001I want to make sure good evening everyone and welcome to tonight's board meeting if you would please rise and join us for the Pledge of Allegiance Allegiance one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all foreign thank you next is Our Land acknowledgment and director Perkins is going to go ahead and read that for us yes Evergreen Public Schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinookin peoples and the Cowlitz 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 students families and staff in our community thank you director Perkins okay next is adoption of tonight's agenda entertain a motion I moved for adoption of
002tonight's agenda as presented second all right first and seconded all in favor aye any opposed great let's get started okay we will now open the public hearing to receive written and verbal comments regarding the proposed director District boundary changes I'd like to call on Sue Steinbrenner executive director of facilities for a briefing on the proposed action thank you sue I'll use this no good evening can you guys hear me okay great thank you I am Sue Steinbrenner executive director of facilities and just to give you a little brief background on the director districts every 10 years following the U.S census school districts have to review the boundary of each director to make sure that we have Equitable geographic representation as you know we're divided into five geographic regions or districts one for each director and
003that's um so you guys each have to run based on where you live in your um in your location by creating five equal District equal director districts Geographic diversity is insured um there were a few minor changes after the 2020 census that we needed to do to adjust but um because each position is elected by all district voters um it it means so that each of you represent the equal number of people um one reminder is the director District boundaries are completely unrelated to School attendance boundaries so this process does not change any neighborhood schools as you know we hired Sammamish Data Systems to come up with the maps for us they've been posted on the website for the last 10 days and we advertised in the Colombian to solicit written and verbal comments so
004I at this point recommend that the board considers testimony in order to make a final determination as to whether or not to adopt the proposed director District boundary changes and um then we'll go from there I can sit down with the folks who have comments if they do if they don't then um you could adopt the new boundary areas at the next board meeting via resolution thanks thank you sue all right I'd now like to open it for any public testimony if anyone is interested in providing a written or verbal comments please do so at this time all right having heard no comments we are now closing the public hearing on the consideration of proposed director District boundary changes hold on one second Lori we're voting it to then at the next one okay so
005we will bring this back at our next meeting in which the board at that time will move to adopt the changes thank you okay next is our principles month I believe in my interview thank you president groundwald yes uh it's my pleasure and I'd like to call Tony miles up to the front of the room uh he is our uh EAA uh president so our edu our Evergreen administrators Association I always get eea and EAA mixed up so we'd like to we're just um really thankful for all of our principals um two years of of a pandemic and coming out of that and a lot of the extreme things that our principals are dealing with and keeping the lid on and continuing to try to press to get Equitable outcomes for our students we're just
006really uh thankful and I'd like to express that in a in a written Proclamation uh for you today whereas the Washington Senate has declared the month of October 2021 as National principles month in coordination with the efforts of the National Association of elementary school principals and the National Association of secondary school principals working with U.S Congress to designate National principles month and resolutions thereof whereas principals and assistant principles play significant roles in our educational system creating hope each day for every student in their buildings by Leading culture systems learning and by working tirelessly each days as Visionaries assessment experts Community Builders public relations experts budget analysts facility managers special program administrators and guardians of various legal contractual and policy mandates and initiatives whereas principals and assist principals work collaboratively with families teachers and District officials
007to develop mission statements set performance goals and objectives for schools to achieve educational excellence and maintain High curriculum standards and expectations for students whereas the association of Washington School principles honors such exemplary principles and assistant principles who have succeeded in providing high quality learning opportunities for students as well as their exemplary contributions to the profession to honor and recognize the contributions of all school principals and assistant principles to the success of each and every student in Washington state schools our most valuable resource and encourage residents of Washington to observe principles month with appreciate with the appropriate ceremonies and activities that promote awareness of the importance of school leadership and ensuring that every child has access to high quality education now therefore I Jay Inslee governor of the state of Washington do hereby Proclaim October 2021
008as principles month so can we please give Round of Applause to 20 miles our president and all of our principles [Applause] again Tony miles associate principal at Union High School and thank you for taking this time to recognize the work that the principals do um but we would be remiss to not be acknowledging those who work with us our teams made up of teachers in the classified support staff that really do the day-to-day work so um but uh it takes an entire team to do the work that's done but we are thankful that you're acknowledging us and our our work but we just want you to know that we cannot do it without our team so thank you very much thank you Tony the next is the acceptance of the board consent agenda entertain a
009motion I'm of the approval of the board's consent agendas has presented second okay it's been first and second in all those in favor aye any opposed perfect it's been passed next is the superintendent's consent agenda entertain a motion move for approval of the superintendent's consent agenda as presented seconded it's been first and seconded all in favor any opposed Perfect all right that's been approved next is our superintendent report Mr Boyd thank you first of all looking forward to the report that Dr Williams is going to be providing in a bit to um discuss and share our ambitious focus on Ambitions destruction and math Improvement across the district I'm I've been attending schools and and taking time to sit down with principals and talk about some of the successes and challenges and and despite all of
010the challenges they're really leaning into this focus and it's a direct result of our staff here and the great support and coordination of that so I'm excited for that had an opportunity to attend today in my first ever Clark County governmental Affairs Roundtable and we had folks from our city managers and and Mayors and our van the city all the different governmental and some Business Leaders across the state Economic Development councils and uh just gave me great hope and inspired me around a community that really has an equitable an equity mindset and a heart for kids and so um each and every person there were about 50 people around the table and they ran around and shared their um their focus and a lot of those Foci line up exactly with what we're going to
011do the homelessness Focus around homelessness and affordable housing focus on trying to provide Mental Health Access and other access for students that need support each and every one of them without fail are also focused on recruiting and retention of of staff and challenged by that as well so some of those same things and really felt the support of the whole Community there were three or four of us superintendents there and gave me great hope that our community really does care about our students and care about us and want the best for our kids and then also um yeah that's that's the report I have today and that's it thank you John hey next is a teaching learning and Equity update I'm called to the Mike Dr Charlene Williams alone tonight um we have Ruth Beggs
012and Nathan Lee who will also be presenting with me and so just give us just a moment to set up yeah do you need a second mic probably I'm gonna go ahead and just turn it on and leave it here okay so sure I think okay thank you um so I don't see it on the screen up there but it's coming she says it's coming um so we'll we're talking about setting the stage for measurable Improvement um we know that we've been talking a lot about unfinished learning that our students have had and the ways in which we have aligned our services to improve the outcomes and achievement for them and so tonight we want to just first anchor this in the work that has already begun the community worked on a strategic plan this
013year we're working with Dr Campbell and team to really unpack what these various pillars mean how we operationalize the elements of this strategic plan and so tonight's presentation Falls squarely in the teaching and learning aspects aspect of the plan where we are supporting students and making sure they feel safe welcome and that they are learning every day and so with that in mind we want to just um you know I don't know a prettier way to say this but sometimes we use the phrase call the baby ugly so when we are looking at our data what is working and what's not working with the ways we are serving our students and James Baldwin always helps us anchor because he says not everything that his face can be changed but nothing can be changed until it
014is faced and so we're just going to put some information before you that just gives you the state of where we are right now as a system and then we'll talk about the work we are doing to change those outcomes for our students we know that that this isn't just an Evergreen Public Schools issue this is definitely an issue that we're facing Across the Nation across our County but we have some very specific and intentional work that we've been doing with an amazing team to change the outcomes that we're looking at and so one thing when we look at graphs and charts and things uh we like to keep in mind that the these are not just numbers these are not just facts and figures there is a student behind every item represented on that
015graph and even the ones who are not represented we have to remember that there are names behind each and one of each and every one of those numbers and not only are their names there are stories which is what our work especially around Equity is about how do we find out the story around each of our students and their learning needs in order to change the outcomes for our students so when we look at this you see the Statewide outcomes and we see the unfinished learning represented in those pencils then you look at Evergreen Public Schools and our neighboring districts and so we were charged in this bring with raising our math scores by 13 percent and that's what we have been aligning all of our practices to do so as we continue to unpack
016the story behind the print pencils this takes us another layer in these data articulate our learning goals as you are learning outcomes in the yellow you see on the left are math outcomes and you see up there where 25 percent of our students met or exceeded standards and we know and believe that more than 25 percent of our students deserve to meet standards in mathematics that's before we even go under the surface to unpack who those students are and then when we go a little deeper we see that only eight to fifteen percent of our bipoc students met or exceeded standards and Mathematics and again we have work to do um we have the opportunity to meet with administrators this morning and so we're sitting at tables with them as they are examining their data
017and this is hitting them hard and they are in they are very intentional about the work that they're doing to ensure that now that we have this new Mathematics Curriculum what are we doing to make sure our teachers can Implement that effectively they are organizing their data teams so that they can unpack what's working and what's not working with students and so this the this information continues to fuel our resolve to stay focused on student learning in pretty much every configuration that we meet as as a system and you'll see similar patterns on the right when you look at Ela only 38 percent of our students are meeting and again we are in Relentless pursuit of every child meeting and exceeding benchmark and the green I would like to draw your attention because we believe
018that this correlates with academic performance when students believe they belong in the classroom when they believe they belong as a mathematician as a writer as a reader then we increase the likelihood that they will perform accordingly and so our belonging data at elementary middle and high all indicate that we have some work to do this is further data in um and you see we've used measures uh we've used youth truth we've used uh Panorama we've used our healthy youth survey and all of them are giving us similar strands of information about the ways in which students feel like they feel belonging and support in their schooling experience early in our earlier years you see students feel more of a sense of belonging but as we go as we go up in age you start to
019see that Decline and so again our system is working on addressing these outcomes so I think a couple of you have seen this graph some of you have not but when you look at this and in the spirit of talking about our student performance what do you anticipate or think this what do you think this represents in terms of outcomes for students breakdown by race breakdown by race any other guesses probably social economic socioeconomic status okay let's see where we are so when we start to break those pencils down even further and we look at how specific groups are performing this is a disparity that we're talking about so this shows from Spring 2019 to fall 2021. that we had uh disparity prior to the pandemic and it worsened of course during the pandemic almost
020proportionately and so we're really we're really unpacking ways to ensure that all of those bars rise to a higher level when we talk about Equity we're not really just talking about you know a few students we're talking about all students what does it take to get a hundred percent of the students meeting a hundred percent of the targets and that's going to take us really understanding what each student needs in order to get there that's what our Equity work is all about and so this just gives us one view into what that work is ahead of us so now we'll shift to then so what are we going to do about it right so our teams have now aligned some of the work and practices from across departments to come up with a model and
021a framework to push our system forward you kind of see that that's almost like a a telescope but we're focusing on what will it take to lift the needle in mathematics and so we have three key areas that we are addressing math practices what are those teaching practices that assure that each and every student can meet the target at um meet um High math targets what are the beliefs that we have because some of us have some baggage around mathematics if I were to pull the room I don't know that everyone would say yes I was celebrated as a math student right uh we um one of Marlena is one of our instructional leaders and she showed us a video she said when did you get the invitation to the math party and you know
022some of us were never really invited to the math party and we want to ensure that each of our students gets the invitation and that they can Thrive when they are present in our classrooms and before any assessment that they have the skills and tools needed to be successful and then the the final piece of this circle before I turn it over to Ruth and Nathan um it's talking about our sip support work and who remembers again what zip stands for for some people who haven't been here yes that's our Improvement plans thank you so in ways what are the systematic ways we're working with schools to ensure that students are learning so with that I think it's Ruth's turn well I get the fun part because I get to tell you what we are
023doing how we are operationalizing the vision so the cool thing is that we have I'm going to try to we have a math vision so um I don't know if uh when you later on if you uh want to ask me I will show you the full page-long thing of our beliefs but um the new math vision from just last year is each student will make sense of rigorous mathematics in ways that are meaningful collaborative and relevant in order to ignite curiosity and passion for math that's cool but that's not really representative of what our data shows is actually happening in our district and so our job is to figure out how do we fix that just like Dr Williams said so we know because research tells us that effective and Equitable practices that include
024culturally responsive practices are what we need to do in order to increase it's a good thing I'm old and I can can't hear anyway so it's okay but they am I doing something yes that was an alarm thank you okay thank you okay uh what I was going to say is that we are making sure that we're not only thinking about when we think about math practices we're thinking about um from nctm which is the National Council of mathematics we're thinking about the practices they talk about and we're thinking about culturally responsive practices and making sure that we are using those in the classroom to increase student learning so um we've got a problem of practice so if you're familiar with problem of practice you know that a problem of practice identifies an adult problem
025of practice it's not about kids it's about what is the through line that adults need to be doing in order to improve the teaching and learning for kids so in our district the newest SBA data just like Dr Williams says shows that 25 percent of our kids met math proficiency um and in iready it this last spring it showed 31 which is you know a little bit better but still not good so um what we're trying to do in our case as evidenced by our data all students We Believe are not consistently um uh or excuse me all um kids are not consistently receiving effective and Equitable math instruction we also know that we are not effectively dismantling the consistently disproportionate student outcomes that we've been seeing in the past at least five years so
026um we we know also that it is the responsibility of leaders to build the capacity of their staffs to be able to deliver that instruction that kids so desperately need and that's what we're working on right now so based on the problem of practice um we have kind of flipped that and turned that into a theory of action so we believe that if we grow our leadership capacity um that so that they understand and utilize effective math practices and focus attention on especially algebraic thinking which is the Strand that is the most deficient for for us in Evergreen and if we engage in data informed decision making Cycles then teachers will be able to consistently deliver instruction that our kids need okay um as you know our superintendent has given us an imperative we are
027going to increase performance by at least 13 percent this year in math and we're making sure that at every angle we are emphasizing that and figuring out how to operationalize that um for not just one kit but for every single student so this huge problem and this huge goal requires systematic change in our district and so we have been working on aligning how we will do that all right one of the things that we're using in our teaching and learning team is we're using this book sort of at to to help us to learn it's called Improvement science and education and what it does is it's providing us an overview of improvement science as a framework to guide continuous Improvement and not just that but to Center equity and justice for the purpose of improving
028for all of our kids especially those kids who have been marginalized by our system so um uh oh I didn't read the quote what okay so dimming defines a system as a network of interdependent components that cooperate to try to accomplish some aim and our aim is improving outcomes for kids by 13 so thank you Mr Boyd for um for giving us that aim um now Deming cycle of improvement is a continuous quality improvement model that can consists of a logical sequence of key stages plan do study and act the large Circle that you see in the center is our year-long cycle um and the smaller circles around it represent progress monitoring around that large Circle so we're going to be planning our actions we're doing the thing that we plan we're studying how it
029worked and then we're changing and we're doing that um consistently throughout the year so that we can continue to improve we did our structure this is a continuous um Improvement cycle right here it looks a little bit different but I wanted to explain to you exactly what we have planned this year and how we're going to achieve um the 13 and hopefully more um so what we're going to be doing first of all we know that we're all in the district office all the way you know from the district office all the way to all of the people here that support we're all here for kids so the reason that we're here so in thinking about Opera operationalizing the support that kids get what we're going to be doing is we're in the process of
030thinking through how how that support might work so this visual um too fast okay so this visual could maybe help depict that so what we're going to the Top Line you see sip support first of all month by month by month we're going to be supporting our leaders with school Improvement so in the past we've had you know our school Improvement plans do you know once a year yes you know the plans are due but then we haven't necessarily followed through with progress monitoring so we're making sure that we do that this year so in September what we've been doing is we have been really setting the stage for that Improvement so every single month what's going to happen is for instance in week one Sif supporters will meet um to learn and plan support
031for school teams in week two each month there will be leadership Gatherings one of which we had today with our elementary principals that are aligned with school improvement district and school Improvement planning they were those Gatherings are intentionally focused on school Improvement and alignment with the district aim leaders will be studying evidence-based practices they are figuring out how to implement them in their schools and then they're studying what happens and then adjusting um then in weeks three and four every single month the Sip supporter will be visiting the school to talk through and walk through classrooms and figure out you know what the next step is to look at data all of all of those things and that will happen month by month every year or excuse me every month so I keep mentioning sip
032supporters these are our sip supporters each each sip supporter um has three or maybe four schools um and um one thing that I want you to know about sip supporters is this work is not evaluative the work of improving involves everyone it does not um just involve um um you know if not evaluative necessarily it's about support that's what I'm trying to say all right so during September we set the stage um and to be able to effectively measure implementation of actions we talk through Equitable practices and sip supporters have been meeting with schools to review their sip plans and make sure that the right things and the high leverage actions are in place and also to make sure that they've named what the student outcomes they're looking they're aiming toward are um and um
033we have been also thinking during September about what are the key components of school Improvement plans that should be on every single plan um so every single school has a problem of practice and a theory of action on their school Improvement plans every single school is focused on at least one evidence-based math practice that they're expected to implement in their schools we've also on the plans we've designated what do we mean by progress monitoring so if you think about progress monitoring there are two types that we're thinking about we're thinking about process measures and that means did we do the thing that we said we were going to do um if we said we were going to implement evidence-based practice one which is goal setting and following through on goals did we in math with
034kids did we do it and can we see evidence of that so that's a process measure and then of course student outcomes um we are thinking about long-term and short-term measures so um Mr Boyd named for us the long-term measures those measures are SBA and I ready the short-term measures schools need to name themselves and those are the measures that they're thinking about how do we how do we figure out along the way if we're on track in between those big measures and so I'm Nathan's going to talk for just a minute about this good evening I'm Nathan Lee and I'm elated to join the digital learning team this year coming to you from Fishers Landing Elementary and working very closely alongside assessment and instruction this year to really analyze what are we doing what
035how can we use the data to inform our instruction on a day-to-day basis and how can we put practices in place that quickly allow us to look at the now what behind the data and to understand how are our student students experiencing education on a day-to-day basis and so at the elementary level one of the things that we've been working on so far this fall is creating a data grid basically a responsive collection tool where elementaries are can Implement their or record their reading reading level Benchmark data as well as the new math unit assessments and entering very similarly to a Gradebook and then it is dynamically um going into grids like this to be able to disaggregate the data on the left you see data by proficiency as well as by growth so we
036can understand by a class at a classroom level at a grade level and also at a building level how are students performing throughout the year in addition to our diagnostic data so this is giving a more regular check-in and then also going deeper into that understanding by race how are our students experiencing each of our units of math each of our levels of reading throughout the year and then also um the capacity to go deeper into by program so special education lab ell support and understanding how are all of our groups of students experiencing instruction within the classroom and so in this example this is showing three units of math throughout the year being named for each grade level and when scores are entered it will indicate it it can show disproportionality within an individual
037unit assessment and this again all comes from Simply entering a end of unit score where it goes deeper and and takes away many data teams have been trying to compile this data by hand and so this does it automatically as soon as the data is entered so that's one way of measuring short-term measures at the elementary at the high school we're also working very closely to work with existing data and making meaning to the classroom so how how do we make ties between iready for example and with our grade level content what does it mean when we have a student who's coming to us two or three years behind in comprehension and trying to access grade level content in a science class for example and so working very closely with instruction to support and scaffold
038students in gaining grade level access thank you so now it's October you're almost done with me yay but I want to let you know that in October is super exciting because now that the stage is set we have a um our wonderful cni team has created a monitoring tool for each of the eight evidence-based practices that we've named in our leadership Gathering and that they've chosen so each school is going to be using a monitoring tool in October with their sit supporter as they walk through classrooms to try to determine what is the level of implementation of this practice that we're putting in place and you know how how how am I going to build the capacity of of my staff to be able to implement this thing so once again not evaluative at all
039just trying to build the capacity of people to be able to ensure that they're evidence-based effective practices culturally responsive practices happening in classrooms um this data is going to be impacting the leadership Cadence so um it will be impacting their PD because as they look collect the data and take a look at it will it will help them determine what the next steps are in learning for their staff it will affect plcs because plc's as you saw the grid that Nathan has created they're going to be entering data and looking at that data and trying to determine next steps in their classrooms so we're super excited about what's happening in the systems that are being put in place I wanted to lastly tell you um this impacts our our school Improvement plan timeline so we
040have a much more rigorous School Improvement plan timeline this year than we've ever had before I'm excited about it and guess what our leaders are excited about it too we just had um like I said a meeting this morning and got some great feedback about wow we're going to have four checkpoints on our sip that's never happened before so on November 14th excuse me November 29th is the first four presentation every one of our leaders will be there each board member will be you might already know this but will be in a room with their leaders from their region and then the leaders will be presenting their plan summary to you we will of course ahead of time be sharing that plan summary with you um it's LinkedIn here and all also giving you a
041template to record any information that you get so that you can report back about to the rest of the members about what's going on with your schools so we are just super excited about it the leaders are excited about it and um that was a lot of information in a short amount of time thank you so much for listening I'm going to hand it back to Dr Williams thank you um we as you can see we have an amazing team that's doing some amazing work to really keep our eye on the prize I think um I I saw a few principals get giddy when they saw Nathan's spreadsheets like you know I've been trying to organize this data myself and there's no way I mean just the Brilliance in terms of being able to efficiently
042pull data from multiple sources and make it usable so that teachers principals can plan and make moves accordingly even today when we were in our elementary principal meeting and some of our Specialists and toses who are doing action research Cycles with students and groups of students were like oh my gosh this is going to make my work with schools so much easier and so and and that's what I think this is all about you saw um I think it was this slide here where you know the ask has been since we entered how do we align all of the amazing work all the teams all the different skills you know all the Departments getting together working in one direction towards a common aim and it's beginning to feel more and more coherent and more aligned
043um according just to to reports that we're hearing from some of our leaders so I'm just going to close us with this you will hear more about this and in our November meeting right before you are able to go into your rooms with your schools that Ruth mentioned there are math practices and math beliefs that anchor the work that we are doing because as important it is to do the right behaviors we have to have the right beliefs that anchor that so I just want to call our attention to the National Council of Supervisors of mathematics and todos which is a National Organization for Latin administrators collaborated on a position statement because your beliefs in mathematics are that important and so these two slides just kind of highlight some of the essential statements in that
044framework there's a whole I think about six page paper with references and resources that kind of amplify why this work is important but that mathematics and performance and access is truly a social justice issue we know that when people are proficient and can perform well we open doors of opportunity like never before and so it is it is on us it's a moral imperative that we make math and all content accessible to all students but this is the area where we find the most disparity where math has been treated pretty exclusively so we're when we talk about fair and Equitable teaching practices it goes back to what we were saying in the beginning 100 of our kids meeting 100 of the targets that it's not tailored towards certain groups to meet and be proficient that
045we won't be able to predict who will perform well because they will all be doing so and here's yet another page that offers even more explanation of why these belief systems and structures are important we know that you believe in our students thank you for entrusting us with this opportunity and we'll stay in front of you throughout the year giving you updates I'll take any questions or comments you have at this time while they're thinking about questions I just want to thank you and the team we're so lucky to have you as a former math educator and a turnaround principal who's who's done this and you know we have a simple notion that our notion is that we have a lot of talent in this District many of them are sitting in in the seats
046in front of us and yet we're underperforming and we know we can do better and we know that with the talent we have the resources that we have that we can make a difference for our students you can see it's simple notion but the complexity of uh of trying to accomplish our goal of 13 across 23 000 students in 38 schools so it requires a very strategic approach I feel really good and about what our team has done and I just want to thank you for your leadership I don't have a question but a comment um I'm excited to see these short-term results um the way you guys have put that together it's going to be really interesting to see sort of month by month and to be able to see that and to be
047able to track that is pretty cool thank you how many questions would you like me to ask I have a couple I was watching uh the disaggregation data that you were showing expanded out from that pencil graph and the question kind of entered my mind is that uh we know that it historically there have been biases that favor the points of view of certain people in these exams like SBA and and uh s-a-t-a-c-t which has been described to me sometimes as an anglo-bias or or an ability bias what's your sense uh you Ruth or Nathan about how much of that is a barrier for SBA and and I ready today foreign that's a very good question I know work has been done to try to mitigate bias that are in test items and you know
048they're going through more rigorous work to try to to assure that and we know that it it exists and so our our job is to help our students become critical thinkers and to kind of weed through that with some of the practices that we're teaching them in terms of how to do problem solving and those kinds of things but I know some work has been done but I think there's yet more to do I'm so glad that this is this is engaged work this year I've been hoping for something like this for a long long time I can remember my daughter this is like decades ago so there are no people uh to name or blame about it but just watching in the elementary school environment how much greater enthusiasm there is for reading and
049Mathematics is taking kind of second place just structurally based on the strengths of the people and also the the curricula and I'm glad to see this addressed especially in elementary school a kid that's interested in math in the first grade is never going to stop unless pressed out of it the earlier the better the earlier the better what about uh the idea I always have to ask this one of Computer Sciences or coding programming in those intermediate grades we like that idea um there we haven't focused in those particular content areas for this work as of yet but I'm I'm certain that you know that's yet another opportunity to ensure students are engaged in math and we do have students taking advantage of those things but I think we can we can expand those a
050little robot run around on the floor yeah yes uh how do how do the national math councils discuss that kind of angle um around the around the use of of writing programs to develop algebraic thinking and algorithmic thinking well they name the things you just named algebraic thinking and to prepare them to take whatever the courses are so they lean on the eight mathematical practices so whatever content area you're in what are those eight mathematical practices that apply K-12 content agnostic when it comes to mathematics to support their learning in those areas but just based on my personal experience I was always more interested in programming than I was in euclidean yeah because it's Applied Mathematics yeah yeah once you see the point Thank you thank you I had a question um we have a
051history in our district of allowing a lot of autonomy in individual schools no it's I mean this is not an I gotcha um my question is you know it makes sense to me that we are more systematic without being overly prescriptive you know we don't want to tell a teacher every little move that they make all day long that's that's not very creative and I know that our teachers are creative thinkers so we want them to have that ability so um I guess the question I have is are we as we're rolling all this out addressing the concept of of the ability to be inventive in their thinking but yet still be systemic so that we know we get results and we see so in and I know it's a fine balance yes yeah um
052but I'm excited about what I'm seeing in the again that data information is I remember a time when there was no disaggregated data at all I'm not I'm too I'm so old on this that to see it laid out um like that is really encouraging to me well I'll go first and I know John probably wants to answer and maybe these two will like to answer that whole on the edge of their seats I know they're about to come come on up come on up but um one thing that you know like my first 90 days was listening right listening to principals directors you know anyone who wanted to have a conversation with me and a a recurring theme was focus and Alignment they didn't want to be 38 little districts anymore because that freedom
053didn't have enough form to produce the outcomes and so right now we're working on form and we can have freedom within form but we got to have some form first and so that's kind of been the the art of this work and this team what they're trying to do is give them the form so that you know the freedom we have actually still leads to our desired outcomes I couldn't say it better than that thank you that and that makes sense to me and I'm glad to hear that because I have been a little concerned about systems not being real systems right and the cohesion piece I think we're really meeting all of us board included indeed indeed happy to answer any more questions of course you can email me there are links in the
054slides that we gave you if you want to go deeper into you know the good news we'll have plenty of opportunities to dig into this over all year thank you so much Dr Williams okay thank you thank you okay with that we're moving on to our legislative updates I'll go ahead and turn this over to director Perkins for an update evening we have an opportunity now that the general assembly is completed I attended in a wasda role which did not give me the credential to vote or anything like that but I ended up watching most if not all of the positions as they were debated uh along with I think Julie had the credential for Saturday and and Jackie had it for Friday and it was really useful the work that we did to prioritize
055and identify those positions I think was really useful in jogging my memory because each of them in turn would ask me what the context of positions were based on my past work with the legislative committee um so that was good work now we have the opportunity to name the positions that we consider top 10. we have until the 17th to do that um and ought to uh I can either take that list as it stands and and uh produce the top ten or we could have another conversation about it but it pretty much has to happen before next Monday which is their deadline they extended it from due tomorrow to due next Monday um and then our voice will be part of the wasda prioritization um I understand that Sandra Zavala Ortega of the Vancouver
056district has taken my place and is running to be re-elected on the legislative committee and I think that can be a good idea to um consider her in your vote so Rob when we Workshop this um a couple weeks ago I don't remember exactly when it was but and we each came with our like top five priorities I think Lori took that list right and then we asked staff and we got their priorities and a lot of them were very similar themes funding special education funding so I guess my question is are you going to take that list now and are you going to be the one that's because only one of us submits the priorities for our district and since you're a legislative rep right we'll take that and do you need more from
057us than what we prioritized that night well I think our top three are special services funding and special services funding followed very closely by special services funding so because yes uh because that is how we'll be able uh to fill those 80 positions I think and and make those things more appealing and that's a Statewide ask now I've never seen more alignment and I'm hoping that each of the groups that Advocate and Lobby in Olympia will uh stand with wasdon with us about that particular issue it's it's been underfunded for 40 years and uh we're seeing the results of that really hurt kids these these days just Statewide so a bit of advocacy there but I'll be looking for all the special education positions and putting them in the top ten uh followed by I
058guess whatever advice you have to give me or I could uh talk with John about it and get the districts sort of consensus next week the legislative committee will see the data that we generate from offering our top ten and produce the beginnings of a platform for wasda which our legislative rep next January we'll use with the others and Olympia on the day on the hill will that be ready for the um listening session at the ESD in December I think it will some preliminaries will be uh oh for the legislators listening session yeah it'll be it'll be ready by then uh there was a year when I read them out loud at that session just as a da60s d112 kind of Representative brought was positions in there before the superintendents brought detail to those
059positions because they were in alignment four years ago three years ago they still are so I'll fill the list out with that in mind and could I have a short conversation with you something I would love to and and the ESD 112 superintendents have uh put together a position a platform as well and so we can compare and notes with that as well it'd be a nice tool for us to be able to sit down and talk through and be happy to do that yeah and we can take that work and bring it into the meetings with a Melissa gomboski when she comes into town and just to elevate the the funding gap for special education in the meeting we had with the government and the superintendents today Washougal for example pays two million dollars
060a year for um other Levy for to support special education services for us at that is about a 10 million dollar Gap that we're paying for and so it's a significant um a significant amount of money that would really support us to to help our students it's getting those the numbers of those shortfalls Statewide into legislators hands that will put some strength behind the arguments along with the stories along with the stories um in the past Heather Fowler has been very helpful in getting us Evergreen stories to talk about other issues because of the way ale and and I think some access waivers and things brought kids to graduation who were like in the hospital but we can do the same thing if we know the stories um for Behavioral for academic for English language
061Learners which we're starting called bilingual Learners instead multilingual multilingual now even better uh and so we can use everybody's help really if you've got something to say about it let's get aligned and let's get the arguments going or the advocacy going thank you you um so then you'll be able to submit by the 17th oh yeah I want to make sure we get ours in and that's pretty much it the next legislative thing will be that December meeting okay next is board comments any comments by the board I just want to um chat a little bit about the listening sessions that we had last week having to do with the Strategic plan and the you know the work that we're doing and and this is the superintendent requirements and things of that nature it was
062just really good to hear from the various different stakeholders I feel like people were very honest um and open about things that need Improvement things that we're doing right um what their wish list is for leadership um in the district so I I felt good about that and and I um I know all of us attended meetings it was a busy day but it was really valuable information it was it was very good very thought provoking and the ones with the students they're the they're the best I mean they really were fabulous and those kids they just lay it out there and I I love that I just love it Jackie and I have a breakfast with the board at um Thursday at is it Evergreen and I know we're going to get some good
063some good feedback from kids so I just think our our students and I like it that um we were calling them Scholars all day and I love that and because they should be considered Scholars and so it was it was exciting information and I believe that Google uh Doc is still open until tomorrow is that correct Lori to be able to do so Thursday so if you didn't get an opportunity to complete that questionnaire that survey it is still open and available so we want as many voices as we can possibly get and that went out to the whole Community it's gone out in emails it's gone out a couple of different ways that way it gets in the hands of everybody and so we can have as much feedback yeah I hope so thanks
064no I wanted to talk about it um the last leadership was the session which should have been in June but Cove had kind of canceled it I was in Walla Walla last week last week and uh we got a look at the Early Childhood Center there they have a pretty unique circumstance and uh uh some of the same problems that we have in Clark County the shortages of availability the waiting lists even in commercial early childhood education I'm going to look at their transitional kindergarten program and uh I've got some literature about that if John if you want to take a look at that yeah that'd be a great future topic too because we've added pre-K in the district quite a few programs so I think that an early learning we have moved around some
065staffing to have a director of early learning that will be onboarding um um Galen who will be doing our early learning work and so we're excited to to pull together a team with Dr Williams and and our early learning staff and and we can come back and I think that will be an exciting report for the board to see the plans that we um have in place and and have are doing yeah and each year we get the a presentation about early learning in connection with the certifications for the private providers um perhaps that would be a good time to works out that in we were also we also sat down with students and Librarians and had a pretty serious discussion about book challenges because Walla Walla has seen a lot of library book challenges
066and um a community that's less peaceful than ours on that subject and learned about their strategy and and the reasons why they made those choices it was pretty much a mirror for the book challenges that I participated in and seen happen here including the most recent one um but it's just kind of made me thoughtful about where their stuff intersects with our stuff and uh turns out they didn't use their IMC for it and so we can be pretty glad that we already have a basic structure with citizen parent support uh in there and everything um they've already talked about the uh stakeholder feedback I was along for those and tomorrow I'll be in the online learning advisory committee meeting over Zoom only too appropriate um I think we'll be discussing CTE and Ale which
067I know Mazda has a strong position in support of enhancements for that now we can carry the district voice in there as well I think it's aligned that's all okay um I just wanted to thank Jackie for attending the two days of general assembly and taking those that was a long day on that Friday and we got through it and Rob was there too but um doing a conference virtually like that and but it was really interesting this year there's you know one of the things that wazda does and what Rob talked about the legislative priorities is we're advocating for students across the state and the things that we do um as a state affects districts throughout our region and throughout the entire State and so it's really about all of our students in Washington
068succeeding and so some of the positions on there there was a little bit of divide but good conversation and things that you know for us to be aware of as we move forward I will say that um it would be better to do that in person oh definitely definitely yeah being together I think would make a big difference yeah yeah from experience it really is a different thing you can amend positions for example yeah which would have been a good thing yeah all right I do have a couple of things um so uh let's see Thursday night John and I participated in the Harlem Wizards basketball game realize just how old I am um her for days but it was a great event raised a lot of money for uh the school and we had
069so much fun the energy was up it was a I'm that was I enjoy doing that every time they bring them to town my favorite part of the event was the tip-off and they grabbed Jenny and carried her Acro ran her across the floor tilted Twisted her around and it was outstanding yeah that's always fun I feel like you were reliving Your Glory years Sean as a basketball player I I would only referee I I chose not to play wisely I think laughs so yes so that was a lot of fun uh and then uh director Weatherspoon and I have been working on our student board rep um student rep what are we calling him student board Representatives uh so we're really excited to kick off that new initiative with the board and we have
070applicants that we are going to begin interviewing and I believe we have five five applicants and we will see two Juniors this year on our as a representative of the school board through our high schools and eventually that will grow into two representatives from each of our high schools that will work directly with us and then report back to their schools and report to US vice versa so those are another that's another initiative to get student voice on the board and out in the community and to hear what they have to say and base our decisions with a lot more input from them so we're really excited to get that going that has been something we've been working on for a while now kovitz kind of prevented some of that going forward but we're finally
071hitting the gas and that's all I have so anything else before next nope okay next is any future agenda items I was actually interested in seeing the affirmative action plan annual report I know that you guys created that plan in 2021 and I think a report is due at this point happy to add that is a future topic okay any other future agenda items I know there was a quick note of it earlier did we get that noted yeah and and we're building a um a board calendar with all the future topics on it and meeting with um the vice president the president to you know try to figure out the timing of of each individual report so we'll add all those to that to the list and then we'll discuss it in board leadership
072as to when we do those reports okay yeah I just wanted there was a mention I think was it your comments that's uh the early childhood and we said yes that was what it was I just want to make sure we make note of that to get that on a future agenda The Early Childhood noted it has been a regular yearly um agenda item and it fits really well with the time of year really excited to do that report thanks I uh I could use a reminder myself maybe we all could about where the Performing Arts calendars are I think the district um Elementary Middle High School concerts are next month aren't they we also now have a calendar with all activities while we're trying to get all the activities in the district for us
073on our Google Drive yeah as well have a chance to go to one of those several of them yeah absolutely okay the next is public comments uh any Community member wishing to address the board may do so during this designated time on the agenda for public comments as long as the comments are not excuse me Personnel related or about an individual employee or student and are not legal in nature each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board I kindly ask that you are considerate to that time because we do have quite a few speakers this evening comments are to be directed to the board of directors as a whole may not be addressed to any individual member of the board the administrative staff or the audience please state your name and District
074affiliation if any first on the list is Doug Lasher is the person no view virtuals okay Doug can now okay Mindy Trafford Cooper welcome good evening I'm Mindy tropher Cooper I'm a parent at Heritage in the kinderbridge program and I'm also the PSC large group president I received a letter that I would like to read to you all it says the value of para Educators in our district many say that something is worth or valued at what people are willing to pay for it parent Educators in the Evergreen Public School District are grossly underpaid and therefore grossly undervalued this letter outlines several reasons why the para educator role is vitally important to students wellness and achievement and how the pair is in EPS are deserving of much higher pay along with more time to better
075serve the students than they are currently receiving Paris developed strengths confidence skills and morale a parent in our district says in my nearly two decades working as a para educator education assistant teaching assistant I have had many titles and seen much student progress success growth development and achievement something that has become evident working with many many students over the years is what we Paras have the power and privilege to get really to know our students interests and strengths and to build on those we make learning meaningful fun and accessible we instill confidence in those with learning challenges of many forms encouraging and supporting students to develop a mindset that they can hand that they can and do learn new things with support and effort gives them the confidence willingness and skills to be unstoppable Paris
076helped meet students basic and social emotional needs to support learning para educators are safe consistent caring adults in children's lives not only do we attend to their basic needs and rights of hygiene safety food play belonging and confidence but also to their emotional well-being and then finally their academic needs and rights if you take into consideration Maslow's hierarchy of needs para Educators support students to get their most basic needs met so that they may be more ready to tackle the academic tasks set forth by their busy teachers we also get to really know our students and build rapport with them which not only boosts their morale but also results in a significant reduction and even elimination of undesired behaviors we know that behavior is communication often based in trauma and we take the time to
077find out what is really behind the behavior to meet the social emotional needs of every one of our students I have potty trained fed loved worried taught the importance of clean clothes read to taught more than one to tie shoes comforted taught the importance of respect for self and others reported abuse and neglect and those aren't even the academics that we all do Paris Comfort Inspire respect lead emphasize and advocate a pair in our district said we Comfort anxiousness we Inspire to shoot for the stars we earn trust we lead with respect and learn individual student interests and characteristics so we can really tailor learning for them while respecting boundaries we instill Safety and Security during and after escalation we bring light-heartedness to an otherwise chaotic School experience we balance our own mental health while
078emphasizing deeply empathizing deeply with a wide variety of students every day teach empathy self-respect and above all advocate for the fair respectful treatment of our students para Educators impact achievement our recent study finds that teacher assistance boosts academic outcomes for students most clearly in Reading Hamlet loud and Clifton found that para Educators had a positive impact on students reading and math achievement scores on state standardized tests and that these impacts were particularly strong for students of color Mindy I'm sorry to interrupt you but we've gone over our time but we do have your letters thank you so I was reading along with you so we'll read through these thank you I appreciate it foreign next on the list is Julia Apple welcome thank you my name is Julia Apple I teach special education at hearthwood
079elementary I would like to talk about our para Educators and I was here last month for the same reason which is frustrating there is no part of Education that is easy everyone within the field including you works really hard to make miracles happen we all have different challenges certainly but everyone in this profession has them there is one difference that stands out right now between the difficult task you have and the difficult task we as people working directly with students have that difference is that we don't get to say no when it comes to providing what our students ask for when our students say to us in whatever way they can I can't do this I need more help we would never never tell them no I'm sorry we just can't do that for you
080instead we say yes I hear you and I'll get you what you need then we work harder to provide provide it we ask our colleagues for support we teach ourselves new skills we try different approaches we get creative this is a non-negotiable in education we say yes when there's a need and then we find a way to make it happen not the other way around it appears that saying yes then figuring it out how to make it work is not a new solution for you I'm seeing it with inclusion right now it's the right thing to do so you say yes maybe without a fully formed vision of how it's going to happen then you which is actually more like your schools your employees your administrators your parents your teachers figure out how to make
081it successful you can tell yourselves it's you can tell yourselves its budget constraints and it might be part of it because who can argue with numbers but if it's possible to say yes to other things and then figure out how to pay for them why not with this I'll also say Educators have time constraints and energy constraints and constraints on resources and we still find a way to do this work all of this makes me think it's more about beliefs I invite you to try this on as a fact the classified Personnel who work in this District are the most important people in your Workforce they feed your students they greet your families they help your students do the work the teachers assign to them they get your students to and from school safely each
082day and so many other things without them your schools would not function if you believe believe this and I don't mean in your brain but if you believe this in your gut that your special education pair is and all of your classified staff are an essential part of your students success then your answer should be yes when they ask for what they need Educators can and will always perform Miracles with what we're given because we believe in our students and we want them to be successful in what matters to them your classified employees are telling you what they need to be successful if you are committed to functioning schools and you believe the fact that they are the reason you have them you should start by saying yes to their request and then do what
083you've done before and what Educators do every day and make it work thank you thank you Julia next on the list is Lynn Nichols welcome hi my name is Lynn Nichols and I'm a physical therapist assistant I'm an itinerant staff I've worked for the school district for 30 years I've been out there in the trenches with all of these other amazing classified staff um I can honestly say I've worked in every school in this District over the 30 years and I know how difficult their job is and what we all went through during covid was unbelievable and we're now looking at the aftermath of what's going on and and I'm seeing a lot of chaos and a lot of Mayhem and I think everybody is doing above and beyond the jobs that they've been hired
084um I think my my comments are more towards us long-term folks that are looking for a little bit more than what has been offered to us and I understand the 10 percent nine percent eight percent to try and get more Staffing but I don't feel that the six percent is representative of our years of experience or expertise our knowledge and I think what's happening right now is US long-term people are picking up the slack they're doing double duty triple Duty because of the shortage and people are getting injured people are being put in positions that they have not been properly trained and they're not being compensated I guess I'm looking for a little bit more wiggle room in in these increases especially for us long-term people that have been here because people are seeing that
085this 10 percent increase in nine they're not seen it justified in their increase at six percent and I myself feel like I've been locked out and stuck in in a payer scale that you know I should be getting more as well um I I think it's difficult for some of us to understand how is it that administrative staff got an eight percent increase we're trying to figure out what justifies that we are all doing double triple Duty because of our shortage and we're trying to figure out how how is that justified what validated that increase to eight um we've many of us are here because we love our jobs and it's not about the money but we need to be compensated and we need we need it we need more especially us long-term people that
086have given our entire career to this District we've given our brains our body our soul to these kids because we love them and we love this job but uh we need more [Applause] thank you Lynn next is Kate Barrett welcome thank you my name is Kate Barrett I'm a special educator at Hollingsworth Academy and I can't do my job without adequate staff support I can't keep students safe without staff to support and utilizing preventative strategies to help students stay regulated the students that we work with are incredibly complex and require multiple adults to be responsive to their immediate needs I can't ensure that all of my students are accessing things like our great new math curriculum if I don't have the staff to support them to get and stay regulated enough to learn for the
087past eight years that I've been a special educator in this District every year I've had extended time periods that I've been short staff assistants needed to provide one-on-one support designated on their IEPs since the covid-19 pandemic there have been more and more open para educator positions in my building we currently have 10 open staff assistant positions it has led to extremely unsafe situations and Incredibly exhausting days this is unacceptable lack of appropriate staff support to meet the needs of students with special needs is an equity issue that I don't think gets nearly the amount of attention it deserves I strongly believe that we can attract and retain staff support if we pay them a wage that is competitive with other districts and increase their hours so that they have enough time to collaborate with the
088Educators that they work with [Applause] I'm grateful for the amazing staff that I've gotten the opportunity to work with it breaks my heart that they are paid so little that they can barely pay for basic needs without a second or third income the job of a parent educator requires impeccable skills in things like decision making patience and attention to detail but most importantly being a para educator requires a heart for working with students with unique needs we are so lucky to have pair Educators that care deeply about our students we need to pay them a wage that acknowledges the important work that they are doing thank you [Applause] thank you Kate next is Samantha voller [Applause] welcome my name is Samantha voller I am a special education and para educator at Ellie Hill Elementary I'm
089also one of the newer uh para Educators to adjoined our district this is my second year with Evergreen however I am the daughter of a educator who has been with our district for many years since 1920. Jennifer voller love her um um so I have a deep understanding of just how much work and heart is put into these students by everyone who is in our Evergreen school district and as a product of the Evergreen School District as well I think it's really great however I can speak very much to retention of the staff I as a second year person I had teachers last year who thanked me for just staying through the entire year because para educators are worked so hard for so little it's hard to continue to do the work that we do
090for what we make for example I am currently missing my second job right now because I want to speak on this issue and yes I need a second job in order to survive and I am a single woman without kids I know plenty of people here who also are trying to do this with families and that is terrifying so I speak in representative of the amazing classified staff that couldn't be here tonight because they're working other jobs or have families to do um one of the most important thing about classified staff is relationship building with these students in order to form a relationship with a student to better serve them and help them grow they have to be around and if you continue to treat your classified staff in the way that we are through
091our pay and through being overworked and short staffed you're going to have more and more turnover which will never benefit the kids we need to build these bonds with children and we can't do that on the wages that were paid currently um it's a safety concern especially I've worked in behaviors last year I work with special edges of course is behaviors and academics this year if you do not have the Staffing if you do not have the ability to work with a team of people to meet these children's needs is not going to work it's not it's it's just not sustainable um I uh also want to say that um knowing I knew already going into uh applying and becoming a member of the Evergreen School District that my my pay was low um however
092I was uh I'm sorry I was inspired to continue on I knew okay maybe I'll have to take a job during the summer um the rate the wage that is presented um is not advertised properly it is by spread pay and uh when trying to get just the 10-month amount so that I could maybe have one job during the school year and one job during the summer I was told I cannot do that so the rates that I'm at is actually much lower because it's being paid out through 12 months instead of 10 months so that is just uh something to keep in mind as well um so yes I thank you for your time and I hope that you have heard everyone here today because these are yours this is your bread and butter
093this is your heart so yeah thank you Samantha next on the list is Shelly Prothro foreign good evening board Mr superintendent my name as you stated is Shelly Prothro and I'm a para educator right over here at ollingsworth Academy but I am also the mother of two boys at Marion Elementary School in fact Mr void and Dr Williams have both joined in my classrooms at different points Mr Boyd last year to do yoga with me and my students and this past year Dr Williams joined co-workers of mine just a couple days ago when we were debriefing about the Equitable communication practices and how to ensure enough processing time for students yes I a power educator was leading both of those sessions at my school most students require one-on-ones as Kate my teacher just stated there
094are 10 job postings from my school alone that guarantees there are 10 staff missing without anybody being sick because of this my school currently has four broken windows multiple staff injuries damaged equipment and students becoming more dysregulated destructive and violent every single day this is not due to the lack of training work ethic energy care or effort by our staff who are absolutely arguably the best of the best but because we don't have enough staff we are exhausted and feel zero support from the district today I however am not coming to you as an employee but as a mother my boys are in the force and first grade in the Dual emotion program and are both neurodivergent which means they do require some additional assistance my youngest Jai is a covid long-hauler jai's brain has
095been affected in ways we are just now understanding and at times he's in requiring unexpected interventions sadly he is not alone district-wide there has been a surge of students needing IEP level care especially in kindergarten in first grade leading staff stretched extremely thin and exhausted we're exhausted because there's too much need and not enough staff due to the complete imbalance of students needs versus staff's ability Jai has started to self-harm out of frustration and dysregulation let me repeat that for you due to there not being enough staff to service the needs of the student body my six-year-old baby is punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall at school because the equities will support he needs is not there or available the amazing staff and administration at Marion are and have
096been doing everything they can but they can't always get to him and many other students in time many days I am having to go on my lunch to help de-escalate and get him back on track when I'm supposed to be eating and taking a mental health break so I can help my students the way they need I have to go to another school to support my son which I will do happily every single time because he and the staff deserve every bit of support and help they are not getting from the district [Applause] the mental health of your staff and students is suffering and this is unacceptable I know I am not the only parent or staff going through these kinds of situations because you the because you the district undervalue para Educators you are
097short staffed students are suffering and you are not in legal compliance with many student 504s and IEP [Applause] this is unacceptable you know better now do better and pay them [Applause] thank you for your comments next on the list is Sierra sorry I can't it's I know it's a g welcome so um it goes without saying that districts across the country and school public schools in general are underfunded and that revenue is hard to come by and that is not a unique problem here um but and it comes from the entire Community to say that we need more as a newer staff member that transplanted from across the river I was able to support myself as an individual in Oregon working as a regular education assistant and a tutor jobs that are very similar I
098moved across the river just a few years ago and while it was okay for a little bit the amount of pay that we receive and the process by which we are allocated onto the pay scale is a little concerning I had about seven years of experience that was not counted for anything because of the way that HR processes experience and I dealt with it I care about working in public schools and working in the field of public education I have a bachelor's degree in science and a minor in child Youth and family studies I myself was a homeless student a student in transition as a child and dealt with chronic illness since birth and struggled my way through so it is a bit frustrating that I have gotten this far and can't even afford to
099rent an apartment in the area and have to reply rely on my partner I have to disproportionately rely on my partner to help supplement living here um and that's just being housed it doesn't touch scrimping and saving for groceries and all the other things that we need to be able to have adequate brain function and work and do our jobs and be excellent and rise to the occasion of our jobs every day and so while I do understand the systemic issues that present themselves throughout our country it is very hard considering the increase in cost of living especially that we can't afford to be here realistically so but we're here still and we will continue to be here still and we will do everything we can to fight for our ability to stay and do
100our jobs and be here every day thank you for your comments thank you all for your comments with that that actually is the end of our meeting for tonight I'm going to go ahead and call the meetings who ends 709 we will not be going into a workshop this evening so that is all for tonight folks thank you for coming and have a good evening [Music]