School Board Meeting - January 26, 2021

001uh good evening i'm jenny grunwalt your vice president of the school board the time is 5 39 p.m governor inslee's proclamation 2028 in response to the coca-19 outbreak temporary temporarily suspends portions of open public meeting act the opma the proclamation requires that all attendees at an open public meeting not take place in person but occur remotely including the board directors and the public our meeting this evening is conducted via zoom audio webinar at this time i'll go ahead and take roll call uh director rob perkins come here director julie bocanegra here and director uh rachel rogers and president victoria bradford will be joining us shortly um as soon as they are able to uh at this time we'll go ahead and recite the pledge of allegiance please join me i pledge allegiance to the flag

002of the united states of america and to the one nation invisible with liberty and justice for all i believe i said that incorrectly so i'm going to try that again and it's only because we were talking about it being incorrect that it was so i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay with that we'll go ahead and get started i will go ahead we need to adopt the agenda for tonight's board of directors meeting go ahead and i move that we adopt tonight's agenda as presented second okay we have a first and a second all those in favor it's i for me rob hi julie hi all right go ahead and move that

003forward the next on our agenda is our board appreciation yeah and so uh it is sport appreciation uh special recognition for board appreciation month and i've got a proclamation that i'm going to read and then i'm going to turn it over when i'm done to lori and she's going to have a video to share so i'll start whereas the mission of washington's public school system is to assure that all students achieve at high levels and possess the knowledge and skills to be responsible members of a democratic society who enjoy productive and satisfying lives and whereas washington's 295 locally elected school boards and nine elected educational service district boards are the core of the public education governance system in our state and whereas the districts and regions they lead serve more than 1 million students have

004a combined annual budget of over 15 billion dollars and deploy employ approximately 120 000 people and whereas school directors play a crucial role in promoting student learning and achievement by creating a vision establishing policies and budgets and setting clear standards of accountability of all involved and whereas school directors are directly accountable to the residents in their districts and regions serving as a vital link between members of the community and their schools and whereas school directors and educational service districts provide a passionate voice of advocacy for public schools and the welfare of school children and whereas it is appropriate to recognize school directors as outstanding volunteers and champions for public education now therefore i j ensley governor of the state of washington do hereby proclaim january 2021 as school board recognition month in washington and i

005encourage all people in our state to join me in this special observance signed this 19th 19th day of january governor jay inslee and no question the school board puts in uh tremendous amounts of time uh particularly uh in this last 10 11 months i've been faced as a board uh with things uh like the whole country has been faced with the pandemic and uh you know working through uh uncharted territory so i know i wanna just say thank you to the school board for the time you put in and the effort you put in and the thoughtfulness that you put into the job i appreciate it and lori i think i'm going to turn it over to you now awesome thank you um if you'll go ahead and turn up your um volume just a

006little bit that will be helpful helpful for what we're going to share um we'd like to thank the board of directors for your advocacy and your commitment to our student staff and the eps community our video services department and community relations worked really hard on a special message from some of our students to celebrate board appreciation month we hope you enjoy it thank you thank you thank you [Music] thank you for the chronicle for the school supplies and thank you for the internet from this school thank you for letting me come to school and see my friends and my teachers thank you for the best education thank you 2 3. [Music] thank you for continuing to help us learn and prepare us for life after high school hello evergreen school board members this is shahala

007middle school asb and we have a message for you [Music] thank you for helping students like me go baby bulldog thank you for supporting students like me thank you for keeping students learning during remote learning 2.0 high school forward my name is evelyn i'm a 6th grader at cascade middle school and i thank you for keeping students learning during remote learning thank you [Music] thank you for keeping your students learning during remote learning 2.0 thank you for supporting evergreen families thank you for keeping the schools running even in the toughest times thank you for supporting the build for the new the brand new middle school and elementaries and thank you for providing everything you provide for our schools thank you for helping with everything thank you all for helping out families and students in need

008thank you for all you do to help support students like me thank you for keeping us learning through remote 2.0 have a wonderful year guys bye thank you for all you do you support students like me [Music] hi thank you for all the hard work and time you put into these past months and for keeping students learning through these difficult times we really appreciate it thank you for the books on behalf of mountain boom we want to say thank you to your school board members we appreciate you thank you guys hi my name is devin i'm a sixth grader at cascade middle school and i just wanted to thank you guys for working very hard to keep um what's learning in 2020 and remote learning thank you for everything you've done to make this school

009year work thank you for teaching students who are in during remote learning thank you for work for your work and helping us reach our highest graduation rate in history thank you for everything that you've done during quarantine thank you for everything that you helped me learn with in school asb president and representative of evergreen high school thank you to the school board for all of your hard work we really appreciate you thank you thank you for all you do i very much appreciate you okay thank uh can you guys hear me yep so uh that was wonderful video that they put together really appreciate that and i think it it reflects the appreciation for the work that you do um you know the hours go well beyond uh probably what any of you necessarily expected

010when you first ran um i know in particular well all of you do immense amounts of work uh rob um serving as a uh legislative rep to wasda julie now a board member in wazda um just really appreciate everything that everyone does so thank you very much thank you thanks uh for the video lori and gail i'm sure gil and her team had a lot to do with that and all the people at the schools that took the time and the kids at home um this one of our i don't want to say it's one of our favorite things because we enjoy when we go to this meeting in january because all of the artwork that the kids have usually done on display in the room um so again in a virtual world where we

011can't meet because the governor's proclamation it's fun to see the students doing creative work and them getting behind this and putting that together for us it's very much appreciated so thank you yes one of the um the hardest parts now of doing these zoom meetings is missing that because that was one of our last meetings that we were able to um be present uh with all of the the signs and the appreciation and so it's we're definitely missing missing that makes it hard and i appreciate working with all of you as well we have a good team and all of you work really hard on behalf of our kids in our district grade read there's can you see me guys yes yes oh welcome [Laughter] hi oh my gosh i've had nothing but issues here

012we are live back oh man this is frustrating um okay rob were you gonna comment i i was uh i like to express appreciation in return for this and i just appreciate all the people around us who have extended grace and patience and also ironically and believe it or not those who have had the uh um the willingness to share what's frustrating and and uh share the difficulty of a difficult year it helps us to understand and prioritize things when people give us ex give us what we need in order to make good decisions and i think we've gotten that in spades uh over the last 10 months 12 months um and i'm grateful for the trust that uh that folks have had in order to share some of this difficult stuff with us this

013is hard this year for everybody and um i can't go away without acknowledging that each time thank you absolutely agree thank you great uh so welcome rachel and victoria we just watched the um school board appreciation video i actually saw it i just didn't okay i couldn't get my voice or my picture out there um it appears that when we were james having some of our tech issues the audience could not hear the sound um we will go ahead and offer that link on the website tomorrow along with the recording of on this evening's meeting okay perfect for that for those that couldn't hear because it's very special and super cute wonderful thank you very much laurie all right i actually at this time we'll turn the meeting over to victoria um and let victoria

014and rachel comment if they would like i just i thankfully was able to watch it and heard most of it um and i was just thought it was so sweet and so appreciated to um have you see the kids and and see the different um areas where they are and where they're talking to us from um these challenging times and i i think it's a good time to to share that you know being a school board member and being elected to this service is really an honor and we take this job very seriously and put our hearts and souls into it because we always want what's best for our kids and our staff and our community and i think that um it's important that people understand that that i feel good that we're on i'm

015not joined with other members of this board who have no agendas they don't have special interests they're just really about kids and it's been a pleasure working with everybody rachel hi guys i popped in at the very towards the end the last um 30 seconds or so of the video what i saw of it was so cute and special i love seeing all the kids faces and hearing from them and you know i feel weird that they're thanking us because i feel like i want to thank them for letting me represent you know them and help them so i just i'm really glad to be a part of the school board and work with all of you guys and everyone in the school district that i've come to interact with and all of our students

016and parents and our community members it's just i i'm really grateful to be a part of it and just to be a part of evergreen so yeah that's nice um just so i know where we are did we do the pledge of allegiance yes okay good kind of it didn't hurt it was fine we're up to the consent agenda for the board okay yeah to make sure that all the things that are usually said get said okay so we've adopted i moved to approve the board or we already did the agenda sorry okay we did special recognition obviously okay so we have the board consent agenda and jenny are you making a motion to accept that yes sorry for interrupting you vic my computer is like in and out too so i'm catching pieces and

017not pieces so yes director grunwalt moves to approve the board's consent agenda thank you uh do i hear a second a second thanks julie okay um next up we have a superintendent's consent agenda do i have a motion for approval of the consent agenda the move adoption of the superintendent's consent agenda as presented thank you seconds thank you jenny um let's see let's take a vote um i'm so thrown off um rob sorry just uh vic did we vote on the i know i just it just dawned on me yes we need to vote on the on the board consent agenda first yeah can we combine the two you can ask unanimous consent for that yeah um is everybody in agreement that we should vote for the two or would you like them separated i'm

018individually so yeah so we need to vote individual issues all right that's fine okay so rob on let's finish the one we were just on for the superintendent we'll go back to the other one okay um i'm i for the superintendent's consent agenda ginny hi julie hi rachel hi and i'm an eye for the superintendent's consent agenda thank you okay let's loop back to the um board consent agenda it's been moved in second in and we'll vote now um julie hi rachel hi jimmy hi rob hi and i'm also an i okay thanks you guys i think i'm back on track here next up we have the superintendence report uh mr merlino yes yes so i've got a few things uh the first thing i'll start with is um that we did welcome back second

019and third graders uh this week and uh scott zoomed with our principals this afternoon and the uh kind of the early information is that things you know i mean everything has uh bumps and difficulties but really it's gone well this week and that's uh we're very thankful for that um absolutely so basically at this point time we have k through three our k through three uh in on site and you know if we take a roughly 75 percent of the kids uh thereabouts choosing the on-site versus remote we're getting to the point where just in elementary we're bringing in a little over 4 000 kids which is a big thing for us um in the you know i think one of the earlier meetings we had before christmas we talked about we had about 2

020000 kids we were serving um i think with expansion of elementary with what we're doing with students with ieps with the set team expansions with some of the athletic things that we have supporting our kids um i think we're pushing a number probably well over six seven thousand kids at this point which is a very a positive thing uh of course following all the protocols as we've as we've been doing all along today the department of health clark county department health put out updated metrics for clark county i think we're at a little over 400 cases per 100 000 right now so we're still over the 350 uh but the trend is down and uh we're thankful for that i know that the cases are getting into the hundred even less than 100 uh on

021a daily basis which really gets us back into that area where um the three we should be in the moderate i think next week we have a good chance of potentially being in the moderate um we you know continue to watch uh jay works with his staff the nurses the building principles the covet you know the everybody's working with this but we're we continue to see as we follow the protocols that there are folks that occasionally have positive um covet tests but they're bringing that's external that's not happening in our schools so you know that we have talked about expanding into fourth and fifth grade next week we're still on track to do that so we would see we we should we we will see fourth and fifth grade moving forward next week and um

022we're planning on middle school for mid-february with continued downward trend of the cases so um honestly talked a lot about how grateful we are for the folks that work in our system you see some of the responses we get i think people are happy to have their kids back in school um i got an email from uh from an individual who's just happy to be able to drop his second grade daughter off at school today so really appreciative of the schools and all the work that's gone into this um and you know tomorrow's an on-demand day uh we'll be back at it thursday and friday and just really excited to see the kids getting back in school um one of the things that we've been i've talked a lot about is this vaccination issue uh

023we've been working with the clark county department of health they brought in some fema uh specialists to kind of help with the logistics of of creating that um we've been talking with superintendents locally i think without throughout the county all superintendents have committed whatever staff we have available to help with the participation of vaccinations we've we've offered our facilities the meeting this week talked about right now the issue is with supply uh i think that we've got things in place now in the county to try to vaccinate folks rapidly we're in i think the 1a category governor inslee which is folks over 65 we need to get about 50 of those folks vaccinated before we can move to the schools um but all districts have have pledged full support to make this happen asap as

024soon as we get into the next phase for our schools uh and we'll continue to work with uh dr melnick on that and i'll continue to share information on that um one of the things i also want to share is uh you know the return also is returning athletics to uh school our local ads our coaches have been working uh very hard to try to find a path for athletics to move forward the worry first is the uh start date for fall sports uh and you have to have the golf four you're going to be in phase two to be able to participate or you've got to be in a low risk sport that's outdoors so what um one of the things within the rules of the wiaa is typically once you start a season

025if you aren't able to actually um move forward in the season uh that you you then can't even participate in practices so uh our region has made the decision that we will start our seasons next week uh i think we've got tennis out uh that can start the games we've got cross country that will be able to start their meet matches or meets or whatever whatever they're called and then boys golf as well but we're going to go ahead and start the seasons [Music] next week with the idea that we're going to fully compete in all of those it may just be once we get to the phase two that we can actually do that but this way we're able to continue to meet with the kids in the small groups and the cohorts and

026give them opportunities to continue practicing if we didn't move the season forward we would be out of season and then things would have to shut down so we worked with local superintendents with the ads the schools are very excited to have that opportunity to start that next week um so that's another positive i really think uh you're going to see some good response from our people so it could be that if if a sport a fall sport can't start right away we wait until we get to the point where we're in phase two or whatever point in time if the governor were to change phases that we could then participate so the season could go longer than the six weeks they may overlap a little because we just want to give kids opportunities any way

027that we can um i want to also mention um bond work uh you know continues to move forward we've got marion under construction fully under construction ellsworth fully under construction um the the legacy hauling swords transitions campus mountain view y east uh on the 11th we're going to meet as a a board and workshop for a school improvement plan meeting but we're also going to add on to the agenda conversation around the bond one of the very fortunate things has been that we are ahead of schedule in terms of timing of the projects that we committed in the bond in 2018 and we're also under budget on those the fact that we're under budget gives us an opportunity to kind of look at some additional projects we might be able to undertake so on that

028meeting on the 11th we'll have more conversation about that and go into depth about around some of the options that we might have which we wouldn't have if it weren't for the fact um honestly that the you know the leadership of of sue in in facilities uh working with our internal staff rnc uh construction management but then honestly all these schools have principles programs have program managers that work on all of these projects and they've taken obviously a ton of time for sue and her staff but they take a ton of time for all the people that work in our system also who are also doing their jobs at the same time they're trying to do all of these other things so i just really want to say thank you to the the uh folks

029that um that have put so much into making these projects work so well i'm also really excited that uh students beyond kindergarten are in emerald and in image and in sifton um it's it's just really tremendous to see that and i've said it many times when we come back in the fall and uh we will come back i'm sure in a much different situation in the fall and all of our uh buildings are up and ready to go and our our new facilities um i've driven around that the facility i mean my older kids uh grew up in this district and the facilities that the kids that are coming to our schools now because of this 2018 bond that they will be able to access the fields that they have the community um honestly i

030don't i think you'll be hard-pressed to find anything better anywhere in the area in anywhere outside of clark county so i'm really happy about that um i also want to mention um i mentioned hollingsworth academy i saw a tweet today from governor inslee who was had tweeted a picture of dorothy hollingsworth after having just received her vaccine for kovid and he mentioned uh that her family had shared that picture and he wanted to share that you should get vaccinated when you can and and here's a hundred year old dorothy hollingsworth i don't know that he was aware that uh we have renamed 49th street academy to dorothy hollingsworth academy and that we will be opening that school in the fall and so i tweeted back to him and invited him to come to help us

031open that school in the fall and we have a former evergreen board member skyler haas that rob uh reminded me of who's very connected to governor inslee uh so you know i i you know i probably read more of his tweets than he reads of mine but i'm hoping somehow governor rinsley will get this news that we've invited him to participate in the fall in hollingsworth academy because if she's important enough to um be mentioned uh uh in a tweet from the the governor i think i think it's also she's important enough to be uh he could come visit the school when we open it in the fall and i mentioned that the school board had named it hollinsworth academy with recommendations from students at the academy so very hopeful that he will take us

032up on that uh and then the last thing i want to just mention is that we uh in our schools administered the psat to about students today and uh that's a that's a huge step uh we're planning i think doing the sat in our schools within the next month um but we start to do some of these things we're bringing kids back starting to run some of these things that are the more typical things and it's important for our kids to have opportunities to get into the national merit scholarship and some of the other programs scholarship programs available to them through that so uh just real thankful that uh i'm real thankful that in january we're bringing more kids back and i'm thankful for our our staff our teachers stepping up and doing the work

033and all those people that have done the work for the last you know like i've said many times most of us never went home last march and have been working and trying to come up with ideas and and plans and and paths back for our students and i'm thankful uh that we're starting to see some of the the fruits of that and uh appreciate all of the folks adhering to the to the uh protocols as well the safety protocol so with that i'll stop i was going to say if um dorothy hollinsworth had the vaccine then maybe for sure she'll want to attend our grand opening too i'm pretty sure that she's been invited uh and it's just a matter of her transport and uh amber i know knows the family uh quite well and

034so uh if that can happen that will happen i'm sure that's really a cool connection that was made it was a it was a great name recommended for the school it's a great connection with the family and um and now uh governor to find that governor inslee is a big fan that's a significant thing too so i know he was here before when we reopened crestline and he's been here for a number of different things so i'm sure i'm sure he'd be happy to come down for that he probably didn't have anything else to do vic i think you're talking but you're muted still muted oh there you are so mike didn't hear me say that i also invited the governor be to come to hollingsworth opening because because i saw the tweet so he

035should be coming julie can do it too she's on twitter anybody's on twitter can can invite the governor okay let's see if i can get through the rest of this meeting without falling apart um so now we have matters reserved for board action um tonight um the item on our agenda is the evergreen public school calendar this is the second reading and adoption um i want to turn things over to mike merlino again yeah i think that we uh i think talked about this in workshop we've had a first reading i don't know if janae has heard any other um uh questions about it but this is the calendar that we work through with uh eea pse and then we've brought it forward uh a few times and if i'll let janae speak if anything

036has come up in the last week couple weeks thanks mike i haven't heard from anybody uh regarding the calendar since the first reading i would recommend the board um approve and move it to through the second reading and are you in agreement to that mike yes okay good i'm on mute too okay good um so i will now at this time um i will call for any comments by the audience has anybody raised their hand lori i see someone not at this time for that okay all right so um at this time i'd like to call for a motion i'd like to move that we adopt the uh calendar for the 2021-2022 school year as it's been presented in our second reading second thank you that was that julie yes okay thanks i can't see

037all of you because i had to go to my phone um to do the meeting because i couldn't get it on the computer tonight okay great so um now i can open it up for any comments by the board i don't have any comments i think like we said earlier uh it was discussed in workshop and then the first reading um every that we haven't received any feedback so i would recommend that we move forward with it there's no big changes from this last school year so or the one we're in so no concerns no concerns either my thanks to the people who did the work to build this i know it has to happen every year and that there's always some discussions that have to go on thank you for taking the time and

038setting up what looks like a good solid school year okay hopefully a normal school year yeah that's not why we yeah we can keep the good parts of this year and and go back to all the good parts of the previous years that would be the best okay so we'll now take a boat um rob aye jenny hi rachel i julie hi and i'm also an i all right so we have a school calendar all rare and to go next time i would like to or next i'd like to bring up um the good news report and do we have gail here with us tonight to share with us all the good news you do here i am first of all i also wanted to let you know um that the board appreciation video has

039been posted on facebook and instagram as well so people will be able to view that so it's actually already up i was just checking so if folks want to pop over they'll get to see it and hear it as well but the good news as we start scrolling down um the first story is one of one of our faith-based partners uh evergreen bible church and uh in particular one of their parishioners ralph kepner he's a retired los angeles police department um detective he volunteered and built some wonderful student desks from marion elementary and delivered them and then they got them out to the students well there was a continued demand for them and ralph said hey i'll build another round but unfortunately um ralph encountered some health issues um he's getting better now but he

040knew that it was a priority and he promised that these deaths were coming out so we were able to secure some funding from the foundation for supplies and some of the other parishioners stepped up to build additional desks and actually that effort is being led by one of our retired principals gary tischner who retired after a number of years at why east middle school so evergreen bible church and gary are continuing to build additional desks and ralph and synesie's abel will be back there doing that as well so the next story rob knows about he was on site visiting as we were working with the leadership students and skanska construction our contractors at mountain view high school they approached us and said you know we have this long expansive fence on the west side and

041we really want to remind our contractors and there's a number of them on any given day there can be 80 to 100 contractors on site this is really they're working on something that students will be in and it really is not just another building it really is something that's very special to this community so um they brought and and we assisted in buying sheets of plywood and and weatherproof paint and we sat some students at mountain view loose and so they painted 30 different murals and they are installed along that west side of the fence now as rebel attests it's not easy to get to that west side of their fence and it's not meant right now for public viewing at some point we we do hope that we can remove those as as the

042construction finishes and and use them and display them other places but the scan stem and their contractors and subcontractors are very appreciative of the messages and the students are very appreciative for the work that the contractors are doing especially since as rob will attest again it was pouring rain muddy yucky out there and so um the murals really brighten up that side of the construction site lovely story in kgw about the efforts as well so as you know last week we celebrated martin luther king j and we are beginning black history month right now and one of the things that our our students have always done and and worked um very proactively on is staging and putting together wonderful assemblies to honor dr king as well as black history month and we were delighted that

043even um though they were mostly remote they put together some beautiful tributes some um touching words and music and so we featured two of those here um it's celebrating martin luther king so um if you scroll down just a little bit yeah so there's bridge creek and then union high school um as well and as we continue scrolling down one of the things as we were all involved in helping students in the community name emerald elementary we remember that process and how to and and actually very passionate the students were about all of the the names that had come forward in their decision-making process and they presented three names to the board and um you asked for their opinion and they said they wanted emerald well i'll have to tell you during that process one

044of the other things that they were really really excited and wanted to jump right to is what kind of mascot they were going to have so they ran another lively contest and i'm pleased to report that the new mascot of emerald elementary is the otter and um darcy mitchelson the principal there and her staff put together a really festive unveiling and passed out otter pops um to the students as they came by and so you'll see some of the photos there and we look forward to seeing the otter t-shirts that we know will be soon coming out and some of the other decorations so again um emerald otters so um we also are honored to see one of our student musicians who has been was selected to sing as part of the us air force

045band over the holidays and if you click on the link um in a little bit when when the meeting is over you'll get to hear logan goodwin singing as part of that presentation as well so as you know the last five years we've participated in a greater community identity clark county process called live here land here learn here and that organization asks all of the school districts and educational facilities or educational groups in the community to put forth employees and then volunteers in the school system that have really gone above and beyond and so we this year nominated um two of our folks jennifer misfelt and hussein ad hussain carvarry for their roles in ensuring our students didn't miss even you know one meal during our shutdown in march and then as we've gone through

046the rest of the 2019-2020 school year and then into this year over summer so our all of our students have had access to breakfast and lunch and can even pick up multiple meals if they needed and so they were our staff honorees we also had our volunteer honoree many of you know henry scheck who is with zoom info his company has taken on our fcrs these over the last several years and just brought in a number of donations as well as monetary support so there's a video that showcases um jen hossein and henry as well as all of the folks in southwest washington that really support all of our students and their endeavors so that video is attached as well and then at the end we just um have started a feature on mondays on

047our social media masked up mondays and really it's also a way to honor all of those folks um who are out working in our buildings and ensuring that things continue to run and they're doing it um safely and social distancing and continuing to support not only the maintenance of our buildings or the operations of our buildings but the students and staff as well so just a couple highlights of photos there and that is your good news for this month good good news thank you gail you're welcome okay well next up we are going to have a presentation for mike merlino on the budget yeah okay i'll take it away um i am going to uh you know typically what we will do in these in past years this show our enrollment show our staffing how

048our staffing matches uh what the enrollment's driving out this year has been a different year because our enrollment has been impacted so significantly by um the covid and much of the work has been around some of the reductions that we've had to make and then estimates of how we were going to you know how might we look at the end of the year we've worked with the state legislative folks about the two main areas that were impacted enrollment uh and then also our transportation funding our transportation funding is is based upon number of students transported on our buses to schools today uh yvonne submitted the report for the winter report we reported that we've transported a little less than 1500 kids in january of this year in the fall count we had about 950 or

049some somewhere there about so we had an increase of about 500 but in a typical year we would be transporting about 21 000 students on that form so you can uh the formula is not honestly it's not easy for anybody to understand but what is easy to understand is if you're if you're transporting 1500 students versus 21 000 it's going to generate a lot lower dollar amount and there are a lot of fixed costs within that program so what we've been really looking at this year is working with the olympia folks on um how are we going to get to the point where there may be some hold harmless funds for us and then over christmas we ended up with the esser from the federal government the second stimulus uh program which now that is

050really where we're working and spending a lot of time is trying to work with the legislature and provide information for how they're planning on distributing those funds so um what i would say is this year uh without um money like bailout money from esser and out of bailout's probably not the right term but that effectively is what it is uh without funds from the federal government or the state government we could um have potentially been looking at a decrease in fund balance of somewhere around the 10 million 910 million dollar amount i believe we're going to receive those funds from the federal government but we're still working with the legislature on that i know rob's very involved with the conversations legislatively around that as well but i think that there is a plan around having

051some federal money a little bit of state money that's not only for these impacts of enrollment impacts overt impacts but also looking at how we can uh spend dollars on uh the learning loss that that has occurred uh over the course of the last year and had programs this summer this spring and even into next year to try to help with that so we we're still learning about that it's not final um we'll certainly talk a lot about that with the board here in the upcoming weeks um the second thing i would mention is this is also the time of year we start building our budget for 21.22 um it never ends and you know the the largest driver of our budget is the number of students that were expecting for next year so one

052of the things that will be quite interesting to see our february first enrollment next week is whether or not returning some of our students to school is going to start to take up some of that enrollment um we will we'll have to see how that all plays out over the course of the spring but ultimately we'll have to settle on a budget number for enrollment for next year and we'll have to have a lot of conversation around that as well because being too conservative on that and looking at this year as a uh an indicator of what's to come i think would mean uh it i mean i think we're going to have to deal with some budget cuts regardless but um the enrollment is going to be a key part of that conversation uh

053one of the other things that we need to have happen from the legislature is the recognition that there are formulas that we receive funds for from that are based upon things like the free and reduced price rate not our percentage of students that are free and reduced or how many students are there in the district the lev equalization formula that we receive funding from is dependent on how many students and in a one year blip where the enrollment is quite a bit lower than it typically would have been that will impact us uh there are districts that are affected in terms of how many levy dollars they can collect our district isn't one of them uh we're more contingent upon the rate than we are the number of students we have but level equalization dovetails

054with the levy collection so we'll be talking with the legislature about that um and then the lap distribution uh formula is based uh a lot on the free and reduced percent in the district and we have um because of the fact that for the last almost the last year um all meals have been free for everyone there hasn't been the incentive or there hasn't been the the need necessarily to fill out these applications and so our i think across the state you'll see free and reduced percentages potentially reduced um and that would impact funding so that's something else that we'll be working with the legislature on our enrollment primarily has been impacted at elementary our middle school and our high school haven't significantly been impacted um but these will be conversations that we'll be having

055here in the next month or so so i would say those are the main things that we're working on the current year esser and then already thinking about next year's budget i'm happy to answer any questions if anyone has any okay thanks mike do you have a question rob i think most of what i have to say can come into the legislative update when we go to workshop but uh um yeah i've been working and yeah most of it's legislative i'm sorry vic uh that's okay but i had a sentence and then it didn't come out okay all right thanks so you can tell us what you were thinking about when we get in the ledge conversation yeah it's probably more appropriate for that time okay thank you can i ask a quick question sure

056so um on staffing have all have all the employees and maybe i don't know if this falls in with budget but i guess it does because we talk about you know there's um just i i guess our overall staffing picture but i have all the employees that were furloughed at the beginning of the year have they all been brought back at this point yes so what we had done was um when we had the plan to bring start bringing kids back uh the kindergarten first grade and then second and third grade we brought all of our classified staff back the week before um on the friday before for training so that they would be able to go through the training protocols also and and be um available the following week so our secretaries that had

057been furloughed and were kind of moved around are all back in their buildings i think one of the issues that we're facing and i think one of the main issues that uh some of the elementary schools are facing is you know you know we we furloughed a lot of people and in the spring we we froze hiring which allowed us to when we started in the fall we moved a number of our staff around once we went back to where we are now a lot of that staff got moved back into their positions which left some open a lot of open positions and so we're going through that hiring process and hiring folks and i know that that's taking a lot of time and and it's just another one of the things many things that

058we have to do um but all of the positions have been brought back whether they're in elementary or middle school or high school as we're starting to bring kids back with the expansion of the student engagement team students with the expansion of the students on ieps um the fact that middle school uh was the next to go and you know so yeah we did we did bring folks back yeah i saw the hiring post and so i just wanted to make sure that that we did everybody back in place which i thought was the case i just wanted to make sure yeah i think that's most of that is the fallout from um i i would guess the the hiring freeze where we had to move people around and then i think honestly there's probably

059people that were furloughed that maybe have had found other opportunities at the same time so uh there is a lot of work going into hiring there's no question about that i did want to ask how the uh sorry julie i did want to ask uh actually how the uh i guess the bus driver situation is going uh they're uh they're still operating fewer routes or or are we able to i think the thing is is that that when we went back to uh bringing students back on on the i guess the 19th um we had bid routes in the fall and so we went with those routes starting the 19th what what's happened though is um field trips let's say extracurricular for uh activities for concerts and things like these a lot of the extra

060trips that they would typically have aren't occurring uh and therefore their average hours are impacted by that and so and then additionally you know we operate school monday tuesday thursday friday we have school on wednesday so there's that impact as well many of the positions do work wednesdays but not all of our positions work wednesdays so i do believe that there's frustration around the fact that there's less hours available for our drivers than what has been typical in the past and honestly well and we're still up against the constitutional prohibition about i guess paying for work not done i i don't know a better way to put that but there's there's that limitation right there i think that there are any number of limitations you know with the um the the i think the difficult

061thing is in the spring when everybody got sent home um the state continued to pay and fund everything at its full capacity and that's right and so there were there were folks getting paid that weren't that weren't uh doing the jobs that they had typically done um and so i'm sure there's confusion around that but then the fact that the fund you know the funding everything has has been impacted um the folks uh yeah say it's just a difficult situation there's any question and that's why people need to try to follow the protocols as much as they can so that as soon as we possibly can we can get back to some semblance of normalcy um likely that isn't going to be until the fall but it's it's been a very difficult a very difficult

062time for folks there's no question about that yeah thanks mike thank you okay next up is board comments does anyone have anything to talk about um we've hardly had any comments about things because we're used to being out in the public and out with people and the kids and schools so rob what do you what have you been up to i was trying to look over my calendar and see if there was something there most of the work that i've been doing um was with wazda's legislative committee and so a lot of that is going to go off to the workshop and save time here i did get a chance to testify on one of the bills and uh ended up going first in remote testimony and so the comment for this meeting is how

063interesting it would be to see some of the asb leaders from the high schools if they have an interest in in interfacing with the with a government official or testifying before a committee on on a cause that they believe in i can help arrange a zoom meeting where they get a chance to talk directly to senator house committees on education there's also a wazda program involving students exactly to that end with the strategic advocacy people to there and so if there are student in students interested in participating at that level let's identify them and if i learn their names i can pass that along to logan andres at wazda and he can involve them in advocacy on those causes in the testimony that i gave it was about the graduation requirements emergency bill that would

064continue the authority of the state board of education to give districts flexibility in times like this and i was able to say to recognize i think that living through a pandemic is social emotional learning and the way that we adults respond and treat each other during the pandemic is inevitably social emotional teaching um and they did that in terms of you know trying to persuade them to pass the bill out of the committee which they've done it's on the floor of the house for a vote when they get to that part but it's scheduled and i really appreciate the opportunity to speak for evergreen on that issue and makes me happy to see that and in the public meeting the other bill that i'm really excited about with respect to education is the expansion of

065pathways to include a portfolio option and some options to substitute experience in a pathway for elective credits in case there's no high school credit attached to something this new bill would let us attach a graduation to that experience and and issue the student a waiver because they were spending time getting ready for their lives um so i'm pretty excited about some of the ideas that are coming in to a busy and disoriented legislature and hoped to continue that work i'd uh and that was about it except that i accepted an appointment at the county level to the county uh let me get the name of this right it's the caab um it's a melanie green is on this committee as uh as a committee member it's uh killing me inside that i'm blanking on the

066name of the committee but there will be some work by monthly that appears to dovetail very nicely with our equity work and uh with our poverty work and so i'm looking forward to bringing our district's uh voice into that county conversation there's already a couple friends of mine on the committee and i'm just happy to be a part of that that's great that's what i did thanks rob anybody else um i finally was able to do my breakfast with the board the sports development class at evergreen high school took a couple of times as i had some technical issues so i understand what virtual learning was all about but was able to participate with them yesterday um i had my wazda board member orientation a couple of weeks ago and we've already had a couple

067of board meetings and one this coming friday good the community action advisory board oh found it thanks rob thank you for stepping up to do that i got their letter as well and i i just did not have room on my plate i really do appreciate you taking that on um rachel or jenny anything you want to add to the conversation nope i don't have anything except for our we had our essay our sip meetings last week our student improvement plan so it was good to sit down with the principals in north county and go over kind of how things have been going um but it was really good to meet with them because they were the group that we had to skip over last year because of covid um everything was shut down and

068we missed meeting with them so getting presentations from them was great so that's really all that has been going on we have our district our equity meeting tomorrow and that's all i got thanks ginny anything else okay yes we have that meeting tomorrow morning i'm very excited to hear the latest um on the our equity projects okay um next up we have future agenda items is there are there any agenda items that anyone would like to suggest um i would like to if we possible to uh discuss adding um the topic of doing like the personality tests quizzes for the entire uh cabinet team in this the board to kind of learn how everybody is we've had some moving parts we're all kind of away from each other and i just we've had some new

069people join the team and i just think that it would be good for all of us to have a discussion on that if we can maybe add that to one of our board workshops coming up soon and maybe do some research and discuss let's talk about the better ones the berkman style not necessarily berkman but um well you know we've had actually at some of our conferences we've had people from gallup um on the strength finders the clifton strength finders report um or actually give presentations and i've gone to a couple of them and i think that you know that's a good one too there's also there's other ones as well so i just i would like to um reserve or see if we can put that on our workshop as a conversation item how's

070everybody else feel about that i would be in favor for that yeah my last experience with one of those was the berkman and it was revelatory it really helped the team that we built uh to accomplish some great things well and we used to have a lot of um not a lot but more representation on the team from like lcc which had taken the berkman and can really kind of you know knows exactly what that's from so i just think that it would be a good opportunity for us just to kind of learn how we all interact and and especially since we've been apart for so long yeah and i'm not married i'm not actually you're not married i'm not married to the berkman as an idea no i'm yeah i'm okay uh i'd like

071for these flat meetings to come to an end someday yeah well i think i think it's uh you know sounds like a fine idea um like you said we've had a lot of changes but yet we haven't been to really together and so i think it's important as we're embarking on such a big effort on our equity work but also a strategic planning process that we'll all be working on um so i'll see if we can't get that on the next workshop agenda and um anybody well especially as we start to you know embrace some of the tough topics as we start going through equity stuff and i just think that it would it's kind of good where everybody's if we know you know it's not a mystery so um i'd like anybody out there

072um cabinet mike the board to if they have any comments or recommendations for models that people think are good to please come ready to talk about them at the next board workshop rachel are you okay with with all this yeah i think it's a great idea okay all right well we'll move that forward and get it on our workshop agenda then and we'll go from there sorry mike were you gonna say something no okay i don't get to i don't see all of you guys at the same time on my little phone so i'm sorry anybody needs to talk just holler i uh this might dovetail with the strategic planning but i do want us to uh to draw a focus as the in-person stuff ramps up and uh we we start to let the

073i guess the past go into the past uh that we don't let go of whatever might have been good out of this experience um and that we uh that we take a serious look at the disruption of the pandemic to operations and to teaching and learning and also talk about how what what failed in spite of our best efforts what failed us in spite of that um and what could have been different sort of as as a i'm having another hard time getting i guess all the words put together for this but the idea is that we that we look at this last year as a disruptive experience that that surfaced uh problems that we might have been uh coping with in different ways as a system um and that we fold that into the

074strategic plan is that okay we noticed that this was a a problem or that was a problem and this was a great success in the disruption so that we're keeping what's good um and reforming what we learned was a problem uh does that make sense vic yeah i think that's great yeah well i was just going to say that uh you know we've been talking for a while about the what are the things that have worked you know what are the things we don't want to lose and i know that our uh teaching learning team is already started working and creating the documents and documenting these things because a lot of what's worked has been you know there have been students that have been successful in a remote environment and so do you create a

075remote environment for kids in our schools potentially next year or will there still be the opportunity because this is legislatively driven the fact that we're doing what we're doing would never have been uh we would never be able to do this before it would have all been alternative learning uh enrollment which is a whole different set of requirements but i think there have been successes so basically um uh brian shared a document with me today where there's gonna be a meeting tomorrow the teaching learning folks starting to put together you know creating these google docs of what are the things that have been successful so that we can start trying to get ahead of them you guess i guess you were talking also about what are the things that what are the things that we've

076learned where the gaps uh and what can we do differently as we move forward for students so it's kind of both sides of it i think is what you're saying rob it's it's that but also figuring out for for those who are really successful in the remote learning um why because if you can duplic if they have to come to school because the legislature didn't change and attendance is still mandatory seat time hours things uh maybe there's a part of the school environment that we could be modifying for kids so that they still can have the social experience we know is developmentally appropriate but also have those safe spaces where they can um engage in and take the academic risks that i i'm certain because i know who is in charge of these kinds of

077things brian and julie and everybody else uh they're paying attention to that and we just need to be able to sort of trumpet what's good and how we're gonna how we're going to keep an eye on the progress of those kids and make sure that they come to graduation with the sense of accomplishment you know so that's that's sort of a you know pie in the sky kind of dream is that the way we pay attention to this is more than just an operational thing it's it's also a social and emotional thing i think it also we should take a look at the um the change in in abilities and um i'm losing the words now too tired um of our staff our teachers because i've been hearing some really awesome stories about teachers who

078before weren't really tech types or didn't really like using technology that much who have now learned so much from through this experience that now they feel more empowered to be even more creative and and do cool things in their classrooms as a result of the technology so maybe kind of a getting a pulse of where are we now with the level of experience with our teachers versus what you know where we were before um could be interesting just to see any other professional development opportunities that we might need to to make so just a thought yeah technology is the tool it's how we build the connections and use the tools that yep uh we're gonna make us bring people to graduation with the goals that we want for them okay anything else okay um next

079up we have citizen comments um this is the time for citizens who wish to speak to the board um about anything that's not already on the agenda is not personnel in nature and um for and they have three minutes to um talk to us i also would like to be very clear about our decorum in in this situation um we had a pretty rough meeting the last the last meeting and i just want to remind people that i wouldn't want to see anybody do anything that we wouldn't want our kids to do we want to be you know respectful to people and don't threaten and be negative and it's okay to tell us your concerns because we want to hear them but it's not okay to be rude and and unruly so anyway that being

080said um i know we have several people that have signed up tonight do we have um catherine on the line here lori um we're working on that she has an outdated version of um jim so uh austin's working on promoting her to a webinar webinar yeah she she put her hand up right away and that put her to the top of the list that's real helpful yeah she's on catherine are you there i'm there hi everyone perfect all right um well nice to meet everyone um and thank you for letting me um share a little bit this evening um my name is catherine cetusca i am an ecsc preschool um teacher's a special ed preschool at crestline um and i'm actually here first off to say that i feel like as a new evergreen employee

081it's my first year with the district i've been teaching for the last um six years in oregon um i've actually been really encouraged by the board's decisions and the district decisions thus far especially as it relates to really keeping students top of mind and um like when i looked at your boards like beliefs and commitments like those five beliefs all start with like we believe students dot dot dot and i just i just wanted to start by saying like i feel like that's all super congruent with the decisions that have been made and um i've been teaching in person with kids since october um so that's been my world and um i am a believer that that's been really effective for the kiddos that i teach um so that being said uh the issue i

082just wanted to speak kind of specifically to was um that we received news that in labor management last week um our union president um and the district had a conversation about staff workplace flexibility on non-student days it's like wednesdays for example and that um what's been communicated to our licensed union members is that the district will not be providing any level of workplace flexibility on non-student days um so i guess where i just i'd i'd like the board to consider um just a perspective as a new employee specifically um that you know i it makes me just wonder like why something that feels pretty like costless and really low stakes because it has no impact on students and families since it's a non-student you know it contact day um that why why the board wouldn't

083and the district wouldn't jump on an opportunity to um really try and meet that one sort of core belief and commitment that i did see on your beliefs and commitments which was retaining your high quality staff and um i know that you know messages and well wishes can be sent out but i can't think of a better way to honor what uh really hectic and um very obviously unprecedented year this has been for teachers and students and families alike um then just kind of extending that hand of trust of like we know this is not gonna be a forever thing but we honor that having some flexibility on that non-student day so that you can work from home while your kids are also doing your school work or you can continue to be a child

084care you know support person for your neighbor that you've been in community with since um the pandemic began as being you know that trusted adult next door um and any you know all the reasons why just like logistically financially and just like social emotionally this seems like such a such an obvious like yes we can grant that to our staff because we trust and respect them as professionals um so that's just what i'd like the board to consider when it comes to giving us some workplace flexibility on those non-student days um i set a timer for myself so i wouldn't go over three minutes so i'm not sure where i'm out on time um but uh kind of also just one final ask would be you know thinking about if if you were an employee

085and being given that directive that just has no impact on students our admin don't anticipate any required in-person large group style meetings that can't be done on zoom like you know just if you heard someone telling you that at your job wouldn't that make you feel like your district doesn't or you know your employers don't care that much about retaining you respecting you and seeing you as a professional who can um you know have some discretion and some flexibility with where your physical body is on a non-student day so that's all i'd like to share and i appreciate the opportunity to address everyone and thank you for making all the decisions you've made thus far i know they're difficult and not easy so um thank you for your time thank you catherine we appreciate you

086coming and visiting with us today okay um do we have julie on the line we've unmuted or julie are you there i think she's just warming up the connection can you hear me hi can you hear me yes great but you can't see me no no that's okay as long as you can hear me i guess that's okay i don't know why my camera's not turning on here should i go ahead yes okay thanks for being patient i am a learning support teacher this is my fifth year in the district um and i think catherine did a really lovely job talking about one of the issues that i'm going to talk about so as a teacher if my students don't understand something i don't blame them for not understanding it that's on me right and

087i feel like the same would be true for you there are decisions that you've made this year that we as teachers just don't understand and at times they're um our safety and that really needs to be number one at this point um i've been in the building since september 25th with students and students have been taking their masks off and eating since then and when asked if we're not eating in restaurants in clark county at the time but we are able to eat in buildings the district said that's just what we're doing it's safe in addition when and you guys have talked about this already tonight when the cdc recommends that employers be able to employees be able to work from home whenever possible and at times like on a wednesday we are able to

088work from home you are saying that our mou states that we need to come in that's not really an answer and for everybody's safety the less people in the building the better i'm currently working with 12 different classrooms each day and so i'm exposed to about 120 different students and so for me there really has been no no oversight so mike tonight when you said that you talked with this the principals about how second and third grade went no one has come into any of the classrooms i've been in once to see how the safety protocols are going and whether we're following them so if you're just saying that we are but nobody's coming out to see them that's a problem and i really do expect that the district including you are taking care of

089me in some ways and by doing that that would be coming in to see what's actually happening in our classrooms and whether safety protocols are actually happening you're letting parents know that they are but nobody's coming in to actually see them so i'm not understanding some of the decisions that you made and that you're making in this moment and the feelings that i have when i get worried about going to work every day are feelings that will never go away from me so i appreciate that catherine feels great about being in the buildings i feel pretty worried about being in the buildings right now and i really feel like there's no oversight and nobody has my back in this moment and that doesn't feel great thanks hey julie i had a quick question for you

090yeah um which one's i'm sorry is this part of my three minutes no i just wanted i just had a quick question i just wanted to find out what school are you at i'm at hartford elementary okay i just wanted to and again try to understand the perspective of this yes so um since i've been in the building not one administrator on any level has been into any classroom that i've been in and yeah okay thank you julie appreciate that um okay so next up we have kenzie you should be on kenzie yes hi welcome are you able to see me as well let's see nope just a little person figure but we can hear you okay all right we'll just would you like us to know um well i just want to say my

091name is mackenzie russo i teach at marion elementary um and with all the current events happening this year um i've really been thinking critically about how to incorporate more topics surrounding social justice in my classroom with my students really to try to empower them to speak up against injustices that they see in their own worlds um so knowing that i would be doing them a great disservice if i did not come speak to you about the injustice that i'm seeing happen to the staff in this district um just to put it plainly to send all students in all grade levels back before getting staff vaccinated when covid levels are still very high in our county seems to be just a complete disregard for the safety and health of your staff um quite possibly a death

092sentence for some of them and it's also a disregard for the health and safety of students i'm a kindergarten teacher so i have been required to be in person since october um we were told this was safe because supposedly young students don't contract or spread covet as easily as adults so the theory being if we bring in the youngest learners and a limited amount of adults then we can provide a safe in-person learning environment for these students so i am quite puzzled why even though covid cases are still very high we are now bringing in all students which require all adults to come in and support them we know for a fact that adults do get coveted will get coven and spread it to others and so to have a max amount of adults in

093a confined indoor space sharing the same air um really makes me feel pretty expendable so when i hear that on wednesdays we're being required to come in even when students aren't here it just seems like a missed opportunity to show your staff that their health and safety is important to you um why not request that staff do their back-to-back meetings and their prep work from the safety of their home why not give that space for maybe a day of more cleaning maybe to help the air freshen out in the buildings before students come back in um we're not meeting in person today so i just feel like if it's not safe for these meetings to be in person how can it be safe to ask teachers to all go back and and teach these students

094in person what i've really realized is you have excellent staff in this district they're amazing highly trained highly educated teachers we should be considered a coveted asset to this district and this community we should be valued we should be protected i know when my students feel safe and valued in my classroom they perform better academically they do better behaviorally they get along better socially with their peers and the staff in this district are the same how can we be expected to do our best for the students and you if we are fearing for our safely safety and we feel expendable to our employers so i've gotten a lot of nice words from district leadership saying no you guys rock we do value you your safety is of concern but right now for me your actions

095are speaking a lot louder than your words thank you thank you very much we appreciate your comments uh next up we have adam thank you school board um tonight i need to brief the evergreen school board that as an employee of the district i am concerned about ethical decisions being made that are putting students and school staff in high risk unsafe conditions i think it's very important that we pause the reopen schedule and hold public listening sessions right now we did this for the budget post mccleary over money yet we are not inviting evergreen families to weigh in and provide feedback to plan details when it comes to the safety of our students staff and the families they go home to this plan is being rushed without pausing to analyze the impact it is having

096on grade levels and measuring safety protocols the superintendent in the meeting stated of course we're following all the protocols as we have been doing all along there are directives of district leadership that are misleading the public and i recommend the school board zeros in on the hazardous working conditions special education students and staff are in right now despite an mou school district leadership is misleading school staff in its interpretation that is putting students and staff at risk and i want to give you a personal example i'm a covet safety member for my building consistent with wac 296 800 30 20. i am disturbed in reviewing our building safety plan that building administrators are being told by the district that they only need to temperature check students that self-complete their attestation forms when the mou states

097students not some students will be temperature checked cutting corners on student and school staff safety is not acceptable and while my middle school will insist on temperature checking all students because it is the right thing to do i wish our district leadership valued that same high standard of safety for all their schools and i want to bring up massless eating in the classroom the school district is telling building administrators that they cannot work with their staff to come up with alternative plans to prevent massless eating in the classroom this is another example where a top-down mentality alienates building principles and their school staff for making decisions that keeps their students safe trust has been broken with classified staff certificated staff and administrators who are concerned by the dishonesty of top leadership in the school district

098you are not alone many of us feel the same way and know that students and school staff are not safe as plans are rushed corners are being cut and there's no data collection and communication system to prevent outbreaks and quarantines that's why tomorrow at 10 30 a.m school employees are having an informational picket at the district office and i invite every school board member to take the time to attend to hear the stories of our support staff speak to the abuse broken agreements and unsafe working conditions that the district has imposed on them this school year you need to hear the story of how a union representing over 90 percent women who are paid the least in this district were silenced in their right to bargain in mou because the district threatened their jobs if

099they did not agree to an mou that has placed them in the unsafe working conditions and cut hours they are experiencing today i asked the evergreen school board to redirect superintendent merlino to do the right thing in our community thank you thank you for your comments adam okay next up we have laura she should be on laura are you there i am i just got unmuted great all right thank you for being with us yeah thank you um so first i appreciate that you are here to listen and to listen openly um i appreciate how eloquent the previous speakers were and my thoughts were written at four in the morning [Laughter] um given my my teaching schedule and everybody else's i don't know how they were able to be quite as coherent as they were

100so i am in hybrid right now i'm a teen second grade teacher at harmony elementary i have a son at union um and uh i guess the first thing that i want to just mention rob and victoria you both mentioned that there are a lot of experiences that have great potential and i think they do for the future for making it more vibrant flexible and a more inclusive learning environment and that definitely excites me because i think like you as a teacher students are always at the forefront so there have been so many things where i thought wow can't wait to continue to use this and couple it with the other uh good teaching practices so i'm with you rob in thinking about that um in thinking about many of the issues that have already

101been brought up i i can't help but reiterate because that's what i came here to talk about so it might feel a little bit redundant but the central thing is really about um being in hybrid and thinking about the fact i'm sorry not being in hybrids being in the school building and given it is a pandemic the thing we know is that people will die and part of it may happen because we are in this hybrid environment there's no question that we know about masking we know about not breathing the same air and the social distancing those are our central tenants hopefully that we're all basing our decisions on at this point as members of the community so my thinking is those two things should be the foundation that guides us together um and leadership

102certainly to help keep us safer and i think that the the thing that i have in my brain right now is that spread happens with asymptomatic people at a rate of 59 so when that number sinks into me i think we can't keep ourselves safe we can only keep ourselves safer so that's why when mike mentions the protocols um yeah we can absolutely follow them but they only make us safer they do not make us safe people will die and as far as being able to trace who's going to die we may not ever really know but we will know that it will happen because this new strain that is now for sure in oregon and just across the river it's 30 to 70 percent more contagious and that's very concerning to me we are

103in this hybrid model we're bringing more kids in that is concerning to me and we will continue to be breathing the same communal air as we have lunch in our classrooms right now and it's after 10 months of going everywhere and having a mask on all the time to watch a group of kids take their masks off in an enclosed environment i didn't realize how jarring that was gonna feel because that's been something that we've all talked about and we all just sort of understand and now we're gonna go against the one thing we know is primary to keeping us safer and it's just as an educator and as part of the education community it just i'm kind of dismayed at myself as i'm standing there watching watching them do that and yes they're not

104talking they're having a zero voice except for the kids who can't because it's especially in kindergarten through three third grade i think it's gonna happen where kids are talking and is it gonna be that asymptomatic kid who's spreading the virus in that moment i think ultimately what i'm hoping for is that you're going to have our back that you'll continue to have our backs because we are literally working day and night serving our students and families and engaging with them and doing what we love to do but we're counting on you to give us grace to treat us as respected professionals to treat our lives and the lives of those in our community as if they are your concern that what's upon you to do is to lead with your heart your humanity and science

105because brave leaders were counting on you to do that and our community will benefit from educators like myself that are supported as it has been said before but we have been pushed to our limits and we're truly asking for your advocacy so yes continue to advocate for vaccinations ensure that we're maintaining the integrity of our pods and our groups because we know this the communal air equals spread that's the science we have to find a way to ensure that we're not eating lunch in the classroom yes we're distancing as i mentioned we're not talking as much as that is conceivably possible and we're cleaning but we're cleaning surfaces and this is an airborne virus so we need to continue remote meetings for all staff and allow the professionals to work from home on wednesdays again

106this is an opportunity to extend grace thank you laura yeah thank you so we appreciate your input next step next up we have bill hello uh billbevel1004 northwest 43rd street and i uh i'm uh i'm i'm gonna asked uh director uh director um i was gonna say director perkins but it's actually i think the director bradford is controlling the decorum um i i'm i'm pretty angry right now and uh i haven't come to this mic angry i've i've come frustrated i've come upset i've come passionate i've come advocating um i'm i'm coming to the microphone angry tonight and and i need to talk to you about that um one of the things that director perkins did and that's reason i was thinking of director perkins who had in my notes one of the things that

107director perkins did acknowledge is that this does take patience and grace and uh patience and grace is something that should be extended uh both directions i know that this is very difficult for our staff and for the members who teach in this district are educators i also know that it is stressful for our administrators and those people trying to do the best thing for kids but some of the times that is not extended both ways and i want to talk to you especially about our students with ieps the safety protocols that we've put in place and that i've worked almost on a every other day um nature to to work to make sure that all of the special education staff receive all of the ppe that they need to uh be safe in classroom we've

108we've not had a problem with that we've been able to get that ppe out to the buildings as soon as possible where their issues those issues are are supposedly going to be addressed soon what i want to talk to you about is administrators who are disregarding um our our special our t our students with special ed needs um and this is not new to the coronavirus uh this is a condition where there are some principles in the well i'll say administrators in the district who uh think of our special education staff and students as an afterthought in their pursuit of whatever other goals are involved in a running a school and currently there are some situations i'm going to be very careful here because there's a current situation on my head and i know it's

109inappropriate to bring it up in this group where that person is not here to defend themselves but i need to talk about retaliation um i need to talk about a sped or sorry a teacher of special ed students who brings up a safety concern that involves inaccurate or inappropriate staffing and the fact that when that person doesn't feel that they can keep their students safe instead of being helped and supported and finding solutions that person is targeted and retaliated against for bringing the issue up and i'm telling you that this is the thing that is going to cause um this is going to cause this program to come down and we know that it takes all of us to be on board for our students with special needs a lot of them can't wear masks

110a lot of them can't be in the same space they don't understand they work and work and work but they're going to have a hard time with social distancing and so the idea that we are allowing um different uh administrators to actually target our sped teachers who bring up issues instead of helping them with the safety it's it's a real concern and i'm telling you right now it's the kind of thing that can ruin any good work that's happening if we're if there is an outbreak or there is spread because of this and i would just ask you to direct the i'd ask you to direct the superintendent to find where this is not working it's not every building there are a few buildings where this is an issue and see if we can solve

111their approach to how they treat special ed staff and students thank you thanks bill we appreciate your comments uh laura just a second thank you laura can you hear us laura's muted i'm so sorry i didn't see the button pop up thank you thanks for joining us tonight thank you so much for having me i really value the opportunity to share my thoughts with you and i do want to take a moment to thank the board i've been fortunate enough to be able to join some of the board meetings throughout this last year and victoria jimmy rob julie and rachel you have my gratitude i know this is a position that you volunteer your time for and it takes patience um i've been impressed with your thoughtful questions and careful recommendations so thank you it

112makes me feel very confident to say that i know we want we all want students in our classrooms but i think we can also all agree that safety needs to be a priority and our current plan feels reckless the government the governor's recommendation includes a cautious phased in approach to reopening schools we are not doing that the governor recommends starting grades first through third and if schools can demonstrate limited transmission then add grades four through five we are not doing that the governor recommends waiting for a trend of moderate transmission and we're not planning on doing that we are opening grades four through five before we can possibly ascertain if we have limited transmission or not we've just added i believe superintendent really knows that six to seven thousand kids into school in the last

113week or so and we are not waiting to see the effect of that we are pushing to open middle school as soon as we can with just one week of moderate we just saw our numbers dip into moderate for one week and then skyrocket back into high as a science teacher i would be remiss if i did not also mention that one week is not a trend the difference between elementary risk by age exposure and transmission rates is a manifold of difference to middle school risk middle school teachers will see six classes of 15 students or and those students will not be in a cohort let's pause and make sure that our plan is working in this new world of variants and thousands of kids back to school we all want what's best for kids

114but what's best for kids is not sick friends substitute teachers and their own teachers and foreign team our kids do not need more change and chaos let's pause and make sure we're doing this right that is my plea thank you so much for the time to speak to you thanks laura we appreciate you being here tonight next up we have jennifer hi my name is my name is jenny bradley i'm a first grade teacher and i'm speaking as a concerned citizen and educator i continue to be deeply concerned for our students staff family and community as the majority of our pre-k through fifth grade return to in-person learning by next week i implore the board and district leadership to use their power and influence to prioritize safety and put students staff and our families health

115safety and lives first unfortunately in k-3 we have seen firsthand over the last few weeks how the unnecessarily rushed timeline to return as many students and staff as possible as soon as humanly possible before vaccines are available has jeopardized the mental and physical health of students and staff and families three minutes is not nearly enough time to discuss all of the specific concerns i'm sure you've heard many of them in emails and calls and i encourage you all to return to the school buildings that your decisions have returned students and staff to and see for yourself and talk to the students and staff and families that you have been elected to represent and protect as we continue k5 expansion sorry as we continue k5 and expand in person school for middle school and high school

116in the coming weeks i ask that you please put health and safety of our students staff and families before speed by prioritizing safety and giving adequate time to plan and proactively and creatively problem solve we can avoid the most dangerous aspects of in-person expansion plans such as the unmasked eating of meals and classrooms which continues to be a serious health and safety concern for thousands of students staff and community members who are exposed every day putting safety over speed will also allow for community for our community to try and bring community transmission numbers down to make our entire community safe and allow our most vulnerable staff and community members and families more time to protect themselves with vaccines that are literally days and weeks away putting safety over speed will allow more time to hire

117necessary nurses counselors school psych social workers para educators and all the people we need to adequately staff our schools during a pandemic for everyone's mental and physical health and safety putting safety over speed will also allow for community feedback and input that was totally denied students staff and families and our community when it was unilaterally decided on and announced on january 4th that k5 students would be back in person this month this decision affects tens of thousands of student staff community members who are not given a single opportunity to have any feedback let alone be a part of the decision making and planning process for the return of students during a pandemic community members were allowed hours of time to disrespect and i am sorry about that it was disrespectful to disrespect this board and

118discuss the redrawing of school boundaries a process that has been going on for months but when students staff and families and community and health and safety are on the line not a single listening session or opportunity was given for community feedback as they say better safe than sorry and this is an instance if there ever was one where i really hope that we will all be better safe and not sorry i know every decision i have made since march for myself my family my colleagues has been to put safety first and i hope that you will start to do the same to quote the amazing maya angelou do the best you can until you know better then when you know better do better we know better now and evergreen students staff and families in our

119community need you to do better now thank you jennifer okay we have no other people signed up so yeah okay so now um we will go into recess and we will take a short break and then we will um reconvene in a board workshop where we will discuss affirmative action plan teaching and learning equity update a legislative update another superintendent's update thank you for those who joined us tonight we appreciate that um let's reconvene in about five minutes does everybody need me can you use five minutes or is that too long it's probably a little bit for me to have seven all right rob need seven okay well let's all get back if we can be right back i don't know why it keeps popping me into mute when i don't say it to do

120it so i'm so sorry okay so um we're inconvened at 7 40 and um we our first topic for the workshop is the affirmative action plan um who's going to walk us through that it's uh uh gonna be a combination of uh janae greg brown who helped put together the plan led the group that put together the plan and then clarissa so i'll turn it over to the three of them and they've got it together okay thank you thank you can you hear me okay okay thank you for your time tonight and allowing us the opportunity to share a draft of the affirmative action plan um as mike mentioned presenting tonight will be myself greg brown and clarissa i'm going to outline the work that's been done leading up to the affirmative action plan greg's

121going to present on the work that he led in the development of the plan and clarissa is going to present um how the print the plan is in alignment with our recent equity work and equity audit uh the purpose of the district's affirmative action plan is outlined um on page two of the plan and it specifically states the purpose of the plan is to promote diversity in the district's workforce in identifying and addressing factors that may be contributing to an unexpected under utilization of protected groups the plan is designed to promote outreach recruitment training retention and educational efforts to expand the pool of qualified applicants and to promote diversity greg's going to go more into that when he's presenting our current practice is to follow the non-discrimination and affirmative action policy which is number 5010

122and we also have a procedure number 5010 that outlines the grievance and complaint procedure for the district that we would follow should we receive any type of complaint in procedure 5010 it also references the operational expectation oe4 that specifies the board's desire and expectation in recruiting and in retaining a diverse workforce a few years ago it was a requirement for school districts to file a five-year affirmative action plan with ospi because it was written into both the rcw and the wax however that requirement is no longer in rcw or whack and therefore school districts no longer have the obligation to file with ospi and because our current policy and procedure 5010 we have remained in compliance but we are expanding into um having the five year plan on file with evergreen over the just to

123give you a little history i guess leading up to the plan is over the last few years we have developed certificated and classified hiring manuals interviews scoring forms confidentiality forms uh reference forms there's a bank of questions that have been developed with principal input that are accessible for hiring managers to select from if they choose we've also developed a interview checklist for hiring managers to follow as a guide and all of the forms that i just referenced they're included in those hiring manuals that we have written additionally we initially reviewed every job description we updated them with the non-discrimination and equal opportunity statements and that work is now under review again and that ties more into the uh equity work but that is um underway um let's see uh leading into the affirmative action plan

124uh when it first started when matt handleman was here working he had approached me and asked if he could help with a project and he uh worked on that initial template up until he left the district shortly after that greg brown just happened to approach me um he shared that he had entered into a doctoral program and explained what his focus was and asked if there are any projects that he would be able to work on in order to support that work and greg has done a thorough job in the development of the document and i'm going to turn it over to him now to share more information on that great thank you janae um really excited to share the work of our committee this evening and in doing so i'll describe the process and

125some of the key considerations we utilize in creating the action plan and and briefly walk through the document to highlight some of the pertinent details as janae had mentioned she reached out to me with this opportunity in in june of 2019 and i initially kind of set out to familiarize myself with the requirements set forth by ospi in alignment with the wac and rcws those are linked and referenced in the plan under sections a and b and while the ospi information proved to be beneficial it didn't provide examples which initially was disappointing but actually proved to be a pretty good thing so spent the better part of june and july in 2019 curating sample plans from districts around the state i was also able to consult with other people in my doctoral cohort who work

126in hr to get an idea of what processes had been utilized within their specific districts they were also able to provide me with some artifacts and point me in the right direction of how to uh to get more so soon discover that there are a wide array of plans um and that some are more comprehensive and detailed than others some i would say are truly aligned uh with equity in vision and action and others are more aligned with what a friend of mine likes to call chequity meaning that it's more procedural and compliance based and transformative essentially we're just checking the boxes that did pose a bit of a conundrum because it wasn't really sure though i was hoping for what kind of plan we wanted for for eps and i was able to connect

127with mike early in the 1920 school year to ask for some additional direction i shared the samples from the other districts he was able to review those plans and honestly without hesitation or equivocation mike indicated that he wants something that was transformative for eps he did not want something that that merely checked the boxes so that aligned with my belief system and passion so that was very exciting and the next step was really to gather up a committee i felt it was very important that the plan was crafted by multiple voices with unique experiences um lived perspectives and angles of interaction with our district that just moved beyond what i would have and so with that i would like to thank the committee members of ebony mckenzie lamont woods jamie johnston naftalia rodriguez cary altom

128and patrick connolly these individuals were key and consistent contributors to this process the committee represented employees parents community members the dedicated personal time and energy between october of 19 and february of evenings and weekends the research collaborate draft iterate and create the document that is scrolling before uic so the committee truly believed that the collective efforts could be used as a catalyst in creating a more equitable diverse and inclusive organization one that's aligned with social justice and designed to meet the needs of the diverse community which we serve and so that was really the frame from which we operated so as you can see structurally the plan has five main categories section a is policy and review which which janae referenced earlier and it contains a lot of boilerplate language that's consistent with other plans

129around the state section b is more specific to our school district it is composed or comprised of a workforce analysis looking at current workforce demographics and identifying areas of underutilization specific to race and gender and certificated and classified employee pools and it drills down even to specific job areas section c is about goals and action steps for recruitment and would really like to draw your attention to this specific section i would say this is where the bulk of the committee's work was centered uh the strategy statements provide direction and point to the future while action steps contained within this section um are really more like they combine technical and adaptive shifts within eps that can be made some of the action steps can be implemented quickly while others are going to require a greater degree

130of strategy support and provisioning of resources another guiding principle that the committee was really adhering to was that this plan needed to move beyond recruitment and include key elements of organizational culture necessary to transform our system and strategy four and five really speak to this and so it was the it was the belief of of the committee that retention may be the most critical lever in the plan and that retention is really directly aligned to the organizational culture of eps and how we show up daily in relation to each other our students and our community section d talks about staff responsibilities for implementation monitoring and evaluation of progress and section e looks at internal monitoring and reporting so some of those accountability measures that you would want to see in a very detailed plan what

131is to be monitored what's to be evaluated who's responsible for for those things so the plan ultimately is designed to be reviewed renovated and responsive to emerging trends within our system and community and though it does check the boxes it's intended to be much more than a compliance instrument for a potential ospi audit we're confident that it aligns with the direction of our equity transformation and and really can be used to accelerate and substantiate the forward motion that we've already started i think there's probably going to be some opportunities for questions and answers later but with that i'd just like to kind of turn it over to clarissa who's going to be able to speak to how the plan connects with findings from the equity law thank you greg thank you greg i'll be speak

132speaking briefly about the connection to the equity audit as you all know we just completed our equity audit in december and had the presentation um and in that audit there were two major components one of which being the um recruiting hiring and retention practices for more diverse staff out of that audit came 24 specific recommendations and of those 24 9 had to do with the recruiting hiring and retention practices i mentioned that because uh for one the i would say we counted so seven of the nine recommendations um from the audit were present in the affirmative action um draft and we did provide that draft to education northwest um and so that the the data that they found in addition to their years of experience with creating audits um definitely verified the hard work that

133the committee had done in putting this plan together um the second reason i mentioned that is that um the there was you know the recommendation for us to uh update and then implement the affirmative action plan from education northwest and you may be wondering okay so if the plan was so awesome which it is what is it that we needed to update and it was two minor things one was to add that ninth recommendation and that recommendation was simply to add the element of um a full pathway of a grow your own program within our district that includes students peer educators as well as teachers to admin um and those grow your own plans are in the works right now actually as we as we are speaking some things are happening um so we went

134ahead and added that to the affirmative action plan and the additional thing that we added was that the um evaluation and monitoring of the affirmative action plan would be a collaborative effort between hr and the executive director of equity inclusion and so we just wanted to make sure that that collaboration was noted in the plan as we move forward as greg mentioned our next steps with the affirmative action plan is to make it more than a technical solution right the check boxes is not is not where we want to stay we don't want to hang out there we want this to be an adaptive solution which means that we will it will be it will continue to change as the folks who we created it for change so it will be an adaptive living document

135um that we hope will provide a pathway for the change that we are looking for to diversify our staff and with that i will pass it back to janae does the board have any questions for any of us around the affirmative action plan or anything that greg or of course i have shared mike anything you wanted to add at all i mean i would just say i appreciate the work that went into it i appreciate uh uh greg leading that process um and uh i i would reiterate that it's not a uh chequity plan uh we need to do the work and uh i appreciate it so no there's questions that the board has that's awesome i had a i had a question about the stuff that clarissa was just speaking to um we currently

136have um some different efforts that have been going into growing our own um will the existing programs will the new work get kind of folded into the existing programs or will they be their own standalone kind of programs well we hope they get folded um i what i can say is it definitely won't be going away there they are going to be um an effort that we want to make sure is involving all of the people who are doing all the things so one of one of the things i was going to mention in the equity update was that uh we applied for um yeah we will be applying for um a grant to help support that work for us so the student piece of providing you know a new curriculum if you will for

137our future citizens in high school to encourage them to go into teaching and then come back to us um so it would be important that all of those programs talk to each other but there will be some nuances within those um that will that will you know show themselves but we they will be in communication with each other for that for that very last reason i told you we updated the the the plan it's because we have to be in communication with each other to make sure we're not we're working smarter and not harder with these kinds of things right exactly okay thank you so the plan make use of the federal protected classes as a way to break things down or are you using a different taxonomy can you repeat your question rob i

138did say that quickly didn't i the the there's a list of federal protected classes that appears in all the reports latino hispanic black uh african-american et cetera et cetera and uh the context around the question is that uh we know that's hiding some people um especially people of two races who might have an intersectionality that needs our greater attention in order to create equity right um are you using the protected classes to start with are you contemplating a different way to measure race and ethnicity that might be wider than the federal classes what kind of workload would that impose on something like this i would say we are including the um protected classes but also using our um the the data that we just got from our our audit to see where we need to

139start and focus with diversifying who who is currently the most if you will marginalized and i think those groups that you just mentioned the ones who are invisible um will show themselves through that data did the audit um consider a wider i guess list of groups than that list that you referred to yes yeah then the federal yeah i really just felt that um need to talk need to include like unlanded tribes and and i've said this before in other meetings but that's it's been on my mind uh a lot tell me is the uh next question is the term affirmative action plan is that set forth in the statute is it something that might trigger patrons or comfort them depending on the group they're in just the term itself i can remember growing up

140and hearing about affirmative action plans as uh from my background people around me complained about them because they thought it was creating a quota that kept them out of their desired job whether or not that was actually true my sense in hindsight is that it was not true and it was not ever true in general but is there is there a requirement to use that name and if there's a name that doesn't trigger could we use it or if that name is a comfort to the people that we're trying to help then i'm enthusiastic about using affirmative action plan and just kind of rolling with the consequences of that but it will come up in a community as polarized as this one that's the root of the question so your question seemed two parts to

141me so the first part is it a requirement that i'm not sure of okay um however what i can say is is that just as you have demonstrated in your experience with the phrase affirmative action that's going to be based on everyone else's experience with that phrase i don't know that any anything we call it is going to negate some of the polarization that will happen because the plan itself is still built to do what it's supposed to do um i think our messaging and explanation of said plan is going to do have more impact than what we choose to call it even if we don't have to call it an affirmative action plan that's my own personal local and immediate response to your question i appreciate that thank you rob and maybe maybe just

142to elaborate a little bit too within ospi it does talk about it does name affirmative action and within the whack it does as well okay um so so there are some there's phrasing there that that is pretty specific there's some operational wisdom to using that term for as long as it remains in the state rules then um okay yeah i'm just i'm kind of going over the the pbe questions the portland questions here as i'm thinking about this is uh what do you suppose the barriers are going to be to uh accomplishing this and the context of that question has to do with the appearance of population proportions in a lot of these positions in the chart for under and over utilization but we also know that certificated employees require certificates and it seems like

143the workload would be would cause the availability to diverge from the population um could you comment on that um i don't want to impute a position of my own because i'm actually trying to develop it and for myself could you comment on the usefulness of using just population figures like 20 or minorities and 50.5 percent are women as opposed to a possible um objection or concern with the plan because we know that not all people in a population overall are trained to be a principal of the school or an elementary school teacher and and the workforce development implications that might drive some advocacy from us for making it easier to become the thing um that you need in order to fill those positions rob are you talking about like um the program that's it that

144we've partnered with um wsu where we've had some of our um classroom a people and that go on to school and become teachers we have a pretty nice group of those that those folks that have been able to kind of bypass some of the normal that would make my question are our programs and developmental um are our workforce development efforts sufficient to overcome a concern about the use of population to measure over or under utilization i mean are we doing enough that's really really the question i would say we can always do more rob um that's the part of that that adaptive uh solution that we were talking about but through what we learn um as we develop these grow your own plans from student to teacher teacher to admin actually student to teacher student

145potentially to para fair to teacher teacher to admin um we'll we'll learn a lot along the way the idea that we could take a student in onto that track and help them establish a certificated teaching career all the way from i guess the deploy the day of graduation fills me with hope and i love the idea for me the the answer is no we haven't done enough because we wouldn't have the numbers that we have if we had done enough and so it is exactly what you're saying it's it but you know the the communities that are are uh that represent these numbers need to feel comfortable that our system is one that welcomes them also and so once we you know i mean the work is starting the work is occurring um and we

146just need to continue to do the work and we need to continue to reach out to communities and then over time we do create what you're talking about students that want to become teachers that want to become at the same time though we do need to find these paths for folks to come work for our school district that aren't teachers you know the the the existing population we have in our community they don't maybe have certificates so we create a path for them through wsuv or the esd or wherever that is and what can we do to support that through uh legit legitimate methods and i've talked the esd is a great opportunity for people that that have a degree but a barrier for those individuals is the fact they've got to go with unpaid

147leave for a number of weeks to make that happen but as a district we can put things in place to try to support that so it's all of these things and it's it's it's expanding um our staff so that people do see evergreen as a a district where people want to work and they believe that we we are here for the right reasons and you heard people comment um in the citizen comments about their perspective on the board listening and paying being here for kids and this is just another example of that so know that we haven't done the work but we will do the work so the utilization data is driving good work that could produce better data i'm posing an internal questions like if i see certificated secondary teachers and twenty point eight

148percent theoretical minority availability what i wonder is of all the current secondary teachers in the greater portland metropolitan statistical area how many people of in theoretical minority groups if that's not the right way to use the term i'm sorry um how many people how many not how many non-white people have those certificates now i'm interested in that uh as something that might inform how we prioritize uh developing our people i'm having complicated thoughts tonight that's all right yeah i actually appreciate it rob and i think when you look at those those data tables what you're seeing are lagging indicators those are the result of something or something something that we are something that we're not doing okay um and and those numbers tell a story though too and so we can't we can't forget the

149humanistic approach the data and the qualitative lens that we look at and i think maybe to address that question i would hope that as we continue to fill these data tables in the years that follow we are going to see different numbers right and and it's because some of those qualitative stories that that we've heard um as we are doing our research and doing our examination that we'll be able to counter balance some of the things that we currently do not have in place and then you're going to see and identify those as leading indicators to change the numbers okay does i mean is that does that kind of resonate with some of the things that you were talking about yes it does excellent means and let me reflect that back and ask you it

150means that we're starting with what we have and we're going to keep thinking about it and refining things uh in order to accomplish equity in hiring and retention yes oh good you know one of the things that came to my mind um because every there's always you know a co everything impacts whatever it is that we're trying to do and you know we always used to say that schools are just a smaller version of the community at large and the community problems become the school problems and and vice versa gifts that we have also become the gifts for our kids but one of the things that i'm curious about is as we're thinking about these plans and and our action steps and this might be something the board can take on but it's it's about

151connecting to the various other um jurisdictions like the city the county um just the various areas there because i remember a conversation i had now it's been a little while with a young lady who was a teacher over in vancouver and she was bla she's black and i said what would it take to get more people of color to come and want to be teachers and principals and work in our schools and she said the challenge is this is not the most welcoming place to be black it's the community that there's not enough of us to make me feel really um part of the greater community and i found that really interesting um because i could see that i mean i could i could see if i went somewhere and i was like just a

152handful of white people i'd probably be like a little confused about what to do i don't know i i would just i think we need to really work with these other jurisdictions so that we make sure that the community is a community that people want to live in not just the white people i live in um and so that's just a thought that was on my mind thank you any other questions from anyone julie just noticing that our student population is 46.3 percent non-white so that's a comparison you know rob you brought up an interesting point about um because you you know the statistics are what they are right now right because we're this is where we're at but thinking about like you know how many people are out there that have the right credentials

153and you know like who hasn't been hired yet um you know i guess that i guess that's the thing and you know like how many people are going into the profession to be a teacher or or administrator like what what is what is the goal there kind of what victoria brought up like why would you you know are people considering it um you know are those numbers expanding for the hiring pool and i guess that's kind of remains to be seen what kind of goals should we begin thinking about well you know i think one of the things that uh we've done well um is our teaching academy class you know getting kids interested in that you know even at you know the high school level and getting them interested in the profession um we've

154seen a lot of stories where our students are coming back and getting jobs in in the system that have gone through that class and so just making sure that you know our all our students know about the opportunities and we're encouraging them that's one of the programs i was thinking of um when i mentioned about the different programs it's the same with our administrative interns and you know all of those things that makes it sound like um the pathways idea and our high school guidance counselors could be playing a fundamental role in helping kids onto these pathways as they get into graduation which is a loose thought it's just one of the groups on our whole culture who could be transformative if they're on board too the goal is 2.4 impacted categories over the next

155five years okay sorry i talked over somebody oh i was just gonna i don't know if this even is meaningful at this point um is there is some research out there that says that we obviously know that if we have teachers and principals and you know whomever working in the district that look like our kids or our kids look like that you know that that that's great for for our kids of color but it's also good for our white kids it's how they're gonna that's how kids that have been isolated from different cultures and and you know lifestyles or whatever it's a way for them to have get to experience that so the mystery is gone and it's just seen as what it is other just other people that maybe look a little look different

156from me or have different traditions or any of that and um i know we're not doing this to make white people feel good um but i think it's important because you're right the affirmative action label can be it can be a dagger in some people you know my husband as you most of you know is black he was a pilot and when he left the air force to go work um for the airline for united airlines now he granted he was one of the few back then because he's going back 30 a little more than 30 years ago he got a lot of oh you're just here to fill the quota but yet he was a decorated pilot from the air force who had citations had gone thousands of hours of time and often time

157had more flight hours than these guys that he's flying with and it was just so hurtful to him every single time somebody would only see him as getting the job because of his color of the skin and not because he was a very skilled pilot and so those are the things i think about is just i want to at some point kind of fold into that idea that this also is about bringing everybody to a better understanding and care for each other and so that's just my random thought too rob just wanted to thank the board for allowing us to share the draft plan with you tonight and also to um share with you that our plan is to provide an annual update to the board on our progress and how we're moving forward with

158the goals and strategies thank you janae this is very yeah like i said it's very hopeful it looks it looks wonderful to me it's all very thought-provoking as all of this has been um but it's exciting to see see us moving forward in bigger ways than we ever have before and with such intention um it's it's really gratifying thank you for the work okay um are we ready is everybody ready to move on to our teaching and learning equity update yes julie all right um i'm going to screen share here so first i just wanted to show some quick numbers of um at the last board meeting we were asked about the breakdown of students that were entering back in elementary school um by race and there were some questions about that and so here

159is the this is the k5 numbers and our um total numbers are 74 are returning in person and 26 are remote and then you can see the breakdown that they are slightly higher for staying remote in ours and communities of color and um i don't know that we have great reasons why that is right now and all the schools did a lot of outreach our spanish liaison held community meetings um with the families to make sure they understood both choices so we don't think it was necessarily a language barrier but that is a number that we're going to take some time to think about and see and what maybe made the difference in those categories so are there any questions about that piece i just wanted to loop back from a previous board meeting thinking

160in terms of about 2 000 students per grade very roughly uh we're probably more elementary uh i would say more like 15 1600 per grade and then you get into middle and high school maybe more 17 1800 in that range particularly this year we're lower okay this primary secretary oh yeah thank you okay and again we'll loop back and see and try to dig into that a little bit more to find out um why those numbers are like that a quick update on our middle school return so as the number the community spread went down this week um down to we need to get below the 350 to start the middle school return but we have an anticipated date of mid-february so we're going to be calling back at middle school teachers to do the

161training and to be able to get them safety training and instructional training so we do anticipate if we continue in the trend to do a middle school return of mid-february and that return is going to be a phased-in return where we have sixth graders coming first to the campus by themselves so we know that they've never been on campus and um there's transitions in middle school that we need to work on and make sure that we have all the safety protocols in place that were talked about earlier tonight so we're we have a really thoughtful approach to the middle school return and our middle school principals did a really great job in thinking about that plan of bringing sixth graders back for a couple days and then seventh and eighth grade by themselves as an

162acclamation week and then an orientation week on a shortened schedule for all students so we think that will give them some time to get acclimated to not only safety protocols but then back in school and really to understand what they need to do to be successful students back in school so with that phase in we would see early march would be all the students it takes about three weeks for that phase in so all the students would be back in their small group model by early march any questions about the middle school return what indicators could interrupt that plan if the county goes above well we have to get under 350 to start the plan so that's the indicator that we're why we don't have an exact date is because we see the trend hopefully

163going down like last week to this week that two-week trend and if that continues then mid-february is realistic um but of course we have to watch that number and and rob that would be that would be the thing um if we saw a significant spike the trend is down and uh it's gonna i think very likely could be below 350 next week and trend even down further than that um but it would be a odd spike up uh that might get be something that we you know obviously we'd have to consider that but uh short of that that the trend is into the moderate and uh on i think the trend is actually getting us down to the below 200 where where you start bringing high school kids back as well so we just have

164to continue to watch the cases that's according to dr melnick it's according to what's happening and according to dr melnick you know because you're on a two-week lag every time this is basically the numbers that came out today or from [Music] roughly three weeks ago two weeks ago so if you look at the if you look at the data on a daily basis we're now training below 100 cases per per day and um the way dr mellick explains it is if you have roughly nine cases a day it's the equivalent of about 25 per hundred thousand so at 90 cases per day you're at about 250. we've been 90 100 even 80 at one point time so um what we're seeing is case transmission declining um so that's really that that is the metric we're

165following okay yeah that's thank you it's uh it's hard from their webpage to from the county health department's webpage to plot a trend because there are only six data points um so that that's good additional information for someone like me and someone like me yeah okay and then the other thing i just wanted to update you on was we got additional guidance from the department of health yesterday about our music programs and what we can do and this was really great news for what can happen in music classes and first of all just in all band choir and orchestra they gave some limits to the duration of activities so before they said no singing so now we have duration of 30 minutes um which seems pretty reasonable as we always have you know time that

166it takes to get into class out of class get settled they did increase the physical distancing for choir and band to nine feet so our um music specialist corrine is going to work with all the bands and choir directors to look at their space of those classrooms and make sure that we can have nine feet between the string orchestra only has to be six feet as it's not something that and of course is using their mounts a band require not to exceed 15 students per space so no live performances of course and then just some cleaning of the space and then there's some band specific and choir specific guidelines and all of these guidelines we're going to we just got it yesterday so there are some guidelines here around the types of face coverings they

167can have creating splits in the face covering for the instrument to go into and then re changing that face mask after you're done rehearsing we're going to look into how to provide those for students so that they can play their instruments and then also ordering the different covers for the different instruments for students as well so corinne got this information yesterday she's already working on how to get pieces ordered so students can perform in class um but overall just as you look through it was exciting to see that with some proper safety precautions we can have some robust music programs which are one of the main reasons students love coming to school and interacting in their classes all right any questions over those pieces so singing nine feet apart uh for 30 minutes or less

168is now considered not risky with a mask yeah so they do have to wear they call this a three-layer surgical style well-fitting mask so they still have to be masked while cleaning like these that was my assumption when i read that and karen's just going to make sure that we have the um the correct information so karen and i had a conversation about all of that today and she's working with scott to procure the masks because no it's not like those and we don't we don't currently have those um but we're going to procure them and provide them to the kids so that the singing can occur so so they're creating guidelines to allow for singing and then i'm sure some of the most wonderful sounding singing as well nine feet apart under 30 minutes

169with masks on so i i know it's fantastic that we get the opportunity uh it'll be great when we get to the point where we can sing like we used to sing and that day is coming it is coming it's coming it is coming but then when we get to that day i won't have the excuse of sounding like i'm singing in a mask so all right that's my update thank you so i'm not sure if there's any further equity update clarissa i'll turn it over to you uh just a couple of things that i didn't go over in the affirmative action plan piece and they're just quick updates we had our second round of dei gatherings with our community members um so some some great some good some good news and there's some areas

170of growth for us in that and the good news is that the folks who are showing up are showing up and showing out right they are they are passionate about what it is um they have to offer they are passionate about the co-design process and addressing you know their concerns and co-designing those solutions they're super passionate about it and it's quite a fulfilling experience for myself and the other co-facilitators um we are noticing though that we aren't we'd like to have more people um attending especially in our uh dei groups of color um then i mean you know me i want there to be three-digit participation right because i know we have that kind of representation in the community um and so i am connecting with uh um adriana and noemi they are co-facilitating the

171spanish speaking group in addition to some of our other groups to see what additional efforts we can put into place to increase the attendance for our groups i'm positive we'll get there and in the meantime we definitely have some the folks who are attending have some things to say and to offer but we want to make sure that we include as many voices as possible um in gathering their concerns secondly uh i know i heard jenny mentioned that we have our third dealt coming up we also had our third session of leads with our leadership academy with our department and building leaders on today uh this morning actually um we discussed the uh ladder of inference which talks about ways in which our experiences shape our actions and how we can actually change that if

172we take the time to think about uh what those beliefs are and then invite in and multiple invite in multiple perspectives um so that's what we talked about uh today during their leadership group and then finally uh week we have completed all of the um courageous conversations pd that we're going to have for this school year and the final count on that is 2039 staff members that includes our certificated staff in addition to our at-risk advocates transition coaches um and security staff we will begin the second phase of the professional development courageous conversation with the rest of our classified staff in the coming year and so i'm excited to get them on board as well and i already talked about the other two items during the affirmative action piece so are there any questions about

173that all right thank you so much thank you i'm thinking you might have said something about legislative update i think we're going to see victoria throw her phone across the room here in a minute there he goes um if we're talking legislative update which i think we are uh yeah there we go i am i i've i've the the main things that that uh i'll speak to really quickly are the ones i spoke to earlier and that's just following the legislature around the implementation or the way that they end up how quickly they distribute the s the federal stimulus funds um and then um also this work around the uh the rules changes to the formula so that we don't end up districts don't end up getting shortchanged in lab funds and in uh lev

174equalization opportunities so um that's a lot of what's going on uh on the conversations i'm having with uh melissa i know the rob is very deep with the wasting group as well so i'm going to turn it over to rob and let him share what's going on from his perspective deep you say well deep in it can be positive or negative i'm taking it as a positive it's it's a positive today uh just as long as it's not the deep state and okay one two something's not i was trying to pull up a share is it working it's thinking about it maybe if soon quit unexpectedly oh hello did we lose rob that that wasn't okay wasda has a bill watch list and if you google wazda space bill watch list it's the first link

175at the top of the page do you remember vic when the when john dieter used to hand us packets of yeah yeah that's what this is yeah i've seen i've been on that before yeah um and i think just by way of reporting that the priorities this week and last week were around the emergency authorizations things like the credit waivers that i testified on for evergreen as well as the bill we all heard about puds getting access to retail internet and wazda is i think tracking a wider array of subjects because the pandemic fronted uh the need for better internet access at every residence in the state so there's uh there's motion on a lot of that and not a single peep about things like the special education funding model but what i wanted to

176kind of point out is that the bills that seem to be in motion about this year's funding have to do with the transportation like mike alluded to that a little bit uh and the way the asser funds are going to backfill um some things the state formulas short shortest on and and mike that's the question is whether or not we're in support of the 70 transportation i guess hold harmless uh bill and i'm trying to find that bill number yeah i think we are we were are in support of it but i think in the end they're going to do some sort of a marriage between the federal money and the state money so that they use the federal money to kind of do uh what the state so the state doesn't have to fund

177it because of their shortfall and i think the state funds that they're trying to put forward are more around learning loss as opposed to but they'll they'll somehow kind of use those funds some state money and some and and the federal money to take care of the the bridge or the whole harmless or whatever they want to call it um yeah and that's that's part of it is that last thursday evening not the covet 19 call but last thursday evening uh they showed the legislative committee a table or a schedule of uh of the title one based esser awards and um oh this is something i was pi prepared and and a uh an estimate of the current proposals in the current bills uh for taking all of esser and using that to fund the

178state emergency that right kind of showed that we were like 1.8 million dollars short shorted by the title one formula but the talk there was that the state would bring us up to would cover that shortage so that's what that's what reichdale's plan does yeah right and and that was his proposal and it looked it looked difficult to respond to because of the way they built the table honestly there weren't a lot of people who uh immediately understood what it was they were saying um but that's that's the clarification then is that that ospi proposal is to make up the 1.8 million dollars that we'd have been shorted in esser right yeah i think there are some that are pushing for this the state to pass all the federal money down as well as passing

179through all of the transportation money were short and all of the enrollment money were short which would be a huge number um and so i i don't think the state's going to do that but i think there are groups pushing for that um i think i think that ospi's plan um helps us with our shortfall and provides us a little extra to deal with learning loss and other issues so and i mean it seems like a reasonable plan so we'll see how it all develops over the next i think over the next uh talk to melissa today she's saying over the next two three four weeks probably two three weeks really um a lot of this is going to start kind of formulating and we'll have better doc better information to to lock down exactly

180what may or may not happen yeah so it looks like it sounds to me like it's going to end up being a half-loaf if you will um somewhere between what either side is asking for which may or may not be if we [Music] it's a it's a like a baker's dozen from my perspective okay it's a full loaf and we're not we're we're doing well uh with it so um it will give us opportunities uh to be creative and it'll give us opportunities to do uh and i know that the teaching and learning folks have been working on different opportunities you know the the the uh um what was the seattle challenge some challenge i can't remember what it was there was a group out of seattle pushing different ideas around the learning laws i

181know that there's already the work that's going with going on with that and creating plans if we if we have right doll's plan we'll have uh we'll we'll have funds to to fully fund uh a robust um set of programs to help support our kids so i i think i think it's a it's a good it's a good uh opportunity for us you understand that i think his plan is a full loaf and it's maybe a baker's dozen and the other plan that's being pushed is like four loafs it's it's it's not a baker's dozen it's uh i don't know that i'm not even gonna think about what it would be but it it it would be uh it would be significant and i don't know how the state can fund it but we'll see

182how it all develops yeah there's a on on the uh just notes to remember i guess is the the lead and water bill that failed last year uh looks like it has some traction after modifications and feedback from all kinds of interest groups uh but that's in motion and it's um lead the bill number is hb 1139 which will probably be asked for a perspective about but i think the level in it right now is five parts per million i don't know sue in the room yeah there you are more more people in my squares than brady bunch um yeah the limit right now is five parts per million or billion rather um and that uh looks like a testing requirement that isn't onerous um we could use some stories and things and your position

183i guess on uh the impacts of the passage of that bill as it comes because that's also kind of on the emergency track and so it could it could get attention in passage and then immediate implementation whenever um i gave feedback on that to say that uh the language of the bill should preserve the goal of five parts per billion but also permit districts to reach that um kind of in their own way it's like if one district might reach it with bottled water and another by fixing faucets um and my hope is that it'll become that more flexible but that was the feedback that i gave him about that um beyond that i don't think there's anything really on the immediate radar to pay attention to the internet access bills are out there and

184i don't have a sense whether or not puds will get authority internet access providers like xfinity and the phone company tend to resist it very aggressively and i anticipate very aggressive resistance and so i don't know if it's going to pass but if it did then pud could offer retail internet and there could be grant programs for supplying devices to kids in school but the funding prepared for that particular bill doesn't seem like it's high enough to cover everybody in the state so there will be competition for those grants if it passes that's kind of where we are is just kind of managing the emergency watching them manage the emergency and not hearing a dang thing about whether or not we can meet in person and model some in person for our teachers and students

185you know oh and i always forget the most important part till last i have an appointment uh with a legislator with paul harris scheduled for the 17th of february and i sure would like to bring some students uh in for them to advocate to him on their interests and whatever bills are in motion at that moment and i need help identifying the students i wondered mike if i could uh if i could ask clarissa or brian for that help yeah sure so they just need to zoom in with you to uh uh i would modify the zoom meeting that's arranged and notify tony in in his office that uh some students would be along and i'd be sharing the link with them or take her instructions on the techno the technology to do that but

186i mean if we if we have any problems i know that brian's son jack would probably love it and clarissa's daughter would i'm sure love it and julie's got four kids in the district that would love it but we've got all kinds of kids that would that would be awesome to prove i'm just joking obviously they'll be able to put the right kids with you there's no question i was thinking if if i were able to bring together some uh a list a shortened list of bills and i can coordinate with wazda about that piece uh because logan will tell me what the students are interested in advocating for in general around the state and present that to asb leadership at two high schools and see if they have students they'd recommend but i'd like

187to go through um i'd like to go through a district official to do that because i'm white and there's a mistrust trigger i've already experienced it and they've got a beard too i've got a beard yeah scary we can work with you on that rob thank you so much um but i yeah i tried to get some students together just to talk to me directly about policing in the schools and only why kids showed up and i would like to hear from non-white because i think the story is different but they need to be telling paul harris what to do because i think he'd really appreciate that perspective okay thank you thanks rob okay mike and i don't have another superintendent update i think we just always have that on there as a catch-all so

188um i appreciate uh i appreciate everybody's time this isn't it's not easy uh work that happens and uh i think it's great uh that we give folks opportunities to comment every week and we get you know and you you've heard comments since last spring it's it's not just the last week or two that we've been hearing comments so i appreciate uh uh everybody being out on the forefront and being accessible and uh i like everybody else look forward to being able to meet in person and i i would imagine we'll probably stream these things in the future and be meeting in person and maybe the next time we are able to meet in person we'll be in a new building that would be kind of nice yeah hopefully it's not that long though yeah i

189was just about to say we're not that far off actually at this point we're not too far well maybe we made in the parking lot outside yeah it's so maddening though because we want to get together we could do it safely just like they are in the classroom and they won't let us it's it's just it's it is maddening i'm going to talk to skyler and see if he can put a bug in the governor's ear yes skyler gets the governor to uh the opening in the fall for uh hollingsworth academy also oh yeah oh yeah i'm sure he's paying attention to both of our uh tweets or twitter i think rona would be better for that though because isn't she his person in clark county i she's not doing that anymore oh i thought

190she was okay she's been down in california helping with her with her grandkids yeah that's nice yeah but i think the state had to make cutbacks and that's why she's not doing it in clark county right now yeah got it that's right and irene increased too yeah yeah okay have fun on your vacation night all right thank you night thank you bye bye oh