001good evening thanks for joining us tonight we'll go ahead and start with the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all all right thank you again for joining us we do have some folks that are attending with us virtually including a couple of school board directors so we're going to do roll call first we'll start with the folks that are here director rob perkins president director victoria bradford superintendent john boyd president administrative assistant lori stroll board director jacqueline witherspoon who's virtual president and president jenny gronwald who is also attending virtual here great thank you all right so the first thing on our agenda this evening is the land acknowledgement
002so i'm going to turn it over to director perkins who's going to read that for us evergreen public schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinookan peoples and the cowitz tribe we they have lived on and cared for this land and its water ways 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 thanks rob all right next is uh to adopt this evening's agenda we'll entertain a motion for that i move for adoption of tonight's agenda as presented second it's been moved and seconded all in favor say i i did we get both folks online great all right we're going to go ahead and move on to special recognition uh first
003it is teacher appreciation week and to kick this off we have a proclamation that director bradford is going to read for us this evening okay it's my honor to do that okay state of washington proclamation whereas a strong effective system of free public school education for all children and youth is essential to our democratic system of government and whereas the united states has made considerable progress in the social technological and scientific fields due to our system of free and universal public education and whereas much of this progress can be attributed to the qualified and dedicated teachers entrusted with the educational development of our children and whereas teachers provide opportunities for students to connect with the world around them develop basic skills for success in life and work and experience the realization of high expectation and
004the fulfillment of steps toward achievable goals and whereas teachers should be accorded high public esteem reflecting the value placed on their skills and abilities and the importance of public education and whereas it is appropriate that teachers be recognized for their dedication and commitment to educating their students now therefore i j inslee governor of the state of washington do hereby proclaim may 2nd through the 6th 2022 as teacher appreciation week and may 3rd 2022 as teacher appreciation day in washington and i encourage all people in our state to join me in this special observance and he signed that on the 18th day of april 2022. great thanks do we have who's coming up to accept bill bill i wondered if it was you yeah okay with the folder come on up bill i'm trying to find
005the oh well i got i got switched in the middle of it all the other one's the nurses yes thank you so much yeah absolutely of course i definitely first i want to say thank you uh for this acknowledgement and for the the governor's order um obviously this is always a tricky time of year uh we are in that spot where it's always bittersweet because we are also once again looking at cuts to some of our new teachers that we have just established working great in our schools and adding so much to our uh the environment that we teach and but i understand that the the this was given in good faith uh towards us and appreciate all the work that teachers have done through the absolutely insurmountable uh challenges that covet has brought and
006just general the state of education in general and i just would encourage you to continue to look at all parts of the budget that make sure that there's no stone unturned that there's that we're absolutely accessing everything that we can to make sure that we keep retain as many educators as possible i use the term educators i know the week became teacher appreciation week but i'm all constantly reminded we're full of people that work in the educational climate that are important not just teachers so i just want to make that comment as well but thank you thank you so much i just want to add one thing um it's been so fun to watch and craig and his team to going out to all of the buildings and taking pictures of all of the great
007teachers that we have out there because you can just tell the joy and pride they have in their in their jobs that they take great care of our students so just wanted to add that it's been nice to see this week always makes me think of my teachers and and growing up in the district and then coming back and having my kids there and watching the teachers i had uh finish their careers out and retire and it's just when i think of the pandemic bill i think of the fact that you [Music] and your colleagues lost uh the classroom and the classroom was the place where you received the assurances that you were doing a good job you could see the response of the kids there and still the effort that went into the online
008learning and the advocacy that went into it really showed a deep regard and an affection for children and students and my thank you and your colleagues for that i think that um every year when we we talk about teacher appreciation and all that i always remember my favorite teacher who a long time ago um was my fourth grade teacher mr tovey and he's the one that really got me jazzed about science which i know rob's thinking victoria and science but i actually just got really into it in biology and all of that and and he saw through you know my you know personality and the way i like to be and he got me engaged and and i also he was my first real example of someone who knows how to show a kindness to
009a student because we had a student that now that i look back as a 60-something-year-old lady i realized was probably being abused at home but he made sure that he had a sandwich every day that he brought because he had he always brought extra lunch and so i just that that will never leave me and it's it definitely formed how i what i believe about educators so thank you because i know we have those same mr toby's in our system all over the place yeah lots yeah thank you thank you thanks bill all right next recognition special recognition is for school nurse day and to read this proclamation is superintendent boyd and i just want to thank bill for acknowledging the um the bitter sweetness of teacher appreciation week while we're celebrating the great work
010of all of our teachers we're also mourning the loss of of several um we've had to reduce uh significant uh significantly in our teacher core and it's it is bittersweet so thank you for for acknowledging that i think that's really important to celebrate or the good work but also acknowledge the loss as well but it is my privilege and pleasure to read the proclamation of our school nurses and there's no man you talk about a an employee group that has brought it over the last couple of years and has really talked about earning your keep i mean they have just been absolutely invaluable over the last couple years so it's my pleasure to read the proclamation about the nurses whereas students are the future and by investing in them today we're ensuring that our world
011for tomorrow and whereas families deserve to feel confident that their children will be cared for when they're at school and that all the schools all students have a right to their physical and mental health needs safely met while in school setting and whereas students today face more complex and life-threatening health problems with increases in students presenting with behavioral health challenges asthma diabetes epilepsy and food allergies requiring care in schools and whereas the covet 19 pandemic has emphasized the essential role that our nurses play in student health in an academic success with school nurses implementing covet prevention prevention detection and isolation measures needed to maintain open schools during the pandemic and whereas school nurses have served critical role in improving public health and ensuring students academic success for more than 100 years and act and act
012as liaisons to the school community families and health care providers on behalf of children's health by promoting the wellness and improving the health outcomes for our nation's children school nurses address school nurses address the home and community factors that impact students health and support the health and educational success of children and youth by providing access to care when children's cognitive development is at its peak so i'd like to invite matt gill up to the podium to introduce our nurses and help celebrate them with us thank you john uh you know i had written a very nice speech but i think that you must have gotten it from me right off my desk because you said about what i was going to say but i did want to draw a light that our nursing staff in
013evergreen public schools is a small one of only 18 certified nurses and and it's guided by holly long our manager of nursing services and our two office staff danielle and deanna so they provide all the health guidance and support and services for all of our students staff and really facilitate that peace between home and school and health for all of our students so tonight i bring to you megan reynolds and heather jensen heather rice and speaking tonight on behalf of the nurses is maggie conlon marks i just i just have a few words to say if that's okay yes okay i wrote it down because i get nervous in front of groups so i just want to say thank you on behalf of all of our evergreen school district nurses for this recognition thank you
014for acknowledging the accomplishments and efforts and meeting the needs of today's students by improving the delivery of health care in our schools school nurses understand the link between health and learning and are in a position to make a positive difference for children every day children today face complex and life-threatening health problems requiring care in the school setting school nurses assist in the well-being and academic ex success of all students by acting as a liaison to the school community parents and health care providers on their behalf advocating for their health and educational needs including those with physical and mental disabilities reflecting on our practice as a group this year this past year i feel we have helped to clarify uncertainty and hopefully calm fears through understanding and empathy making a somewhat challenging year also a rewarding
015one especially during a global pandemic thank you okay you can't even understate the level of stress and challenge that our school nurses have faced in the last couple of years um it's it's really quite admirable i'm hoping that they never have to face anything like that again and i just i want you all to know that we know in the face of all kinds of criticism misinformation [Music] just anxiety coming from multiple directions you all behaved like professionals and did what was right for our kids and i really appreciate that thanks victoria i could speak just as my experience as a parent uh there was a point in time when one of my kids was in middle school and the principal's team the teachers and and the nurses stood together and i say this with
016complete honesty i think they helped save my son's life and i'm so glad that they're there the school nurse was i think integrity integral to designing the efforts that went out on behalf of my child i keep thinking that we should see if ginny or jacqueline have anything they want to add from virtual land good all right i'm sorry what was that i was that wondering if you had any comments that you wanted to add from virtual land no i know okay thanks i just don't want you to think that we're forgetting about you over there no we're here okay so next on the agenda is our board consent agenda and so we will entertain a motion for approval the move adoption of the board's consent agenda is presented second uh moved in second and
017all in favor say aye aye aye aye aye perfect thank you all right next is uh superintendent consent agenda again will entertain a motion for approval i move for approval of the superintendent consent agenda as proposed second uh moved and seconded all in favor say aye [Music] all right thank you all right next up is the superintendent report so i'm going to uh pass it over to superintendent boyd thank you very much well i want to start off by um just naming uh as bill put at the bitter sweetness of the moment and at the same time that we're celebrating our levy we're also mourning the loss of some really significant cuts so i'm going to talk about the levy and just acknowledge the work that was done on that and then speak directly to
018some of the cuts that we had to make this is the first opportunity we've had to be together as a board and a community after the the levy success so i just want to thank all of our community for their support i absolutely want to thank ev thank evergreen citizens for schools and our staff for all the time that they spent there's no way that this would have happened without uh them leaning in in the way they did and um we also you know we i think we did a pretty good job of engaging our community and uh we need to be committed to continuing that engagement at the high level so um i just want to commend and thank everybody for leaning into that and making that a success it's we did something extraordinary
019together our board our teachers union our principals our classified staff our parents and our community came together around a common purpose and went from 42 percent to almost 55 percent success so i feel like we are after this um incredible feat that we're well positioned to move forward together um in our strategic plan and some of the other work that we're doing so that part excites me i also want to speak to the enrollment loss the reductions due to enrollment loss we knew that it was even if the levy passed it was going to be a difficult moment to also reduce nearly 20 million dollars to be able to get in line with what we need to do to operate our budget next year one of the things that was mentioned up here is we
020need to make sure we leave no stone stone unturned about the budget situation i'd like to speak to that a little bit right now we're at a minimum five percent fund balance which means we have just about enough one month's worth of bank account basically to um to do our payroll we've had an enrollment loss of 2500 students over the last few years and we've kept our staffing levels up and i think that was a good thing during the pandemic needing to keep social distancing needing to keep class sizes small we're at a point where we no longer have the resources to be able to continue to do that we're budgeting tightly for next year even there's not a lot of slack in our in our budgeting if our enrollment loss is significant so we're
021not uh we're not being ultra conservative with our budget there also isn't uncertainty related to enrollment for next year and our esser funds are being used to support uh the the leanness that you're seeing in some of these reductions right now so i also just want to say that i'm personally sorry for the people in the programs affected by these cuts these are gut-wrenching cuts that were made that impact individuals personally and i just want to express i accept the responsibility for informing these decisions these budgeting decisions and i just want you to know that i don't and we don't as a board and leadership take those things lightly we are at the asc our budget reduction strategy including included putting provisionals at the top of the reduction list we did that across the board
022we eliminated seven um provisional positions at the ase one of the really important functions um that we have in this district is our academic inclusion work and the result of reducing our provisional employees the result of that was that three of our equity and inclusion specialists were lost to the cuts so that is that's you know it is i would say a setback for us in our equity work um and we're going to have to really work hard to keep that work moving forward by distributing our leadership around equity and making sure that all of us are are doing that personal work that journey work and that work to be equity leaders in our roles and we're also going to be committed to through our strategic planning process to keep that work alive and moving
023forward in the best way possible given the challenge with the loss of our three equity specialists we also made the difficult decision to eliminate the newcomer program two newcomer programs in our district our elementary newcomer program served 24 students our secondary one was currently serving 11 students the significant cost associated with that and we made that difficult decision to do that that one i was an esl teacher for five years i ran a newcomer center so i'm not unaware of the needs of our newcomer students and i'm i am i'm confident that we can provide the services and support to our immigrant and refugee students and i will personally make sure that i am involved in in ensuring that and i will i will ensure you that i will be personally involved with making sure
024that our equity work moves forward the biggest the biggest reduction across the board was in classroom teachers and so we lost 100 classroom teachers 60 elementary 22 middle five high school four alternative and eight itinerant the itinerant folks are those people that were doing music and pe at the elementary given the enrollment losses of the classrooms those positions were reduced as well we lost administrative staff two teaching and learning executive directors a cte manager a compliance manager we lost 12 special education teachers and 34 quarantine monitors classified staff 20 el perez 17 special education peras three asc classified positions that's folks that work here and we also were able to find a budget savings of about 800 000 in supplies and service contracts that the district had we have really worked hard to get down
025to every nickel and dime to find all the resources to support what we can in our district and so just once again i wanted to name i know that there's going to be some folks speaking about these various losses i appreciate that your input i'm i'm glad you're here supporting your passion and um i just want to repeat the fact that i'm i'm personally affected and personally sorry for your loss and i just want to thank you all right thank you john open for a question uh yeah uh you talked about the uh the asc cuts uh as being driven by uh starting with provisional contracts p1p2p3 they assume and that the loss of our dei specialists emerged from that rather than being a target of a cut that's correct okay thank you anything else
026okay all right uh next is department updates the first one is going to be teaching a learning update and rebecca is going to lead us through that i warmed them up for you rebecca so do i just i have not used my computer here before i just unplug and plug in okay thank you i'll get you projected up over here great okay good evening good evening members of the board superintendent boyd it's my a pleasure this evening to present a few teaching and learning updates for you um as you know we have made some changes uh to our i think i'm not mirroring do i drag you must be this way there we go so it's that side thank you so i'm here to talk a little bit about our school improvement plans as you
027know school improvement planning is the heart of our principal leadership of the work of our classrooms and so we've made a couple changes this year in the way we're sharing those with you we haven't made any changes to the actual plan this year so you received a document that had our one pagers on it had a list of links to all of the one pages i'm just going to walk you through one of those one pagers and that is marion elementary school and i'll just take you through that one and so what the principals have done for you because as you know the school improvement plans are meaty documents right they have a lot of information in them so they've chosen to highlight one high priority smart goal in this case it was students in
028special education and our language learners moving to different levels of their phonics domain and so you can read more about that but then as we go through you can see um you know their outcomes from the beginning of the year to the second so this is their mid-year status update they have that visually in another way this is iready data and so you can see that they're moving their students from tier one to tier two working on that and the date of this one isn't so important as just the format of the way that they've as you go through all of these one pagers you'll be able to see the principles highlighting that and then they're already thinking about their mid-year adjustments a school improvement plan is not a static plan it's not meant to
029sit on a shelf we're meant to be looking at the data and thinking about how we can make adjustments now in our classrooms in our school in the professional development we're providing and then looking toward the following year which takes me to our next thing that i want to talk about which is our um our plan for next year so next year um i believe that our um i we are reading fullens right now coherence as you know so fullen has this concept called simplexity which i love and as i thought about simplexity and our school improvement planning you take a difficult problem identify a small number of key factors that's a simple part fallen tells us then you make those factors gel under the reality of action with its pressure politics and personality that's
030the complex part so you get to simplexity so at its surface school improvement planning is pretty simple but when you add all of the outside factors that you have to gel together it gets very complicated so some of the things and we're starting to plan for next year already we're really beginning to work on that one of our key goals for next year is going to be very tight alignment to our strategic plan we've had literally thousands of people comment on our strategic plan it's such a robust document and i'm just so thrilled to be a tiny part of that work here in the district um so vertical alignment as we think about it from the board to the classroom so from that strategic plan to what is impacting kids and what kids or our
031students are experiencing in their classrooms and then our we're already beginning people are out in buildings doing careful and extensive review of data as we're thinking about next year and planning for next year so we have the youth truth which is a very robust tool we have healthy youth survey we have assessment data and other pieces which are going to really inform the work of those school improvement plans we're hoping uh in targeting that sips will be completed earlier in the year or next year so that in november our board will be receiving information about the plans uh and those plans will be shared with you at that time this week john's going to be rolling out at our operations meeting information for the principals about backwards planning from that date and then we'll have
032checkpoints in january march and june where i anticipate the board will be getting a one-pager similar to what you did today checking in on that strategic plan for each one of the schools we're also going to plan to divide all of the schools up because frankly 38 is way too many sit plans for any one two even four if we had our school supervisors as well as ruth doing our check-ins it's really too many so we're going to distribute that leadership to many people at the asc so that each one of us would have maybe two or three schools to really partner with around this work so that is how we anticipate that going next year i look forward to having a chance to take a deep look at those one pagers and addressing any
033questions you might have about those could you go back to the one pager for marion uh it's a question about the colors a question about the colors am i reading it correctly i think it's on page one that the the graphs of uh that looks like mtss sort of um is what does tier one mean what does tier three mean uh on this graph it is essentially the same work as mtss so tier one are the students you know who are getting what they need to be uh at proficiency um in our you know just through our regular curriculum our regular instruction tier two needs some additional support and then tier three need support beyond that and this is data from the last i ready the fall okay fall and winter fall left winter on
034the right and then do keep in mind that these are our language learners and our special education students so this doesn't rep you know they developed a goal specifically around closing gaps with those students and elevating those students's proficiency understood does the graph as we're looking at it now resembled previous years or is it uh harder for kids you know i don't know the answer to that having not had a chance to look at the sip data longitudinally but i'd be happy to get back to you with an answer for that appreciate it can we go back to that other page that we were just that we came from i think when those simple um those simple pieces is this the simple part i think as this rolls out i'll be very curious as to
035what those key factors look like um i know it's very easy to point at test scores but test chords are as we know that it's only a very small fraction of what really um identifies what the issues are and there's multiple things that come into play and so i think it's really important for us to know what those key factors are so that we can really understand what it is because every school is unique every student is unique and so understanding it in a more comprehensive way i think will be helpful to us and just so you know victoria we are in the process of now that we've completed the first part of the strategic planning process with our mission and vision and some key actions and outcomes and some beliefs now it's time for
036us to put kind of the meat on the bones and that means developing uh you know uh deciding on what those key metrics are so that we can monitor those over time build some routines around them and so that our outcomes can improve and we can have confidence that we can improve and what i appreciate about what um rebecca has outlined here is is both the um the support and accountability built in the routines and the checkpoints and then there also be an alignment to the strategic plan and to use a very tired analogy we're sort of building it as we're flying it because we just completed the strategic plan um but we're really going to work hard over the next few months to to to help the principals build the alignment to the strategic
037plan through the school improvement planning process with some uh accountability some checkpoints and support great thank you what strikes me about the list of uh data sources that you're that you have up there uh is that including youth truth and so forth including ready it should be not impossible to find alignment with the operational expectations pieces for interpretation and indicators um and i believe you should advise us if like mike was doing a couple years ago if there's overlap or alignment or a misalignment that would work better if we reworded it but it'll have to be the board's work to reword it right and that's definitely a piece of the work is figuring out how that intersects with board policy and the board work um so that's part of the the mean on the bones
038that we're gonna have to put on this thing happy to support it well i definitely appreciate the fact that we're gonna have it earlier in the year and then we're gonna have checkpoints throughout the year so then we can keep monitoring it and you know whatever the data is that we decide you know as a team that we want to make sure that we're making significant improvements in that we can see it throughout the school year i miss the winter conversations i'm sorry the what i missed the sip conversations that we had for so many years and this looks like it could focus that as well yeah um i did want to find out i know this will be fleshed out in our strategic plan but right now i worry about kids now and [Music]
039are we going to be receiving some information regarding like our like what our interventions are ongoing right now we did summers pretty extensive summer school last summer you know i'm not expecting you to have answers for that today but i really would like to know what's going to happen with interventions for bringing kids back up to speed from when they were home and and the the lag and in their learning so i think i certainly think the teaching and learning department would be honored to be able to share maybe in a workshop the work that's been done certainly lots of it to support our students and our learners as we address you know the the challenges of the pandemic and how we're working very hard to overcome that so if we have time in a
040future workshop we'd be honored and pleased to be able to showcase and shed light on that work thank you thank you very much thank you all right next on the agenda is our equity and inclusion update clarissa hightower's gonna present for us this evening hi clarissa good evening i don't need that um good evening members of the board community members i'm going to give our update on our equity and inclusion work since we last met i would be remiss and it would be disingenuous of me not to mention a large part of the work that myself and jamila have been doing over the past couple of weeks is making sure that our staff and specifically talking about our staff that was affected by the cuts and their colleagues keep their morale up um namely because
041a lot of the work that we are engaging in as a transition into what uh equity work will look like on next year involves them having conversations about work that they won't be included in and so it is it is a time for us to be thinking about how we can make sure that there are supports and resources in place for schools in the absence of three of our equity advancement specialists and the way we have been doing that is by focusing on three things the first thing is re-looking at our culturally responsive practices roadmap the original version of that was a plan in which included the supports that we have now and so we're looking at what that will look like in our schools as we proceed forward to make sure that our culturally
042responsive practices the work that has been put in thus far remains and continues to grow and expand because as we know our equity work is not separate from what happens in our classrooms it is an enhancement and it can be embedded and will be embedded in in our content so that our students can move from dependent learners to independent learners we are also creating guidance around our school's equity teams each of our schools have equity teams at their sites we're making sure that they have on-demand resources and guidance for making sure that those teams have a guide for how to proceed throughout the rest of the year um without the specialist guiding them so they'd have a a book right or some canvas modules to be able to help them do that the third is
043finishing up the proposed metrics for the key performance indicators for our equity efforts moving forward we do have quite a bit of data some lagging right some lagging indicators and some leading and we have some suggestions for which of those we'd like to utilize in helping to monitor the work of our strategic plan as well as what's happening in our buildings finally even though like i said it has been a bit of work to make sure that we keep morale up you all have and i say you all because these staff members are still with us they are quite resilient and they're still doing beautiful work and one of those things is making sure our teachers have resources for the month of may which is asian american native hawaiian pacific islander month so we did
044we were able to push out resources around that i am going to share a little bit information with you about our wonderful asian american native hawaiian pacific islander community as we celebrate their heritage this month i'd like for the board and community to know that we have about 1300 students and families represented in our asian american community including but not limited to our vietnamese indian afghani korean japanese and chinese students and families for our native hawaiian pacific islander community we have about 600 students and families represented in our district and they encompass a wide range of cultural groups including but not limited to as well are micronesia polynesia tukey's native hawaiians samoan just to name a few the way in which you will see some of our asian american and native hawaiian communities celebrated and
045our schools is going to range what i can share with you that has happened thus far that would be happening pretty soon at illahi elementary they had an all-school assembly with a performance from portland taiko which is a japanese drumming company and the students really enjoyed experiencing the japanese culture through music at cascade middle school the pacific islander club has been making uh kukihu i hope i said that right kuku nut lays and they are teaching each other how to introduce themselves in their respective pacific islander languages and they'll be having a celebration at their school on monday of next week we also have some amazing asian and native hawaiian pacific islander staff who have dedicated their lives to serving our students and families and what we're going to be doing is throughout the month
046we'll be sharing some short videos of their narratives via video and we encourage them to share those narratives with students and the the the goal behind that is to provide our students with multiple perspectives um and bring us all closer in our humanity and so i encourage everyone to join us to celebrate asian american asian american native hawaiian pacific islander month during the month of may that is the extent of the equity update for this evening do you have any questions i don't know that i have a question but i have a comment um clarissa you have really been a light in this work and i'm so impressed with what you guys have been able to do and i'm broken over the change that has to come because we're in conflict with our contracts and
047and you know and we've lost student you know we've lost students and i'm hoping they come back at some point but i can assure you and you and i've talked about this this board stands behind our equity work 100 percent this is not going to we are not going to let it stall we are going to keep moving forward because you know as far as i'm concerned there is no hate allowed in this district and if we don't take a stand about it and and stop the meanness the unkind activities the words that hurt you know all of those things because equity is encompasses every child in our district and this equity work helps every child in our district and i don't care what the political bs is in our district it's about everybody being
048treated with respect and kindness so that every child comes in here and feels safe so i want you to know that you still have our commitment the commitment we've had and this is a pretty big bump in the road but the intention is there and the the truth about it is still going to be moved forward by this board and i appreciate everything you've done and i understand that this whole situation has been really hard on you and i'm sorry it's a hard break for me too uh when we wrote our resolution two years ago was it two years ago already we meant it we still mean it uh my since learning about this cut my my head has been kind of just thinking in the background about now how do we maintain this and
049so i'm really looking forward to the plan that you're talking about um and hoping that the people that had to be let go are all right um it's a heartbreak it's it's let's oh let's not uh pretend it isn't our district will miss them structurally and personally and i'm sorry that i'm sorry it happened this way so i share that and everything else that victoria said was so eloquent and perfect that i can't rephrase it yeah i think the difficult thing is when you when you really are building up a program and things are you know and we're heading in the right direction and then it feels like it well it is a step backwards and but you know we're going to come through it on the other side and i appreciate that the work
050that you continue to do with your team during these hard times because i know it's difficult junior i think jacqueline had to step away but i think we're good i can't hear him i can hear you guys um [Music] it's just it's really difficult to make comments this way so i just thank you for everything that you guys have done um and i i look forward to continuing the work that we're doing and and moving forward thanks jenny all right thank you okay thank you thanks clarissa thank you [Applause] all right next on the agenda is informational item we have some curriculum to take a look at this evening these are all first readings so the first one is essential health 9th through 12th and this is going to be presented by kim miller come
051on up kim hello thank you for having me here this evening uh last time when i was here there was a question on the board about using this curriculum on our online program and so went back and looked at that and our online credit recovery program is a very intense very shortened program that this could certainly be used as an alternate source or an enhancement however this is really we're aiming for this to be our classroom book to be our spanish book in spanish health so to answer that question so do you have other questions for me does the board have any other questions since the last time since we did this in a workshop this is the good heart wilcox um yes sir look i i just want uh i guess reiterate the the
052notice that this does not contain a comprehensive sex ed curriculum we're addressing that elsewhere that is correct just to affirm that as we go into it thank you i don't have any other questions thank you all right since this is informational item we will entertain questions from the audience on for this essential health 9th through 12th yeah maybe stay up here kim in case there's any questions thank you are you presenting on the next three two oh you're not okay all right seeing none all right thank you thank you thanks for clarifying that question for us too all right then next up is crystal wolf julius crystal is this our first reading we don't have to vote to oh these are first readings yeah i suppose we should take a motion for essential health a
053motion to move essential health nine through twelve is presented to the second reading second okay uh it's been uh moved and seconded all in favor say aye hi hi hi ginny sorry hi did you not hear me yeah thank you thank you i think jacqueline had to step away yes um okay so next up ap biology we'll start with that we've done this in our workshop this is our first reading yes yeah yep thank you for having me um it's been a while since i've seen you and a lot's happened since then but um ap biology um is a new textbook that we are looking at we had campbell in the past but teachers felt that this textbook really addressed the needs of all of our learners and would support students who may not think
054of themselves as ap ready and being able to achieve ap biology standards are there any questions about ap biology um i'm really happy to see this and you know as we know if a student takes even one ap class um their chances of graduating yes in fact they don't even need to pass the test necessarily to gain that let's just they do pass the test that's an even bigger advantage so i'm i'm a big believer in ap um it's it does show that there is and you know there i've been on the board long enough to see an evolution of ap and years ago we had a very small number of students that took ap classes they were pretty much focused in one high school and i got to give credit to joan skelton who
055was a former colleague of mine on the board um and the push to bring one ap to every high school and to expand the offerings and to really encourage students to find that subject that they can embrace and move forward and and have that experience which we know is good and now i don't even know how many kids we've got in ap now but it's a lot yeah and they're sitting for their exams this week so yeah and so i feel really good about the fact that we have kids taking these higher level classes passing that test helping them um with their future um whether it's going on to college or other endeavors so i thank you for bringing us you know the new and improved textbook um and i i just um celebrate the
056fact that we've stayed committed all these years to just keep moving ap more and more um out to as many kids as we possibly can so thank you for that absolutely rob any questions it's it's more of a comment uh thinking about how this offering and and the idea of introducing an ap uh kind of pedagogy to students who don't think of themselves as college bound um is that there is a law about right now about requiring that someone be automatically enrolled in certain subjects and might end up in an ap section without having you know cognated through whether or not they want that or their family wants that uh ap classes come with some extra fees that are kind of soft not from the schools but an expectation to take the test we have
057limited opportunities and an expectation to purchase supplemental materials on your own is on my mind um i am really glad that there's a broad array of opportunities to get college credit running start college in the high school and the district just participating in the mall but it's that law that automatically enrolls that uh actually my son ran into and found himself um changing classes after the fall began because of his interests and he's doing fine he's getting college credit through cascadia but as we get into that tracking it'll be important for our counselors to know them and to help them with the scheduling uh otherwise we end up in this automatic thing so that's kind of tangential to the curriculum adoption but it's the thing i've been thinking about for a long time about college
058track yeah the things though that i think is interesting i think it's a misnomer to think that because somebody takes an ap class that they're automatically going to go to college because having those higher level um that higher level knowledge and depending on the subject matter um anybody can benefit from i mean so i i always tell a student who's asked me if i sh should i take ap or take what interests you and go at it the highest level you possibly can because your interest is going to guide you through that and and help you be successful um and so helping kids understand what their likes and dislikes are i agree with you rob having real good knowledge of who our kids are it makes me excited for kids to be able to have
059access to these classes no matter what their future holds right now i could fall back on my biology because i have a robin nesting in my window with babies and lots of questions right okay any other questions or comments from the board since this is a first reading we'll entertain questions from the audience on ap biology all right scene none then we will go ahead and move oh we need to take a vote to move it to a second reading oh i moved to advances to a second reading second moved and seconded all in favor say aye aye aye aye thanks jenny okay all right so next we'll go on to ap physics one and two algebra based yes um so uh inward board workshop i expressed the need for a new textbook here that
060serves both of our ap physics courses one which is algebra based and one which is calculus base and so that is really what the review team was looking at and so this this first one here is ap physics one and two two separate courses more students take ap physics one than ap physics two and then the book there is by night i think rob you had a question last time about the pearson plus app which is an app that students could download on their personal devices should they choose to yeah i wonder if they're going to be marketed to yeah so there's no additional cost to it and as far as i can tell we need to dig into it further but the marketing isn't there it's something that is in the k-12 bucket and
061so there's some really specific parameters around what's allowable in that bucket because they understand that it is school children there and so you would ask about the additional costs there's definitely included in our digital license and then the marketing is is not targeted to them it would meet our our qualifications for um so me going in as a citizen or as some random person to pearson looking at this um sees a different thing than someone going in through canvas so uh the students one more time if you have a student login you don't see the ads right so there's a student login and it's that it's a different platform than the marketing platform that you would have seen from the public side of the web page yeah okay thank you makes sense yeah it does
062right just good gotta watch out for that yep it's like when you pay for an app right and you don't have to save the ads all right any other questions or comments from the board questions or comments from the audience for ap physics one and two algebra based yes sir can you come up to the podium so we can hear you just be uh my name is don steinke my retired physics teacher taught ap physics and i just caution you on all these specialty classes what if only 18 people sign up and your building is staffed at so many students per teacher and so if there's only 18 in this class and only 18 in that other type of specialty class and only 18 in that one that means some other teacher has to have
06335 and 40. and that that happened that forwards a lot and i just want to caution you on that thank you thank you appreciate that it's nice to see you don yeah i know our building principals do really work hard on staffing to make sure that we can offer as many courses as possible but it does get tricky okay if there's no other questions or comments then we will entertain a motion to move to a second reading move we advance this uh curriculum to the second reading second we haven't second it all in favor say aye aye aye [Music] all right so then we'll move on to um sounds even harder ap it is harder ap physics with calculus it is probably not classes i i'm just be honest i would probably not enroll in
064these [Laughter] yeah so this is this book is going to be um with the math level at a calculus level and it is by the same author but again the the concepts match the ap course district description for ap physics with calculus all right any questions or comments from the board this is the one we got to look at last time yeah and i think there's copies of all the books too on the table i really like the presentation in the book and the way that the data was organized or the the information it's always good to see a good textbook it is amazing to me how many that we do have a number of kids that work at this level it's exciting and i'm glad that we can offer that so that no child
065doesn't get their needs met and they can move forward is you know no limits that makes me feel good absolutely i i will maintain a stance that calculus makes physics easier and physics makes calculus worthwhile um so anybody interested in how stuff moves and studying that in order to be an engineer or a scientist the two go together i'm pleased to see that we're offering a course for that thanks rob geeking out a little bit yeah only one of us that god knows what it says because i'm gonna take your word for that one all right okay so um questions from the audience for ap physics with calculus alright cnn will entertain a motion i move that we advance ap physics with calculus to a second reading second uh moving segment all in favor say
066aye aye aye aye aye all right great and then the next one is uh inclusive comprehensive sexual health education are you doing this one as well crystal i've got all the things tonight yep all right my big girls were hanging with us um yeah so in board workshop um what we talked about was um you know we have our flash curriculum and we have that in the elementary and the middle school and when we initially adopted the curriculum we selected a certain selection of lessons and now looking at our equity policy it makes sense to make sure that we have all of those lessons accessible to teachers in the elementary and middle school curriculum again as you referenced earlier high school has adopted the flash curriculum as a supplemental resource to cover comprehensive sexual health
067at the high school level also ospi has come out with a great resource for implementation and so i'm utilizing that as a framework as we just really make sure that our sexual health is inclusive and it is comprehensive and it meets the needs of each of our students you know one of the things that i i've always appreciated and and it's been this way in our district forever and will continue to be that way i assume is that any because this can be a touchy subject as we know um but the curriculum is always open to review by parents absolutely and a parent always has the option to take to opt out for their student so i like that it has that parent choice piece also like that it is inclusive because we have a
068lot of different families and a lot of different kids and and so they need to see themselves in this curriculum and i also feel confident in this in the data that tells us that when you have a comprehensive plan for sexual health that the chance of a student making choices that might endanger them and and have bad consequences is lowered and that um we also help our kids know what are boundaries i really like that piece throughout the curriculum about and it's all you know and it being age appropriate is the the idea that you know no is no um if somebody does something that's not appropriate then you know teaching students how to identify that and to tell someone they trust i like the frank discussions about consequences to our actions and i like
069it that there's a wide variety of options for kids to be thinking about um because not everything works for every person and so um but again i really like that parental piece that i think is important to our families absolutely yeah it's the if i may the um necessity given the sensitivity of the subjects that we're adding to many families that we should be as open and as clear in that curriculum examination some of the some of the curriculum especially in the first few grades isn't it true that the first few grades is on the website for people to look at yeah so we have a public-facing website that kind of outlines what all the topics are what the lessons are so that parents can see that at any time and then of course i
070also have family engagement nights as well and then some of the curriculum has a copyright restriction that prevents you from public republishing it correct so the elementary lessons are freely available from the king county website and the middle school and high school is behind a paywall but we do make those accessible to parents here what do parents need to do today if they want to examine this yeah so they would just um contact the curriculum instruction secretary laurie davis and she can set up a time either to meet with me personally or for them to come and preview the material so my appointment at this point yes we had a family engagement night in march and we always have one in the fall as well so we're past that march date but i'm happy to
071loot parents in who might have missed it appreciate hearing that i think given i don't remember the bill number but the cse law that was worked on and the the attention that uh the legislature put into parent uh notification and parent opt-out is uh gonna the possibility is gonna arise that parents will agree with some of the curriculum but not agree with other parts and as difficult as that sounds it would be um [Music] i think it would be of comfort to the community as a whole if parents could see the order of the subjects and be able to opt out of pieces uh i don't know if that's that is part of our opt-out form yep okay so if it's lesson by lesson and we're clear about how to explain that and and and
072kind about inviting parents who have those concerns i think we can proceed all right thanks rob all right any other questions or comments from the board questions or comments from the audience yes sir come on up thank you gary wilson um i'm glad this came up tonight because i just emailed crystal today i know back last year i talked to the board about a another comprehensive sex ed curriculum called check the facts and it's down in california oh you know mainly there's 31 school districts down there where it's being used and it's a more factual and family-friendly curriculum than the current planned parenthood flash curriculum and you mentioned you know you've lost 4 000 students and i know part of that is attributable to essb 5395 the state mandating comprehensive sex ed i know parents
073are just like you know going to take my kids out at this point i think this would be a good compromise to look at this curriculum i have a a portion of it a sample and i also have a video from the writer and yeah i think you guys would do well to consider looking at this curriculum i know i brought it up like i said last year and you put me in touch with ryan the chair of the instructional committee and in talking with him he said well you know we look at it about every seven years and it sounded like you weren't going to look at it for a while but then a few weeks ago in one of your your previous session on this you mentioned that it was brought in in
0742016 so seven years that's 2023 so this would probably be the year you could look at other curriculum and consider you know maybe this would be a good choice for parents in your district to they could get more behind rather than you know because frankly a lot of parents are going to have issues with it i know i did i went i went to view the curriculum it was like two years ago i've still got a daughter she's in fifth grade now um but i viewed the curriculum and yeah i had trouble first off getting an appointment it was like october 15th and i was busy that night and the next time i could view it was march 15th so it was like two nights in the entire year at least that's the way it
075was two years ago but i did view it and i did have some concerns i've got a page right here that's actually from it so um anyway just if you'd consider and if you'd love to set up a meeting i can bring the sample i have and have you review it and review the video so thank you thank you follow-up question for you gary ospi has a formal review process of curriculum are they evaluated against their parameters do you know of check the facts has been reviewed by ospi um you know i don't i can contact the writer i know battleground was looking at it okay and you know i think i'll find out okay thank you thank you but i know the you can it does there is an opening for school boards to
076select their own there is yes but i was wondering if it has met the state criteria if ospi has taken a look at it that would be interesting to have thank you thanks crystal it does that curriculum wasn't brought to your attention during this development process was it i got an email from him i think like 4 30 this afternoon so this afternoon but yeah we're here at first reading and so yeah uh thank you and again we didn't really go through a full adoption cycle more just an analysis of the new law with what we currently had and looking for the holes there so we haven't gone through a cycle of do we want something completely new and different okay all right other was there other questions from the audience yes sir mr phil
077chronology um do the parents know that a corporation planned parenthood is behind the flash curriculum it's king county they queen county made this curriculum okay all right okay it's not involved with any corporation okay okay thank you thank you for your question that the flash correct just to repeat the the answer that i had there um flash was created by king county in support of seattle public schools and it's a public health initiative that originally created the curriculum so it's king county public health thank you all right um so if there's no other questions then the we'll entertain a motion to move this for the second reading i know that we advance the proposed additions and changes to the sexual health education curriculum to a second reading second moving second at all in favor say
078aye aye great thank you so much crystal we appreciate it thank you all right next on the agenda is comments by the school board i did i just have one i guess i can go real fast but take me a minute next tuesday is the uh washington state school directors association regional meeting it looks like laurie got us all signed up so um it's kind of excited for it because it'll be my first one in person that i get to lead for region six we're looking thank you for all signing up and joining me i was able to attend the um i guess it's the southside choral festival uh with the elementary kids and the whole thing and uh i got the opportunity to speak about the quality of music education and a little bit
079in terms of the levy and the richness of the programs there i really enjoyed the performances that were given there it's come such a long way since i was involved in the music programs and and uh really warmed my heart to hear the children sing and to be back in those concert venues doing that i also had an opportunity on a spur of the moment to [Music] attend shahelah middle school's drama performance of winnie the pooh sixth through eighth graders performing two of a million stories uh it was delightfully peaceful and uh the care and attention that the teachers there put into helping those kids perform really showed they really shined i had the legislative committee meeting and there were a couple of positions that if we're getting if we have that on our workshop
080that i could present to you just for first impressions so that i'm carrying the right advocacy for our director area and i'm looking forward to kelso a lot of the same reasons as the as the choir concerts i think so okay um i did the one at the choir concert over it um that was at evergreen and i took my mom who just turned 84. she loved it and it was so exciting to see the kids they were so happy engaged in awe the old the youngers were in all the olders and how they're so good and and but they were so into it and that's what were you know school should be exciting and fun and and having all the families represented there um supporting their students it was it was happy it reminded
081me of the old days before before covid um so yeah that was super fun and i know rob and i are going to be attending the culture parade which we've done for years and years so it's gonna we're back we're gonna be doing that and it'll be your first time john it's super fun i'm really looking forward to seeing all these students who are representing their heritage and we'll see countries represented from all over the world and it'll be super fun i'm i'm it's always one of my favorite activities to do every year so i've missed it a lot um i personally want to thank um everyone that came together for the levy um i'm gonna also take some responsibility for the fact that the first round didn't go the way we wanted um distractions
082did not have us keeping our eye on the ball about what kind of effort needed to go out but everybody came together as john was saying you know we had staff we had community it really did represent um our our community it's always sad when we don't get as many people who you know voting but that way in every election so um but it was surprising to me how many people when we were outdoor belling said i didn't even know about the first one so there was a lot of people that are supportive of schools that just didn't know there was an election so um so it was encouraging and it was a turnaround and it it really was amazing the work that was done and and the effort that was made and the just
083the chain because i don't think it people you've been hearing about it from all over the state you don't usually see turnarounds like that in in a school election so it tells you that this community really does support our schools i've already talked about the heartache over the things the staff cuts and the equity work and i think that's pretty much everything that i want to talk about at this point i've already kind of covered my i could interject because i got the numbers from the secretary of state's uh thing and was able to correlate that with uh the list of voters that i uh purchased as part of the campaign just out of my own funds we gained 5158 voters by my count which is a comparison to the voter lists from february um
084that's immense and the change in yes votes versus no votes was larger than 51 58 so i think yeah everybody should bet themselves on the back i'm so grateful for the efforts that people made to get the word out yeah great thanks ginny did you want to add anything no i don't have anything tonight thank you thanks jenny all right so then we will go ahead and move on to future agenda items does the board have anything they want to add i think we got an idea earlier when we were getting a teaching and learning update to do a workshop around some of the things we're trying to do for to get our kids back on track i also would like i can't remember if i brought this up before but if i did i
085apologize um i really would like to um get us back into some of the things that we used to do as it pertains to meeting with other groups like we used to meet every year with the city council um we have some real discussions that need to be had about the east side and our kids and and so and i'll be happy to spearhead that if you want um and just other groups that what they do impacts what we do and vice versa so and then john can meet all the fun people but that would be something i'd like to see us kind of get back on the schedule now that we have nothing to do i uh i agree i'm thinking about as well just notification each month of every arts performance used to
086be standard practice covet took us took it away from us for so long and if it's not an addition of an overwhelming workload just knowing when the choir band orchestra drama performances are kind of in a month list would be really helpful i like going to the student shows and celebrating what they have to do i love those plays oh my gosh okay is it mountain view or union that's doing newsies i don't know one of them is doing news he's doing a musical this that'll be fun it's just great all right so did we get all that for the i think so okay all right so next on the agenda is citizen comments any citizens wishing to address the board about an item not on the meeting's agenda may do so during the designated
087time on the agenda for citizen comments as long as the comments are not personnel related or about an individual employee or student and are not legal in nature each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board comments are to 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 if there's more than one speaker on the same topic the board president may set a specific time limit on how much testimony the board will hear on that particular topic so this evening we have three folks that signed up virtually and so we're going to hear from them first okay so jasmine is not going to speak this evening okay so uh then we will move to
088um essence brown epperly his essence she's not on there yet okay um is it zanaya briggs did i say that correctly and i'm gonna apologize in advance if i say anybody's name incorrectly okay well maybe they'll get back on and we can circle back if they do join us um so we have several folks in the audience in person that would like to speak tonight the first one is shannon shamba is that right i got it all right come on up shannon good evening i'm shannon shambaugh this is my 19th year in eps i've been happy here my whole career and i'm currently an equity advancement specialist the last time i attended the school board in person um was september 28 2021 and at that meeting our newly formed equity department listened to executive director
089clarissa hightower present a vision of equity and culturally responsive instruction so powerful that it brought me to tears in the room to a standing ovation in fact some community members who had come to speak against our equity focus complimented clarissa on her presentation and chose not to make their comments she changed their minds my team felt an overwhelming sense of pride to be doing this important work alongside her we were taking steps forward for our most vulnerable students and for the first time i allowed myself to really believe that the district was committed to making progress towards racial equity unfortunately i'm speaking tonight because despite concerning data um showing racial inequities in eps and all of clarissa's hard work three-fourths of our equity specialists have been cut two of whom are people of color as
090a white woman in this position it's unacceptable for me to be benefiting again from a system that's disadvantaging my colleagues of color our department requires the multiple perspectives and talents of my teammates to effectively serve 38 schools racial equity wasn't mentioned during my first 17 years in the district five years ago when i asked about the existence of a racial achievement gap i was told we don't have that problem because we're not an urban school district the recent equity audit revealed that we did indeed have a concerning achievement gap in addition nearly half of eps students are students of color and more than 90 of their teachers and administrators are white the equity audits first 33 pages are dedicated to hiring and retaining staff of color and the affirmative action plan set a goal to
091increase workforce diversity by two to four percent by 2025. how does reducing staff of color help us reach that goal institutional racism is designed as is defined as the policies practices and programs that intentionally or unintentionally perpetuate dominant white racial presence positioning and power systemic racism will continue unless it's actively interrupted in total six doses were cut from the district office five of them serve our most vulnerable students cutting these crucial positions is protecting the status quo and perpetuating systemic racism in eps without people who are dedicated to centering equity how will we ever shift our system in june 2020 the board adopted resolution 6365 committing to dismantle systemic uh racism in our schools um with the time limit that i have left um i guess i have a couple of questions but i believe
092that we have a moral obligation to do something when we see something is not right whose decision was it to cut our department down to one white lady and was the equity lens applied in that decision how was it applied what message does this send to our staff and our community how is this action in alignment with your written values and beliefs about equity members of the board will you choose to do what's necessary to build an equitable system where all students succeed if so please find a way to resource my department with skilled equity specialists who or consider removing the promises from your board policies because words are meaningless without actions [Applause] next stop [Applause] next up is lisa mckee lisa mckee are you in the audience this evening is she online okay all
093right then we'll move on to vanessa lawrence and her daughter michaela are you here this evening oh good come on up hi there how are you hi i'm vanessa and i'm juanesa lawrence and i'm a volunteer mother at covington middle school and i'm over the black student union there and i work alongside with charlotte latte the equity events um specialty and this is my daughter michaela hold on one second is her microphone okay i wanna make sure we can hear you one time oh okay did you want me to start over it's okay it's okay yes it's okay to continue okay this is my daughter michaela hi michaela my name is mckayla lawrence please save the black student union is a safe place for me to go to and talk about the negative interactions i
094face at school if you cut the black student you you are sending a powerful message that you don't care and we the students don't matter please save the black student union and show us you care and we matter thank you thank you we appreciate you being here this evening [Applause] all right next next up is kyle helm hi kyle all right i taught kindergarten today and i'm not a kindergarten teacher so forgive me if i stumble over my words members of the board of directors thank you for this opportunity to speak to you tonight my name is kyle instructional coach at burton elementary affinity group co-facilitator and eea member i'm here to share my perspective on proposed cuts resulting from decreased enrollment we can situate our work including the process of cutting staff and the
095values inherent in a just education system which in evergreen's mission centers on improving the educational experience for students staff and community members with unearned disadvantage and decreasing systemic harm systems are made up of and depend on people therefore our eps system can only become the place of educational empowerment and aspirational attainment outlined in our strategic plan and vision with people who believe in this future and have the power to make itself that's why our teachers on special assignment several of whom will be cut are so important in schools tosas guide the work of educating children this year burton's equity committee embarked on an investigation with weekly support from an equity advancement specialist to identify explain and solve predictability and outcomes for economically disadvantaged students members of the team shared that this experience shifted their practices
096tosas are a gateway to supporting affirming and growing every student tosas uplift the voices of students staff and community members too with guidance from an equity advancement specialist lgbtq plus affinity group members surfaced barriers to safety existing authentically and longevity we also provided resources to our members and shared their feedback with this board tosas are a through line for marginalized voices to be heard and fostering safe caring and welcoming environments at the district level ptosis creates systemic change for traditionally underserved children this year the excel tosa formed a multi-disciplinary team that reviewed how we identify potential and determine eligibility for highly capable services this work allowed burton to offer these services to multilingual learners who were in the past denied tosas are uniquely positioned to initiate and sustain system-wide change this work requires all our
097ptosis and it benefits from their diversity by accepting these cuts we accept losing the perspectives knowledge and experience of staff of color queer staff women staff and staff with specialized expertise we accept losing the very people we need to achieve an eps where all students can pursue without barriers academic and social emotional excellence so that they can create the future they envision for themselves we can choose a different path so that the vision becomes our reality by reviewing and revising the proposed cuts retain our ptosis thank you for your time today and for your service to this community thank you john you know if we have that speaker's written speech in written form as he sent it to us okay it'd be nice to have that written form all right next up is adam aguilera
098hi adam hello good evening school board my name is adam aguilera i'm a middle school teacher here in the school district i want to thank the school board for passing equity policies and investing in this school year when it comes to staffing equity and quarantine monitors and i would like to address what we're looking at for next year in the proposed cuts following with the staffing cuts of over 100 educators which is not okay these are the very same folks that we asked to door knock phone bank and vote for this replacement levy and now this school district is telling them that they no longer have a job these are the same folks who keep our class sizes smaller to provide one-on-one teaching to students and to keep community spread of covet lower when there
099are less students in these crowded classrooms there's no pipeline waiting to replace these educators when we do that last minute hiring every year at the start of the school year as a member of the professional educator standards board i recognize that there is an educator shortage across washington state we need to keep these folks that we have now who are experienced already with our students and our schools and are still willing to do this tough job next year and in specifics to our cuts to our equity specialists cutting the dei department's certificated staffing by 75 percent is the embodiment of inequity and against board policies on equity what other department is being cut by that percentage i need my equity specialist who services our middle schools she has observed my classrooms to provide instructional support
100this year she's provided me community circle curriculum for mass mandate changes and she attends the district affinity groups that i co-facilitate the remaining equity specialists will not have the capacity to provide my students and myself that individualized attention and i thought she spoke very eloquently tonight to that i find it disrespectful to clarissa hightower and jamila singleton to take away their team after only one year of investment how we continue to attract and retain highly qualified qualified educators of color like them and the ones being rift when the district shows the public they are backsliding on their commitment to equity i want to express concern to the community that vancouver children who live on the east side will only have one equity specialist next year when the vancouver school district has invested in 10. that
101is not equitable and when it comes to our core our quarantine monitors being cut um that is overwhelming to our dean of students and our security staff who are overwhelmed with testing quarantine and contact tracing students before they were hired uh we need them to continue because right now we're seeing skyrocketing cases in our schools among students and staff and this pandemic comes in waves throughout the school year and we need to make sure that we have the appropriate staffing on all levels to keep our students and staff safe during the school year thank you adam all right next is christine chambers hi christine how are you i too will be speaking on the equity advancement specialist and particularly the black student union program and i just want to speak from a personal note on
102some points i've done some research and i've done some studying on the suicidal rates in our african-american students and i found out that between the ages of 5 and that the african-american students are leading in suicide rates in females and then in ages from 15 to in the last year for black males it has spiked 50 percent and that is to show that there is a need there is a need for them to have mental health help there is a need in the education system for them to have supporters and people to advocate for them because if they don't have them when they spend almost eight to ten hours at school who do they have their parents are at work they're at school with the teachers and the students and so how are they getting
103the support that they need when the support is being taken from up under them that is not fair to our students that is not fair to the parents who are allowing the students to go to the schools and to put their lives in your hands the educators and to say that you're going to pull that rug from up under them when you have given them the opportunity to say hey we're going to help you we're going to be on your team we're going to support you and then to say a year later we're going to rip that rug from up under you and say you know what we're not going to help you anymore that your trauma that what you go through does not matter that is cruel and yet that should be inhumane as
104a human being to not get the support that you need as a child as an adult it's hard to deal with racial issues and to get up every day and fight to live but we're expecting children to do that who are not even mentally developed enough to even understand that so i hope that this message from everybody in here who has spoke has really put your hearts and i hope that you really understand the fight that we are doing in this community and i hope that you stand behind us and stand with us and not against us thank you right next to speak this evening is uh casa brown is that casa is that right no casey casey asia okay come on up i can blame my mom for that daughter's here for moral support
105i'm kasia brown and i'm a teacher in evergreen and a parent and i am here to speak to the continued lack of support for staff and the misguided use of funds by those in leadership positions evergreen staff rallied and got the second levy passed but with enrollment declines we are still facing huge staffing cuts once again everett green leadership is excluding their staff from discussions about how to solve the problems instead of learning from the past especially the last two years our leaders continue to focus on the only solution they seem to know cut staff and pile the work onto the ones who are left knowing full well that the work cannot and will not get done i have personally asked to reduce my contract my first request was in august of 2021 i was
106denied with the stated reason being that i missed the march deadline a ridiculous explanation at best considering the global situation and it was forced into a process of using the authority of the medical profession to speak for me and my needs i applied for another reduction in fte this spring and was again denied again being told that my own voice was not enough that only a if a doctor could give me medical reach reason that i could reduce my workload i do not need a doctor to tell me that it is better for my health to have the time to take care of myself and my children i do not need a doctor to tell me that it is better for my health to share the burden of trauma that is overwhelming our children after
107the past two years with another qualified professional i do not need a doctor to tell me that self-care is essential when providing care for others i am a veteran teacher i know these things i know that job sharing is an equity issue and we are planning to gut our equity department i know that we have paid out over a half a million dollars to simply be done with former two different former superintendents and i know that this time my request for fte reduction was denied because the district doesn't want to pay for benefits for two employees for one job so my question to the board is twofold and is this how many jobs could be saved if the district offered job sharing and what do you actually value your staff students and their well-being or
108the bottom line thank you for listening thank you all right next up next up is charlotte larty hi charlotte i'm charlotte latte i'm one of the equity specialists that has been cut this is about as racist as it gets i think like what we're all feeling in this room it's terrible and no one's saying it so i'm going to say it this is racist we have the policies we have affirmative action plans we've been moving on this path you've hired black women and put them in charge of creating a plan um and there's just no excuse we don't support schools classrooms we support the entire district the school improvement plans i'm not sure that y'all even know what a school improvement plan is every school has one every school is working on an equity priority
109goal and we support provide direct support so i think there's you know not only is this racist there's a misunderstanding about what we do and the impact that we have on this community and that's a problem we can fix i think it's really important that when you put policies in place you have a budget that is aligned to them and we could all agree that like words don't change behavior people change people's behavior we have all the policies in the world um and that's not going to change our systems i've walked into a middle school and and ran into a grandmother coming out with her grandson who had been attacked and told to change the color of his skin he was bleeding through his bandages and jamila and i just looked at this boy and
110his had to tell him that we were sorry that we knew he didn't deserve this that he was just trying to go to school that this was wrong and this was after weeks of escalated targeted racism that resulted in a physical attack that will leave scars so not only is this just like so terrible but it's also making evergreen public schools a liability if you do not invest in the people that are going to work with the adults to change the culture of the climate it's not going to happen this district is one n-word away from getting sued kids and chemists are called monkeys the n-word kids in evergreen are called monkeys too i've heard the ev the n word from schools and evergreen more than i have ever heard in my life i'm an
111adult and like i don't work in the schools directly i just support students in the schools and i have to hear that and and i keep coming to work because we're in this work together like how dare you suggest from the association to find you overturn the rocks i don't i appreciate that rhetoric i don't appreciate the board are you sure these tar these cuts were not targeted they were necessary i don't appreciate that don't appreciate the superintendent saying that this is gut wrenching so we've got three white men talking about how terrible this decision is that's racist and i'm just gonna say it out there is your responsibility to raise your level of consciousness so that it doesn't this doesn't have to be brought to your attention in such a public way but at
112the same time maybe that's necessary um so i i did receive my non-renewal i do not accept it but i will accept an invitation to restore the harm it has caused me because i'm willing to forgive this and recognize that this is a mistake that we have to be partners that i have assets to bring and i expect you to see that and to honor that in history segregation started in where do you think the black teachers went they didn't just abandon their students they were pushed out i have been pushed out of three different school districts i will not allow you to push me out of evergreen because i'm invested to this community and this needs to be restored this was harmful our renewals were harmful bring in the naacp bring in lulac bring
113in pica bring in the attorney general because evergreen's got a problem and this needs to be fixed we all need to be invested in healing this community and moving this work forward i appreciate it i'm off to dc i'm also an nea state director one of six in washington state i am lobbying in dc i have a meeting with candy herrera butler who is our representative to advocate for equity so you're welcome [Applause] all right our next speaker is carissa kirsty chris are you here with us oh there you are hi good evening thank you for the opportunity for me to speak on behalf of the equity department my name is carissa kersey and i am one of the three equity specialists that is being cut back in february i coached and supported one of
114our instructional coaches in gathering student experiences at a school here in evergreen we asked students to share their experience about a time in school when they felt unsafe and disrespected this information was then presented to staff as a tool for self-reflection and growth during a school-wide pd i would like to share with you a few of the responses from our students of color here in our district these experience are difficult to hear and may be triggering for some folks because they contain races and derogatory language and behavior i was a freshman in class and another student didn't want to participate and refused to dress down and the teacher called him the n-word how does that make you feel the student was asked it makes me feel uncomfortable and i didn't think a teacher would say
115something like that can you tell me a little bit more about how that affected you emotionally and how you felt after that in the classroom i felt humiliated i was one of the only black students in that class here's another story that was collected there's a problem with racism and homophobia in this school like two days ago i was in the cafeteria during lunch and there was a group of kids they looked like upperclassmen and they were making fun of hispanics and mexicans and they pointed at me and my friend group because we are all hispanic and they said something about going back to mexico and how we're all border hoppers and all of that and that happens like a lot actually like almost weekly there's a group of these boys and they always say
116something racist and it is online too they do it online how does that make you feel it's unsafe it's an unsafe feeling because you know i grew up like learning how some people are really mean to you because of your skin color and hearing on the news what happens to people of color is really scary to be honest because i've gotten threatened before by one of those upperclassmen and ever since i don't feel safe here and it's a scary feeling these are not the only stories in our district many students reported similar experiences unfortunately as adults in this system that are working to support our students our most vulnerable and marginalized populations we need to do better we have to do better we have an obligation to do better when presented with the student experiences
117we ask staff to reflect on what their hopes are moving forward in their feedback here are some of the direct quotes that we heard i hope more of our pd times dedicated to listening to students i want to create a unit on systemic racism and media i want to learn more strategies to support all of my students i will check in more with students to see how they are feeling i'll learn more about microaggressions and how those affect students this is how change is made this right here we transform our systems to meet the needs of the students we create the opportunities to listen deeply and then we use that information to reflect on our practice in service of students because we don't know what we cannot see we must first listen each of us
118on the district equity team is supporting this type of transformative work and all school levels that's our jobs we support our schools in identifying systemic barriers root causes and inequitable practices in service of our students in making such drastic cuts to our department i'm deeply concerned about the loss this will mean for our most vulnerable populations i call on the board to demonstrate their commitment to equity by reconsidering this decision thank you for your time good evening thank you carissa all right our next our next speaker is bailey cunningham hi there hi so we have uh three student speakers today is it okay if we have three minutes each or do we have to fit all three into the i think as you just lined up as one it'll be three minutes total okay um
119hi i'm bailey cunningham and i'm the president and founder of henrietta lacks health and bioscience high school environmental club we are here to advocate for fossil fuel emission reductions within our evergreen school district facilities and the transportation department our goal is to make evergreen the second school district in washington state to commit to carbon neutrality by the year 2040 by transitioning to electric buses fossil fuel free heat pump systems and fully electric appliances in 2019 the united states secretary general stated that we have less than 11 years before climate change becomes irreversible in 2022 that means we have less than eight years to drastically reduce our fossil fuel emissions to restructure the way our world operates from transportation to production to education eight years to restructure our mindsets for politicians and educational leaders to put
120our planet and the health of future generations over personal gain and tradition climate change and environmental issues aren't just something we can afford to detach ourselves from climate change does not only affect animals it destroys ecosystems and natural resources but has lethal effects on humans all over the world in our area hundreds of people have already died in deadly forest fires and sudden heat waves of last summer climate change destabilizes earth's atmosphere exacerbating natural resources natural disasters such as droughts flyers floods hurricanes etc that destroy lives forcing families to relocate and successfully affecting marginalized communities the evergreen public school board should not only act to do your part to save the planet but because you owe it to the children you are preparing for the future evergreen public schools should not only shape the future
121through education but is also your responsibility to protect our future a quality education is of little use in an unhabitable world this is your opportunity to build a better future to give us a chance for a habitable planet not only for evergreen students but for our children and for generations to come thank you [Applause] hello evergreen school district board of directors and superintendent oh sorry i am tyler smith a student from henry alex high school hilo and there is a rising issue that we also need to address climate change climate change is a slow but devastating disaster that will creep its way into affecting our lives more and more for example according to data from 2001 2011 and 2021 the average temperature during the years have dramatically increa have slowly increased making it warmer hotter
122summers and warmer springs and this was most evident during last june during the heat wave which temperatures rose from to around 110 to 120 degrees causing many lives to be lost during the event especially those of marginalized communities and while the top 100 companies produce over 71 percent of all global emissions we can still strive to make a change locally by setting goals for the evergreen school district to be carbon neutral by 20 20 40 along with replacing worn out diesel school buses with new electric ones if we set these goals and make these changes we can help our climate reduce emissions and make our planet better for future generations thank you for your time will you allow me to speak can i continue go ahead hello everyone my name is bella williams and i
123am a senior at henrietta lacks high school i'd first like to thank everyone for their time and for everyone who spoke earlier and for the privilege to be here and speak on an important topic the first bulleted point in the evergreen school district's declaration of beliefs document states we believe in a school system where no child is expendable every student without exception has the potential for growth improvement and success in life although these statements remain true for current students i wonder whether or not achieving these ideals after high school is possible i wonder whether or not success and improvement are even possible while living on a dying planet i wonder whether or not in 30 years there will be air clean enough to breathe whether or not my peers or my own children will ever
124know of a summer without wildfires or even know what a koala is but part of me knows the answer to all of these questions there seems to be no success for my generation without systemic change i urge you today to keep the evergreen school district promise that without exception every single past current and future student of evergreen public schools will have the opportunity of growth improvement and success in life starting with a healthy planet as you may know as of february of last year seattle public schools became the first district in the state to commit to transitioning to 100 renewable energy sources by 2040. we know we now know that lowering fossil fuel emissions within the school district is possible by transitioning to electric appliances carbon free heating and cooling systems changing light bulbs to
125leds and when shopping for new school buses opting for zero emission vehicles the question is no longer how or why we need to save the planet but when and i know what you all may be thinking that we are naive that we don't know what it takes to reduce emissions within just 18 years you can't just completely alter the infrastructure and budget of the entire district it's just not that simple but the climate crisis is an emergency and it needs to be handled like one we have solutions we just need you to enable action i can promise you that the small group of teenagers i came here with today will be incessant we will be annoying we will be dramatic and we will be whatever it takes for change to happen thank you all right
126thank you all right next up is margaret hunter hi margaret good evening thank you for giving me the time to speak my name is margaret hunter i am a visual arts teacher at covington middle school and a community member as well of eps i'm here to speak about the ell newcomers program as i have been teaching ell newcomer students for the past 15 years at covington i watch them come with no language english skills they can't read in english they can't write in english and often times they leave in months to return to their home schools because the fantastic program that we have at covington when i started learning psyop for those that you don't know the sheltered instruction observational protocols to help students with language that have high difficulties with english i was given
127what's called the ell experience my experience was with 15 co-workers that i trusted completely in one room student cll experiences walking into a building with a thousand or more other kids you don't know how to ask to find the bathroom even though you know what bathroom symbols look like you can find the bathrooms when you walk through the hallways but when you're in the classroom you're not quite sure how to ask to go to the restroom so although the facilities are available the supports to help you access the facility are absent as they think about the things that our newcomers will be missing out on with their program being dismantled i sat and talked with vice president of our union for a while about it we discussed how it is best practice to keep kids
128at their home schools and the data shows that but it doesn't say it's best practice to keep them there without supports so as i look at my time that's dwindling the kind of supports they get at covington are one person for their families to contact and communicate with as we string our aol kids out at all six different middle schools that support will be gone they will be communicating with multiple people if they get communication at all so when i heard you boyd say i personally will take over this working to get this program and these supports out to these schools my question and the question for the staff of the l newcomer secondaries is when it's obvious the decision was made because of finances sitting down at the table with the people that have
129built this program and made it a success for students should be happening not now not this summer but yesterday before the call was made that their program was going to be dismantled asking teachers to teach a workload at the school and then also support across the district is again like people have been talking about taking a job away and then asking it to be done by somebody that also now has a new one so what i would ask is for the supports to be actually supportive not lip service but those kids and those families have people at their schools that they can go to that are experts but someone will communicate with the teachers about the fact that this student may not be able to ask for the restroom they may not know how i
130know how communication is lost when these types of specialty programs are spread and i would hate for the thinness of this program to impact the students and families that need it the most thank you thanks margaret all right don stunkey hi don hello uh thank you everybody my name is don steinke i'm a retired science teacher taught 43 years mostly at camas high school in fort vancouver high school i'm basically here because i was invited by the students bailey cunningham from gila henrietta lacks school invited me to speak at their environmental science environmental club meeting about two or three weeks ago and because they were concerned about climate change and why did they invite me my team was the team that led the effort in the city council of vancouver to commit to a goal
131of reducing greenhouse gas emissions i asked them to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions 50 percent by 20 to match the state goals but they wanted to make it 80 percent to reduce the reduced emissions 80 percent by 2030 in the community-wide in the city of vancouver and i realize that could not happen if the evergreen school district and if this campus and the not the camas but the vancouver school district didn't also participated in that and so i'm here to ask you to put it on a future agenda item to set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions at least to match the state gold 50 below current levels by 2030. now i heard that seattle has done this and portland has also done this and why did portland do this because they realize that
132congress is never going to act because there are too many senators from coal and oil states to ever act joe manchin for example owns a coal mine he's not going to give up that and and and so we have to act at the local level and so uh i appeared before the school board five of them about five years ago when you're starting your building program and i urged you at the time i believe to install heat pumps in your new electric heat pumps instead of gas fossil fuel heating systems in your new schools and and i don't know what happened but i didn't have time to follow up on that because i was working on the oil terminal flight here in vancouver and i believe at the time i suggested that if you install
133fossil fuel heating systems you might regret it because the state's going to eventually impose a carbon tax or some sort of penalty on the pollution you create by burning natural gas in your schools and and that bill those bills got passed the climate commitment act is basically a cap and trade program like california has the clean fuels program is basically like another cap and trade program for vehicle fuels so it's going to cost you money now for mistakes you made in the past and so i'm going to send you my complete comments uh in an email but uh encourage you to set a goal and and then develop a plan i'm on the plan i'm on the committee for the city of vancouver to develop a plan there and but needs to happen everywhere at
134every level of government so uh thank you and we'll see you around thank you don [Applause] all right next is jonathan lawrence hi jonathan thank you for letting me speak my name is jonathan lawrence i have a daughter at covington middle school you met her name is michaela lawrence my other daughter spoke that was miss chambers and i'm here to support the equity program i really believe that it's a program that is needed for the district i'm a father i'm a member of this community um my daughter is the student at covington and when she comes and says dad i have a problem at school and we find out that it's a problem that's considered race racism and so we believe that this program will work my wife volunteers vanessa lawrence at the school my
135daughter is the student there and they work together at the school just for change and so i'm here really to ask them the board if if if you see how important this is look at us where we really believe that this program will work for this district for this community and we just really urge you to really reconsider the reconsider the shutting this program down so i i'm here really i'll volunteer whatever i could do to help keep this program going i'm willing to do that um so i'm just making myself available i don't have all the answers i know that you had to do cuts i i'm sorry it had to be at that at that program but i'm here really to help to to be a positive member of this community to really
136help whatever way i can so please reconsider on cutting this program thank you all right next speaker is tiffany rendo hey good try it's really hard uh good evening board members my name is tiffany riando and i'm the instructional coach at mountain view high school i'm also a member of the district equity advisory council and a co-leader of the white affinity group this is my fourth year working in evergreen school district in my 13th year as an educator i've never been more proud of this district than when last year our district chose to support our equity work by hiring equity advancement specialists bolstering the work of the inimitable clarissa hightower tonight i'd like to speak personally locally and immediately about the need for equity advancement specialists my building has great need for support from the
137district and our equity work our data in every facet of school tells us that our kids are not all our kids are being served academically we find that 80 of our latino students are not enrolling in our most rigorous course pathways that ap program you love so much that means there's a 30 disparity between our white students and our latino students enrolling in ap these students rank poorly for preparedness in college and careers the fix for that includes what our equity policy calls for the identification and removal of barriers that make outcomes predictable by race carissa who spoke earlier are a science specialist is instrumental in that work she's the only and primary contact to the high schools from the equity department that work that we have to do begins with listening to kids her
138help this year in designing learning experiences for teachers included helping us design empathy interviews that explored student experiences and microaggressions that she told you a little bit about through this work our staff heard from kids about how implicit bias and implied those standards set students up for exclusion both disciplinary and academic i believe when my staff knows better they're going to do better and the work of specialists is to help us uncover what we don't know and to tap into and bring forward the experiences of our most marginalized students without continued support from specialists my work's impossible i need a dedicated expert to bring forward resources training feedback and coaching and equity if i'm going to continue to move mbhs toward equitable outcomes for all students i need them this data could not be more
139clear our overwhelmingly white staff is not serving students of color our recent youth truth data reveals that all students identifying as people of color are proud of their schoolwork more than their white counterparts are they don't feel connected to teachers they don't feel seen as whole people by our white staff and they are less likely to feel that their teachers believe in them than their white counterparts nothing should be more disturbing than this data nothing should be higher priority than the removal of these barriers we've made gains since i first got here but we've only just begun i can't overstate my disappointment to hear we've neglected our adopted equity lens and our cuts this year i implore you to do more than lip service to the equity operational policy and reinstate our equity advancement specialists
140when we talked about how this wasn't a targeted cut we have to remember that systemic racism is a product of standard operating procedures so no dii is targeted in these cuts because when we default to making decisions without our adopted equity lens we fall prey to standard operating systemic racism thanks all right gary wilson thank you the evergreen yes for schools campaign essentially bought the april election with two mass mailings in three weeks and almost 100 000 registered voters each time as well as door knocker flyers hundreds of signs advertising the voters of the evergreen school district were basically brainwashed approximately fifty dollars to one into voting for the second attempt at a levy that previously lost by over 3 600 votes the initial count on election night was razor thin and admit it you
141were sweating it out as there were ten thousand nine hundred and sixteen yes votes to ten thousand six hundred and thirty three no votes showing a lead of only 283 votes however the second mass mailing occurring on the last week of the election and ballot harvesting at elderly care facilities had its effect on the ballots counted after the initial return as the yes votes took a more commanding lead any candidate referendum levy or initiative would typically win by a landslide given the same 50 to one ratio that said it should tell you something personally i was more concerned about getting the truth out to voters and parents and grandparents than i was whether the levy passed or failed i know this levy funds some needed supports and extracurricular activities the question comes in though how
142do we affect change when the school district and school board only cares about agendas and not the quality of education the district is giving our children as stated in an earlier op-ed in in the voters pamphlet 80 percent of esd students are failing math and 60 are failing english per ospi contrast canvas schools district where well over half are passing math and 70 are passing english you talk tonight about the strategic plan and these poor percentages how about a direct approach i've asked this board multiple times to do an analysis looking at which math students are passing and failing the math standards and to see if there's a pattern identifying which teachers are successful and which are not or does this board actually believe canvas students are two to three times smarter than evergreen students
143the pathetic percentages of students meeting standards have been shared at several board meetings with no response until one of us mentioned recently that we will actively work to defeat your levy that got this board's attention instantly why this board in the district strangely could care less about how poorly they're teaching academics however they do care about two things they care about teaching and agenda and they care about the money of the 32 000 spent on the yes campaign the pdc lists donations totaling twenty seven thousand of which over twenty five thousand or ninety four percent of the donations came from a janitorial service and engineering and construction firms that either work directly for the district or would benefit directly from future contracts with the school districts sort of a scratch my backs i'll scratch yours
144has this board listened or had this board listened and worked with us they may not have had their first levy fail miserably and cost the district 29 million over the next three years one well-worded worded and factual opposed statement that was mailed in with the ballot was all it took if this board continues on its presence course we will continue to educate the parents grandparents and voters about the poor education their esd students are receiving thank you also i was just going to ask um how do i fill out an instructional materials committee application since that's going to be voted on after during the after the recess i know i called in once about that about getting on a review committee and never basically heard back we'll have somebody follow up with you on that
145thank you thanks gary all right so that concludes our citizen comments uh the board will go into a brief recess we'll then we'll reconvene in a board workshop where we will have an instructional materials committee review committee applications uh we'll get legislative updates and then we will go into an executive session potential of a pending litigation thank you all right we're going to get started we're going to go ahead and start with the legislative update so i'm going to turn it over to director perkins i was trying to pull up the positions that we discussed during the legislative committee meeting in which i'll do that after in which we uh um evaluated and recommended or didn't recommend the different legislative positions that have been proposed and i was hoping to take away i have to
146find the document that we uh yeah they don't put in the same places that evergreen does in board docs so give me that moment um [Music] i might even have to search my email but uh i could start with the one that's i guess most recent i had a discussion with one of the directors up in the puget sound area is that they're working at wazda to agree to advocate for a change in election years for school board directors to the uh to the positive or not the even-numbered years rather than the odd numbered years and there's a rationale behind that um and so i'm curious about your gut feeling uh with that kind of position i'd like to be able to represent the whole director area accurately so would that put people who are
147presently in for like a five-year term looks like uh the proposal that rep gregerson i think is rep gergeson put together as a bill contains something like that but the data that they showed us in the claims came from one source and really didn't want to advocate for wakayakum county or clark county or lewis county uh without having a broader picture um so i'm working with karen chase what is their primary reason behind it um their reasoning and claim is that uh especially persons of color vote uh more consistently in even numbered years uh younger voters vote consistently even younger years and we're missing those opinions is it because there are those general elections yeah it's the general election things the proposal right now would not force our bond and levy uh special elections into
148even numbered years they would still happen um but uh yeah i was just kind of conflicted about supported i actually moved do not pass on it and uh mostly to preserve the idea to reconsider it if the arguments were actually stronger than the ones that were being presented information that gave me the rationale and you know what's the advantages and disadvantages of the things oh yeah and you know i can see the point if the data actually shows a greater poor proportion of people in uh disadvantaged communities oh yeah i feel like there's a well because the well i guess it would be every four years the presidential election needs to be like 24 26 28. and it won't take effect for a number of years not familiar with all the details but it's out
149there somewhere and the question becomes whether wazda should uh weigh in on it we also uh i guess speaking just in general the uh the the disconnect between uh the way small school districts operate in large school districts like ours uh is very evident and we know that wasda's general assembly is driven by individual board members so they've they're working on ways to amplify that voice and we could end up in the minority for our needs unless we're paying attention and including as well it's another i guess uh dimension of inclusion that well the other thing too is um should make some things possible yeah i'm going to bring up a touchy subject but that's compensation it's never been changed in the years i've been on the board and and that is a difference i
150i mean i don't know the difference between a large district small district i don't know they are looking at that aren't they board compensation i thought they were there's an existing legislative position it was to uh to support legislation uh calling for the school director uh salaries um the the exact boarding isn't coming but uh there's been a lot of proposals to just raise that to the same salaries that part-time city councilors are making in small towns and let the salary commission adjust that uh and there's pros and cons to that but i know people who uh experience hardship because they're school board directors i'm thinking of drayton jackson up in central kitsap and a couple of other people who um one adjustment to his circumstance and he wouldn't be able to do so and
151it's it's something that's born of the frictions and the barriers that stand in the way of people who experience poverty well and i think about like younger family you know younger people that have small children because when i was first on the board and had to have kids and have pay for a babysitter i was in the hole every time yeah and so you know that's a barrier though to people running for election and being on this is you know so those are just things i think about what's nice to see is an equity lens in the rationales for the positions um i don't have any information uh about potential bills it's not quite that concrete yet um but we're meeting again in may virtually in order this is me we're meeting in a couple
152of weeks virtually in order to revisit some of the positions and and so forth so if you've got i'll find the document and forward it to everybody okay and if you've got points of feedback or know somebody in another district who really should be weighing in there are a couple of positions that i can ask to reconsider because of the way the vote went uh and we can uh we can make some motion on that it's kind of indirect but getting all those voices included is something that's been on my mind yeah we did a lot of good work with the safety position and it got higher priority and uh resonates with some of the things that the citizen comments commenters were talking about um i just hate it when the system hides our hearts
153it's no fun to experience that and that's about all i have from like a board director kind of legislative rep perspective uh john do you have anything legislative wise okay then that's that's what i've got looking forward to your feedback i think we meet in three weeks two weeks or three weeks i can't believe may is almost half over right thanks rob all right rebecca's going to come up and we're going to do the instructional review committee we have applications as promised and as asked by the board and as promised by us we are delivering on some instructional materials committee applications for you tonight workshop tonight um and then bringing them forward for your approval at the next meeting so what you will see and i won't um go over them in detail but in
154front of you you have elementary one elementary two and elementary three uh as applications and then you have secondary one community one and community two i was asking and those are the applications that we have received thus far um for these uh positions as indicated by policy i'm sorry procedure 2020p do you want to take a minute to review those and then see if you have any questions for me the application window for these appointments is closed now well it isn't exactly i mean we've been doing recruiting so it isn't exactly that kind of a window um as as things you know we hope to fill all the positions so there wouldn't be any open positions after the board takes action um but you know we always seem to be in the case i don't
155know about evergreen so much but in many places people have to leave a committee for one reason or another so the application you know we may reopen applications to try and fill a position which has been vacated okay so it's not as rigid as a window of time i had a citizen ask me about that and wonder if they could still make an application fill out a form is so the question i have is um how did we advertise so that as many people as possible that might want to do this would be aware of the applicant process well so we send it to all of our principals i'm looking at lori because she's supported with this she's we sent it to all of our principals asked them to disseminate it to our school communities
156people reached out within their personal networks to encourage people to apply um anyone who has been attending or listening to board meetings has certainly heard about it so those are some of the ways so the posit we have how many positions open let's make sure i'm as of recently we have not had any um community or parent vol parent input so we have two community and two parent open at this time so there are two elementary open two secondary open or those okay and two community open correct right excellent by the way congratulations oh thank you when do they normally convene the meetings are they during the day or in the evenings uh they are at four o'clock i believe we said on the application and we asked people to um uh oh i see
157i'm available after 4 pm you know we try to work around um people's schedules i think but we do have teachers on these committees as well and we don't typically get subs so typically they would be at the end of a school day sometime not keeping people hopefully into the evenings where it may conflict with other things but late afternoon okay and this committee does not always meet on a regular schedule because um they only meet when needed so if we have some kind of a challenge to curriculum this is a committee that handles that or if we have instructional materials to review so tonight we're just reviewing these applications that's correct and then are we going to vote at our next meeting yes okay do we have any kind of a rubric or anything
158as to what qualifies somebody to be a good candidate so we or any guidance or anything short answer is no we scoured your past practice um i was not i've you know obviously haven't looked for candidates in the two months that i've been here really couldn't see how you had taken this on in the past um i think probably typically you don't have such an overwhelming number of applicants that it's really been been necessary to do that so one of my questions the the answer the question are you a resident of evergreen school district they say yes if they said no that would disqualify them right regardless if they're parent or that's correct we do ask that people be um members of the community or well no i don't think that's true about a parent
159if they have a boundary accepted child into the district but out of the district boundary accepted a child in the district they would be a parent in our district community member has to be yes and then how do we verify these addresses do we do that after like because if somebody because they're anonymous so sony was selected and they didn't live in our boundary we have the information about who they are and we can certainly check on that has that been verified yes we've redacted their um their information for your perusal at this time what's that okay i think the last reading of my of the imc statute that i did imposed only the requirement that parent representatives not form a majority on the committee um that was explicitly called out i think everything else
160about it is flexible you want one of these that we have here it says they're a parent but then it says that their kids were very successful in the district and they want this tradition to continue with their grandchildren who currently attend so i've only just received these so we have an application i i'm sorry i did not have a chance to okay before i brought these forward to you to look at um several of the applications and elementary uh three does say um out of school and then they're listed as elementary so yeah so i don't um that may in fact be a community applicant rather than an elementary yeah it may have been a mischaracterization honor any other questions thank you we'll look forward to getting still receive some if any come forward
161before we make our final vote well i think we need to go back to workshop rather than taking a vote next time um to bring those to you um rather than introducing one for the first time at the vote do uh jenny and um jackie have these two fresh ones two two that just came in tonight i personally would like to so do one more workshop what if what if we didn't receive any more before the next board meeting but if we do then we could workshop it at the next i do think it's likely i'll just plant the seed that we will be moving forward with a process a challenge process without parents then because we're a month out we will be a month out from having a vote on this so we workshop
162again next week or in two weeks and then we um wait i i do believe that we may have an uh an instructional materials a challenge to materials coming and we would move that forward that process forward without um parent or community members uh i don't have the details on it yet i've just been given um some foreshadowing that we may have a um and you know we like to move those forward so our preference is to get people on the committee to work with that well that would be my advice if the board gets to choose their preference but it would be my advice that we try to get a full committee we've really done kind of a full court press on trying to get people to apply here over the last period of
163time i know that some um since we took some today that eliminated some people from being able to have also well couldn't we oh couldn't we leave it open if we get more we could review them as they come in because it's not like we're going to discuss them all like we all are going to vote independently based on what we read in their application so okay so here's a question if we have because we have so few applicants and if we see one that we don't feel they're qualified to be doing it do we have to fill it with no then we could just leave i believe we can leave the position open and um continue okay so we can leave an open spot if we feel like somebody doesn't qualify okay but i
164guess the question is do we want to accept more applications between now and the next two weeks and still be able to vote on this at our next meeting so we can have parents and community members join the committee right away i would say i mean i think that would be my preference and that we can just review them as they come in because i don't think we have to i don't think we need to have another meeting to just so we can have all the applicants at once well i'll commit to reading what comes in as it comes in um yes so what is the date on that wednesday of the 18th wednesday the 18th sounds good end today and jenny and uh jenny and jackie are okay with that was the decision i'm
165sorry i couldn't hear what was put off the side that we put uh the end of day next wednesday five o'clock as the deadline and then we review them independently as they come in and then we're ready to vote in our next meeting okay yeah no i um i agree with that um i would just like to say that not all the applications are loaded in board docs so i don't have access to all of them um but i just sent lori an email asking her to send them to me yeah two were just given to us tonight that were just filled out here at the board meeting that's what i figured that's so yeah so if i can get those emails then i'll be prepared as well we'll make sure you get a full
166packet at that time of all of them together how's that thank you thank you thank you okay so i think that ends our board workshop so we are going to adjourn and then we're going to go into an executive session thank you very much for attending this evening [Music] you