go away and then that loss of Levy Equalization dollars he was talking about it has a negative 5 million dollar impact expenditures estimated inflationary increases of three to four percent uh equate to about 12.8 million dollars so those factors taken together have an impact on our fund balance of 19.1 million dollars here's a very high level overview of our financials so I brought in last year's 2122s on the left you can see our revenue and expenses we basically had a break even year we received about 14 million dollars in enrollment stabilization funding last year it was one-time funding to help us address the impacts of the enrollment decline that we were all built across the state we also spent about 25 million in Esser funds so those two

036things together helped us balance the budget last year we knew going into this next year that we would not receive those 14 million in stabilization funds again and that we were aiming to spend about 19 million NRS or funds and so we had to go into this 22-23 year making about 20 million in budget reductions so that we could balance this current Year's budget and now as you look forward into 23-24 we only have about six million dollars left of those Sr funds because of those decreases that we listed earlier we don't expect to hit 400 million next year and then with those inflationary factors on our total expenditures we expect about almost 419 million so you see the deficit there the difference is the 19.1 million and it is important we stay in a

037balanced budget next year so otherwise this would deplete our fund balance I wanted to spend just a minute talking about Esther funds so these are federal funds they were Grant awarded to us through these three different phases over the last five years these were to help us combat the impact of the pandemic and we were very fortunate to receive these funds they helped us keep our staffing levels up during this time so we could address learning loss we could address all of the things that we needed to at the start in 1920 2021 we spent a lot on devices and connectivity software trying to get our kids all on the remote learning and also Staffing 2122 is when we came back to school we had quarantine room monitors that year and we also spent the

038funds to um support our certificated staff so that we could keep our class sizes low in 2223 is the current year we anticipate spending about 19 million dollars that will all be on Staffing and then in 2324 we have the last 6 million and then those funds are expired so and this last slide a student FTE in our staffing Trend I did first share the slide back in December it was part of the video I recorded I think it's a good visualization you can see the impact we've had the blue shows our enrollment decline over these last six seven years we've gone from 26 479 down to the 22 as a superintendent Boyd mentioned in the current year we receive about ten thousand dollars for each student FTE so if we still had this number

039of students in our system today we would have about 36 million more dollars just in basic Ed funding so that's not even touching that we would also receive more in title and lap in our other Oracle findings so during this time period you can see our staffing the orange line is the certificated instructional staff these are classroom teachers the yellow line are a classified staff so these include bus drivers Paras secretaries all of our HR payroll and then the gray line is the certificated admin staff and these are primarily principles and so you've seen we've been fortunate receiving the 64 million dollars over the last two three years that we've been able to maintain pretty consistent Staffing levels even despite this enrollment decline but unfortunately we can't maintain those same Staffing levels with the decrease

040in Revenue we're experiencing thank you I'm going to take us through the recommended reductions uh rather quickly we want and we know we have a lot of people here for comment but I do want to publicly show these recommendations to folks so we're looking at again 19.1 million dollars of reductions at the central office we're looking at reducing certificate administrators certificated staff and classified staff you can see the projected savings on the right we're able to realize almost a million dollars eight hundred ninety thousand dollars by changing our custodial contract from an A B Cleaning to an ABC every third day cleaning and having our students put chairs on on desks will save us 142 000 and we're going to do that our department supplies and services we're removing Portables that helps us with cleaning

041and utilities another big one down there you can see is software and other IT services again I told you we got our district folks together we looked at everything that we could to try to realize some savings here and we had some redundant things that we added during the pandemic that we were able to get rid of some of those redundancies and streamline and blend some of those programs to be able to realize that savings travel and utilities and the utilities piece is just a simple change in how we pull air in in and out of our buildings and during covids we had the dampers way down we'll open those dampers up a little bit and we should be able to realize those savings at our elementary schools we're looking at currently we have about

04253 academic interventions interventionists the plan is to the the recommendation is to reduce those down to about 30 or so associate principles 4.5 reduction building budget reductions you'll see that in each and every one of these 10 reduction in building budgets at elementary middle and and high school certificated staff in basic Ed and that's just reducing down to our new enrollment and maximizing our class sizes a big one here a big challenge also is Our Family Resource coordinators and reducing those by half having them split assignments have a lot of work to figure that out but we plan to continue that service for folks language Specialists those are certificated staff that go out and support our multilingual Learners and then media assist instance that's media assistance at elementary they're supporting students in the library so

043that's 12 for that savings to the right and then another big one is to phase out full-time Excel and pull out Excel and re-envision our hap High cap program for a savings of uh six hundred thousand dollars and we've already began to make some plans around that and identify some staff to be able to look at that to make some plans to support our high cap learners at middle school we have at-risk Advocates and we have we're recommending a reduction of 3.3 again you'll see the building budget reduction you'll see the certificated staff both in gen Ed and CTE and that again is Staffing related to our new enrollment levels their counselors we have some fractional counselors at three of our schools and that's a reduction of of of those partial counselors multilingual para Educators

044three and a big one here is the reduction of teacher Librarians at secondary and secondary um at middle school you'll see that same recommendation to reduce teacher Librarians at high school and Associate principals that risk Advocates that you saw on the on the previous one another big one is the reduction I know of our athletic directors so we have a lot of work to do to continue the functions that the hard work that they're doing is going to have to be absorbed by our our building administrators at high school and are building budget reduction of 10 percent again 14 and a half staff to align our staffing with our new enrollment projections we have some extracurricular program efficiencies so that's looking at you know some transportation we will look at some of the after-school activity

045buses and if we're not fully utilized maybe combine some of those and look at our coaching uh to to coaching to athlete ratios we think we can realize savings without having to cut any programs for students para Educators some we've worked with our special ed Department to determine that we could reduce special education support pairs by 11. another big one here is our clerical staff at high school so we're going to have to combine some jobs and look at some efficiency there and come up with a a model for all schools to have the same so those are my recommendations for the reductions and the board if you have questions or comments this would be the time for the board to to ask all right thank you John and Jennifer and I'm going to ask

046Dr Charlene Williams and Jennifer Jacobson to come up as well Jennifer Jacobs Janae Gomes thank you all right thank you um all right questions comments from the board my first question is the how like how are we going to move forward with cutting these services that people have been relying on for a long time students have been relying on the Excel program athletic directors the language Specialists I mean I'm just I'm not listing everything but how do you how are you going to do that what's the process that is definitely a question because this is definitely going to be difficult to do this work without the key members that we just listed so um our teaching and learning team for example has pretty much become a budget a budget mitigation team so we've taken on

047different aspects so we have a couple of our members who are working with some of our Excel stakeholders to decide to redesign and reimagine what the Excel program will look like we have members of our team who will be working with administrators around how do we redistribute the athletic director duties we also know that our multilingual Learners are taking a hit so what is the mitigation plan for that so we've already tasked staff members to gather feedback and input and to start drafting what our next steps should be and we know that people are going to be very curious to hear what that is and so we have every intention to engage stakeholders as as appropriate oh yeah I wanted to ask Jennifer if I remember the budget number being higher than 406 million when

048we approved the budget in August um it's 417 I think the last I looked which was this afternoon and uh I wondered what factors went into the reduced revenues and expenditures over the plan or well a primary part of our putting our budget together is putting in a grant contingency amount so I believe we used about 6 million on both the revenue and expense side and so that was to build capacity so when we bring new grant funding in we have that capacity in there to recognize the revenue and expense for that so that's why we always come in a little bit under otherwise we have to go out to the state for a budget extension every time we start getting up close to our total right okay yeah that's a good point um a

049suggestion is for how how many uh special education para Educators out of the total how big is the total of uh staff in that section to one significant digit is fine yeah we don't have that off the top of our head it's a big number um but yeah I don't have that in the dozens or hundreds um I know it's over 100 or so and we can get that number to you um just to speak to the 11 that are being reduced a lot of them are representative of students who are graduating out of the services and so the the lower impact peras that still we still have open positions for pairs that we still would love to fill because our students still have those needs so we wanted to make that clear thank you

050I have a question around I mean maybe I don't have a question maybe just more of a comment just really around enrollment because I really feel like that's the kind of one of our major factors that we're facing and it's been a six year Decline and I think during covid and the pandemic and we really felt like our students would find their way back and but we've stabilized a little bit in enrollment the last it feels like this last year we've stabilized our enrollment and just thinking forward because I know that we have to right size now based on our enrollment numbers we have no choice because we're the SR funding is gone and we've been using that to fill that gap of our decreased enrollment so just looking forward to next year or future

051years and I know that the state makes us do several year projections out for Budget how do we how are we going to look moving forward based on that because I feel like our enrollment's right sizing right so next year we do plan to spend about six million dollars in our funds so those again the following year will be gone that will be another hit to our Revenue otherwise we will plan for continued decline in enrollment as we see the lower grades have more like 1500 and our upper grades are in the 17 1800 range so we will still plan for that decline in enrollment we'll have to continue to adjust Staffing to reflect those declines and uh you know there's there's more budget reductions to come but I feel like this year is that

052will stabilize this more that's that as her Cliff that we've heard about where we're taking a huge decline in us or funds for next year so yeah and I just another because with the board has been very concerned about our enrollment decline over the last several years because we know what it's doing to the bottom line of our budget we've actually done some studies around it where we had a demographer come in and tell us you know what's happening in our area and what we've found because people are like well we still see Apartments going up and buildings and housing developments but what we're finding is that people from Portland who are now in the age of no kids are the ones that are buying up those houses and moving into those condos and those

053apartments and that's what's not families which we want families to come right we want our enrollment to increase that's the goal so I just wanted to make that known to everyone that it is something that we've looked at because while we've been waiting for enrollment to go up it just hasn't and but it's stabilizing a little bit we believe I I yeah he used an inflation figure three to four percent which is a lot lower than the uh inflation figures that are being broadcast on the you know popular news programs is that a basis in ipd or or consumer prices the latest estimates are using I believe are in 3.5 to 3.6 and so that's what I went with um if I had been more aggressive we'd be looking at a hair reduction so yeah

054I have to make that balance okay is it do inflationary pressures on a school district work differently than on a household do you think yes we receive a certain amount of funding for our state positions but anything that we pay over and above comes out of our local Levy dollars so it was kind of the point I was trying to make in my video about every time we pass through an ipd to our to our staff the district has to pick up those excess costs the state does not fully fund that increase right thank you can you talk some more about the fund balance explain why we should make it absolutely so we have a five percent minimum fund balance policy that is we need to keep five percent of our previous year's expenditures in

055our fund balance um we ended last year with 5.14 so we have a very slim margin there right now one of the main issues with this is we have cash flow problems if we get any lower with our fund balance right now our fund balance is around 29 million total and that includes the restricted accounts as well every month we pay payroll an AP of about 34 billion so so we are sitting on a less of a fund balance than one month of our expenditures so that causes cash flow problems you know we see school districts don't receive cash in equal increments through the year there are certain months where a porschement might come in at five percent in certain months where they pay it at 12 percent and we get property taxes a lot

056in October and April but not a lot during the rest of the year so we see a lot of variability in our cash flow and so it's a it's a concern when we're just trying to pay our bills that we have that fund balance there to cover so sorry um a lot of questions having a hard time kind of pinpointing them uh for me I mean it's it like you said it's been a discussion we've had a lot with the budget reductions and I I don't know that that's really you know any of my questions as to why we're doing these we understand why my biggest concern is the moving forward obviously we don't know everything yet the impact but I have a lot of concerns and maybe I mean what are the thoughts so

057far about we have learning loss I mean we all know we've got huge learning loss from covid we have um previous budget cuts that took away programs our newcomers programs so we have students we have an influx of students um you know our MLL students how are we going to address those when we're pulling out academic interventionists and language Specialists and those types of things we have behavioral how are we going to address those with making these reductions and and I'm primarily looking at our elementary schools right now because our elementary schools are taking the biggest hit this year [Applause] yeah my first response to your question is not going to be easy uh these Cuts can't be um couldn't have come at a more inopportune time with our students with all the needs that

058we have but as Dr Williams suggested we're going to work really hard to try to work with folks to make sure that the the functions continue to uh to get done we're not going to be able to support Folks at the highest level that we're doing now because of the loss of that step but we're going to do everything we can to work with folks can I make a quick comment on that to Jenny's point right it it is it's not going to be easy because that we're not unique to any other District in this region or in the state and we need to as a board and as a community lean on our legislators to ask for more funding to help us with this deficit to help our students that are in more need

059yes and I think we can all agree that that is a we are suffering hugely because we are not being funded for our special education as a mother of special education you know special ed kids it's a huge it's a huge issue and this is you know it's concerning and it's so I guess what is the plan I do we have a plan in place of how I know we don't have a plan specific plan but do we have goals to how we're getting there we do um there is the Strategic plan that we are working on and one of the things that we are trying to do through that plan is streamline our services so that we can focus all of our resources and all of our all of the best practice strategies that

060we know through that plan to serve all of our all of our Learners in particular we want to make sure we address the needs of our students that are receiving special services we are calling that out as one of the key strategies that needs to be identified in our framework as we support schools similarly um I believe I just said special services multilingual Learners Learners that are receiving Excel Services we know that we are going to be having to do more with less and the only way that we can do more with less is to identify what are the best practices that are are out there which we've been able to do through some of the work with our strategic plan work and working with Dr Campbell and some of these amazing Educators in this

061room and and additionally paying particular attention Okay these people have left this building how are we going to redistribute resources using an equity lens we know this school has more needs potentially than this school so then how do we maybe reallocate Staffing or resources accordingly with that in mind because we know equal isn't always Equitable and so we'll have to use what we have left with a strategically and judiciously as possible how are you going to go about making that process visible to the community into the public so some of the mechanisms we have we have our newsletters and we're actually working with um one of the people who have been supporting our strategic planning process with marketing giving our schools and leaders tools on how to push information out to their Community you have

062questions about what we're doing with our strategic plan the you know this is these are the agreements we've come up with this is how it's going to look like in our school setting we're planning um uh basically a strategic plan Summit where we're pulling all of our leaders together to identify what those practices are they're going to leave with tools and they'll be able to share with their communities around the ways in which they are going to support their students moving forward Dr Williams can you do you know what the timeline is on our strategic planning development I know we're in the process we talk a lot about this new strategic plan that's coming but what is the actual timeline on when that's going to um we actually I believe will be bringing before the

063board May 9th um the recommendation for you to adopt the Strategic plan and so in the meantime we are literally in the polishing stages of the plan where we are refining the strategies again with the lens of the needs of our Learners um that are being I'm sure represented in the voices in this room and our leadership teams in various forms are taking the and those let me be clear those groups have involved some of our student voice we've used student voice to come up with the vision and give us input on are we are we hitting the right marks with this with Our intention there's going to be some socializing back out to key stakeholder groups hey this is what we came up with we think these things will be effective in meeting the

064students your students needs we're going to take all of that information and process and by ideally by May 9th you'll have a product in front of you of at least our best efforts to this point to represent what our plan is to serve our Learners we have you know we know we're dealing with less but we're going to do the best we can um in a couple weeks ago Rob Perkins and I along with John superintendent Boyd and Dr Williams were up in Olympia meeting with our legislators to talk about these very issues and what was some interesting information as it pertains to um special ed funding I mean the state needs to invest 800 million dollars in special ed and right now the current legislature leased kind of conservative funding model calls for a

0655 or 500 million to 600 million dollar investment I mean our district it costs us 12 million dollars more than what were funded by the state and that's you know through the formula plus there's a cap and we're one of only two states that even have a cap on how many kids you can can be paid for under special ed um so that's a huge chunk right there I mean and it's it's maddening when you're up there and you're talking to to our legislators about these things and Rob has this like I call it the miracle program that can show every single District in the state and how much they're short or not but most everybody's short um so we were able to show it with exact data by area so I I definitely want

066to encourage people to because of course when we go up there they oh they're from the school district they want you know obviously we're gonna but when parents especially our special ed parents are writing and talking about it um they do listen and I think it's really this is a time for us all to band together and do that um the other interesting thing is when we had the McCleary decision um which most of you know was was a lawsuit that all the districts banded together and sued the state because they weren't fully funding basic education which is the Paramount duty of the state according to the Constitution and it's to be amply funded not barely or minus millions of dollars funded when we Pat when that was passed and took effect in 2018 the

067state's budget 51 to 52 percent of the budget was going towards basic education funding now it's only 42 to 43 percent so they've gone backwards in spite of the lawsuit um and so that's concerning you know that what is challenging and I always um I would like to have this conversation we're talking about legislation they have so many competing things that that they're trying to fund or deal with and all of that but I always like to try and remind them of a lot of those things that they're dealing with mental health issues homelessness just you know scads of things impact our kids and it comes into our schools and so we have to have them really looking at this in a holistic way as it pertains to our students and so that's one of

068the things that I know that Rob's been you know he's been was our legislative rep for several years and has been really active involved in that I'll continue to do that as the ledge rep along with John John and and Dr Williams and um I really want to ask you to help us with this it's important now because it's it's not going to get any better and it's not just us it'd be one thing if it was just us but it's across the state and across this nation and and all the attacks on public education it does concern me and I don't like to be pessimistic about it but right now we we don't we cannot not band together on this whole thing it's important I think it's worth pointing out that uh there's a

069some alignment I've been talking about alignment as ledge rep for a couple of years now I'm trying to find that with all of the interest groups uh that this year PTA wazda the school director's Association business Officers Association the principals the administrators Association WEA and the Public School Employees of Washington are aligned on the issue of special education they've sent as well as ospi this time so that's eight entities that have come together in a way I've never seen before in in the work that I've done for this last 12 years um that means that we are all speaking with the same voice at the state level now uh our advocates in Olympia think that there might be the best estimate would bring this District a relief of about 3.9 million dollars right from our

070back of the napkin conversations while we were in Olympia and that's based on the February apportionment report so the most recent data that we have might address less than a fourth of the problem we're facing but it would be it would not be nothing if your advocacy can extend to Olympia and your conversations to those representatives and senators um it will be a tremendous help and you can consult with The Advocates of the groups that you're in in order to coordinate that help you know kind of the bright spot in this if we can even say we have one um I do I I do appreciate some some of the things that were saved that in many districts would be first on the list and that would be our Arts programs our Sports things that

071really we all know keep kids engaged in school um I've always been really proud of those programs that we have here and people are always so amazed that we've been able to maintain them through you know tough times and we're still protecting them um but there isn't a single thing on the list it's a good thing to be losing not one and I totally feel heartbroken about about that but I also know that's our reality and it's not like if you know in a family if you're going to be if you're running short and you can't pay all your bills you go and get a better job or you get a second job or you know do whatever you can to supplement your income or but we don't get to control what our income is

072and that's a front that's a frustration because you know trust me we have thought about are there ways we can raise some money you know and it's just it's just not that easy not this kind of money anyway um it's not a thing a grants will save us from and it's we can't get rid of the whole central office because that's always the one thing everybody agrees that we need to cut we're already making some pretty sizable Cuts there and we still need people to make the payroll happen to give support to to the schools to handle the insurance and you know there's those kind of businessy things that have to happen um and so the pain is felt throughout I mean it's not just in one area so I don't know it's it's not

073good it's it's very sad and upsetting and but we're all in this together and we're gonna not get through it together that's all we can do Victoria Jackie have another question I wanted to talk about the levy it passed on the second try last year but we're still making Cuts can you talk more about that right we're mostly adjusting for the loss of Revenue because of our enrollment Decline and these Sr funds going away you can imagine if we also had filled that Levy that's another 40 million dollars we would be missing for this next school year you can imagine the magnitude of that of those types of cuts to to our district if we had to make another 40 million on top of these um I I was told by a friend at the

074ESD that it takes a district about five years to recover from something of that of that depth and so we were fortunate that we were able to pass it the second time around and um well even with the passing of the levy we reduced it so the percentage in what we were obtaining so we had to that was a loss in itself as well so even though yes we passed it yay I mean because it would have been worse but it still was a big hit because it was less than we were getting yeah well I think the other thing too is how do I say that I mean we knew back then and we talked about it back then that if we saw the Esser fund and Cliff coming and have been talking about

075it for several years so it's it's been something that's been of concern but it's not something we can control it happening or not it's a you know it was short-term Federal money to help us get through covid um and there was never a promise made that the levy was going to save us forever I mean it it helped it and it's still helping and it is helping us maintain some jobs and but you know with the enrollment decline you start adding on top of it all these other issues it's our reality all right any other questions or comments from the board or anything else to add to the discussion all right thank you very much I just want to remind everybody this was just a presentation this evening there's no vote and so thank you

076for your presentation and for answering our questions and thank you for going through the process of trying to identify ways of reducing the budget I know that wasn't easy so thank you for your work thanks Jenny all right next up is Department update teaching and learning and Equity update Chris are you coming up tonight thank you how are you that's a loaded question [Laughter] um I'm here I'm a lab I have breath in my lungs I can't say that I'm going to stop there but what I will say is I do have the opportunity to add on to what our student reps presented to you for our teaching and learning Equity update as you know this is hour or maybe not this is our second year doing youth truth as a district and just as

077we have been bringing our updates around the school Improvement planning around academics and math we will also be bringing to you updates around our students sense of belonging and we get that information from our YouTube survey we just got our data back on March 8th and so District leadership is digging into that so that we can present that to you our schools as they do their next School Improvement Plan update for you all we'll have the belonging sense of belonging component to the update so that you can see that we have some comparison data from this year from last year to this year that we'll be able to share um with you that they'll be able to share with you and then an extension of our student reps and the work that they'll be doing

078is we were asked by youth truth to help them make sure that the new questions that they've added around math are hitting like they need to hit with their students and so rather than you know sitting in a room down in their organization wondering they would like to come into the districts and talk with our students about that exact thing so they'll be having a two hour session with students to get their input around how those questions hit for them as well as they're going to be walking them through the youth truth data so that they too can see what the trends look like from a student lens um in our I don't want to say the date of the next potential time that we'll be coming to you but in our incoming meetings our

079student reps will be presenting out on that but also we have three admin interns that are going to be helping organize these efforts along with our student reps those interns are Rhonda Lim who is at chrisline William William uh Ephraim who's at Heritage and Aaron heleniji who is our student engagement specialist said I put his big picture up on the screen a couple of meetings ago and so we have some conservative efforts to make sure that we keep student voice at the Forefront of what we're doing and the wonderful people down at youth truth have also um they're doing that as well and they're utilizing our students to do that and that is a very brief update that I have for you for teaching and learning equity yielding the rest of my time to the

080folks behind me questions thank you thank you Clarissa all right next up is board comments Thomas by the board directors do we have anything we'd like to add Becky and I got to actually join Sullivan at the uh breakfast with the board at Cascade Middle School last week so that was pretty amazing um it's always rejuvenating to get and spend an hour with the students and hear from them and to hear kind of how things are going what the school year looks like what their their going through especially after kova just being able to check in with our students and this year it's been even great because we've included our middle schools schools into our breakfast with the board so I've had the privilege of attending two middle schools so far this year and takes

081them a few minutes to get started but once you get them started they don't stop but I'm looking forward to the next one I Julie and I have been answering the emails that have come in and I thought it'd be useful to summarize kind of the feeling that are contained in these documents and and some of the things that it causes me to think about um how many messages a day a couple dozen messages a day that are forwarded to us not including the the letters and the petitions and so forth so there's a lot more than just those messages and a lot more voices and the mood of those emails like probably summarizing just by talking about the feelings that are expressed in them uh it breaks my heart went one dismay disappointment CERN

082reminders of the great need that student has that students have and a sense of unfairness the list of cuts has also Hit me hard as as with all of this because of my history with the district I was in the first Excel pullout class back in the 80s as a sixth grader and it was a sanctuary it was a great program for us then I had always used the library as a personal place to go when the pressure's got a little too high spend the mornings and lunch times and things my kids did too and of course I have a career in software and I.T and so the cuts to it uh and the software selections were also a concern of mine because you have to have i t these days and I'm glad to

083see that it's it's just software this year in the proposals so through that verbal and written feedback and the discussions that I've ended up having over the phone and in person with parents and teachers and other stakeholders is this summative feeling of loss and this question that arises in almost every communication is how can we do these things without including the people that we love in serving these kids and that that's a real Testament I think to the to the quality of the people that we have here right that uh they're just that good and they're that loyal and you know imagining the kind of changes and reforms we called for that are not necessary in order to deliver services that's always going to be difficult in Good Times that's difficult without the Specter of

084budget cuts and the only way forward that I can think of is if we all Imagine This Together and for that I'm appreciative of the Strategic plan process uh and our ongoing work to involve more and more voices so that everyone is heard and the results are what's best for students and I'm hoping that we can continue to listen and exchange ideas and keep the lines of communication open so that people know where they where they stand and where we stand with uh the difficult decisions that we have and then just to express that um that in this moment this is pretty much the time when we get to listen to this kind of pain and uh well I Won't Say I'm looking forward enthusiastically to that I am looking forward to hearing all the

085words that will be spoken tonight and so and I'll be taking notes so we read every email message we respond to as many as we possibly can and I appreciate the advocacy just to piggyback on that real quick Rob um no big comment just wanted to let the audience know and for the people that are watching because I was asked multiple times over the past two weeks week and a half yes we do get all of your emails so you send them to the board email address and they are forwarded onto us so we are seeing them just in case you are um not sure so thank you right any other board comments nope all right future agenda items at this time a lot on our plate already all right next up is public comments

086at this time we will ask for public comments I'm going to go ahead and get us started with that we have many people signed up for comment this evening and we want to hear from you if you've signed up for comments this evening you should have received a card with your number on the sign up sheet when you hear your number and name please come up to the podium I think there are they in order Lori of numbers so if you have the next number if you could please be ready to go like maybe go to the side door over there so we're ready to go and transition um in order to respect everyone's time this evening if someone has already spoken on the same topic you're addressing please give us new and relevant information

087that would be helpful for the board for those of you who've never attended a board meeting before and a reminder to anyone who has the guidelines for public comment are when called forward individuals will give their uh name and District affiliation comments need to be made within the three minute timeline established by the board we'll actually have a timer on the screen and it's really important that you adhere to the time this evening um keep in mind the board will not be able to engage in dialogue with you or just simply here to hear your comments and your feedback the president May terminate an individual statement when the allotted time has passed please be mindful of the timer on the screen once again another reminder the board May interrupt a speaker to require the same

088standard of Civility that the board imposes on itself in examples of uncivil comments would include comments that are related to Personnel or about an individual employee or student are legal in nature our library libelius or slanderous by Elite School District policy a procedure related to harassment intimidation bullying or discrimination create a material and substantial disruption of the orderly operation on the board meeting again we want to hear from you and I thank you in advance for adhering to these guidelines okay so with that we are going to start with our virtual we probably need Diana back over that's okay we're going to start with we have a few folks that are signed up to give public comments virtually the first one is Christine kalalo okay is she ready all right hi Christine oh Crystal Christie

089hi can you hear me oh hi Christy yes we can hear you okay so I'm not uh actually going to talk about the agenda or I mean the whatever it's called that you guys were just talking about the budget cuts I actually just wanted to talk about something else so can I start yeah that's fine okay so my name is Christy Chloe I currently have a first grader at sifton a late start school he starts school at 9 10 well really 9 20. next year you have shifted him and most other late start schools to 750 the early start time I understand the need for the changes for all other elementary schools so you guys can change the start of school for middle and high schools I understand it's because there isn't enough buses my

090problem is you flip flop the late start schools to early start well most of them I see six schools do not have to change their start times I looked into it and even plotted the schools on a map I thought the reason for the change was that a lot of current late start schools are near high schools and since the high schools will start five minutes after the late start schools you had to switch them to early start that's what I thought at first but upon further examination of the map I see there there will be plenty of late start schools next year near high schools so really it is mixed some high schools will be near early start schools and some near late start schools so really you just switched up which ones would

091be where my problem and the problem I think a lot of parents and teachers are facing is that schools like mine are in for a drastic change of 90 minutes earlier if you were to keep the late start schools late and the early early all the schools would only have to move up their schedules about 45 minutes early earlier changing their these late start schools to 90 minutes early causes a hardship for parents with no child care and who work around the school's schedule there's no additional child care opening as it is child care programs and daycares that bus to schools are full and all have wait lists that never seem to open I can change my schedule a little to accommodate the new schedule however I will still be losing hours and I need

092every hour I can get and what about parents that cannot change their schedule and have no child care I'd also like to add that younger kids need more sleep they aren't as good at regulating their emotions when they don't get enough sleep 90 minutes is too big of a change to ask of them another thing you say you sent out a survey about this but also that not many parents responded to them well I think that's because a lot didn't see them I have looked through all emails from EPs and the only mention of a survey I found is a youth truth survey trying to gather feedback of what they are doing well and what needs to be fixed if that's where the change in school time survey is I'd say it's like you try

093to sneak in an unnoticed so people cannot have a chance to voice their opinions before you made the change changes you wanted and we are upset so I'm asking can you send out a survey now to get parents a chance to respond there's still plenty of time to fix this and that's it thank you Christy all right next up is Lindy Forest let me go ahead and bring in Wendy bye bye hi my name is Lindy Forrest and I teach third grade at Ellsworth um in your communication to staff and families you like to use the word inclusive or inclusive schools or inclusion and just because you're repeating the words that doesn't make our school's actual inclusive schools inclusive schooling is a model that you've chosen and our state along with ospi has provided guidance

094about how to make schools inclusive Staffing is Paramount because our schools are not staffed according to ospi guidance we can't call them inclusive schools our schools are mainstream schools where students are put into the same understaffed classrooms regardless of need you talked tonight about fully funding special education but that's not going to help if we don't understand the definition of inclusive schools you know the the handbook the inclusive practices handbook has diagrams and definitions none of which Evergreen is following and I can't figure out why we're still calling our schools inclusive they're just not and maybe you just don't know because you haven't spent time in our buildings maybe it was to get the IPP grant money I'm not sure but like I don't really care it's just disrespectful and neglectful to our students and

095this was something I was upset about before the budget cuts and then we get these emails that say that we need to do more with less but Ellsworth has already been doing more with less and we say that we're all in this together but when I think about it it's all on the people who are actually in the buildings and that they just I just we cannot do more with less we just that seems really disrespectful your cuts to associate principles and academic interventionists and Librarians and saying that you're cutting staff furthest from students just couldn't be further from the truth these people work with small groups and with classes every day all day so one-on-one with students every day all day then they consult with teachers to provide intervention in their own classrooms they

096provide resources they create school-wide plans to support our students K-5 we all know that early intervention is where it's at so if we're talking long term well obviously Elementary is where we keep our academic interventionists it feels deceptive when you use the word inclusive it is a nice word but it's just not true and I would ask that you speak to families truthfully all right thank you Wendy all right next up is Elizabeth Johnson [Applause] I kind of want to point out that the technology prevents the online speakers from hearing the Applause and that's why they continue speaking or all right let's bring in Elizabeth please and I couldn't hear the speaker while the applause was going on and she continued different are we bringing in Elizabeth yeah she's hi can you hear me yes

097just a reminder for online speakers too even though you I don't think you can see a scream you have three minutes okay okay thank you so much my name is Elizabeth Johnson and I teach fourth grade at Ellsworth Elementary I appreciate your time in being able to speak today I would like to specifically address some quotes that superintendent Boyd made in reference to his budget proposal in the letter that he sent to all of us along with a few of the guiding principles District leadership says there they are using when designing this proposal you say a priority theme that was consistent among all of our stakeholders was the need to keep the impact of reductions as far away from our students as possible you Echo these same sentiments in your guiding principles however it is

098one thing to solicit input from stakeholders but soliciting that input means nothing when those ideas are not then taken into consideration through further conversations and with the goal of gaining a first-hand understanding of what is at stake for our students instead of partnering with Elementary stakeholders in this process much of our input has been ignored drastically reducing early intervention opportunities for students by cutting over 20 certificated interventionists will have adverse long-term effects and yet in another guiding principle you claim to think long-term versus short-term to avoid unintended consequences similarly cutting both our family resource coordinator positions and Associate principals in many Elementary buildings down to half time will have a ripple effect felt not only by the students in our buildings but the communities we serve Dr Williams said tonight that Equitable is not equal

099and yet many of the sizable Cuts made to Elementary are equal cuts from building to building with only school size being what determines who keeps a full-time associate principal our schools are not just names and enrollment numbers on a piece of paper we are not just pins on a map on your wall the only way you will understand the day-to-day needs of each of our individual elementary schools is by spending more time in them and truly listening and engaging with Elementary stakeholders when you ask for input and when we advocate for our students so I urge you to go back again and look at where Cuts can be made because I know these decisions are difficult but these Cuts need to have the smallest impact on students as possible so that you can actually be

100following your own guidelines instead of just saying that you are thank you thank you Elizabeth all right next up is Brittany Allen let's go ahead and bring in Brittany [Applause] okay thank you we're still on the online we have two more for online Brittany are you there can you hear me we can hear you Brittany thank you okay hello my name is Brittany Allen and I'm a parent of two young boys in the Evergreen school district one is in elementary and one's going to be going to high school um thank you for this opportunity to speak I'm going to be speaking briefly on the concern of the budget cuts um I um the community voted no originally and then in the community report um John said that he wanted to rebuild the community's trust and

101the levy was altered and the community voted and it passed barely but it did um I feel like it was really misleading I actually originally um almost didn't vote Yes because I feel like um the the financials aren't being spent um well and it's clear that the money that's being received is just being put where you guys feel that it needs to go um I feel like the Evergreen Public School um is choosing to cut budgets on things that they don't really feel are as important as the the parents and the teachers and the ones that are doing the job all of the positions that are being proposed to cut are extremely important but my my main issue that I'm discussing today is the athletic director Evergreen school district is the largest District in the

102area and this is going to be a huge disadvantage to our our young athletes some of our students have waited years to get to this point in high school and now you're proposing to eliminate athletic directors at all the high schools in our our district who decided this who's going to make sure all the Athletics are functional who's going to put who's who's this going to be put on the pla of the science teacher who doesn't like sports the principal who doesn't care you're asking other people to take on the uh jobs of these other people so you're asking more with less the budget cuts you're saying obviously is difficult but I feel like this needs to be reconsidered and um you also mentioned that the enrollment is down and so your guys are getting

103less I think it said you said lesser money or I I don't remember what the where you were getting the money from but it would only make sense that you are getting less if your enrollment is down but in this community report the levy is supposed to fill an 11 Gap so I'm just wondering where where is all the funds going specifically is that all Brittany yes all right thank you all right next up is Lacey [Applause] we have Lacey perfect hi can you hear me we can hear you Lacey good evening just a moment please okay so I am uh reading a statement um that was written by Katie Emrick she is a special education para at image Elementary and the parent of a child in Evergreen Public Schools who has a 504 plan

104um and Katie is currently ill so I'm reading her statement for her this is not the first time I've stood here and begged for a solution to the crisis we have faced this year this time I am not just disheartened and exhausted I'm angry and I am angry with you superintendent Boyd for your disingenuousness you've spent time in classrooms in your lengthy career in education you know better than what you're doing allow me to be crystal clear because I feel transparency trumps delicacy here when we're told we'd be changing models to Neighborhood schools in full inclusion we were given absolutely no guidance structure or roll out plan from the district administrators no training and abysmal excuse me abysmal Staffing shortages but we may do the teachers in Paris I work with are dedicated and we

105have bent over backwards to make sure our kids are taken care of to the maximum extent of our abilities personally I have been near my breaking point in this impossible job for months in my school there is a caseload of over 50 students with IEPs and we have two and a half special education teachers five Paras with three empty positions for which we have zero applicants we have been drowning since August 30th the staff we have available to us have spent 99 of our time with a handful of students who have such high needs and intense behaviors that they are physically unsafe if left without a one-on-one or in some cases two-on-one staff ratio the other kids with IEPs are not getting support from special education staff we do not have the Staffing to make

106this happen these are the conditions everywhere not just at my school or my child's School the vast majority of support that kids get is coming from academic interventionists multi-language learning Paras speech therapists and counselors in your email to staff you claimed you wanted to keep the budget cuts away from the classrooms you said you were running your decisions through the equity lens it is not Equitable to remove academic interventionists MLL and counselors removing support for disabled children and newcomers to our country FCRC is decimated in this budget report that is not Equitable treatment of our families in poverty if you want to create emotional disturbances and behavioral problems go ahead and put special education kids in gen Ed classroom and fail to provide them with their support staff having escalated thank you we're out of

107time thank you thank you all right next up uh that was the end of our virtual comments we have Guadalupe Batista Guadalupe if you want to come on up to the podium [Applause] hi there hi hola when I started in elementary high school families [Music] escuelas um families [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] thank you good evening everyone I'm a mother of three children two in elementary school and one in high school I come to external disagreement of mine and many parents some present here and more than they couldn't not attend it about the change in school schedules because many families the we work can now be on time to pick up our children and we cannot pay child care why it is very expensive many also depend on the help of our older children and now

108with this change our young children will come home alone before the students of higher school and middle school another important Point are the school's cuts that will affect both our children and us as a family when we why we have our valuable and useful resources Center we are many families benefits from this why it provides us very much in several needs it provides us with information on Earth and events for families we even it brings up to our school's classes for parents many of the time in our language and we do not want this to stop working us until now either that our special education's children lose their teachers we do not want to lose our teachers we do not want to lose our resources or our programs as much as for our children as

109for us as a families thank you very much [Applause] all right next up is Karen Starr Aaron are you coming up [Applause] is Karen Starr here oh there you are Karen thank you members of The Evergreen school board and superintendent my name is Karn Starr and I've worked in the district for 27 and a half years I live in the Landover of charmel neighborhood I've been a media assistant at SilverStar the last 23 and a half years the last four of those I've been split between two squirrels currently also working at Sunset once again media assistants are being cut the quote from the letter that went out in the bold letters need to keep the impact of reductions as far away from our students as possible I would have hoped that more Cuts happened at

110District level the schools are where the need of the students has met it doesn't help that principals are always going to district office when they are needed in the buildings students continually interrupt teaching by unacceptable behaviors there is a huge need for substitute teachers when a specialist has to teach in a classroom because no sub has filled the open position this impacts students missing Library PE and music improving academic scores seem to be a big part of what the district expects this can't happen when students are disruptive and lost two years of learning when schools were shut down due to covet two years to make up learning with the reduction of Staff distractions affect teaching indoor activities were were stored oops we had an upper Library where a student totally destroyed through tables turned over

111um tables through chairs knocked out students crafts that they had been working on during indoor recess um so and we had and this room was also used for teachers to continue learning when the rooms were cleared due to disruption if district office administrators and doses are so important they should be in all buildings seeing what actually goes on and how learning is impacted not just making monthly or bi-monthly meetings in the principal's office and maybe visiting one or two classrooms during the visit we've built all these new schools maybe close a school if part of the reason for Sharp shortfall is the loss of students then why all the schools closing a school would save money two articles from education week and U.S today that were put out October 24th 2022 say that Decades of

112progress nearly gone math and reading scores are the same as 1990 for the state of Washington between 2019 and 2022 fourth grade math scores down five percent fourth grade reading scores down three percent eighth grade math down 10 percent eighth grade reading damn five percent most of the post budget reductions impact a large number of students thank you for your time thank you thank you next up is Melanie green hi Melanie good evening School Board directors and superintendent Boyd my name is Melanie green and I've overseen the development of the family and community resource center program for the last 10 years as you know the SCRC Outreach coordinators are included on the list of budget cuts my team would be cut in half leaving each remaining staff to cover two schools this decision will hurt

113our students furthest from educational Justice introduce our program to crisis triage while our district enrollment is on a decline the number of students experience in homelessness is dramatically increasing with no relief in sight as of today we have identified identified 1 200 students experiencing homelessness 727 of them are at schools supported by FCRC Outreach coordinators they're the ones responding to critical needs providing resources referrals supports and often the only Lifeline for families on the edge the needs of our families and students are complex and for many families as they struggle to keep their heads above the surface the fcrcs respond by growing and adapting their programs and Partnerships so I ask you what services and programs would you like us to stop providing Fresh Foods pantries with Clark County Food Bank share backpack program utilities

114and rent assistance housing program referrals mckinney-vento building point of contact shoes clothing hygiene and household items assistance procuring donations for school events and activities and to support families basic needs school-wide family engagement events planning and coordination including culturally specific groups and clubs like the Pacific Islander family nights OMSI Knight back to school barbecues coordination of after school programming including Girls Inc say club with the Salvation Army boys and girls club before and after school tutoring for mckinney-vento students smart team support Northwest Furniture Bank referrals providing a consistent and reliable person in space for families in crisis to unpack and work towards resolution of barriers home visits Distributing diapers from our diaper Bank partnership signing families and unaccompanied homeless youth up for EBT WIC TANF health insurance assistance obtaining State IDs social security cards birth certificates

115and immunization records welcoming new families to our schools and assisting with enrollment translation support from multilingual FCRC staff fostering student sense of belonging and safety child care referrals and navigation volunteer coordination and training holiday assistance attending wraparound meetings helping schedule appointments for sports physicals medical dental and vision services assisting with Job searches in-school activities with students Distributing bus passes and gas cards access to school laundry facilities connect connections domestic violence programs the list goes on and on I'm going to stop here because I'm almost out of time and I've barely scratched the surface of everything the FCRC coordinators do behind the scenes to support our students and Families and community again I ask you what do you want us to stop doing what services do our families not need we do have a lot to

116figure out and I look forward to discussing further thank you thank you all right next up is Paul Penninger typo hi my name is Paul Porter I'm an at-risk advocate with Evergreen High School and before I start my speech I'd like to say that I feel like it's highly inappropriate that the proposal presentation gets 20 minutes a PowerPoint to explain to the board why it should be passed and we get three minutes [Applause] my name is Paul Porter I work at Evergreen high school I'm an at-risk advocate the black student union advisor basketball coach and member of the diversity equity and inclusion committee I work for this district for over a decade I'm student at representation African-American representation and minority representation on my campus and for this District when I see the thought process they

117went into these job eliminations I do not see that taken into consideration you say you established and used and utilized a system of guiding principles that included running the decisions through a district Equity lens that the need was to keep the impact of reductions as far away from our students as possible while I do not see how the elimination of any of these positions reflect that if anything I see the mere opposite minority positions directly connected to the student body that represent this community are being eliminated you say you survey and use data well here's some data I'm one of the only three black men in my entire building the Union High School athletic director is one of the only black athletic directors in the state of Washington the Evergreen athletic director has helped to

118send hundreds of minorities on College scholarships to college but in this budget cut the only data being used is the data that reflects your initiative an education modeled behavior is important for children your actions have to match your words the only Behavior you have chosen to model with this proposal is the kind of such I hope my children never live to see looking in front of me I do not see many faces that look like mine so I don't expect you to necessarily understand our frustration what I do ask of you though is try to see through our lens since we talk about an equity lens so much do your best to put your feet in our shoes and deny this proposal thank you very much [Applause] all right next to the party and the

119special Spain hi Christian Swain athletic director at Evergreen High School I want to talk tonight about the proposed cut to athletic directors let's start with transparency this proposal does not cut athletic directors we shouldn't even be listed there will be a building athletic director in every high school campus next year you can't run athletic programs without athletic directors this proposal unnecessary unnecessarily reclassifies our jobs into administrator positions that require admin admin license this results in a less qualified associate principle doing the same job for thirty thousand dollars a year more this isn't a budget cut it's a salary increase in FTE for our building ads the real cut is to associate principals because that cuts a result of the workload that has to be absorbed by the other two associate principles for the associate principles

120that's being moved into our jobs this is a commonly used model and it's a result of failed levies and budget cuts the model was recreated to keep an associate principal in a chair when budget cuts happen when the Music Stops we did not have a single male athlete ineligible at the end of the first semester at Evergreen where do I send that athlete when they are struggling I help them set up a plan with an at-risk advocate and Coach that just talked whose positions being cut we had over 50 universities from a far away as the University of Miami fly here to visit our student athletes just this school year our current ads have generated life-changing full scholarship offers for athletes at schools like the Air Force Academy Notre Dame Oregon and Georgia just in

121the last two years we have a current Evergreen athlete with 15 division one scholarship offers and what are those offers require they require several Sports specific technical feedback updates to college coaches that cannot be recreated by associate principals and those associate principals won't even be contacted for campus visits creating another unnecessary admin position not required to do this job means less access to minority applicants and in this case cutting one of the only African-American ads in the state I would like an explanation in writing from this school board as to how The Guiding principles listed were applied in this cut that's not a cut Ting an associate principal in a high school's what's being considered here it's the board's responsibility to go back to the budget team and make them actually look at the FTE

122that's being cut and decide if they can do it I hope they don't our associate principals work their tails off but our jobs our workload is not being cut it's being replaced by someone being paid thirty thousand dollars more a year this is a terrible model and it's wasteful at a time where we can't afford to waste money thank you thank you [Applause] Cameron Cook Cameron hey Cameron well that's a hard one to follow those last two my name is Cameron Cook I'm with Mountain View High School I've been the president of the Mountain View Thunder athletic foundation for the last 18 years part of this community excuse me the last eight years and part of this community the last 18 years I came to speak about the athletic directors as well it's hard to

123put it any better than coach Swain just did um so I thank you for that because that was fantastic but I listened to the board describe why they're doing this and I hear this this reduction in in students quite a lot cutting the AED job is not going to help with that cutting the ad job was going to lessen your student enrollment over the next few years here I don't know how anybody can't see that people will leave they flat out well I've had three kids well two graduate and one that's in the way through right now there's no way we would have stayed in this community how did you guys cut the athletic director in all these other positions that everybody's talking about out here right now tonight you speak of equity inclusion this

124Equity lens I feel like we could play buzzword bingo tonight with all these terms that are being thrown out right I view as Athletics is one of the most inclusive and Equity driven programs in the whole school district cutting that is seems to be very counterproductive to what you guys keep speaking about out here tonight the athletic directors as coach Swain just put they do a lot more than what you guys think I know you guys see them doing the the scheduling and and the transportation services and and you know all that other good stuff but it's the it's the culture that they drive it's it's the the effort they put into these kids lives outside of the school creating leaders and developing these kids to be good human beings Athletics gives these kids so

125much more reason to be part of the school part of the community and drive forward to be a contributing member in society last night I watched coach Matheson who's the athletic director at Mountain View sitting outside at a soccer game at eight o'clock last night away from his family because he's an A.D and nobody else will do it I don't know who you're going to get to replace that is the associate principal gonna go sit at these games every night basketball volleyball soccer till eight nine o'clock at night he was there till nine I was there with him he had to take down the tent afterwards the pouring down rain and clean up the field who's going to do that I don't know I'm not sure how you expect to backfill those positions I heard

126you guys speak earlier tonight that you didn't have much of a plan you're making these cuts and have really no play out on on how you're going to backfill and it sounds like you're in the process of making this I don't know how that's a good business decision to make Cuts without a plan to move forward but maybe that's the way you guys operate so I'll leave you with this because my time is running short um the district spent a lot of money on these new buildings right they're beautiful new schools I think they're fantastic although I do miss the old Mountain View if you go ahead with these cuts you're only focusing on the short term the long-term erosion of this community will go against everything you're trying to accomplish around Equity inclusion and

127growth in the district the enrollment will drop you will have to make more cuts and eventually these beautiful new schools will be a hollow shell of mediocrity instead of a home of a thriving diverse Community focused on Excellence for its students I'll leave you guys with that I hope we do better thank you [Applause] good evening superintendent Boyd and members of the board my name is Mindy tropher Cooper and I am the President of the Evergreen PSC large group your classified staff I am here to speak on behalf of my members who serve this District in many varied and essential positions positions that are being cut and that directly impact our most fragile population you may pay us but make no mistake we work for the kids we get up every morning and come to

128the buildings that make up this District to do what is needed and what is best for our students we don't do it for the money most of us could make more working other jobs or in other districts we don't do it because it's glamorous it's hard often emotionally and physically draining work we don't do it for the accolades but for the joy we see in our students faces and their families it is good stuff that keeps us going we have heard repeatedly that these Cuts were made with an equity lens with the driving force to keep these Cuts away from our kids I must tell you neither of these things ring true to those of us who work daily in direct contact with our students our media assistance free up time for our Librarians to

129teach our kids they do the tasks that need to be done to keep our libraries running what is a bigger learning environment than a library they are the friendly faces kids see when they need a book or help with a computer issue they are the people who oftentimes provide a safe place for a student having a behavior crisis and to until someone else can provide support if you cut our fcrcs by half who will help our families remain housed or fed or closed these men and women are working hard in each of our elementary schools to keep these kids as whole as possible to keep them attending school and learning they each have a full-time caseload at one school and if you go through with this proposal they will have twice the load at two

130schools and only have half the time to get the jobs done kids will suffer and they will fall through the cracks and we will have failed the kids if you cut The Advocates and the interventionists who will be able to help with restorative justice that is so very necessary within our upper grades these people work hand in hand with students who are in crisis behaviorally emotionally and educationally they track attendance deal with referrals assist with classwork the lists go on and on these three positions work with kids and families who have trust issues kids will not academically succeed if their basic needs are not met it takes time to develop these relationships and if inflation is the real reason to cut our budget imagine what those families budgets look like these are the people Bridging

131the Gap at a time when the Gap seems impossible in closing I implore you to truly look at the budget cuts with transparency equity and inclusion if we are truly keeping the cuts away from our kids the cuts must come from positions who do not work directly with our students please look outside of our schools and keep the kids at the center of your important decisions thank you Mindy all right next up is Jill Earnhardt Jill we're on number seven Jill Earnhardt number seven Jill Earnhardt is Jill here no okay we're going to move on to number eight Kelly Barr I I'm sorry of course sorry this is very new to me it's actually my first time here hello my name is Kelly Darr I'm a mother a friend a team mother and a volunteer

132at Mountain View High School we want to talk about how we can increase enrollment well I want to ask you who's been to a football game here in Evergreen School District I know almost all of us can say yes and the community that that brings together is profound because we have children friends siblings grandchildren whether you're a graduate or maybe just a fan all these games provide cheer band football and it brings us together that would otherwise not be possible without our athletic director one of my main topics here today is community we want Community we want to bring people to our community but what community do we have to offer if we're going to be taking away our athletic director enrollment is down and we're fine we need to find Avenues to rebuild our

133enrollment connections is what will make that possible to trust to have safety a sense of belonging is a must and our athletic directors provide those connections these kids believe in what these coaches say and these alphabetic athletic directors stand for and it's taken years to build and disturbing that can come with great consequence it will set a tone for our deterioration in our community and our community is what we're trying so hard to rebuild how are these changes and the budget cut not going to disturb that and a strong Community is what leads our students to be tomorrow's leaders these medals represent represent three months that my son was in school longer so we have three three months after the school day has ended he comes in and he goes to school and he stays

134after he does Sports and these Sports have changed his life these aren't 30 these are six months this is nine months this is 12 this is 12 months that my son and there's many more at home on his wall that my son goes to after the day has ended and it's not because always that he wants to be there it's because who's there and that's our athletic director our coaches and so much more [Applause] be these kids Heroes and people that they can trust I know we can do better and thank you so much for your time today thank you Kelly [Applause] all right next excuse me next up is Rachel Drake hi Rachel hi there my name is Rachel Drake I'm a 14-year resident of Vancouver a mother of four I have two that

135have graduated from Mountain View High School and one that is currently a junior and one a seventh grader at Shahala my husband's a pilot for UPS he's based in Louisville Kentucky I've been a real estate broker for over 10 years here we've lived in 10 different places over the last 25 years despite my husband's job being over 2 000 miles away we have chosen to commute and stay living here in Vancouver Washington for one reason alone our kids for their education and for the community here I know I'm not alone in saying that over the last two years we have looked seriously at homes in Idaho Texas Utah and Kentucky because of concerns specifically with our schools we are among the good tax paying Community the Evergreen School District needs to keep in order to

136continue to thrive my daughter came home from school last week saying she heard Librarians were being cut starting next year I told her there was no way the next day she came home and she said she heard they might not have sports as much as I appreciate a good librarian the sports comment sent me immediately to my computer where I found the devastating news for budget and position cuts planned for next year study after study show a direct correlation between athletic participation and academic performance to an average of 10 percent Improvement in grades and standardized test scores we need to remember athletic participation also teaches invaluable lessons of leadership persistence teamwork Stress Management respect dealing gracefully with success and learning from failure it is evident that maintaining a balance between sports and academics is of

137utmost importance for a child's holistic development as a real estate professional I am greatly concerned about how these Cuts will affect the home buyer appeal and existing home values the National Association of Realtors states that the quality of a school district is a primary factor for nearly half of all buyers since one of the main reasons for budgets our budget cuts is declining enrollment academics and Athletics must be protected to sustain and hopefully increase our enrollment it is my understanding that the athletic director position will likely be assumed by each of the high school's associate principals my guess is if you ask any of them if they can assume all the ad responsibilities in addition to their existing duties and successfully be able to perform these two full-time jobs simultaneously they would laugh something's got

138to give this is happening throughout the corporate world and many businesses are burning through their employees this is a toxic expectation about to be placed on the leaders within our schools on that note it is my hope that our district reconsider planned budget adjustments specifically in reference to the athletic director position or I fear you will be learning from your failures if you continue as planned thank you all right next up is Natasha Williams is Latasha oh hello uh good evening everyone first of all I'd like to give an honor to God who is ahead of my life um and then just say good evening to everyone it's been a lot of information that has been shared today that I honestly agree with so I won't go through a lot of the repetitiveness but I

139did want to come up here and still advocate for the sense of our children when you come into a district you're coming to a district for a sense of community you're coming for a sense of having a village and having support which is a lot of what our teachers our Educators our athletic directors do for us day in and day out I will say that I am a mother of five so I am fully invested in not only this District but in the trajectory of my children and how they're going to be brought up we have moved here and lived in this district for only a year and a half and after doing lots of research on all the school districts we came from Louise Louisiana if you know about Louisiana the education system there

140isn't that great by Way Portland which again the education system is slowly failing some of our previous Portland Portland leaders are in this room right now and now we're over the river here in Vancouver Washington where yet again education is feeling like it's starting to fail my question to you is how are you setting our children up for success I understand that the budgets are there but is it really just about money how can we think in a bigger perspective make a bigger perspective about where we're going next to make sure that every children succeeds I'm not up here talking about minority based upon the color of my skin even though I am impacted by that right I'm talking about the minority in the sense that I didn't know about a lot a lot of

141the legislation going on as a new resident in this neighborhood me and my husband we both work right full-time jobs with the new changes of the education times that's going to impact me very greatly right we're losing Educators we're losing athletic directors we're losing teachers my mom has been in sped for over 30 years that is very detrimental you know to the future of where we're going to be for my children and for others that are in this room so I just ask you today with everything that has been said I have 38 seconds left please hear our voices because it's not a cry it's a never-ending call for Action we together as a community as a village must do better thank you thank you [Applause] can I start my name is Tyrone Foster I'm

142a father of two kids that are in elementary school and I'm here speaking today also about the time changes specifically around the switches between elementary and middle school when I went and looked at the February 28th board meeting uh what was given as far as the reason for the changes in the times was all about um the bus drivers and being able to arrive to the schools on time there was even a comment by the superintendent about we needed this uh change so that uh bus drivers didn't have to rush to get the kids to school and with the switch between the elementary and the middle school I guess the thing that I'm wondering is by Shifting the elementary students to that time slot how is it any better to have Elementary instead of middle

143school students being rushed to get to school on time so that's the first thing the second thing also is that in thinking about these time changes my school was also in elementary school that was a late start that has been shifted to an early start so that means that there's a 90-minute change earlier instead of later for the school but it also means we will have to get our children up hours earlier to get them fed and dressed and then walk them to the bus stop and when the fall and the winter comes in the dark waiting for that bus to arrive and to take them to school and I can't help but Wonder through an equity lens was that considered that making these significant time shifts is going to be most impactful to our

144vulnerable families those who are working in Hospitality in manufacturing lower income employees have the least amount of power to change their schedules and their shifts so what are they going to do once their kids are moved to these new times and and I did read I mean the information that was sent on the email about the studies that show that later start times are beneficial to students by getting more sleep but I can't help but wonder how much of a benefit is it to those same students if one or both of their parents loses their jobs all right number 12 Tiffany Shaner number 12 Tiffany here she comes hi Tiffany good evening me and my family have moved here not even two years ago from New Jersey all the way to your beautiful state of

145Washington I have six children three of them who are under an IEP all the resources that my family was provided between when we moved here we lived in a hotel for almost a year and a half we recently got was able to get an apartment this December we were able to be with our family resources and although that I did not utilize and my family did not utilize every opportunity that they were given it was a comfort to know that they were there in cases there we had a fallback we always felt that there was other families that were in need more than we were also with the IEP with my children they are beneficial to extra help and without this study and what your guys are going to be cutting they're not going to

146be receiving all that that is very this this is very frustrating as a parent because of the fact that they are going to need this assistant I see the growth that they have that they are having at this point and knowing that it's not going to be there next year I don't know where my kids are going to be seeing them fail is not an option for me also I also would like to bring up that I have an older student who is under an IEP at Cascade Middle School you guys talk about where you do not have the people enrollment and I wonder why and I and as a consideration of wondering why I don't agree that it's all with the apartments going up and people moving in that don't have families my child

147has been bullied at that school for almost two years I have been through several from your accounts from counselors to your officers who have contacted who have not reached out to me until recently I just spoke to your assistant principal who also I has spoken to your associate Mr Gardner as well who is now handling issues as well so with everything that is going on and there has to be a better plan for what you're doing especially with cunning libraries and guidance counselors this is where students go for salvation from their bullies thank you all right Michelle Gaskin number 13. hi Michelle good evening school board and superintendent Boyd my name is Michelle Gaskin I am the homeless and Foster Care liaison for our school district after hearing the proposed reductions in Staff last week

148I felt the need to speak to you tonight specifically in regards to the FCRC program reductions and the middle and high school heart Advocate eliminations schools have become more than just a place for our youth to learn for many it is where they eat breakfast lunch snacks access clothing and hygiene items and many more services to set them up for success for our 1 200 students currently experiencing homelessness school is their shelter and school is their stability it may be the only consistent space where they feel safe and welcome every day we were able to share information about our heart program with superintendent Boyd when he was new to our district and he described our typical end-of-year number of a thousand homeless students as haunting and we all agree it is truly haunting though our

149overall District enrollment has decreased our number of students experiencing homelessness has increased substantially especially in this current school year highlighting that our families are in crisis when students do not have stable housing we see chronic absences we see lower test scores and lower graduation rates than their housed peers we have a responsibility as a school district to do everything we possibly can to identify and serve students who are experiencing homelessness something we are not able to fully do without all of our fcrcs and heart advocates fcrcs and Advocates serve as our building Liaisons to provide direct support and services to students experiencing homelessness students living without a parent or legal guardian students in foster care or any family or student who is needing support but due to the recent increase in homeless students our district

150team and fcrcs can barely scratch the surface of the needs of our families the acronym of our heart program stands for Hope Equity access resilience and Thrive by reducing access we are reducing hope we are creating more inequity we are leading families to be less resilient and the opposite of thriving by cutting these positions that directly serve our students who are the furthest from educational Justice we are doing an extreme disservice to our families who need the most wraparound support if as a district we truly are centering our decisions around equity and ensuring that students are not impacted by these reductions then these cuts and reductions should be seriously reconsidered before making your final decisions thank you thank you for your comments next up is number 14. hello how are you hi go ahead and

151state your name for us marisabel eredia okay I'm apparent to kids in ilahi elementary school the future in the median term is in education today by element eliminated the Excel program for gifted children what will happen to the development of the Brilliant Minds that we have in our community why why was the development of so much talent if there are was already a bit line Source how is the Excel program general education teachers are not equipped to teach and understand these students especially when there are so many children with different needs in a classroom you ask the staff for their opinion on the plan but not the parent or the teacher of Excel program to take this decision why do you cut your salary and instead of remove the Excel program Rochelle Amos number 15.

152hi Rochelle hi I'm Rochelle Amos secretary at Evergreen School District also a Community member and a union leader and the most important asset we have in the district is our students the email from our superintendent concerning the cuts including guiding principles is simply not happening students are not being put first long-term versus short-term effects to avoid unintended consequences is not in the plan engaging stakeholders ensuring feedback and accountability with good stewardship of public funds in my opinion is not happening let's start with the most obvious one they're telling community members that our athletic directors at the high school level are being cut that's not true they're being replaced with existing ass associate principals who literally make thirty thousand dollars more a year than our athletic directors so we're now paying a hundred and twenty thousand

153dollars more for these same positions we are not cutting an admin position instead we're just reshuffling it I know these admin work hard but there's no reason in my opinion we should be paying them thirty thousand dollars more a year to do a job that's functioning and working well and supporting our kids at every level and these athletic directors have amazing relationships with students additional Cuts cuts to Family Resource coordinators without a relationship in this community they will likely go unserved and there are some of the most vulnerable how can we say this will be the least impact on students same as with at-risk Advocates it's about a relationships to help change student lives for Success how is this cut best for students cuts to para Educators that directly affect student report support excuse me

154Librarians let's give every student a device and then take away tech support really Cuts 12 secretarial positions just at the high school level teachers from all levels and I could go on and on the cuts Never End unless you're at the district office especially in a senior role where we support a superintendent a deputy superintendent a CEO a CFO three executive directors six senior directors 14 directors three assistant directors 10 managers three program coordinators and 17 coordinators and I'm sure there's more yet total Cuts in the building are going to be 34 certificated teachers or Librarians 38.5 at-risk Advocates and Family Resource coordinators 15 para Educators 12 secretaries and this is the tip of the iceberg where are the cuts from above at the district office why do we need a superintendent a deputy superintendent

155and a CEO all at the top where is their cuts for enrollment decline because we were told our Cuts were from enrollment decline I would propose this board asked the superintendent and his committee to go back to the table and come up with a more reasonable cut cuts that are actually Less impactful on students and do it with transparency this time thank you Michelle all right next is Rica's phone number 16 Rica [Applause] Rica either hi there my name is Rika strong and I'm here tonight uh um as an Evergreen Public Schools parent I have a child well we have one left um in the in the EPS system so um first of all I want to say I know that this is tremendously hard and it really as a parent in this District it

156really makes me upset um to know that our district is underfunded in the way that it is and that these are the kind of decisions that we're having to make that impact our children and what I will say to you all and to all of us who are in the room right now who feel lots of energy around this go talk to your legislators tomorrow at 1 30 there is a senate hearing on education and public comment at 1 30 tomorrow and you can do it online and they are talking about special education and funding special education so all of us in this room need to use our voice and show up and sign up for public testimony tomorrow at our Senate hearing and and weigh in with the same kind of conviction that we

157have in this room here and I will be doing that I want to speak on behalf of me as a parent I am a mother of an African-American young man he's a high school student and I want to just say representation matters and my son left a school environment where he didn't have a lot of representation and it was horrible he was a mediocre student he didn't connect with many people who were on that campus and a lot of it was because of the lack of representation not seeing anybody that looked like him or anybody that connected to him being an African-American male we moved him to a different environment where he had a lot of representation and as a matter of fact the African-American staff at Evergreen sought my son out as soon as

158he walked on that campus my son went from a mediocre student who wasn't really engaged kind of starting to check out of school to announce 4.0 student in the matter of months and the positions that supported my son's transformation from one environment to another were a number of the positions that you all are listing here is cutting and I I get the idea of um wanting to maintain the classroom but if we're looking at under enrollment we also have to I'm a little bit worried about us cutting all of these Supportive Services and not thinking about ratio in classrooms and for my son the Supportive Services are what pooled him through it was seeing someone that says hey man I see you I understand what you're going through make sure you get to class I'm

159going to tell your mom that you're out here that was the change for him and so um these Supportive Services even the athletic director walking up to me and saying I'm so happy that he's doing so great now they all had an impact on his experience so one of the things that I will ask you to do and I know we've talked a lot about Equity lands my other concern is a lot of people that are in the supportive positions are people of color and these positions also support students of color so as you go back and you reconsider the cuts and I know you guys need to figure that piece out I'm going to ask that you disaggregate the data by who is benefiting from the Supportive Services by race and then the other

160thing that I'll ask you to do is to disaggregate data by how many people of color are in these positions and let's shoot for Purity across the board thank you Rika all right number 17 Judy 17 Judy was that you Judy come on up hi there how are you good evening my name is Christine George and I am a sophomore at Evergreen High School and I am a 4.0 student and three sport athlete I understand the need for budget cuts however some of these budget cuts are very short-sighted our athletic director for Evergreen high school Christian Swain has given so many students an opportunity and is willing to help any of them in any situation he is constantly trying to make sure that the students at Evergreen High School are given a chance to go

161to college with scholarships and to play sports at a university level he gave me an opportunity to play football and got me into team camp not only teaching us how to play football but he is giving us a lifetime skill for our futures he maintains equity and equality while he ensures Title IX opportunities for me and other female athletes without an athletic director our athletic programs could fail cease to grow become underfunded and student athletes could never meet their full potentials I just want to take the balance of her time and say I have one shot at this I have one kid so I have to do everything possible to make sure that she has the best education possible superintendent boy you know where I came from we came from probably one of the best

162school districts in the country and we came here I need to make sure that she has every opportunity that is you know if I have to come up here and make a fool of myself I will do that for my child to make sure that she gets every opportunity that's a that's available and Coach Swain has made that possible there are not many girls that get to play football and he makes sure that she gets an opportunity and she gets out there and she gets her butt beat every single Friday night but she gets to play and that is so important and I need to make sure that everybody in this room hears that it's not just a number some of these kids are just their opportunities are just slipping away and we need to

163make sure that there are possibilities for every kid that wants to go and I appreciate coach Swain so much and just I think you're being very short-sighted in some of these budget cuts and I appreciate your time thank you [Applause] number 18 is it deca number 18. deco all right number 19 Adam hi Adam to the Evergreen School Board I'm Adam Aguilera as an evergreen teacher I must address the recent concerns over decisions being made regarding transparency within the school district on a weekly basis trust is being broken as decisions are being made on key issues that directly impact the students and families of the Evergreen School District the response here from the community tonight should be a wake-up call to the leadership to reflect own their impact and commit to do better to start

164I would like to address our newly appointed superintendent the school board promised us an open and transparent hiring search This Promise was broken and for the third time in a row after firing the last two the Evergreen superintendent has been hired without allowing any other qualified candidates to apply and be interviewed for this job to ensure our district upholds its commitment to being an equal opportunity employer the School Board needs to establish a clear protocol for future hiring processes modeled off the Vancouver and Camas school districts this could include open forums and public input as well as a thorough review of candidates by a diverse election Committee just as those school districts recently did to find their superintendents second the recent change is to the start times of our elementary and middle schools have caused

165undue stress to students staff and their families these changes were made without consulting the community leaving many scrambling to adjust to the new schedule and its impact on after-school clubs Sports and child care arrangements to address this issue we should delay the implementation of any new start times until a comprehensive plan is in place to support those families affected by the changes we should involve the community in the decision-making process by conducting surveys and organizing Town Hall meetings this will ensure any changes May made to the school schedules are transparently thoughtful Additionally the proposed budget cuts are concerning for the well-being of our students mental health and academic success by cutting our libraries academic interventionists Family Resource staff athletic directors and other essential Services Evergreen students will be denied the resources and support they need

166to thrive we must prioritize the best interests of students instead of the high salaries of District administrators who proposed these cuts and still get to keep their jobs about a dozen of them make close to if not more than the governor of Washington it is important to point out the truth that when the first Levy failed to pass last year the school board made a terrible error to ask for less money the second time around most school districts who fail a levy do not do this folks so when the community stepped up knocking door to door to pass the levy a second time the school board already knew they had left millions of dollars on the table to address this the School Board needs to own up to their mistake and pay the difference in

167the millions they have in reserves and not on the backs of students review the proposed budget by involving all stakeholders this way we can collectively identify areas of savings without compromising essential services for students all right number 20 Jessica hi Jessica hello my name is Jessica Beckel I am a first grade teacher at SilverStar and I'm also a parent here in the Evergreen School District I just wanted to share some of my thoughts um and feelings about the proposal for this budget and um yeah so let's start with some numbers the Total Staffing Cuts proposed by the district 40 of them are coming from the elementary level are small guys um the district would like to let go 21 academic interventionists or academic academic interventionists are in direct contact with our students on a daily

168basis they are working with our students that are in most need of support especially with their reading and math our recess our recess our family resource coordinators they're also in direct contact with our students on a daily basis they're also helping our families the families that our district wanted to push to pass the levy um are they're helping our families with housing drop opportunities food pantries they provide clothing for our students school supplies and food supports um of the Total Staffing Cuts proposed by the district 14 are are coming from middle school 37 are coming from high school and only eight percent coming from our district office and they are not in direct contact with our students on the daily basis like our other levels and as a parent in the district I find this

169frustrating our Focus your focus should be on students and the people that are in contact with our students on a daily basis of the 11 positions in the district office how many are in direct contact with our students jobs should be taken should not be taken away from our school levels here as a parent I'm putting my trust in you the district and the board members to make the decisions that are in the best interest of my child and these proposed budget cuts are not what best for my child or the other students in the district school board I'm asking you that you reject their proposal and have the district come back with a different way to cut their budget because 92 percent of the positions being cut should not be in direct contact with

170our students this is not acceptable and it needs to change I hope as you listen to the many colleagues here today voicing their thoughts and opinions and concerns about the budget cuts and you look at all the people in wearing red here that work for school at the Evergreen School District you know and understand that we care deeply for our students and our community and we will never stop fighting for what we think is best for our students let's do better and be better for our students and Community thank you thank you thank you Angela hi Angela my name is Angela magistrali I'm a former Evergreen parent both of my daughters spent 13 years in the Evergreen schools and I've also been teaching in this district for 20 years last Tuesday I received an email

171stating there were budget cuts that needed to be made while I do appreciate it is a big job and no cut is an easy cut the cuts that are being proposed are not the right ones in the email the there were words in bold that stated the need to keep the impact of reductions as far away from our students as possible if this were the case there would have been different decisions made I'm a second grade teacher at Silver Star Elementary this year 58 of my second grade students started the year below grade level mostly at kindergarten as of let me see coming off of a pandemic and the restrictions of a pandemic these kids lost a lot of school out of 18 students in my classroom at the end of trimester two I have

17211 students below grade level I have five children who have IEPs I have two children who are students in transition meaning they are homeless I have four multi-language speakers and I have four students who are being supported by interventionists the percent of the students of my students receiving these supports who are persons of color is 50 percent where is the lens of equity my school is 56 free and reduced that means 239 students out of our total number our FC our FCRC coordinator was told that she would not be at our school next year I'm not going to list all of the things that they provide but I have several students who benefit from our FCRC I'm only one class there are 18 other classrooms in my building that are just like me and many

173others across the district the cuts you're proposing are the dis are the Direct Services that children absolutely need just because you're not cutting a classroom teacher doesn't mean our students are not affected thank you number 22 Sally and this must be Roman hi there my name is Roman and I'm in the sixth grade of Middle School what school do you go to Cascade and now I'd like to begin with my speech knowledge meaning of education education the meaning of school school is about educating the people of tomorrow kids go to this place 180 days a year and school is about kids they Shout with saying what happens here libraries are important to schools for two reasons education and peace libraries are important to education because books are a source of knowledge take away those and

174you take away potential intelligence resulting in the failure and not working to the full potential later on and in school you're also important because they are a shelter of Peace amongst the chaos of the world not just in school but in the but in the world surrounding the school which is the stress seems to be closing in on us closer every minute the library is a source of Base take away that in kids who suffer from stress will have a hard time working to their full potential during school also resulting in potential disaster later on due to ignorant leaders foreign The Librarians are awesome horned because in the school they're basically the only ones who know how to work a computer correctly and also they seem to just brighten up everyone's day we just passed

175a levy and now we're losing those things and it's also weird because everyone's always saying that kids these days don't read enough and why are we getting red Librarians who help us with that task I also I also realized well I've always liked going to the library and let's just say a lot of kids who care about the place and like it there's lots of other things I think we need to not cut or remove or do whatever we're playing do with it but there's a few things that are important to consider thank you thank you all right yeah [Applause] the board is going to ask for just a short recess of five minutes five minutes thank you all right we're going to reconvene and our next speaker is number 24 Mandy Mandy and Maddie

176if you go ahead and take your seats and we're going to reconvene the meeting our speaker wants to get started in just in just a few seconds so if you'll please take your seats and allow our speaker to speak we're going to go ahead and resume all right go ahead Mandy and Maddie thank you for joining us hi so my name is Mandy gear and I am a parent and a para educator in the district my name is Maddie and I am in Excel and here's what I think all the kids I just got in this year or last year are going to be very sad and mad Excel teaches kids to keep trying and also teaches kids other skills like learning about Mars in Space in Excel you can get away from stress and

177you can get creative and feel at home the teachers care and let you do what you want also the teachers love you for who you are you can make friends from other schools and Excel is perfect though nothing is perfect it's great also being at Excel has been gay has gave me the confidence to be here today what Maddie didn't tell you is that this has been an emotional roller coaster with Excel up until this point when she first tested she was two percent away from getting in the next year only one percent away last year she finally got in only to find out that if the levy didn't pass there would be no Excel anyhow as it was on The Chopping Block so we told everyone we knew how important Excel was and to

178please go vote the levy passed and yet here we are 11 months later with excel in The Chopping Block despite being told Excel would not be cut if the levy passed Excel is so important for the highly capable students I'm lucky to have both my daughters to be part of excel the projects that they do are very in-depth and are designed to engage and challenge the students they have done some amazing things like create websites create businesses and a huge variety of steam activities in addition to the confidence they have now like Maddie has shown they have the tools needed to handle challenging situations in the future with the neighborhood School model large class sizes and staff shortages the teachers and para educators are stretched thin I know because I work in an elementary school

179there is simply no way that the Excel students can have the same beneficial experience including being challenged in the same way in their home School classrooms cutting the Excel program has a huge negative impact on the 200 Excel students that are in the classrooms at Burton alone which is only a portion of the program as a voter I'm frustrated at best I feel lied to and manipulated when the next election comes along where programs are again on the chopping block will it even matter if we vote to keep them when the district may still take them away as they're proposing in the case of excel because phasing out the pull out or the the full-time program and cutting the pull out program isn't keeping the program thank you for your time thank you all right

180number 25 Jolene Stevens is Jolene here all right we'll move on to number 26 uh Brandi Elder [Applause] hi Brandy all right um good evening I just wanted to say I am just so proud to be in this community right now so thank you all for being here all right um my seventh grader is um going to chehala and he thrives there in and out of the classroom and we've had really great experiences so thank you for hiring such top-notch staff we're really appreciative um I'm here because I always tell my son you need to stand up for yourself and you need to stand up for other people and if I'm not here then I'm a hypocrite so here I am to speak on our family's behalf one area of concern we have with these

181budget cuts is all of the positions that work with students on a daily basis that keep them engaged in the classroom without those positions there's going to be more chaos in those classes and I'm already concerned about some of the things that my son reports to me on a daily basis we also acknowledge that budgets are difficult and inflation has made everything expensive can you make Cuts in other areas how many jobs might be saved if families can afford it by the school supplies and go back to providing lunches for their kids what other things can we do to save some of those positions we are also really disappointed in the decision to change the schedule 8 to 2 30 is manageable for my family one tangible example is we're in track and field and

182I can pick up my son at four or if there's a meet leave by six and I can get dinner on the table with cooked meal get homework done have him read for a half an hour and still have time for that hour of trumpet practice with that 9 35 to 405 schedule that creates a barrier from my family and do I haven't play sports or do I have him keep kicking tail in his music like I'm forced to choose and the sports is good for his well-being his physical activity and his social skills and that is what we were choosing to cut from our family if this time change happens and that's really devastating for me and devastating too my son who's been sitting outside listening to all this foreign by pointing out that

183I've filled out all the surveys that have come my way none of them have asked is my student getting enough sleep let me tell you he goes to bed at 9 or 9 30. by a self-appointment we don't tell him to go to bed he gets plenty of that time he also has a 4.0 like he doesn't need that to improve his test scores right now your choices will mean that he gets to be in less activities than enhances life and that really is disappointing to us thank you for your time thank you 27 Kyle [Applause] good evening everybody [Applause] my name is Kyle Chen I'm here with my teammates tonight I'm currently a senior at Mountain View High School and tonight I'll be talking about the cut to the athletic director position uh this

184June all graduate and begin the next chapter of My Life as a Cadet at the United States Air Force Academy where I also have the opportunity or also have the opportunity to fulfill one of my lifelong dreams of playing division one football however I didn't get here alone and as graduation approaches I'm here to say thanks to so many people from my parents to my teachers to counselors and one person specifically and one group of people that's like director at my school from from teaching me invaluable lessons about myself life and the value of hard work and perseverance rad Adam Madison has played one of the most pivotive roles in my journey and his guide me to help me learn balance academics and Athletics and something that most people don't realize he's created a culture

185and a community at Mountain View where all of us student athletes can thrive and as a first generation Chinese American has been countless obstacles in my way trying to put my foot into the Sports World from my mother immigrant from China and working hard to giving me stability but even with that I've I've needed mentors and guidance along my journey foreign and for me and many other kids from different backgrounds there's a lot about American culture that can be extremely difficult to grasp however on a football field a basketball court or another Sports setting the background that kids come from and the color of their skin doesn't matter at all sports develop a team a community and a family for all students to be a part of and that's what the cultural Sports at Mountain

186View and all the other schools in the Evergreen school district has given me more than anything it's given me a place and an environment where I can be part of something bigger than myself that kind of culture doesn't happen it doesn't just come out of nowhere and it's created by a leader and although it's not on their job description I truly believe that's one of the most important things that the athletic directors who lead our High School athletic programs can do the members of the school board I know we Face a budget challenge I don't envy the burden that you face however our ads are invaluable and they have a huge impact on our students on my life on the people here with me tonight Mr Madison Mr Swain and the other 80s in our

187districts are are some of the best Role Models the student athletes are in our district and cutting this role at a time when we all need reasons to come together would have extremely negative long-lasting unintended consequences for athletes our student body and our entire community in closing I advocate that our school board retain all four athletic directors because they play critical roles in equipping students with skills that they need in life which can be replicated in a classroom and so that other students can have the same opportunities that I've had with the support evidence like director whatever I achieve playing division one football or as an officer in the United States Air Force all a huge debt of gratitude to Adam Mathison and because without him I wouldn't this wouldn't have been possible thank you

188thank you Kyle and teammates [Applause] all right next up is Camille Lowman number 28. hi Camille all right my name is Camille lohmann I am a mother of a soon-to-be early start time kindergartner at York as well as a volunteer court-appointed child advocate within the foster care system and my kiddo is significantly going to be impacted to the reduction in behavioral related staff that's been proposed in these budget cuts and I originally just want to come up here and speak on not wanting to wake up too early to take my kids to elementary school and then I was left feeling hopeless at the budget cut recommendations I watched the YouTube video with the leadership team speaking on the budget with the theme of being we keep the cuts away from the classroom which felt particularly

189disingenuous considering the 200 teachers that were laid off last year there are no classroom cuts that could even be made this year I was really hoping that the leadership team was going to address how these responsibilities of the 140 proposed layoffs would be absorbed by the remaining staff and teachers but the word efficiencies became a buzzword by the end of their budget review I sat with my sister during the meeting she's an elementary school counselor here in our district and she experiences intense behavioral issues the students are already suffering the schools are already understaffed without enough resources to support the students especially with the covid related impacts and while I understand that the reality is that we just don't have the 19 million needed to avoid these Cuts how are we going to provide hope

190for the teachers the parents and the students we cannot and we will not accept forever future of budget cuts yes the federal Esser funding has run out we all knew it would and we already knew that enrollment was down way before coved and historically speaking as seen after the recession in 2008 the data shows us that it takes eight years at least for public education to recover budget wise and I understand that the McCleary case uh it impacted our funding by 10 since 2018 under the guise of equity but it seems like leadership is sitting back with throwing their arms up in the air instead of fighting for the future of our children Senate bill 5486 is the Washington State wealth tax bill that has been passed in the house and is sitting in the

191Senate and this bill will tax the ultra wealthy with assets of over 250 million and fund four social programs and one of them is the Washington State education Legacy trust which provides supplemental funding to K-12 now while their funding is enrollment based it would provide funding that we desperately need and if that 19 million really can't be salvaged then we need to come together as a community because historically uh historically when we come together as a community we can make change happen so we need leadership to provide not only Direction but also a platform for us to all come together to make change we need more than monthly board meetings we need fireside chat style communication from leadership not overproduced YouTube videos in the style of an ESPN Roundtable and we need a plan from

192leadership detailing how detailing how you evaluate these signs of burnout from how these Cuts will impact the staff as they absorb the vital responsibilities as well as a plan on how you'll support the mental and emotional health thank you [Applause] number 29 Ariella Ariella hi there I am fine okay A lot of people are saying how this is going to affect students a lot and I am one of those students because growing up the library was my safe space the book was my place to escape and that is going to be taken away from me and for my little siblings and from people who are like me when school or life or anything becomes too much I go read a book and I put myself into that book and that is being taken away and

193that is not fair not to mention there are people The at-risk Advocates I believe those people I've gone to them throughout my entire entire childhood to help and those are being taken away from these new students and it's just sad to think about because growing up I would not be where I am today or who I am today without those people without those books without those Librarians I can name every single librarian to you right here right now because that is how much of an impact they made on me and those are being taken away from future student students some students don't bond with their teachers I quite frankly hardly do and when I couldn't listen to my teacher or to understand my teacher and I was too scared to ask my teacher to specify

194or to explain furthermore I I later went to my Librarians and I asked them for help and they helped me with my grades and they helped me pass my classes and that is being taken away and it's not fair not to mention these poor people are losing their jobs when I mean the main thing they want to do is for the students and that is being taken away from them and it's just not fair to all these people to these students to these people losing their jobs I'm grateful for my Spanish teacher because she's one of the few people who helped me gain the confidence to get up here today and she's lost her job multiple times to budget cuts and I don't want her to lose it again because she's already in this one

195year the school year isn't even over and in school year that I've known her she has made such a big impact on me I mean without her I would not be up here right now I didn't even know about this board meeting until her because I don't check my emails she is the reason I'm up here and I'm so grateful for her and the thought that she might lose her job for the seventh time I believe because of budget cuts is just devastating and same for My Librarian My Librarian has helped me with so many things already and I would have failed both trimesters that have gone by so far if I didn't have my librarian and if I didn't have my books and if I didn't have that safe space even the few times

196that I didn't like my Librarians the library was a safe space because they always decorate it and it's so nice and it's so pretty and I just love it I love it so much and the thought that other students students who were like me who are now growing up aren't going to have that and I really really don't want that from the for them I don't want that for my siblings I don't want that for the little kids I know I don't want that for their friends I don't want that for everyone anyone I want people to be able to have those teachers and have those Librarians to help me be here today thank you [Applause] all right next is number 30 excuse me Chris is it Chris number 30. number 30 Chris no all

197right 31 Trina if you're number 32 could you like maybe come start coming up towards the door on the side so that way we can perfect thank you hi Trina hello my name is Trina I'm a parent at Mountain View High School and at Crestline Elementary um let's see three of my kids have I have six kids in the district but three have graduated my son serves in the U.S Navy um and my other three are currently students the decision where of where to raise my kids is one of the most important decisions I've made as a parent of biracial kids and pretty much a single parent I knew that I needed to find a supportive School Community where my kids would be nurtured and challenged to achieve their potential I chose the Evergreen school

198district for their very dedicated teachers and great support programs and the one-on-one that they give them the biggest this is one of the biggest factors me choosing where I moved to I've reviewed the proposed budget cuts and I could talk about the many different negative impacts but I'm here today to share a story about one of my kids an example of how cutting athletic directors positions will surely have a negative impact on him and on kids like him my son is a student at Mountain View High School and if I tell you he has sensory processing disorder and sensory modulation disorder with ADHD and anxiety disorder OCD tenancies you might think you could develop an idea of who he is if I tell you he's on an IEP you might think you understand his potential

199if this whole identity was based on his struggles in the classroom it would be a fraction of who he really is it would not even begin to reflect his potential you know where he realizes who he really is where he proves himself what he's capable of it's on the football field it's on the wrestling mat and it's on the track my son believes in himself and he knows what he puts when he puts in the work and he stays committed he grows he wants to be a good team member and he has learned to trust others and he's hopeful for his future because of Athletics as an athlete he sees examples of what it means to be a good reliable and tough but kind man because of the coaches who Mentor him but beyond what

200he learns in any of these Sports throughout the year no matter what the one consistent Mentor for these kids and mine year after year is the athletic director Adam Matheson athletic directors do more than schedule a plan travel and move money around they work with kids and mentor and leaders to be accountable with their grades attendance and behavior my son hears stories from Matheson of all the athletes who like him who went on to do amazing things how they could use their Athletics towards opportunities his brother being one of them like colleges and Military service the athletic directors who see these kids over the course of four years come to know them and they use their connections to help these kids in ways that you can't record on a job description this is what we're

201talk this is what we're taking away when you cut athletic directors thank you Trina you're welcome [Music] all right Cindy [Applause] hi Cindy [Applause] oh this is overwhelming um good evening my name is Cynthia Darr I'm a I'm going to try not to cry um I'm an ESD alumni the aunt of a current Mountain View football player and a parent of a child entry in ESD this next year um I'm also a licensed counselor working closely with young adults who were failed by their school districts because mental health is not addressed enough within our schools I'll piggyback on a member earlier as legislative legislatures were referenced earlier I hope that all board members are in direct and regular contact with our legislators Senator Linda Wilson Senator Ann Rivers representative Paul Harris Etc our newest legislator

202representative Stephanie McClintock is on the education committee so email call show up to their offices and speak up for these students your staff in this community um I support all the matters being addressed tonight but I'm practically here to discuss the risk and protective factors at play with the cuts that are costing us our activities athletic directors because one currently plays a large role in my nephew's life I wrote a research paper in my bachelor's program that addressed Washington State's deficit and school counselors our schools lack counselors Washington is one of the highest student accounts their ratios in the nation we have hundreds of high-risk students within our district and apparently we are even we are cutting even more counselor positions in this District these activities directors have gained the trust and position to sit

203in is at that role for hundreds of students these students spend a lot of their time at school and within the extracurricular activities that these directors coordinate not only that but safety is a primary role within the athletic director's job description they ensure that students coaches sponsors community members are adhering to safety regulations and procedures they keep our students safe and that's a top priority as well right as any um so anyone anyone heard of adverse childhood experiences so a cases for short so adverse childhood experiences come in many forms from physical and mental abuse to neglect and household dysfunction Aces arise when students face adversity in their lives and the school district plays a role in these students lives especially when these budget cuts neglect the needs of our students research shows that negative

204psychological consequences associated with Aces is significantly reduced for children who had a trusted relationship with at least one adult and also those who regularly regularly participated in sports these activities directors are that trusted adult that is building resilience among these athletes these Librarians these FCRC staff resiliences both the outcome and the vehicle with which to build improvements in our students lives in every position you're trying to cut is a roadblock in their Journey that you play a large role in thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Kyla careless 33 so 34 is next hey how are you good evening members of the board superintendent Boyd and Dr Williams my name is Adrian Frye as an academic interventionist within our district I want to express my deep concerns about the proposed budget cuts I understand that these cuts

205are being considered due to financial constraints but I urge you to carefully consider the impact they will have on our most vulnerable students primarily students of color low-income multilingual and students with learning disabilities our school district serves a diverse population with a wide range of needs many of our students require specialized support to achieve academic success I fear the proposed budget cuts will disproportionately impact these students who are already facing significant challenges in the classroom positions such as family resource coordinators academic interventionists language Specialists multilingual and special education para educators are all critical to the success of these students any reduction in these programs will have a significant impact on their academic progress with cuts in these programs we're sure to see The Fallout with our students for years to come meanwhile there are positions

206in our district that do not face have daily face-to-face contact with students these positions are like the dessert after dinner when we are facing Cuts these positions should also be considered I wanted to point out one thing as an academic or a couple things as an academic interventionists one is with the short staffed special education staff this year at our school alone we are meeting most of our IEP minutes at our school we are also specifically trained for dyslexia strategies and there are laws that we um that there are laws that have come down that we have to screen students for dyslexia um between four academic interventionists at our school in two Paris we serve 160 students a day I'm deeply committed to ensuring that all my students have access to the resources and support

207they need to succeed I know that many of my colleagues share this commitment and these programs and resources are essential to the success of our most vulnerable students it's our responsibility as a district to ensure all students have access to high quality education regardless of their background or circumstances I urge you to carefully consider the impact of these cuts on our most vulnerable students in closing we were made to believe that budget cuts would be based off the thought exchange and through the equity lens the cuts clearly can clearly conflict with both of those please encourage Evergreen Public Schools to do better and follow through with their promises thank you thank you [Applause] Christy Peak 35 [Applause] we're on well wait hold on okay yes sorry that's what I thought we got mixed up on

208the last one you must be Kyla okay okay Pi Day everyone my name is Kyla I'm a seventh grader at Shahala Middle School I'm here to address the mainly the new schedule change um I don't I only have three minutes so I'm not here to address all the problems I have with it mainly just mine I work on the yearbook after school I work on taking photos of after school activities and sports and putting it together my the teacher who is currently in charge of it has said that we are not going to have it next year how how are we supposed to put together a yearbook when we do not have the time in or out of school to do it how are we supposed to be how are we supposed to do our

209homework when we are getting out of school at four o'clock every day we'll have we'll be having Elementary schoolers walking to their bus stops in the dark and if middle schoolers stay after school they will have middle schoolers walking home in the dark personally I stay after sometimes and walk home normally because I get out at 2 30 currently I normally get home at four o'clock 4 30 but no bus drivers will be willing to to have activity buses to drive us home at six o'clock if we do have after school activities teachers have already said that they will not be providing after school help to those of us who need it those of us who are neurodivergent and can't really learn well in classes and those of us who just need help outside of

210school my little brother he is special ed he rides the smaller buses and to get off the buses they have to make sure that someone is in the house with them on occasions there are times where I have to make sure he gets off the bus how am I supposed to be expected to do that when I get home two hours later than him next year and to address the budget cuts in my Ela class we read on Mondays and Fridays and every time there are people asking to go to the library our librarian who technically currently does not work there anymore has made sure that we have books made sure that we know what books are available had made sure that we have diversity amongst books for those of us who are lgbtq Asian

211American African-American and diversity amongst all of us but with the new budget cuts they're cutting all of our librarians which is a big problem for us middle schoolers who rely on our librarians to make sure that we feel safe and to talk to even when some of our teachers don't listen thank you thank you all right Christy you're up hi hi it's been a long night um my name is Christy Peake I'm president of Evergreen Education Association and of course I came to talk to you tonight about my concerns about the depth and and the direction of the budget cuts but I don't need to repeat everything that's already been said in my own voice I think that there were some excellent excellent speakers here and I can't disagree with any of them really but

212I do just want to point out that uh you know two things can be true at the same time uh we've heard from many at this board meeting but also at previous board meetings that our students are coming to us with greater and greater and more severe and higher in number needs for extra supports for Learning and their emotional well-being and teachers and paraprofessionals are working as hard as they can to provide for their needs but we're just seeing needs more extreme and greater in number and that is simply a fact but also it is a fact that our enrollment has declined and there is a need to evaluate the budget and reduce costs where feasible though I don't agree to the premise that that number is 19 million and the fiscal responsibility to this

213community is real for the district and so is providing students with a quality education provided by highly qualified educators and it is also a fact that the state and National level lawmakers are failing our kids and have failed to provide adequate funding for prototypical school models they fail to provide funding for serving the number of students with special education needs that show up at our door in our district and many others across the state and the nation every educator job is essential in our state and our nation need to fully fund and fulfill their promise to our kids who are the greatest resource truly that we have and the Hope in the future for Washington State and the nation and we all share this responsibility to push for funding to happen and I really appreciate

214it the person who spoke about the the wealth tax because I am just waiting for that to happen four of our teacher leaders were set to carry this message in person to Olympia in February but unfortunately the bad weather canceled their trip but we continue to encourage our members at local state and National level to stay involved in this effort to help lawmakers understand the need and I know you as a school board and superintendent Boyd have been involved in that work too and we all need to continue to fight for our students and back to two things being true at the same time budgeting requires careful judgment and discerning and when reductions are made the choices for when where and what are critical staff has already stretched paper thin working to meet growing needs

215of our students any Cuts resulting in stretching staff even thinner are alarming and irresponsible thank you [Applause] Chuck hi my name is Chuck Kepler I'm the parent of eight kids four adults four currently in high school all of them have had all of their education at Evergreen schools six of our eight kids we've adopted through the Foster system have served on the policy Council for eoca for three years coach Youth Sports in our community for 15 years and currently volunteer and coach at Evergreen High School before we passed the levy last year superintendent Boyd on his April 14th video which is still up on the website stated that Athletics and we were told specifically athletic directors support staff and special education were on the line if the levy didn't pass you can find that at

216the 5 minute and 27 second Mark of that video now a year later he's proposing to cut those positions you've lied to us you've broken our trust you say your first guideline in forming this budget is to keep students furthest away from the educational Justice at the center but with that guideline in mind you're entertaining cutting at-risk Advocates and academic interventionists who exclusively support students that are struggling academically you're you're proposing to cut Family Resource coordinators who are there to support the students that are in the deepest poverty you're looking to cut language Specialists special education para Educators counselors and athletic directors now I understand every business goes through tough times and has to make these Cuts but successful businesses look at their cuts and they have to decide what is the low impact and

217high pay positions that we must cut 128 and a half ftes from the buildings and 11 and a half from the district office is not that but the people that you're proposing to cut are these your family resource coordinator in Burton who I've known for years that works hard that this year alone has Partnerships with her community with resources in the community where she helps families pay their utilities even the rent she's helped provide those kids with clothes and shoes and hundreds of meals school supplies to students and their families my children get help two to three times a week after school at the high school because of The at-risk Advocates doing the after-school homework help my youngest daughter has gotten her grade her grades up from a 2.0 to a 3.5 this year because

218of their help our athletic director has hundreds of interactions with students every week encouraging them and helping them to be studious polite and respectful adults how are these positions the one you've deemed non-essential for the students that are the furthest from educational Justice you have broken our trust which causes me to question the leadership of the Evergreen School District a leadership that is hired and negotiated the resignation of two previous superintendents giving them each hundreds of thousands of dollars on the way out a leadership that hasn't had a legitimate hiring process for the last two superintendents but you have an opportunity now to do the right thing thank you all right next up is number 37 Linda is Linda here we're on 37. come on up over um a little overwhelming up here but thank

219you for having me um my name is Linda Davis and I'm an academic interventionist at illahee elementary and this is my 30th year teaching um 15 of those years were halftime classroom first grade and halftime reading specialist and I I say that because I want to go back to that point about my expertise in the classroom versus being an interventionist um I have things written that everybody has already said and I'm also hungry is anybody else hungry because I'm super hungry um but I I really I want to acknowledge the magnitude of this decision and how hard this is and I get it we all are caught between a rock and a hard place I made posters for myself of the two things that stood out that everybody has mentioned from The Guiding principles which

220is keeping students furthest from educational Justice at the center and then um avoiding unintended consequences with long-term short-term long-term decisions but when I think of the first those students that were trying to keep you know in school I think of these kids I think they're the students of color students who are multilingual students living in poverty students with gaps that are getting wider like you would not believe um they're the Tangled Learners possibly dyslexic that we're learning more and more about and many of the kids that we're seeing are those kids that are experiencing unfinished learning because of the pandemic so if you're thinking about that basic Foundation of literacy and math those are the kids that we work with those the academic interventionists so we're all shocked we're all in shock because we thought

221how how is it possible that we're being cut like this you know it's a third or more of our program um of certificated people and I think the only thing I came up with is that maybe our roles were misunderstood um maybe you don't understand what we do and the impact that we have um basically we have a wealth of specific training um so much math reading Orton Gillingham reading recovery Guided Reading Plus literacy footprint we have lists of of training and we do so much to support teachers in communicating their about their at-risk kids we work with parents we work with students um anyway I'm almost out of time and I appreciate you listening and I appreciate Adrian speaking before me and everybody else that was here thank you 38 uh Casa it's a

222casa is that right acacia my name is Casey Brown and I'm an educator and a parent in Evergreen I started working for Evergreen 16 years ago part-time on a one year only contract with thirty thousand dollars in student loan debt from my master's program but it wasn't about the money over the years I did secure a full-time continuing contract but our cost of living adjustments were frozen and I slept I crept slowly up the salary schedule high high insurance premiums for a lot of that and eventually I had to go on strike to get a state state sanctioned pay increase but it wasn't about the money for the last two years I have repeatedly requested to reduce my work hours to better care for my own mental and physical health as well as my children

223and the students I serve when I first requested this in the fall of 2021 I was led through a maze of medical letters requests to First determine my eligibility for an accommodation I made multiple requests for a meeting with human resources and was denied despite the fact that engaging in an interactive process is a legal requirement for employers instead Human Resources simply informed me that my accommodation was to use my sick leave and then take unpaid leave my request for part time was denied again this year so I took a leave of absence and I am subbing in our schools at all levels Elementary Middle School and High School and I wish I could give you a positive report but that is not the case the most heartbreaking thing about the district's utter disregard for

224staff needs and requests is how it affects our students my heart broke for the students who had had three teachers by the time I met them in October and they asked me if I would be their forever teacher when I as soon as I walked in and I tried to tell them they quickly explained to me that they were the worst class ever and that's why no teacher would stay but I told them no no it's just about the money I've heard this District's Representatives refer to their fiscal responsibility when explaining decisions these decisions range from their refusal to fire Mr Merlino for cause when there was evidence and cause two refusing to allow job sharing and of course the budget is responsible for gutting our Equity Department closing our newcomer Center and now cutting

225our family and Community Resource Centers and our academic interventionists this is irresponsible the district is making fiscal decisions that disregard the essential purpose for the existence of the district in the first place to provide the education and well-being for the Evergreen students I propose that the decision-making in this district is flawed educators are not in this for the money our district is failing because the reasons for your actions are not worthy of the students you serve please start making students and staff well-being the priority then maybe you can hope to see an increase in student enrollment thank you all right number 39 Carrie Carrie are you here with us tonight all right we're going to move on to number 40 who's Michelle hello beautiful people my name is Michelle card library assistant for Evergreen High

226School can I get a e way story time once upon a time there were amazing Librarians in the schools um wait nope if that sorry nope uh that might get kept there um they help students every uh made sure that the library was up to date on [Music] I help teachers and substitutes with technology problems um help students and staff have a safe and comfortable space to work in well as you can tell this isn't a very good story without the main character it's pretty bad story lucky for us we have some wonderful authors who can make it have the happy ending you hold the pages now what will you write [Applause] it's my microphone oh there it is 41 Kim okay 42 oh there we go Rebecca 43 Brian hey Brian so I've been

227doing editing while all this is going on because a lot of people talking uh oh my time's already going okay so I do understand the difficult decision that you have ahead of you you cannot cut 19 million dollars from the district district budget without there being some devastating impact on some of the people that you employ that kind of decision should not cannot be made based on public appeal and the emotion of people who've had a week to wrap their head around the devastation that you have wrought upon them that's a trauma response but a week is all we have and this is our only shot to make ourselves heard so I now find myself fighting with other programs that I believe in to try and save one peer from another because of cuts you've

228seen coming for six years okay not emotion fact you need facts well researched and verified facts by someone who well knows how to do research like a librarian that's me studies and meta-analysis of studies since 1992 have shown that when schools have high quality programs and supported by actual Librarians Stu excuse me student achievement gets a boost specifically data for more than 34 Statewide studies tell us that students earn better standardized test scores in schools that have Librarians supported in media programs to be clear that is data formulated and adjusted for socioeconomic and ethnic disparity those same studies show that without Librarians High performing readers do not continue to grow at the same rate as those High readers who have access to school librarians without Librarians low performing readers do not get the Boost that

229they need relative to the same readers who have access to school librarians in high schools without librarians the number of graduates goes down as does the number of seniors who even bother to apply for college according to the Gates Foundation about 83 percent of our high school students access the school of high schools to get their books to access the internet and to get help with research for us that number is obviously going to change your effort to make these Cuts with an equity lens seems to have missed that it is specifically our students furthest from educational Justice that would benefit most from those libraries staffed with a certified librarian there is one public library in the Evergreen School District boundaries it's walking distance from here I parked there Brian you're out of time so

230just wrap it up please if you lived in the Heritage District it's a 30-minute bus ride plus a stop at the transfer station to get to that Library lastly this is a violation of RWC rcw2883.20.240 which says you have to have a certified teacher librarian in every Library thank you Brian Stephanie 44 are you Stephanie yeah good evening my name is Stephanie I'm a teacher at Cascade Middle School I wanted to talk to you today regarding the budget cuts we know sometimes these cuts are necessary these days there just isn't enough money to go around budget cuts usually Force roles and responsibilities to shift within a school structure budget cuts usually mean prioritizing what is important I'm here today to tell you that Librarians at the middle school lover level are essential for Student Success

231and also support teachers in a way that cannot be done by anybody else they are the up of the utmost importance and should be prioritized accordingly Librarians are the heartbeat of our school librarians are the glue that binds us together teacher Librarians are a unique School entity that provide a variety of things for staff but mostly for students in the last 10 years teacher Librarians have Diversified not only our school libraries to be more inclusive and to prep to provide Equity but also our classroom libraries they worked with the district to choose books that all kids can see themselves in in addition teacher Librarians improve Community between schools and parents they do this by offering parents tech support teaching parents who often experience barriers to access their child's School accounts and Building Bridges between those

232parents and their teachers teacher Librarians provide professional develop development training for teachers to use District preferred technology so that they can be better prepared to meet students educational needs both at school and for those that need untraditional ways of learning and need to access online resources organizers information deadlines Etc in order to be successful in class they are part of many plcs in the middle school and help by contributing their expertise opinions and vast experiences that help to bring literacy to the classrooms teacher Librarians are literacy advocates that perform as coaches and mentors to staff and students their jobs are irreplaceable they provide opportunities to students that classroom teachers cannot they they create and promote the love of reading to A whole school they provide bi-weekly book talks to ELA classrooms and reading electives they

233have created school-wide book clubs contests and meetings for students to have amazing experiences with books they also help create school-wide lessons and an engaging experience for all students teacher Librarians also teach students 21 century skills there have been several opportunities for students to engage with gadgets that require code students have also got to bring their personal writing to Life by engaging in lessons with the librarian to record their voices and add sound effects they have learned how to make videos using a green screen and how to edit them all opportunities that wouldn't be possible without professional teacher Librarians thank you thank you 45 Michelle hi Michelle I'm Michelle Annette I'm the teacher librarian at Cascade that Stephanie was just talking about um I'm also the teacher librarian that Roman was talking about uh for my

234other students I have changed their names in my building we have approximately 850 students I see every single one of them at least once every three weeks often more than that I have relationships with each and every one of these students in much the same way as their specific classroom teachers in some cases I have a stronger relationship because I have had the opportunity to teach them for three years some of our most vulnerable students need this relationship and the library as a safe space books and positive relationships are a Lifeline for these students one example of a specific student who has benefited from this relationship is Sarah a current seventh grader in elementary school Sarah struggled with anxiety and attendance as a sixth grader she quickly became a regular spending every lunch period in

235the library through a variety of programming opportunities we developed a deep teacher student relationship and she was able to share some of her challenges with me and how books and a counselor helped her overcome them I helped Sarah to write a book about her experiences and publish it for our school where other students can learn from and read her advice for difficult situations as a teacher librarian I am at the Forefront of promoting equity and diversity I have years of experience and specific training for determining how to create a library collection that reflects all students and allows them to use books as Windows mirrors and sliding doors without a teacher librarian who will buy a book like Dawn raid by Pauline V Smith about the injustices Pacific Islanders faced in New Zealand in 1970s who

236will book talk that historical fiction novel and watch Pacific Islander students like Looney's faces light up when they see this book as a mirror who will present this book to White students like Maya so that they can use this as a window to understand the experiences of others who will buy books with lgbtq characters like Heart Stopper so readers can view the growing relationship between Nick and Charlie as a window into the struggles of lgbtq students who will search for Diary of a Wimpy Kid in foreign languages so our newcomers like Alina can read in her native language along with the rest of her classmates students need teacher Librarians to build diverse and Equitable Library collections where they can have access to books as mirrors windows and sliding doors students need relationships with teacher Librarians

237that they know and trust to be able to request the books they want to read if the board approves these budget cuts I will be okay I can take my expertise to a classroom and share it with a few selected students because I am a teacher first librarian second but what will the rest of the students be missing thank you Michelle [Applause] hi there are you uh Jana Jenna hi I'm Janet Grody and I am a Community member I questioned whether I had a right to come and speak today I'm not part of the Evergreen Public School System and yet I am because of family and community resource coordinators every Wednesday afternoon me and several or volunteers who are also here are there passing out food in conjunction with the Clark County Food Bank fresh

238food bank fresh on Thursdays I'm delivering boxes from share and on Tuesdays I'm organizing the share Warehouse so that we can get coats and clothes and other things to the students that have a real need the family and community resource coordinators develop Partnerships they reach out into the community and find ways to make a difference for all of the students and the families after I retired I started going back and taking education classes in early childhood education and Elementary education because it's an interest of mine and every class emphasizes students are not ready to learn if they don't have their basic needs met their food their shelter their sleep and and that's what these people are providing and they're leveraging resources they're not doing this alone the I wasn't able to find data for the

239Evergreen Public School System but the 2019-2020 report from Vancouver showed that for every dollar spent for the family community resource coordinators 4.25 cents in additional resources are being brought to these kids to meet the basic needs so that they're ready to learn and so that they can do what they need to do so all I ask is that you you look closely people here have repeatedly gone back to your basic principles that we want to prioritize student mental health and safety the coordinators do this they're there constantly I've never been to one of the offices where they haven't had students in there or families that they're helping meet these resources so we're helping student mental health and safety we're addressing learning loss these coordinators provide all sorts of resource opportunities for these kids to participate

240and prioritizing the students who are furthest from educational Justice is what they're all about so I ask that you not balance the budget on the backs of those who have the least and who often have a voice that isn't heard thank you thank you all right next step is 47 Ben hey Ben hello my name is Ben Cort I am the teacher librarian at Fircrest Elementary School and I was just named Washington library association's 2023 teacher librarian Elementary of the year more importantly though more importantly though I am a father of four young children ages 4 to 12 and we live and attend school in this District I speak to you tonight begging you to reconsider your choice to eliminate all secondary Librarians and Elementary media assistants libraries are so so much more than just

241checking in checking out and shelving books but if these Cuts go through that's exactly what our libraries will be reduced to since having our staffing cut four years ago libraries have already had to do more with less we've implemented systems so that Library collections can be available to students no matter what else is going on keeping libraries open in the face of significant challenges we got creative with scheduling so we could provide access to Makerspace activities clubs career exploration and training and a safe and welcoming place to be our Librarians already do this at a personal cost teacher Librarians often skip their duty-free lunches to stay open they schedule themselves down to the minute to make sure that their students are as well taken care of as humanly possible having spoken to every teacher librarian

242in this District we are already at our limits any further reduction in Staffing will be directly correlated with the degradation of every student's access to materials and information the removal of opportunities to learn and to experience new things the lack of access to clubs and communities the shuttering of our maker spaces and the transformation of our libraries from busy exciting beloved hubs of our schools to a place where the books live is disproportionately harms the students that we need to help the most teacher Librarians are trained certificated professionals who know how to carefully cultivate spaces collections experiences and most importantly relationships we cannot just be replaced by media assistance at the secondary level without giving up almost everything that makes our libraries our libraries for many of our most vulnerable and at-risk students the library

243is the only safe place in the school we've heard from some of them this evening if these guts go through the library will instead be a place that simply Cycles people in and out just like the books that we provide it is my firm belief that the school board in the District administration don't understand the depth and breadth of what our libraries already offer to our students every single day and just how impactful these Cuts will be to our students so I beg you on behalf of our students please reconsider these Cuts they will be directly harmful to the students who most need our help and our support and our students will lose access to much of what already makes our schools currently great and I invite all of you to come into our libraries

244please come have conversations with our Librarians learn what we actually do and see the great work that we're already doing every single day and Marvel at the amazing things that we do and provide for our students we hope to hear from you thank you Ben [Applause] 48 Angela come on up Angela hi my name is Angie and I have two students or two children one that graduated a couple years ago one that's going into high school and I'm actually a sped para educator at Pacific and I just wanted to talk to you about the time change you guys are hearing a lot of it already but it's really going to affect these kids and I I wish you guys could see how so I'm just going to tell you what I had to say even

245though some of it's already been said um I'm not sure how you came to this discussion or this decision I know you sent out a survey to the teachers not to the parents not to the other staff the teachers and I heard the results they didn't sound great but did you take into consideration there's only 277 Middle School teachers and 744 elementary teachers yeah I took the time I sat down I added it all up those numbers aren't right it's your survey doesn't make sense how the numbers were so wrong when there are so many more Elementary than there is Middle School and it's affecting so in my opinion you're not thinking about how this go is going to affect families and staff I did my own research and I spoke to over a hundred

246people and out of those hundred people only three were okay with the time change I spoke to moms that will not have now have to hire someone for after school care for their elementary students as they're going to have be home way too early have you thought of the young kids being home with no supervision what's going to happen because with the economy nowadays parents can't afford Child Care both parents have to work young students catching the bus in the dark that's not safe I have parents who have told me that they need their older kids to get younger kids off the bus with this time change that's not possible anymore now to the middle school where it affects me how can you say they need more sleep that study is from eight years ago

247that study is from before the pandemic these kids are different I work with them every day I see them I have a middle schooler they are way different than my daughter was and she is in Middle School they need their Sports they need their time how are they going to get off at four in the afternoon and then have sports our coaches don't want to coach that late I work all after school events at the school I keep score for every sport I don't want to be there until 8 o'clock at night our school can't find people to do these things there's nobody we need four for wrestling all we can ever get is two nobody wants to be there till six no one's going to want to be there until eight you guys have

248to really think about how it's affecting the families and the kids it's not fair please just think about it that's all we ask thank you [Music] 49 is it Crystal or Christy Crystal hi Crystal hello my name is Crystal pipgrass and I'm a second grade teacher in Longview School District but a parent to two high school students who attend Evergreen Public Schools everything that I wanted to say that I had written down earlier who has pretty much already been said but I'm so I'm going to tell you a personal story so maybe you can understand how this would impact the students directly I was a Teen Mom I did not graduate your high school and I specifically moved to 3 000 miles away to come to this District so that my son could have a

249better life because I knew that he would get the support that I didn't have then made it to where I didn't graduate high school I had to work 10 years harder longer to get to where I am today and I did not want that for my son my other child that's in my house is a foster care child which means that he relies so heavily on those at-risk Advocates that you are advocating to be cut it wasn't long ago that both my son and my foster son were suicidal and had no reason to want to continue to live but do you know who pulled them out of that the athletic directors their coaches and their at-risk Advocates you don't seem to understand just how much this is impacting our students on a personal level and

250it seems like they were the furthest from your mind when you decided to choose what was going to get cut and you talk about looking through an equity lens but I'm telling you right now that your Equity lens seems to be very different from mine and a lot of other people's because the kids who are most at risk and the furthest from educational Justice are the ones most impacted by this so I'm just I'm just asking for you to really reconsider these cuts and figure out where you can make different cuts it seems like there was a lot of audacity to sit there and say that you're trying to make these cuts the furthest from the classrooms and the furthest from kids with educational Justice and yet almost all of the cuts were being made

251at elementary schools middle schools and high schools but very little at the district level when the superintendent is making 500 000 a year roughly around there and I did not see a single suggestion for that seller to be cut but yet we're getting rid of all of these other positions in the school district so please take the time to do what's right for our kids thank you Crystal all right next is 50 Katie hey Katie hello um I was going to Forfeit my time to student voice but I think they're all in bed are there any students in here that would like to have my time slot it's called wait time for educators all right in that case I have one quote from a student I'm a teacher librarian daughter sister wife mother and kid

252Advocate I was doing mock interviews with sophomores this week in the library and the most awesome kid Mitchell said he wanted to be a librarian and I just loved what he said about libraries and I just wanted to share with y'all um he's just so clever so it says he said what's a kitchen without a cook what's an office without a manager what's a Library without a librarian honestly it's just a pile of books my best analogy is this libraries are like a machine there are all these different moving Parts each having their purpose if one part stops working and no one is there to fix it you might not be able to tell right away but over time the machine will stop working libraries need librarians thank you and I appreciate everything you all

253do thank you Katie thank you all right next up is 51 Carmella hi there first of all I want to tell you guys my butt is so sore from sitting in these seats for so long and I understand you guys are probably just a sore with that being said I also want to state that I've been watching every single one of you guys during these testimonies from everybody and it's rather disappointing to see several of you guys not making eye contact with people it's so important to make that eye contact to let us know that you're listening to what we're doing we're not wasting our time out here without also being said I want to talk about 80 Cuts everybody's a lot of people talked about 80 cuts it is insane the amount of impact

254that these people possess they are there's not even words to describe it I've I'm the I'm the pain in the butt parent that teachers hate and coaches hate I will call up I will say what's going on how come this is happening blah blah I admit it okay I've butted heads with Christian Swain I've butted heads with principles and you name it I'm a passionate mom okay um with that being said I love coach Swain he has met me with every attitude that I've ever had he's come back at me with nothing but professionalism intact and he has taught my kids uh how to behave and how to act with respect as young men that's super important and when it comes to the college aspect there are tons of these kids in these programs that

255absolutely would not be where they're at without these athletic directors now on another note I'm a first-time homeowner I'm pretty proud to say that I bought my home back in 2021 so these whole levies and taxes and that's so adult for me I have no idea what it is um with this last Levy our kids came home and told us like oh my God our teachers these favorite people these amazing people are going to lose their job if you don't pass this Levy what Levy what's that gonna do there's taxes involved there's money I know there's something no no no it's not going to impact our taxes all we're going to do is reallocate where the money is going so we want to save the schools or save the teachers save these positions so my

256husband and I with hesitation jumped on board and absolutely voted it and it passed we were all excited we took a breath of relief and it's sad to say that after listening to this uh whole day those were lies it was all lies teachers were misled they were manipulated they were also manipulated to lie to the kids to have them come home and feed us lies to get bought into what you guys want us to do and it's really really sad it creates a lack of trust from me as a homeowner who is going to vote on future levies and I just think that that's something that's super important and the last piece here in my last 20 seconds I think it's rather horrible to keep the teachers stringing along until August to find out

257whether or not this is going to pass I thought there was going to be a vote tonight but apparently not thank you all right number 52 Jamie hi Jamie good evening my name is Jamie bear my pronouns are they them I am a degree librarian I work at our Public Library here in town I'm speaking tonight on behalf of my profession not my organization and I'm so thankful I'm so late in the list that I got to speak after the teacher Librarians and your students are so passionately talked about how the library has made an impact I don't feel the need to reiterate that for you but I do because I had this time want to just give my professional stamp of approval that everything that's been said about your your teacher Librarians and the

258impact they make and the difference that they make in your students lives cannot be undervalued and I have 14 years experience as a professional librarian I have my Master's Degree there is no way in hell I could do the job that your teacher Librarians do and so I just want you to know that it's very important and we know it's an equity issue we have the public library we want everyone to be able to come there we know not everyone in Evergreen Public Schools can reach our libraries there's lots of reasons they can't get to them but you guys have this beautiful resource already in your buildings of these libraries and these beautiful fabulous very passionate very dramatic teacher Librarians and media Specialists that you need to cling to for dear life because they're doing

259such a phenomenal job for your students and I just wanted to make sure to make that known so thank you for your time I'm going to Forfeit the rest so we can hopefully get out here a minute and a half earlier thank you Jamie all right we've done it we got to the end of our list we've got one more 53 fill I don't know if Phil's here I haven't seen him yeah Phil are you still here all right thank you very much we appreciate all of you coming this evening and giving your comments um at this time the board is going to go into a quick recess where we're going to sign documents and then we're going to reconvene for an executive session where we'll discuss the performance of a Public Employee thank you

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