School Board Meeting - August 10, 2021

001good evening everyone thank you for joining us for tonight's school board meeting if you would please join us in the pledge of [Music] of allegiance united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation and under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you i'd like to welcome you to our first meeting in our beautiful building um i've been on the board for 20 some odd years and um it was always the position of the board that until we got rid of most of our portables for students that the adults were going to stay in portables and in this district i think it's been 45 years that we never had permanent housing for for administrative offices and finally um the wonderful citizens voted to approve that along with some

002of our new buildings and and that and we are finally in permanent housing for our administration and it's proving to be one of the best things we could have done because it sure makes it a lot better for them to work in being together instead of in all these different buildings and and we don't even want to talk about the air quality in those things after that many years so anyway we were excited to be here um this since this is our first meeting the bugs there might be a few bugs as we're trying to get used to all this technology but so bear with us but i'm hoping that you will come often and these are some perfect facilities to use as part of the community and we're excited to have that for the

003community's youth so welcome first up i would like to do a do you need me to do [Music] a roll call okay rob perkins here jenny granville here julie bocanegra here rachel i just lost thank you very much okay so next up i'm going to ask jenny crunwall to read the land acknowledgement evergreen public schools resides on the traditional lands of the chinookan peoples and the kellogg's tribe they have lived on and cared for this land and its waterways since time immemorial we thank them for their stewardship and make this acknowledgment open a space of recognition inclusion and respect for all indigenous students families and staff in our community thank you next step i take a motion to adopt tonight's agenda and move to adopt tonight's agenda second all in favor aye any opposed okay

004first up for presentations today is the skilled trade center and justin birmingham will introduce the gentlemen that are here to talk to us tonight thank you good evening president bradford members of the board thank you and congratulations uh congratulations on your stewardship of the bonds resource to construct this beautiful facility as well as the numerous ones uh new school buildings and other capital improvements across our system uh dynamic and wonderful so uh what an honor it is uh for us uh to be first on your agenda uh within your inaugural meeting in this inviting space my name is justin birmingham i'm the director of college career and technical education in your evergreen public schools i'm joined this evening by a couple pillars of our community whom i'll introduce momentarily but before doing so and to

005set a little bit of context and while speaking of construction as we admire the craftsmanship and the skill of the journeyman and construction trades who collaborated to engineer and build this space including but not limited to carpenters brick and stone masons electricians plumbers installers and among others and as the district fulfills our financial obligations to our contractors it is safe to say that these professions are each high skilled high wage and high demand careers and that's why it felt serendipitous when these gentlemen approached us this past spring with the opportunity to jump start and expand our geometry and construction program at evergreen high school to build a full-service uh skilled training skilled trade training facility uh joining me for this evening are the inspiration uh the intellect uh in the investment uh behind this initiative

006uh mr doug green is a lifelong entrepreneur uh inventor and educator uh as a committed citizen of vancouver he will share some of his mission vision and the urgency of now uh to address both the major labor shortage locally and across the region as well as to catalyze this equitable opportunity to diversify the workforce in this evolving career for our students following doug's remarks mr john gerard is the owner and builder of quail homes his company has built high quality environmentally sound custom homes for more than 25 years in our community a product of local schools he's married to a career educator and is a leading member of several local builder associations john can personally attest to the pending labor demands as well as can amplify the voice of the coalition of builders as to

007the direction and the needs of our employers after john's remarks all three of us are welcome to your questions so without further delay mr greene which is what my vision is and i'll introduce myself again as douglas greene and what a wonderful facility folks have have here i was here a couple of weeks ago and you are still unwrapping chairs and desks and everything else and to see this facility at this point it gives me a great good feeling here and i know that we're going to be working together as a team to build a skilled trade center i i brought along some some props because i i teach at entrepreneurship and skilled trades at several colleges and universities on as a guest speaker basis and i like to rely on this give a man

008a fish feed them for a day teach a man to fish feed them for a lifetime and we think about that for teaching students a skill and they will always have bread on their table and that's what to me that's what skilled trades are all about i uh i have crafted a few notes here for myself uh because i'm a long-winded speaker and i hope not to be that bad but i keep thinking of a something that george burns said if you remember george burns anyway about giving presentations he says have a good opening and have a good closing and have the two of them as close together as possible so i will try to do that 20 years ago i went down to southeast missouri state university and i was lecturing on entrepreneurship and

009after about the third day the president and some of his staff came to me and said how do we put entrepreneurship throughout the campus here it's a 12 000 student campus and i said well i think you need to have a cie and he said what's what's what's a cie and i said a center for innovation and entrepreneurship we said how do we do that my wife and i stepped up the plate and said i'll tell you what we'll start the funding of that if you're willing to put some money into it too they said yes we'd be glad to do that so they have a cie that's 20 years old now and they also have at our generosity 60 scholarships for students studying entrepreneurship about five years ago i was over at psu across

010the river and i was giving a lecture there and one of the students came up afterwards and said what's a trade show and i was taken back by i says well you know a trade show where it's where you people gather together and they talk about their businesses and and sell their products and all that stuff she didn't have a clue she didn't have a clue what manufacturing was all about she didn't have a clue of what uh supply cycles were all about and i thought what are we teaching kids today in high school so this this freshman from has gotten into psu and doesn't know much about what's going on in the real world how does that cell phone get produced they have any idea how many suppliers are needed to put that together

011so i decided to concentrate on skilled trades not abandoning entrepreneurship and i went to the las vegas trade shows of which i usually attended for many of my businesses and i decided to go to the nahb which is the national association for home builders and i spent two days listening to the issues that the home builders were having and the number one was the shortage of skilled trade workers the interesting thing is two days ago i read an article that in the next two years there will be a shortage of one million skilled trades workers and so as i started to listen to all the different presentations i found out and i was i was not aware of this 15 or 20 years ago most schools with the exception of evergreen uh took the shop

012classes out there was no more wood class no more metal classes there was no auto auto classes they were all taken out because everybody thought that everybody should get a four year college education well you know what there's a lot of kids the numbers close to 40 percent that have no interest in going to college they don't care about improving their english skills they don't care about psychology they don't care about the roman empire they want to work with their hands and we've abandoned that number of kids today i couldn't see that happening so what i did was i created a document called the skilled trade center document it's 40 pages long you have a copy of it it's been upgraded three times and the idea behind it was why don't we build an stc

013a skilled trade center similar to the cie and why don't we bring all those students in there and teach them skilled trades of which there's 10 or 12 that are easily identifiable justin grabbed me by the shoulder and he said hey i think we could do something with this idea at the evergreen high school and i said great so brian said mike molino justin john we all went over to the high school and we saw what they were already doing in four or five classes skill tr uh skill classes and we saw this pad outside and i said my gosh this would be great for a skilled trade center yes it would and i said i'll tell you what i'd like to do i'd like to fund the skilled trade center and i like to

014fund some scholarships and some internships and some apprenticeships so my wife and i have dedicated a certain amount of money to do this we'd like to do some of it at evergreen we'd like to do it some of it in southwest other southwest washington schools but nevertheless it appears that evergreen has decided to move forward this idea and we hope to open this up in 2022 with all 22. the great community support was driven by this guy right here john jarrod he got together all kinds of suppliers contractors competitors of his and what have you and we actually engaged another individual derrick hugo from owner of wolf industries and wolf industries manufactures tiny homes up in battleground and derek said if you guys really are going to build that trade center then i'd like to

015help you and i'd like to help you actually be able to build tiny homes inside that trade center and if you can't sell those to vancouver housing authority or to the public maybe i'll buy them because i am 90 homes behind in building those little 300 square foot homes what an incentive to move forward with this idea those two little models there are 300 square foots but all the skills to build a 300 square foot home are the same to build a 3 000 square foot home all of the trades framing carpentry plumbing electrical hvac all of that is necessary to build a 300 foot home as well as the 3 000 square foot home and so that's what we're going to do that's what i hope we're going to do we're going to make

016it a profit center so that you folks don't even have to look at it as a line item in the budgeting process this will be self-supporting i would like to see evergreen form a 501 3c foundation dedicated just to the stc the ib idea being that we could solicit monies solicit services solicit overstocks supplier stocks and what have you to support the stc i would like to see an honor roll of donors to be put up someplace in the stc i would like to see some type of an excellent award system put together for students that if they excelled in in in carpentry they got their name etched here and maybe they get a hundred dollars from the foundation um i know i'm running out of my time and what have you but everything anyway

017i just i have so many ideas uh that i'm just bursting to the seams to want to just jump in and make this a very positive thing for evergreen and the evergreen school district you know the greatest thing about working in the skilled trades is the amount of money that these people make fifty to a hundred thousand dollars a year is not unseen in the skilled trades industry yes you get your hands dirty but there's nothing wrong with that and this is an equal opportunity throughout the community for all women men people of color whatever and i just think this opportunity shouldn't go uh not on unagreed to as we have mike um my mission statement for the center is another thing the mission of the skilled trade center is to empower students to be

018creative think for themselves introducing them to the opportunities in the building trades industry connecting them with the tools and the trades people who use them the stc strives to change the perception of what it means to work with your hands preparing students to become skilled professionals who are effective problem solvers communicators and decision makers and some of them i hope will go on and become entrepreneurial and basically start their own business and hire two or three workers and build a business as john gerard has done i think that's more than my time but thank you very much nice job hi my name is john girard i own coil homes it's right here in vancouver i want to thank you for volunteering to be on the board i know how difficult that is especially times like

019now i uh coached for about 15 years at fort vancouver high school in hudson's bay and i i understand working with that population of keeping them in school we did a really good job with that what we didn't do a good job is what happened after high school a lot of kids struggled so i was searching after i was kind of done coaching what could i really do different and i thought we need to help them get jobs there's a certain population that's going to go one path another path this path a lot of the kids that we worked with were not college bound we're just trying to keep them in high school and i thought you know and when i was in high school they used to go out on job sites and build

020homes like cascadia tech does i said well why don't we bring the home building function back to the school so i had met doug we're involved with clark college and as i i'm on the foundation there and as i learned students that go to clark roughly 8 000 students go there's 45 of the students are enrolled some sort of vocational pathway and i got to thinking well our high schools aren't doing that my wife teaches at mac they're not doing it there that curriculum really isn't lined up somewhere along the line you come out of high school or you go running start you go jump over there and you're on this other path i said well maybe this is a calling so doug and i started talking about it i had this vision of a

021tiny home concept that really if you bring it on to the campus it's more controllable you can do some things that are less risk so i went and talked to a friend of mine that owns a wolf industries he's all in and here's some things that i found interesting between the two the employers there's a gap between the employers the educators and the students it's it's kinda really not existent the employers complain is i can't get any talent we need people but they're not engaged in the education system they're not engaged with the teachers or the students the education system i'll give you an example a couple friends of mine are educators they have a 20 year old kid they're struggling with because the kid doesn't want to go to college that's what they know

022they call me about may can you help get him a job i reached out got him a job at a trust plan no experience 18 an hour i talked to the kid earlier this week he's been there a little over a month they tell him in a year you can be a foreman you can make 32 dollars an hour what's that tell us the kid shows up on time he's willing to work that's all the employers want now they'll train the rest so this opportunity here that the educators of friends of mine they had a network they called me but the kids i worked with that struggled no network so this is a lot bigger than a facility it's actually bringing in a network and helping kids learn networks out there that they can reach

023not just for employment mentoring job shadowing stuff like that but the kind of the vision that i have for it is to get people back involved in kids education this is just a vehicle to do it so let me share with you just a couple of things that that are interesting so work learn it's not just in here can we get kids jobs during the summer can we get jobs when they're out of high school no doubt about it just just as an example par lumber right now is a thousand employees a hundred openings they can't fill it so just this having this here i talked to their number two person in the company what do you want i said i don't know yet i don't have that vehicle in place he says when you're

024ready we're ready because we're struggling we need quality our workforce is aging so this is a great opportunity for students summer jobs job shadowing full-time employment some of the skills that they'll learn in here that you may not really be aware of it's much more than just doing the physical task for instance just budgeting purchasing i don't know what everybody knows about procuring items right now with kovid but it's very difficult they're going to learn these kind of things project management you can't build a home without being in a team environment you can't do it by yourself there's collaboration that's what all these things that employers are looking for this will provide it and i just like the end that that that is very interesting to me is construction which you have a beautiful new

025building here construction is a top five employer in the county how is the curriculum aligned to help fill those jobs and we want to help with that thank you very much speaks to me because i'm in that i'm in your industry um on the design side and i've been doing my own remodeling i cannot get an electrician to save my life i've got boxes of new lights can't get them installed um so i totally get it and we do have a shortage and they are awesome jobs and they offer so many opportunities for our students and i feel like when we were looking to build um henry and relax health and biosciences it's because there was a need in the community for health care workers and and people in that field this is just another

026need that our community has that can bring jobs to our community can give our kids a future that's a good future so i i feel really good about this pro you know developing this program if it feels like something that serves a lot of different functions that we have one of the things for um years one of our results policies for our students is that they're career or college ready when they leave and um and for a long time the push was always to be to get kids to figure out how to get them to college and it still is you know but we also want to make sure that kids have choices because we know that not every student is geared towards going to a four-year university and maybe they want to go to

027a trade school maybe they want to get into some sort of industry but we want them to have something and we want them to get into a living wage job and we know that the trades will do that um we've been hearing it from our partners and the different labor industries that we need more of that and that there's a need and if we can get kids on that pathway so they have um something it really if they're interested in i'm thinking and i'm looking at the chart with all of the different trades nine nine trades that really they can kind of dabble in all of them hopefully and figure out what it is that they're interested in and um and we know that if they have the skill set and they're on time and

028they show up for work that they're going to get hired and they're going to they're going to make a living wage and that's really important to us so i can speak also from my experience i did not finish college until i was 40 was 46 48 years old something like that so it took me a long long long time and in the meantime i had to establish a career um fixing computers was my talent i was able to make a living support a family doing that without that college degree still felt a need for education so uh but the the experience really showed me what can happen because i valued that liberal arts education that i was getting in my 40s much more than i knew i would have in my 20s and began thinking

029what if there were a pathway like that for people like me like others who could go to an associate's degree or some along that level and then go to work in their interest and then develop the other interests later on and get a chance to go back to college i'd like to write scholarships for 40 year olds so they could go back to college that would be cool that's not what you came to talk about um i'm just really excited to see the kind of support that you're offering to our students it is something that matches my ambitions for having come on the board in the first place is to make sure that students who are different than we assume uh can have a pathway and i appreciate that i have questions so what a

030good question um i know for me when i what 10 years ago when i went through leadership clark county and we had we were at the skills center in cascadia tech and that when we had the education presentation that was one of the most memorable parts of it was hearing from the kids that were in our math to construct uh program and i wasn't involved in the district i didn't even have kids old enough yet and i just that stuck with me and it's always it's been something that i've carried with me and have always touted and the great job that they do i'm also i'm actually a commercial lender so i see where all of the expenses are going up with all of our construction projects and it's you know it's a need when

031you've got projects that are shut down because they don't have enough people to be out there doing the work and i also i work for iq so we actually have branches in the school so to tie it all back we actually mentor a lot of our tellers through the high schools that are actually working in the branches in the high schools and then they come up through internships through the bank or through the credit union so so it's kind of like all these different pieces that just go back around to this program and providing our students with excellent opportunities and that's i think what all of our goals are can i can i say we were fortunate sue i think was the first one that was contacted from one of uh one of the local

032builders about the concept and sue made contact with it with doug and john and initiated the conversations on moving this forward and then it kind of elevated to evergreen high school and then we like doug was saying we went and took a look at it so where we're at now is kind of in this phase of wanting to let the board know kind of what we're thinking um but then working through the mou process the sioux and rnc construction are looking at costs of the facility on that site and the hope would be that we would be able to get construction moving on something and i think the thing in our last conversation we had and doug alluded to it which was so important was that somehow we could work together so that if we

033have the funds to construct they could take those funds that they were looking at putting into the program and put that into our kids through scholarships through internships slots opportunities and that's the only reason i mean obviously it's a great program it's an honor to work with these gentlemen but it's for our students right it's just for all the reasons that you just talked about so i'm encouraged about our our opportunity to do that we have to work through an mou we gotta agree we gotta work on the foundation just all of those things um but we're extremely excited about this opportunity and these two gentlemen have been wonderful to work with yeah i think i just i mean literally my life late in the last months has been a little challenged with trying to

034get supply chain issues moving along um my just things like my cabinet guy doesn't have enough people to cut the cabinets out i mean he's like where are all i've got jobs here and they're good-paying jobs and you know i just hear that over and over and over again and have had to explain it over and over again to my clients and so it i i just live it and i know this is such a high need um in various different capacities um one of the things that i now are you thinking this would be over by at evergreen high school or yes so thank you everyone um again for for your comments and your affirmative remarks um we're definitely still in the as mr molino's temple uh indicates the mission and vision phase but

035to that question specifically yes at evergreen high school currently they're the geometry and construction program where students are in a course for two periods they earn a math credits as well as a cte construction credit um are framing houses on site at evergreen high school outdoors and then in partnership with habitat for humanity they take what is pretty much as a framed home and habitat takes it off site and finishes all the additional trades required the idea here would be to accelerate the geometry and construction program and in partnership with the suppliers and builders and other business and industry to construct a facility that looks something like this doug's great um we we love his models um but sue steinbrenner and the team uh will all have um their expertise uh engaged as well um

036but to to to build it on site at evergreen high school uh is definitely the vision so um how do we open this up to students from other highs how are there are high schools because and not just evergreen but yeah it's the other four because i i we're very big on not having halves and a half knots in our district that we open opportunity up so that everybody has the chance to to access these kinds of things and so i'd be very um that would have to be an integral part of the program so that we make sure that every kid who wants to to take advantage of this is able to yeah great question um and one that we've uh batted around a little bit it's uh it's a supply and demand issue

037at some level right we certainly want to have the program from day one be launched with a full roster of students if that can be accomplished from students at evergreen high school which they're projecting is probable um then we're going to run up into that exact conundrum that you would identify um president bradford um but at the same time if there are openings that are available we're not going to leave any uh seats unfilled and i would anticipate that we could get creative with interdistrict boundary opportunities to ensure that students across our system have have access and i think doug has indicated he's almost got an unlimited supply of support so that we can expand this to any school we wanted to put it in isn't that right i think you had mentioned these are

038the problems hopefully i understand that justin has a you know we've had an ongoing relationship with sch america yeah and um i've had the internships there and ben begavor has been a very big advocate for these various different opportunities for kids to have hands-on experience in the different industries and it's exciting to see it branching out um into something that's so needed here locally you know finally yeah mike was this because this was part of our like our bond phase two discussion right one of the options for is this is that a different thing part of that no way this was not because you've got the stem accelerator program that's that's in the legacy that's what i'm up as a honestly it came from a conversation sue had on a late cover fee conversation across

039from cascadia uh with one of the developers that grew into this but if if uh we chose to use bond funds it would be another conversation we would need to likely have here uh with the board in terms of a resolution saying how we would use the potential funds that were left over from the bond i just got confused with that project is that i was thinking when victoria brought up the part about students because i that stem project the idea was to even include middle school students correct correct that's correct and that's an exciting program that we'll bring we won't talk about tonight but we'll talk about that as well all right so the mou would take care of issues like gifts of public funds or the safety and insurance issues the mou would

040outline you know what is our role what are what is the role of the donor and how do we sort through those things it also likely would also include the foundation i would think in that as well so there's obviously a lot of work still that needs to be done on this but what's exciting is the momentum that we have and we want to we want to take advantage of the momentum and keep moving this forward part of the basis of my question is some of the internships that they arranged for at legacy there was one with columbia machine for a year or two that came to an end because the students needed to be 18 according to their risk managers that was the story i was given um how the problem of that kind

041of work in a school with a 16 year old great question i appreciate that um uh ellen i uh makes presentations to the ct bureaucrats like myself on a pretty frequent basis and within that they make some exceptions for apprenticeship programs around the state there's work in road construction in the fisheries those aerospace that come to mind immediately where l i given that it's a learning experience where students are obtaining credit they make exceptions of course while also ensuring that that safe protocols are being carefully met is there still a limitation on earning credit and earning a wage i am not aware but i can absolutely look into that and get back to you in terms of what there might be a i think i heard about that is that in order to earn a

042high school credit you had to be engaged in something that wasn't paying you it was the way that it came across to me but i i'm going to confess to not a lot of knowledge about that it's just a data point that i was given it would be nice aspirationally if in their internships and and in their work study projects they could also be earning a wage i think that would clear up a lot of equity problems like this um so i am familiar uh sir with our work study programs currently uh where students are either volunteering or obtaining uh jobs in the community as well as earning credits simultaneously so i think there's a model that we can follow in that regard and i think that in the conversation with john and doug you

043have uh employers that aren't necessarily always that inclined to want to offer the pay up front you know they're willing to give the opportunity for the credit and really the conversation with them was using some of these foundation donations from donations from businesses and donors where they sponsor kids to make them paid work maybe outside of the school day but also connecting individuals that want to donate directly to a student so that there's that connection on top of just i'm i'm giving money to a foundation i'm giving money to a foundation for this student to work in that job and then i can become a direct mentor for that student as well so it that that was real exciting to hear that and it's something you know we we need more relationships with kids we

044need more connections with kids and that this is a tremendous opportunity i agree how does it uh how does it mesh with what we've got uh at henrietta lacs and cascadia tech as far as career pathways would it how did how would we fit that in uh i guess with the other programs that are found in the county um um so a great question and um i think it's it's mostly about offering students an abundance of choice wherein cascadia tech offers a beautiful array of programs there are some limitations in their daily schedule for example that that don't always allow for all kids to be able to access their programs um the the travel and some of the other logistics um can at times uh present barriers to students uh in terms of access having

045this program on campus at evergreen high school where we anticipate an abundance of student interest i think complements the the other programs at cascadia and elsewhere and doesn't take away from anyone thank you any other questions comments thank you gentlemen this is exciting stuff thank you everyone hello again [Laughter] thank you for the opportunity to take a few minutes to update the board on highlights in cte from 2021 and to present to you targets uh initiatives in our five-year cte plan that i submit on your behalf to ospi as well as more precise consolidation of the department's 2021 highlights and 21-22 goals via the executive summary both of which i believe are available to you in your packet i have negotiated with laurie frankly but also superintendent mr molino to return to you in february

046which is national cte month next year february 22 where i'll be able to present to you updated 2021 data which ospi is still crunching for us as well as images and highlights from both last year and the first semester of this year so this presentation today is is comparatively short still comparatively new to this position and in lieu of taking your time to bullet through the rather comprehensive lists in those two documents i wish to both highlight this past year's accomplishments as well as the upcoming year's goals via three primary observations in my short tenure to date which serve as drivers of the cte department's purpose uh one i acknowledge that i inherited a well-oiled and powerful cte train for my predecessor ms dixon's 20 plus years built an impressive track record here to offer

047an abundance of hands-on engaging relevant and rigorous programs that prepared students for college and career my charge i see it is to unabashedly invite welcome and accommodate a more distinctly diverse passenger onto our train who better reflect our emerging student populations and critically from whom we can tap into their beautiful tapestry of their community to benefit all of us some accomplishments in this area this past year the district ct department was awarded an inclusionary grant which supported career exploration for students at legacy and at 49th street in the special education population at large engaging more diverse students from special education into cte we also awarded the recruiting washington teacher bilingual educator initiatives grant which seeks to diversify our students in our teaching academies and then ultimately partner with our post-secondary partners and bring those students

048back um as uh as a charge to diversify our workforce grow your own is kind of the the catchphrase there uh and and we're working diligently with our teaching academy teachers across our high school system to recruit and offer more inclusionary and culturally responsive teaching practices in our teaching academy program we also partnered specifically at mountain view high school with the dual language program to incorporate medical science as a in um in spanish only um credit to the teachers uh for their for their their collaboration in dual language cte at mountain view goals for this upcoming year include ongoing work to increase our under-represented populations across cte to diversify and develop a teach workforce and to work much more diligently in parent engagement and community partnership second observation uh is to integrate the cte into

049the transformation within the teaching and learning department the division within the district at large because ct are the recipients of a generous supplemental fund from ospi it's easy for us to run parallel or alongside our teaching and learning and equity department i'm excited to collaborate with a reinvigorated teaching learning and equity department to ensure that our district's initiatives are culturally responsive uh multi-tiered systems of support incorporate universal design for learning and are incorporated into all of our cte courses as well as i made assessments in this area this past year there were not distinct accomplishments in this area per se as it's evolving but the cte department is setting goals to integrate our professional development with the tle division as well as to enhance our supports for career guidance specialists and to purchase learning management

050software that will be utilized district-wide third observation of three and i can't emphasize this enough the resilience and the talents of our students and staff i came into this job and i didn't meet a single teacher face to face until after christmas we took off our meeting our mass at a meeting in april and superintendent merlino remarked he'd never seen my face before new district new state new job developing relationships through two inch screens was a steep learning curve for me this past year but through it all what i could continuously offer to our staff was my undying respect my appreciation and support as a backstop for them throughout this past challenging year and did our students and staff step up in a world driven by hands-on learning our staff devised innumerable ways to creatively

051engage their students through simulation software qr coded socially distanced scavenger hunts at the middle school putting together take-home kits for kids to pick up at school to help them support their engineering learning their robotics their drones their culinary and their floral learning at every turn our teachers went beyond the extra mile to ensure that their care and concern for our students did not miss a beat this past year specifically i'd like to highlight talia blair who earned the early career new teacher award from the northwest agricultural network but she's just one of many um and our students who also participated in remote internships with lsw architects as well as seh america and too many kids to name won regional state and national awards in our ctsos which are after school clubs associated with our cte

052programs these are only some of the highlights but which are also linked in our in the cte executive summary at the bottom uh showcasing our accomplishments and a cross-section of the great work performed by our staff and to demonstrate their professionalism care and commitment to their profession so goals in this area were mentioned above plus offering additional professional development and coaching to our middle school teachers in particular the development of our stem accelerator uh program as referenced earlier the skilled trade center of course which we've discussed already this evening as well as consolidated program uh reviews across our agricultural natural resources program are on tap for 2021 excuse me 21 22. and i can spend the rest of the evening frankly bragging on our kids and our students but to suffice to say when people

053ask me after a year at evergreen justin how are things going i say it is going to be great and it always will be uh with that i'd love to field any questions for you if you haven't i think those videos are some of those things you talked about that we were able to see during the pandemic really kept hope going and i appreciate gail's department facilitating getting that information out there with the teachers yeah you know i'm connected with the first robotics at union high school they contacted me and invited me to their virtual robotics competition where they had figured it out they were still doing the learning and the teamwork they were all in masks they couldn't compete team to team so they were recording the the telemetry of the robot's behavior in

054the video for judgment later it was the adaptation uh and creativity around the adaptation was really remarkable and i would agree yeah one of abundance um and i i think it sort of speaks to what what's the intangible outcome in some ways of ct is is that design thinking right backwards planning here's the problem how do you engineer a solution to get there uh and in remote learning their engineering skills even when they weren't in engineering class um were really brought to the fore um and so you reference mr perkins um robotics videos uh i'm uh i can i could name a bunch more of other uh creatures who are sauteing and chefing from home uh the videos that uh that they produced uh to demonstrate the assessment safely and and i have to say

055too that our teachers still maintain a high standard um they found a way uh to incorporate the standards um and to hold the students accountable in ways uh as we've referenced which were creative and dynamic but did not lower the standards and still maintain high expectations for all and i couldn't be more proud we're proud too yeah if i could just really quickly also say i appreciate justin a year in uh the assimilation with the district and and uh he's done a great job i mean it was a i mean what a difficult year it was i think i had seen your face once i just didn't remember you looked like that in april um but he's done an amazing job you as evidence by what you're hearing and you're a great cheerleader for the

056district and that's fantastic for kids thank you paul anything else from hoax any other questions or anything comments you've got a full agenda uh this won't be the last time you see me i look forward to coming back to you uh with some more precise uh empirical numbers in in february uh and then our collaborations on these ongoing partnership projects uh as well so thank you again for your service i really appreciate you thank you thank you it's fun to be enthusiastic again i feel like we can push forward and have some normalcy again that's for sure um next up i will entertain a motion for approval of the board consent agenda i move that we approve the board's consent agenda as presented second all in favor aye any opposed okay next up we have

057the superintendent consent agenda do i have a motion for approval of the superintendent consent agenda as presented i move approval of the superintendent's consent agenda as presented second all in favor aye aye any opposed okay great um next we have superintendent report yes yeah you what do you know what uh well what i know is that three weeks from today is our first day of school and we're to follow along with the uh excitement we're extremely excited to welcome our students back full time on the 31st in person that's fantastic it's great for our students it's great for our staff it's great for our families and we're just really excited about it so to that end this last week and the next few weeks where there's going to be a lot of work done last

058week we had our principals and non-instructional staff in for two days of training the non-instructional stat was there for half of a day the principles were for two days of training we've got new teacher orientations going on we've got new administrator orientation going on our teachers come back on august 23rd that's when everyone is back thank you both uh august 23rd everyone comes back to get ready for school starting on the 31st so very excited about that we also actually got an email this afternoon from superintendent reichdoll indicating that uh you know on obviously the last year plus has been a uh what now were 18 months of 17 months of guideline changes updates progress to bring students back with the response to covet on the in the spring governor inslee uh put out some

059updated guidelines that we in the spring plan for the fall in those guidelines were updated on the 28th of july and then i even got an email this afternoon from superintendent right doll indicating that there would there was maybe today some more updates to those guidelines being released um when we ended school last year we were aware of the fact that at that time the guidelines would say we would return to school with masks that was the guidance we received at that time we kind of kind of thought or believed or hoped that things would develop evolve to the point where we would be able to open school in the fall without masks through vaccinations through just the natural course of the of the cohort but that was not the news that we received on

060july 28th from governor inslee and the department of health what what we re what we received was a continuation of the mass order and then i think what we didn't really receive in the spring was some of the language around you must uh require i mean we always have kind of had this assumption and belief the proclamations the orders from the governor you know you have to follow those and and i think districts across the strait across the state complied with that what we heard that day were two things one was that it was a legal requirement from governor ainsley and then two from superintendent reichdoll was that if districts choose not to follow the guidance that they would withhold funds for school districts so that did change i'm not saying anybody was necessarily thinking

061about going against the guidance but that i think in most districts mind kind of sealed that that that thought or that conversation as uh if you lose your funding you lose you lose your ability to serve the students that we're here to serve so that was information we received the the guidelines uh continue with the language that says it is the state's intention that the guidelines don't get in the way of students returning to school full-time and particularly a lot of that was around the fiscal distancing that was something that made it challenging last year last spring the six foot physical distancing when you it didn't have mass on three foot when you did have mass on the language that's in there now it basically says that there's a the mass requirement that the three

062foot is recommended but it should not get in the way of you being able to offer a full-time school so it's within reason it's more of that type of language which allows us to continue with our path forward uh is that even during real times even yeah i mean it talks about that even during meal time so what we've been doing is working with our administration in the buildings and and providing guidance um around that and and certainly we want to to the extent possible provide as much distancing we want our students to be outside but like i s we were talking today we don't our schools aren't in california in september and october the outside option is certainly more uh prevalent for us than it is in november through really february so the hope

063is that as we get through the year things start to improve in the world and certainly in not i mean i care about the world that i care about what happens here obviously um to to help with that uh i would say that we continue to have contact tracing requirements that will be challenging uh i don't think there's any question that there will be challenges throughout the state around contact tracing and then there's new language around testing in counties that are kind of moderate or higher transmission as kind of defined by the cdc that there's the expectation that there be some sort of a testing program available not that it's mandatory for participants in it but it's more mandatory that we have the ability to offer a testing program we're still waiting for guidance on

064uh some of the questions that we see around athletics music some of the things that were a little bit of a struggle last year but there's nothing that we're hearing that would lead anyone to believe that you we're not going full speed ahead with things in the fall this year um we still got the same folks working in this but we've kind of changed our communication pattern to the buildings scott monroe bobby height and heather fowler senior directors of elementary and secondary are going to be the conduit for all of the information to the building so that we're always speaking with one voice to the buildings they will continue to work with scott eppinger with shane gardner with tracy thompson with jan misfeld in nutrition with with all of those folks but it's going to

065all come to the buildings from the same uh direction i i an email went out last week to everyone that was i think a great communication i'll forward that on to you so you have an opportunity to see that google documents with questions being answered in real time so i'm really encouraged by that all of these things we will deal with we're collaborating as we have all year with dr melnick we collaborate with local districts we collaborate with anybody that we can to try to give ourselves the best information to make sure that the experience for our kids is as positive as we possibly can i guarantee we'll continue to talk about this i am just very excited uh today i i was i got to talk to one of the tv channels about coming

066back to school it's just great to talk about coming back to school and how much you know our kids are gonna be so happy to be together um it's it's just a really it's a good thing uh the last couple things i would just really quickly say is uh last year i had the opportunity to participate in a coin town hall on covid with portland public schools and beaverton and salem kaiser i'm getting the opportunity to do that again here this week they're taping it for i think it's going to be on next week and then jessnell the new superintendent from vancouver is going to participate in that as well so i i'm excited to have the ability to collaborate with dr snell in vancouver he's a great leader and a really good person so

067i think there's really good opportunities for us to collaborate with them in the future and then the last thing i will say is that i was i got nominated to be on the chamber of commerce's board so i'm excited to to uh unless they vote me down i'm excited to participate on the chamber of commerce board and get out and in the community meet more people and have an opportunity to share our story from evergreen that's great so that's all i have i'm happy to answer any questions right now any questions thanks mike don't go anywhere because now mike you can lead a discussion into the um 20 21 22 district budget this is a first reading i'll turn it back over to you thank you uh so so um what will what we're doing

068tonight is having a conversation around the 21 22 uh public schools budget i've had an opportunity to meet with all of the board members and kind of speak with all of you about the budget this will be kind of a higher level conversation about the budget and some of the things thinking about as we move into next year i will say right up front the budget's not approved in this meeting the budget is approved in two weeks so anybody that's participating online or anybody that's participating here that has any interest in asking questions of the district between now and two weeks from now when we actually authorize it send emails you can send to the board of directors you can send it to myself however you'd like to do that i will also say that

069this will be my last budget presentation full budget presentation um i've i've been doing this uh i think since the year 2001 maybe 2000 2001 somewhere in that range jennifer jacobson who's in the back of the room has been announced she's transitioning into the cfo role and i'll be excited for jennifer to make this presentation next year not nearly as excited as i'm sure she will be so what i want to talk about let me get my yeah here we go the biggest thing is make sure you get your papers the the going into this year we're starting the year 2122 the estimated beginning fund balance is a little over 28 million the total revenues and expenditures for next year are in the 413 million dollar range so our board has a policy of a

0705 reserve roughly five percent reserve and you don't have this this is just a president the powerpoint presentation we do have the budget the actual budget documents online and i think we might even have some copies here in case people wanna we might not but they're online and you can review the document um so five percent is approximately 20 21 million dollars so our our total fund balance is probably in about the seven eight percent range um the 28 million dollars represents the 21 22 school year being about a break-even year we went into the year of 2021 with approximately 28 million we'll end with approximately 28 million what we have been able to do when we when we started last school year there was great concern about our enrollment uh with respect to covet

071and the fact that students didn't come back to the district and so there were a number of decisions that were made early in the year in terms of cost-saving measures that were needed to happen at the end of the day the federal government and the state both came in with some support for districts across the country for the federal money and then across the state for the state funds that helped us break even there's dollars that it's called esser funds and sr stands for something um emergency elements whatever it is it's federal money that helped us through coven and uh they initially issued about 4.9 million dollars to us in the initial allocation which we spent on in the 1920 and early in the 2021 school year on technology devices we spent that money on

072uh enhanced cleaning in our schools we contract with uh abm is a company that we work with dan brit who's been a great partner of ours is in the back of the room they had enhanced cleaning so we spent some money on that if you remember in the spring of 2020 we hit the ground running with delivering meals to our students right from the beginning and we delivered fun meals over spring break in a year that typically in individuals wouldn't have been employed and working those esser funds helped support that uh at that moment in time the personal protection equipment ppe supplies printing for students was as well spent out of that first uh esser grant in 2021 then we received a second allocation of esser funds which was approximately 18 million dollars we'll spend

073probably about 12 million roughly of that in 2021 to help balance the budget that's uh goes towards a lot of those same things that you see the enhanced cleaning the ppe when our enrollment declined as significantly as it did it meant that we lost a lot of state funds those federal dollars were able to backfill those state funds that we lost so it helped pay for a lot of our teaching staff in the 2021 school year as well um in the 2122 budget we also then sr2 came through and then when uh president biden came into office the senate and the house agreed on a third esser allocation in the i think it was january of 21 that was a significant amount of money as well between those three pots of money then they also

074extended that that money could be spent for the next three years some of those funds are helping us with the 2122 school year so going into the 2122 school year that kind of gives you an idea of how we maintain the 28 million and in the 21 22 school year we expect to use esther funds to help balance our budget particularly in this first year we need to see what our enrollment looks like how does it come back we're not you know we expect a lot of these elementary students that stayed home to come back but we need to actually see the whites of everyone's eyes and and have the ability to get a better understanding of our enrollment but esther gives us the ability to work through that as we move forward um i

075also want to talk really quickly about levy rates we always share this information this kind of gives it an idea of what our tax rate is for our citizens in the community and get kind of give a history of the rate and you can see back in 2018 we were at three dollars and twenty one cents that three dollars and twenty one cents was the last year before uh mccleary took effect when the new mccleary law took effect it capped the levy rate at the dollar fifty which is what you see in 2019. when we went from 321 to 1.50 the state has a state property tax rate that they then increased to kind of offset they basically took local money kept it at the state level and then distributed it back that's the levy

076swap that you heard about if you heard about it in 2020 the legislature in 2019 the legislature changed the dollar fifty cap evergreen had passed the levy in 2019 for 20 21 and 22 had a number that we expected was going to be around a dollar fifty they raised the cap to two dollars and fifty cents which allowed us then to collect the dollars that we had actually levied that's how you come to the dollar 64.72.66 we also passed the technology levy and the debt service the debt service levy rate is the rate that we pay on the bonds that the voters approved in 2018. we at the time said we would keep that below 1.77 and you can see that we've done that in 1920 21 and 22 so this is really meant to

077illustrate uh kind of the history of our rates as well as um kind of how we've we've gotten to where we've where we've gotten to now um one of the issues that we face as a district is our district has been a an assessed value tour like a property poor district historically and in the state of washington levy equalization funds are a way that property poor districts are sent money from the state to help mitigate the fact that tax rates typically are higher when they change the mccleary rule they they change the way they calculate levee equalization and we've gone from a district that i think in 2000 let's see in 2020 the number we received was about 15 million dollars in the 1920 school year somewhere around there that number i think by the

078time we get to 2025 which is as far as ospi kind of calculates that number's going to come down to 2 million so we're losing a lot of levy assistance from the state which uh in order to you you maintain the program either by increasing your local levy rate or you have to make reductions uh and the only reason i mentioned that this year's budget the 21 22 school year budget does use besser funds to help we do have those escrow funds for 21 22 22 23 23 24. um but there likely will need to be a conversation about our levy rate the um that the 2.50 cap that the state has most districts in clark county are at the 250 many of them are i'm not saying that evergreen is looking to make that

079happen but it's just a conversation that we need to have um this fall we will uh budget assumptions that go into the budget the salary increases uh we have various employee groups we have principals we have our teachers we have our classified we have coaches and we have principals and the classified group uh is in i think the third year of a three-year deal their increases three and a half percent rate increase our teachers are in the second year of a three-year deal eea their race is 2.7 percent those folks that are not represented by a union are receiving three and a half percent we're in the middle of negotiations still with our coaches uh and likely i think we actually need tomorrow and i think we'll probably um settle with them tomorrow would be

080my suspicion hopefully uh and then uh our principals we've negotiated with they have an open contract we've been negotiating with them we're in mediation with them i think we meet on thursday uh we met we were supposed to meet with them a couple weeks ago and may very well have had that number but our mediator was ill and so we weren't able to do that so this is just something that we share as we look forward to our rates of salary increase this is a slide that we've used you can see all the way back to 0.405 and it was originated in the uh there's two members of a budget committee that we had uh back in 9 10 and 11 12 in the room uh one of the board member now rob perkins and

081one of them is lauren sickles who's in the back of the room and when we had to go through his pretty significant budget cutting exercise at that time because of the housing prices we we made every effort to try to protect the classroom and so since that time we've always tried to go back and kind of measure how do we spend money within the district as it relates to how did how do we used to spend money we made a lot of administrative reductions and we protected the classroom at that time and you can see in this this looks at the various activity areas of expenditure looks what we actually spend in the 1920 school year and then what we have in the 2122 budget i've always been um proud of the increase in the

082teaching and teaching support which basically is your teaching your librarians your counselors your all the people that are the nurses um that five percent that you look at from almost five percent from the 69.6 up to 74.3 in 1920 that represents probably about 20 million dollars worth of expenditures that we've kept in the classroom over that time and if you if you put that on how many teaching positions that might be somewhere around 166 165 positions it was always important to the board and it still is important to the board that we spend the money in the classroom that's where that's where we need to spend our funds and so we've measured it always from that point forward you can see how this looks at whatever green spends the large district average of the i

083think the top 20 districts in the state and then what the statewide averaging so this is just something we've shared uh historically and i think it it shows the values of the board how you spend your money kind of shows your values and i think we've done well the next page gives you an idea of our uh budgeted enrollment the it gives what we our actual numbers were in 2021 and then what we budgeted in 2122 the elementary fte was our actual what we had budgeted for 2021 was about 10 500 students so we were about a thousand under in elementary last year what we're doing is budgeting for a little bit of a decrease in our elementary enrollment but getting back to numbers more like what we might have expected had we not been

084through what we've been through for the last 15 months a little bit of an increase in middle school and high school relatively flat you can see the ctte special ed and the ell numbers these are the numbers that we use to build the budget for 2122. staffing wise we then take those enrollment figures and and allocate staff to the various levels and our administrators work with building administration on on this elementary you can see what we allocated for staffing we budgeted a little higher than that or middle school is about right where we allocated in high school a little bit higher one of the things that we definitely did after we had allocated the staff was provide a little bit more staffing to the various areas just to make sure that we have some grade

085levels with a little higher class size we want to try to keep the class sizes down particularly with the three foot distancing recommendation so that's the reason that you see a little bit of an increase and this is just our basic education staff it doesn't include our special ed staff or our cte staff or our title lab so we have well more than i think we have almost 1800 total cert positions this is just the basic education program we also uh have to and on our on our website we have the the f-195 is the actual budget document it's hundreds of pages that very few of us enjoy looking at the f-195f is a four-year outlook that the legislature required a few years ago and then there's a supplemental document that has a little more

086information this just gives some of the information around the the four-year budget outlook our four-year budget outlook estimates a sim kind of a flat budget a flat fund balance over the four years we do show an enrollment drop of approximately four percent over that four year period um we've had many smaller kindergarten classes come in for a number of years and this just reflects as you graduate higher classes and bring in smaller classes you have a natural decrease in enrollment it really projects very little revenue growth uh over the four-year period part of that is because as enrollment declines your revenue is not going to go up we also lose esser funds over the four year period so it does reflect a little bit of an increase in the levy that ultimately will be brought

087to the voters this spring but that will be after a big conversation so the four-year assumption includes a possible well it includes us passing a levy okay yeah because if they could continue with where we're at a little bit of an increase a little bit but um you know i like to tell people like doing a four-year outlook for any school district is problematic because every time the legislature gets together something changes so to really know what's going to happen and there's a long list of things that could happen between now and then for us really it's like a one year thing but we have this is something we're required to do by the state it really reflects minimal growth on both revenue and expenditures over the four-year period the biggest thing is i think

088that the legislature is interested in seeing if districts can predict that they're failing and having a problem that they get ahead of it as opposed to now you know what do we do we should have known four years ago that this was going to be a problem so that's that's the purpose of this uh and then you see from that f195 the total estimated ending fund balance over the course of the a very i mean the chart looks like it's you know quite varied but you're talking about a difference of about two hundred thousand dollars hundred fifty thousand dollars over it if we do this i'm gonna keep the slide because if we hit these numbers that would be really good if we if we end up hitting these numbers i'd be pretty proud jennifer

089would have done her job if we had this number so that's kind of a quick walkthrough of the general fund again what what you will actually do in two weeks is approve a resolution that outlines what the expenditure levels are for various funds that we have in the district the first being the general fund you'll also approve uh some transfers between funds things like that we'll talk more about that in two weeks so the general fund we talked about the capital projects fund is the fund where the bond work that we passed it with the bond that we passed in 2018 uh is where the actual revenues and expenditures occur we have one more bond sale we passed the 695 million bond in the biggest bond in the history of the state when you throw

090in state match and and you throw in impact fee money it's well over 800 million dollars in projects that will occur in this community over about a five year period sue who i mentioned earlier with respect to mr greene and mr gerard sue oversees all the work that occurs in this in this bond fund for those of you that aren't aware of it here we've had such uh great experience with bid prices with um timing of projects and honestly uh coven when everything was shut down it caused our construction partners to aggressively bid jobs that drove prices down for us at the end of the day we have a significant amount of money left over that we've then had conversations as a board went through the resolution process and we did not plan on building

091rebuilding mill plane we're able to rebuild mill plane elementary school in a time of of usually you have delays in projects and cost overruns we're ahead of schedule and we have cost under runs so i appreciate sue and rnc management and all the work that's gone into it and and it's it's really been tremendous this fund shows the beginning fund balance of 145 million revenue of about 215 million expenditures and an ending fund balance and ultimately this will wind down in a few years and will be done and at the end of that we'll have rebuilt uh i think seven elements we have one new brand new elementary i think we'll either six or seven elementary schools mountain view high school y east will have remodeled and kind of re-engineered and re-bought heritage high school

092this campus which one of the main reasons came up here was so that we rebuilt burton elementary on our old campus also allows us to rebuild the transportation facility legacy high school hollandsworth academy and then the transitions program which we're going to go through a process of talking about renaming the transition so it's got a name like every other school so tremendous success in the capital projects fund transportation vehicle fund is where we buy buses and so we buy buses the state then gives us money to replace that bus over in either 8 to 13 year time frame this budget just reflects depreciation money coming in uh we've built in some expenditure capacity to buy some buses uh when i first started the district victoria was on the board before i worked in the district

093but i remember one of the first things that we worked on was we had a transportation fleet that had no buses with the money actually following them to replace the buses which isn't a good place to be it means you need to borrow money and then make payments with the money to replace the bus to be able to have the bus we've got uh we talked i talked with uh yvonne gayle gaylord our our director of transportation and lindell grant our assistant director of transportation we've got about 280 buses and about two-thirds of those buses now have money following them to replace them so over about a 15-16 year period we've gotten two-thirds of the way there and we'll get there eventually this has been another really great story that it is a great story

094it might not seem like it but it's a great story the asb fund is the fund where we have student body fees we have concessions gate receipts from games this is the the students decide how this money is spent with oversight from the billing advisors and you can see that this is about three million dollar budget primarily all middle school and high school and mostly high school really nothing goes on in asp in elementary school and the final fund i believe where's that in there there it is debt service fund i'm sorry jumping the debt service fund is where we make the payments on the bonds when we sell the bonds we build it out of the capital projects fund we make the payments on the debt service fund so this is when the voters

095pass a bond it gives us the authority to levy taxes to make the payments on this is what happens in this fund so all of these um i think we have a plane landing now all of these uh maybe it's my hot air that i've i've heated the room up i apologize for that all of these funds will be approved the expenditure level is approved by the board in two weeks at our board meeting and like i said if there's a question the board has between now and then if there's questions and i think we even open up for questions if anybody has any tonight and i'll stop now i'm sorry that's okay thanks mike um i'd like to open up uh for anyone in the audience who has questions or comments regarding the budget

096this would be the time to speak or you got to come back in two weeks or send me a message to anyone um well we are we're always open for suggestions um from parents and staff and the normal process would be to submit something to the board um in writing and then we go from there sometimes we may already have it or [Music] you know depending on what it is there's different processes for that thank you i think there were a couple emails that arrived today that intersect with budget issues yeah so yeah i'm always listening to that anyone else okay now i'll open that up to board um questions or discussion so anything from the board we've just for the audience information we've all met individually with mike and jennifer um to go over

097in detail and be able to ask our questions um ahead of time do we have any further questions or anything i don't have a question either oh sorry we took over that i just said nothing further i think that might i don't um just thinking about that four-year projection and what could happen with the levy and that equalization money as it starts to reduce over the next several years is something that i think we're really going to have to keep a really close eye on um in the coming years yeah i agree there's yeah we talked about in the meeting there vincent i guess messages going back and forth on the congress about unclaimed esser funds and yeah we've got to keep some vigilance on that and make sure advocacy goes in if they decide

098that money we can't claim yet is claimable elsewhere they'll claw it back yeah we'll we'll make sure that any funds that are due to us will be claimed by us and just continue our advocacy work when there are mandates that are sent down from legislation or from uh even the federal government that we make sure that they're funded because that's what happens when mike mentioned that so many times you know the four years lots of things can change because of legislation well that's because they don't fund some of the ideas and then the school districts are left to figure out how to fund those yeah so we just need to keep doing our part and making sure that they fund those mandates anyone any other questions or comments okay well thank you mike thank you

099appreciate it uh next up we have and this will move forward for a second reading in two weeks next up we have a equity and inclusion update and i'd like to ask clarissa hightower up to give us that update please i'm a little shorter um good evening board and all of our attendees i'd like to give a quick update on our uh equity inclusion department um so i'm going to start off with the most recent we had an immensely successful admin leadership kickoff on last week we were able to spend a day and a half with our leaders we spent a lot of time reinvigorating those relationships between district staff and building staff but also among school leaders themselves across buildings during that time we also talked about new structures for our school leaders to

100build their own capacity so what pd would look like for our leaders as they are leading in addition to what supports will look like for their school improvement plans we also talked about and highlighted our focus areas for our culturally responsive practices for this year those areas being culturally responsive teaching discipline family engagement and multi-tier systems of support which in shorter terms are the just right supports for our kids taking into account their unique needs i am also enjoying the expansion of my department so i spent time onboarding our new director whom you all met in june additionally we will be welcoming our four equity advancement specialists who will be working directly with building leaders and staff to help them eliminate the predictability of those outcomes by demographic group our specialists are uh charlotte lartay

101carissa kersey ashley cooper and shannon shambaugh and two of those specialists came to us from out of district one from washougal that's charlotte and the other from portland public and then we had two who were um internal candidates uh ashley came to us from orchards and shannon schambach came to us from riverview um this the specialists will also uh be working with myself and jamila to prepare and co-facilitate the equity half day pd that's coming up for our teachers on august 26th and in that pd we will be preparing our teachers introducing some of them to the concept but then furthering the concept for others um around culturally responsive teaching through zoretta hammond's work culturally responsive teaching and the brain we're doing that work in partnership with education northwest that organization should sound familiar because

102we also partnered with them for our equity audit as well as the strategic planning work they're also helping support our mtss our multi-tier systems that support um work as well i believe i hit everything yes i did there any questions any questions sounds like you've been busy go go go all right thank you thank you uh next up teaching and learning update julie tumulty hi good evening so clarissa as she mentioned already the admin pd what i really want to emphasize and enjoy about that it's we split on here equity teaching and learning but as a team we really talk about our tle teaching learning and equity so as together we're running all that and it's all interwoven into everything we're doing with teaching and learning um i wanted to give an update on summer

103school so we are currently in session two of summer school session one was a huge success we had the elementary middle and high school running combined session one and session two we had over three thousand students in there and when i first approached the planning principles that were going to work they were thinking a couple hundred at each level and it just blew up we had so many students and families that were excited about it and um got just a ton of participation and really got everyone in that wanted to get in so in elementary we had over 1700 students middle school 1100 and high school 280 between the two sessions and at the end of the sessions we asked for feedback from not only the staff but the students and what's exciting about it

104is to hear the things that they were excited about which is why we need to open school like we're going to on august 31st one of the parents responded on just being able to play and interact with other students another said thank you for offering this as well as transportation our kids were excited to attend and had a positive experience one middle school student said the fact that i bonded with my teachers and that i had teachers from my other school here telling me that i had it in me that helped him feel like he belonged there another student said i belonged because everyone is so nice and kind and i've learned learned so much in a short period of time you could see most of them said what did you enjoy they're like it

105was fun it was fun to learn again and i think a lot of them were surprised that it was an academic camp we called it camp evergreen but it was it was really academic and that was exciting and that got them really engaged back in school again which was our goal in high school we had 150 students attend the session one and these are high schoolers giving up their summer which is a bit of a stretch but of those 150 and they gained 120 credits back so we talk about so many of the plans of what we did to pass no pass the removal of the f they still had to make up those credits so that was exciting to see how many they could make up and then we're going to continue a plan

106for credit recovery and credit retrieval throughout the school year and then um i just want to thank the tremendous effort of all the departments to put this together it was running school again so we needed our student information systems team our transportation food service our curriculum instruction team to put together all of the curriculum the ad our administrative interns stepped up and did a ton of work with this as well as the principals who helped which were angelina elverton marshall pendleton ian lefaber and heather fowler so just a huge thank you to them the teachers the peras and the buildings that volunteered well they didn't volunteer their buildings but they were they were the ones chosen um everyone just helped to bring this together so it was a really big effort but it turned out

107really great all right questions about 130 students in high school in session two i'm sorry say that again 130 students 130 credits or 120 credits we had 150 students sign up for session one and 120 earned credits some showed up for some days and some showed up for partial days and so we're working with with those students to continue those classes in session two is the difference yeah session two has 120 students signed up for algebra and english focusing on ninth graders and their transition to high school what was the middle school numbers oh sorry middle school we had 700 in session one and we have about 500 in session two it's a good number and what about elementary elementary was about a thousand in session one and we're around uh 8 50 in session

108two yeah and you didn't have to go to a wait list or turn anyone away we didn't we added an extra school in june um in elementary and then um well i should say if they signed up on time we didn't have to if some parents i know there are some that reached out in um in july and we may not have had space at that time but if they did it within the time frame we were able to accommodate everyone and there's a specific esser fund for learning like i think it's for learning loss is what they call it that we have an allocation that helps fund this which is you know it's a huge part of allowing us to do exactly what julie's talking about provide the transportation have the staff there that

109we need to have it's it's not only having kids giving up their summer but you have staff giving up part of their summer too and coming in and working which is right sometimes not always that easy to make happen well that's why we didn't know how big it would grow because it was how many staff are going to volunteer and how many students and that's we got a tremendous support from all teaching staff para educators we had to bring special ed staff in for the summer also our interventionists and federal program staff and there was a lot of people who were willing to come in this summer are you at a place where there are insights about summer programs for subsequent years that you've learned from this particular uh execution model yeah i think learning

110models modality i think we've learned a lot and specifically we have these funds for two years so i can see us continuing many of these programs the feedback forms that we got um had that a lot of good feedback about the timing which we had asked those questions before but now we actually had the people that showed up about how much time there was in the in the day the length of the sessions um curriculum that was there so we did gain a lot of good feedback from there to plan forward depending on what we need for next summer that's good yeah yeah thanks julie all right thank you okay next up is citizen comments this is a time for citizens to speak to the board about things that are not currently on the agenda

111tonight um we ask that you keep your comments from um legal or personnel in nature we don't want to have that and to keep your time to three minutes so first up i have margaret mila and she's here representing the fer chris neighborhood okay i have a big smile under my mask i don't know you can really see it so margaret milam co-chair of the fur crest neighborhood association i just wanted to welcome you to the furcrest neighborhood every home business organization in this boundary is automatically a member of the association so you're automatically members there are no dues so you don't have to worry about any of that we already have a great relationship with the fur crest elementary school and we're looking forward to developing the relationship with you and with hollingsworth and

112legacy and the transitions program so with that in mind we're going to welcome you with some cupcakes from a vancouver bakery they're covent safe they're all individually wrapped they have a little fur tree on the top it's from a bakery you know so professionally made i don't know if i can hand them to you now or how you want to do this but welcome to the fur crest neighborhood thank you thank you very much maybe act right after the meeting we can eat them yeah before dinner okay next on our list is henry harbert i'm here and uh okay thank you henry okay margaret you're up again you're just busy had to wait for you to get all the way back so you can come back up again so i just want to make clear

113that here i'm just margaret milam a teacher nothing to do with the fur crest neighborhood association for this part i understand that much of the decision making regarding returning all students to in-person schooling is being made at the state level but it's also obvious that we are all forming our own opinions about it and i'd like to point out that this is a decision that requires good critical thinking skills in the form of analyzing and synthesizing lots of different pieces of information and different goals so i've actually been a little baffled by the single-minded focus on masks that i've heard in many of the public comments lately when really the situation is much more complicated than that for example i haven't heard much talk about the physical distancing i can tell you as a sixth

114grade math teacher masks have not had much of an impact on my students learning but the physical distancing definitely has students feel awkward asking questions and getting help in a tone of voice loud enough to be heard three or six feet away and it's also difficult for students to help each other work together when seated apart as a result the physical distancing means that students spend much of their learning time working independently which makes the room very quiet and greatly reduces the development of that learning energy in the room so does this mean that i'm advocating for no physical distancing before it's safe to do so no absolutely not that is not my point here i am wondering if wearing masks might actually make it safer to sit closer together but my main point here

115is that there are many different pieces of information and different goals with some of them actually in tension with each other and they all need to be thought about before they're put together in a plan so once we form an opinion about the best plan going forward i hope we will all understand that everybody's ideas and plans are a balancing act of information and outcomes in a complex situation where there really is no perfect solution in other words it would help if we were all a little less sure of ourselves and a little more respectful of each other's opinions thank you margaret always very thoughtful next up i have sasha so did i wreck it that your last name i'm sorry you said my last name correctly it's sarah i'm sorry oh so i'm sarah

116akey and first of all i just want to say thank you so much for welcoming the public in and hearing us i have a tremendous amount of respect for every single person sitting on this board i wouldn't want to be you um so thank you for that i'm a lifelong resident here in clark county i'm a parent in this district um i am incredibly nervous right now i'm so sorry um i'm an elected precinct committee officer right here in this neighborhood and i'm really concerned with how things are being handled in our schools i love the evergreen school district and the woman who spoke before me i totally understand this is such a balancing act but i'm here to talk about the masks um for starters i want to be clear that covet is a

117real thing i'm not disputing that um but there are no peer-reviewed studies that are showing that masking our least vulnerable population is actually effective masking and social distancing our children in some ways is being shown to desensitize them a little bit it's uncomfortable for them to be so far away from their peers from their teachers their faces hidden our our mouths and our eyes show our emotion so i just and i'm echoing what a whole bunch of other people are saying um i want i want the board to consider the emotional and mental toll that this is taking this can't be an easy decision but i feel responsible to be here on to critical race theory for just a moment um i don't think there's any reason for this teachers should be teaching our children

118compassion via action our teachers in this district are so good about that i was encouraged to hear about our equity and inclusion program that sounds like an absolutely phenomenal alternative to the crt curriculum as it's written and finally and then i'll stop talking this comprehensive sex ed program is not belong in our schools i'm not sure if anyone has come out with that come out about that recently that's for the parents to handle um i i'm just asking for the board to be a voice for us in coming down from olympia bureaucracy and politics don't have any place in our schools unless it's in a civics class this has got to be more about our kids and i hope more parents start kind of getting involved but thank you for your time thank you very

119much sarah ashley ashley if you could give us your full name and your address you didn't include it on the thing and okay required to get that um i can write my name or my address down when i'm done my name is ashley osmond i am a mom here in the evergreen school district i have kids in high school i have kids in middle school and i have kids in elementary school i'm here to not only advocate for my kids but other kids as well too first i want to address the mass as all of us have stated recently i believe it should be a choice a parents should make not anybody else's i believe that if kids want to wear master school please go for it if you don't i should believe i believe

120that's up to us to make there's not enough evidence backing up why we need to be masked or why children need to be masked actually they're the ones who are less likely to get it but why do we have to mask in class but not on a playground why do we have to social distance in class but not on a playground it just doesn't make sense to me the mass pose more the more harm than good for our children it's detrimental to their health not only mentally but physically enough has already been taken away from our kids we need to let them be kids first or second i want to talk about the sex education program you are trying to implement in our schools how that got voted in is beyond me there needs that

121needs to start at home and stay at home it needs to be a parent's choice as well not for anybody else to make i hope that you guys take what we're saying into consideration and you start leaving these decisions up to your parents thank you thank you okay daryl johns hi hello excuse me uh daryl johns d-e-r-r-o-l-j-o-h-n-s uh 3106 northeast under 48th place and in essence i have the three issues that these two ladies brought up the first being critical race theory masking and this comprehensive sex education the masking i'm not going to really go into any more than what's already been said other than common sense tells me they don't work they're not as effective as they try to make us believe and these studies have shown that they are not effective so you

122basically you got a mask on you breathe your germ back in anyway because the sitting right there in the mask a parent packies that i've seen kind of prove that with one of her children when she went had her kids mask examined if you will and it showed all the germs that were sitting in the mask before she washed it so uh common sense tells me it don't work the vibes it's not going to just sit there it's going to go whichever way it could go up outside down over you know whatever as far as critical race theory i think that is the dumbest thing that i have heard today it's it's teacher hate something that we supposedly we're supposed to be against uh i i'm in a bi-racial marriage my grandchildren uh who i'm

123speaking for are all about racial but i'm about to tell one that you're an oppressor tell the element you are oppressed how do you make that happen in a family or in the home it's just i don't know who came up with this idea but it's dumb it's stupid it's ignorant and it doesn't belong in school teachers have one purpose and one purpose on it and that's to teach reading writing arithmetic not get into all this other stuff and i hope and pray that our green school district does not incorporate this curriculum especially as i've been hearing from some other from news stories from some other school districts where they're actually sneaking it into if you will into the school uh one school was telling the teachers telling the kids about it but don't go

124home and tell your parents about it and don't answer any questions about it you know what kind of conversation you have to give a kid we are supposed to be adults we should act like adults we should not be trying to teach this hatred and that's what this is all about hatred uh this country is great period and i don't care what anybody say this country is great i've been to other countries because i've been military and i'm telling you anywhere this is where i want to be not anywhere else because you would not be able to say what you say comprehensive education sex education as this lady says it belongs in the home and home only teachers and i should not be trying to teach particularly starting at kindergarten level i think it's where

125it starts that's not your job to do this it's not your job it's the parent grandparent whoever guardian it's our job to tell our kids about these things when we feel it's time to tell them about it not just not the school not the governor not everybody else thank you that's that's all that we have on the list is there anybody else in the audience that wanted to speak you could come up and state your name and address please yes my name is heidi zalish um my address is 1-355-13522 northeast 52nd street vancouver washington um the reason that i decided to come here today is for the three reasons that everybody else did but um not only that but i think that when we come you know they first they started with the critical race

126theory and then afterwards a lot of school districts and i'm not saying that you guys are doing it because i don't know but a lot of school districts started to call it diversity equity and inclusion and in inside of that there was still critical race theory and what i want to ask you guys is to just not allow that to seep into our schools i grew up in the inner cities and this is not something new this is something that has been taught before and it was taught to me growing up and the only thing that that did was hurt me as a child what that did for me was make me feel like i wasn't good enough like i couldn't do something what actually helped me and what i encourage you guys to push

127for is for mentoring programs because that helps a lot of children who don't have a two-parent home or or children who are poor or whatever kind of circumstance that they are dealing with whatever challenges they're having a mentor would help them greatly i had a mentor that helped me immensely that was so great and there is a mentoring uh program called great life mentoring and people just volunteer for it i encourage you guys to look into something like that where children can have mentors that will make them just want to thrive because that just makes them feel like they are cared for people do care about them not only that but tutoring tutoring is something that we could implement into our schools and not just tutoring groups of children but just one-on-one tutoring i feel

128like that would help children immensely we don't have to change the way things are taught because i've seen a lot in the news lately where they're changing math you don't have to get the right answer in math but you know what if you go and try to get an engineering degree and you go and try to work as an engineer you're going to need to know the right answer so we can't do this to our children we can't create our chil make our children be less educated we have to provide them the tools so that anybody who is left behind can succeed and tutoring services will do that for them i really encourage you and that's why i asked about the budget because i think that the tutoring services would really really help so i

129don't just want to come and say okay this isn't working like don't do this don't do that you know i i really feel that really helped when where i was growing up the tutoring and also um the mentoring was just life-changing for me it helped me see another world that i never would have seen if i would have never gotten that mentor and that helped me be who i am today be able to get out of poverty and get into the middle class so please look into those two things tutoring and mentoring that would help not only children of color because there's a lot of white poor children too who also need help and we're all brothers and sisters we we are not divided by race um thank you for your time thank you is

130there anyone else in the audience lauren lauren lauren sickles 3013b northeast 103rd loop vancouver i'm here a little different subject i am here about this amazing building that's right across the parking lot here the hollingsworth legacy and soon to be renamed transition program i walked through it the other day when we were given notice that staff could come and take a look through it um but and by the way for the audience i work i will be working at hollingsworth this next year um i am so excited about the opportunities i think that that build that new building is going to provide for all three programs and it's beautiful and it's more than i imagined while i was on the design committee helping to think through all the little details and stuff like that so

131i appreciate the people of evergreen school district that supported that amazing bond that allowed that among so many other buildings to be rebuilt and built anew and i'm very excited and i know our staff are very excited too so thank you thanks lauren thank you thank you okay last call yes sir good evening school board and to other parents who are here tonight thank you for coming and supporting this is now my third board row meeting in a row and my third time coming up and speaking and i actually don't have anything prepared tonight but i did want to come and just say that i appreciate all the folks who are here speaking about a lot of the same topics that i agree on i was thoroughly surprised and excited about the opportunity at the

132very beginning about the cultural uh the technology center i think that's a great idea and i would love to volunteer and help because i have a background in procurement contracts aerospace and defense and i think there are a lot of people who need to have jobs going forward the question is how do you explain a program like that when we start digging into this inclusion exclusion program that's also making its way into the schools and it's going to be difficult how do you decide which kids get into the program if it's a limited number or if it's popular you're going to start discriminating on color that's bad well we haven't done we can't do that i'm sorry it's all done by lottery it could be done by laurie i think that's the fairest way of

133doing things and if it's going to be done that way then i think it's a great idea but again as the parents have said before kids aren't born racist we got to not teach it to them we got to not give them the opportunity and i've missed my uh timer up there i'm just gonna use that to make myself again george burns keep it short at the beginning in the end there but no i just think that you know there's a lot of opportunity for folks to get in there and get involved and i asked the parents who were watching on video who are listening in on the telephone come in here see the building it's really nice it's actually is a really nice place and there's a lot of room here and we want

134you to be involved it needs to be a partnership and all i ask is that we get more information as part of that we saw a lot of information come out tonight we got some briefings on what's going on with the training i think that's fantastic and maybe during one of those sit down with the soups that we hear the term you know uh culturally sensitive this well what does that mean throw it up on a powerpoint slide and say it means this at evergreen and that will help folks say okay it's not critical race theory it's this but until we hear what it is we don't know whether we like it or we don't whether it's needed or it's not so we need to hear that information from everybody so i just i know

135you're running short on time i don't want to take advantage of the extra time but i think we need to make sure that we get that information out to all his parents so we can make those choices and help out where needed because we're here to partner with you we need to partner with the school districts the schools and the buildings as well we can't be doing it on your own or us on our own as well thanks thank you thank you okay well we appreciate everyone who comes and gives public testimony to the board oh is there anyone in the virtual world okay next moving on to board comments these are comments by the board that are above and beyond what's on the existing agenda do we have any comments by the board well

136i spent this last weekend up at wazda for the wazda board meeting speaking of new buildings wazda has a new building and they did their ridden cutting celebration and grand opening saturday evening really good to see lost returns 100 next year wow wow 100 100 yeah so big plans are in the work for the washington state school directors association's 100th birthday um really you know was located in olympia and up there with you know having a real chance to advocate and i know that rob's work with the legislation committee and we have a voice down here in in our region too that we can take um through wasda to present what we need in our area so some exciting stuff coming up obviously we're going to have our next region meeting october 27th i'm sure

137you all will write in your i'll do calendars right now october 27th um a couple things that are going to be different this year is we're going to do nominations at um i'm in the region meeting at the region meeting so that way we can hopefully uh get more of the people from our region involved instead of waiting until the last day at the annual conference um and then the voting will be done at like through until annual conference we'll have like a period of time where more people can vote and it'll be like an electronic voting um which is really about getting more as we heard tonight from uh many people in the audience about getting more voices heard um even with our own school directors in our region so that is coming um

138there was you know lots of information over the weekend as a sunday the first year on the wozder board you know i took a lot in but i learned a lot from several of the others from across the state and that it was nice to see be up there and see the new building in person in person yeah wonderful that was our my first in-person meeting with that board i think ours is september the general assembly uh i think both you and i are planning to attend that in september but i don't know if the legislative committee's gonna hopefully we're done with that work from now until then um i wanted to talk a little bit about that because uh in connection with my was the work i thought july was going to be pretty

139lightweight we ended up meeting a lot in legislative committee but also congresswoman jamie herrera butler's office contacted me to have the meeting that wasda and the national school board association usually arranges in january and it became a phone conversation about 20 minutes with her and kyle sprawl in the vancouver district talking about federal issues important to esd 112 director area six i'll co terminus with congressional district three so uh basically asked her do you want us to start aspirationally or do you want us to get right into the wonk and she wanted to get right into the wonky details and i may i'll do it if you haven't done it yet but i uh you should have had a copy of the email following up we talked about community eligibility provisions we thank the congress

140for keeping this you know support for the summer lunch programs going through this whole year that i think isn't it correct mike that uh school lunch is free for the next year because we're still using the summer program model it's a different program but it is free next year yeah we talked about transparency and red tape and and uh i think the impact for our district was really the community eligibility provision because i think three or four of our schools were on that whole school pre-introduced lunch permission uh up until they changed the threshold and so we advocated to change the threshold back to a 40 percent count instead of a sixty percent count for the reimbursements so that the whole school can have breakfast and lunch and that removes the stigma of having to

141fill out the forms and so forth uh for those who don't like it and so it was a good conversation that ended with our invitation to have the congresswoman join us for a ribbon cutting for these new buildings knowing how interested she is in cte job and workforce development um i wanted to point out when you correspond with her office you end up on her mailing list and i learned today that she's throwing a job fair next thursday up at the county events center the fairgrounds and if it's appropriate sounds like something that we could advertise if it's appropriate given our interest in trades and so forth that we were talking about today i also ended up on the day that the superintendent of public instruction and the governor talked about masks in schools i

142got a call from tim garcia and he answered a couple of the was the questions that i had then he talked about expressing thanks for specific work that mike and the cascadia folks joan houston and others have done to arrange for the national school board association uh to visit uh including top f uh the top five officers from nsba from eight different states um i think it's a western region thing on october 7th and 8th they're going to come through henrietta lacks they're going to come through cascadia and visit the culinary flight and robotics programs there and he intends to position us as model cte programs nationally that should take get some national recognition as top in the nation approaches to career and technical education and invited two of us to join them for lunch

143on one of those two days from our board so that's worth talking about seeing how we can represent it and uh there was that and finally i uh look at my notes out for this because i don't want to get this wrong is that we talk about uh equity um we heard a little bit about critical race theory from patrons today um i'm hearing this uh two definitions come out of uh folks around here for that term right we're hearing critical race theory is um a legal analysis tool that examines power dynamics and you teach it to attorneys and it has no place in k-12 schools because you teach it to attorneys and law students and we don't teach law students in k-12 schools it's just not possible to become a curriculum at these levels

144and the other one is the use of that term to describe an effort to divide and reduce the circumstances of others i just think about our results policies and our governance culture policies and how we have continued to say long before we wrote them in that form all kids can learn all kids should have the opportunities and hopefully just kind of recognize that but i i do what i do i did a data dive i went to the ospi report card and looked at our district i looked at our exclusionary discipline and it's still easy to see a difference in race but i also looked at our graduation rates and the difference in race is closing last year and the year before it's hard to tell a difference based on rates it's like the outcome

145can no longer be predicted based on that and that's the goal um that i hope we can all agree so we started this years ago with poverty and talked about it as a culture and access to technology and we've been doing all this work all these years and it's worth making a comment we can see some results from that but i define i would like the public to hear from us that we define these things locally and that we're not queuing off of national voices when we talk about equity we're talking about the dictionary definitions of equity not coding it in some other way right when i talk about inclusion it means inclusion and not exclusion and as frustrating as it can be to hear people saying the schools are doing this and that it's

146it's really nice to hear from folks who are recognizing um that we're not and urging us not to divide our kids which i can't think of a policy where we ever would decide to do that and that in my view needs some clear communication we should be talking about it in terms of us here and we will be having that yeah how do we communicate that and what does that look like yeah i think wasn't had a seminar on it last week that i wasn't able to go to but if there's a recording there too so we can do it and just wanted to i guess be clear in public about our stance my stance on that is that we're going to do this for our kids here and include them and you know hope

147to continue closing those gaps so that we just can't predict uh based on race well the other thing too when we talk about the sex ed we've had the same sex ed program for i don't know how many years i mean a really long time and every year it's open to parents to be able to review it to make sure and it's always been age appropriate um it's actually not sex ed as much as it is health and human development so that includes things like nutrition um physical activity you know just how how to be a healthy person you know and take care of yourself and and then also things to help kids well we did pressure recently because we got rid of the vhs's yeah yeah so um that's what i got to watch

148but i think it's just important for parents to know nothing big has happened there's not been some big change in that you are always welcome to review the materials ahead of time and make a decision yes you are we open it up to parents every year it did not impact the curriculum model that we're using yeah so um it's in some ways it's much to do about nothing because nothing has changed as far as we're concerned and so it's important though for people to it's fine to ask questions and we want you to ask questions because we want accurate information out there i agree with rob on crt we don't teach it in our schools it is a theory it's not a curriculum and it's taught at college level and what we do teach is

149accurate historic information um so that people are very aware of our history and the good with that um but it isn't about dividing it's about if you don't understand your history you may be doomed to repeat yourself and we've seen that happening so we just want um our families to feel comfortable that nobody wants to pit kids against each other we we want to bring them together that's part of this whole ideas is not um creating have and have nots and you against me that's just not how we we've been and that's not how we are going to be any and so that's kind of where we are yes sir you know i beg to differ yeah so i'm gonna um bring this back to order because this is the board's time to to bring

150out information to each other and um if we have that on the agenda we'll i would be more than happy to answer questions regarding those things but trust me we've looked into it pretty seriously and we're comfortable where we are in this district with that issue um anything else wrong oh no that was uh what i came to say okay yeah i don't have any comments i have a feature gender item okay anyone else nope i don't have anything okay um next up is future agenda items and it sounds like you have an agenda item i'm waffling on this agenda item so totally want to hear what you guys think but we've been hearing a lot of misinformation about crt over many many school board meetings and i think it might be great to have

151you know someone from teaching and learning or another department come and lay out what the truth is about our curriculum and whether it contains crt or not because they've heard it from us multiple times and yet still don't believe it so what else can we do i think it's a great idea and that is something that we'll be talking about at the board work at the board retreat as far as far as public input and our parents um information so they have that yes i think it's really important that we do that because there's just a lot of stuff out there nationally and locally that yeah i mean that makes sense you know there are a lot of news articles about it there are a lot of internet articles about it and so it's understandable

152why people you know have differing information based on the source that they're getting it from um then there's a bifurcation of definition you know and sure and maybe some school in texas ohio who knows where has something on some senior curriculum and some ap class possibly i have zero idea but that has no meaning or bearing on whether we in eps do have anything on our in our curriculum we need to bring the conversation local yes local it's there's too much national um and yeah and if we have it as an agenda item then we can't have an actual open dialogue and discussion right that's what that's what i kind of want to have is that full-on let's air our views and with input from you know with knowledge given to us and to you

153know the audience by people who work here so um that's my proposal i think we agree on that yes we do any other future agenda items we'd like to add okay well i'd like to call us into recess where we'll sign documents um and then we will reconvene for a workshop on legislative update and this another superintendent's update and then we will go into an executive session to discuss a personnel issue thank you everyone for being here today