School Board Meeting - September 14, 2021

001um i'd like to welcome all of you to joining us for tonight's board meeting the first item that we'd like to take care of is our pledge oh please join us contributions now i'm going to ask director perkins to read the land acknowledgement evergreen public schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinookan peoples and the khalid's tribe they've lived on and cared for this land and its waterways since time immemorial we thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgement to open a space of recognition inclusion and respect for all indigenous students families and staff in our community thank you very much um i do have a statement regarding the recent vid um guidelines from governor inslee's office in response to the outbreak and the open public meetings act it allows in-person meetings to

002occur but are limited to 25 capacity in the meeting room those who cannot attend in person this evening are joining us via zoom webinar and we welcome everyone no matter what format they're visiting us um i'm going to ask for a roll call to confirm the attendees director jenny gronwell here director rob perkins here director julie bocanegra here director rachel rogers here superintendent mike merlino here and administrative assistant laurie stroll thank you we'll be in here okay our next order of business is to adopt the agenda for tonight's meeting do i have a motion for approval i move to a uh proof or to adopt tonight's agenda as presented second all in favor all right any opposed okay next up is the board's consent agenda do i have a motion for approval of the board's

003consent agenda remove the approval of the board's consent agenda second all in favor aye any opposed consent agenda i move to approve the superintendent consent agenda as presented second all in favor any opposed okay now we have the superintendent's report mr merlino thank you uh thank you uh victoria um i've got a few uh just a few different things i'll mention tonight first off since our last board meeting we had our school startup and that went quite well we're into the third week of school thus far i think there isn't any question everyone was extremely excited to come back august 31st i know each of you had an opportunity to stop by a school i enjoyed having the opportunity to share some information about the district and then also we had the opportunity to uh

004uh highlight some of our our uh schools particularly that day i got an opportunity to highlight legacy and hollingsworth academy in the transitions program which was which was great so everybody's very excited about being back i think our students are excited to be up about being back our staff is excited about being back um we've got we're into the third week of activities events you know we're back again mackenzie stadium we get to hear noise on weekends in mackenzie stadium which is i know that that sometimes can be annoying for people to probably live around there but i think there's a strong likelihood that the people that live in the neighborhood are quite happy to hear the cheering again volleyball games cross country golf everything so real excited about it and uh grateful that we

005have the opportunity to be back i was on a zoom today with superintendent reichdall it's a statewide zoom that he has there have been some questions and i think even some rumors at times about the thought that copic cases are rising uh we may have a situation where schools are closed i think i've heard at least two or three rumors of that uh probably more than that uh superintendent right doll reiterated again today there is not very unlikely that we would see guidance from the state that would cause a statewide reduction not reduction but statewide stop of school as we saw in march of 2020 it would likely be if there were cases at extreme levels it's going to be it ended up being a local decision it's a local decision between the school district

006and the local department of health and we work on a daily basis i really want to highlight the work that uh holly long our manager of nursing services does on a daily basis along with the few staff that she has she does not have a significant amount of staff working to support our buildings working with the clark county department of health who themselves are understaffed in the work that they're doing the case levels are at the highest that we've seen for 100 000 over 14 14 day period in the county uh since march of 2020 so there isn't any question that the case levels has impacted what's happening in school and i would say that the primary impact is just around the time and the effort that goes into the contact racing at each site

007and originates through holly with each of the buildings i really can't enough say how much th that we all appreciate what's going on in our buildings uh to make school safe for our students and keep school open on a daily basis for our students it has been uh at times i think overwhelming for administrations and and so when i talk about it's the school nurses it's the principals it's the associate principals it's the school secretaries that are working on the contact tracing and a lot of the efforts that go into that so we we're doing our best on a daily basis to continue to maintain the learning environment we will continue to do that very excited about the fact that we have kids here but there isn't any question that the current levels of of

008uh cases in the community are are uh they do impact what happens on a daily basis in terms of working with our students the most recent week we started to see a little bit of a decline in cases throughout the county on a daily basis hopefully we'll continue to see that declining cases i'm very encouraged that we've been able to continue to offer our program offer all the sports programs to our kids it's just a it's a testament to everything that's going on in our buildings um i mentioned the new guidance uh one of the other things that we're dealing with hr is dealing with uh the we've talked i can't remember when it was but governor inslee put forward the vaccination mandate which uh obviously has been received in all kinds of ways and

009i i think i would be um it wouldn't be right to say that no matter what the governor puts out there's a segment of people that really support what he's what he's putting out and there's a segment of the population that's really against what he's putting out the amount of of uh work level that has been added to the system to work within our system with our employees with respect to collecting vaccination proof uh whether it's individuals wanting to work through religious religious exemptions uh or the medical exemption that is provided it's a significant amount of work i really applaud the efforts that have gone on in the hr department to continually provide information to our staff to make sure that they have everything that they need to have in order to be able to

010move forward with providing the documentation around vaccination status or providing religious exemptions or providing medical exemptions and each one that comes in there's an accommodation request along with that and we have to work with the individual with respect to that accommodation so it's a significant amount i was on a call monday with the local superintendents as we have been really for the last 19 months or so kind of just talking through the various things that we're dealing with and i think it's it's a reality that there likely will be a certain percentage of staff members that won't provide the vaccination uh or provide a religious exemption and may not uh continue employment status with the district when the the conversation with the districts many of the districts said they see that that number could be

011as high as 10 of their staff in a district so you think about evergreen and i'm not saying it is or it isn't going to be at that number but if it were to be 10 forevergreen that's probably 300 to 350 people so the only reason i mention that is we're having a struggle even at the current situation to find attract employees to come work with us there are certain areas that were low lower than we've typically been we typically have a number of subs as bus drivers right now we're struggling to find bus drivers the office staff including the mechanics which there's about 20 of them they've all got their cdls their commercial driver's license so they're all having to step in occasionally and make that happen so i just mentioned that as as

012we get closer to the october 18th deadline we'll have more information about our numbers what they look like and we absolutely will communicate at the earliest possible time with our our parents and families about any impact that might be seen within our district i will say that uh also with respect to the staffing um hr and various departments have worked together to set up a career fair kind of a open door to allow outside the public to come in and look at the types of jobs that we have available that's on september 22nd here at the district office i think lori had flyers attached out front on that it's from three to six in the afternoon i think we've gotten a lot of interest in that already which is fantastic so we're doing everything we

013can to make sure that we're staffed at the levels that we need to be staffed at to support our students the way we need to support our students and families the other thing i guess uh the last thing i will mention is uh enrollment is obviously a significant thing for the district as it drives the revenue that we have to to uh support the district we had [Music] looked at the budget for 2122 as if you looked at 2021 and said you know we didn't have the pandemic and looked at our enrollment if it had been a regular year carrying forward we would have seen enrollment decline but not to the levels where we were in 2021 so as we built the budget for 2122 we built back in some of the students that had

014chosen not to attend in 2021 as a result of the pandemic and some of that was homeschooled some of those kids going to private schools there could have been a wide variety of people weren't here what we're actually seeing this year is enrollment patterns similar to what we saw last year so actually lower than budgeted but even lower in some instances than the numbers that we had last year so our elementary schools um see have a little bit of a decline even from last year our middle schools are down a little bit our high schools are roughly status quo uh so what we had budgeted and what we had last year is about where we're at this year and then we have seen an uptick in the home choice academy and legacy online programs of

015about 150 to 200 kids so we do we did retain some of our kids that maybe chose to move to the remote only option at home choice for k-8 and then also legacy high school for those in grades 9 through 12. so fortunately we have esr funds as we've talked during the budget uh to help us through this budget year so as we looked at uh you know typically what we do in the fall is when the enrollment comes in at the schools we kind of look and take a look at class sizes do we have high class sizes in there we have low class sizes in areas do we add staff or do we move staff how do we treat that and when we had the conversations about that around staffing this year um

016one of the things that we had done as an exercise this fall as a leadership team was kind of look at kind of revisiting why we're here which is for students we're here to support students and using that lens to help us as we're making decisions which of course we always have but it's always good to kind of re uh just kind of rethink what we're doing and what we're here for and then actually put into our decision-making process that uh we're paying attention to that so uh what we've done with the staff so what we've i kind of view it is is that we have an ex we have a resource of teachers this year that have smaller class sizes particularly elementary school maybe a little bit in middle school high school roughly the

017same in elementary schools this year rather than moving teachers around also with the idea of stability and connection trying to provide as much stability as we possibly can the the vision was that for the last 18 months we've had kids that have lost access on a daily basis to their teacher through the classroom in person and so for 18 months we've kind of dealt with that if we have an excess if we call it that it really isn't an excess but our resource we just have some smaller class sizes rather than trying to move people around we believed it made the most sense for us to just leave our class sizes intact have a little bit smaller class size so we can focus even deeper on what we're doing to support our students and then

018in the fall as a team a teaching and learning team really work around what are kind of the metrics that we can use to look at as the year goes on around what that has meant for our students in those smaller class sizes how can we go back and measure growth in reading growth in math whatever the area may be and we're working on that so that we can communicate that back out to the community we have this resource of esser funds this year and we're really focusing it on keeping our class sizes small and as esser looks at they talk about learning loss we've talked about learning acceleration getting ourselves back to where we've lost a little bit of that time and so really that's where our focus is and i think we all

019feel good about that shared that with the staff last week after we got our official enrollment now our actual enrollment will be finalized in the next few days one of the other things that we're working with is the state law around immunizations not the cova vaccine but other immunizations state law changed a few years ago requiring that every every student have those immunization documents with the district before they be allowed to be in school and we still have a number of staff we've had a number of students that have struggled to have access to vaccinations whether it's through covid right now we have kind of a a shortage of vaccinations is the information that i've received from holly and matt hill that works with holly um so we're doing our best and i lobbied ospi

020to you know if if we have students that go out with the covet quarantine in the first few days of the of september they were allowing us to count those students so we were trying to push for them to allow us to do the same thing with the immunity students that have got all the immunization information in we were supposed to have that last year they delayed it a year this is the first year they haven't they have not allowed us to do that so we probably had i don't know what the number is now but it was around 400 students of ours that still had not uh we hadn't received we've got our staff reaching out working closely with families to just try to try to provide as much when we want to be

021able to serve our students we need to get them enrolled we need to get them in to be able to do that so i would say it's kind of a double-edged sword i think everybody's really excited to have our kids back there's no question about it but i do think that it's a very challenging environment that all districts in the state of washington are facing with respect to the protocols and just with respect to the level of of the cases that we see in our community so we're really hopeful to see those numbers drop and i would reiterate again as we say in our guidance if families have students that aren't feeling well or if their staff that's not feeling well we really need to try to keep those at home as much as we

022can to avoid a lot of the contact tracing and then let us work with everyone remotely and tell them remotely i'm getting assignments to kids and working supporting them and then getting them healthy so we can get them back in school you approved in your i think in the superintendent consent agenda and mou for uh eea uh which we're very grateful uh thankful of the work that janae and clarissa julie aaron with bill and lisa that we were able to kind of work through that and have something in place real early in case there's any need for us to react to something if there's a classroom that might get quarantined or anything like that so we're just really pleased that we were able to work together and make that happen and appreciate the board for

023uh passing that tonight a lot going on excited to be here everybody's working really hard in our system and i really appreciate from the bus driver that picks our students up to the custodian that cleans up in the building to the cook that serves to our secretaries in our buildings to our paras that work on a daily basis to our teachers our counselors our nurses our librarian and i know i'll forget some of our administrators associate principals deans everybody's working really hard for the students in this system and i'm extremely appreciative of everyone agenda this is i just need to give a gentle reminder that people need to have their masks completely on thank you very much julie did you have a question i wanted to ask mike a couple questions and that's okay yeah

024so have we just seen some isolated uh outbreaks nothing like where we've had like quarantine classroom or we've not had a classroom that's had to be quarantined yet but we've we have had members in a classroom that have had to be quarantined not to the level that we had to shut the classroom down i think that when you look at the data you just see a lot of individual one two in a building we're not seeing transmission within buildings we're seeing a lot of kids or staff members even coming we've even seen staff members unfortunately over the weekend they got sick and they didn't even bring anybody to expose anybody so we haven't had the widespread but i i i have to say it's it's much more impactful this fall obviously we have everyone in

025school as opposed to in the spring where we had half of our students on two days a week but we have not seen a classroom have to be shut down yet i think we've been close at least once but we haven't had to do that and then my other question was on enrollment so um i know some of it shifted to legacy and then home choice but what do you have like what the total number is like total number of students at home choices no no no like overall in the district uh i would say if you went to and i don't have the exact number but if you were in 1920 we probably were a little over 24 000 students at that time i think uh right now our number is probably in the

026upper 22s so probably 1500 students less than we were just even two years ago and it's been kind of a little bit of a decline so that's 800 maybe last year another 600 this year or something like that so 22 800 but all as soon as we do the actual official count then all yeah i just wanted the ballpark what about activities do you feel do we feel like as many kids are participating so far this fall i'm not hearing any any information that's sharing that there are concerns about uh kids turning out i think that i think we're getting a lot of kids turning out and i think that we're having great experiences with that that's great news yeah that is good now i guess the the one thing i would also say is

027the esser funds that we have really likely are here this year and next year and we cannot continue to staff a system at a level for three and a half thousand kids if you've got twenty two thousand eight so it's just something that we'll absolutely have to be looking at this year as we think about next year and then communicating and making sure that we're having the transparency around that to share where we're at and i say that today because i don't want people to think that we can just continue to operate forever s for funds or federal funds now you know maybe they they extend federal lesser funds further but we have to think about that day that those funds aren't there and how do we address that thank you any other questions from

028mike really curious to know um how our transportation numbers are i noticed there's a lot more parents picking up um in our elementary schools mostly but is that how many kids are on the buses yeah i know that we're having to thin them out and we obviously don't have enough bus drivers um for the amount that we need but how is that affecting our numbers on transportation so the actual bodies not just the assignments all need to ask yvonne that number that like are we seeing a decline in the number of i mean the number of routes that we have didn't change one of the things that we this is the first year we've been talking about doing this but then school ended last year we're going to do it one is is the transporting

029students to the dual language immersion program so while we have seen some routes consolidated we added routes back so to make sure that we were giving access to our students particularly spanish-speaking students to make sure that they could access the program so i'll ask everyone about the numbers i do know that they've consolidated some routes um they've got routes in place in case they were needed needed to do double runs go out get kids come back drop them off and go back out i know that they're already looking at just looking at safe walking and and those types of issues because we don't necessarily know what the numbers are going to look like october 1st october 5th as we get closer to the 18th but i'll ask you on about the actual numbers comment that

030i noticed in our consent agenda the first time in a long time was a staff and student travel request and i'm very happy to see those things beginning yeah we we have started to see some of those again we had some requests to travel nationally and i've kind of said we're not going to travel nationally but if we're within the st within the state and obviously if we're going to uh play football games or volleyball games or try cross-country meets in seattle we're absolutely gonna have our staff particularly you see a lot of cte staff travel and student travel to events and and probably music travel as well i would think um but somewhat hesitant to have people flying to the east coast and be there for and i heard about that but we just

031need the cases to start to slow down we need and and and superintendent rectal showed some of the charts over the last 18 months and they do show the numbers starting to come down statewide and getting to the levels that we would want them to be hopefully if that can happen we can get back to the potentially a time where at least where the most recent change in the mass mandate is that over 500 outside if there's over 500 so we will have to impose a mass mandate in our football games uh this weekend and any other events that we have outside that are over 500 so we're just hopeful to see the cases decline and the hospitalizations decline so that we can kind of move forward an interesting time that we live in okay

032uh next up we have a department update and aaron music is going to be giving us a teaching and learning equity update staring in the audience yep they're back there they're determining how they're doing it they look slightly confusing past the podium i think they were doing rock paper scissors well we're happy to have you here marissa okay um we are gearing up for two presentations coming up for you all on the next board meeting the first one being our continuity of operation plan this was something that all school districts had to have prepared that shows that we will maintain and if necessary implement a continuity of operations plan in the event of disaster uh also kovit is a disaster right so um we are prepping for that that has to be submitted to the

033state but we'll also be presenting that to you on next time um in addition for increased transparency and clarity of purpose as well as at the request of the school board we will be presenting on culturally responsive practices um in evergreen public schools and we are really excited to do that for you so our time it has been gearing up to prepare for you on that as well as opening and being in schools meeting with principals and then we are excited to be able to present for you on next week on those two topics questions for clarissa looking forward to it okay what she said thank you clarissa i appreciate the update okay next up is citizen comments this is a time where citizens may address the board about issues other than personnel or legal

034in nature the time is three minutes and if we're asking if you hear someone who's making the same point that you're making if you've could we don't need to hear it more than once if it's the same so a few people on our list here the first one be karen asbury hi good evening um i'm karen asbury and i'm here as a parent of a high school student i've had some concerns about transparency around covid [Music] lack of communication we received one email in the middle of may and then nothing until august 19 and meanwhile we were like going are they really gonna reopen schools really like the lack of hearing anything was upsetting to to us to our child um and then when we got an email it was just about attendance and how

035important it is that your student is there every day there is no mention of unless they're sick or unless somebody in your family has been exposed to kovitz so that was uh yeah not good um i liked the the sit down with the soup that was really that was funny and good and everything um and then i hope that you'll recommend vaccines yeah i know that you don't necessarily want to mandate but gosh you know the la schools are so at least to recommend i think would be huge i'm relying on mass it's the only difference you know there's adults in the room that aren't even correctly wearing their masks i've seen a lot of masks drooping and it just makes me so nervous because i'm sending my precious child to school every day relying

036on kids to wear their masks correctly um where that's especially problematic i think is eating obviously i'm encouraging my daughter to go outside to eat which is what portland public schools is recommending um and i think that's that's a really good move um that's going to work until it gets cold and then i hope that we're remote i really i i hope so because i think that's the only safe way to do it um and then buses a friend of mine told me she saw two buses going into ridgefield last friday um with the bus drivers wearing masks and no students wearing masks i did report that to transportation that's an outbreak waiting to happen very concerning overcrowding classes especially electives classes three feet distance minimum doing the minimum just doesn't seem good enough to

037me um there's a french class i know about with second year third year and fourth year french students and the fourth year french students are all crowded around one table so i'm not sure they're even social distancing unreported cases i've also heard about cascade middle school having a student come to school on the first day of school 15 minutes in parent calls and says oh yeah the kid tested positive and they picked up the student but i'm not seeing cascade on the list anywhere so it's obviously not you guys's fault so sorry i've just i've had so many things just building up um thank you so much was that an activities bus or was that okay i didn't personally see it a friend of mine told me that she saw two buses pulling into ridgefield

038in the evening they were evergreen public schools yes evergreen public schools buses um last friday evening transportation said yes there was a football game out there so played football against ridgefield last friday so we would have okay yeah and i appreciate dialogue because it's just weird to stand up here i've done this once before um to just stand up here and talk at you and i i wish that we could have more of a conversation thanks karen and we do appreciate when you come next up we have samantha golden anthony here oh there you are all right i've never done this before i'm kind of nervous um my name is samantha golden i have a student at wyu's middle school and i have a student at riverview elementary please do not go back remote or

039i won't have any hair left my i was maybe i didn't know how school board meetings this whole thing was going to work but i more had questions rather than a statement um but now i'm saying that it's statements um but up until 2019 there were personal exemptions uh given for school vaccines all school vaccines no one had to be vaccinated um to go to school i know that they removed that for the mmr specifically in 2019 um so my whole thing was if the copa vaccine is mandated would there be personal exemptions allowed for that vaccine seeing as you could send your kid to school with tetanus diphtheria pertussis anything that is on the vaccine list for personal exemption besides mmr and my other questions were if the copa vaccine is mandated for kids

040over 12 is what i understand is the guidelines right now for fda approval how are you going to differentiate between those students who are vaccinated unvaccinated religious exemption whatever the case may be and if a child doesn't want to get vaccinated or their parents don't want them to get vaccinated for whatever reason are those children not going to be allowed back at school i know with the mmr thing when that outbreak happened it was if there was an uh outbreak of mmr the kids would have to stay at home for four weeks um if they were not vaccinated are you going to follow similar rules like that and i know some of this is up to the governor and you guys just follow what he says but i was just wondering overall about vaccines um

041and then something completely unrelated uh i saw in the news a teacher in intercom high school which i'm sure probably some of you have seen um he had an antifa flag in his classroom he had a chairman mouth flag in his classroom he used a lot of stamps on assignments he gave extra credit for kids if they went to protest now this was a high school so like not my elementary school student but with parents not allowed on school property anymore at least at y east and riverview we're told to stay in our cars we're not allowed to get out a student in his classroom had indicated that they were very uncomfortable and the response was well if you're uncomfortable by my antifa flag you must be a fascist so that's your problem which really

042resonated with me as a parent if my student feels uncomfortable about anything in a classroom and goes to a teacher and says i'm scared i'm uncomfortable i don't like this tell me more and they're called a name in return i just don't think that's very good so with parents not being allowed back into the classrooms how are we making sure that this kind of thing doesn't happen in the evergreen school district and that's all thank you questions about uh mandating vaccines for students or medicating vaccines for staff yes so students um i just have i've worked in a medical clinic for a long time and so i know that there was personal exemptions that existed you would go to your doctor it wasn't even a medical exemption it was just a personal one so i

043was just wondering about students i uh okay um are mike are you aware of any mandates uh pending for student you know in the zoo today with superintendent reich doll i think somebody asked the question because of california they in california they're now mandating it he indicated that he didn't see any he didn't have any belief that that was going to happen in the state of washington that they would mandate covet vaccinations for students now that's today yeah so it's just unknown it's unknown but just because california did it i don't it didn't you didn't get the feeling from him that well california did it so organs are going to do a lot of times these three states are doing the same things he did not give that feeling that that would be the case

044okay is there somebody that can make contact with samantha yeah i mean when we're done we'll come out talk with you okay sounds good thank you then i wanted to make sure the high school you were talking about was that one of ours or a different no the high school i was talking about was a high school called intercom high school in california and it was i don't know if you saw it but it was in the news it was it was a big thing just an example of what you know just an example yes of course yeah now i can't get into a classroom my student says that they're uncomfortable about something but i can't see it what am i what am i supposed to do and what are the steps because somewhere along

045that line that breakdown happened and that person had these very polarizing things up in this classroom well that's the kind of thing we would always want if if that happens and if it goes against what we believe and what our culture is here but if it were to happen you'd have every right to notify the principal and well and that's what i guess that's my question is if i don't know what's happening and my student doesn't say anything to me how are you guys are there people that go into the classrooms to make sure that everything's copacetic especially now that parents aren't allowed to go into the classrooms because before you could just walk in yes but yes we do okay yeah good thank you principals and administrators right you know there's a lot of

046people that yeah right it's okay thank you all right thanks samantha uh next up is gary wilson thank you evergreen school board and superintendent merlino my comments this month will echo my comments from last month my name is gary wilson i have a fifth grade daughter here in evergreen and two older daughters have graduated here last month was my first visit to your meeting and what got me off the bench you ask facebook comments of one of your teachers concerning the unvaccinated she said let them die and if we're lucky we can cut out 30 percent of the population that votes the wrong way i've been vaccinated so i'm not standing here as one who she wished death upon i'm standing here as every parent in the school district should be to stand against hate

047speech her comments were hate speech were they not there can be no question on that last month i reminded each of you that last year each of you signed resolution 6365 that stated now therefore be it resolved by the evergreen school district number 114 that we condemn racism racial violence white supremacy hate speech and bigotry in all forms inside and outside of our schools so i ask each of you here tonight who signed this resolution what are you going to do with your teacher who publicly stated multiple hate speech comments second point a black father said this at a school board meeting recently and i quote putting critical race theory into our classrooms is not combating racism it's fanning the flames of what little embers are left end quote people of all races are standing

048up across this country against this racist doctrine in theory last month i also mentioned check the facts as a new comprehensive sex ed curriculum used in 31 school districts in california this curriculum would meet the mandate for teaching comprehensive sex ed but in a more widely supported style than the planned parent parenthood versions currently offered in talking with some of you after the meeting mentioned that there is a committee that reviews these curriculums i failed to get more information on that and i want to know who i can contact to share that information with if you can share that with me tonight i'd appreciate it and lastly online learning i mentioned last month my daughter was in that last year she excelled at it another parent called via the internet last month and spoke and

049said that their son excelled at it as well i pointed out that offering this is an option to those who want it would be a win-win situation less children in person to contract the virus which the delta virus is attacking children much more worse than last year's virus and teachers who don't want to get vaccinated could teach via online there's no downside after last month's meeting superintendent merlino mentioned that the governor is basically telling the schools not to do online learning this year and i asked if we can push back and challenge that edict as well as other school boards across the state and my question is has there been any discussion on this subject since last month thank you do you have thank you all right thanks gary appreciate your comments uh next up

050is henry harbert yes okay henry thanks for being here and daryl johns hello my name's uh in middle and high school uh high school and graduates next year uh my issue uh as some of these people spoke of of course uh first off is on these mandates um jennifer said that ancillary has put out a vaccine mandate well i haven't seen anything uh with regards to that so i don't know what what even was in this mandate uh i'm sure you're aware that there are have been a number of lawsuits already filed or in the process of being filed against this vaccine mandate i'm against it myself i i'm against it because i don't like somebody controlling me and telling me what i can do uh with my kids grandkids or or whatever uh sure

051that this is a serious virus no question about it uh nobody denies that but this controlling thing that that's prevailing not just here throughout the country and i know several uh washington workers have already sued injury against this vaccine mandate um again that's our choice it's our choice for you to do it or don't do it and it's like you're cutting people out because you want them to do what you say that you want them to do that's not right that's not american period um excuse me [Music] um so like i say i'm i'm against the vaccine myself uh one is it's experimental you know and we have side effects coming out even for kids and kids even more so than adults that that concerns me you know i don't want two years down the

052road that my kid all of a sudden can't walk or hearts you know um having heart attacks and all that stuff there's not enough evidence you're not going to learn whether vaccine is good or bad in two or three months period that's that's that's well known it takes years to learn and i don't like them either but i can adjust to it my kids they have adjusted my grandkids i should say have adjusted to me so uh i can't really speak on that although they don't work and there's been studies already publicly made says they don't work you don't do what you think to do viruses don't stand in front of you and say i'm gonna wait until you uh pour your mass now it's going to go around you up downside whatever like anything

053so to to say that this is the all-in-all cure is wrong it's a lie plain and simple but this this thing with the mandates is what really angers me uh trying to push this uh i just saw in the news today about the uh lh teachers union which is a powerful union from what i'm told and it seems like they are because apparently they are directing the cdc to come out with stricter restrictions for kids on these mandates now i don't they don't they shouldn't have that kind of power period cdc really shouldn't have that kind of power because all they do is recommend things but because we have these excuse my french pencil neck sitting in washington not just washington washington d.c and i know about that city because i grew up there yeah

054they're crooked and corrupt i mean that's the bottom line i know like i said i grew up there and i seen it firsthand of some of the crooked stuff that goes on in that city uh this is just ridiculous it's it's gone beyond ridiculous now uh when it started out there was a definitely a reason for doing all this stuff but now after almost yeah i'm going on two years this is really becoming ridiculous kids the kids are the ones who are really suffering you know i can get along hey i'm 71 years old i ain't got to worry about it but the kids are the ones really suffering behind this and they don't understand what the heck's going on and sometimes we can't even explain to them what's going on you can't tell there

055we go yeah uh my address lori has my address an eea president um printers i i am just as surprised as you to be here you know i don't waste my time at this mic and the fact that i'm even talking to you about this is just the level of ridiculousness that this is at uh the real the reality is is that we had an understanding and we this has been at every bargain we've talked about personal printers and the effect that they have on classrooms and there was a unilateral decision made to take away half of the printers to get to a two to one ratio now uh the clear feedback was do not do that we know that there are some hub printers especially in the new buildings and we agreed to those

056we said yeah that makes sense if you have a hub you can have a hub printer but where you don't have a hub printer it doesn't make sense to have to traipse across the classroom or traipse across the school to get to your to your printer now this seems like a pretty small thing and i regret the fact that i'm here talking to you we work these kind of things out in labor management but i've already been rebuked several times and had to go through a formal process to bring this up that this is not the time to take away a resource from our students uh well you may say what's a big deal it's like you have to go next door you have to go across the room you have to go into other

057people's classrooms a desktop printer close to the teacher means flexibility if you really want to support students and the accelerated learning that we just heard about you're going to want the teacher to have the tools they need to teach the teachers came to me and said that this is a resource that was taken away from them i'm skipping down and it's not okay to interrupt classes to go get copies that's not really anything that a teacher needs that a class needs that the student needs printers are the on the flyway for us to actually figure out what it is that the kid needs in the moment it allows our subs to correct lesson plans that don't fit they can print out different things during the day our special education students need new materials every day

058depending on where they are on their iep goals are well there's a lot of other things on my list but here's the thing i'm not asking you to add any printers i'm not asking you to buy any printers i'm saying give back the printers you stole from us give them back to our teachers and then we'll have more than enough printers during the pandemic and then we can talk again about good sensible uses of the resources you can talk about what actually works but during this time why would you want to take away a resource from students from teach and taking away his resource from teachers is taking away from students why make teachers teach with one hand tied behind their back this doesn't make any sense to me and uh i think that students

059and teachers can't wait thank you all for citizen comments now it's time for board comments these are comments by the board uh just informative things that we like to chat about with each other do i have really yeah i have a couple of things um first i wanted to say that victoria and i started the strategic plan sessions it's a sizable group of staff community members some students i actually got to work with a student the last one it's every other thursday um and it i've been really impressed so far with the work that's gone into it and the brainstorming and so i'm excited to see some of that work come out later as we bring it forth to the community um so the other couple of things that i just want to update everybody

060on is the wazda the region meeting will be october 27th that's the date october we also have a large school caucus coming up that is coming up too but uh they it's going to be a hybrid event right now at this moment it is scheduled for kelso but um depending on how many people decide to sign up in person it could all go remote we'll have to wait and kind of see as as we get closer to that date and then annual conference there is now the um online option for annual conference so i think we're all signed up to go in person at this time yeah okay that's all i wanted to update okay oh one other thing uh as mike mentioned earlier we did get to go visit some schools on the first

061date it was great and oh and thank you lori if you got us our tickets for activities because uh i want to go out and see some of the kids participate anyone else rachel yeah uh just basically what julie said i was glad to get our tickets to events um on the first day of school i was i had the pleasure of visiting elementary middle and high school and just the excitement of the staff just seeing all of them you know just really excited to be there everybody's outside welcoming kids um and all the kids on the campuses seem to be happy and glad to be back and you know we're a couple weeks in now they may not all be as smiley as they were on that first day i know mine are a

062little tired after not having full day school for a while but i'm i'm glad to see everybody kind of getting their ground under them and acclimating to the new school year great bob i was at emerald in frontier uh got to see how things were going and between then and now i actually had a parent pull me aside and say you should do something about the pickup lines at emerald and when i went to look it was it was very efficient and well run um good days and bad days and i might have been there on a good day patient with darcy mitchelson um they're getting a signaled crosswalk at the school thanks to her efforts and i appreciate the work that they were doing for that i also was able to use district resources

063the public resources of the videos matt solberg's qr code scavenger hunt remember that from the beginning the pandemic uh the district's video describing remote learning 2.0 and that spun up at this time last year and the northside music productions um online technology rich choir performance you remember that i shared that with the honors students taking a class called a seminar on technology in the study of technology in the context of social things i gave a lecture to those students about education and technology in terms of what we had to do in the pandemic and show them things like how we flipped the buses to bring food and materials to kids and just a nice conversation with some bright students there were the conversation was amplified by the work that the communications department did and the

064teachers did to retain connection during the emergencies so i appreciate that the resources were there for that the um i want to express uh appreciation from raphael perez's family for the card uh and expressions of sympathy that were sent uh the naming in the affinity groups and uh board member uh they are grateful for the attention and they're receiving uh condolences and deep wrap around supports from emerald school teachers and harmony school teachers [Music] the district people are surrounding the family it's been a real help good that's good um i wanted to second julie's comment about our strategic planning committee i mean stellar people i i love the parents that are on that committee they've been so un willing to share and you know participate it's it's a really collaborative group and i'm excited about

065being on that um i was out at um the ribbon cutting for legacy and and uh worth academy transitions academy and happened to have my mom with me and i tell you what she's like a walking ad right now she can't remember any anything else but she seems to remember that day and how cool that school the schools are and the whole campus of it all and she just was quite imprecious at school and not the same as it used to be and it was that was kind of fun um on the first day of school i was out in harmony where they know me there i mean my kids were there when the school first opened it around forever and they put me in charge of a bus kids and all of that and

066usually they just have me you know i'm just there greeting people and talking and but no they put me to work and it was so much fun the only disappointment i had is i only had one kindergartener on the bus and i really loved those little guys but it was fun to see everybody so jazzed up excited and you know sometimes the fifth graders you know at the elementary schools are kind of like yeah yeah yeah i've been there done that they were even perky so it was fun and the teachers were really so happy to have their kids back in in the classroom it was nice to see were you getting the kids on or off the bus i was helping him get off handed me a thing and said here you're in charge

067number you know whatever the panda bus it was a panda bus um and it was just so funny because i was like okay what do i do you know there's a whole system and i didn't want to be like the one person who who wrecked the system so it was it was fun i love the first day of school it's just so exciting and do those with animals and numbers yeah because that helps both types of brains exactly the bus yeah it was fun and and whenever you give little ones stickers that's always a big deal so i felt like i was a little bit of a rock star with those stickers so it was super super fun one of the kindergarten teachers put me in charge of helping uh one of the kindergartners get

068her breakfast and i was like and then i was like she was like oh yeah take her to the breakfast line get her breakfast and then i'm like and i'm like bring her back here like you know i'm like i'm like okay this might be the most uh difficult task i have all day so kudos to all the teachers that are getting those kids their breakfast on time lunch lined up on back to school night we went through the process of you know how my first grader is going to get out of the car and walk to the back of the building and right where you know the line where he's supposed to line up on the first day of school so let him out let him go then i had to go back with

069aaron to take photos and i got yelled at when he got home from school because i was not supposed to be in the back of the school because parents were not allowed back there so i got in a lot of trouble by my first grader told them it would never happen again well i really appreciate that we've had i mean in difficult times we've had a lot of public support um and parental support um giving feedback people have been really awesome about sharing their thoughts but doing it they're really respectful and and what i would consider constructive way and that's been that's been really appreciated a lot i know by the staff very consistent in the boardroom and with the people who contacted me and yeah i think we've had some overtures from folks who

070felt angrier before and there was one of that it was really gracious so yes so that's that's good because we need we need that in our system in general but marian reopening is really emblematic of what's possible the way people were excited about that new building and that location um really well thanks thank you for your comments is anybody anybody else okay um next we have future agenda items is there anything on the already packed agenda list that we might need to think about or add to our conversations i was just going to say maybe hear more about this the printer issue because i um some of the emails and it's just kind of curious so maybe mike can get us an update on that yeah okay and i'll have agenda items proposed in the

071governance policy section okay so now we will go into recess where we'll sign documents um and then we will reconvene for a board workshop where we will discuss a parks update governance policies board of distinction that's a legislative update um then it then we will go into an executive session for about 45 minutes to discuss the performance of a public employee and i call us into recess thank you for joining us tonight okay we're going to reconvene the meeting and go to our i know i'm just looking to see who do we have doing the parks update today gail and sue okay there it is go ahead and start just with a little brief overview so i represent the school district on the parks advisory commission and we have so many collaborative projects where we

072share school rounds and parts adjacent and we co-use and one of the most recent examples is right here where we just signed an agreement where we have reciprocal use of the parking lots and then we're taking full advantage of the park the employees and the students here but the parks this is the city of vancouver parks and rec um and in doing that they have to identify green space within the city boundaries and there are subdivisions or districts within the cities overall parks and they try and balance out the accessibility to green space in all three of those districts it also has to do with how they spend collect and spend parking pack fees as well so no surprise as we've found when we're looking for vacant land for schools parks also is running into

073that problem as they try to identify vacant land in fast growing areas of the city where they need to provide green space so one of the ways that they can help offset and count some of that space is to look at some of our school facilities and school grounds and count a portion of that as accessible for our citizens in off-school times so soon i've been working with the parks and rec planning group and just talking about what that might look like and what that means for us um as a school district in accounting for our grounds and then what it means if we allow the parks to co-share that green space so that's kind of the overall piece we're working toward um closure by the end of this calendar year as far as wrapping

074up the plan and then they of course submit it to the city council and then up through the state by your business so the information that they've asked for and that i've shared with them is just how many acres we have we actually track and separate field acres versus fronts because it's a different mower the fields are a 14 foot batwing mower and the fronts are more detailed and they're trying to figure out should they count elementary should they count middle school high school because of all the athletics so we've shared with them the wiaa schedule for secondary schools and how often they're used and the other information that we've been really protective about is our building rentals policy around who controls the rental of the fields because that was my biggest concern is that

075oh no it's a park and you can't you no longer control it so and we've been working with vancouver public schools um nicole is kind of newer in her role over there so we've been kind of tagged even behind the scenes so that we're providing the same information and the same kind of stuff to her so it's just a lot of kind of information back and forth i think overall i i looked there are several other cities that do that throughout the state and it's not uncommon so um i think it's it's fine we work so collaboratively collaboratively with parks that i don't see any issue with it at all and it made sense with how they um try to spread the park impact fees around if they can only spend it in a certain

076district but there's really nothing to buy there it would it would help them um in the long run so just we just wanted to keep you guys in the loop of what was going on we're kind of doing this back and forth with parks and i didn't want it to come to you and have you guys go what or see you yes tune into city council and so you've been talking about um how they are using some of our land within their comp plan and again we've been very specific about what the acreage is when they use to the public outside of school hours and some of those other rules and regulations that we have that are very similar actually from hardcase as well so we receive a copy of the report it's in their

077comp plan yeah yeah we can ask them for that i i still haven't seen it yet we've just been giving them information about finishing everything okay yeah we'll get a copy of it we have some arrangements with the city uh places like marianne and correct wood and rivers creek where some of the land that was it was originally purchased as school property and it's in use as walking paths or parks and rick i think there are some inner locals without maintenance is that part of the conversation or no it it a lot of those agreements are exp expired in 2013 and that's that was my leverage as i told monica i won't give her the information until we get those upgraded we've been trying to get them updated for a long time but um that'll

078that'll happen and there are a number and there's ellsworth marion crestline has a park next to it but we kind of share use but we don't have an agreement with it yeah it was well there was a question about where marion could be sighted because there was park and that was actually part of the ellsworth purchase when we bought ellsworth somehow that big long skinny parcel we still own it i think that one's good until 2030. the one next to marion was part of the it was part of ellsworth yeah somehow the two agreements are tied together which i never really understood yeah why east has parked we in fact they've been trying to sell us the parcel north of y east but it just doesn't it just didn't make sense with the way the

079building laid out and everyone in the apartment complex parks there and uses it so i just hope that they don't build apartments on that piece [Music] and then you know we bought the burton natural area where the evergreen fields are going in right now too and then we just they just put the signs up at image for the dinosaur park that um overflow parking i think you guys approved that a couple months a couple years ago maybe a couple months ago did they name that one yet do you know it's going to this isn't the dinosaur park yeah that's really how we all know it oh it was supposed to be named it's supposed to be given japanese nation yes the thing with the dinosaur park i'll just give you that one and then because

080you've got a lot more um that's because of the playground equipment but in 20 years when they replace the playground equipment with something other than dinosaur people will go why is that called the dinosaur yeah so and and they really do want to honor um lieutenant farming history truck yeah my kids have been watching that park go up all of last year and very excited when it got done awesome first update we'll get you the uh comp plan draft yes okay thanks so much guys now we have governance policy uh on the screen because the language and editing work i i condensed it into a document that you can pull up out of board docs off of the link there we are um and rachel and i talked yesterday was it just yesterday yeah uh

081about kind of wording choices and what to propose together and this is what we came up with uh i'm going to propose to you that uh we do a couple of things of course all of this is uh to honor and use the equity policy committee's work uh to place those ideas into the results policies and the governance culture and so forth and what we uh agreed might work best is to start with our gc1 policy uh and modify the declaration of beliefs to include some of those things policy proposal and uh also to draft results policy r3 equity as a standalone results policy moving one of the lines from citizenship into the equity policy with some of their other language and then renumbering everything down so that goes r4 r5 the dates that i

082have up on the screen there are what i thought was probably the fastest way we could get to adopting these i'm not precisely performing or proposing exactly specifically these dates but to get to second reading and adoption by the 12th of october we would need to have our first reading at the next meeting but maybe i know that i have an invitation to talk to the citizen committee meeting from clarissa and that's the next day so they can have a look at this between first and second reading and we'd also have this policy proposal out to paul for a legal review to make sure that the wording stays aligned with statute and case law um so yeah amend our declaration of beliefs uh draft a new equity policy and then uh an operational expectation policy

083called equity um that isn't really in a sh in a place where we could begin a first reading very next meeting but there's some wording ideas there and i think it needs another workshop closing with rachel for the statement of beliefs so this is an amendment to gc1 this track changes stuff out of the way so that it's clearer because i highlighted the changes so our so is the recommendation that we do all like all three of these are we picking one of these we're doing all three of them that takes content from inside that proposed district policy and places it into the board uh coherent governance policies and places like we put our commitments into governance culture uh we put our student focus into results and we put our superintendent and so all three

084of these things is part of this part of the proposal yes they're not separate really there's three separate parts of those there are three separate parts of the same work to bring an equity policy uh into the district policies yeah it's populating our some of our already existing governance policies with equity language that we want to have by saying this right and then we've got the one equity an amendment to gc1 which is abort commitments is like our board commitments uh are three we're just choosing numbers that's not actually part of the word but um and then a new oe or something x right all of the highlighted represents changes or new language to the existing gc1 right yes so uh the first one to talk about is that as we were thinking about it

085as i was thinking about personalized learning and talking with rachel so we could change uh all students which has kind of become a trigger for some people to each student and still honor all students but have that individualized personalized learning focus in the declaration so wherever all students were i replaced that with each student and uh some of these are like grammar checker things like on the basis of is clearer if you say must be made based on that's kind of minor uh but the language that came from the the citizen proposal uh are the big chunks in yellow there that we believe that each student given unwavering guidance and a learning environment free from inequity will develop the skills needed to face moral and ethical life challenges uh that's an insertion of free from

086inequity and a rephrasing a little bit but it changed enough that i highlighted the whole sentence and then the two at the bottom uh which draws significantly from their contribution we believe that educators must supply access to the opportunities resources and supports each student needs to be successful aware that their diverse experiences play vital roles in how they learn and grow they must personalize teaching and learning and be responsive to barriers that arise from the list poverty homelessness race ethnicity culture religion ability spoken language sexual orientation gender identity or national origin the list looks a little bit different there's ability instead of disability and that actually came from some work that i was doing with the cab the community action advisory board where we talked about positive language instead of negative language to describe the

087class of person or the characteristic of person that we wanted to call out ability instead of disability is one of those examples citizens and elected leaders we commit to recognizing the interconnectedness of individuals cultures communities and our environment that's a call out to result policy citizenship we work to set expectations and policies policies that commit evergreen public schools to increasing achievement for each student narrowing the gap between the highest and lowest performing students without lowering expectations or introducing new inequities uh and that phrase comes from the feedback that we got from people at our last two meetings when they were worried uh that equity got a chance of meaning um lowering expectations for people with a disadvantage right that's actually the way rafael put it when he was talking to me on the 10th of

088august that we can insert this and kind of express that community value that way that's the proposal for gc1 that we could bring forward for a first reading for two weeks that's this piece or you want me to take us through the rest of it just keep it in chunks that are easy to digest so um thoughts do appreciate the work that you want to put into it i like the wording i agree i like it yeah michael probably likes it yeah yeah i really like that last paragraph i think that's worded really well you know what i was happy about and this is just a selfishness thing on my part but i love that you guys left in there no child is expendable because that's kind of been a credo of ours for a

089long time that should never change so i was happy to see that in there yeah it was really important to me to keep the spirit of declaration and beliefs that's had such a long-standing establishment here um it's part of what makes it a special place the whole district right from the peanut gallery out there everybody who's on their computers haven't even heard that asked for in the community action groups um [Music] no i just saw a thing on it it is i know that they're referencing houseless more instead of homelessness well yeah come use the mic okay groups i've heard to to reference that it has more to do with the facility not necessarily the experience so that that's that's where i've heard it but it's really thoughtful um you can certainly look into it

090yeah it's worth a look would you uh do if you have resources or things that you could send my direction in rachel's direction i think you can google it yeah i can google it but yeah less happy with the words unhoused and houselessness as a neologism sounds might be that might be a good question for the um committee the assistant committee to ask them how they feel about it yes is that christie out there i think she's on this committee so yeah we could talk about that after when we meet that week person i was gonna actually the language you may have already tried to address this but when i heard the part about barriers that arise from race ethnicity culture like i don't think maybe other people's responses are the barriers but i wouldn't

091say that you know a person's race or ethnicity brings barriers i mean it almost made me think about like deficit thinking that may not even be exactly right either so here's where i'm really coming from over the summer i taught the gear up avid class and like the whole message of that class was your second language your background your ethnicity is your strengths there are not barriers that arise from it you're bringing something extra to the learning experience and that's your strength so i don't know what to do because i know what you're trying to get at with that language it's maybe just so that was what crossed my mind areas that arise from and you're talking about the externally imposed or are you talking about the externally expressed characteristics ethnicity culture religion you must

092personalize or just put barriers that arise and take out i really wanted the rest is to be in there wanted what part of it what all of that but the list comes from uh the citizen work say did clarissa say something okay so the term you're using is deficit mindset um but that's not it's not what we're trying to do but the clearer the language the better because i'm if i think about this in terms of like neurodivergent uh differences we have this name with these names like that end in disorder right as though uh the names dyslexia or attention deficit are part of the deficit mindset is that a good reflection of what you're of doing no what needs that may arise when uh characteristics and when okay when i'm just putting this in

093brackets to talk about it's like when characteristics create something that's like create inequity letters down right now to see if anything makes sense that's an area that we might want to just you know just know that that's uh grab deficit mindset that'll be enough for me to google jargon as we think about this but ready for a first reading of two weeks so if there's input it will happen before this citizen committee meeting and our first reading but even then the language can be changed in a second reading if we get better ideas taken a note then to examine that section and uh ryan out there spots nothing strikes you um as a foreign never too late until we put the balance put the boat on late in the day brains of all off still

094from a communication standpoint barriers uh my perception is that the barriers that arise arise because of the speed with which we have our interactions right it's our below intention [Music] what he can sit the comments making me thoughtful too violating some kind of tradition or something i'll noodle email address open if you have some ideas please send them to me all right should we move on to the next one the second proposal is to establish a uh well second proposal comes in two parts one is to remove one of the lines from citizenship uh because it appears in the proposal so that's just kind of a unit and you'll see where it is uh we're taking out um demonstrate cultural awareness from citizenship and inserting demonstrate cultural awareness with a modification or two into equity

095this is the proposal for an equity results policy now governance culture we adopt it and it becomes like the ethos of the board right equity results policy has an interpretation indicators and reporting cycle to it uh so please be thinking along the lines of you know how can we talk to the public things in a quantitative and a qualitative way here's the proposal it is to say equity students will recognize value and celebrate cultural ethnic and other diversities that's a preamble sentence and so it doesn't contain the whole list students will be respectful and compassionate toward others of any race ethnicity or other difference discuss controversial issues with civility and respect that was rachel that was an idea that i came into my mind as i was finalizing this i stuck it in there number

096three demonstrate cultural awareness and competency in their interactions with others who are different by principles of equality and equity in their roles as students and student leaders and when writing this i was thinking about ilani baldwin's story not being turned away from a club because she was a brown female five have equitable access to educational resources number six experience a supportive and barrier-free learning environment seven contribute perspectives stemming from their own racial cultural ethnic and family identities you know the the potential erasure here is of sexual orientation gender expression um so there might be some modifications to that or some more general way to put it or even just to make it so bearing in mind that this is a reportable policy we still had significant inputs to um i think it'd be good to

097hear what the committee their feedback is since it kind of stemmed from them so i think that this will then will also generate an oe that's interpreted and has monitoring attached to it correct that's the third thing that you'll bring forward that's even more preliminary than this but yeah the operational expectation would uh call this equity policy out in your interpretation and indicators yeah hey i'm going to ask the hard question it just hit me with all this conversation about crt and all that where do we or should we have language that talks about that we teach history and we teach the real history but in no way does that demean any particular group i think that a lot of what i'm hearing on the crt is peop people are concerned because they think white

098people are going to now be you know ostracized or treated bad because they committed certain things back in history and the bottom line is it's history it's history we can't you know put lipstick on on it if it if it happened it happened and that we as a institution would not i'm not saying that because the ancestors did this you are that that means you're this now i think there's that worry and i might be just totally off base and worrying about it more than i should um but we don't use our history to be the hammer to punish others or use it to bully or to you know whatever it is for any group because that could look different at different you know different times depending on what's being discussed it was the use

099of that kind of idea to divide and reduce the circumstances of others lines because we had to say is uncommon right along those lines right yeah and that letters and different things so i don't want to it's really hard because sometimes it's like i don't want to um validate trying to be really careful here i don't want to validate though people's opinions they're gonna that are in this essentially perpetuating what's already been a problem um and so i'm walked i'm kind of like how does this fit in because i don't think this should be made just to make people comfortable either i don't think our it's not a i don't think we're obligated to put things in there that will make any particular group still i'm really i'm struggling because i'm trying to be careful

100with my words right now because i would really like to call it out for what i wonder marty marty what do you got honey we have a standing policy about the teaching of controversy that uh i've seen she saw this in covet school if you will because my son was in his world history class and then he'd come out of those zoo meetings uh talk about how his uh high school history teacher uh always didn't seem to have an opinion he just kept asking you know more clarifying questions and listening to students and and they ended up having a disputation arena without the teacher taking sides that frustrated him because he really wanted the teacher to take his side right um but it's it's uh already part of the practice of our teachers to uh

101kind of watch for that in their teaching history is my sensitive the best ones um make the curriculum and then they they have the students thinking uh critically about what they're learning now i don't know in every detail whether our history curriculum uh satisfactory in terms of creating equity and talking about things like uh well that's gonna that's definitely gotta be part of our getting deeper and deeper is looking at our curriculum i mean i'm being sure that it's really true they do have a line about curriculum i'm afraid of it either you have a line about curriculum in the proposal operational expectation okay maybe that's where it goes maybe that's where it goes but um is there anything missing do y'all think these words is this what my passion looks like first thanks brian

102incidentally brian it was a union history teacher giving you a little credit there that's really encouraging the words which in large part come from that citizen work and the ideas they were able to evoke for us uh to be used that directly in any classroom i i think that i like the words in this too because if we if we just read it from the perspective of this is what we want for our students not necessarily like what we want from the curriculum in specific history classes but just the want what what we want from every student like when they leave our system or how they treat each other or how our staff treats each student this is what we want and we said that we want our results policies to be easy to read

103and straightforward and i think this does it curriculum discussion is probably a deeper or problem belongs you know in the oe or it's going to look different for every grade level in every class depending on what it is this was rachel's one of rachel's specific contributions these differences and i think that's good because i think that then that that one right there on seven allows for every student the ability to share and feel comfortable talking about how things affect them from their perspective and then we learn from each other too because we it's not always this ever the same story we heard everybody's story my from my kids experience these are the kinds of if you any classroom if you can create that environment they remember it for years and years number seven is really

104the beauty of public schools because we have the exposure to learn from the diverse community from within our own classrooms your comments from out there for scheduling the work it would be to have a first reading in our next meeting that's the presentations that clarissa and the others going to make about culturally responsive teaching and i think that dovetails nicely with what you're going to talk about um that is it saying 9 21 are we meeting on the 21st or the 29th 29th sorry about that uh so meet with them but after our first reading uh also send the words of both of these to paul uh clay see if he wants to suggest some uh then the rounds he and i he says this is pretty exciting but that would bring us to a

105place where we're adopting this on the 12th of october as an official policy uh and then these two dates are certainly worth or just the fastest we could possibly go to adopt an interpretation in indicators and if that's i'm on the work calendar would be october for an interpretation and indicators workshop and then adoption in the movement final piece here is a very rough draft of an equity operational expectation just for review the difference between a results policy and an operational expectation policy is the focus on what the superintendent and the people working for the superintendent may or may not do gamble reads the superintendent shall maintain a climate and culture respectful of all people who work and learn in the district recognizing the interconnectedness of individuals cultures communities and environments again call out to

106citizenship results the superintendent will provide students access to the opportunities resources and support they need to be successful no matter their race or ethnicity culture ability gender identity or expression sexual orientation religion national origin native language housing status apparently i thought about that or level of affluence so i'm removing homelessness and poverty from this sentence but other than that it is taken from the dei citizen committee that's their word those are their words modified by some things i learned about um access to services uh through the cab work that's interesting because this one talks about access to opportunities where the other wording was the barriers it's right it's like the same wording but just this one's more positive and the other one has more of a negative so maybe you take some of that first

107part talking about the yeah when we're talking about the yeah when we're talking about the the barriers oh yeah and then in this one you're talking about opportunities so it's kind of just it's almost the same way it reads but just a negative word on a positive word down here [Music] okay okay but then you do have the that's just that's where you rewrote it i don't know i'm not i word smithing is not my thing yet you were just very succinct later on in later on in the day when i wrote this piece i was thinking about that and and did not think to call back to that but and it's i saw a couple of thumbs go up so it's possible that we have our answer and we just need to do the

108copy of it okay create learning environments where also from the dei committee teachers staff and administrators are consciously working to counter and eliminate the impacts of racism discrimination bias and unconscious bias in their interactions with students and their decisions which directly impact students superintendent will remove wherever possible and permitted by law barriers that create differences in student outcome predictable by race ethnicity or other marginalized identity that is uh call out to the wasda statement honorably as an outcome predictable buy is the way they focused on that superintendent will permit robust controversy conversations around controversies among and between staff members and students and developed curriculum containing materials that reflect the diversities and needs of district students then uh the superintendent will not tolerate the marginalization of any student on the basis of their membership in a

109protected class or grouping identified by the board and the superintendent has a marginalized group this positions the authority for this policy here laws with respect to um rights uh department now see you know you'll see article patients that proceed from that but i've long thought that the federal designations of race and ethnicity are far too broad and eternally imposed characteristic and ethnicity and culture as an externally expressed characteristic that comes from positive things uh because i think if we saw data that separated it out a little more broadly uh there would be some insights that came from that person who calls themselves hispanic the same there are at least 16 cultures and probably more than that that you can name who live here uh and come from peru it's just not the same as uruguay

110or argentina it's not the same as mexico she's not name one over-generalized group do we have to say do we i'm asking do we need to from a legal standpoint have to put in their worship in a protected class could you not say the superintendent will not tolerate the marginalization of any student spam sure if we do that marginalized for what for any reason i agree and so i'm just but i want to make sure that by not being more specific it also leaves room for marissa what's your thoughts on that [Music] i see them young man there are interpretation risks by getting too specific eliminate or if we just take out the identified by board and the superintendent as a marginalized group so if we marginalize any student on the basis of their membership

111in a protected class or grouping so does that then say that we're going to tolerate marginalization of students that aren't in a protected class that's why i added the second clause is that i thought that the board would want to be free to identify groupings that aren't declared as protected classes in federal or state law but then that puts it on us to make sure that we are identifying and staying on top of it and making note of it somewhere but then we're saying if you're not on this list then you're not marginalized in general like sometimes you have kids that just are going to the beat of a different drum and maybe their scene is dorky or whatever um and might get picked on and kind of marginalized within our system or maybe it's

112that introvert that doesn't talk a lot and it you know kind of gets treated crappy you're singing my song because they don't you know don't or can't defend themselves i don't know i'm just thinking there's a lot of reasons that peop people can be other people i wanna i just don't want to say oh i can pick on you because you're the skinny kid that you know it sure would have been nice to have a policy like this when i was 13. i'm just asking yeah that by saying we just won't tolerate this kind of behavior don't move maybe paul would have a suggestion i keep thinking in my head about including but not limited to stuff yeah how deep are we getting into just you know into the bullying where you know it's not

113just like the overlapment of some of it because we don't tolerate that either so i mean i guess like you know making it into one to take away from the importance of definite um protected class groups at all rights but i also don't want there to be any any doubt in anybody's mind that you're not pulling this stuff with anybody because of their membership in a protected class doesn't three pretty much state what we're trying i mean three expresses it positively right go on i mean we say we say all of that up above and then the last part is just about what the superintendent will will or will not do yeah so we've already we've already defined groups well we already because we said it up above right in one right opportunities and then

114we talked about it and we talked in three about removing the barriers for um and then the last sentence is really just about what the superintendent will do yeah will not do because this is what superintendent is doing and now the superintendent's not doing it so do even did that come from something that lost is that no it comes from the pattern in coherent governance is that a an operational expectation uh but it can include what i'm saying yeah it can include affirmative uh instructions from the board to the system about what it will do and then it can prohibit things that we absolutely don't want them to do all of them have it will do and they won't do no they don't well can't we just take out what we already said what we

115want the superintendent to do so why do we have to have a will not do this that's causing the most [Laughter] what that might issues us to even i'm sure he would i don't know i'm not necessarily should be eliminated but i do believe he would probably have a comment on that sure here are externalities that the school district can't control and that was that was the thought i had when i was writing that clause in there it's just like okay there might not be a barrier that we can remove because there's a law in the way uh preventing us from extending a gift of public funds or some of the other administrative things that can interfere with causes you to reach out to a foundation to supply the balance that's that's why the language

116is like that in in this draft is just to think about that part carriers maybe it creates an excuse that we don't want to create but we also want to write an operational expectation policy that is actionable and contains qualitative and quantitative data for the public to see yeah uh we don't want to ask the impossible about people operation so that's that's the loose thought oh yeah my sense of this was that if we if we tried to workshop this after uh first readings like you know had another discussion on the 28th uh then the fastest that we could go would be to have a first reading 12th of october second reading adoption on 26th and then be thinking in december and january about interpretation yeah because what we've got to be careful of is

117we have we're going to have a pretty packed agenda and there could be a lot of public testimony depending on how many people show up so if we load too much in there well maybe take care of the first two but the third one will just finish it out a week or something [Music] good so we could do a second reading if i push that out one meeting that's what happens yeah actually that i was thinking of the interpretation indicators in other words more time because any interpretation and indicators yeah you push it out into january or longer if it needs to be it's like i said i didn't put these dates in to say this is what i want yes this is the fastest we could possibly garden yeah you have a concern as

118i some learn that the deficit mindset may exist in this language here the possible solution to that perception in the operational expectations language proposal just move that up to here and see how it sounds gc1 to first reading their next meeting and then yeah combined action to modify citizenship and renumber the policies and then insert our three with this language as a results policy first reading the day after that it will come before the citizens committee as the board has taken action on this and we can uh take feedback from them and of course the second one is we can always modify them we get better ideas hearing what they say about this and then the operational expectation policy would be deferred until giving us all time you're with the lawyers in the difference have

119to say yeah we are right yeah okay i like it good work you guys oh it's nice to see this stuff coming together that's for sure we appreciate rachel's help too oh yeah thanks for a good teamwork on this one okay next up of distinction you're the one that requested did i take it off you requested it be on the agenda right so i thought you had something to say about it there was a board self-assessment that went out yeah and what i discovered is that this is due soon are we going to do it that's that's really kind of a question it's like every year that we've done it we've achieved board of distinction um story with the finishing of the schools and and uh some of those and if they align with and

120i think we actually have to try to go for it what it's due so four days yeah oh no hold it wow that's not going to happen the um self-assessment or the application the application is due 3000 characters 300 500 words on one of the standard benchmarks that's in the cycle and opportunity gap essay version of our professional development on four days from now i can tell you i have no bandwidth to do that in four days that's my problem as well i know i almost feel like we should not do it this year we already know or in all of that i don't need a thing telling me i'd rather do it when we really feel like we can do it in a much more cohesive way and what we need to keep track

121of somehow is when does it first hit that we what the information is so that we know what we're writing about i don't even remember seeing it for some reason because usually i see it yeah so i maybe just missed it with all the stuff going on but i don't know it's up to you guys i say we pass that's freda whoever else i that's a pass you got your numbers there we go we can move on we don't need to worry about it we have quorum okay do you have any legislative updates of information the only thing i was going to mention was just that melissa will come to the second meeting in october hear from you all any issues that you want to raise or anything that you want us to focus on

122we'll check the dates of general assembly 29th and 30th of october so she'll be here before the general assembly and before we have a chance to prioritize what was passed there well she could help us we're going to advocate for yeah actually uh what i learned today i was on a lunch and learn about the general assembly today just listening in is that a director in a spreadsheet with all the position proposals and uh organized it so that her board could ask each member to just kind of prioritize like this is a priority for us and so forth stuck it on a google doc on their district system and what i heard from marisa yeah rathbone about that she consulted with uh abigail lawyer and mazda he said if we were to do that keep

123it exposed publicly and put it out there as a read-only thing the public could see that i'll be working on our little column in the document without it triggering any kind of op-amp as long as that's all we're doing and we're not talking about it with each other right until we meet the visually it's still a risk and i think we ought to pass our own attorney trying it but uh there is a way and now somebody's organized it in such a way that we can actually look down them and before julie and i go to the assembly uh that's all sounds good are going into executive session and we'll be in there to discuss the performance of a public employee and it should be about 45 minutes or less and then we will come

124out and adjourn thank you everybody [Music] you