001all right it is 5 31 and we're gonna go ahead and get tonight's meeting started um if i can have everybody that wants to join us with the pledge of allegiance please stand 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 thank you okay next we are going to read the land acknowledgement and director weatherspoon's going to read that for us evergreen public schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinook peoples and the khalid tribe they have lived on and cared for this land and its waterways since time immemorial we thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgement to open a space of recognition inclusion and respect for all indigenous students
002families and staff in our community thank you okay entertain a motion for tonight's agenda i moved to adopt the agenda as proposed second all those in favor aye aye any opposed thank you hey we get to go into our special recognition national library week and director bocaneker's going to go ahead and read that proclamation for us thanks juni whereas libraries of all types are the heart of their cities towns schools and campuses serving their communities whereas libraries are accessible and inclusive places that foster a sense of belonging and community whereas today's libraries and their services extend far beyond the four walls of a building and everyone is welcome to use their resources whereas for people lacking broadband at home libraries provide access to computers and wi-fi even checking out internet hotspots and laptops whereas libraries
003strive to develop and maintain programs and collections that are as diverse as the populations they serve and ensure equity of access for all whereas libraries offer opportunities for everyone to explore new worlds and become their best selves through access to technology multimedia content and educational programs whereas in time of crisis libraries librarians and library workers play an invaluable role in supporting their communities both in person and virtually whereas to adapt to our changing world libraries are expanding their resources and continuing to meet the needs of their patrons whereas libraries are cornerstones of democracy promoting the free exchange of information and ideas for all whereas libraries have long served as trusted and treasured institutions for all members of the communities regardless of race ethnicity creed ability sexual orientation gender identity or socio-economic status whereas libraries librarians
004and library workers are joining library supporters and advocates across the nation to celebrate national library week now therefore be it resolved that the evergreen school district board of directors and the evergreen school district administration proclaimed national library week april 3rd through the 9th 2022 because of you libraries transform lives and communities thank you julie and if christy peake wouldn't mind coming up and accepting that proclamation in the district and i just want to introduce jennifer and paul who were at emerald and chihala middle school you might have seen paul's amazing read con on sit down with a soup today so just brought them along to represent [Applause] wonderful thank you any comments i just thinking on the fond memories i have of when i was a kid and i loved being at the library at
005the school and in the summer i'd ride my stingray to the the community library and get my books in my basket you know and all that and read it under the covers with the flashlight kind of thing and just i just has never gone away i just love books and i um enjoy that and my own daughters really had great experiences when they were in school with the teacher librarians there at harmony and pacific and evergreen and so i'm thankful that we have you in our system i can attest to that too the library was sort of my go-to place at school um the playground bullies don't come to the library and so that was a safe place for a lot of students including my own kids as they grew up and came through the
006schools and they were more comfortable there they had their lunches there they had the instruction of our guibrarian paul warner for several years and so and and yeah the recon was we gushed about it before here i think but it was a really really good day and uh that's the kind of dedication that these folks add to the schools make it a community center that way and thank you so much i think too it's i you know as i've been talking a lot to people about teacher librarians and and what they add to our curriculum and our assistant our system people think you know a lot of us older people we remember the books the dewey decimal system you know the index cards to find the books all of them the lady checking it out
007and using a little stamp but you know now it's it's media it's computers it's re you know helping kids research in a bigger world and it's it's become such a technical profession and so i i find it really fascinating how it's evolved over the years so yeah absolutely okay thank you next is the board consent agenda entertain a motion i move for approval of the board consent agenda second all those in favor aye aye any opposed okay next is the superintendent's consent agenda remove approval of the superintendent's consent agenda as presented second all those in favor aye aye any opposed wonderful next is the superintendent report thank you i'll be brief because i have a more lengthy report to report on the the main um focus of my work over the last couple of weeks
008and that's related to our levy and our budget reduction planning so i'm excited to tell you that i've gone to probably 34 out of our 38 schools and i've visited with principals and walked the hallways and gone into classrooms and i've just been completely and thoroughly blown away and impressed and it's also really helped helping me with some of the very difficult and challenging uh decisions i've made having talked to some folks and interacted with them and understanding their unique needs and situations so i'm appreciative of that time we spent about a half hour in our cabinet meeting with doug nathan who's going to be supporting both the board and the cabinet related to team building and so that work is ongoing and we'll be setting some dates shortly to begin that work we're really
009excited to begin that part something the board has wanted to work on both our ability to work effectively as a team and build trust with each other is really foundational for us to be able to work with our community and build trust with our community so i think that's going to be important work that we'll all benefit from and i just can't get my brain away from victoria within on out with her bars and banana belt seed and her basket and her books and a ponytail that was quite a vision in a ponytail so that's my report [Music] thank you okay next on the agenda is action items for the board the curriculum recommendation actively learn english language arts curriculum was actually presented at in a workshop session and brought forward for first reading at
010the last board meeting we do have michael and marlena online or on zoom if we have questions but have any comments or questions arise since our last meeting does the board have any questions any questions from the audience okay see no questions i would go ahead and entertain a motion for a second reading and adoption are we doing these separately we are going to do them separately so right now it's just to actively learn english language arts curriculum i move to adopt the actively learned english language arts curriculum second all those in favor aye any opposed wonderful next on the agenda is the illustrative i can never say that word math um the three the k5 curriculum was presented in a workshop session and brought forward for first reading at the last board meeting i
011have any comments or questions arised since the last meeting any comments questions from the board just that i think that it definitely is in alignment with what we're wanting to do to have a more continuous evolution of foundational math all the way through to secondary and i think that's something that we've needed for a while and and [Music] it it's going to be a good thing for our kids i really feel comfortable with it and i can echo that conversation and the uh with the conversations i've had with principals and teachers there's a lot of excitement about having a a continuum of k-12 math curriculum that's adopted and and our our goal will be to really work hard to provide good solid professional development and hold ourselves accountable for having some integrity with the curriculum
012so we're excited to to go to lean into that work one of the things that questions i have and i don't know if it's for you john or for rebecca or who but um you know in the past we've had curriculum adoptions of various subjects and obviously we as a board we um want to approve approve these so that our kids are getting the best possible curriculum but sometimes it's not um being used with fidelity throughout the system and so i guess one of the questions i have as we look at it at these adoptions is whether or not we need to do anything within policy so that it's very clear that if we adopt a curriculum by the board that it is an expectation that it's used as our curriculum and not at will
013yeah and that's one of the themes as i'm talking to principals is the the desire to really have a curriculum that we're all using across the system so that we have a guaranteed and viable curriculum so all the students are getting an excellent experience so i don't think policy will be required because in practice we're going to do just exactly what you're suggesting and um and i think in talking to our teachers and our principals everybody's eager to do that to get to some consistency for our students so we'll we'll make that happen okay thank you any questions from the audience hold on your mic's not on no thank you i know i mentioned it at the last meeting when you were doing the first reading um you know my daughter she struggles with too
014many options for teaching her math and you know my wife's teaching her home through the home choice academy and really just i think a lot of kids are in the same boat that you spend more time teaching them four different ways to add numbers together then you're not spending them as much as much time on the one way that really you know that would be i would think you'd want to look for the best way and yeah if you're spending less time teaching them then you know it's just it confuses them having more than one or two ways it really as i said last time keep it simple and i won't use that last word again on that thank you so it's out just real quick so it does sound like then that having a
015curriculum that's used across the the whole system that's very consistent will kind of answer that yeah yeah if you you know just don't make too many choices for you know how to teach doing you know things that really you know you really require really just the one or two best ways and if you give them too many ways it just confuses them and then you're not spending as much time teaching them the one or two most direct most common ways so thank you thank you i could add just that i'm going to put this sentence together uh his comments resonate because that was an experience my daughters had facing the eight different ways to find the square of the or the area of a circle or whatever it was that they were doing in elementary
016school but i also noticed in the years that they grew up that they would have some teachers who would be really excited about reading and literacy in books and fewer but other teachers who were really excited about math but the combination of the two it uh it presented an attitude shift to them they loved their teachers but when they could see their teacher was not as enthusiastic about math they made choices in first second grade about math that kept them from taking any joy in it in the future in part i mean one teacher is not the sole influence on a child but we know that uh especially for girls um enthusiasm about math is harder to reach than it is for boys it's it's just a fact right uh and if we're going to
017see an increase in math literacy and interest in mathematics which you know in my career went on i get excited about math because i know how many problems and how many ways you can use and solve problems that way if you're creative about it so that creativity is one thing that i hope is maintained as part of this curriculum great thank you okay now we i think that was any other questions from the audience before i move on okay then i will entertain a motion to approve and approve for approval and adoption of the illustrative math k through five curriculum and i will have to learn how to say that word i'll give it a try i move approval and adoption of the recommendation to adopt illustrative math for the k through five grades second
018all those in favor aye aye any opposed all right thank you guys thank you mark marcus mark michael and marlena for all your work on that okay next on the agenda is our good news report craig oh you missed teaching and learning did i i did i'm sorry hold on craig sit back down i'm getting ahead of myself so next on the agenda is teaching and learning rebecca thanks good news hold on one second let's get your now go ahead superintendent boyd members of the board thank you for the opportunity to share some updates about our teaching and learning department with you today just three updates for you this evening first i would like to offer thanks and gratitude toward the principals the directors everyone uh the ptas who helped get the word out about
019our need for parent members of the instructional materials committee we do believe that we will have a um full slate to present to you and it's my understanding that that has been done in workshops so i anticipate that will be may 10th with those then coming back to uh for approval on the may 24th board meeting so we recognize how important it is to get those parent voices heard and so we're looking forward to including those second as a result of reviewing those procedures we're beginning discussions about elevating student voice and including students on that committee there's a body of research that talks about how much how important it is for students to not only have their own voices but to see their colleagues other students voices in these events and so the opportunity in
020particular to include student voices on things which directly impact them like instruction like building like those things school environment are very important so we are beginning those discussions about including students there and we'll certainly update you and bring that forward to you when we have a recommendation for that finally i know our superintendent superintendent boyd has given you um coherence and i hope you uh if you've had a chance to dive into that that you're enjoying it our teaching and learning team has read the first three chapters and in particular we spent quite a bit of time at our last meeting talking about our district's strengths and opportunities as they pertain to the coherence frameworks for tenants focusing directions cultivating collaborative cultures securing accountability and deepening learning and we're looking forward to finishing that book
021at our next teaching and learning meeting and then beginning to really think about all of our various aspects of work in the various departments who meet there and bringing it together to move our district's work forward i have a question going back to the instructional materials committee yes sometimes we have community members who have skills or interests in in that committee is there any way that we could consider having if there's a community member that would like to be on that committee that we can think about that as we're thinking about the student connection there as well i think you anticipated me and something we needed to talk about last time and you've anticipated something you'll soon see that procedure in particular in 2020 refers in one point with two community members but in the
022list of the members it specifically calls out parents this time we've interpreted as parents but we recognize that there are community members with expertise in this area and we are thinking about how we can also blend that in there as well so thank you for the feedback certainly we need to tighten up the language because we all value our policies and procedures mirroring what's actually happening or more importantly us mirroring what's in those and so um we want to tighten that language up and consider whether community members would be a great asset we know there's some wonderful people with some expertise um some voices who we could elevate in the community on that who may not have children in the district thank you thank you i thought the current the current makeup of the imc
023had a like a um primary grades intermediate and secondary or elementary middle school and high school parent representatives is that the title that you saw uh the parents are just it just says parents it doesn't break those out in that way it does in other areas like it has um primary intermediate middle and high teachers principles are broken out slightly differently than that but i'm parents that did not specify grade levels for those oh i was on the imc 10 years ago and i think 12 years ago a long time so might have changed since then i wanted to ask you about um i come back to uh student voice on the imc uh because when i served on that committee um its purpose was to ratify that the process was followed for adopting or
024recommending curriculum to the board and there wasn't i guess there wasn't a lot of feedback or change possible the way that it was organized and in that sense do you see a reorganization of the imc to meet the requirements of the statutes for the imc in in state law plus some other things or do you fundamentally what role do you see well a secondary function that we have here although we haven't had this in a long time the imc also manages book challenges right whether those are to our libraries and i think that would be in part a very important place to um have student voices well and their contributions um and so although that isn't a regular i shouldn't say it's not a predictable function of that group it is one of their tasks
025um but i think it would be great to assign students also to be able to support that work of did we follow our processes help them become more engaged help them see what our processes are so that they could speak to you know another student to say well how did we end up with um this body of work that we're now studying high school social studies with and they could say well a committee was formed and this is how it goes through in the board to have them and a lot of those packets that would come before us then had descriptions of the students who participated in the original scoring and selection at this or that school wherever it was that they were piloting each of the curricular textbooks that they were proposing and it
026sounds like you imagine a larger role for students in the whole process yeah does it at least different yeah to be included on that committee does that uh mesh well with our ideas for the student representatives to the board would they be um i think it would be a great match for that work as well so that students would see themselves in you know kind of mirrored throughout adult participation in our community you know certainly time for further discussion about that but i think having been a part of a district and a board that had student representatives i think it could be a great match for that as well thank you thank you very much okay next on the agenda is equity inclusion and that is clarissa she always looks so happy to come talk
027to us i love it i am it is my pleasure every time um so thank you all for having me i have learned that my computer always blocks my face and i enjoy looking at you all spaces so i'm going to use a different method tonight so it is my pleasure to report that our department continues to support the improvement of our district's effort towards improved outcomes for all of our students it's just i just like to remind the board in our community that our equity work is not a replacement for academics but is an enhancement right to ensure that all of our students have the tools to be effective independent learners of rigorous content one of the things that we are working towards is to make sure that we are helping to embody the
028um operational expectations of equity and so my report tonight to you is going to hit on the three areas um that our work between now and the last time i reported um has been implemented so for our first item we uh addressed uh item four of the oe for equity and that asks us to create and support learning environments that are conducive to learning for all students and the way we've been doing that since last we met is our counselors they have been working with our seo coordinator casey lyons and asca and asca is the american school counselor association and what they are doing is they are coaching and supporting our school counselors to create a comprehensive school counseling plan for each of our buildings not only is this work important to our counselors but
029this comes to us from a substitute senate bill 5030. 30 and it asks that our counselors create access to academic achievement career development and social emotional well-being that will lead to improved student outcomes for college and career readiness our counselors have completed two sessions of the six that they will be involved in two will be this year the remaining four will happen next year and so far they have discussed uh implementing excuse me collecting analyzing and use of data for improved student outcomes and speaking of data the other two equity operational expectations are both five and six those ask us to identify and both remove barriers as we learn about them and our work comes from the youth truth um survey that we did so uh students staff and families participated in the youtube survey
030and they provided us with a ton of information when i say time i'm going to give you the stats but this is good um having having the information to work from to make sure that we can better support students based on what they're providing for us and not only students so like i said our students our staff and our families participated in this number wise 18 735 students participated 2 850 staff members participated and 23 704 um parent or guardians participated in our youth truth survey and so we are beginning to look through that massive amount of data to look for ways in which we can better support each of those three groups that gave us input and then finally it's just a huge thank you to our community all of them we had we
031successfully completed 18 listening sessions some virtual and some in person to get input on our draft strategic plan education northwest is now analyzing the data from both our adult survey and our student survey we had over 6 000 students who to participate um in that and we will reconvene as a strategic planning committee on may 5th to make sure we incorporate the input that we got from our community into the strategic plan in hopes that we can put a proposal for you all together um before the year's over and that you hopefully approve it that is all of my updates any questions i just want to commend everyone that's worked so hard never have we had this much input from community members and students and just parents the business community um i mean it's been
032coming from every angle out there and you know if we're going to move this system forward and our strategic plan has to reflect the community and what their goals are for our kids and so i really appreciate everybody who participated those numbers are they're pretty awe inspiring actually so i appreciate all the hard work that's gone into making this happen and and i think it's um a testimony to what we believe about our community and that we have to be partners and that's a good thing so that's a that's an 80 response rate for youth truth uh from students roughly i don't know don't get me the same percentages and stuff yeah sorry about that 79.9145 never mind um that is that is a really good data set it is i i you started talking
033about it and the question that i had is that i knew there were um a few who were opting out out of a fear that it was uh not the thing it claimed um and uh i would have expected a lower outcome based on all of that fear but i'm glad we have it i'm glad we have that data people want to be heard yeah i know that that's true especially students you give them away and they'll tell you absolutely it was also um heavily sent out by the principals and they have experience with people three kids three schools yes it was heavily sent out and just sharing not just you know pushing it but sharing the importance of it and you know asking and continuously asking to for people to fill it out so
034i appreciated their due diligence in getting it done i've got a lot of good data to work with any other questions will the data be made available to the public to see out for youth truth yes we have we actually are meeting about that very soon um this is our first go at youth truth um and we have quite a bit of reports and data to have but it yes we just got to get it into a user-friendly presentation uh but yes and we plan to whatever we are sharing we definitely plan to use to inform what we are going to do so absolutely wonderful thank you clarissa thank you okay craig it's your turn now sorry about that he's a newsman he's used to working on the fly i usually plug mine in here
035thank you for your time as always i have the privilege to talk about all the good work that our students and staff are doing uh we led with the an event that we had right here we've been really lucky to have some wonderful performances uh from our students this is a union i think at the last board meeting but they've kind of melted together um i wanted to start we've already praised reid khan a few times oh i actually went in a different order because this went first okay this was at riverview elementary school this was really cool this is a parent paula statten and her she got help she used quotes for help from her second grader oliver and her kindergartner harlow she built uh this lending library at riverview um by herself and
036with her children and then donated it to the school and they're really enjoying it there's games and books and i just think it's a fantastic thing to see a parent kind of volunteer that time and and i asked her to build me one she said no emerald elementary school had this really amazing event it was the first time ever they called it the wax museum night very creative so their students they researched and then wrote biographies about people that have made a real difference in the world and then the wax museum part was that they then came on this night and dressed like the people in which they did the biographies on and then stood really still for pictures scoot down here so uh don't worry uh this is not a safety uh problem so
037kyle you can settle uh this is at ellsworth and the ellsworth uh panthers they can earn panther tickets for being responsible safe and kind and the students earned enough tickets that their principal alex sheewy got yeah he got taped to the wall i'm not sure who chose this and i will say i'm not sure how alex got down but i do know he was at school this week so just a really creative way to get uh your students to participate in in best practices and i think that very few people would do this other than alex shewey but uh that was very cool i actually have a picture of don harris and alex sheewy taped to walls there you go okay this has happened before um and then here's reid khan i know we've talked
038paul warner was here this is really an amazing event and i i do want to say that there were it wasn't just having um as true to life star wars characters as you can can and having pictures taken this was also a book fair which students took part and then they did a lego contest and you could see from these pictures i was just blown away by what these kids could do with legos and how much time and planning and engineering uh that has to go into this um just a wonderful event and uh i was glad to be there and and watch the line out outside the door for this um so that was fantastic and and uh i wanted to share that you know we have great community partners including sees the bagel
039that puts up our artwork from our schools all the time and this is the the latest one um art discovery worked with uh sees the bagel and they they're displaying art from pioneer which is really beautiful and then finally this story it's a story that kind of keeps going at hawaii's middle school joe bowken's classes for the last few years have built mini boats and these mini boats are designed with the goal in mind for them to to launch off the coast of oregon or washington and make it to the other side of the pacific none have actually done it yet but they they track it as it goes they have tracking devices in there and then they have partners in japan just a wonderful program but this boat neptune it was lost they they
040could see that there was the battery was dying but the um the locator was was no longer working so they thought they lost the neptune and then as luck would have it this man right here brad brucker who is from oregon was in hawaii on a fishing boat and they said oh there's some junk in the water let's go see what it is and it was not junk it was the neptune and they got in touch with uh uh joe bocan and uh uh brad brucker uh described it as something like he it was like they discovered the you know the moon for the first time that's how excited mr boken was and then he got to tell their students that the the neptune was found and then they tried to figure out uh they
041had tried to track to see where they thought it would be and they did not think it was going to be hawaii so the students went back and they're now trying to figure out okay what what did we do wrong with our calculations uh for to to find to think that the boat went in a different direction so this was great and this is a story that local media has done continuously and this story was picked up by newspapers and television so it was really uh it's a it's a fun story that uh continues to have when they move on to the next grade and then they you know they get to find out where their boat is when it gets uh when it gets discovered what an awesome way to problem solve and to
042really have critical thinking yeah and this program also has things like government um uh people that were government relations so that they had a team that needed to put together letters in different languages and to let government agencies know when they were launching and what the goal was and then on the boat itself there's messages that they got translated as well just with the thought of where the boats might end up that's neat i love that all right thank you very much thank you craig well that's cool well that's awesome and that one of our one of our former teachers is connected to that school that's pretty amazing small world really really amazing all small world okay next we're going to do our budget update and superintendent boyd is going to go ahead and present
043that for us uh well so this is the the purpose of this report is to discuss the planning that we've been doing related to our enrollment loss and budget reductions associated with our enrollment loss and then also associated with if a double levy failure should occur and as you uh know we've been doing a lot of planning to be able to to imagine those those reductions and the purpose of this is to share that information of what we've come come to so i'm going to share both uh budget reduction plans for the enrollment decline i'm going to share also talk about that enrollment decline what the fiscal impact is for that and then i'm also going to share a reduction should the levy fail on april 26th i'll also share what we've been doing related
044to our outreach to help inform our community about about the the levy and the levy loss and the budget reductions associated with that and the bullets down below are just reminders of the of the kinds of programs that are levy funds that are directly will be directly impacted by a should the levy fail a second time as you know we can only go out for a levy twice in a calendar year so that makes the next opportunity not until the following year it's teaching staff health and safety performing arts athletics activities and educational programs i want to discuss the the way that we got to the budget reduction um the considerations we use to get to the plans that i'm going to share with you in a moment and so all you all know we
045have collective bargain agreements we have to reach reach certain contractual agreements we have compliance issues with the funding and osbi requires that we follow certain processes procedures regulations and so forth it also it's also important to note that the scenarios or the the plans that i'm going to share with you are directly the second budget reduction scenario for a double levy failure is directly also related to what the what the levy dollars actually fund we had to keep that into consideration we had to keep the consideration of our collective bargaining agreements our compliance issues what the levy dollars fund we also put our strategic planning uh in in front of our of our leaders as well as we did an activity with them to determine the highest priority functions that we have in the district
046so instead of getting our principals assistant principals and our directors and cabinet in a room and saying what should we cut we said what should we preserve what's important it's it's reverse engineering the problem to determine what's first important that we need to preserve to support our students from pandemic to recovery and some that was really important information as we puzzled through uh this in the different the two different plans that we have uh prospectively here for you also want to remind folks that the the levy accounts for 11 of our budget and it also uh we also get approximately next year seven between seven and eight million dollars for levy equalization assistance from the state of washington that's nothing that's something our taxpayers don't uh provide for us that's something the state provides us
047for us because we have lower assessed values than than is on the average and it's important to note that from 2016 to 17 to the current time our enrollment has dropped from 26 482 students to 22 960. for the 2122 school year the basic head allocation for each student was 91.39 and so to put that in perspective the enrollment drop and the and what's provided through apportionment the decrease is in a funding of almost 7.7 million dollars for 21.22 and it's based on a drop of 762 students and the drop basic ed funding from 19 to 20 is and 20 21 was approximately 12.5 million so the two year total is around almost 20 million dollars of uh of funding that we have been reduced based on our enrollment loss i put this slide up
048again because the next slides i'm going to show you are a direct result of the the work that we did to really think hard about these these considerations i will tell you that these are people these are incredibly gut-wrenching situations that when you put these up you'll see people in them it's hard it's difficult we made the decision to communicate this information out as we started to have conversations with our staff people were asking for more specific information and i contacted our labor groups and they felt like also sooner is better and appreciated the fact that we were being transparent and open and getting information out so people can consider that it's not lost on me that we did a proclamation for our wonderful librarians and on the page we also have some reductions in
049librarians that's the kind of things that we're we're looking at here these are 40 million dollars worth of cuts between your enrollment loss and your double levy failure are significant and you can't get to those large numbers with small cuts it's significant and it has to be a lot and it has to be all of these things that are up here were taken into consideration in that very difficult task of coming to these recommendations uh for you today so for elementary uh the reductions that we're recommending are reducing uh this is for so first of all this is the these are the reductions due to the enrollment decline again we have the enrollment decline and and the the double levy failure uh if it should happen it's also to remember it hasn't failed yet and
050so there it there's a possibility that the levy will pass but given the size of our system we have to do the work associated with this with 23 000 students 4 400 staff members we have to do the work in advance to meet our deadlines by the notification deadlines of staff uh for reductions in force and that deadline is may 15th so we have to backwards plan that from may 15 backward and we are we we're doing that work now our human resources department is working overtime on weekends to also look at and develop two different plans one is if the levy passes and one is should the levy fail and they have to do those two different calculations so there's basically double the work um so that it on uh on april 27th we
051can begin the ground uh hit the ground running on doing what is necessary according to the circumstances elementary the reductions uh for the enrollment decline and these mainly are reductions uh at the at least in the building level that are already in process well we're looking at these as right-sizing of our district for enrollment loss decisions were made to keep our staffing levels high during the pandemic that makes sense there was social distancing there was great needs we had to organize our classrooms and low classroom size ratios and we had to add quarantine monitors we had to add a lot of resources and able to just function in school so the decisions i think wisely were made to maintain that level of staffing were at the point though now that we don't have the fund
052balance to provide any kind of flexibility for us to be able to continue those so we have to right-size our district in order to meet our our budget obligations and that is reduction of um 110 classroom teachers i think 60 or so were at elementary um how many jennifer at 22 at middle school and 15 or so at high school yeah and so those uh principles have already gone out and they've already notified those individuals and they're in the process of uh of having those conversations most of those reductions happen through our our most through provisional employees so those provisional employees are first and second year employees and in maybe some other cases third year employees where the plan is to eliminate the quarantine monitors those are folks that were brought on to do quarantining
053and contact tracing and all of those things associated with the extra work due to the covet pandemic we're also planning a reduction of 14 central office positions and 46 pair educator support personnel in a reduction of central office supplies and services we're looking at in we're looking also at the double failure reductions the previous reductions are happening and progress are going to happen now these are the reductions that will happen should the levy fail for a second time we'll be eliminating fifth grade band orchestra and music programs we're reducing our associate principles to half time in our elementary schools a reduction of our teacher librarians to half time in our elementary schools eliminating the excel pull out program that's three and a half people a reduction of intervention specialists of 19 reduction of classroom para
054educator support in addition to that we'll be eliminating intramural programs and clubs field trips employee travel and a reduction of school materials and supplies budgets the first one two three four five six are people individuals human beings the rest are budget items that are paid for i will remind you that 85 of our budget goes to staff we are a human resources organization our power is in our people and our people are who serve our kids and so the majority of the the you we can't reduce a 40 million dollar budget without impacting human beings in middle school the plan is to eliminate deans of students reduce classroom teachers eliminate media specialists those are the librarian support personnel reduce classroom peer educator support eliminate athletic programs that's a real tough uh tough cut there eliminate
055field trips employee travel and reduce materials and supply budgets the again a direct result of what the what the levy funds the levy funds 100 of our athletic programs or thereabouts and so that's a significant hit for our music in our athletics and all the extra curricular stuff for our students here high school will eliminate the dean of students athletic directors reduction of salary positions eliminate media specialist pair educators reduce classroom peer educator support and reduce classroom teachers i will tell you that our dean of student one of the main things that came in to the top of our list when we talked to our principals was safety and security for our students uh there was a real desire to have uh social emotional sort support for academic behavioral and emotional support for our students
056eliminating our dean of students they also support our students in a safety and security they also are instrumental in at our ninth grade in uh providing help and support for our ninth grade success program but those are functions that our assistant principals are gonna have to take on should the double levy failure occur in elimination of our athletic directors secretary positions and those things that i already mentioned we'll reduce athletic and fine arts programs we won't have as many field trips and activities and extracurricular programs fewer jv and c team programs and will eliminate field trips employee travel and reduce school materials supplies and budgets and then support student support district-wide so those are the individuals that mainly work at the asc they uh support schools and teachers to be able to do all the
057things that that help our students succeed and achieve and so those are the positions that we're looking at in addition to the in addition to the to the reductions that are are going to happen uh just for the fact that our enrollment was reduced so we'll reduce teachers on special assignment reduce central office administrator program coordinators we'll reduce central office classified position and eliminate employee travel reduce supplies and service contracts we've been going through with a fine toothed comb looking at all of our contracts to absolutely ensure that our contracts are necessary and not redundant that's an exercise that i've done every year as a superintendent in other districts i think it's an important thing to do routinely and we'll we'll have to go a little bit sharper on that here i want to let
058folks know that we really tried to do a number of in in addition to the considerations that i i put up before we tried to make our reductions proportional for our pair educators and classified staff for our administrative staff for our teaching staff for our buildings in our district office in terms of and just we're just talking about double levee failure in terms of the reductions in the percentages of people our elementaries are re reducing their staffing by three percent approximately our middle schools are reducing by about four percent um approximately our high school is about four and a half percent in our district office and five percent or more of our overall budget as being or overall personnel is being reduced so we wanted you to understand that proportionality is a consideration for us
059as well as well so before i move on here again i just want to reiterate our levy uh you know hasn't failed we're still out there talking to people and informing them and i want to talk to you in a moment about all of the efforts that we've done and just to reiterate these are gut-wrenching things there's no good decision these are not good decisions none of these decisions are good um and this is what happens in in the situation of a double levee failure it's what's necessary to get to that number um and that number is big and so we've done the best we can to take into consideration all of the things we discussed before make it proportional and we hope we've come to meet that mark in the best way possible for
060you so on a positive note we've we've been doing a lot one of the things that we learned from our thought exchange when we conducted that was we learned several things one of them was that we needed to people really didn't understand one weren't aware of the levy happening two they didn't understand the specifics of it uh the funding what it is specifically the uh what it paid for what it meant and so we've really tried to get that information out uh through all of these mechanisms one is a levy webpage we've our levy webpage has has been there for folks to be able to go get that information our frequently asked questions document we've pushed out information through social media in all of the different ways you see up there we're able to push
061those out straight out to our schools through facebook pages we have flyers in english spanish russian to the right there you see the replacement levy facts that's a district mailer we're able to send out one mailer the rules are that you can send out one factual mailer and it has to go to every single mailbox in your community and so we've accomplished that by sending those out those levy flyers the the communication and the media that we've done around this has been completely revamped according to what our community said they needed to know more about and i'm really proud of our communications department and the work that we've done on that our principals have been really key communicators they've done videos to explain what our levy is again it's factual information provided to our community
062they've reminded people to vote we've done several i've done a lot of messaging myself we've done uh some videos we did a sit down with the soup i actually did an english and a spanish version um wanna i got a little help on the side on the spanish one but uh i met a parent in at at a school yesterday and marion who um saw it and she told me about it and thanked me so much for doing that uh presentation in spanish so that tells me that we need to do more of that you know you know and that really meant a lot to her so it meant a lot to me uh we've done levy informational videos um in all of the different ways we've put things on our reader board so the
063only thing we haven't done is dropped courier pigeon notes over every household and we're working on we're working on that part so with that that's my report any questions i know it's sobering when it comes to the um job reductions how many of them will be offset by retirements and resignations they're working the details out of that and i will tell you that on the enrollment scenario the enrollment reduction scenario more of those will be due to attrition and retirements and and people leaving for other jobs and so forth when we get to the double levee failure it changes and it gets into not just our provisional employees meaning the people in their first three years but it ends up potentially going deeper than that depending on what you teach and what your area is
064you talk about the reductions impacting those of our teachers who are on provisional contracts does that does the fact of the provisional contract hide the years or decades of experience those teachers might have uh from out-of-state certificates no a provisional employee folks that from out of state i'd have to defer to jeanette jenae on that can you come up and explain i don't want to get this wrong good evening um the so the question was around is whether or not a teacher a provisional certificate who moved to washington to teach loses all that experience if they've been teaching in another state for years or decades not under the under the provisional status they would if they come to us and having completed their provisional status in another school district they have one year provisional with
065us and so they wouldn't have been on a seniority list so that's where they're considered the provisional and then after that moving into the continuing status is when we then consider other experience so continuing status happens after normally one two three years yeah there's depends on the slot it's a variety of scenarios but yes um one year two year or three year okay thanks yeah thank you so the fact that we can some of it can get lessened by the the positions that will open up due to retirements and resignations and but i always think about the number of staff that we won't have that support our students especially like the intervention folks and the para educators right now our kids need it more than ever and so that's the part that's really the gut-wrenching
066um and then i think about all of the opportunities for students that's the reason why we're all here is to provide opportunities for our kids to participate so it's like the whole child the whole student you know the arts the sports all of the things that keep them engaged in being at school it it kills me that those are the things that we're going to have to possibly take away if we have that double level failure well and i think yeah i agree with julie i mean at this point in time um it's it's the worst possible time for our kids to be impacted by this and and anybody who thinks this doesn't impact kids doesn't understand education and under understand our system i mean every single one of these cuts impact our students and
067not in a good way and it's um it's very frustrating to it's very frustrating to know that and i agree with you john it's people so it's the adults in our system who are employees here that are citizens in our community who have mortgages who pay taxes also who are part of our greater community volunteers in our churches i mean they're it's a lot of people and and then it's our kids so it it's not just a simple i think a lot of people just think of it as a budget it's more than a budget that budget means something and so i i just feel um really frustrated that um and i'm saying this just to myself as well as to any you know anyone that the first time around we didn't do the job
068we needed to do to articulate that but i think this time we have been very thorough and have been out there i mean you and i and rob and julie we were out we've all been out walking talking to door to door talking to people and it's been very interesting the kind of input that we get from people and it's been mostly positive and when it's not been positive it's almost centered around people not understanding the facts or have been listening to misinformation and so having that ability to be able to face to face talk to somebody with the facts has been really good and i think it's been good for us um so i just this is the this is gut-wrenching stuff right here and i've been on the board for a long time
069as everybody knows i've said it a million times and i've never seen such a dire situation for our kids ever okay thank you john next on the agenda is the comments by the school board i've already made mine all right vic's already made hers julie you have none i already already made my comment i think that just adds out on the budget though actual school board comments okay did you want to talk about that calculation that you were figuring out that talks about what the actual have you got are you ready for that i yeah i see that uh it's um a little piece of software what a web page that i put together describes what happens when property values change with respect to the levy ask is that something that uh you'd like to
070see on the screen it might take me a minute or two to or i'll just show you afterwards yeah yeah that's fine but the the idea behind that page is that you know jennifer and and her folks have predicted that property values will increase in a certain amount and that is usually an ospi estimate of property values combined with the county's assessments and so forth so they can predict with a range of accuracy how property values have changed and will change or may change but if it's more or less the thing that happens to the tax rate if it's more property value is that all other things being equal the rate goes down the the ballot is a fixed dollar amount we're asking for a levy of a fixed dollar amount in each year and
071the adjustments upward turned out to amount to uh on on an average priced home or an average price property in the district with that will include the commercial properties and and the industrial properties uh the tax is a certain amount it's uh hundreds of dollars uh and the increase year over year is about five bucks for each of these properties on average um so if you're paying eight hundred dollars in in levy taxes uh for the enrichment stuff next year would be 805. the following year would be estimated to be you know it's a month i'm divide 800 by 12. each month would be another five that's less than a venti uh and i agree we've been much clearer this time around at how much impact that actually has for a homeowner um for a
072tax that is not a new tax it's just a continuation and an adjustment for the inflationary forces that are present on our system but yeah i can show you the web page later on because i i do think that has been one of the biggest misconceptions is that if our property values go up because obviously we're in a time of of increases in our assessments um that we're just if it just suddenly jumps up even more that the amount of money we get is going to be more and that is not true we get a finite amount of money that is already listed on the the levy and we're aware of new construction we're aware of new commercial construction light industrial construction which will increase and and residential every time they you add value by
073improving a property the share that an individual homeowner has to supply for this levy goes down so the rate could go down even if the property values don't change because we're adding new property i think that was part of the dynamic that we had in the early 2000s and 2010s that helped keep tax rates pretty low thank you any other board comments nope okay future agenda items comments okay any future agendas okay going to citizen comment any citizen wishing to address the board about an item not on the agenda or the meeting's agenda may do so during this time as long as the comments are not personnel related or about an individual employee or student and are are not legal in nature each speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board please adhere
074to that timing we have a long list of citizen comments tonight you will see your time on the board in front of you the comments need to be directed to the board of directors as a whole and may not address to any individual member of the board the administrative staff or the audience when you approach the podium please state your name and your affiliation to the district to start off our comments tonight i'm going to go ahead and call rebecca bavis to the podium hello so i'm rebecca bathus and i'm the executive assistant to the evergreen school district foundation and i just quickly wanted to let you guys know about a program that i've been working on we have been receiving these farm to fresh produce boxes every tuesday that come in and it's for
075our families that are in need or experiencing homelessness we send them out and they get delivered to my house actually and they come in big pallets jenny grunwalt was able to see the lovely process that i have going on today but they come in big pallets of 60 and then we have the fcrcs they come and pick up and also all of the pantries that are in the middle and the high school and i just kind of wanted to quickly show you guys a little bit of what's in them there's like different types of salads each week is a little bit different of the food that comes we have apples there's sour cream carrots rice so just a lot of the basic food things but it is a big blessing too to our families and
076then this week the company that i work with it's called fms global strategies they're actually out of seattle but he did send me a bunch of extra boxes so there's boxes right outside if anybody would like to take one or also if you know of somebody maybe that's in need that you would like to share with because rebecca still has 120 in her driveway yes yes so um feel free to um pass them out and get them out into the community and then also thank you all for volunteering and all that you do for our district i'm thankful thank you have a great night thank you thank you rebecca okay next on the list is lola bosovich sorry i nailed it thank you i have a really complicated last name and i still can't seem
077to get other people's last names right it's all right thank you okay well good evening um my name is lola bosovich and i am a parent of children in the evergreen school district um and today i'm really here to talk about um culturally responsive teaching and the efforts of our diversity equity and inclusion team so here i go so i'm here to speak today as a mother a white woman the first generation on both sides of my family to be born in america i am the daughter of immigrants and the mother of black sons that have attended various schools in the evergreen school district for the last 18 years and counting i am a taxpayer two of my sons are current students one a seventh grader at pacific middle school and the other a senior
078at union high school who will be heading to eastern washington university in the fall to major in communications and play football for the eagles and i just want to take a side note to thank the amazing teachers at burton pacific and union that um that my son wouldn't have made it that far without their support so i just had to pause there and and do a shout out i understand though that there is a concern in this community about how our budgets are spent the current levy and the focus on our curriculum specifically related to diversity equity and inclusion i saw the billboard in response to the current levy and the concern regarding math scores crt and gender as a parent i am disappointed but i am not surprised i can tell you i don't
079lose sleep at night worrying about how my children succeed or fail when it comes to statewide assessments when they have struggled there have been resources available in this school district to support them with measured results and success and when my children succeed they have been celebrated what keeps me awake at night is whether or not my children are welcome in our community and in our schools thinking about the children that have harassed my sons and called them the n-word and threatened them with physical violence and how my children have taken it with grace and empathy yet they weren't given the same how would you respond as a parent and what would you hope our schools do to help prevent these situations success is so much more than a test score and it is measured throughout
080a lifetime of accomplishment achievement and reflection not just through an annual statewide assessment i can tell you i'm a proud member of this community with a successful career i couldn't tell you what any of my test scores were during elementary middle or high school so this argument doesn't win with me how do you prepare children and teachers to address these situations or better yet prevent them it is through knowledge awareness and empathy that culturally responsive teaching provides and i'll share a side note it's because for me it was really important when my youngest son who when he was around eight at the time responded when he was asked how it made him feel when a child referred to him as the n word and it happened more than once with the same child and his
081response was maybe he just didn't have a good home life that's the empathy i also understand that there are individuals in our community that believe culturally responsive teaching takes away from our student experience in a district where almost 50 percent of our students identify as something other than white and an additional percentage of the student population although identify as white are non-native english speakers culturally responsive teaching prepares our teachers to have inclusive conversations and helps our students feel how am i doing for time like they belong the focus is on academic success in structural practices curriculum disciplinary practices school board policy hiring practices within our district and community engagement culturally responsive learning is our student experience it's not it's not uncommon knowledge that as a nation we're not comfortable with learning how to and and
082teaching how to talk about race and cultural differences in a respective in a respectful way our children need a place where they feel all are welcome to the table they need to learn how to navigate the world world as it exists and it begins in our classrooms children that feel emotionally supported and learn empathy early on have a much broader understanding of the world in which we live and have more opportunities for success think about your own experience as an adult your place of work the things you don't like the things you do the decisions that are made the people the people you have to learn to work with the earlier you learn how to navigate and partner with people that aren't just like you who don't share the same ideas as you the sooner
083your doors open to more opportunity it is the process in which we self-reflect and learn who we are as individuals how we support fellow educators and more importantly are more importantly our students to think we that to think that we don't see color or to believe someone else's experience isn't important is ignorant and not a community in which i want my children to grow well i'm sorry to interrupt you but we have actually gone over the three minutes okay and i am actually going to wrap it up and just say you know it's important for our next generation to be successful community members um and a community that recognizes and embraces both its similarities and its differences so thank you thank you okay next on the list is mark gassaway and he's actually going to
084give his comments via virtual i don't see him no mark are you here in the audience okay we will go on to the next next on the list is julie apple julie apple julia oh julia no you have her remarks christy oh i don't know that we can do that we actually do you have time because you are on the list as well christy do you want to add some can send it to the okay directly she can if we can just get it sent to us directly or if she can get online then we can circle back if she does get online can we hear her okay next on the list is amberlynn lane welcome thank you so i'm amber lynn lane i'm here today as a parent of three children in the district
085one at elementary fur crest one at cascade middle school and one at evergreen high school i'm also a music teacher at burnt bridge creek elementary i want to start by saying thank you so much superintendent boyd for your transparency and your communication in what the budget reductions will be i know for all of us it's really hard to look at that information but the fact that you communicated so clearly to us is appreciated i would like to speak to the levy reduction as a parent even though i'm a music teacher my two older boys didn't really show that much interest in music to my heartbreak um i did not force it on them um but when they got to fifth grade we encouraged them to try out band or orchestra it was the perfect time
086to just give it a try there was nothing to lose and both of my children fell in love with music in fifth grade had they not had that fifth grade experience they probably would not have signed up for a year-long elective of music when they got to middle school but because of that fifth grade experience they did and now my high school my high school stunt his for son has forecasted to do choir and band and percussion next year let alone jazz band and every single music opportunity that he can all of his friends that he goes and hangs out with our friends that he's made through music so because fifth grade experience is not a given that experience my children's love of music cannot be attributed to me it's to this school district and
087our levy taxpayers and i want my son that's in third grade now to have that same opportunity whether it's sports or whether it's music every ch child in our district deserves that when i see my own fifth grade students go to their band or orchestra class they are skipping their way there they love it so thank you to the taxpayers who have paid levies in in the past and i really really hope this levy passes this time i really want my child who has almost his whole school experience to go um to have every experience that his older brother had and then when it comes to cost i just want to say to the community that these costs will cost more than what they'll save in taxes if they have to pay for private lessons
088or join private athletics or give their son a tutor or counseling it costs less to to pay the taxes through the school so um thank you for putting this levy forward for a second chance thank you thank you amberlynn okay all right we are actually going to go ahead and circle back to julia is it julia or julie julie apple who is online joining us wonderful thank you so much uh thanks for the opportunity to speak with you my name is julia apple i teach special education at hartford elementary i've been teaching in this district for about 18 years and i would like to talk with you about how important it is to our special our students in special education that we pass this levy i think we can all agree that every single human
089being on this planet deserves the opportunity to learn new things students who get special education services have been identified as having obstacles to learning new things this means that they're not able to learn like their peers without extra adult help our job as special education teachers interventionists para educators and other support staff in special education is to remove or lessen those barriers so our students can learn maybe the student can't move their arms or hands very well so someone needs to hold a book so they can read it maybe the student has a hearing loss so someone needs to interpret what people are saying into american sign language maybe the student understands directions best if someone shows them a picture instead of just telling them or maybe they have heard have a hard time staying
090calm when they're frustrated and an adult needs to remind them what to do in that moment if our students have someone to do these things with them to help them get around the barriers that are in their way they're more likely to be able to learn new things on the flip side if there is no adult there to provide these supports no one there to remove or help the student remove the obstacles then our students have a very difficult time accessing new information if this levy fails there will be huge cuts to special education staffing in our district and our students who deserve to learn like everyone does will be the ones who suffer the most i am asking you as someone with direct knowledge of the impact of this levy on students in special
091education that you please vote yes and pass this levy so that all our students have the operating opportunity to learn thank you very much for your time i appreciate you circling back to me thank you julie okay next on the list is gary wilson yep thank you i have a little handout here i've been handing it out to people i'm just going to read it it's got the graph of the ospi website the report card for evergreen school district students and it says here let's see consider these success and failure rates as our current leverage operating results far less than half of esd students passed or met standards with three out of five failing to meet english and four out of five failing to meet math standards more class time is needed on academics and
092less on social engineering lessons causing among other things gender confusion until refocusing back on the basics no more money is warranted property values have increased 11 percent since last year so has our taxes inflation the same levy rate will collect 25 million more in funding than the previous levy where is the excess funds being spent enrollment as you've noticed is down dropped 4 000 students about 16 since the last levy yet still you want more money parents should demand a better education for their children before giving our school district more dollars i've been here eleven of the last well twelve of the last thirteen school board meetings i've spoken out on this and other issues in the past and basically no response really we're sending our kids here to learn math english science and you
093know that's not happening at a anywhere near a decent rate as i mentioned last or a few times canvas is like double our statistics our percentages why you know we what teachers are not doing the job you know what students are not passing these making these standards so do a you know schematic on that find out where these the last two years who were their math teachers who are their english teachers of the ones failing to meet these standards and see if there's that shows like okay these uh teachers are not doing the job and there has to be consequences there it's you know just because this is run by the state you know it's taxes there's still you know you need to do a good job and it's not happening um these are not
094numbers i'm making up these are your numbers from your website your state website so yeah i wrote a majority of that signed i didn't want to include the crt someone else mentioned that i know crt is not technically being taught but i know the teachers have been trained in it and i know it's coming and i know culturally responsive practices and diversity equity inclusion it's going to be paving the way for it um you know so anyway i just the worst thing is the gender stuff i mean no child should question their gender and i won't send my daughter to the classroom ever again because based on the teacher that could become an issue they could be having them question their gender having them choose their pronouns i mean sorry um that's not what our
095school system is for if you think it is well we'll vote down your levy thank you i'd like to ask a clarifying question gary if i could sure you uh mentioned social engineering leading to gender confusion do you know of any examples in our 36 schools of that going on that you could bring to our attention well i know it's occurring i know it's you know children are questioning their gender more and more i mean uh last week in my church a fourth grader um we gave her a little it was a little cross and it had like a blue and a pink squiggly like pastel color on the side of it and she said oh my transgender friend's gonna love this she's a boy and frankly i i mean so so that was an
096instance at church no that was i mean this is a her school friend this isn't a church friend this is a school friend it's not a church if you i guess i guess my plea is that if you do find specifics that you bring it to our attention okay i will find out i'll see you know it's kind of a touchy subject all i said to the girl was he thinks or she thinks she's a boy god made them male and female that's i just said it respectfully nicely you know but thanks thank you next on the list is rika strong hi y'all my name is rika strong a proud uh parent of six children in the evergreen public schools uh system we got two left that we're trying to get out of our house
097i'm glad critical race theory didn't come up because i was coming to let people know that is absolutely not what is being taught in this school district a little bit familiar with curriculum and i'm the last in the last term of my phd looking at thousands of theories going through books that look like this that explain what critical race theory along with a ton of other theories are and what i'll say to that is probably in the easiest terms critical race theory is an ethical epistemology of a social construct leading to an emphatic movement i doubt that evergreen public school district are teaching my senior who's going to notre dame as a scholar athlete these kinds of words and context or my sophomore or any other child i don't think they're equipped to do it
098so um just want to get that off the table that that is not the social engineering that is occurring here and i don't know that even myself being a phd candidate have the bandwidth to be able to explain to people with critical race theory i doubt that we're teaching it through to kindergarteners and uh seniors so let's take that off the table what i will say though is and and the the argument around gender or the argument around critical race theory is just as ridiculous as accusing the school district of teaching our students that the earth is flat it's just not happening okay it's a theory but a theory that is not taught what i will say though is what is being taught in the district is humanity and empathy and our students being being
099able to show up as their whole self and as you gary mentioned your daughter struggles with math right the programs that we have in place right now that would support her or that the levy would support is giving her additional supports that she needs so that if she is struggling with math she can have a 504 or her teacher can adapt their style to be able to support her learning needs or to listen to your concerns as a parent about what kind of curriculum is being taught to my children and having an actual committee of people that are willing to listen to and hear what's important to parents through surveys and we heard 6 000 people participated in the survey so that the district is actually carving out a unique learning experience for each of
100us in each of our families if we don't pass these levees those kinds of supports will not exist for our children i had the opportunity to be principal for a day when i showed up there was a child who came to school in the pouring rain without a coat and with sandals on and i thought to myself how could this first grader actually learn in school soaking wet and i talked to the principal about it and she said we have this fund that's called the principles fund and so they're able to write a check for that child to get a coder for that child to be able to get shoes no levy no principles funds rebecca came up here and talked about food packages that go to children in our community 50 percent of kids
101in evergreen public schools we're not campus campus school districts are funded well and that's why they're able to have the success the success that they have fifty percent of our kids live in poverty in this district those food boxes those kinds of things would not occur if we didn't have resource officers in our district to pair parents with resources that they need to just feed their children or for basic needs this is not an argument about critical race theory or gender this is about humanity and those of us and i'll call on are my christian brothers and sisters and you think about christ-like principles his principles are to take care of all and to take care of those who are hurting the worst that's what this district is trying to carve out and so in
102closing and i know my time is up what i'll say is this is not a debate about any of these ancillary things that people are throwing out there this is about creating a educational structure that embraces and wraps around our children in this community and gives them a real fair chance at life regardless of identity regardless of social economic status regardless of ability or whatever they have to bring to the table we're making sure that our children have the ability to leave this district whole and it takes funding for us to be able to do that and not of this other nonsense that people are thrown in the way those are my comments thank you thank you thank you [Applause] next on the list is christy peake i thank you christy peek i'm a teacher
103librarian in the district vice president of the evergreen education association and president-elect of that body i'm speaking to you as a teacher a union member and a grandparent and parent of students that used to go to evergreen schools and i'd like to speak to you about the levy and what it means to the students teachers and staffs working with them the last two years have been hard for everyone nothing has been normal for adults aged 35 to 60 we spent three to six percent of our lives in relative isolation and pandemic chaos we've had most of our lives to figure out how to deal with adversity and adapt to difficult and unpredictable conditions our oldest students at 17 have spent 12 percent of their lives struggling with the conditions of pandemic and our five-year-olds this
104pandemic has been 40 percent of their lives while they're still figuring out how to learn make friends problem solve and just be a human being on this planet i'm hearing about basics i think empathy and humanity are basics and and i think we need more if it were only the pandemic alone this would be a heavy burden but it's more than that they have lives too that existed pre-pandemic with all the usual bumps and challenges and in too many cases the exceptional trauma that was a part of their life to begin with school is not school as usual we are unmasked and we're ready to start regaining a sense of normalcy but recovering from the pandemic is not as easy as taking off our masks our students are coming to school caring with them not
105only the effects of not socializing with friends and peers and struggling with online learning and the stress of the pandemic but also the burdens they carried before we need more counselors more paraeducator support more behavior coaches more caring adults in classrooms and schools to wrap around and support these kids we need more adults to have eyes on students to notice when a student is in need they don't wear signs and they don't always or even often ask in traditional ways for help they act for help they shut down they act out they seek or create conflict and those are the kids our internalizer kids need our eyes on them they become depressed anxious and disengaged we need more activities and enrichment to backfill what they've missed out on this is not the time for cutting
106programs that exist to meet the needs of students we need more arts and music outlets for students teachers are struggling under a workload that's indescribably heavy they carry the emotional needs and burdens of students along with the standards they have to teach if you want to know what a smaller class size means for kids go and talk to the teachers of the smaller classes like the first grade at millplane or better yet go spend a half a day with them and then visit the same grade level at a school where the numbers are closer to the max and then tell me which class you want your first grade child or grandchild in community members i implore you to pass this levy whatever thoughts you might have about mistakes the school board has made or decisions
107you disagree with taking programs and supports from students when they need it most is not the answer school board i implore you to make any cuts as far from direct contact with students as possible thank you thank you christy excuse me okay we're actually going to go back and hear from mark gassaway see online now mark are you there mark yeah can you hear me now yes we can go ahead great thank you so i had a business meeting with an associate this last week his name's levi and our conversation went something like this levi how is business going well mark it's going okay i suppose you can say we're in the middle of the pack just okay huh so what is it you wanted to talk about today well mark i want to talk
108about i need i want more money from investors levi investors are already giving you 37 million dollars a year how much more do you want mark i want 5.9 million next year and 25 million over the next three years levi that's a lot of money is your business growing no mark in fact i have four thousand fewer students than i did just two years ago you have fewer clients but you want more money what is it for are you increasing services no mark in fact i intend to keep the same ratio of service providers to clients but you are asking for more money levi i don't understand i want to see your business plan what will you spend this money on that's just it mark i don't know how much money i need but i
109still want more money levi i would suggest you stick with 37 million asking for more money just doesn't make sense mark i'm not going to do that i'm going to ask for more and if the investors don't give me give it to me i can always come back and ask for a lower amount levi that sounds pretty risky to me that's not how organizations usually work i can't support giving your more you more money without a plan not even a credit union would do that i'm going to advise the investors against your proposal this conversation may sound fantastical but this is exactly what the evergreen school board is asking of taxpayers i challenge the school board and the superintendent to be honest with taxpayers tell them you're asking for 25 million more dollars over the
110next three years tell them you have four thousand fewer students and intend to reduce service providers accordingly tell them you do not have an epo budget for the next three years and you don't you do not really know how much money you need i'm really disappointed in how this communication has happened with the public and i challenge you to be upcoming and honest with taxpayers in the future thank you mark next on the list is bill bevell uh good evening um i'm bill beville address on file um i'm a fifth grade teacher uh right now i'm on release to be a union president and i've been doing that and i'm ready to go back i get to go back next year and so this is uh definitely uh my experience uh what happens at this
111levy and i just kind of made a bullet list as you know i'm a pragmatist it's like i really want to know bang for buck what are we getting out of this and honestly i have to say to you and to the community this is the most kid first money that we have in the budget everything in the levy is almost directly to kids just the the concept that we would be giving up seven million dollars of levy equalization that the state's willing to give us uh to help support our students doesn't make much sense for me for us to make ourselves ineligible for that julia did a much better job of talking about sped supports but that's a good part of my job is talking to sped teachers into schools about how sped students
112needs are being met but the concept of cutting the things that really make school great music choir band clubs athletics to us it may seem like those things are extra but to get some kids that's the only thing keeping them coming back to school and if we lose kids because they drop out or they're not interested or they disengage those kids aren't coming back either and that will make it even more difficult for us to reach our reach be able to fund our budget in the future one of the things i think that's most alarming about this is the ability to disregard reality we are in a teacher shortage not enough i'm on the wsu professional educator board or advisory board and i know there are less people going into teacher education programs right now
113we are going into a crisis of not being able to staff all of the things that we'd like to teach our students that are required to teach our students and so making cuts to teachers right now while those teachers scramble to find other jobs they may not come back we may be hunting from another group of teachers that are less prepared and we haven't invested in a lot of these teachers are teachers that we have in evergreen already spent money to train to get ready to participate in equity and inclusion and all of those things that don't come just in a regular teacher preparation program one of the other things is is when a teacher from somewhere else asks you about the district one of the first thing they ask is do you pass your
114levies it is an identifier whether your district is successful or not if you pass your levies that is a vote from the community that you believe in the education of children in your in your community and i had a couple other things but it's also a bad idea to to shortest on bus drivers we know there's a bus driver shortage it'd be hard to find those and i just think the the ending thing bang for buck this is a great investment this is a really great investment and the things that make our schools worth coming back to thank you bill next on the list is brynn and i'm really going to try not to scam a horn awesome thank you [Laughter] welcome thank you as i make the long walk back yeah neither of my
115names are easy so i'm here um um as a community member without kids but also as a teacher a music teacher in the district um my big thing i believe that strong schools build strong communities period and so i believe that also in educating students i believe in educating them that we are fanning the flames and the interests and the curiosity of our future leaders our doctors our architects our scientists yes i'm also a music teacher i also get the some of that in there as well and i also believe in the arts i believe in training the mind that comes from an arts forward curriculum i believe that all of our future endeavors those doctors those architects those what we consider to be sometimes blue-collar all those white-collar blue-collar workers can benefit from an
116arts-based education my job affords me that unique position to be able to see how it can influence the thinking and the training of the brain as we move forward and progress in our educational balances it also allows me to see how these non-basic classes as they have sometimes been led us to be can influence those students if the levy if the replacement levy fails music arts and our sports stand to have drastic cuts the ramifications will be felt not just for a little bit but for absolute years to come these extraneous classes and i'm including sports as a class because there are lessons that are learned on the basketball court in the field and everywhere else these extraneous classes as they have been called this music art theater sports provide not only essential skills such
117as dedication perseverance self-discipline and long-range goal achievement but also they provide a home there are students whose entire driving focus is the band the choir the orchestra the black box the field where they will be these subjects they're gifted in the ability to discover who they are and who they will become they have aided students to learn to look past themselves and what it means to be part of a group and to give and sacrifice to that group they learn that they the sum is greater than just them when they all work together they are also the impetus of success oftentimes acting as a catalyst to keep our students in school they are the reason they wake up in the morning they are the reason that they decided to raise their grade from an f
118to a c so that they could play in that game on set friday night for some of our students they are the reason they wake up and open their eyes in the morning when if we choose to cut we are losing a vital support for their success for a segment of our student population we are creating a no-win situation there's a quote by george bernard shaw who says you use a glass mirror to look at your face you use works of art to see into your soul we cannot take away the education of students it allows them to see their soul and to learn implicitly about themselves i beg and plead please pass this levied as what is best for us and for the future of our students in the future of our community thank
119you very much thank you thank you [Applause] next is peter martsuzaki did i do that right i'm so sorry i need to i just i should just apologize and not even try well i used to be virginia grunwalt so oh my middle name is koloku every time i have to fill out applications or you know like new driver's licenses peter koloko kumaili matsuzaki so pretty long anyways oh you know i was i kind of wanted to keep what i wanted to talk about just small and uh as non-political as i could you know and you know just factual but listening to all the teachers talk you know i i i was trying my best not to choke up you know especially i know we're not supposed to direct stuff but especially listening to miss bradford
120you know you know they're not even concerned about their jobs they keep talking about how it's gonna affect students you know they don't even care about that that's about what they're gonna do and you know that's i mean excuse my language but that's some heroic you know i mean thank you uh i just moved up here you know one of the things i liked when i moved up uh what why we came up here me and my wife was because you know hawaii is kind of expensive you know it's like you want to get a house it's like a million two you know we just sold my mom's selves it was termite eaten sold it for a million two you know we moved up here um because when we looked at places to move you
121know vancouver was really welcoming and nice when we came up here to visit everybody was so nice you know um and it's cold it's a lot colder than hawaii but which you know this was the coldest i've ever been i've lived in hawaii all my life so when i saw the snow it was it was cool my i built my first snowman here my first snow angel but um you know what you guys have here is community you know i mean listening to everybody talk you know hawaii people that have that spiritual power in them when they talk and you feel it we call that mana and i see a lot of you guys have that so i appreciate it you know even the people that i disagree disagree with you know um it was
122nice you know they didn't scream or yell they just left nicely you know i appreciate that so even when people disagree you know they can leave nicely so i just wanted to say that but you know i have 30 seconds left so the biggest thing i want to say was you know what attracted us to evergreen was you know the force that you guys put into your school system i mean one thing i think people keep forgetting was two years ago you know kovit hit a lot of money got spent there you know people keep forgetting that it took a lot of resources and the teachers the teachers all and all you guys you guys had you guys went through shots risking your guys lives you know that's heroic so thank you thank you [Applause]
123okay next is phil cronobush yes i'm the chronologist i'm a homeowner and uh my grandchildren also attend every school district um basically uh rob perkins uh asked fielder's question to one of the teachers giving a presentation i think two board meetings ago about math curriculum and he noted he asked a question about parental involvement in the curriculum selection and basically it was he kind of the the person at the podium basically kind of went around and said well i don't know and it was basically i think there's no involvement so my question is what can you give us an update maybe on how that process has gotten better that parents are involved in the curriculum selection just not you alone we can have someone follow up with the answer to that that actually was a
124presentation earlier on tonight correct right okay thank you okay next on the list is jen selen i've been sitting here looking at these names trying in my head to say them properly that's okay and i have to apologize i went to a mariners game this weekend and we did a lot of yelling and i lost my voice and we're not even mariners fans so it was a really good time we wore our giants gear to the mariners game so my name is jen thielen i am a parent and employee of evergreen public schools and because i lost my voice i wrote a letter that i'm going to read to you just to keep me on track i'm sharing with you tonight because many believe that i hold a valuable perspective being both a parent and
125employee of evergreen public schools as well as a tax paying citizen within our district but beyond that i also can offer an honest viewpoint as someone somewhat of a new member to this community my family moved to vancouver from the big island of hawaii pause shout out in um okay where was i in 2016. the biggest reason we sought this move was because we wanted more for our children's education it was also helpful that my husband studies volcanoes so something that hawaii and washington have plenty of i investigated the area schools with villages we visited the area prior to our move and i quite literally went around asking people what school do we want to go to what i was surprised by was that there were so many answers so many schools that people raved
126about and loved my realization was that within evergreen school district there were many many many very good schools in january 2016 my son began first grade at illihi currently we have a seventh grader at shahela and daughters in third grade and kindergarten at illihe after a 12-year hiatus to raise those babies i returned to education this year as an instructional para in learning support at elihi in the next few years i plan to dive into full-time teaching when my kids stop taking so much of my time we'll see growing children and students is my life's greatest work since 2016 i have seen the leaving of multiple superintendents reorganizations of admin and recently the failure of a levy these are big things but yet the love instruction and connection my children have received has unwavered my
127children have been met with so much grace and commitment more than i could have ever hoped however as someone that is now on the ground every day working in the trenches the latest dysfunction is unexplainable mostly because we don't have a hot second to try and figure it out we are already feeling short staffed and overwhelmed with all the excess need in a school year that's following a two-year pandemic what i can explain and i hope voters can understand is that the upcoming replacement levy is crucial to our schools community and its success this levy is about kids it's about the staff that serves those kids it's not about the high level admin that maybe need to get it together whatever it is these are two separate issues both very important and with very different
128solutions i am in favor of resolution and restoration for both but failing this levy does not make any progress for either side we need this levy to pass so our students and staff have resources they need to keep going it's crucial it's okay to support our school communities by passing this levy and it's also okay to be furious with the very district that's asking for it many of us are feeling that but all of us want what is best for our students on friday afternoon when these proposed budget cuts came out it felt like a punch in the gut each line item is a person a resource a student that will be offered less than they deserve we have got to work on the unification of this district's administration but failing this levy will not
129do that so to our voters i ask that you put the students in our district first by voting yes only they benefit and only they lose what's at stake and to our district i ask that you please get it together whatever it is it's costing students valuable resources and we can do better we must do better thank you thank you okay that is the last citizen comment sign up so i will go ahead and call at 7 27 going to go ahead and adjourn the meeting where we will reconvene for board workshop go over elementary boundary committee changes proposals instructional materials committee workshop and legislative updates thank you all for joining us this evening awesome all right we're going to go ahead and get started with our board workshop and first up is the elementary
130boundary committee changes per proposal mr monroe yes eugenie thank you members of the board and superintendent boyd it's our pleasure bobby's in mind to be here to give you a brief update as to the status thus far and what you'll see at the top of the document that you have and that's there on the screen is phase three of the work uh we elected uh because we know that uh you know for some folks you know this work is new to them in terms of the work that's occurring so we put a little background up there with regard to how this work ties into the 2018 bond and the new school construction and so phase one and phase two of the work obviously have been completed previously and they went into effect on those dates
131there that are listed and we're in the midst of phase three now and if all goes according to plan and per your the board's approval of the work as we move forward these changes or whatever changes are made would go into effect in august of 2023 so the next section there before i turn it over to bobby for a part is i wanted to make sure that the board is reminded of the timeline that we have published on our website with regard to what we've promised our community and specifically that if all goes according to the plan we would be in a position to have not so much bobby and i but really the parents on the parent committee present the proposed changes to the school board either this june or this august depending on
132what is the board's pleasure and so bobby is going to come up and detail a little bit more about the current work for phase three and also show the board a couple of images that detail the current boundaries and what the possible proposed new ones that we would take out to the community would be so i'll turn it over to bobby good evening so current work um like scott said we're in phase three um we are working with burton crestline endeavor for crest hearthwood and mill plane the schools that we've underlined are the schools that have had parent representation um crossland and mill plain we've worked hard with those schools but we have not been successful in getting feedback so we're working with our current parent team to figure out ways to get crestline and
133mill plane parents involved as we move forward with this process in different ways we've had seven meetings and we've arrived at a recommendation to take out to our school communities for feedback so if we look at what um our zoning looks like right now um you um we're looking at fur crests in the pink and then we've got hearthwood we've got endeavor which endeavor obviously is an interesting one with the growth in endeavor you can see pink right in the smack middle of endeavor which those are students that go to fur crest because endeavor is at capacity um and so we've also have burton which will be opening a new elementary school um either mid-year next year or the following year depending on that open date and then we've looked at hearthwood and mill plane
134and crestline we've looked at those boundaries based on enrollment and space in those buildings so with our proposed feedback and input from our parents we have taken into consideration considerations like safety able to walk to and from their neighborhood keeping the population when it comes to socioeconomic and diversity intact as much as possible impacting as few families as possible removing patchwork quilt types of scenarios so we had some guidance and norms that we followed with our our parents and so under those guidances um we came up with a proposal and you can see real quickly at endeavour obviously we removed that pink section which is now all endeavor and fur crest we have extended boundaries um on this west side of 112th which was currently endeavor students moving into the fur crest neighborhood um which
135is still all business so they busted for crest as opposed to busing to endeavor and you can see we've pushed so that so the patchwork the pink in the middle of endeavor has been removed we've extended on the west side of 112th we've pushed burton into endeavor boundaries if we think about the location of the new burton which will be over in this area so burton will be picking up endeavor students we've extended hearthwood a bit into fur crest and which is a third move and then if we look down between crestline and mill plane mill playing down here is going to be picking up crestline students so we've made four significant shifts in regards to family neighborhoods and shifting the boundaries um so again just a quick snapshot here's the before you can look
136down at crestline and mill plane and kind of see where mill plane is now going to be picking up um some park crest neighborhood um in that area so with that um in thinking about our our demographics and our numbers and what the impact and when those numbers actually look like scott is going to speak to that thank you bobby so uh this chart here and i realized that you can't see the bottom of it there but i'll scroll up and then share a little bit of information we just wanted to give the board and superintendent boyd some information about the types of numbers that the parents ask for and kind of the educational process that we go through as we work with them so you can see there are the six schools in question
137that are listed and of course burton and millplane are the two that are being rebuilt and that means that the capacity student capacity for them in the new buildings is increased over the current ones and so the first thing we did was once we came up with those possible recommendations that bobby went through is you can see there for the total number of zone students that simply shows for the parent committee and for you all how many current elementary school students live in burton's current attendance zone and how many would live in the proposed new one but it's important to note of course that as you all know we have a very active boundary exception process in our school district and so all of the students who live in the burton zone don't necessarily attend
138burton and all the students who do attend burton don't necessarily live in that zone they could live somewhere else as well so the boundary exception process is a big part of this in terms of trying to get an approximation in terms of what the results of this will actually be we had some initial targets there that you can see in terms of additions or subtractions to the current enrollment it's also very important as bobby mentioned and as the guiding principles that the board has approved all three times that we've been through this phase so you can see there that we've detailed for the parents based on their questions what the possible additions or reductions would be to students on free and reduced lunch how many students are currently served with some type of an iep
139and also a little bit about the most significant ethnicity breakdown in terms of student numbers and then this last one down here i'll scroll up a little bit that is the plus 94 that you see for burton and on through the line there that is the best projection in terms of additions to current enrollment or subtractions that we can come up with based largely on what we expect students and families who are currently on boundary exceptions to do if we pop back to [Music] you know this map here that bobby detailed before when she spoke to um that area right there on top of endeavour that is currently zoned for fur crest and that we are proposing to change there are approximately 100 elementary students that currently live in apartments and condos and different things
140in that zone and about 40 of them approximately already attend endeavor on boundary exceptions so if that were to change as one example for those 40 students we're not really changing anything for them they would still go to endeavor but they wouldn't need to be on a boundary exception after that so we're actually one could say improving their situation so you see there at the bottom of the chart what the projected pluses or minuses would be and i guess the last thing i'd say for that in terms of you know just a holistic view is that based on current enrollment current projected enrollment for next year for these six schools right now there is a difference in projected enrollment of approximately 300 students between the smallest of those schools mill plain and the largest of
141those schools endeavor if this proposal were to go all the way through the process and be approved then that difference between the smallest and the largest would shrink to approximately 70 students amongst these six schools so it's very much in keeping with the board's directive to you know right size our elementary schools through this process what's different of course due to the enrollment decline is that right sizing is not necessarily in all cases now at the approximately 550 student mark that we came up with several years ago because of that enrollment decline that is there and then lastly before we get to our proposed timeline which bobby will cover there's just a little detail there for each of those affected zones with regard to the number of students that we believe this proposal in total
142would affect and so that's approximately 389 students which is um you know a lesser number of families but that's the number of students that would be possibly affected by this were these changes to go into effect and i'll turn it back over to bobby to talk about our proposed next steps so next steps uh would be to um connect with our parent group and look at um putting some community forums on the calendar for may we want to do an in-person one at for crest and invite all of the impacted communities to for crest to have that conversation and then also offer a zoom english and spanish opportunities for our families and stakeholders and then after that feedback the parent committee presentation would present to the board during a workshop in june and then reading
143in august and second reading august 23rd so that is our proposed timeline um and our plan at this point and i guess we open this up to questions maybe yeah so and so you guys recall from part that was shared before you know this is the timeline that we suggest based on how we believe the work will proceed um you know pending your approval and um if for some reason it was the wish of the board of the superintendent that we waited until august to do the first reading and do it a little bit later we've got the leeway in there for that but we believe that we are ready and the parents on the committee believe that they are ready to engage in these community forums here next month in the month of may
144which would put us in a position to make any recommended parent recommended changes based on the feedback of the folks who attend those forums either in person or virtual and then present before you all on june 14th oh sorry sorry i forgot to defer to you go ahead oh i i just have one question when when are these um proposed boundary it's going to go into effect next school year or the following school year fall okay okay so it's like that's a tight time frame if it was for the school year so you know our our promise to the community and it's published on our website and it's consistent with the other two phases is that it will be ideally a full year from approval to when they would go into effect and it would
145be no less than eight months if for some reason it were to take until next december but we believe we can come in under that and still be very thoughtful in this feels like a long time since we did the last round right it's happened since then but yeah yeah you know that i it all makes sense and so i want to read the chart as accurately as i can that you had on the previous page you have before numbers in the total number of zone students it's 377. you said that wasn't the actual enrollment at the school no those rob are like in burton's case since that's the number you chose if you were to go back to that map and capture only the current burton attendance zone at the time that this work
146was done it would show at that time that 377 elementary age students lived in that zone okay and most of those of course would go to burton because that is their neighborhood school and their home school but some of them would go to other schools and also students from outside that zone also attend burton right right so so that was a first look for the parents on the committee that are new to that to capture here's what it looks like in the zones so that they could begin to understand the importance of doing the best we can to factor the boundary exception process into this because we have a very robust one yeah and i'm picking burton to discuss because it's the leftmost one is all uh do you i can look this up if
147you don't but do you have at the top of your head the current enrollment at burton um i do as a matter of fact or if it's okay with you we'll go with uh since we're talking about work that would be approved at the end of this year to go into effect the year after we always try to use the data closest to that if we can and so the projected enrollment for burton next year with its current attendance zone is 341. okay and so we're proposing adding approximately 94 students to that which would give it an enrollment of approximately 435. okay which okay yeah i understand that i understand what the chart means okay then uh the scheduling of the approval for these boundaries that appears to include plenty of lead time for those
148families that apply for boundary exceptions to uh have the news so that they can make a plan and not miss the deadlines right yes okay you know hopefully about a year or a little bit more than that just as occurred in the first phase and then in the second phase those of you who are on the board at the time will recall the you know the amount of time they had was a little bit less than that because we delayed the process until late summer you know really because we naively thought at the time or i naively thought at the time that if we waited a couple of months we might be able to do in-person community forums because the pandemic would be over it's not over and it wasn't over then either so we
149did everything virtually last time and those were very well attended in many cases as some of you know from going to those so moving forward even though you know we are allowed to do in person community forums now we want to do that as bobby mentioned but we're also going to continue uh with virtual ones and give parents choices with regard to that and so our proposal is that we would do three forms total two virtual and one in person any other questions no all right thank you guys well thank you okay thanks everybody we appreciate it endeavors needed to be adjusted for a while yes all right thank you that's my stash okay okay next on the agenda is the instructional materials committee kimberly miller and crystal wolf they're both no i just have
150my notes have both all right greetings um i'm crystal wolfe i am the k-12 science toaster for the district and i'm coming to you tonight to present three curriculum adoptions that are various ap science subjects and i'm going to be starting with ap biology so as part of our ap science program again these represent our highest level science courses for the district and these are our rigorous courses where students after a year of learning take an ap exam in may and that that season is coming up and all of our students are hard at work at reviewing for those exams currently and if they pass that ap exam of course they have the opportunity to earn college credit and so part of the requirements that college board sets out for ap courses is that the
151instructional materials for science are are up to date and current and so there is a requirement that they are less than 10 years old and that all students and teachers have access to a college-level textbook so with ap biology i convened a resource team because our digital subscription is expiring the end of this year and our digital subscriptions are six years long and so renewing the current edition would put us past those requirements that are required by the college board and so the review committee consisted of a teacher from each of our high schools that has an ap bio program and that is five of our high schools and so any every high school except for legacy um has ap biology and we had a teacher from each building and so they looked at a
152variety of textbooks including the currently adopted text which is a campbell biology and at first that was probably the text we were going to go with but there was a new book out biology for the ap course by bedford friedman and long publishing company bedford freeman and worth and uh one of the teachers in particular took a a really close look at this brand new textbook and said you know i think this is really worth our consideration we have a strong philosophy that ap is for all in this district and we want to make sure that our textbooks really do support engaging all of our learners who want to challenge themselves with with a challenging science course and so when we look at this textbook in particular it really is tailored specifically to the the
153course exam description for ap biology and it's really trimmed down with very good visuals and understandable text and very readable and so as the teachers evaluated it using our policy and procedure 2020 and with all the criteria there the thing that really stood out was that this textbook really is going to support our students um that that are challenging themselves with this course so just taking a quick look at kind of what it looks like some of the digital resources are still being developed but the physical textbook there's a copy here and it follows the course exam description exactly from from ap college board it has a lot of really great features that will support our students including an online platform that has practice problems it has interactive visuals it has very tart very specific
154learning targets and so those are all features that are ap science teachers found compelling um the organization and the structure in particular really um support students and so um that is the resource that the materials that resource review team unanimously decided would be the best and we presented to the imc and now presenting to you it is fully integrated with canvas it does also include an app that students can have on their personal devices should they want to access the online text with when they're offline it allows them to download and access that resource that the the e-text even without internet those are some other features that that i wanted to highlight for you any questions about ap biology and that process nope okay maybe i will move on to my next um adoption question
155sorry real quick sorry you have to do your thing mike was off he wasn't fast enough trying to keep the mic turned off so that people don't have to hear me doing that i was looking at the um i guess the overall i just struggling with my technology the overall cost but i saw the list price of like 124 for the paper textbook that is very typical actually that is actually more affordable than our current text that was my question is that that price seemed lower than the other so these ap science books they are more expensive than most other textbooks because of that college level but this particular new book is priced below the campbell biology used to seeing a college textbook cost 300 these days and yes so there's that um yeah i
156can i i have that information for you um so for ap biology um you know it varies high school building to high school building how many sections we offer um i can tell you over the last couple years um evergreen's had one section mountain views two henrietta lacks has two to three sections um heritage has one section and union is our strongest program with five sections so what's that mean in numbers of kids yeah so for um somewhere between 340 and 260 depending on the year we haven't really got all the forecasting nail done for this next year okay yep thank you yeah it always seemed to be a well-attended and well-forecasted course of study yeah it's a popular course any other questions before i move on to ap physics algebra based okay so our
157next um resource review team uh convened to consider resources for ap physics um just a little bit of background about ap physics there are actually four exams that college board offers there's ap physics one ap physics two and then there are two ap physics calculus exams that i'll get to so um we have three courses that cover those exams and we've previously been served by a single textbook it was a walker physics textbook that we adopted i believe in 20 2012. and when i convened the resource review team very similar to the ap biology team we had representation from each of our high schools um and we we have typically one ap physics teacher in each building and all of them were involved and when we came together to consider the resources and bringing those
158up to date they strongly felt we needed a separate resource for ap physics 1 and ap physics 2 which are algebra-based courses and then there's ap physics with calculus course um and they need a separate book for that because of the higher level math and so um this first pro this first one pager that i'm showing you is the algebra based so we used to serve both courses with a single textbook and we're moving to having two separate ap physics textbooks this first one is algebra based one of so when we consider which textbooks to look at the resource review team again is looking at that alignment to the college board exam description making sure that the resource really supports students and and gaining the the knowledge and skills that they need to be successful
159on those college board exams and the we had several good textbooks to look at it kind of came down to splitting some hairs and what the ap physics resource review team really came came to an agreement on was putting those textbooks in front of students and asking them is this a readable textbook what do you like about the features of the texts that help you learn how do the problem sets allow you to practice the things that you need to practice and so the textbook that they chose is college physics a statistic approach by night and it is also again integrated with canvas it has really rich problem sets and a strategic approach to problem solving that the teachers really liked so these pearson textbooks come with a digital platform called modifying mastering physics it
160includes an interactive textbook it includes a variety of problems and embedded video tutoring solutions which is also a really great feature so say you get one of the online problems wrong there's a tutorial video that walks you through showing you step by step how to solve those problems um it also has a phone based app for students so on their personal devices if they'd like to access the digital text in that way they can have that option and so that is our ap physics algebra-based proposed adoption questions go for it i notice they're all looking at one particular person i he's like in his element i'm in my i'm i'm reviewing curriculum it's it's really uh yeah and there are those preview links so if you want to see the whole online platform we have
161that preview link with a demo looking at um the link over to the college physics algebra book the knight jones yeah and the first thing that popped up when i tapped on the link was an ad to sign up for pearson plus yes so that is that app that is a phone based app and it says it's a ten dollar uh it's a ten dollar charge oh that is interesting so that is something that has the first time i've seen this pop-up and i am wondering i'll need to double check with my rep but i would assume that is included in our subscription because a lot of these books have different ways of purchasing them and it can be just a student buying their own stand-alone access which might be that 9.99 so i'll have
162to ask if that is included in our digital subscription or not yeah it's uh i think we actually wrote it in one of our policies with the technology initiative the lift initiative that uh yeah we would not require students we would not require students to pay a surcharge for other products but my other concern really has to do with whether or not they're going to experiencing advertisements by pearson for pearson products while trying to learn physics that's a good question and i would prefer that we avoid presenting a branded ad during school to anybody i don't think that it's appropriate yeah i mean we'll clarify when i say that rep and have that answer for you at first reading yeah go to that yeah other questions some physics books i think it's very heavy yeah
163very heavy how many students part of our physical ed yeah so if you think it's quite a bit um school year to school year um so uh let's see currently so 2021 we had sections just at no that's i just have enrollment i don't have sections um so ap physics 1 20 21 we had 129 students taking ap physics and three students taking ap physics two um and then this last year we had 123 students in ap physics one and eight students in ap physics two we're gonna have to start uh providing chiropractic services for students carrying those books we often have students leave the physical book at home and then access the digital item now yeah now that it's on the phone and digital that's kind of nice because that's a huge book right
164you'll see students that come with this book full of stickies and like they're they're really engaged in it which is great they're um so they will be handed out to students checked out the way the textbooks have always yes okay this is the calculus one um this is the physics c this is the physics algebra based algebra yes and i thought i had the calculus based book in my cubicle but it is still in the hands of one of my resource review teachers so i can get you that as well any further questions on ap physics with algebra okay moving on to a physics with calculus exact same resource review team as ap physics with algebra we currently don't have enough students forecasting to have a teacher at each high school teaching ap physics with
165calculus that is a goal of ours is to have that offered at every building currently ap physics with calculus is at mountain view and union and we would like to see that expanded interestingly enough the the teachers did end up selecting a ap physics book for ap physics c by the same author and so it's the same problem-solving approach the same strategies but obviously the math is at a calculus level um this was the most challenging resource to find there are a lot of textbooks that are in this higher ed bag for college that we actually don't really have access to as a k-12 institution and the way that purchasing works for college is way different than it is for high school so we had to kind of go back and forth with several of
166the publishers to find a resource that we could purchase as a k-12 institution um but we are satisfied that this resource really does align again with that college exam description and the requirements of college board supportive for students who are reaching those high rigorous standards for ap physics with calculus um the dynamic studio study modules were something that teachers really like there's a lot of responsive um responsiveness in the digital platform as students are either answering questions right or wrong it gives targeted feedback to students and the teachers can see that as well if they have multiple students you know which particular questions are most of the students missing all of those things are part of the part of the digital resources um so very very similar to the ap physics with algebra but again
167with that higher level of math that teachers really feel is needed to help the students with that advanced class interestingly enough ap physics c is a year-long course but students take two ap exams there's ap physics with calculus mechanics exam and ap physics with calculus electromagnetic exam so it prepares them for both so those students when they sit for exams in may are actually sitting for two exams they are rock stars just looking through that book i was like these students are brilliant this this is the calculus basis the engineering one yeah okay strategic physics for science and engineers strategic response you've seen some symbols in the chapter on vector mathematics that suggest yeah yeah it's college level it's definitely college level yeah any questions about ap physics with calculus no mother thank you very
168much thank you come here hello i'm kimberly miller i am a family consumer science tosa and i've also been a health teacher and i was the chair of this review committee i brought with me kyle bingham one of the teachers that was on the review committee to talk to you about the health book and what we found we did have a teacher from each of the high schools as well as the spanish teacher that is teaching our spanish health curriculum that was one of the driving forces of as we looked at textbooks what we were looking for and why because we are going to be offering two courses that are integrated uh full-on spanish and so we needed resources for that class our current textbook is a 2010 textbook so it's woefully out of date
169and so that's another driving force plus we have textbooks in the classrooms that are needing to be replaced and we wouldn't want to replace the 2010. so one of the other big issues was that we wanted online availability and so that was something we were really looking for we did find that there are very few companies right now making health textbooks so out of uh goodheart wilcox prentice hall cengage northwest textbook depository mcgraw-hill houghton mifflin harcourt and glencoe we got from goodhart wilcox and glencoe that was it so out of all those that was the only availability that there was in good heart wilcox we were able to get two textbooks one was essential health and one was comprehensive health and in uh glencoe we were able to get um health smart and so we
170pulled all three of those books one of the books um comprehensive health had a very comprehensive sex ed curriculum and since we're doing flash curriculum we took that one out he figured we did not need that the essential health was the same textbook without the sex ed curriculum so we took that one away we reviewed both of those covering all of our areas and i'm going to have kyle tell you a little bit about what the teachers found in just a moment we did have one-on-one meetings and zoom meetings and review online and then evaluated that lots of information questions back and forth questions to our publishers and some of the very interesting things that happened today if you look here on your online access for online access the top one where for high school
171the evergreen access code i talked to them today and i said let's extend it to the end of june for our school board she said no problem i looked at it this afternoon about four o'clock and she said uh oh they cut it off rather than extending it so tomorrow morning i've been promised that one will be extended for you to go through june but she did show us the junior high one which if you click into that one you can see the high school as well and the junior high science or excuse me spanish as i said one of the big issues was that we needed a spanish textbook and spanish resources and that was very hard to find at the time that we first started reviewing this they had the textbook in spanish
172but they did not have a teacher book or any of the resources and so as we talked to them and one other district talked to them they have they came back and said we will give you a certificate where you can go ahead and translate and then just this last two weeks ago three weeks ago they said we have decided to translate the whole thing for you so today when i talk to her they will be available in one month for the whole thing translated for high school junior high has been translated you can see the resources and how it's done and this was a very heavy resource laden program that we really thought had a lot to offer one of the other things that was very interesting that we found out was when you
173integrate this in canvas you log into canvas and that's your passcode in so you don't have to have individual passcode per class and they suggest finding out our biggest semester so as an example if we were to buy the bundle which you look at down here if we were to buy the bundle where we had say a classroom set or even a school set of hardback books and then have a online access they would have us look at our largest semester so if our first semester because the semester long course had 300 students across the district taking the course they would recommend we buy 300 certificates or licenses through canvas and then next semester if there's 250 we don't buy again they we just reuse that 300. so we don't have to continually update the
174and speaking of updating they do update the book every three four months and so if it's online you get that updated version as well online thank you again my name is kyle bigham i'm a health teacher at mountain view i've been a health teacher at mountain view for seven years now when i came to the district i came into using our current text that we currently use now and we had classroom sets and we also had sets that are individuals that could be checked out by students through our library through our book room with that we also had online accessibility at that time as time progressed we lost that accessibility we kind of as teachers found ways to get around we found some other ways to access it online and as the years have rolled
175on less and less currently right now be honest especially pandemic you know kind of you find a young you find something you got to do to get content to kids especially during pandemic i was able to procure somehow pdf copies of chapters to be able to post in the google classroom had to find a way and even though this text also yes become 12 years old so with looking at the good heart you know wilcox text my fellow teachers at the other high schools we basically were thinking hands down this is the best for our for our kids so looking at it again as kimberly was already talking about just kind of the updates that the company is already starting to do one of the biggest pieces that also stands out technology wise it links
176to canvas and we're all going that as teachers we're going that direction using canvas you know leaving google classroom using canvas and again that offer you know that gives a huge opportunity for our students to be able to have better access at home especially with our kids using their one-to-one devices also teaching resources for us again there's a lot of different assignments activities again other you know levels of differentiation to help meet our you know our students of ell things like that um also our iep students going through with that also for assessments they have pre and post assessments to help us also that's you know in the text and the curriculum but also um you know other ways to assess students as well you know for performance task based and things like that to
177help serve our other students so basically overall i would say as a hands down we think this is you know probably the best way to serve our students here at the evergreen school district you know across the board thank you too many questions for us yeah it's coming is this a curriculum that's used for credit advancement in the summer one more time please is this a curriculum that's used for credit advancement in the summer time we haven't checked into that but we can definitely check into that and find out yeah so for like use it for like summer school courses yeah we can check into that see if that would be useful for them as well any other questions same questions thank you guys very much thank you next on our agenda is legislative updates
178do you have one more quick thing to tell you oh yeah also come with a professional development they will come and train our staff for using the textbook through canvas and have a one-on-one person for technology issues oh nice the end let me say that again the legislature is out of session however wasda's position proposal window is open until tomorrow our our board schedules the way we schedule our meetings are always just out of sync with that process but if we find that uh wasda has a position that we'd like to modify or a position we'd like wazda to vote on there are ways for members of the legislative committee to introduce those positions in their own name or emergency positions which would require that we get four other school districts to sign on um
179so the opportunity is still there my sense is that with i think it was 200 odd positions wasda's biggest focus is to try and find all the ones that have been that constitute accomplished work and go to general assembly and repeal them uh the other piece of news about general assembly and stop me if i get this one wrong julie is that it will be held virtually instead of uh returning to an in-person model because turnout was greater yeah and well i can hope that we can use our own webcams and be seen by others instead of what had had to happen the last two years that's the condition and that way the event as it's been explained to me remains free of charge so we've got friends in other districts who don't normally come
180to general assembly here's a big chance any other legislative updates john do you have anything for legislative nothing okay then the time is 8 44 and i'm calling our meeting adjourned have a good night [Music] you