001thank you all for joining us this evening we're going to go ahead and get our meeting started if you'll join us for the Pledge of Allegiance allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation and under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you okay first on our agenda is Our Land acknowledgment director Perkins is going to go ahead and read that for us Evergreen Public Schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinooken peoples in the calyx tribe they have lived on and cared for this land and its waterways since time immemorial we thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgment to open a space of recognition inclusion and respect for all indigenous families students and staff in our community
002thank you director Perkins next is our adoption of our agenda entertain a motion I move that we adopt tonight's agenda as presented second adopted and seconded all those in favor aye aye any opposed wonderful go ahead and get our meeting started next is our board consent agenda move adoption of the board consent agenda is presented second moved and seconded all in favor aye aye any opposed next is our superintendent consent agenda motion to approve or to yeah sorry I moved to approve tonight superintendent consent agenda it's been moved and seconded all in favor aye any opposed next is the superintendent's report turn it over to superintendent Boyd thank you director gronwald uh just a few things to report on there's been a lot in the news about the fentanyl which is a very dangerous drug
003that is rampant in our streets we had a a report from Sergeant bill sofianos from Clark County Sheriff's Office that prompted us to take some action one was to develop a website with all of the information related to the dangers of fentanyl we also sent out a letter to all of our families talking to our families about the dangers of it some resources and some resources for how to talk to their students so we'll continue to do professional learning with our principals with our staff and with our other folks to make sure that folks are aware of the dangers of fentanyl in our community and I'll just say that what is kind of terrifying about this is that that officer sophianus told us that you know a dosage of fentanyl the size of two grains
004of sand could kill someone so we want to be direct it's an intense topic but we want to be direct about that and communicating with our families so folks know and understand and can talk to their students um we had an opportunity to director Perkins and I to go to a Clark County Regional legislation legislative Forum so that was great to listen to and hear from our legislators we continue to do work on that and director Perkins has been invited to Washington D.C because he's done some really impressive work around helping the whole state understand the special education funding Gap so we're real excited for you to engage in that opportunity and support us to be able to maybe get some more resources as folks may or may not understand we have about a 10
005million dollar gap for what's funded for special education and for what we spend so much of our Levy resource goes to support that when it should be fully funded by the state so thank you director Perkins for your work on that had an opportunity to go to Mountain View and visit and watch their music performance and was absolutely mind-blowing Away by the just the level of EX Excellence there you could close your eyes and feel like you're in just a a city symphony it was just beautiful and stunning our music programs I've said this before are among the best I've ever seen and it's just really inspiring to to see that I saw director Weatherspoon there and we both had big smiles on our faces listening to that wonderful music today's uh as I'm continue
006to visit schools and um pass out the MVP award so I think we might see that in our upcoming good news but we're having principals select someone in their building a classified or a certificated staff to that's gone above and beyond for uh students so we're we I've been passing those out and we've got a website filled with our MVPs throughout the district my next round of visits this last couple weeks I visited um several schools including was able to be at Silver Star today and I've gone to several schools to be able to Harmony Hawaii East Cascadia Tech Heritage and I'm visiting schools and asking principals to talk about the challenges the successes talk about their math focus and we're visiting classrooms to see their leadership in action and how their leadership is resulting
007in in powerful and ambitious instruction around math for us and that's been a phenomenal work we had principal professional development for elementary um principles today related to our math Focus we're now really leaning into the notion that if we're going to be focusing on math we really need to be monitoring math real time I will say that Dr Williams made us dance so you may see a formal complaint from me about that that's cruel and unusual punishment for someone rhythmically challenged and I'm excited to get the report that Dr Williams is going to give on our strategic planning today and that we're going to hear from our both Ruth and Jamila related to our youth truth so good stuff coming up great thank you next on our agenda is our board reorganization so every year
008we reorganize our leadership positions and so at this time we will begin that process first up we have a election of a new president can I just add something real fast absolutely so uh one of the things that this board workshopped last summer when we had some we just had some time to take further board and do some Workshop items as we talked about board reorganization and how we function as a board unit and how we move forward and sometimes to give everyone an opportunity that we would you know kind of be on more of a rotating basis and give people chances to be in leadership roles um and things might change it might not always be a direct science because of um you know variations maybe somebody's new or on the board or maybe
009they have something that's going on that would keep them from doing um the leadership role perfect so with that um do I have any nominations for the president position are accepting nominations I'll extend a nomination for Julie buckenegger as board chair right so nomination for Julie as board chair is there a second I second all right so there has been a nomination and a second Julie would you accept the position of yes board president all right so it's been first and seconded all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed perfect here's the gavel [Applause] thank you Jenny thank you for your year of leadership in the board chair position it's not always easy but thank you for guiding us this past year Ben um learning experience it's been fun it's been a lot of
010fun but definitely a learning experience so thank you thank you Jenny all right so at this time we will move on to election of a vice president if we could entertain a motion for vice president I would like to nominate Rob Perkins as vice president I'll second that okay it's been moved in second into a point Rob perkins's vice president Rob do you accept the nomination I accept all right all in favor say aye aye aye hey congratulations Rob thank you all right at this time we usually uh choose a legislative representative somebody who works on the board's behalf with local legislators and then also in Olympia attends waza events and does some of those things to make sure that we Advocate what John was talking about um so Rob has done this position how
011many years now in a row five six six at the same time he represented our board he was representing uh our region at wasda and recently he took a different role with wasda um volunteering up there so Rob thank you for that time um I know that and I kind of wanted to address that Victoria Bradford is absent this evening she's traveling and wasn't able to make tonight's meeting I think she's on a plane on her way back um but I know that she has expressed some interest in taking ledge rep I think she's done it in the past and uh had made some comments that she was willing to do it again so I don't know if we have a motion for legislative rep I like to nominate Victoria or director Bradford for legislative
012rep my second all right it's been second and Victoria is not here to accept the nomination but um I could suggest that we take a vote uh on her appointment um contingent on her acceptance of the nomination and move forward from there I was actually at a meeting earlier today where folks talked about where wasda was talking about the conditions for legislative reps and some districts just have the president appoint somebody some districts do a formal vote nomination if we fall somewhere in between this time it's not going to be a problem chair and vice chair is probably a little different for this one yeah all right so I think that that that's good I think we can move forward with our vote so all in favor of Victoria Bradford being legislative rep say I
013I opposed perfect all right next on our agenda this is really exciting because this I think is the first time an evergreen School District history that we have board reps that are joining our school board student board reps thank you John um it's been a long process and I'm going to turn it over to Ginny and Jackie to kind of talk about the process that we went through the last year so actually our student board rep process started pre-covered unfortunately covet kind of derailed the process but just a quick kind of overview of what we started as a board and kind of where it's come and where it is now so we have always known we wanted student Representatives on our school board um we wanted ways to be able to connect with our students
014find out what was going on in their schools we do surveys they come back with results but we never really know what's going on in each individual School so and and all over the state there's student board Reps for a lot of the school districts so as we took on this process and we started looking at what other districts have done um best practices um kind of how they all functioned we realized that most School boards actually only have two student reps um usually they're seniors maybe Juniors and seniors and that's great but being these I think we're still the sixth largest school district in the state of Washington we knew we wanted to be we wanted this to look different we wanted this to look like how it needed to look like Forever Green
015we have four large high schools and then two of our well they're still comprehensive they're there's no difference between any of them so ultimately in Evergreen we have six high schools and we wanted to make sure that we were hearing from all of them so we decided to have two reps from each High School then that looked really large and we started to try to go through how they were going to intertwine with the board we were looking at our procedures what they were going to do what meetings they were going to go to who they were going to be involved in and and really it was I I felt we were smothering the process and I really wanted our students or we really wanted our students to be a part of this process we
016wanted this to look how they wanted it to look along with the school board so we wanted to do this in Partnership and so then when Jackie was appointed to the board she joined me in in pushing this forward after covet and kind of really digging deep into this so we've actually have appointed we went through application process interview process and we've started with two juniors that will help us within the district we have two Juniors from two different high schools and that were chosen and actually I I'll let Jackie kind of go over that process I'm doing all the talking so go forward I had interviews with um five students and we narrowed it down to these two excellent students here we're very excited to have you um it was a very hard choice
017because there are so many amazing student leaders in our district and we feel like these two students will represent our students very well and help us sort of put together the board for the students in a way that will sort of represent everybody so we're great we're very happy to have you here so over the next couple of months we will work closely with our new student board reps to mold this program and come this spring we will then submit out requests for applications to appoint the to a junior and a senior from each of our high schools to start next year with us and move forward and with that so I'm going to turn it over to superintendent Boyd who's going to administrate administer the oath of office I don't think is there a
018handheld or you got me it's picking me up great well I'm going to speak from here so uh folks online can hear too but I just want to say congrat congratulations to Covenant and Sullivan for being our uh our successful candidates for student board rep you are both blazing a trail as director gronwald said you're going to help us design how we work with the rest of our student body so big you're going to have a big job to do but we absolutely um feel like we've got the right two for the job so we want to do a formal swearing-in for you so if you'll raise your right hand for us there we'll have you repeat after me I Covenant chukowocha okay and I'm gonna do this simultaneously so I Sullivan Taylor and the
019rest we can do together do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution and laws of the United States and the Constitution and laws of the state of Washington and we'll do the best of well and will to the best of my judgment skill and ability truly Faithfully diligently and impartially perform the duties of the office of Evergreen School District student representatives to the board as such Duties are prescribed by law and policy you are now sworn in board student board reps of the Evergreen Public Schools congratulations [Applause] you feel like a proud parent almost like can you make it official with their signatures thank you to see a program that we've all put so much time and effort into come to this point and and moving forward it's pretty amazing I'm really excited thank
020you guys welcome all right welcome thank you if I get interject before we move on to the next one is um in the next few days or weeks whenever he can get things organized for us all uh a colleague of mine Logan endres of the Washington State State School Directors Association has materials and supports for student representatives to the board I don't know if you've heard his name yet or met him um but with this appointment you will have some access to opportunities for advocacy um in Olympia if you're willing and also the camaraderie of all the other student board representatives in the state you may uh know that at annual conference in November the student Representatives come together and they have a program as well so I'm really excited that you're along for this
021really just happy thanks Rob all right next on our agenda we have to appeal the hearing decision of the IMC book challenge so a little bit of background can I turn this over to you maybe for the background or of the how we came to this yeah I'm happy to do that we um uh a couple of months ago we had a challenge to the book 47. um it is was a book in our middle school classroom set the instructional materials committee heard from the um from the individuals that brought the complaint forward a decision was made to remove that book from the seventh grade libraries but not remove it from other places in in the in the school system so we had a challenge to that decision and the board now must determine whether
022or not to uphold that decision or to overturn it and just to clarify it was removed from seventh grade classrooms throughout the district only correct but it's still in libraries amongst the entire District okay okay so we're going to go ahead and um we can open it up for discussion or we can make a motion and then open it up for discussion well you want to discuss I I think we could profitably have a discussion before we decide on a motion yeah am I going to start or do you want to go ahead and start Rob I uh I've been giving this a lot of thought and um recognize uh that there were some deep feelings uh connected to the complaint there were um reports of uh problems that the students and the teachers had
023communicating with one another over what they were allowed to do and uh I think some some Nuance got lost in the middle of all the process just in the you know day-to-day realities of the classroom and so forth um I've read the book I come from a different Heritage than the folks who filed the complaint um I was taught certain things that helped me to recognize that there were words and usages and circumstances and scenes in the book that would be shocking uh to children who hadn't ever come across those kinds of facts before um I I'm trying to be as thoughtful as I as I can as I say this because sometimes I'm just making the words is doesn't come across as I mean it but I haven't got I can see too much
024of an advantage to keeping the book where seventh graders might have access to it um because it would be advantageous and educational for children who have my heritage to learn about for example what it was like so often for a slave in the South before the Civil War um and so my inclination is to maintain the book in the schools where they are and and to really ask John to respond to the to the back story of the student and the teacher and the circumstances behind that to see if we can add some information to uh Publications and books and those collections that would help a child and a student uh pick from the list of books um so my my inclination is is to reverse the decision of the um of the IMC but
025still try to find a way to recognize um that there are triggers in our classroom sets and these are Halls of learning these schools and so there are going to be times when they call it the productive uh productive frustration or productive rigor uh is something that happens um but we also need as adults to be sure to see and recognize those points and we've set that aside we've set that out in in our results policies and our operational expectations policies so um My Hope Is that we can all get better at taking care to see our kids where they are yeah I believe that our instructional materials committee was very thoughtful in their choice and they didn't remove it from students from the libraries the students still have access to the book what they're
026saying is that if I'm reading it correctly that it won't be part of this unit of learning and so it would not be something that students wouldn't have access to I do think that the process needs to be looked at in terms of how these appeals are these um this is done the IMC process is done I am concerned about how the student was told they couldn't get another book so that process needs to be looked at as well but I'm not for at this point repealing their decision for me in Reading the minutes from the IMC meeting the decision the appeal so ultimately it was brought before us to appeal the the decision that the IMC committee made which was to remove this book from the seventh grade classroom and remove it as a
027suggestion as part of this curriculum we've all read the book for me there is not enough evidence to overturn the imc's decision which we have we have this team to do these types of things for a reason uh and and I feel that we need to support them in this decision a couple of things on the overall process or process I believe that it can be reviewed I do not believe that just because it was originally approved by the district and the board that it should not be re-reviewed that I don't think that that should be a reasoning for keeping a book in the classroom just because at some point it was approved by us because when we know better we do better so if a book is brought it before us and we find
028that there are some things within it that do not resonate with our District's beliefs or it is causing harm to our students then I think that we should be taking another look at it um and we and we owe that to our students and making decisions this was brought before us it was reviewed and there was a decision that was made and I feel that there wasn't enough evidence presented to us to overturn that decision so I it's my opinion to uphold the imc's decision so my thoughts align um more with Rob I also have given this a lot of thought and consideration for months I think I read the book Last Summer was it last summer I can't even remember the timeline summertime um but it's difficult for me to to think about like
029even what Jenny said about there are thousands of books out there that will trigger a response in someone um and so I just for me removing a book just kind of stands against really everything that I believe in and I just feel like and I kind of wrote some thoughts down but I just feel like books serve as a window that provides a view into others lives and experiences through literacy litter literacy and learning it improves our language skills knowledge of the world and the people who live in it it strengthens our empathy if we start removing books for any reason we are taking away a student's ability to learn about topics and from their own View and form their own viewpoints I know that sometimes content may be upsetting or sensitive but the important
030part of the discussion we have around those feelings and we explore how we feel and help each other with our understanding this was a book of choice anytime a student and I completely agree with what Jackie is saying that when a student feels uncomfortable that we need to build our culture where they're feel free to bring that up be heard and feel supported our process could and should improve and maybe in the future we list out books and we list what content might be sensitive in those so there's an upfront they know before they open the book and start reading it I'm sure we can Shore up our processes from the appalled process to the IMC or at the building level I was actually a just thinking about my own experience raising my kids in
031the district and and uh um when my oldest got into high school I was actually kind of suspicious of what material that she would encounter um what she'd be required to read mostly because in another school district my younger sister had encountered a requirement to read something that she wasn't comfortable with um when I was told that it wasn't a book it was a book list and that students in their English classes and their Humanities classes could be choosing something that resonated with them best then the fear of it was gone I knew my kids would make the choices that I taught them to make and we go on from there now I also have to recognize that my family isn't the same as every family um but I've also been on the IMC I've
032also gone through a book Challenge on aimc and knowing what I know now as opposed to what I knew then 10 years ago I might not have voted the way I did which was to move a book from middle school to high school um the uh the change in opinion about all of that comes from the fact that I started to get to know a lot of middle schoolers um and recognizing that their life experience at that age is not the same as mine uh I share Julie's extreme resident reticence to Banning or appearing to ban a book it's a problem for me um so I don't know we have a process um there's no doubt that the imc's members were thoughtful about it so I'm in favor of overturning it we're moving to overturn
033it the IMC decision uh it's more of an ambivalence now that I've listened to Jackie and and Jenny talk about process and so forth no wonder if there's anything more to say since director Bradford's not here it would be interesting to hear what she has to say since there are four of us I I agree and just based on our discussion I'm not sure that we're able maybe to move forward with it without um her opinion and having the whole board here having a tiebreaker I agree and I guess yeah so I'll move that we defer this agenda item to the next regular board meeting that all five of us are at um it's the first meeting in January would be that's our next next meeting is the 13th of January 13th the motion is
034to defer until January 13th second I did sorry so there's a motion on the table to defer um this decision to the first board meeting in January when we have the full board present it's been moved in second and all in favor say aye aye aye all right thank you thank you for the discussion all right next is our teaching and learning Equity update Dr Williams and Clarissa hello um I won't be before you long I think we had quality time the last time we were together I just wanted to say thank you for the time you spent sitting with our schools listening to their school Improvement summaries we did get to hear from some of you we know that some I think one of you was out ill and we are looking forward to
035our continued conversations around our school Improvement plan um in January the schools will be bringing forward and submitting to you short-term measures so how are they monitoring in between these assessments how students are doing in with respect to the goals that they've set and we will in the interim between now and the course of the year have schools who were missing from those presentations come and share a little bit with you and some of those uh in our future meetings during the our our teaching and learning update portions and so we just wanted to let you know those things and the the other item that I had here oh is strategic planning um we have had we are having um a great time with Dr Tammy Campbell who's facilitating our strategic planning process we have
036organized ourselves in various teams we have our district leadership team we have our core planning team we've elicited student feedback and at this point we have unpacked our strategic Vision in the form of I statements of students we also have established some core values that we are excited about that will kind of anchor us and guide us especially through some of the sticking points when it comes to implementing our strategic plan and a theory of action it will provide a formal report for you on where we are with our strategic planning in January but we just want it to Signal towards what's coming up so what's really exciting about the the next phase is with the theory of action we'll be able to see how from the classroom through the boardroom how we all play
037a role in implementing the Strategic plan everybody's voice matters and everyone will have key assignments and tasks for you and so that's just a preview of items to come in our teaching and learning update and I'll turn it over to Clarissa Hightower is that going to pop up before I start greeting people okay all right I also will not be before you for too long but appreciate the time to share with you some exciting news I'm going to give you an update on our Equity advisor committee so our application window closed a couple of weeks ago and we began reviewing those uh applications and we are in the process of now doing our one-on-one interviews with the finalists we had a total of 81 applicants for our Equity advisory committee and we it was so
038difficult we had some amazing amazing applications all of them but we narrowed it down to 41 finalists and that's who we are endeavoring to do our one-on-one interviews with this week and next and then we will have our finalized list of Equity advisory committee members for you for our first board meeting of 2023 um based on their availability I hope to have them here for you to meet in person at least just to greet and say hi um and um I also want to make sure that I highlight how the use of an equity advisor committee helps us to support our superintendent in our OE for equity and what we're thinking about here is the two that I've highlighted so as you know and you've had the opportunity to interact with our Equity advisory committee
039serves a really important purpose for us as we make sure we continue to engage and Empower our diverse stakeholders we have this group of very Dynamic folks to provide for us information around barriers that they are seeing in their stakeholder groups so we're talking about students parents certificated staff classified staff administrators and so when we solicit their input and then move forward with code designing solutions to the barriers that they bring up to us we can better remove them as we've identified them and so that hits those two OES five and six but those are in support of once we identify them in order to help us remove them we can then provide the students with the access they need to be successful as well as create those supportive learning environments and so I have
040the pleasure of meeting with them on a monthly basis and I can't wait for you to meet our new Committee in January and that is my update thank you any questions I want to say that um I read those 81 applications and there are a lot of amazing people in our district who want to help and be a part of this yes we're lucky absolutely thank you all right next up is the youth truth survey results it looks like we've got a group to present this this evening welcome thank you for coming tonight do I put this one in yeah okay all right there it is thank you good evening student board Representatives board directors and superintendent boy I'm super happy to be here to tell you about youth truth um youth truth is our
041survey survey instrument that helps us get our perceptions basically from students of course from families and from staff members so we know as the quote says that student perceptions are linked academically to academic outcomes so we're super excited to hear what our students have to say all right um we know that we have to listen to our students in order to be able to understand their experiences so that we can better serve them and youth truth gives us information that we can actually act on in order to improve our schools we in order to do this what we're going to be preparing students for this important survey where we have been there are a few people who have been doing videos to get them ready so we thought it might be kind of fun to
042show you one of them so I'm going to go ahead and press on that see if I can get it to work we're excited to announce sorry it's really loud how do I turn that down okay sorry about that guys opportunity for each and every Road high road runners it's Miss Brawley and I wanted to tell you about an important survey that you're going to be taking um that is anonymous meaning that no one will know that it's coming directly from you that lets us know how we're doing here every review in what areas Mrs froley relationships our community our culture everything from how you're treated by different adults in the building and how you feel like you belong so it's really important that you answer the survey truthfully and let us know what are
043we doing well here at Riverview and what can we fix to make it foreign [Music] will take about 20 minutes it will be done online and in class starting soon remember your answers are completely private so don't be afraid to tell us what you really think thanks for taking the time to help our school improve [Music] whoops sorry excited to announce an opportunity for each and every Roadrunner hi we're excited to announcement there we go okay and not only does student voice matter but family and staff voices matter research does suggest that efforts to improve School culture and student achievement needs to be informed by family and staff voices as well as student perceptions so we know also that inviting families to share their voices are and the perspectives and helping them understand that we
044value their input will also support family engagement efforts which have also been shown to increase student achievement as well as student attendance improve grades and social skills so we are super excited to get as many voices as we can and we have a plan to do that last year when we did we did the survey in March after it was finished we knew it was really important to make sure that we notified the stakeholders about what happened during the survey so we created an EPS with the direction of uh superintendent void an EPS feedback loop and so during that feed back Loop we thought it was important to both thank all of the stakeholders the students staff and families who took the survey as well as um to share what happened in the survey for
045each school so schools shared out a thank you note they shared out also a slideshow that they posted on their websites that shared a strength that happened um during the survey that they saw they also shared opportunities for improvement in growth and they shared what they're going to do about it so what their next step plans are we had this little feat it's called uh we called it a feedback toolkit and within the toolkit we helped our in order to make sure that there was a uniform experience we had a slideshow template we even had we wanted to make sure that everyone could understand so we had a translation menu that translated all of the themes into Spanish and Russian so that you know as leaders were working through this they could actually you know
046create the slideshows um so that was I think helpful people seem to appreciate that um next up is Janella all right um hello how you doing it's good to see you um I actually am going to refresh real quick and I want to talk with you about three levels of data and when we think about the types of data that we collect in our system we have three levels and so we use this from a book called Street data if you're interested I could share more if you're interested in learning more about the book but right now we're doing this work in our Equity teams across each of our buildings and so we have a monthly Equity PLC where all of our Equity team leaders come together and so the satellite data is really what
047we think about when we think about like our s back work and graduation rates some of our attendance patterns our map data is where youth truth Falls so this is what helps us identify where we might need to address gaps and points us in a more focused Direction and then we get all the way down to Street data which is where we start to do Shadows of students or empathy interviews home visits conferring and so the reason I want to kind of introduce this framework is because if we want to have a comprehensive data system in our district all of this data really matters and so we have three schools who are going to talk with us today you got to hear in the Sip presentations last board meeting lots of information about the satellite
048data and how we're tracking towards that but I wanted to invite these schools also to help us think about this level 2 Data so first up is Fisher's Landing hi I'm Nathan Lee and I'm sharing here tonight on behalf of Fishers Landing to kind of share an overview of how we've used youth truth historically and and going forward so like many other buildings our Equity Journey started well before we brought youth truth in but thinking around Panorama data when we had it we and then going into our school Improvement plans we were emphasizing a couple of questions from both of those surveys and included those in our school Improvement so looking at student belonging Collective efficacy and understanding how students felt connected to the whole school building as well as to their classroom and so
049last year we had questions within our sip that were specifically related to the youth truth questions and the year previous to two Panorama questions and so in addition to the end of year youth truth survey that we gave we also did a similar one with a Google form in the fall that asks the same questions to students and we also narrowed to those top four questions to a K2 survey because the youth truth is third through 12th is that right okay third through 12th and so we wanted to we wanted a whole group experience so that we could really understand how all of our students were feeling connected within our building and within our school and so in that we were able to pull that student experience and make some some adjustments and make some
050intentional planning throughout the year and are continuing to do so this year in a very similar way where we're looking at on a monthly basis what celebrations are we going to bring um last year we were also there were a couple of themes in our younger grades where we were recognizing students were feeling connected and were saying they felt very connected to their classroom but didn't really understand how to be connected across the school and so that brought on a lot of conversations of is that a developmental understanding of school is my classroom or is there an opportunity for us to build a collective sense for all of our students whereas our older students felt more connected and we started thinking about well our older students are involved in band and they're going to all
051these different places and they're seeing school as not just the Four Walls of their classroom but they're getting connected in other ways that maybe some of our younger students weren't so those were just some of the themes that that um have come up in conversation because of the youth truth questions and some of the learning that we're doing and the reflections that we've had and some of the intentionality that we're we're making adjustments for students based on that feedback thank you foreign good evening everyone I'm Greg Brown I am the principal at Chehalem middle school and I'd like to first start by saying it is fantastic to see student Representatives on the board I'm a former student I wish I was able to sit in that chair a few years back um but nonetheless it's
052wonderful to see you uh for us youth truth was a measurement but it was also a compass that kind of pointed into direction for further areas of exploration for us in sharing and analyzing the data with our staff we wanted to avoid asking the question what does the data tell us instead we wanted to focus on what does the data make us Wonder um use truth data for us was not declarative but it really just kind of laid these breadcrumbs out into areas of further exploration and inquiry what more do we need to know from those who we are surveying um it prompted us to conduct student interviews and to explore some areas some themes um that popped up one of the strands that we looked at was relationships and there was one question in
053particular that caught our attention and that question was how many teachers tried to understand what your life is like outside of school the options were none some and all and for our teachers it wasn't really necessarily about the quantity but it was what can we do to create the conditions for students to believe that we care about them outside of the school and we need to ask them one of the unique themes that emerged for shahela was that through these interviews and through these singular somewhat disparate stories it's a theme emerged and one of the things that was interesting is that there is a difference between checking in and connecting and I see some nods over there is that true we didn't interview you but yeah um and one student in particular who really liked
054fishing talked about he had teachers that asked him did you go fishing this weekend but he had one teacher in particular that went to an outdoor show and came back and said hey I was at this Outdoor Show I was looking at these fishing lures they looked different to me I'm not exactly sure what they're what they do what they're for can you explain them there's a difference between checking in and connecting and so one of the things that we asked our teachers to do was think about that be reflective about that in your instructional practice as you are checking in on students make sure you're also connecting with students youth Truth for us also spurred further activity in our school Improvement beginning next month what you'll see when we get back from break is
055that we're going to use a complimentary survey to have staff survey the students that are currently in their class elicit their feedback develop action plans to see how they can strove and proceed to improve their instructional practice to be more responsive the student needs likely would not have occurred without our initial analysis of Youth truth so that's what we're doing at chehala with it thank you good evening I'm Andy schoonover a principal at Legacy High School much like the other schools we saw youth truth as a call to action it's just not a data thing that we're going to look at once and move on we're going to take the student voice which again awesome to have you here um and and use it it's not just a oh okay so 58 of kids think
056what their learning is relevant now what so we really focused on application what are we going to do with it so it drove a lot of our school Improvement plan this year we chose to focus on building learning Partnerships and creating independent Learners because part of that data showed that a lot of our students didn't see what they were learning is relevant to their lives or that they didn't have a voice in what that process was so that data helped drive that kind of our core goal for the year um the other one we just saw a lot was kids didn't feel like they had a sense of belonging at Legacy as much as we thought that they would that was a data point that surprised us a little bit so this year we've been
057very intentional in trying to do more community building activities that we hadn't done in the past but coming back from coven and not being together as much we realized we need to do more together so we're doing assemblies we did a trick-or-treating thing we did pumpkin decoration so we're doing all these things trying to build some community at Legacy one of the great things about youth truth is it combines social emotional learning and instruction so it's really a balance I think a lot of what the district is working on in terms of supporting student social emotional needs through what's happening in the classroom so we were able to use a lot of that data for professional development with teachers on how does the curriculum make you think and is it relevant so we got that
058data in front of teachers and we we dove into that a little bit and then the last question we have is why does it matter obviously as a district we're here for kids and it's the kids education it's not ours so we need to hear what what they have to say in order to best create the plan that's going to work best for them so it's been a very good growth area for legacy and we're glad we're doing it all right so um thought it would be helpful to hear directly from our schools to hear the way that this data is driving some of the decisions that they're making some of the shifts and the professional development a couple things I'm going to walk you through there's several slides here so I'm just going to
059scroll through some of them and then open to stop or if you have questions but as you know there's operational expectations and what we've attempted to do here is demonstrate how these questions can provide indicators that connect to the operational expectations so first with the operational expectation 1.1 that we will develop a curriculum that includes instructional materials reflective of the diversity experiences and needs of District students so the gray box just represents that that question wasn't necessarily asked in elementary but it was in middle and high school so we've got a question here of how often do you see people of diverse backgrounds represented and this is across the building um and we have it both for parents and students operational expectation 1.2 so we permit and support robust conversations around controversy among and between
060staff members and students so the student survey how many of your teachers make an effort to understand what your life is like outside of school my school puts practices in place that include families of diverse backgrounds and in conversations foreign students with access to Opportunities resources and support that they need to be successful while considering factors such as race ethnicity culture ability gender identity or expression sexual orientation religion national origin native language housing status or level of affluence so questions here do you like the way your teacher treats you um when you need help how many of your teachers are willing to give extra help on school work does your teacher ask you to keep trying when the word gets hard and my teachers expectations want me to do my best create and support learning
061environments where teachers staff and administrators are consciously working to counter and eliminate the impacts of racism discrimination trauma bias and unconscious bias in their interactions with students and their decisions which directly impact students so I'm going to pause here because I just want to make sure as we talk in our district about creating an inclusive environment that's supportive and has a sense of safety critical that we create that psychological safety for our students and that starts with belonging and so this is a really strong indicator for us to think about and so those percentages against um I didn't say this before but that's reflective of the positive responses so these are students who either agreed or strongly agreed with the response so you've got 56 percent are experiencing that sense of belonging in elementary 38
062middle school and 34 in high school and so I think you've heard our school leaders here today talking about when they look at this data it's really a way to to set a provocation to start to unpack that possibly isolate race disaggregated and really start to get a sense of okay so if it's 56 what's happening for the other percentage of students and how do we get to understand that and so I think we've heard them describe how they're going through interviews talking with students and deepening and understanding and then in addition to the equity operational expectations I pulled some of our safe supporting learning environment so this is oe10 so the superintendent will maintain a culture or sorry climate and culture that is characterized by support and encouragement for high achievement for all students
063so when you make a mistake does your teacher help you does your teacher let you explain your ideas um so the extent to which we're creating environments where productive struggle is really happening in our classrooms the superintendent will assure that all policies and procedures regarding discipline are restorative in nature collaboratively developed appropriately communicated to students and parents and enforced consistently using reasonable judgment so a couple of things here that we've pulled they're just how students get help when they're feeling upset and the extent to which they feel like there are programs and services that support them to have restorative experiences and then consistency with the administration of policies according to our families so the superintendent will ensure that all staff are trained annually about policies procedures related to safety and that our interactions with students
064are professional responsive respectful and trauma-informed so do you feel safe another really strong indicator of belonging for our students and how climate and culture is being experienced a couple more slides here so the superintendent will ensure that students experience certain environments that create personal perception of physical emotional and social safety so has anyone been bullied in the last year during school have other students bullied and harassed you when I'm feeling upset or stressed or having problems or an adult that I feel like I can talk to the superintendent may not tolerate behaviors or actions or boundary invasions or Attitudes by adults who have contact with students that hinder their performance and well-being so here we measure this or the potential indicator is are you being treated with respect by your teachers and are you being
065treated by with respect from students um one thing I do want to just name as we finish up with this is I just want to kind of pull a quote I love a good provocation as we finish this up to think about so to disrupt the legacy of systematic racism Educators must censor children and adults at the margins Gathering data through deep listening and engagement with those who students and families have been least heard and so that's from the street Data Book and I think it's really important that this data helps us identify who's having that marginalized experience and it's giving us a more I would say a holistic view of that sometimes we hear loud voices but we need to make sure we're listening to the marginalized voices as well so I'll hand it
066back to Ruth thank you actually do I need to take questions or about the survey questions sure I'm sorry I was just checking in I have a question actually on the um I'm gonna go back and maybe they're they're all very soon but the one about um heavy filled bullied in school so is the percentage like affirmative like I felt like I was bullied like those the ones that said yes so those are 12 of high schoolers said they felt bullied that is yes okay any other questions I apologize I can't remember your name the Fishers Landing Nathan that's right I know we've met I'm sorry uh you said there was a survey that you aligned with youth Truth for the K2 set of students what was the name of the survey we just to
067a Google doc okay um and used smiley faces for our K2 so you create an age appropriate um presentation of the same questions right right thank you all right thanks thank you so this past year um the youth truth survey and all of the data that you saw was from last March this year we've moved the survey up one month and so we will be you you can see the dates right there the bulk of it will be in February um we just yesterday had four youth truth kickoff meetings for our leaders they could choose whichever one they wanted to come to uh and they watched a video they learned about how to plan for a successful survey there's actually a lot of planning that goes in Fall um you know that's involved in making
068sure that we get all the voices that we can as you know because I know you've you've done surveys before but I wanted to just let you know that the EPS assessment department has a website for staff and so if you click into this it kind of gives you uh gives them this is the kickoff video that we did together there's all kinds of information about why we're doing the survey and what the research behind the survey is the actual um questions are on there for them but this is one of the things that is super helpful I think for them is we have developed a community communication checklist so that leaders can kind of ahead of time know exactly what to do when in order to make the most of their communication let all
069of the stakeholders know what's going on so that is about it I think unless you have any questions about the rollout for this year one thing I will say is we're super excited to see the data and we're hoping to see some growth we saw some you know some numbers that really provoked us to do some things and we're hoping to see a positive response and Ruth I'd like to speak to that a little bit I've used this survey tool in three different settings I did not bring it with me it was here when I arrived but I was really delighted that we had the you through survey here because I do think it it has the potential to be a game changer we've surveyed our students right on the heels of the pandemic so
070um and when you look at some of these scores it's it can be heartbreaking I will tell you that it does provoke as director Singleton said it does provoke conversation it does provoke us to action to really lean in with the kids and the students to make sure that we're understanding deeply they're experiencing and I and and my experience in every setting that I've used this we've seen the longitudinal data improve over time I really do have faith and believe that that's going to happen our principles as you've seen three good examples of our principles really not just giving a survey and Reporting back but going back to the students and asking more questions wondering and then developing action plans to support students so there's a real positive aspect of the work that's happening in
071our schools and I really think this is is going to help us move forward in a positive way so thank you for all your work both of you and all the principles that that presented today and we'll have data back in March new data so thank you so much thank you thank you did we have any questions for Ruth or anybody on the team or any comments what was behind your decision to move it up a month uh we we last year we did it right during the I ready window also and so now we're doing I ready January which we did last year too and um February is the month kind of in between I ready and when I SBA started it's just we just we're trying to spread out the spread the love
072yeah do you see a do you see potential for Fishers landing's work Fishers Landings work in customizing the survey for the youngers yeah and talked a little bit about that about offering two principals who might want to use it the thing is is the information from youth truth is you know research based and especially tested we just have to be a little bit careful when we create our own surveys and but I think that they can still be helpful and Worthy yeah thank you any other comments I just want to say thank you I think that um what was said in the beginning about you know giving these surveys and then taking the data listening and then making changes that make improvements and really leaning in like John said and listening to what our students
073have to say we can survey and ask people for their feedback but it's what we do with the information afterwards that really counts and so I'm excited to see the results and hopefully we continue to grow yeah and just another shout out to all of our principals and assistant principals and Associates that we're asking them to do a lot of things survey students do feedback loops lean into an ambitious instruction manage all of the effects of covet and so they're really Our Heroes right now making sure that we need to continue to thank them and and share our appreciation and love for our principals doing some really hard work yep thank you so much thank you did I was just going to check in with our student reps to see like if you guys had
074any thoughts did you take the surveys right yeah so any thoughts about it like there we go hi uh I would just like to say thank you for asking us about this and for sending out a survey of course like we said sending out a survey and just getting numbers isn't the only way to get our feedback but going into classrooms and doing check check-ins on us and everybody around us I think that's also a great way but this survey is a great way to start and I'm really excited to see what happens with the updates okay and uh yes I am interested in reading the street Data Book yeah all right uh next up is Craig bernbach our executive director of communications to give us all the good news and I'm sure there's lots
075of it this time of year right there is I'm gonna have to scroll a lot I was actually practicing scrolling so I don't take too long if I can hook up to bring notes so yeah we do have a lot uh going on in our schools and especially toward the holiday time I'm going to start with uh news from November which of course was a Native American Heritage Month our school celebrated this month uh in many different ways at the elementary school level an example here is at Riverview Elementary School where they uh work with art discovery and now I'm not scrolling so of course I said I would scroll a lot they won't go there we go hmm all right I'll go this all right there we go um they did this uh art
076project this is fourth and fifth graders um celebrating Northwest Native American art um well done by them and uh over at uh one of our high schools at Gila they actually had a guest uh speaker Samuel Robinson uh who who came from the Chinook Nation as a guest speaker there at Gila so an excellent experience for them I'm going to scroll all the way down to Columbia Valley which has a really uh a fun story uh just proof that student voice matters and there's creative ways to learn and things that weren't necessary curriculum that you plan on going into the Year this is a really good dear John letters so this for the first graders they saw that there was and I'll show you the picture did I screw uh there you can see it
077right there there was a bird's nest an empty bird's nest on one of their outdoor lights and they requested uh that their um janitor um John please save the nest and bring it to them for their first grade science class so that they could study it so they wrote These wonderful letters uh to John and uh John detling and you could see um they were very complimentary to John in the beginning before they asked for what they needed and in the end there's a great picture of John reading the letters and then he did he saved the nest and he brought it to this uh first grade class well they're gonna study it in science so uh just a a fun wonderful story from Columbia Valley um here um we had uh multiple we've had
078multiple career fairs in our district including uh one at Cascade Middle School I was actually lucky enough to be asked to to be part of this um there was uh this was a four-hour event two separate um sessions for students where all the middle schoolers got to sit down with people from uh everything from education to construction and asked questions and it was uh I could say the experience of having middle schoolers thinking about careers and ask questions about careers um the range of questions was uh was interesting I'm always Blown Away by middle schoolers we also had one right at Legacy High School here which I think was uh more intense the questions were obviously more relatable to a more immediate future but we've had a huge one at Heritage High School also this
079year now I'm going to go all the way down to our schools obviously during the we know during the holiday season so many of our schools our students our teachers our staff our communities give back a couple examples over at Legacy High School they collected socks that they donated to the share house so I know they they did that here at the ASC they came over and requested from our staff Mountain View High School continues their wonderful tradition of Thanksgiving boxes and meals I've been over there these are huge meals I mean they provide for like 10 people and we do want to thank the Finley family their owners of uh area restaurants and they donate so much food for for this wonderful cause and then John mentioned that he went to Heritage High School
080for their musical uh this musical of people don't know uh unique and when I say unique we are the only ones that have ever seen this musical because Heritage High School's principal Derek Garrison wrote this musical which is just amazing and it is called wrestling the musical and he worked with a I guess a composer a person in London a young man in London to create the music which is just uh amazing Derek has worked on this for years and then got to Premiere it with his students I I encourage everyone to watch this story about how they had to do it you don't think about these things but they didn't the the actors you know the singers they didn't get to hear these plays before there's no reference to that which you realize like
081wow so Derek Garrison's telling you how to you know how to do this and you're doing it for the first time and I know that it was a wonderful success so I think that's just a fantastic story for our for our district and then finally um we I was able to do a tour of the brand new Burton um with uh principal Chase and this was uh the first time we've really toured a building this close to opening and I put this in here hey it's great to go look at this building and see um the plans that the principal Chase has when they go in this building on January 3rd so this will be the first time that we have you know opened a school in the middle of the year and I wanted
082to mention that we have the ground break I mean the ribbon cutting for the school on January 6th so they're going to be working to move into the school over break so something to really look forward to when we get back thank you very much and I will promise that next week's good news will of course include our wonderful new student Representatives so welcome yeah thank you and I wouldn't say hats off to our teachers at Burton elementary moving in the middle of the year and um we really appreciate their willingness to do that and I think they're excited to move in but it's a it's a big lift for them too so thank you all right next up is our financial statement information item only and then next on our agenda is board comments
083these are comments by the school board does anybody have anything that they would like to share this evening I want to um reiterate what John said earlier about Mountain View's uh holiday musical um program yesterday with the Mountain View instrumental program they were spectacular and it's just another example of how amazing the music program in our district is and it's just very rare because we have it from fifth grade through high school and students have an opportunity to become a part of this program at any point and it's just when you see what these students can do is just amazing and the best part of it for me last night was the percussion Ensemble they performed the song I think it's called sophopapia and if you can go on YouTube and watch it it's absolutely
084amazing I keep saying amazing tonight they were really really amazing so I made a visit to uh Frontier Middle School I'm actually trying to visit all the middle schools my family has a uh chosen to give a book to each library and I still have to get to the East Side schools the West Side schools it was all the East Side schools and I was able to see a couple of things with uh with the principal there one that I won't give any detail about was a student crisis uh and then uh after we went into the library and talked with the librarian there and her assistant about how things were going in there and presented the book uh got into the cafeteria and it's it's fascinating and heartbreaking and encouraging kind of all at
085the same time with the spectrum of of uh feelings are among the students um because in addition to that crisis the sixth grade lunch looked actually better than I remember my sixth grade lunch is always going uh speaking as someone who grew up kind of bullied all the time in those grades and suffering some of the things that were now emerging in this youth truth survey but uh it was it was uh comforting to see how the staff responded to the student who was suffering and also how the culture of the school is really improving there I haven't been to any music events in December yet because the one I'm targeting is on Thursday with the Union High School choir uh and I've always enjoyed that show so maybe I'll talk about that next time
086I have a several resources uh new resources from wazda regarding the legislative work I the district's led the board's Ledger up right up until the end uh and attended a meeting today where they showed a real Improvement in the presentation and definition of ledge rep that I know they've been working on for two years over the pandemic and have reduced that to a very clear one sheet um showcasing the opportunities that boards and Boards board ledge reps and any board member really have in advocacy I'm looking forward to the FRN the federal relations Network work and and tend to maintain my role in wazda as a coordinating member of the federal relations Network for at least until after January but there's a vacancy in our director District so if you've got relationships with colleagues in
087other districts I encourage you to make mention of the opportunity to them because it means something that we can bring our point of view to Congress it actually helps this year FRN has us plans to schedule a meeting with the Department of Agriculture and with the Department of Education I made a determination to accept their invitation to go to D.C in order to participate in those and my son's coming with me it's his birthday and he wants to see DC he's very passionate about politics and so forth and what I'm hoping is that by this time next year we have the infrastructure and plans in place that students can accompany us to the day on the hill in Olympia and also the day on the hill in DC I think it'll be work well done
088so so um Rob I'm happy that you're going to support your obviously your role in wazda with that and then also support our district too as we're you know advocating for things moving forward especially with the new the new members of Congress there and and chance to form some relationships when you go appreciate that that's the idea right anything from our student board reps that you would like to share all right just a couple quick things for me I did see the musical the rest wrestling it was quite comical with the night I was there Dr Williams actually had a cameo appearance in the play she played she played the board member [Laughter] and I I so after the play I started I kept listening to the the whole play because principal Garrison wrote it
089and um there was all these references to the son of a board member and the board member and I kept thinking like is were we like inspired in this and he even told me afterwards that he's like don't you know don't worry right like but uh it was really comical it was really funny and um it was just so much fun to watch the students not only the performers in the play but even the ones that were behind the scenes and all of their engagement I mean that's what it's all about right is making all these opportunities for our kids to be engaged in school activities um the other thing I just wanted to mention briefly was I know that we are embarking on a couple week break and I just wanted to wish everybody
090a great holiday season and a chance to refresh and recharge and come back in the new year all right next up is future agenda items is there anything that we have okay all right next up is public comments uh looks like we've got two folks that have signed up this evening any Community member wishing to address the board may do so during the designated time on the agenda for public comments as long as the comments are not Personnel related or about an individual employee or student and not legal in nature each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board comments are to be directed to the board of directors as a whole and may not be addressed to any individual member of the board the administrative staff or the audience please state your
091name and District affiliation if any so first we have Sierra Gerber is that right okay come on up Sierra how are you this evening can you hear me through this yes okay um over the last few months I helped coordinate a Bazaar with our School parent Network to help raise money for the school I volunteered because I wanted to help and ultimately I spent over 75 hours of my own time preparing for and executing it it was not perfect but it was a learning experience we were lucky to have the support of student and parent volunteers as well we had some amazing students from Mountain View High School I really appreciate their efforts they did a great job and though I've only worked for our school district for a few years now I take the
092issues that we face as a community very seriously when the district budgets were presented to the public I believe twice within the last calendar year and it was highlighted that there was a clear Revenue issue and that jobs would be cut I did take it personally I began a new personal educational Venture into researching school funding models and I tried to learn about how schools can and have in the past filled the gaps when there's not enough funding available through traditional Avenues I recently had the opportunity to speak and hear from a few of our state legislators I live in legislative district 17 but I was also able to speak with the legislator from District 49. I use my short window of time to ask about school funding these Representatives spoke about how Educational Funding
093will be considered an upcoming legislative session the general consensus was that they would be working very hard to get new legislation passed that supports all schools students families and employees but they also stated that they were not fully optimistic I also recently attended a presentation about the prototypical prototypical school funding model put on by TJ Kelly who's the CFO of ospi while there are clearly improvements to be made regarding how our schools secure funding for operations on a Statewide basis I also learned that schools in the state of Washington have a lot of flexibility in how they allocate funds in May you were critiqued for cutting positions that were directly tied to student support and service in the Dei Department with clear and resounding response from the community I believe the district was able to
094reconsider and move very swiftly and avoided perpetuating a great disservice to our community now there is growing concern among staff certificated classified and administrative alike that positions at our district continue to remain unfilled and for that reason we are struggling to serve our community in ways that are clearly needed for reference as of today there are close to 170 unfilled positions in our district there have also been multiple instances and reports within the last year some of which have been covered by the press and have garnered active investigations by the state that money is being misappropriated I really hope that isn't true and I hope they find that and classified staff have voted down two contract proposals thus far and it is a struggle our bargaining is a struggle if you want the community to
095believe in the district the guidance that is provided by the board and our superintendent I think something needs to change I asked this as someone who desperately wants to help solve these issues amongst the plethora of other issues issues that face that public schools face we all work in this profession for a reason and we are looking at to you for actionable Meaningful and clear guidance thank you all right next up is Gary Wilson Gary you want to come on up yes thank you and Merry Christmas School Board superintendent Boyd um at the wasda general assembly on September 30th policy 61 was approved Twice first as a straight-up voter school districts and then as a weighted average vote policy 61 basically says parents are a major stakeholder in their children's lives in education in light
096of this I asked and submitted to the board at the end of October a proclamation to recognize November as parents rights and education month and Lori Stahl let me know a little later that the board received multiple proclamations and another was picked I resubmitted it at the end of November and asked that December be recognizes parents rights and education month and superintendent Boyd let me know recently that December would not be parents rights and education month but invited me to read it and I asked that January be recognized and we'll read the proclamation as such proclamation in recognition of the vital importance for Education excellence and meaningful collaboration between the school district and families we recognize December as parents rights and Education Month excuse me make that January whereas we acknowledge parents our child's first
097and foremost educator and have the primary responsibility to the education care and training of their children and whereas education is comprised of a range of activities by which families and communities teach Knowledge and Skills including ethical and behavioral norms and traditions and whereas fairness and equality must be afforded to all students and families in the school district and whereas Public Schools need cooperation and support of all parents and whereas the parent-child relationship shall be honored and supported by teachers counselors administrators and school board members therefore we declare January parents rights and Education Month affirming the constitutional rights of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children and again in light of the wasda general assembly vote I believe this is in line with that and would ask that you'd consider that for January
098and if not maybe you might share what the reason might be so thank you I know we need parents definitely a part of their children's education I mean that's going to help bring up our you know ospi averages so the more we get them involved in a proclamation would be a start so thank you thank you Gary Merry Christmas thank you all right that is the end of our public comments uh at this time we'll go into a recess where the board will sign paperwork uh we will reconvene in a board Workshop where we will have a discussion around the 20 21 22 year-end budget report thank you [Music]