School Board Meeting - October 12, 2021

001good evening everyone uh it's now 5 36 and we are going to go ahead and get the meeting going reminder for everyone to please have the rest on over their nose and mouth guidelines from governor inslee's office in response to the cobit 19 outbreak and the open public meetings act allows in-person meetings to occur but a limited to 25 capacity in the meeting room those who cannot attend in person this evening are joining us via zoom webinar we're happy to have all of you no matter where you are um now i would like to have us recite the pledge of allegiance indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you i will now um go for a roll call to confirm attendees director jenny gronwald here director rob perkins here director julie bocanegra here um

002director rachel rogers i need to ask for a motion to excuse rachel's absence tonight i move to excuse rachel rogers from tonight's meeting second all in favor all right um superintendent mike merlino here and administrative assistant laurie stroll okay great and next we have the land acknowledgement and i would like to ask director grunwald to read that for us pleasure evergreen public schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinookan peoples and the kellett's tribe they have lived on and cared for this land and its waterways since the time memorial we thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgement to open a space of recognition inclusion and respect for all indigenous students families and staff in our community thank you jenny okay next up um we would like to adopt the agenda do i

003have a motion for adoption of tonight's agenda i move that we adopt the agenda second all in favor aye aye any opposed okay um now we have special recognition and the subject is principles month and we all know how important principles are to running our schools and and seeing that our students get the education that they deserve um so i would like to talk of oh director perkins is going to be um reading the proclamation for this tonight and then is tony miles here in the audience i can't oh there he is um we'll have him come up afterwards to accept it for us go ahead rob state of washington proclamation whereas the washington senate has declared the month of october 2021 as national principles month in coordination with the efforts of the national association

004of elementary school principals and the national association of secondary school principals working with the united states congress to designate national principles month and resolutions thereof and whereas principles and assistant principles play significant roles in our education system by creating hope for each and every student in their buildings by leading culture systems and learning and by working tirelessly each day as visionaries assessment experts community builders public relations experts budget analysts facility managers special programs administrators and guardians of various legal contractual and policy mandates and initiatives and whereas as principals and assistant principals work collaboratively with families teachers and district officials to develop mission statements set performance goals and objectives for schools to achieve educational excellence and maintain high curriculum standards and expectations for all students and whereas the association of washington school principals honors such exemplary

005principals and assistant principals who have succeeded in providing high quality learning opportunities for students as well as their exemplary contributions to the profession and whereas to honor and recognize the contribution of all school principals and assistant principals to the success of each and every student in washington schools our most valuable resource and to encourage residents of washington to observe principles month with appropriate ceremonies and activities that that promote awareness of the importance of school leadership in ensuring that every child has access to a high quality education now therefore i j hensley governor of the state of washington do hereby proclaim october 2021 as principles month in washington and i encourage all people in our state to join me in this special observance signed this 27th day of september 2021 governor jay inslee okay thank you

006rob um tony can we have you come up and accept the proclamation for the principles do you want to say something yeah tony miles is representing the evergreen administrators association associate principal at union high school and one of the many principals and associate principals that do i mean all the things that you mentioned rob but this year they're hiring managers and they are every year but this year in particular they spend a lot of time on that they're welcoming people back to the schools that have been out for so long the job that our administration our administrators building administrators do uh every day to just kind of keep things rolling as smoothly as possible it's i appreciate the opportunity to get out and talk with the principals and associate principals particularly now as we've gone

007through the first couple months or month and a half or so feels like we're starting to get into a little bit more of a role at this point and starting to get back to where folks are kind of comfortable being back at school again but you know our teachers our counselors are classified everybody does an amazing job and we never stop i think enough to thank the administration building administrators for what they do so on behalf of myself and the district tony thank you for everything you and all of you do especially during this past couple of months our principals have been asked to do a lot of extra stuff and i've had to pivot on you know a phone call and they've they've done it especially when it was concerning our kids getting them

008back and we couldn't have you know we can't appreciate you guys more especially during covid and everything else so thank you for all the hard work you guys have done thank you on behalf of the principal's group uh thank you for your recognition uh the government didn't leave out all of these as otherwise the last year and a half it's been challenging but uh thank you very much for your support thank you thank you okay next up is the board's consent agenda i would like a motion for approval of the consent agenda i move to approve the board consent agenda as presented second all in favor any opposed okay thank you next we have um the superintendent's consent agenda do i have a motion for approval of the superintendent's consent agenda remove approval of the

009superintendent's consent agenda as presented second all in favor aye aye any opposed uh next we have the superintendent report so i'll turn this over to superintendent merlino to give us his updates thank you victoria uh i think that tony's comment about other duties as assigned is an appropriate comment uh i've had the opportunity the last weeks to get out and visit with some of the elementary principals and i've gone out and been able to get into one of the buildings where the principal was filling in as a a covered room uh individual kind of covering because they hadn't they didn't have a sub or they couldn't find someone to be in there i know that we've got administrators filling in as teachers as subs when there's no other alternative so i think this year more

010than any year that i've been around is definitely in other duties it's a sign so really honestly can't say i agree with jenny and and everybody on the board that can't think enough what our administrators are doing on a daily basis and and that's not uh i mean everybody is the everyone that works in our system is working so hard for our students in very difficult challenging times and so very appreciative of everyone i want to really quickly start off by just again thanking clarissa hightower and julie tunnelty jamila singleton tilly meyer for the presentation on the work the equity work that's ongoing in our district rather than answer the question of what we don't do we spent some time two weeks ago talking about what we we actually how we do work with our

011students in the system that was a great presentation got a lot of really good responses it's on our website any if anyone hasn't had the opportunity to see that it's on the website uh for those of you to review it was a it was a great great thing um i also want to mention that we have uh future teaching and learning focusing on kids some of the future things that will come up i know rob asked i think rob maybe it wasn't rob but asked about a presentation on canvas and how that's being used that's upcoming um we've got a movement towards neighborhood schools within special education we'll have a presentation on that there's a new law around uh identifying students that potentially have dyslexia so there'll be conversations around so a lot a lot

012more of the student-focused presentations coming from the group and and that's tremendous i really quickly want to mention that on saturday uh rob myself and jenny were able to participate there was a western region national school boards get together in vancouver where board members that are leaders in the states of arizona nevada california oregon idaho and alaska and washington were in town and the executive director of waza tim garchow asked if we could provide a tour of henrietta lacks health and bioscience high school and cascadia technical academy which at 8 30 in the morning we did at gila high school and i just you know every time we have the opportunity to go and participate where the students are leading the conversation on a saturday morning you had five rotations of kids in classrooms explaining

013the different areas of of work that happened at gila amy haynes uh sean richonda waters there you know you even had uh the phoenix mascot all dressed up on saturday and and it kind of like the the they came in on a what i thought was they said there was gonna be a chartered bus which was just uh i think chartered from the battleground first students they were driving in on a school on a school bus and kind of sleepy when they got in it kind of felt like but then as soon as they started getting in the rotation the questions that they were asking they were so impressed and then not only the i mean our our teachers were in the classrooms answering questions and um it was tremendous and then we went over

014to cascadia i didn't stay for the whole trip but i know that that i'm sure was just as as uh and rob jenny can talk about what they saw at cascadia but just very it was great for our school district it was great for these leaders around the west coast to have opportunity to see our programs tim mentioned to me that now all of these board members are going to go back to their school districts and say you know we need to do programs like what they have in evergreen which was it was great for the district great for the kids great for our teaching staff and our administrators that were there on saturday also um we you know like we've done for months a year a year and a half we meet weekly we

015do see case rates coveted case rates kind of flattening a little bit and declining somewhat maybe not in clark county as much as they are across the rest of the state but they are declining this week we distributed a new flow chart that changes what you know what the res the requirements are for students to stay home they now have a and b symptoms again like we had last year so the hope is that that will reduce somewhat some of the disruptions to our students educations the a symptoms being uh fever loss of taste muscle aches and pains things that are a little more um identifiable as covid related potential symptoms but we're working with our staff i think a letter went out this week on that we've implemented testing in some of the pilot

016schools most of our schools now have testing available rapid testing for students that's been great work led by uh heather and and bobby and scott working with our principals very positive we have um october 18th is next monday that's a date that we've all kind of been aware of for for for quite some time since uh governor ensley uh mandated the vaccination for all staff or except an exemption with accommodation uh the exemptions were due to us by october first the vaccinations were due by the time you got to i think it was october 4th or 5th you needed to have the to have the two weeks before and i guess it was the fourth we i think as a county have had some great fear about the numbers of staff that might be impacted

017uh by this and i think when you talk about a month six weeks ago there was some idea it could be as many as ten percent of our staff which for us is over 300 staff members i think um we are very uh pleased to say i think that our our numbers are are much i think we have that i mean there's still work going on it's not done there's still meetings and individual conversations going on but i think we have well over 98 99 of our staff complying which is tremendous and most of those vaccinated not a huge number of exemptions so i was on a statewide call a super superintendent right doll with superintendents across the state i do think there's areas of the state much more hardly hit than we will be

018certainly in evergreen but i think the hope is that there could be when the data is collected we're going to get a data collection tool not next week i think maybe sometime next week so that we all districts in the state can report to ospi how many exemptions for medical religious what types of accommodations how what's the vaccination rate and that may very well be used in changing the need for um the quarantining he talked a little bit about that today that that could potentially change the the contact tracing if they're high enough levels of vaccinations within our schools so we're still working on it hr gennady and all of the staff has been working extremely hard to meet the timelines and work with individuals and so very thankful for all of that also but

019i think very encouraged by where we are as a district with that enrollment we talked uh have talked about uh a few times with respect to the enrollment decline uh we we did see a larger jump in october than what we've seen in previous octobers would probably increase about 550 fte normally it might be between 100 150 but you remember we had a number of students that were excluded in september because the immunizations weren't up to up to date uh i think we have less than maybe 50 at this point so it's not very many left uh that what it remains to be seen now is how does do we see enrollment kind of continue to tick up throughout the year or as does follow the similar patterns that we would see in every other

020year where it goes up for a while then it comes back down again so at the meeting on the 28th sixth i guess two weeks from tonight uh jennifer jacobson will be here kind of presenting some stuff on that and presenting some stuff on information on uh our esser kind of more specifically how we've spent our essa funds uh and then the last thing i'll mention uh i was very fortunate to tour y east and mountain view a few weeks ago and i know that there's a date scheduled for the board to have opportunity i think it's november 3rd unbelievable schools uh so it's so great it's going to be amazing for our kids when they go to those schools next year you'll love seeing it i also was able to kind of walk behind

021the hill behind legacy to see the the baseball softball facility soccer facility that's being um the voters and the taxpayers and the citizens of this community in 2018 when they passed the bond did such a huge service for the students of our system and we could never i could never ever stop thanking the community for what they've done in terms of the facilities for our community such great work sue and the rc group and the contractor is just amazing so i'm really excited for you all to have an opportunity to see that november 3rd and that is my report thanks mike any questions for mike okay great next we have a department update and i'm going to ask clarissa hightower to provide us an update on teaching and learning and equity good evening members of

022the board and community um as mike stated before the teaching and learning update uh you'll hear a little bit more about that an upcoming meeting specifically rob's request on canvas julie wanted me to make sure they mentioned that she will be doing that for you in the meeting coming up i'm going to give you some equity updates so we had our first equity advisory committee meeting on september 29th as a group and we spent some time reacquainting ourselves with each other and we reviewed some highlights from last year and our hopes for this year for the group we were also joined by rob perkins who presented us with the draft equity results policy as well as the proposed edits to the citizenship results policy and governance culture policy um you hear a little bit more

023about our feedback on that a little later we also shared the cultural responsive practices presentation with all staff in the district via email the one that mike was referring to earlier and we also shared it um outside of district with some district leaders um i shared it myself in a uh regional equity leaders group that i'm in and they themselves are utilizing it as they need uh got good feedback from them as well and so the video is um is being well used uh additionally um on october 8th our schools had a professional development day and in order to help support schools in the continuation of their equity work our department created and curated resources to deepen staff's understanding of the first practice area from the ready for rigor framework of awareness we spent the

024full day with our instructional coaches prepping them with that information so that they had a good grasp of it before october 8th so that they could implement it as they needed and what was already being put together by building principles with that work in each building and those are all of the tle updates for this evening thanks clarissa appreciate it sure and that was a great video i've been hearing comments from other people as well in other districts so it was is good i'm glad people are using it next up we have some board governance work the first i would like to open a public hearing on the second reading of gc one board purpose um i'm gonna call on director perkins who has some res revisions on the policy okay as uh clarissa said

025after we passed our um language out of first reading i had an opportunity to present the information to the district's equity committee which as you know for the sake of just repeating that contains teachers students parents other stakeholders um and i got to watch them have a really authentic and and uh thoughtful response to the language that we were proposing and uh and listen to their feedback on that it is it was a really good experience and they taught me quite a lot in the process of doing so i'm just going to pull up the first reading document if i can that's this is sort of our dirty filled with that it's kind of document where we initially proposed the insertion of those two bullet points at the bottom uh a change to each students

026a couple grammatical things uh and these statements of belief so this is kind of where if you turn on track changes in words that we passed it forward but i think uh it's important and i'm pretty sure that a voice from the committee will appear when we open it up for public comment to make some further suggestions and so i'm planning to make uh two motions uh around this one is to approve for second reading but then after we get that seconded to amend uh with language that they propose so that we can have a discussion and then agree or disagree on that point um then we vote twice one for the amendments and then once for the to button it up as a second reading and make that the policy so at this point

027i'm going to recommend that the board accept a motion in a second to approve for second reading followed by that discussion about the amendments that they will bring forth uh at which point it will be approved for second reading and approval that's the recommendation okay um at this time i'm going to call for audience questions and comments do i have anyone who'd like to comment okay come on okay come on up to the podium please and please wear your mask for us thank you please help yeah i just want to gently remind everyone let's make sure we keep them on and keep our nose and mouth covered please could you can you state your name for the record please wilson mr micah isn't mike hello okay yeah um the cultural responsive practices presentation at the

028last board meeting had a lot of information thank you for providing an online presentation after reviewing in detail the graph on family engagement you know the scores were really low and like i looked like about an average of 40 percent and i'm really curious what the questions were and i imagine they were multiple choice and what the answers were and what ones were considered correct and which ones were considered incorrect it would lend more credibility to the equity audit and i was wondering if that could be provided um yeah i mean a request can be made for a copy of of the questions that's open that's you know and what the answers you know were that were correct or incorrect well there's no correct or incorrect answers it's just they're serving what people how they

029feel about it their experience about it so it's not a right or wrong answer so it'll be but yeah and you've seen some of that data already as as part of their report so well i was wondering if you know there's scores so apparently there is some right or wrong answer apparently you're scoring well i think it's a percentage of how the people answered in in certain so it's probably like and i don't i don't know if i saw that maybe clarissa could help us with that but i imagine it's like one through five and like 40 percent of people strongly agree or disagree or whatever i'm not sure what the components are what we can do is get you a copy of it and have someone who's available to explain that to you or

030you know go over anything that you might questions you might have on that yeah it would make more sense you know because the scores are like i said averaging about 40 percent and different stakeholder groups some were down in the 20s some are high 40s but um yeah to understand how that was put together it would be good to see the questions see what the answers what score and what to just to have a better feel for what is being reported there okay appreciate that thank you you're welcome so let's make sure um gary let's make sure that we have your contact oh we've got your phone number here okay so we'll have someone get a hold of you about that is that okay all right thank you so much is there anyone else who'd

031like to make comments to the board regarding this policy okay i'll go ahead and call for a motion so i move uh at this point uh that the board adopt the um policy modifications gc1 as we approved it in the first reading um for our adoption okay do we have a second on that motion second okay now i'm going to open things up for the board to ask questions so the one that we have in board docs is this the one with the relationship i thought i didn't want to i didn't want to be the committee's voice on this i thought they were going to stand for a bit of a comment about this particular one um but everything in red changed from the one that i'm looking at here everything in red here was

032changed from the policy we have on record now but what about from last time when on our last when we brought this forward these these are the changes from when we brought this forward there's another document loaded into board docs with uh and then there's a clean document but that's within with an element we're on second reading right we're on second reading of gc1 yes but what i'm seeing up here the red are changes from when we made what are the changes that were made from the committee the committee work those aren't on the screen yet okay okay so gotcha do we or don't we have comment from the committee regarding additional changes this one is the one we talked about yesterday is there another policy that talks about how students um did we get

033a a second policy maybe around students um demonstrating compassion that's that's coming up next so that's where we're gonna add some comments but there's this in terms of this and including the inclusion everything is there based on what the committee we went back and referred to the previous document that was presented in may and so that um the safe and inclusive is the chain the big change that we made um a safe inclusive and equitable learning environment each student will learn in excel versus it being the right environment so that was the big change was that other document that we were just looking at that's the one that's on the screen now is the one i'm about to move to amend okay but that should capture the the committee's recommendations for gc1 it does capture

034for gc1 okay i think i'm caught up now sorry about that i'm hoping i'm proceeding down the right path with this myself because there's a lot of changing going on here um for a second reading so i'm a little yeah i want to make sure we're proceeding as we need to so um did you hear a second uh on the motion to approve okay jenny did then i'm gonna move um and julie this is the on the screen now is the sort of proposed final language based on the committee's recommendation i'm going to move that we amend from our approval and first reading okay uh changing the right environment to a safe inclusive and equitable learning environment as presented there so that it reads we believe given a safe inclusive and equitable learning environment each

035student will learn in excel when provided with authentically engaging work based on high standards that's the motion okay so that's your move to amend okay so i'll go ahead and ask for a second on that second okay all okay so now we'll take a vote to amend all in favor are we voting to amend are we asking we're amending we're gonna vote for a man do you have more questions so if we vote to amend them then it that's it like no then we have to go through and take a vote to accept as amended as amended to and then this will be the end of the second second reading and then it will be passed do we have all in favor aye aye any opposed okay so now we will take a vote to

036accept gc-1 board purpose for approval as amended do we have a a vote or do we have um we can just do a straight vote at this point right okay so all in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay and gc one for purpose is approved as amended okay thank you um next we have up um a focus on student results um this is results policy r3 equity um this is also a second reading and renumbering of subsequent policies i would like to open this as a public hearing on the second reading of results policies r3 equity and renumbering the student safety to r4 social and emotional development to r5 and citizenship to r6 i'm going to call on director perkins who has resigned revised the policy to give us a summary so as before

037we had the uh the first reading and we passed out um r3 i'm actually looking for what we did and trying to get that on the screen um there it is so this is what we passed out on our first reading and as before and this is the actual text from the first reading that's what i'm recalling and as before i took the language and the invitation to present it to the district's equity committee uh in order to get their feedback and they gave back quite a lot of feedback which actually i think improved the policy proposal so the same thing we're going to move to except for second reading and then move to amend and then vote by them okay but i think we need to hear what these changes are because this is

038all kind of coming out as fast and furious here yes it is uh would you like me to speak to that or lift a committee it's i don't it it doesn't matter whoever would like to do that i just want to make sure i think broadly what they were advising us to do is to craft a policy that didn't call out differences in students and their suggestion actually makes the results policy looked more like those model results policies that were presented to us and uh that there were some other minor language changes which just really brought some clarity but i want the board to hear that in their voice rather than mine and then we can consider what they're proposing for us after that so i recommend that we adopt this for second reading and

039i'm also going to move an amendment at the proper time to incorporate some of their languages i anticipate that we'll have a little more discussion about those amendments than with the last one okay i'm going to call for audience um questions and comments then regarding this second reading on the policy thank you thank you so um i'd like to discuss the term respect in the current reading of this results policy so as an educator focused on educational equity i appreciate the board's commitment to the student experience statements like experience is supportive and barrier-free learning environment or experience achievement and narrowing the gap between the highest and lowest performing students the oxford dictionary defines respect as a feeling of deep admiration for someone or something that's solicited by their abilities qualities and achievements the equity committee

040met in september and we referred back to the proposed eps equity policy language from like last spring and so these two issues i want to just explain a little bit more around the term respect in this policy and we want to caution the board from using the term respect in this policy at all first the board has openly acknowledged its students that are black indigenous and people of color and evergreen historically and are presently facing inequities associated with aspects of their identities and their context have we earned the respect of these students and families either in previous generations or currently while intentions may have been good the impact is present in outcomes and disparities respect is a feeling one gains over time our policy should not place the complete onus on our black indigenous and

041students and families of color to blindly respect an institution or individuals that have yet to address the systems where they are experiencing bias discrimination harm feelings of fear and lack of belonging this policy should direct and organize the board's focus on the harmful practices structures and procedures that are generating the inequitable outcomes so second as we take on a more culturally responsive approach to teaching and learning we're moving away from compliance oriented practices so sorry about that culturally responsive practice is a mindset one where the principles that we attend to um move away from force and compliance and more towards partnership and so it's essential that the board policy does not unintentionally signal that we need to maintain this antiquated approach to schooling that is in pursuit of compliance with authority or conformity but rather

042the policy could signal an approach to teaching a learning that centers the students and their humanity and encourages staff to do the same so on behalf of the equity committee i stand here to encourage you to remove respect from this policy and focus on asking students to be compassionate towards one another towards the staff and towards a system that is going to continue to work to advance racial equity i have a quick question so when you're talking about remove respect are you talking about online on 3-1 be respectful it would be both from 3-1 and three two oh i see okay all right so instead on three one you would like it to read be compassionate toward others of any race ethnicity or other difference and just take out the be respectful part and then

043on line three two discuss controversial controversial issues with civility and not have and respect yes okay um okay i think that it's i i'm just going to be honest i think there's a little challenge there because part of what we we definitely want our students to be civil and have civil discourse one of the things i've talked about is just how things have happened in our own board meetings surrounding some of the various different issues i've been very appreciative of the civility that we have seen in how we're doing with it in opposed to other areas where we know it's been a different story i um so i'm still having a hard time wrapping my mind around i want to say disrespectful about respect in this situation and that's just my own ignorance here i'm

044just i think i need a little more conversation about that and maybe it happens outside of here i i don't know but i just um is there another word that we would put with civility or is it just end with civility well what i'm encouraging is just to consider the way respect um is something that is earned and so as a way for us to say that in this we're not asking students to do something that is is not a part of how they authentically feel about experience that makes more sense to me sometimes respect is about comply despite the fact that something might be harming me okay thank you that makes more sense to me now it's starting to click can i ask another question because the one that i have in front of

045me has our changes that we made last time correct yeah the one on the board is the current with no changes that we made last time now this is this one is the first reading as we passed it last time as we moved it forward because we moved it forward yeah with the changes because this is new policy but that so then the ones with the red strikes on that i'm looking at on my screen don't have they have that in 3.1 it's i don't know well maybe it's not 3.1 they do and it's actually a slightly older version of the document then no it's in there it's the revised there's a revision version with reddit which looks like some potential changes in the direction that jamila is referring to um but in some of

046these we still have the word respect in within it that that's why i'm confused too but then 3.1 is be respectful and compassionate towards others and the rest of it is struck out right right so is the because if that's the one that we approve then why do i have the strikeouts here it isn't the one that we approved is this language on the screen uh which is a new policy so all of this is new stuff with no strikeouts it's what we discussed and put forward as the first reading approval the modifications the committee is suggesting are in part in the second document the one that you have in board docs uh with the exception of her comments about respect i don't think i have that it's what you're looking at julie it's just

047the it's still having so like on for number two it crosses out what we have on 3.2 and it says discuss and engage in controversies and uncomfortable issues with empathy civility respect and dignity so it's still i mean it changes it doesn't change the meaning it gives a lot more but it still has the word respect in it so i guess that's kind of also where we're because so the language of civility and dignity could be the revision and then just taking that word so that is still a recommend okay that's i think that was some because we're looking at something that's got some edits on it but still has that word respect in there yeah it wasn't something that i was able to get loaded into board docs after 4 30 pm yesterday when

048we had a final conversation about this um the other pieces of the committee feedback about calling out differences in policy uh would you like to talk to that a little sure i don't have the version that's in front of them and so um there it is thank you it is yeah i just crossed out respect as well the only other i think rob spoke to this earlier but the other element is we wanted to make sure that we weren't othering students in the policy so taking out others who are different taking out race ethnicity difference and just saying towards all and that that would be inclusive and so that was part of the feedback of what happened i think with one and three and the last comment i think was just making sure that we

049are actively celebrating all elements of folks identity and so by calling those out that's why it's like that it wasn't including their what they suggested right so i think the spirit behind our changes is just to make sure that the policy is not signaling anything around compliance that we're pushing towards create an environment where we're being supportive of students from all backgrounds and making sure that um that we are just creating a policy that is really inclusive to reflect the spirit of what the first policy was stating around inclusion and safety okay so these are changes that i'd propose in a motion to amend after in the middle of the robbers rules stuff right right okay i just want to make sure i'm understanding it also because i sometimes i'm hacked with robert's rules i

050just want to get down to it and figure out what the heck we're doing so we make sure that we're being good to all and that they all everybody has a chance to have the best possible education experience that we can so okay um was there anything else that you would like us to know understand or know about as we move forward through this uh no that's it thank you thank you i appreciate it thank you for the explanations okay do we have anyone else in the audience who would like to speak on this issue yes sir please come forward and state your name for the record i didn't recognize you at first lauren i'm sorry thank you i felt very you know it was a surfer is doing a good job uh i'm just

051curious when when i hear the word results i want to know immediately how something like this is measured so i'm just curious as to whether this is an aspirational thing or whether it'll be something that can be measured and tracked over time and actually the next step in the process is to have results that will come from the superintendent giving us an idea you know making sure that he's got the same understanding as we have and we're all on the same page and then giving us some accountability measures so that we can measure i mean sometimes these are more challenging to figure that out but you still have to have a way to measure and a way for us to monitor that things are changing and things are happening the way that we want them

052to so that will be the next step is hearing from mike on what he interprets all this to mean and we have to agree that yes what you're interpreting is what we intend and then from there he will put forward accountability measures that we will then hold him and the district accountable to are there established measurements for this these kinds of things there are some yeah and that's yet and sometimes we have to create them i mean i think that's up to him yeah when we were doing this the last go-round it constituted i think a combination of student survey data academic success data especially around the results policies um and it maintains a dynamism is that if we find that an interpret an interpretation or an indicator no longer aligns with the community's values

053or our values or even what we can do then we can adjust them and there's a process for that too okay i for quite a few of them it's some of it feels very subjective on how it could be measured and so that tool for for it to actually give valid information would be really critical so i i thought of that last time when you guys were reading it the first time and i didn't ask anything then but the results policies are aspirational but aspirational with measurements is the way i think about it yeah that's the only way we're going to get to where we want to go yeah yeah and it will most likely evolve um as we learn more and understand more have more resources available for for accountability it's all we're walking

054into new territory in many ways but yeah okay thank you thanks lauren is there anyone else who'd like to have questions or comments to the board on this section okay um let's see who are we let's see okay so now we are going to call for a motion a motion to amend are we at that point yet or where are we i move that we adopt this uh policy as written uh on the screen here from our first reading okay second on and then and then a discussion and then i move from here that we amend the policy as given and recommended by our district's equity committee namely that we strike respectful and and the phrase of any race ethnicity or other difference from item one we replace item two with a language that reads

055discuss and engage in controversies and uncomfortable issues with empathy civility and dignity uh number three against striking with others for who are different and then number seven uh their replace and share perspective stemming from their own unique identities including their own racial cultural ethnic and family identity identities um if you want me to put that up side by side i will but that's the motion is to amend in this fashion okay and now we kind of sort of have it left to right i think in all this back and forth i forgot to i did not ask for the board's comments or questions i apologize is a lot of changes that went on here sometimes i'm not entirely sure so there's what we passed in first reading sorry for the small letters and here are

056the this is the motion to amend require a second and then talk okay i'll second it okay so now i'd like to open it up for board to ask questions or have comments so i i get the changes but some of the changes aren't in red um from that i can tell because it's it's it's difficult to toggle back between two documents and to figure out exactly what's changed i'm trying to figure it out so the one on the left-hand side is the one that we approved last time in first reading we workshopped it and approved it and then um there's recommended changes on the one on the right hand column so uh for for an example um num number two okay so the first part is struck out because we took out the word

057respect and then it says discuss and engage so then it's just the new writing instead of how it's written yes okay so i have a question about the uncomfortable issues um and forgive me if we discussed that before but i i mean i i feel like when just like to lauren's point like who who decides what's uncomfortable right i mean they're um maybe instead of discuss its approach approach and engage i'm okay with the discussion and engaging controversies and issues i mean i don't know about i'm quite what the uncomfortable because there's all kinds of issues i mean but not all of them are uncomfortable so um the sense that i took from the committee was that some controversies are not uncomfortable and some non-controversies are uncomfortable i and one other thing i'm going to

058say i feel like it's the second reading time there's a lot of changes and for us as a board if we're going to approve this tonight i feel like um the work with which i feel very important that we went to the committee but i feel like that work should have done probably even before we had a first board workshop and so we had the recommended changes from that group at that time because now it's like we're a second reading and for many of us just understanding what's on you know on the docket for changes yeah because the changes we have here are up there but they're also interwoven with new changes but not fully don't forget equity the text on the left is entirely new policy yes that we write shopped and then had

059a first reading but you also provided us with another within board docs we've got a like the one in here the one that we have the three points on the left the only change is to remove contribute but seven over here is completely different wording the document that you have in board docs and it looks like that but none of those are over here i couldn't edit a pdf and color everything just precisely so um but that's why there's confusion as to yes i agree that yes so um just procedurally what can happen is we have um mood for the motion but if we're still feeling like we need more time on this then when we go to a vote if we do not have enough votes to move forward then we will take we

060can go back and revisit this and we can and have the time to have more explanation make sure we're all one we can decide that the if if the motion to amend here is defeated then we go back to this language on the left here and we vote to approve that before i before i would feel comfortable voting to move it forward i'd like to see it in a clean copy of the final version because i think it would help me understand what it how it reads with without the confusion of our first one that we proved in first reading with the edits that we see in our board docs to the new language we could table this we don't have to vote to approve or not if there's too many questions too many changes

061coming forward i mean we may want to i'm not saying we shouldn't i'm just saying we're not locked in i mean at this point this body can can say no and we can does this affect our renumering no we can still remember we can remember we can approve uh the first reading language on the left without approving any amendments we can do that but we might want to approve the amendments with more of the clarity and understanding yeah i would be not to approve it because if we're going to make changes i'd rather a final document be what we want the final document to be and i'm not hearing that anybody thinks that what's up there is wrong or whatever you want to see the clean final document as amended i might be able to

062just put that but we've already we've already approved that we're now into the amendments are you asking julie are you asking to see a clean final document part of this is just technical it's getting the um i think part of what we're wrestling with is this is such an important policy to us and we just want to know that we're making all the right decisions at this point because we do have a lot invested in this work and want to make sure so i agree if i if i take out the markup this is the clean result this is mostly the clean review and it reads students will recognize value and celebrate cultural ethnic and other diversities students will be compassionate toward others discuss and engage in controversies and uncomfortable issues with empathy civility and

063dignity demonstrate cultural awareness and competency in their interactions apply principles of equality and equity in their roles as students and student leaders have equitable access to educational resources experience a supportive and barrier-free learning environment and finally celebrate and share perspectives stemming from their unique identities including their own racial cultural ethnic and family identities that's the clean copy as proposed for amendment what and i don't have any problem with how it's reading but if we're following our procedures putting them through then we were supposed to i mean just not seeing all the markups and the changes and what was there before and having to go back and forth on it um so can we just at this point let's push our procedure out of the way and let's just are where are we with this as

064it's worded now do we have concerns questions embracing i mean where are we at at this point with everybody's perspective on it i'm not a fan of one be compassionate towards others um it's kind of you know when we're it kind of puts it in there with that respect word respectful i mean it's it's hard to be compassionate towards someone if you know you can be have a conversation a civil conversation but if it's you know it's hard to be compassionate if you're having a uncomfortable and intense conversation with someone else i think compassion is not usually the it's you know civil and res respectful i guess that word just keeps coming back but i don't know i just don't i think i'm having a hard time with one but i can't seem to think

065of another word to put in there i'm looking up the because i was i did i googled the word and i'm like i just yeah it just doesn't fit for me but i was like what was students will be civil and empathetic or have empathy well then that says well that's the next number too but so can can we get that definitely the definition the respect the respect or respectful how that changes the because it because well it just was removed out of one yeah but from before it was in there but the the definition of why it was removed because it what jamila had yeah because it talks about like an authority or i'm sorry higher special regard quality or state of being esteemed expressions of higher special regard are deference i'm coming out

066of merriam-webster instead of oxford so it's the word respect or respectful respect and if and i think the thought is that if you respect respect has to be earned and we cannot um we don't want to force anyone to be respectful of somebody who hasn't earned that respect and hasn't treated them i mean i would also say it has to be reciprocal and that's a whole nother conversation i'm sure but it does make sense but yet it feels like be compassionate towards other for some reason doesn't feel like it's enough maybe yeah i mean that maybe that's what i'm struggling with it's just i don't know it's it's yeah i'm just i i'm have i'm struggling with number one i mean all the rest of them and maybe it's just that we remove it but

067i mean because it really is all after you we've removed all of the other stuff it almost doesn't i i'm fine with all of it too i the respectful part i don't know because it feels like that does add something and just what i'm reading for definitions about respectful and what it means to be a respectful person um but the the one in number two the uncomfortable i don't know how i feel about that one this almost should have come to a workshop for this level of change yeah should have come to a workshop well here's i mean we could go ahead and approve it and then we always have the ability to come back and make revisions and i mean none of our policies are chiseled in stone and if we want to add

068or revise any of it we can always bring it back for a first a second reading with the with the new changes um one one thing that i think about is that this isn't the only body of text that goes with a district results equity policy we're giving the superintendent and his leadership uh the opportunity to define the words as they understand them and to reflect that definition back for our approval the interpretation and indicators of respectful respect could include the cautions and the shape and framework that we're looking for because we certainly don't um at least as far as i can tell from the consensus it doesn't sound like we want to impose a policy that requires students to uh express unearned respect um just that we don't express an unearned respect is what

069i'm hearing well we don't want to yeah they don't shouldn't be forced to respect somebody who isn't treating them with respect in return i mean i'm almost wondering if it should be on number one be be civil and compassionate towards others i mean i know when people come to a board meeting and they address the board they may not respect our what we're talking about or respect us as people or whatever it really doesn't matter but i do expect a certain civil way of of discussing things in here that doesn't include screaming at me or threatening me or or whatever i'm just being extreme here but i'm just saying and i i would expect the same thing in our classrooms in our schools that nobody is going to be talked to or treated in a

070way that breaks them down that treats them and i expect it to be a two-way street i also expect our students to be civil with their teachers you may disagree with them but there's a civility there that's just part of social discourse that we need to have and we we are lacking a lot of that in our country right now and we need to get back to that so that we can all make good decisions for our world i like the civil in front because i think it frames the the compassionate part because if you just come up to someone and say you you're required to be compassionate it's kind of like okay well there's but framing it with being civil and compassionate i like that better victoria i think we have some comments from

071okay bill i saw your hand up first you want to come up to the podium please thank you i'm just wondering can i make a parliamentary and suggestion for where you're at right now is that go ahead my this is new territory for us it is and this is like really good discussion you're having right now and it seems you know it's feeling a little rushed uh the the way that i would do it if this was my meeting i would say postponed to date certain that that you have an amendment motion on the table you don't want to table it because that would just do away with it you'd have to remove it and everything you postponed to date certain gives you a chance to see all the versions look up the words maybe

072feel more comfortable that's just a suggestion do with it what you will appreciate what you're saying bills we would have to vote on the amendment and then you wouldn't have to take a vote immediately no i could i could just ask the president to postpone the decision yeah just to postpone this motion um which would also pose fun approval of the full policy until a certain date here's kind of what i've been thinking because this equity policy has been so important to us for a long time that i don't feel like we want to rush through it and get it out there and not have it be something that we all mutually agree upon and we don't i don't think we want to publish it and then just change it in a couple of weeks

073because we didn't we weren't quite sure about the wording that we all wanted to use so um so i think we do want to maybe go ahead and shelve this did marty have it i think marty had something did you want to come up marty i'm sorry oh yeah sorry my little thing is right in front hey marty hi there so i was just going to make this make it real simple just replace sympathetic with understanding which which number marty sympathetic number one oh you mean compassionate you replace compassion and sympathetic i have one other sounds like i could withdraw the motion and ask that it be deferred to a workshop we workshop it at the next board meeting and then we come together after that could do that what do you want to do

074with the original first reading language uh i don't i don't mind revising it as quickly as next month this month uh because i think people know what's coming down the pike uh then they can begin the work on interpretation and indicators without necessarily waiting for the official part um and then we can pick this up in workshop second meeting in october first meeting or the meeting in november meeting in december but still have uh this expression uh with an established policy with the uh with the first reading language and where do we put it so if we're thinking about the first reading language here let's adopt it but also right here in this meeting schedule workshop to amend it uh and then just go through two readings december january to make sure that the committee's

075uh feedback is included and that we we understand what we're doing i don't mind that at all but i would like to approve our three today it just means that we have two readings of whatever amendments we get so you want to approve it as we had it from last time i think we already did we know it's a first reading but we've proven it's first reading so now it would be separating your final approval so we're just going to put off the any amendments so we make sure that what we amend is exactly the verb but then we go back to my point if we're going to approve something have it in our policies with knowing that we're just going to change it yes i mean we're close i mean we're we're close but

076it seems like we're being nitpicky on like one word but i think it's an it's an important word and or you know well there's several changes from the policy that we yeah approved in first reading to what's being proposed tonight there's more than just a couple of words there are a lot it's true so what i was actually going to say was be sympathetic and understanding to replace passionate kind of passion okay so we got more to think about yeah no that's good madam chair withdraw the motion so i think i like the idea of moving us forward with the original with all the amendments we workshop them and then we we bring them back for amendments to the to the initial policy i think mike you should have enough to work off of to

077at least get a start on an interpretation and um laundry yeah so are you proposing that we approve the we approved the first what we approved last what we move forward then the first reading we approve that and then we go through a workshop and read first and second reading for the amendment side of it so that we have time to work on that and to make sure that we're getting everything in there that we want to make sure what would you do you have a different recommendation i just i just keep going back to if it's a brand new policy do we want to approve something that we're going we know we're going to amend and with julie on this one it just seems like it's rushed and to put it out there when

078it's not our final best work is i i think is not doing us a good service rob that sounds like not a consensus to me and uh i'll go along you know we can't vote two to two and have it prevail uh we don't want to drop it so the suggestion the suggestion not table that's i think it gets technical and we don't want to get over technical but to defer to uh the next board meeting deferred consideration to the next board meeting we have to have a time in between before we're putting if we're going to go to a vote to approve this we have to have workshop and have more information and have the ability to really have a good discussion about campus looks like couldn't we just bring it back to a

079second reading again next time okay but how are we going to talk about how are we going to get the answers that we're looking for between now and then well i i feel like so if we were going to bring it back to a second reading then would we have to um well we can't approve it because it's the second reading so then it would be final correct final but policies can always be amended that's why i'm saying then can we defer it to a second reading for next time and then we could have all each of us could do our work come back because i just i feel like then we have to start the whole process over again if we do workshop then we have to bring it back to the first reading

080and then we're back then like rob said we're gonna be into december's meeting correct it's gonna be imperative and i actually in some ways like that idea because rachel's not here and i really feel strongly that this work because there's a lot of nuance to it should have all of the opinions of this board this is this has been a long time in coming um to this level and to have all five of us here would make me feel better i'm that's just one perspective about this but um if if we were thinking about the next three board meetings that second meeting in october right with the one meeting in november and one meeting in december do we need time to reach a final consensus on this language uh into december so that we're workshopping

081in october and then maybe approving it in november or december um i'm trying to think of a date for final approval so that we can differ i would like to see it finally approved as soon as possible so if there's a way that we can do this at our next board meeting if everybody can do their due diligence and we can we can't make decisions but we can certainly we can each do our homework do our homework yeah and we can have conversations with clarissa's team if any of us have questions and need clarity on anything i think it gives us time to not rush into it because it is so important to us but i don't want to drag it out and run like you said run it through the process i'm kind of

082feeling like we're we're we're motivated to make this right as just as each individual board member i know the motivation is there so i think if we can get ourselves together with these changes because we're kind of these are kind of coming at us without just any chance for real discussion about it um and then then we can come and have a discussion where we can your knee and have feel like we really are coming at it from a clear point of view of course then the date certain that i'm going to propose we defer this to is october 26th i would that's good because we need a second on that the next board meeting yeah i think we need a second and a vote on that and then it just is on the agenda

083on october 26th and let's let that be the motion to amend um i'll just kind of rescind my withdrawal there uh so that we can pick that right back up with the amendments and then discuss the language but we're not going to approve this we're not going to approve this if i if i'm moving here to defer to a date certainly right we're not going to approve this we're going to hold this all until the next meeting right and complete the work in the next meeting yeah that's where we need to be do we have a second second okay so yes vote would be to do that are we all in favor of that all right anyone's opposed okay i think that's the the strong smartest way to proceed with this and feel like we

084really make sure this is what we want it to be yes okay and it absolutely i'm i have to be really clear on this that we appreciate the input that we had tonight and you know a lot of times we don't get input and we just move forward and stuff but on times when we are having input that feels compelling you know that we aren't there yet it's really important for us to pull the brains in and do the work and come back and make sure all the teaser crusts and the eyes are dotted and and that we feel like morally it's the right thing to do as well i mean there's some there's some emotion tied into this at least for me i know i'm pretty sure there's for the rest of you that

085this has to be right and it has to work for all kids and that's that's our bottom line here okay so laurie you got all that you poor thing the minutes just have to read uh r3 equity deferred to date certain october 26th yeah that's all um for those of you who've never been to a board meeting this is not normal but it's important work so i appreciate you sticking with us on this okay so mike did you want to interject anything in all this you've been awfully quiet over there no i think that you guys got to figure it out and then we'll respond to it okay and you see the writing on the wall pretty much i think yeah okay um next up we have our um results policy r6 citizenship and this

086is also a second reading um like to open the public hearing on the second reading of renumbered results policy r6 citizenship i'm going to call on director perkins who has revised the policy will give a summary of the revisions okay so the uh initial proposal was to remove and you can see it on the on the screen screens but the split screen kind of i'll write it up there was to remove the line demonstrate cultural competency from the existing citizenship policy because we moved that concept into the proposed equity policy when i met with the citizen committee or the district equity committee and showed them this base what i basically thought was a housekeeping element what came back was a real sense of desire to rewrite the citizenship policy uh in order to emphasize and

087um specify some very different things they were also in uh i think relation to the the comment that mr hightower made when he came and spoke last time is that there's uh there's a definition of citizenship uh that kind of leaves people out of a school community and if we're not careful about how we define them um that that could become an issue this is the takeaway that i had from his comment uh is that if we phrased that differently we we would be more inclusive citizenship is a catchphrase for a lot of people um but the proposal here was to simply remove the line and i'm i'm going to recommend based on our last thing a little differently than i did before could we go ahead and defer this one as well to the

088next meeting folks might want to come in and talk about the citizenship policy but i'm also going to recommend that after october 26th we also set this into a workshop for modifications based on their feedback we should really have a chance to learn what that was and i think a workshop is probably a better place to take that report okay okay so this is a motion to defer to october 26 the consideration of uh removing that line okay do i have a second in other words let's not do this now second call in favor aye aye aye any opposed okay you got it lori okay sorry and then on um okay so that's gonna be up on the next agenda and we'll have that conversation then next up is citizen comments this is the time

089for people who'd like to address the board regarding anything that's not already on the agenda is not legal or personnel in nature and for those that haven't been here before other than to ask clarifying questions the board cannot engage in discussion about it because it's not something that was posted on the agenda and there might be people who'd want to have be part of that conversation so i have two people on huh i have two people um the first up is lisa is it carlo great lisa come on up hello thank you for having me so do i state my name is that how this works or i already stated it for you so you stayed up for myself i'm good to go you're good um yeah i'm i'm proud to be here i know

090that i'm speaking for many many people that don't have this gift to speak it's very stressful we all have children school-aged children you know this is a hard time to be here i first want to thank all the parents that are out there that you know have the same feelings as me and that are fighting behind the scenes i want to thank my my son who's been in a mask all day for eight hours and who's been here for the last two hours still sitting with his mask and i want to apologize to you baby my healthy son who doesn't need to be wearing a mask frankly it makes no logical sense to me i mean obviously you guys are all vaccinated you have been forced to vaccinate or you've been mandated to vaccinate or

091you chose to vaccinate whatever it may be we're fully six feet apart and still forced to wear a mask and yes i'm going to wear my sparkly mask you know because i think it's pretty much a joke i mean if you want to talk about a mask this gentleman right here has the n95 which is designed for a virus and a surgical mask that most of everybody is wearing is designed to help a surgeon not spit on their open wounds of their patients not has nothing to do with the virus i'm sure you guys probably already know this but you know i'm here to speak loud and proud i'm going to try to keep this short and sweet so i can get home to my babies and feed them dinner i did want to touch

092on a couple of things i heard ironically the the lovely lady that was talking about blind compliance that you know that's pretty much what i'm here to talk about you also mentioned about um what's morally right for for our children and um there was one other thing you said that was right on the money that i can't i can't remember exactly but it's it's gonna um you know mirror the tone that i have today i know that you would love sir to have your enrollment um rise um i do hear the heart of the um of the of the school district that we just want our children in session um and not at home and i respect that um but i do have to say that there is a huge army of us out here

093that are ready to walk and bring that um bring that number down if the forcefulness continues on the masks and vaccines and you know you guys say that you're here to serve the children but i see you're serving governor inslee first he is a servant to us he we do not serve him um this is um we are americans and this is you know we have the freedom to stand up for these things i'm going to get to my paper at this point in the game i could come here to throw signs and studies that masks especially the ones our children are wearing are absolutely worthless against the virus i could bring you actual cd cdc statistics stating under one percent of children are seriously affected by covid i could bring you countless articles about

094faulty coded tests i could bring you federal law codes as well as the united states constitution and international law set in stone with the numer nuremberg code siding with our stance against forcing mass and the vaccine i could bring all of this to you but it has already been done by parents all over the country for weeks and weeks and yet there you sit complying with the single man's commands unwilling to stand for what is right with our children our country and our future i have had multiple conversations with my child's principle on this issue and i hear his view that the focus needs to be on the kids attending class in person and not on the masks i also hear his view as he states his job is on the line to comply you

095understand this is tyranny this is tyranny against him our kids you and me cruel and unnecessarily forcing and threatening our jobs and education and you understand this is just the beginning of the pull for control do you not you do understand what is happening with the mandated vaccine and their end goal do you not you do understand the risks of the new vacs and why they were pushing it so hard to you not this is an evil political agenda of control i'm sure deep down you all realize something is very wrong here let my words ring this is not the time to get comfy because you are in fear of losing your job this must be approached together with strength bravery and numbers we the people willing to stand for freedom medical freedom truth integrity

096and our future if things don't change let my words ring it will not be good for any of us in this room for many reasons legally there absolutely is liability in your lap with the forcing of masks and upcoming attempt at forcing our kids to be vast yours as well as inslees the only thing he's using to his advantage is an emergency order which there is no emergency i am here to speak for so many others who feel the same but do not have the gift to do this and as it's been said we will be back we will not back down and we are americans we plan to act like it thank you lisa uh gary wilson hi gary gary wilson again um i mainly signed up for i wasn't sure if i was

097going to be able to comment earlier about that family engagement graph and yeah equity the scores um the equity audit but since i'm up and just you know watching today and previous two weeks ago um you know and i can understand what you're trying to do and we all want to be equal and fair and give everybody you know a chance to learn um but it seems like we're kind of losing focus on you know teaching these kids reading writing arithmetic and science um from what i understand the state of washington kids want the standards kids are like in the what 50 percentile they're not passing according to standards and i know in oregon they've thrown out the testing at you know upon graduation or for graduation it seems like we're forgetting why we're really

098here and why we really want or sending our kids to school to learn we i really don't want to see my daughter become a social justice warrior i mean those are values i will share with her my wife um not the school the school it's not the school's job frankly please get back to reading writing and arithmetic and science what schools have always represented and would appreciate you guys doing thank you thank you appreciate you being here gary do we have anyone online that would like to sign up okay all right i appreciate the citizen comments that we've heard tonight um next up board comments do we have any board comments i don't have anything tonight my calendar uh so i i was with jenny at the uh henrietta lacks um and cascadia tech uh

099momentum with pacific region the national school board association so yeah we had people alaska from california nevada the whole western half of this country uh with the exception of hawaii i guess they're in a different area uh to see our schools and how they function how they guide people into the better students into the pathways there um the take away from that uh the washington folks actually invited me back to dinner so i was down talking with them at gray's in the harbor gray sprays it's not the harvard it's at the hilton crazy hilton um about that and i heard them say your um your health and bioscience high school is amazing i've never seen anything like it it's exactly the thing that we want for our kids this is a puget sound area director

100it's riverside school district it's the name of that one issaquah was there a couple others sunnyside from south mid around the yakima area yes a number of districts were there we know that but just the same response from all over the state is just how far ahead our programs and offerings are than even elsewhere in washington especially elsewhere in the united states to the point where tim garcia says to me your schools are a statewide and national model for what vocational education could be so really heartfelt they were very very impressed with henrietta lacks high school um which is very strong and just for the record very strong in math science social studies i mean and then some and that's why it is a model and it is part of our bigger curriculum to make

101sure that all kids have those skills but i wanted to pass that along especially to you because i i had to mention your name and the efforts that you and and joan skelton and todd gizeria and the others had making sure that the school got built uh and the create you know it's like the innovation around financing it came from the stimulus and the way that mike set that up that is important to say is that they are just blown away by what we've been able to accomplish here and they want that for their their districts um if there's a way that the next time you talk to joan won't you tell her please i will uh she'd be thrilled to hear that that was 10 years 10 years in the making for that school

102jaw is a gape it was really amazing to see how people were responding to our students they stood up at the end of the luncheon at the cascadia thing and gave the students a standing ovation i think that's the first time i've ever seen an event group giving the students a standing ovation it was just such a good day that's great media usually gets a standing ovation do they yeah lcc and they usually do oh and i was thinking of like our community lunches our school tours and things don't make a practice of that there but it was impressive i just need to see so you were there yes i was i unfortunately did not get to attend um the henrietta lacks tour so i met them at cascadia for that tour and went with

103a group um with joan so that was great to get to know joan a little bit more john right yep okay you were just talking about joan and i wanted to make sure that i don't skill too much it's been one of those days yeah um so yeah that was a incredible tour i always love going to cascadia and to see all of the programs that we offer our students and the opportunities that our students are given and just having the conversation with the directors about you know it's the college and career paths and it's not college for everybody and just the amount of programs that we offer it's it is really incredible and it's nice for us i think to also be able to kind of be reminded of those and going into the

104schools because things change frequently um and what they're doing and what they have out and a lot of different things i saw some very huge um election signs that belong to shane gardner they were using them in the um the hangars yeah on the tables because they're really sturdy and so i had to laugh i was like i haven't seen one of those signs in a really long time but yeah i know it was an incredible tour and lunch everybody was extremely impressed the students arrived at cascadia at 7 30 in the morning and it was a volunteer option they got to sign up to i mean it wasn't part of their grade it wasn't they weren't getting any credit for it it wasn't extra credit they were just offered the opportunity and they came

105in and they had a full house in the kitchen you know cooking and gave us an amazing tour of the kitchen and yeah it was great it was you know we had people from all over and just to hear the differences in the different states because we are always are often with people from washington and even some you know some organs sometimes but to have people there from utah and arizona and just kind of really have conversations with them and that was that was great just reminds me that maybe you know one of these days we'll get back to the national school board yeah so we'll see yeah one of the things at henrietta lacks that i want to mention as well is that if you remember last may when we had three students from

106the high school there talking with us about student inclusion and equity and so forth uh one of them graduated lonnie baldwin um is at uw but the other two were presenting at henrietta lacks in their programs i got a chance to talk to one of them and and kind of catch up a little bit it was nice to see them there and they recognized and they're watching watching what we're doing with our policies yeah that's good okay thanks for doing that i was out of town or i would have joined you but can't miss my annual trip i unfortunately got i got my kid's basketball schedule late so he had his first basketball game that morning so yeah i came late to the tours but fortunately i was able to we have representation there and

107that's what matters that's great um i'm waiting for app since we have the new campus here with our other specialty schools i'm i'm starting to wonder when that will start creating you know the visitors and stuff because this is such a unique campus um that i think it will be a model for what other districts can do for our kids with you know different needs than sometimes kids have in a comprehensive school so that's that's awesome taking kids where they're at from where they're at and moving them forward so i appreciate you guys doing that yeah julie did you want to add anything no okay sorry i missed it but i'm glad you guys were there to represent okay well that is good okay so next up we have future agenda items obviously we're going

108to be dealing with these our homework with these policies from tonight so i think that's key as far as keeping that process moving as quickly as we can and not you know dilly-dallying about it so i think we got our work cut out for us with that and lori and i and jenny will get together and talk about what that all looks like for the next agenda okay um does anyone have anything else that they want to add to to our agenda items future agenda items okay well i'm going to announce that we need to go into recess it's 7 20 and we'll we'll sign documents and return for a workshop discussion on the new equity operational expectation the legislati a legislative report a discussion on the levy followed by an executive session to review

109the performance of a public employee which is expected to last 45 minutes so we appreciate everybody who joined us tonight and we are now in recess okay everybody i think we'll get started oops where's my mask um so first up we have um discussion on the new operational expectation policy oe x equity okay to be determined okay see here i can find it hang on i'm just trying to get it up on my screen here okay so um mike i think it's rob i was trying to work this to oex equity as a new operational expectation uh if you've got what was placed in board docs and and here we are um the idea behind this first draft is i think we examined some of this at our last workshop a month ago or yeah

110it was a month ago was this is my first kind of shot at developing an operational expectation around equity again drawing from the district equity committee's wording and work to produce something that can translate into solid indicators that's a measurement of compliance right operational expectations are about compliance so came up with six items centered around access then learning environments then barriers removing the barriers and conversations uh and curriculum uh in no particular order just as i went down the uh the equity committee's work uh to pull out things that are operational is operationalizable is that is that a term we could use i don't know what was that again operationalizable can can be can be turned into really concrete measurements that indicate compliance or not in compliance so this is the first shot has have

111we had any other committees or anything review this for their input i did not present this when i was meeting with the district committee on the 29th i don't remember that i presented this explicitly because it wasn't past its first reading and that was kind of the subject at the time uh so no i don't i don't have a lot of input from people outside of our conversations about the wording here or the possibility about the only point of the point of feedback i could get is that they've begun to understand that an operational expectation policy is where some of this would sit because i heard some questions from one of them about how to build indicators and how to you know build that into the problems of practice and theories of action kind of

112approach that they take to key performance indication but no feedback on the actual language okay so mike if you had time to kind of look at this and think about it at all you know i no i mean i'm not saying i haven't had time but i haven't really looked at it that much but i kind of feel like as we go through the conversation over the next few we'll we'll react to whatever you all come up with and then interpret and come up with our ways that we would monitor it i mean it to me it it just kind of aligns with everything else you're doing i want to make sure that we don't have any verbage in there that is going to cause us to rethink everything so i want to make sure

113we're addressing it before it's up for a first reading so that we can make sure that we're being sensitive to what the needs are of people with the exception of the changes that were suggested about changing things like housing status from homelessness poverty becomes level of affluence the things that margaret suggested in our one workshop before we began the other policy work uh the language comes largely from the equity policy committee's uh work as far as i could as far as i could tease it out in terms of oe stuff right the operative question would be can we find in indicators that will tell us about whether students have the access to opportunities resources and support what the learning environments are like and i can imagine a couple of things but i could never be

114complete about it the way that full cabinet working on this wood or that kind of thing i wonder if there's something missing from an operational expectation that is easy to show the public comments from all of you out there i know it's what i'm what i'm kind of getting at um so i want to make sure we don't have any other words that have different meanings to different people in a way that could be counterproductive i guess my thought would be that the work that you're doing to kind of come together on the other would need to occur and then this would spin off that so like putting this ahead of the actual results policy um doesn't make sense to me um is that a suggestion for the wording of the other policy from because

115that's that happened before here it feels more positive meaningful conversations it's doing a different thing maybe the same data informs both the policies this is supposed to be about the actions of the superintendent and other district leadership but the other one is a focus on students do you think that is there a difference between the data that you'd gather for a focus on students as opposed to superintendent and operational expectations well one of the questions here is if you look at number one in our other policy we took out all of the race ethnicity culture you know all of those things to just all you know to all but does that need to be this specific here um considering it's what we expect the superintendent to do this i mean these i mean this was

116kind of meant to mirror the legal list of groups that's found in washington statute with that phrase change to remove the exclusionary language from the thing we're seeing right so this in this case it's kind of a match to an rcw or a whack somewhere is what i was thinking about yeah that makes sense um and it seemed like an appropriate place to put the whole list because it's an operational policy rather than an aspirational policy right um so there landed the whole list as mostly as the committee suggested it i want to make sure we don't i want to go back to what you just said about aspirational versus operational i want to make sure it's very clear that yes you can look at our policies the policies that we've been discussing tonight in

117an aspirational way but they are in no way not to be something we want to achieve and to be taken not as pie in the sky or a dreamland or blah blah blah um sometimes i worry when someone says well that's just an aspirational goal but no but you know i remember uh when we began the coherent governance model that the results policies were aspirational in terms of progress toward uh but didn't necessarily carry that compliance kind of standard that i know we think so yeah aspirational still has to have an interpretation still has to have supporting data and a way for the for us to see which direction we're going this is more of a binary either or in or not a compliance kind of idea and wording it means can you show that

118students have access to that learning environments are and how can you show that is sort of the next page and we'd have to go we'll go through that process of determining and identifying how we would do that i just think if if they kind of tie together it makes sense that the lang maybe there's more detail here but if there's a question about whether to use respect or not to use respect they would think you'd want to be consistent or like julie's saying if robust is a word that you want to use then let's use robust so that there's consistency but i'm sure that we can come up with ways to interpret what you mean and then how to measure that i mean even the predictability of outcome is of the measurement right affecting that

119changing that over time that's one of the measurements um thoughts from brian what i heard to it says opportunities resources and supports that's the key and also not just identifying those races and other problems but removing those barriers clarissa you might have to come up and talk i'll be so glad when we're into a different situation yes i know it's hard to hear you guys from them i know yeah thanks closer it's a few steps um i i agree with the idea of completing the first phase of this phases meaning the equity policy and um or the equity results policy this before doing this but in the spirit of what rob is saying the way these were crafted they did come from what the equity advisor committee put together and so the theme the spirit

120the feeling or however you want to phrase that is captured here and i think the theme and spirit of everything that our our committee has is captured in the changes what we're getting hung up on which is fine this great conversation are how different people are defining different words and what those words do for them and so for this one this is what the superintendent will if we can get the other pieces in line then i think he has a better starting point but talking about what he will will do and so that's just i'm trying to put it kind of all longitudinally because i think after looking at kind of how this is played out tonight and how important the work is um we could be in the same position later with this if

121we don't wait and finish what we'd started before and that's why i want to make sure that the input we're getting is coming early in the game versus in the middle of the game because i value the i know we all value the work of our our citizen committees and the work you guys are doing um and so we got to make sure that as we move this forward that work is can i say respect they know that that work is respect now i'm also worried about certain words well like i said it's a good conversation yeah so is it then that do you want that do you want feedback on this also we're we're workshopping the oe side of things i did want to ask now that you're here maintaining a climate and culture

122respectful of each person does that carry a different connotation uh the be respectful and compassionate uh did in the results policy no it still has the it would still be something that we'd that we change if if asked so julie that's a good point julie brought up that it has respect here and not in the other what do you think of the uh uh let's see we said discuss and engage in controversies uh and what's on the screen is not what's going to be the final language but empathy civility respect and dignity those words there compared to the number five on the right where it says robust conversations around controversies now i'll tell you my thinking about writing the words robust contra conversations were the reports that i was getting from my son's civics classes

123last year where he had a teacher who would permit a conversation to continue and he was moderating this conversation cus history class but my son came home frustrated because the teacher just wouldn't take a side wouldn't take a side but he created a forum for a robust conversation in the classroom which is uh consistent with the policies we have now about that yeah so that's what i was thinking of when writing the word robust conversations and i think what we need are just responses and suggestions to the kind of effect that the language has yeah the idea behind the use of uncomfortable there um had to do with our committee's training and professional development with the creators conversation protocol and having experiencing discomfort and it is true it is not your natural you know instinct

124to have empathy and compassion for one whom is causing you discomfort and the more you practice that the less uh uncomfortable that becomes and so the reason why that was put there is because um we are trying to model what adults are doing right and wanting the kids to do something similar so that's where that came up that's why it came out and was placed in that space are there items missing from an operational expectation that right have been found in the work that you're doing an expectation that you would like to see i guess um maintained about the well the operations of the school in the district is there something missing from this list it's kind of like asking what you want from the store the minute before you leave but my mind goes

125blank on things like that in those moments but that's pretty much it uh no like i was saying i don't i no there's not necessarily something missing we we could make this an 18-page document if we're trying to include all of the things but i think the general like i said the general essence or theme are presented here we just have to agree on the language okay when does your when do your committee's committing meet again monthly um so we met on the 29th and so we'll meet again the last week here this month however uh they're used to receiving what we call homework for me and so and they always love giving their input um and and really appreciate being asked and so if there's anything you'd like and put on i'm happy to

126share with them and provide a space where you can see you know put it in a dock of some sort that you can see the commentary that's an option what time do they meet where did when where and how we we meet virtually and it is a two-hour meeting normally so five to seven or 5 30 to 7 30. okay so on the wednesdays the last week it was wednesday this time because we had strategic planning meeting on thursday so they actually prefer thursday meetings if they meet on the 28th that would be two days after we're trying to finish this well i like the idea of giving it to them and having them maybe get some comments and that way we could review and we're not looking for a whole revision here we're just

127want to make sure there's enough there's nothing in here that could be a you know a misstep that we want to make sure people feel the things we wanted you know that the culture reflects what we want and and they'll notice their language in the policy excuse me in the uh oe here um and they have the equity results policy fresh on their minds and so i don't think it would be a stretch to ask for just generally like the royal respect it's going to come up because it came up before so having the document in front of them that'll definitely be something that they talk about but just in general do we do we see an alignment between all of the documents that we've looked at so far and is there any wording um

128or phrasing that is from their perspective of the stakeholder group um that causes a rope and then they can talk about what that rub looks like and you all can see it um and it'll be there for you to access um how do you guys feel about that i like that i know because i want to hear from them sooner rather than later on stuff i just think it's more productive and it helps guide us as we're moving forward with our with all of this it just feels like people want to be heard early and and have us be able to structure things around doesn't always mean we'll agree but i mean usually we do but you know because if they make a compelling point we want to hear it and we want to act

129on it so i think as is it helpful or not to have a board have a board member or two in that conversation as they talk about things or they enjoyed having rob uh to be able to give context one of the comments that was actually made was it was really helpful to hear the thought process behind or the context behind each of these statements because they're having some of the same thoughts that are happening here it's like what did you mean by this explain explain that to us same thing our comments so what did you what did you mean by that so we had jamila here who was the spokesperson for that to explain right um the the what i can say though is that what we've done in the past with the committee

130is when we have documents for example when we were crafting the policy that we presented to you all we did some in-person work with that but they also did that you know in their own space to have time to process and chew on and then we met in the next meeting to finalize so there was never a whole bunch of live words missing people's um if they were just initially like absolutely not that was an easy thing to kind of talk about but people needed time that you wanted to process it um and then we could ask questions to each other well what did you mean by um and so if this is going to be like an iterative or if we do it in phases since it's still in workshop i'm happy to have

131them look at it minus the context some of the contextual questions may come up and then that'll make for a more efficient time when we if we are going to have a board member attend again to hone in on where the questions came up rather than opening up a life yeah i'm in front okay because i'm kind of almost thinking that we might want to have if we have people that are available let's have two people two we if we do three then we're a meeting and that has to be a public meeting so um but to have a couple of us um there to give answer any questions or give them any context that they need to have um and then that way it can just roll right on out to our first reading

132um with that input and stuff so yeah if if it would be possible to get the dates of the meetings um so that we can chat with everybody to see who would like to maybe be involved in that way because i think it's really good for people for for us to hear firsthand from the group and then also to be available to clarify anything that might need it clarification so everybody and i'll talk to rachel when she gets back about who might be interested in being involved in that process and we'll get everybody get them connected with you so that you know who's gonna be there from the board sounds good was there also in describing your process i thought i heard like folks were commenting on text that might have been sitting like in

133google docs they were adding comments off to the side correct does that sound like something i think it's awesome yeah because then we can kind of see it and see are they sometimes you always wonder are they going to go off in a direction that we hadn't thought of and it could be good bad or indifferent but um it gives us kind of a heads up of what their thinking is so as we get ready to connect with with everybody that we kind of have a little bit of a clue as to what might be coming our way we've all got district emails and notebooks here is that we can put that text into like a google doc that you can curate if i'm going to read it i got to have somebody help me

134because i can never open my google docs on the district side so once again your clueless board president when it comes to technology i need help if it's a if it's a live document like that though and we're all working i have it when that can be considered a meeting if we um if we uh if we receive view only access yeah and cannot comment ourselves then it would be fine it would be fine yeah and that's what we need to do yes yeah and that could be extended so we can't respond back that's yes so then i need to then create the doc if you create it you have editing rights you can't create it i can only give yourself viewing right so i would have to create it or copy and paste into

135it that's how it should be anyway because it's the work of the your committee we're just coming in sorry i put something in my mouth we're just we're just coming in with to be there as also a resource to you and so we can move this along so and then just for us to be informed so yeah you should be in control of it clarissa because it is your your team's work we just want to be privy to some of the comments or suggestions as we're doing our work over here and i think the flow will be nice i agree but we definitely can't have it being a board dock kind of or a board process because then it gets us all into trouble and really that's not our role in that we're here we're

136here to receive input not to guide but we're asking them to look at our yeah and revise it or to right i would recommend not not doing any word smithing just like let's not change will to show it that kind of stuff but if the comments were to pile up on the side of each each of these places uh each of these items um with suggestions about that uh then the document won't end up looking like the one on the right with his crosshats and underlines and colors and no it would it would be highlighted so what happens is the whole document so for example if i had a comment for the first one i would highlight you know provide student with access and then say add comment and so that those three words would

137be highlighted and then the comment would be over to the side and so no it wouldn't be strikethrough and red and things like that but it would it would appear your whole document would probably just be yellow so you have to click you have to click to see all the comments but that yeah that's okay that's okay because when you click on each of the little words then the right comments get highlighted so one thing you can do is if you make the view only privileges public like to everybody on earth then it doesn't really matter which google account we use to access it we'll need permission to see we would just need permission to edit right the only person that would have permission to edit would be the person who created the doc right

138right so just as a technical note goes now in connection here with the alignment with the r3 i'm trying to get my mind wrapped around that is that we've got places here it says like discussing engaging controversies and uncomfortable issues and over here permit robust conversations mike are you saying that those should have the same place in the numerical order of things i'm just saying that if there's words that we're avoiding in one i would think you'd want to think about avoiding them in the other or you'd want some consistency that's i'm not necessarily talking about the numbers that's trying to gauge the depth of alignment my mind's shallow are they supposed to lie like that like should one be one oh okay i mean they don't have to but it might make it easy

139for people to be able to go if they were to compare look at all the documents in a in a row to be able to see that this line about what students will do matches to what this one the first line does for what the superintendent is going to do to ensure that they they're doing that to me it just makes sense that they kind of have a certain the same numbering alignment that way yeah and which is easy enough to just shuffle them around but grappling with weather now there's a one-to-one match and no well there's six there and seven there so now they don't know and i don't know that it does it doesn't work that way with some of the other results policies that's true too so let's not do that because

140then we'll have to look at all of them because some of them have like 12 things under them or a number of things under them they don't have that two or three under the results yeah well and that's yeah because sometimes the student what yeah the students will isn't quite it's not as hefty it's more like you say no which is fine but maybe kind of try and have some alignment we don't have to go back and do any maybe when we review them we can do it then but um just to be organized about it i think this might yeah that can happen that way if you're comparing what this says to what you're going to do would be easier for you just for referencing it to be able to see it in a

141certain organized manner just a thought on that so do you feel comfortable with that process as far as getting us that information i don't want to mess up other plans that you have with this committee you know i know you probably have other projects and stuff that you're working on so yes we do we also realize that that's one of the functions of the committee is to provide feedback on district level things which this is um and so so my next steps are so that i'm clear is to take this create a google doc out of it and provide comment only uh privileges to the committee for them to be able to add those and view privileges to you all they just well it can be to the whole group since we're not going to

142be well communicating we can see that so we can see them yes okay so the link i provide for you is just the anyone can view right okay that's right but then we'll get a cup we'll see if we can't get a couple of board members so that if you need them at a meeting or whatever to answer questions anything like that to be support to the committee we'll have have that available for you okay that sounds great would it help your members to have um short paragraphs short descriptive paragraphs start with the words and operational expectation policy is and is for short descriptions of the context of that policy i want to answer your question correctly so can you can you refresh do your do your folks need more context than just the words

143operational expectation and ah the the why behind um yeah like you did with the other areas so that they understood how right yeah that'd be fine yeah that'd be great because i could supply short three sentence descriptions like a results policy is for this an operational expectation is for that yeah um i'm sure it's in randy and linda's book somewhere yeah just copied out of that yeah because that way they'll understand why we have this because it's our governance model and that way it'll kind of give them some perspective as to what the process looks like yeah so rob spent the first few moments of his time with us walking through just that we just didn't get to the we didn't go in depth about the oes but we did talk about the difference between

144a district policy the board policy what a results policy is he did walk us through that which is very helpful we can give them a little glossary of stuff just so they have it because sometimes we even kind of have to be reminded about okay wait we gotta do it like we're gonna do this okay that'd be good we'll take that that'd be great okay any other comments so we will as we're getting your work start formulating for our we'll start formulating what this should all look like um and then in our first reading we should probably have each of us have seen things ahead of time as far as the comments and then our writing of the document and so we might want to put you and rachel on that again unless julie wants

145to be writing paul working on writing on this one i'm fine with rob and rachel because they're the ones that did a good job so maybe um that way we can then move into that first reading and we've had the input and it's okay to still give us more input during because sometimes stuff comes up you know we still want to be open to anybody wanting to talk to us during our first and second readings um so but the earlier the better is always oh for sure i can i have access to this already i think it's in the public piece of the board okay um clarifying questions so what you saw tonight that that the committee responded on the 29th was that was tonight the first time you've seen it it was the first

146opportunity to really bring it before the full board okay that that then then then i understand if um just thinking about process as we roll more of this kind of stuff out we're much more engaged with your team and everything is um the more that we front load things so that if we need to have kind of extend like if we have to have more than one workshop say or whatever if we're seeing i'm not necessarily thinking that's gonna happen here but we have had situations where it's almost like we open a can of worms and the can gets bigger and bigger and the worms keep crawling out and we have to keep postponing which is fine but if the can of worm suddenly gets open on second reading that's the problem because it becomes

147as you saw tonight a much more challenging thing to do and so it doesn't happen very often like that so it kind of i think threw us a little bit because it just i mean usually things flow pretty easily but this is so important we have to have every word right so i think that's kind of when what we're dealing with here okay and i'm sorry if you guys got caught off guard too because i'm sure that our sudden like what what wait no no no we we try our best to prepare for the unexpected that's kind of what we have to do anyway on a daily basis um we just want to make sure that our input is effective and useful real time um and so so to speak to this about the timeliness

148of providing it for you we don't when we provide our input we don't know the i mean we provide it we don't know when it is shared the respect piece we get because we just met about that but we don't we don't know when everything is we assume once we share it it goes right so the time frame between um is unknown to us and so for this so that we don't have that uh happen again we will get it i mean i can ask them to start commenting as soon as they get it but what is a a reasonable amount of time to have it to you so that you have time to process it and chew on it just as we did as a committee with the previous documents i think that if

149we because we want to have this on our next board meeting as a first reading oh okay but if we if that's a pro if that process is going to be difficult because you guys don't even meet till after our next board meeting correct so you guys might need time to have more conversation i guess it might depend on how many comments are coming through and and you'd have to make be a judge of we've got a lot to discuss here we've got a lot if it looks like it's a little bit of wordsmithing or whatever that kind of is in alignment with what we've been talking about up here [Music] we may not need as much time i know i'm not giving you an exact answer because the circumstances i would rather have you

150say we need more time as a committee because i'm seeing a lot of input that from just from our google docs that is going to warrant us having quite the discussion and then we would have make sure we have a couple board members there and then i'd rather postpone it to the board meeting after that especially because we're still working on this stuff and i know that'll be helpful as we kind of clarify have some clarity there um and and how soon would you need that update what i'm trying to make sure is that what we give you all as a committee gives you the time to to look at it so if i if you need an update like i'm like i'm looking at it and i see a large amount of comments so

151if we is it do you need a week so i gave i gave the committee a week i gave the documents from before to the committee they had a week to look at it process it then we met and that's when we talked about it live that's a good turnaround time really i think and as long as we know it's coming our way and we get that information what do you think enjoy well i'm thinking that as long as we have it um because our meetings are on tuesdays mm-hmm i think if we had it like by the wednesday or thursday before so a week a couple of days that we could call and ask questions if needed and if you make a recommendation to us you know you can do that through me and

152jenny is i don't think the committee we're ready or prepared because of the you know the the input we're getting is coming in fast and furious and maybe it's more complicated than what we all anticipate just let us know and we can adjust just so we don't want to adjust at the you know at the border or right before the board meeting but i mean hopefully we we won't have that i want you to know though that you have that option that if you feel like you guys need more time just let us know and we'll adjust does that feel okay to you mm-hmm it does okay yes were we clear as much no no i just i i i appreciate the flexibility on our part i just want to make sure when we get

153to the point where we are ready you need at least a week to look at what we are ready for you to that's what i'm trying how much time okay so if we're going to use that work on the 26th the 20th uh julius in the 20th or 21st would be when you need to see the dates for so that helps me backwards plan with my committee knowing unit so if if we are approaching the 20th i'm looking three to four days before that at the document and going and then that's when i'd reach out okay okay yeah um question for bill wake up no you're having a nap over there no i wanted i do want you to feel like as you're looking at this stuff if there's anything in there that you think

154teachers and staff couldn't do i want to know i i want to know what it is and why i'm not saying that we're willing to change it but i think it's really important well i'm just saying i know i said it's an opinion and but we're open to hearing about some of this stuff because they're going to be accountable i mean when mike's accountable everybody downstream is accountable right along with them and so i just want to make sure that we don't get in a situation after we've passed this and then all of a sudden we've got a wait a minute here this is not going to fly or this is going to require something in our contract or blah blah blah i mean i don't know if that would come up but i'm just

155saying everybody needs to speak now or forever hold their face to me this is very suggestive of the controversial politics policy reward we kind of have to do this situation at a time although teaching autonomy is and so it's as long as the educators are the ones who are making the choices i think that we can probably we can probably work through any of our different differences if something gets mandated down down then yeah we're going to want some input on that at this point you choose what we teach we use the methods but definitely look i mean if there's something up there that you think i mean i'm finding it hard to believe that there would be anything in there that a teacher wouldn't want to do i mean if they care about kids

156yeah okay all right it's gonna be reasonable she says it's always a reasonable person's standards yeah that does come from this that comes from the aspen boilerplate i i want to meet a reasonable person these days we don't see many it was explained to me as a legal term yeah there's actually an interpretive standard that if a reasonable person could yeah then okay but it's up for interpretation it's always that's why there's an interpretation document thoughts no i like the comments that are going back and making it more sorry i agree with where we're going i don't want to rehash all the points and input yeah so that if we can have opportunity to tweak the policy if we need to yeah so we'd be workshopping this again we'd be workshopping this again next time

157what's our board when is our 26th i think 20 something 26 but i don't think the committee gets together before then we might see comments on whatever google docs she sets up yeah before then but uh there's plenty of time between now and the ninth to yeah we could measure progress as we move along and see what we're getting from the committee and stuff i think it up to as we get closer to first reading it out to to get a legal review it's an operational expectation and we are trying i was trying to connect to operational requirements found in law so paul were to have a look at it i think the money well spent yeah but i'm taking away supply clarissa with descriptive paragraphs of policy and purpose of policy and wait for

158input okay that sounds good do you have anything else to add on this discussion mike nope laurie julie no anyone in the audience okay let's do a levy update mr merlino let me share a few documents with you all okay uh kind of a it's a document uh are you gonna wait for virginia to come back no no go ahead keep going it's a document that looks at uh the levy rates uh for the bond levy the tech lending the m o levy total tax rate and then amino levy amounts 21 and 22 are already authorized by the voters in 2019 the 23 24 25 numbers are numbers related to looking at a total tax rate that remains relatively flat over the term and then you've also got a levy equalization amount and then a

159total levy and levy equalization amount and it was it was meant to be a way of looking at uh it's we're not called it's not called m o levy but it's the emino levy um if we were to run one for three years and as the bond rate drops roughly 20 cents a year if we were to increase the operational levy and then you can see the overall total tax rate starting at 390 and ending at and you can see the amount of money that that ends up generating and i've talked at the last couple meetings that we've had about this this time moment in time where our enrollment's declining our love equalization is going away our ester funds will be doing we but they're effectively done by no later than 23 24 running out

160where there's a need for the levy to increase and whether or not we use the bond rate decreasing to offset the increase in the tax rate and so that this is a scenario now what i would say to you is we always look at you know we've always looked at a house and what are the taxes on a house and you're going to see inflationary pressure on a house each year the the values go up our values have gone up more in the last few years this would assume about an eight percent a six percent and a five percent over a three year period so there's an increase in what a home even if the rate stays the same there's an increase because your house has been reassessed at a higher amount so there is

161a gain over inflation over time and then there's a little bit of an increase because you've increased by roughly 12 cents i think 13 12 cents from 390 to 402 over that time period so there isn't any question that the pressure overall on the system with an enrollment decline and then again we've talked previously with the new way that we collect levy dollars enrollment decline means over time we're going to have less ability to collect so we kind of for the purposes of trying to maintain as much continuity as we can it's likely in our uh best interest in terms of operational being able to deliver the program that we've delivered for that number to increase over time so that's that's really uh it's kind of taking this bond rate decreasing and applying it on

162the operational side which definitely whenever we run a bond in the future uh means we're running a bond to increase with a tax increase to make that happen uh but i think that the potential impact on the on the general fund is pretty significant because of the enrollment decline because of the lev equalization knowledge basically we we have to have about a 10 million dollar increase in the levy just to offset the fact that we're losing love equalization funds but you can see over a through over a uh one two three four year period that levy lev equalization number going from about 45 million to about 65 million now that it would there would be an increase anyway because we would have a levy or we would have an inflationary increase anyway but this does

163allow us to kind of have a little bit additional capacity and i would i've said this earlier you we we've lost in about 2 000 kids from 2019-20 to 2021-22 we've been able to use sr funds in order to maintain the program this year and likely uh well this year for sure but that you can't you can't have 2000 less kids and not have that impact the operational program the instructional program um at some point so you know even with the levy in being approved we we still would have to go through some reductions just because of the reductions in enrollment so uh you know for me um even with a flat i guess first thing is even with the flat overall tax rate people still will pay more in taxes because of the value

164impact on their home and it's not the straight eight percent or six percent or five percent because our value in the in the district increases also because of new growth i mean we still see all kinds of new growth going on whether that's industrial whether it's commercial or whether it's residential but there would there would be an impact and i think it we have to be honest about that that there would be a little bit of an increase beyond what inflation would be i think gail and i looked at this the board meeting in december is after the so either we need to set up a special board meeting or we would need to buy the november 9th meeting settle on resolution and the resolution would be a dollar amount and a rate that we

165would be letting people know now gail myself and jennifer jacobson center meeting thursday and then we will be scheduling our first meeting and i'm sure we'll reach out to lauren and bill and others uh to kind of talk about the the um and putting together the informational aspect of this but we're we're getting to the point where we kind of need to make a call on how we're what we're thinking about um so i guess i'm i'm up for any kind of questions you might have or comments no i like this idea i like the idea of um having it appear to be the same tax rate as people are paying overall i think that's going to be a much better option for us to go out to the community and ask for us to

166get this passed be nice if the property tax weren't as difficult to explain as it is yeah uh yeah drawing as it does from the full value of the land under then the boundaries of the district divided by divided by multiplied by uh but none of our funding is easy none of the funding is easy but the maintenance of tax rate is a very very typical story we're able to accomplish what we do without raising rates is um you just have to be clear about how the money is going to be used is it still called an enrichment level yeah it's not mmo it's like either epo or something enrichment and something else and then and and then we have to have a plan approved by ospi in addition to uh the board resolution for

167the county so we we would do that work as well the single question that i hear from folks skeptical about school taxes is what are you going to do with the money uh and they they're almost looking for like program codes specific this is going to asb or football teamwork whatever the thought is which we now have to actually i mean we do code how we spend the money right um by levy versus state local funds versus state funds so there is that ability and we have talked about making ourselves available as many opportunities for questions and answers with zooms within person however we need to do it because we have to i mean i think now more than any time people just have a lot of questions about what are we doing how are

168we doing it my kids have been in school for all this time why do we need the money what are the programs we have but i think i think we need to talk about some of the things we shared with folks at henrietta lacks last weekend and the things that we we're doing to support the students in the district which we've got all kinds of great examples of the programs so is the next meeting then when we're going to decide and so we can talk i mean we wouldn't have i think we passed the resolution november 9th if you all feel comfortable with the direction i think we would kind of start drafting what that would look like drafting some of the informational that we would provide um and i can share that with all

169of you ahead of time well ahead of time yeah because it's only the 12th today we've got a whole month so i would think we would do that by next week start getting you that information so that you haven't any questions you have or things that you're seeing that seem different and then we'll start having informational well we'll start thursday but then we'll expand off of that and do you have any plans on reaching out to some of our community members that have helped us in the past with not just the evergreen citizens for school stuff but just in the structure of this that are the more the financiers of the area that can say yeah or need this is going to go this isn't going to go or what they're hearing people talking about

170um i think that we can do that you know i think i'm thinking about the people that we've reached out to so the david nirenberg tim shower even uh i can't remember the angelo um albert yeah albert but yeah we we we will do that and then just because they were so good yeah they were good to work with before when we were talking about the bond interview another one was uh uh tracy what's his last name what is their last name uh do wills yeah linda and tracy i was gonna say there's a lot of tracy's here tracy wilson yeah so i mean they were all very helpful with us and then and then we will also have a citizens group that we'll talk with and that's the key is we got to get

171people marty we'll put marty yeah marty wants to be there we talked already about that but we'll tap into the equity committee we'll talk in any any committees that we can possibly all the committees yeah and we need to work with every committee i mean i kind of see it from november 9th it's like from november 9th until february it's as many groups as we can get in front of and then i'm i'm on the board of the chamber of commerce now so we would i could work with the chamber of commerce and get in front of as many of those people also and talking to rotary yeah definitely get the home builders association and the realtors associations bia swaka yeah yes all of the above okay so i'll do that and i'll get you

172guys i'll get all of you information um either later this week or early next week on some of the themes that sounds good perfect thank you okay well that's all we have i think we have legislative too oh that's right well we passed it we got general assembly coming out i said something about it um melissa is scheduled at some point so melissa was going to come to meeting the 26 and talk and and i'm assuming you still want to do that because i don't think we want to push it out too far yeah no that's fine so we'll have her scheduled um she'll probably come down and do it in person she's already scheduled yeah there's a well if you're on the wasda website and look at that big handbook for the general assembly

173if there's something that you think evergreen ought to oppose then the next meeting is the time to do that otherwise i feel like we could safely take the recommendations of the legislative committee and vote or against based on that has melissa seen it i don't know but her she's probably seen it but we've not talked about it i think that would be great to get her input just a couple of days before the assembly because we have we prioritize it after that but it's a span of time instead of doing it that evening on a sheet of paper so we there's some time to think that through and i think too if she or mike see any red flags to alert us to that yeah and see because sometimes you'll know the behind the scenes

174ramifications on some of this stuff more than we want yeah i feel i mean she's always really dialed in on all of that's what i figured the biggest piece of work uh that i've been doing is just to consolidate the safety positions so that we can prioritize one association safety position very high instead of having two that are very soon and that it should be easy for us to support it whether it's one or two but okay that's that's about the only loose thought that i got left in the moment okay sounds good thanks everybody [Music]