001good evening everyone and thank you for joining us for our regular board of directors meeting um i am first going to call for the pledge of allegiance everyone will join me in their head i pledge allegiance to the flag for the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all and never more did we need to hear that pledge than we do this during these times amen so thank you everyone for being with us tonight um first i would like to call to order the um attendees on the conference call um jenny gronwald here rob perkins here julie bocanegra here rachel rogers um i need to actually make a motion to excuse rachel from tonight's board meeting i'll second that all
002in favor aye aye aye aye okay thank you superintendent mike merlino here and administrative assistant laurie stroll here and we do have some other members of our administration with us as well and as needed they will pop up and make their presence known here i'd like to introduce myself victoria bradford board president and announce at this time that governor inslee's proclamation 2028 in response to the covet 19 outbreak temporarily suspends portions of open public meeting act this proclamation requires that all attendance 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 our first order our next order of business is adopt the agenda is there a motion to adopt tonight's agenda i knew that we
003adopt agenda as presented second okay all in favor um i vote yes um rob yes julie yes ginny yes thank you um next up is our board consent agenda do i have a motion for approval of the board consent agenda director grunwald's moves to approve the board's consent agenda do we have a second second okay um i'll vote i'll call for the vote um i vote yes rob hi julie aye ginny aye okay thank you that has been approved um our next order of business on one second here got a lot of pages is the superintendent consent agenda to adopt the superintendent's consent agenda second okay i'll take a vote i vote yes rob hi julie hi ginny hi thank you that the consent agenda has been approved okay next up we have the superintendent's
004report merlino yes uh you mentioned that a lot has happened since we met last i i think it was maybe the second week of december we met last so it's been about a month uh there has been a lot that's happened um and there's been a lot that's happened just in the last week or thereabouts uh before christmas uh kind of i i would say kind of i would say unexpectedly governor inslee uh released some updated guidelines around reopening metrics for school districts in the state of washington i think there was some idea that he may make some adjustment but we had no idea of the timing of an adjustment and we had no idea what the the um metrics would be uh but i think it was the 16th of december or thereabouts uh
005we did have uh the new metrics released and uh the metrics were released uh according to governor inslee and the department felt informed on studies that they had seen in in various uh openings of schools around um not only the state but the country and the world uh with respect to the transmission within schools and ultimately the folks that they work with that do the the modeling found a very a small if any uh difference between bringing students back under their guidelines versus having students working remotely from home in terms of transmission uh of covid and so um ultimately when that came out uh you know we've had conversations with dr melnick um local superintendents uh had conversations with eea leadership and then um ultimately over the past week you know we came out with
006uh the um guidelines not i wouldn't say the guidelines but the timelines with respect to uh bringing students back and i guess one thing i would say is really since last may we've been working on reopening our schools we've looked at the conditions at the time we've followed the state's guidelines around social distancing math you know cleanliness um all of the recommendations and we you know every time there would be something that would kind of that would stop it whether it was a spike in the cases whether it was you know whatever it might be but i i mean you you all know because you've lived through this with every one of us in terms of the june you know this is what we're thinking about reopening august july we did another webinar in august
007then the board approved a reopening plan uh then we we started school in september and uh ultimately brought in kindergartners uh in late september and then we had conversations about expanding into first and second and third and what would the path be then we had some spikes in cases so i say this um because i don't want anyone to think that it's just kind of work that's just happening or been happening it's been happening all along um but but every time we go through the process the conditions were just a little bit different in terms of and now we've learned this now we've learned this so i i say that just because i want to recognize all of the work that has gone into um crafting the plans at the buildings to thinking about schedules
008for students uh thinking about um safety guidelines for i mean it's been a really monumental uh the work that occurs and here we are today we came out last week with the announcement of the timelines last evening eea's exec council approved a new mou that was signed this morning by both bill and i think janae signed for the district and so we we have in place the mou that we will operate under um and starting next week we'll we will bring back first graders as well as kindergarteners and then the following week we'll bring back second and third graders um i appreciate the uh effort of both the district's negotiating team and the eea negotiating team to kind of meet throughout the week last week and then over the weekend and ultimately come up with
009uh where we're at today so it's it's uh uh honestly it's real exciting because it feels like it's been a long it's been it's been a long road it's been a long road and we're going to start welcoming our students back next week and again understanding that our students and our families have continued to be given the option of remaining in remote uh or coming in in the new schedule where it's it's uh monday thursday tuesday friday for a five hour day and so i think i shared the mou with you uh all this morning after it was signed um happy to talk a little bit about that if you're interested i think um an important aspect of it is that we are still you know we're following the governor's guidelines and while we have
010a plan for bringing the elementary back we also have a plan for middle school in high school but we have to see cases decline in order to get to that point last week we were in the moderate range i think 325 or thereabouts cases per hundred thousand this morning you saw probably that we went up to 397 or somewhere i think it's something like that we won't move to uh hybrid learning in middle school or high school in middle school until we get below 350 cases per thousand and in high school until we get 200 below 200 cases per hundred thousand which is what what the language is in the guidelines um i anticipate that uh we'll work on um getting our elementary students back once we have our elementary students back um we what
011we will do is we will call back teachers like we called back last week last week first grade teachers uh to come back and get trained starting tomorrow on all of the safety protocols get their classroom set up for next week we'll do the same um this week for the second and third grade teachers to come back next week for training and fourth and fifth and then we'll start focusing on training the secondary student staff so that when we are in a position to be within the moderate range that we can then move forward i'm very appreciative of the district office staff and the work that they've done leading the buildings i'm i'm appreciative of the buildings i think that we've done a really good job of of getting feedback from principals associate principals uh
012about best practices uh you're aware that we called back our classified staff uh our classified staff will get training uh on friday and then next week um they will come back um as well and and uh um all the secretary staff has gone back to the buildings that they were originally assigned to so that's it's been a good thing and it'll provide a little more staff to get ourselves prepared for when we bring more students in we will continue to have obviously students on ieps being served and jay is working with bill district staff on adding kids there the mou has a limit on the number of students that we would see district district directed or building directed that are in the student engagement teams that's a 15 of the of the building staff um
013we if teachers choose on their own to bring in groups of of uh students within the guidelines within the numbers with the social distancing and all the same protocols there was conversation around teachers that might want to bring in students for labs or for ap or for various classes so there is that ability for that to occur as well um in the in the interim um i'm i'm very excited about bringing kids back i'm looking forward to um having an opportunity to see some of that um in the next week and i know our buildings are working very hard i know that our staff is um also very uh i i would say excited and i think there's probably some anxiety about coming back as well and that's why we have done our best to
014make sure we're following the protocols and have all of these safety procedures in in in place um we have even done things um in the mou to help assure people as much as we possibly can with the safety of of themselves and of the kids when we bring them back so i'd say that's a huge thing that's occurred and since we met last and really excited about that i would also add that with the governor's announcement i think a few days after that he came out with some updated state reopening guidelines where there are areas uh particularly with respect um to opening um of restaurants and various things uh attached to um our region is clark county cowlitz county skamania county and quickitec county and their metrics around hospitalization positive rates on tests of case
015trends and icu percentage of capacity that move a region from phase one to phase two i mentioned it because our you know uh beyond all of the school we also have had athletics has been on hold uh and so the wiaa has put out information that the athletic guidelines are tied to the phases it kind of gives a potential path back for um sports to occur as well we've had conversations we've lobbied ospi with respect to music uh and the ability for um ultimately when do they make the call on allowing for singing and uh and um banned uh instruments certain band instruments to be played uh and so we're word honestly you saw yesterday also myself and and dr webb from vancouver sent a letter uh to the governor and the department of health
016requesting that there be some reconsideration of the roll out of vaccines right now our school staff is identified as being essential workers and at a certain point early get the vaccine february but we're only identified for for folks over 50 under 50 they would push it off till later we're working real hard um with as anyone we in conversations with ea leadership i know wea is is also lobbying the governor to potentially revisit that we've got that letter we're working with dr melnick i think dr melnick is very supportive of that um district superintendents have offered up our facilities to vaccinate staff we've worked with our own nursing staff to offer up our nursing staff that are willing to help with the vaccinations even procedures nurses if they are available so we're we're willing to
017offer staff locations logistics anything to help make this happen we just need to get the sign off i know that there's a group of districts working with dr melnick right now or they're starting the meetings on the whole logistics of how would that occur so i just want everyone to know that um in addition to all the safety protocols we're doing everything we can to make sure that our staff have access to the vaccine um and we have that opportunity too so that's a lot all are there any questions around the reopening i'm not going to stop i've still got about 12 minutes because i get up to 22 i remember but yeah you may have some questions about this uh and if there are any i'd be happy to listen to some see if
018i can answer any i i've heard some victoria please go ahead oh you're muted still muted okay sorry okay it's okay um i just wanted to say how much i appreciate the superintendents and you going above and beyond and lobbying for that and being really um transparent about the work that's being done so that everybody's on board and knows what we're up to and and why we're doing what we're doing and i think that's really important but it getting the staff vaccinated i think is huge it's that's a big one and so i appreciate you pushing on that one thanks go ahead rob sorry madam president um yeah i uh um i i heard some concerns in a state level um advocacy meeting as i was at the uh the was the legislative committee meeting
019of course about using school personnel even the nurses uh to administer vaccinations um they seemed very concerned about streams of liability um can you talk about how we mitigate that a little bit well i think there's a process that the county goes through uh that they have to i mean you you can't just do it there's got there's like a certification process that is involved to identify a site as a site that is eligible but in the conversations with dr melnick uh it didn't feel like that was insurmountable and i know holly long our uh manager of nursing services has been working with the county um there's an esd nursing corps vancouver's got a a number of nurses and so we actually had a request i think from i think it was quickitec county because
020they don't have the staff to be able to vaccinate they don't have a lot of the health department it's not operated out of of um [Music] the clark kent dr melnick oversees a lot of the counties in southwest washington doesn't oversee click that county and so they reached out to see if there was any opportunity that we might be able to help with that also so um yeah we don't want to make we don't want to put anyone in the position and it's not something that we would compel a nurse to do right but if they were choose to do it according to dr melink it is something that could happen but there's there are protocols you have to go through to make that happen okay i mean the vaccine rollout i mean um i've
021i you know i've said this a number of times you know we've we've i've heard in meetings at the state level since last may and june that the path back was through a vaccine so the idea that we've known since may or june of 2020 that the path back was through with the vaccine and here we are today and hearing stories about hey there's some leftover vaccines at walgreens calls your friend to run down and get a quick shot i mean the efficiency of the distribution is not what it needs to be and dr melnick would be the first person to say that so um i hope uh that they that we can get that squared away and honestly it's no different than we've known since may or june um that we've known since march
022of 2020 that we want our students back on site i mean this is there certainly have been good things we've learned over the last 11 months 10 months that can affect how we educate kids in the future but the the primary method of education is on site with kids with their teachers um and if it was time for us to be able to be back based on the guidelines we needed to be ready we need to be ready to go and so um i'm i'm very thankful of the work that we did this past week to finalize the agreement so that we can make that happen um i know my kids are excited to get back to school uh and i and there are you know like i said there's a lot of anxiety but
023there's a lot of people really anxious to get back too so it's a it's a um a good thing thank you i always end up talking for so long i don't remember what the question was well i just wondered if uh if the risk i guess the risk assessment from having us compensating nurses to inject vaccines uh was being you know thought about and taken care of and it sounds to me like the answer is yes yeah because the county has defined some protocols and qualification standards and esd could be the entity that brokers this and not evergreen schools right um yeah in the state meeting they talked about how um we should be willing and ready to like open the facilities and just like hosting a blood drive open the facilities and for anyone
024to come in uh who has the eligibility or or the need but that if it went through our sort of insurance policy that there could be uh some consequences or problems um i think we're talking about our staff we're not talking about opening it up to the community okay okay i appreciate i want to just echo victoria as well an appreciation for the letter that you and steve wrote to the to the governor um and note that uh i think i sent this to you today that the leaders of this house education committee and the senate early learning and k-12 education committee um sent a bipartisan letter to the governor asking for the same thing and so i've shared that letter with wazda and shared the legislative leadership letter with you and uh i cannot
025imagine any school district in the state not wanting this yeah clark clark county districts including everyone sent one today i know that there's one from bremerton or i think seattle had one and we'd heard uh that senator billik was supporting the same so there there's a lot of of bush um it's january 12th if we're gonna make that happen you know to try to move everyone into first of all we need to make sure that those over 50 and in schools are we get it done in february and then on top of that let's get everyone uh vaccinated i think in our county we figured there may be 10 000 school employees something like that that that we we would work on trying to get vaccinated um as quickly as we possibly can now do
026we have uh special education students in like ages zero through pre-k attending any classes in person at this time i think jay is on here yeah we do we have uh quite a large number of them being served now we are only serving three uh through five uh birth to uh three birth to two is is served through uh other entities but but they are receiving services also um and we are doing remote at the same time okay so there is a plan and you're executing the plan and then likely have been from the beginning oh yeah and just uh i had an exchange with a stakeholder earlier today uh around the claim that there was not the plan and uh just wanted to make sure and hear from jay about how many students we
027were serving which ages and so we currently are serving uh preschool through high school about in person almost a thousand students receive in-person services every day not not full day at this point but that's approximately the number of students who are receiving in-person instruction and then of course all the students are being served remotely in addition to that and with the additional guidance of course we're moving forward with arranging additional in-person supports for students with disabilities following the guidelines so have there been any coveted cases vectored through the schools because of the level we've had i will let you know about um we have had to respond to staff members and students who have been exposed and implemented quarantined protocols we have had students who ended up being positive who we responded to and we
028have had staff members who've ended up being positive that we've had to respond to as far as um when i say respond to implementation and quarantine and notification protocols um so so so yes the data has not demonstrated um spread as a result of those positive cases however we have you know had uh the need to respond to them yes okay based on the data i saw i didn't see the i guess they were listing it with exposure at school and i didn't see that they were getting exposure at school except in maybe two cases and i'm thinking system wide for us correct that's correct and that currently there are no active cases being monitored um we do have uh folks uh staff members right now who um have been positive and who uh were
029exposed over a break um and uh who we've been responding to um but they uh never like they didn't return so i'm who they are quarantined so well i was thinking more along the lines of an exposure at school not as of this time okay i appreciate you answering that question thank you um a few other things i want to mention that occurred in the interim uh in between meetings i think before christmas the federal government passed a new stimulus bill which is driving money um to schools or across the country uh we had um you know we've talked i've talked a lot about the enrollment impact transportation impact um they uh the original cares act was somewhere around uh i think 210 million that was distributed to schools in the state of washington the
030cares act uh or sr2 or whatever they're calling it is something like 825 million to schools what we're waiting to see at this point is we we can't have access to any of those funds to help with the shortfalls that we've had through enrollment transportation and other without action from the legislature so the legislative session started today today was the first day or yesterday i think was the first day and so they'll need to take action um we're hearing they're not going to pass all of that money to us but they should take action relatively soon so it'll be something we'll be continuing to watch but the fact that they passed the stimulus uh second stimulus um is significant because there were some pretty i was pretty concerned about the the hit that we would
031potentially be taking um in the courier even with the even with the reductions that we've we've made to try to help balance the shortfall i think um the number that we've talked about has been maybe up upwards of 20 million around as high as 20 million the impact in the current year from the various um you know unemployment cost increases enrollment decline revenue decreases transportation declined revenue decreases so that's a good thing we'll have more information on that also another thing i wanted to mention real quick was um we did uh you all participated in the quarterly bond um meeting i think that was last was that last week feels like everything just runs together these days we stare at the computer a lot um but last week we got you know every quarter we've
032had conversations with uh around the bond program and um what we heard is i think we've bid everything i think we'll have one i guess burton and heritage are the last two projects that are under design at this point um everything is coming in at or ahead of schedule and at or under budget so when you talk about a 695 million dollar bond project and then throwing in another 100 million dollars worth of of uh state match funds so you're talking 800 million dollars in a um you know we passed that in 2018 here we are three years later and at the time we passed it we had all kinds of inflationary concerns um it's just a a real testament to uh the work that's gone in you know sue's leadership and then rnc management
033that works with us and then the principals the program managers the associate principals the staff that every one of these projects requires time going into them so um pretty amazing really excited about the uh when we come back um you know we're gonna have new kids entering emerald and new image and new sifton um we're gonna have kids this spring on some fields that they've maybe not stepped foot on we're gonna have uh folks in the fall getting opportunities to get into re uh renovated auditoriums it's it's been great and i would also say through the whole process you know we do the work uh but we worked with the city through all of this as well so that the the and the county at times as well with projects that happen in the county
034so the partnerships that we have with the city the county are very well appreciated as well so it's been a it's been a really good thing and then i'm the last thing i'm going to just mention a couple things around uh first of all i've and i think you've seen some of these tweets here in the last few days from the librarians in our school district who have started to receive their new um uh equity books the books that we're kind of refreshing the libraries with books that reflect our students and you see the uh happiness when they put these tweets out and the way that they're all responding so i want to thank the board and the district for making that a priority in in supporting our libraries and you know in some of
035these buildings uh sifton library when they're rebuilding uh the sifton you know the idea of bringing books from the 50s and that might be exaggerating a little bit but i don't know that that is exaggerating that much and now uh able to at least get some funds in um to refresh and then also put materials in those buildings that reflect um the students that attend those schools is a tremendous thing and we've seen a lot of really positive comments and then the last thing i would just mention there was an article this last week you know we had that horrific debacle january 6th where we have folks um you know scaling the walls to in theory take over the electoral process and elect uh someone that wasn't elected as president um i really appreciate the
036work of our teachers uh there was an article particularly about dan larsen at mountain view high school and how he you know and i'm sure there are many others that did the same thing kind of changed the narrative from whatever they were teaching at that time take this as a teaching moment and and particularly with the work around the equity that the district has started pictures of the confederate flag in the capitol had to be very chilling and abhorrent to many many and hopefully everyone in our community and so i just wanted to mention that i appreciate our staff for the work uh that they do on a daily basis to help you know illuminate these things and talk with our kids about these things and uh i'll end it with that thanks mike okay
037uh next on our agenda is um matters reserved for board action first up is the 20 20 21 um school calendar so mike you're back up again to talk about the calendar yeah i think uh i think janae is here you know we presented this to the board i think last minute i'll just let jenae update if there's anything that's changed from the conversation we had like that was something else we did in december too remember yeah i forgot about that hi everybody um i haven't had any questions or anybody commenting on the calendar we did adjust and correct those months in under all of the right areas from the last time we had the meeting and workshop and so there hasn't been anything that has come of concern that i'm aware of thank you
038janae [Music] okay and since this is a first reading um there'll be an opportunity if anyone has anything to um to question on this for the next board meetings when we'll go for final approval on it um at this time uh let's see here yeah i guess what i would say is i recommend the board accepts the student calendar as presented move it forward for a second reading and adoption okay that sounds great um now i'd like to call the audience for questions or comments regarding the school calendar is there anyone um lori that's wanting to make comment not at this time all right thank you lori okay well seeing um see num none i would like to call for a motion i recommend the board accept the student school calendar for 2021 and 22
039as presented and move it forward for second reading and adoption okay thank you um now open it up to the board for any comments or questions regarding the school calendar julie any thoughts i was just gonna say we workshopped it um at our last board meeting in december um we just had a couple of corrections on it um but to me it's you know the school calendar it's pretty standard um it doesn't sound like we've had any questions or concerns about it since it was last presented and i think we should move forward with it okay ginny did you have anything on this nothing more to add rod um it'll sound off the wall but it's not to me it looks like the colors that they chose uh are actually pretty compatible for people with
040color blindness and i appreciate that kind of attention to detail if it was included in the thinking um because i know a few people like that and they appreciate it when they're accommodated thank you for noticing that okay um it'll be nice to have a calendar that actually involves everybody being at school that's all that's all i'm wanting this this next calendar agree okay okay great so um let's see we'll now take a vote to accept the student school calendar for as presented and move it forward for a second reading and adoption um i vote yes julie yes ginny yes rob yes okay well we'll move this forward and we'll have our fi second and final reading and adoption at the next board meeting okay next up is our oops my calendar oh they're wet
041okay um next up will be uh elementary boundary committee changes proposal this is our second reading um just for some background we have had numerous um workshop conversations about this we had we've received letters for the different changes that are proposed over the last um couple of months and we have had our first reading on this which we took public um input at that point as well so i like to move this over to scott monroe to walk us through the final reading here okay thank you victoria um and i believe my role here and you guys can you know jump in and let me know if there's additional information at this point in the meeting that you would like um at the last meeting the first reading in december one of the things that
042came up during the public comment part of things concerned the possible building over the over a number of years of approximately 3 000 new homes in the fishers landing attendance area that was the statement that was made and so sue steinbrenner and her department researched that and got back to the superintendent and i to give us that information so that we could determine uh you know what that would mean for us and so you know i'll summarize um what sue had to say related to that and then i think she's on the call too and so if there are further details she could jump in with those but the uh the three thousand uh new homes that were presented um approximately a third of those it looks like or slightly less than that are actually
043in the camis school district leaving us in evergreen with approximately 2 100 of those which obviously still is a very significant number according to sue and her department's research if all of those were to be built out to full capacity at once that could mean as many as 260 additional students for fishers landing however part of the information that sue was able to glean in researching this is that the proposal currently is that if the all of those were built to full capacity that uh approximately 50 of those could be built within the next five years and the other 50 if built to full capacity that that would occur over the 10 years following so it's a a five to 15 year process for this building according to the developers and the folks that we
044worked with so in consultation with sue and with the superintendents we agreed that given you know the timeline for that that it doesn't necessitate in our minds i need to to change any of the previous recommendations and we've already acknowledged several times that as things change in our community and as things are built or as enrollment declines in places that we as a district are willing to whenever necessary revisit school boundaries and engage in this process and that does not appear to be something that is necessary in the next several years at fisher's landing so if these homes come in and it necessitates you know five six ten years from now and engaging in a similar process to again adjust the boundaries then we of course or whomever is involved in that work stand ready
045to do that thanks scott mike did you have anything you wanted to add to this conversation no i don't think so i mean i think that like you said we've had a lot of uh feedback on it um so i don't i don't i don't have anything further to add other than to just say thank you to the committee you know the committee and rut scott you spent a lot of time on this it's a process that they followed similar to processes that this district has has had in place since the early 2000s um in terms of of uh proto you know just what's the process we follow so i would just say thank you to scott i'd say thank you committee this obviously isn't ideal to try to have all these meetings and do
046the work remotely so it's more problematic but they've done a great job so i appreciate it thank you and i'd also like to thank the members of the public that have participated in giving us input and um comments to the work of the committee um because i know that that's not always an easy thing to do and and all of that work um was appreciated and reviewed so that we have the best outcome we possibly can um at this time i would like to call for any audience members that would like to address the board regarding the proposal before we move forward with the board vote is there anyone in the audience who'd like to discuss this with the board uh good evening board my name is ryan loposa and i'm with the city of
047vancouver hi ryan thanks for joining us thank you for having me i really appreciate the time i uh we and we had actually not been made aware of the boundary changes until here just a few weeks ago when some parents uh brought this to our attention um so i had a really really good conversation yesterday with scott to get a better understanding of you know what how these changes are being made and and and i really appreciate that uh one particular area of concern that was brought to us by parents was the change to the boundary for ellsworth elementary school as you know currently uh most of ellsworth is fed by neighborhoods south of mill plain there is a there is a small section small neighborhood further north north of burton that feeds into ellsworth
048but most of it is fed by neighborhoods south of mill plain and then neighborhoods north of mill plain typically feed into marion and the the proposed change would have um would have some neighborhoods north of mill point now feeding down into ellsworth and the concern that was brought to us and and and we share the concern is is the potential even though you know kids would be bussed from these areas down to ellsworth the potential for kids who just choose not to ride the bus or miss the bus or what have you to have to walk to school and to have to cross mill plane boulevard and and as you know mill plane very very busy arterial and so we just wanted to make sure that we're thinking about the potential for those kids that
049are going to walk and whether or not there might need to be some safety enhancements introduced at you know potentially you know places where they would likely cross such as 90 97th avenue 104th avenue etc and i uh what i shared with scott yesterday was a similar situation we had up at pioneer elementary school that was brought to our attention uh several years ago where we have a neighborhood south of fourth point that feeds into pioneer and those kids actually walk and they they cross uh fourth plane or sr 500 um and through the years we've worked and we've recently been selected to receive a grant from the state to actually add an add an enhanced pedestrian crossing at that location that's going to make those crossings safer so i liken that to potential opportunities
050we can have elsewhere within the district where we can improve the safety we can partner with the school district to improve safety for kids who do choose to walk to school and we just encourage the board and encourage the superintendent to uh encourage staff to to let us continue to foster those relationships let's continue to have those conversations and look for those opportunities partner on grant opportunities and and really just do it do everything we can uh to make make it as safe as possible this is this is what we deal with every day uh in terms of making uh making it safe for bicyclists pedestrians uh folks who use a car etc and so we just want to want to expand that that uh that that relationship with the district and wanted to just
051echo my appreciation to scott uh uh appreciation to sue uh sue and i and my team have worked together on many of your school projects and we have a great relationship so i appreciate the time this evening and just wanted to share that that piece of information thank you ryan we are very open to working with you to make every possible um challenge and have those so that they're safe and we do encourage our our students that to take advantage of riding the bus the buses are are safe and we really want them but i know sometimes something comes up and somebody misses the bus so we want those crossings to be safe could i ask a quest question ryan which department in the city are you with so i am the city streets and
052transportation manager within the public works department so i oversee uh our engineering group i oversee our street and traffic operations group and i also oversee um our pavement management and other groups okay and uh oh sorry ron well just just to verify as i recall the the students assigned to pioneer from across fourth plane have always been offered bus service uh so that they didn't have to cross that busy street that that is correct um i think what uh what was brought to our attention by i believe it was by the principal there at pioneers there are some kids because there is an opening uh in the noise wall within that neighborhood that directs them right out onto fourth plane that many of them will simply you know for them i think it's a little
053quicker just to walk and head across so we've we've partnered with washdot who has jurisdiction over that part of fourth plane to uh to scope this project it's going to be a it's going to be a signalized crossing uh so they'll push the button and a traffic signal will actuate and bring all the traffic to a stop and then they'll be able to safely cross and then we'll we'll add some multi-use paths to to connect everything together but we were really excited that we were selected for that project and we want to use that as an example of where we can make those type similar types of improvements elsewhere in the district so i i grew up going to marion and crossing uh mill plain on foot uh specifically the intersection you're talking about the
0547-eleven was always right across the street and that's where we went has uh has the sense of safety around crossing mill plane deteriorated since the 1980s is traffic really that much more oh yeah there's yeah there's a lot more traffic on on mill plane than uh back in the 80s we we typically see about uh one and a half to two percent traffic growth per year and that's just attributed to the community continuing to grow uh we recently completed a project on mill plain boulevard near i205 that's going to help improve safety it's going to help relieve congestion but mill plane uh milpoint boulevard is one of our heaviest uh heaviest traveled corridors uh and so anytime we uh we're looking at uh you know folks that are needing to cross and it does it's
055not just limited to students it's it's anyone uh we we try to really endeavor to make sure that we've got safe places where they can do that um where they have a or they have a controlled intersection so that we're making that as safe as possible okay thanks for coming to talk with us about it oh you're welcome thanks for having me julie did you have yeah can i i have one thing here um i had asked scott earlier because i knew that this was one of the concerns about the safety and crossing mill plane and so i was wanting to kind of figure out like how because all of these students are going to be bus that have to cross a major major street so and so he brought in i in comparison to
056mill plane where kids have had in the similar sized area where they've had a cross mill plane going the other direction to go to mill plane elementary and my quote my question was is how many students are missing the bus and then choosing to walk over you know like how like how often does this happen and he reached out to um jen right from um mill plane and she said it may be a handful of times in the five or six years that she's been at the school so it doesn't happen that often and then they do reach out to those families and talk to them about safety and making sure that they you know understand the importance of being safe if that happens where they have they feel like they need to get to
057school and they go ahead and walk after they've missed the bus so um i do appreciate ryan coming on and talking about some partnership opportunities where we can make some of these intersections more safe for our students if that happens and they have to walk to school yep thank you is there anyone else who'd like to address the board just a minute please [Music] israel parkinson okay yeah hello hi there uh okay so you guys can hear me we can welcome back is my is my camera not working no okay all right i'm not gonna worry about anything cool um yeah so once again i'm just this is frustrating that this is moving forward and this is being rushed rushed through and this is a perfect example of why this project should stop this proposal
058should stop right now because just right there it clearly sounded like you guys were a little caught off guard by some of the questions or some of the positions that he was bringing up uh this just seems like this is all just being pushed through too quick i also have some questions because my understanding that because this is the second reading this is the final reading and that this will pretty much finalize everything so it goes back to the guiding principles of the team that was put together why is it acceptable why should it be acceptable that they violated that um uh oh i forget the gentleman's uh scott scott monroe and their team of parents violated their own their own guiding principles on that you wouldn't have two people from the same area and
059we had two people from the same area representing our area on this team why is that acceptable why should we accept that as acceptable and that's a question i'm asking you guys why they violate their own guiding principles and and then we're rushing this through and we're supposed to be fine with that decision well i'll go ahead and answer your question we have um and i know that we've had this conversation multiple times in different venues the there were two people from different um areas and one dropped out and so then another one was brought on board it was but you also have to remember i'm answering your question we also have more than just two people making that decision you have other members of the committee who are not from your area at all
060very objective people that are also working together so it's not just two people making this decision and it is you know i think because they live in the same neighborhood and it just is something that happened as a result of someone dropping out does not make this some kind of so my understanding is the two people that were assigned the one person dropped out wasn't from the fishers landing area no they were from the fish they weren't from the same neighborhood as each other okay and then the next question is um yeah i yeah i just i i'm just accepting for us because it sounds like judging from everything that we've seen from some of the folks in our group that have put together some some amazing stuff that to bust the people from the
061evergreen highway area to ellsworth would have basically no impact and removing clear metals when we're going to have buses that are picking up kids that are literally a street or two from us that are going to be going to fishers landing and our kids going to a different school it's going to split our community up and and it doubles the amount of buses are going to be coming into this neighborhood we can't our kids don't have a walk-in area to or a safe a safe avenue to get to columbia valley they go through two busy intersections as opposed to one so i i don't understand how how does that not how is that not a patchwork community now i understand the definition of patchwork is kind of uh sketch or or however you guys want
062to determine patchwork but explain to me why that's acceptable around more buses in our neighborhood we're gonna have a split we have a split neighborhood from kids that are growing up together and a lot of this can be alleviated by some of the the people on highway 14 evergreen highway going to ellsworth scott did you have anything you wanted to add to the question yeah mean i'd be happy you know to address that again i uh i mean i think that you know the first point that i'd make is that there are uh well i guess you know the first point i'd make is that i'd like to acknowledge that everybody that's been involved in this process whether they were parents on the committee or parents in neighborhoods that have participated and emailed and called
063and come to forums and come to board meetings you know i recognize that everybody is doing the very best they can and i think that's important to state um in listening just a minute ago you know the unfortunate reality of that is that there are i believe several misconceptions stated in that the first of those is the lack of acknowledgement that the area south of highway 14 that is currently in the fisher's landing attendance zone that that area in its entirety does not currently contain enough students to get us to the desired number in terms of the reduction in enrollment you also have down in that area based on the busing that would need to occur to get those kids to either ellsworth or riverview which were two things that we looked at an inordinate
064amount of time and more time on the bus for those students then it currently takes them to take the bus to fishers uh now the other point that i would make is that in working through this proposal in preparation for recommending it to the school board a part of what we did was work with the district transportation department to determine not only as we've discussed before you know what the bus drive time would be for folks in clear meadows to columbia valley versus what it currently is to fishers but also what the busing would look like and our transportation department has assured us that there would not be an inordinate amount of bus traffic that would go through either side of clear meadows it would in fact be one bus that would go into the
065area that we're recommending that goes to columbia valley and a separate bus that would enter the other area and not through the clear meadows area that we are recommending so the buses would be separate and transportation would be able to handle that in that regard so it should not be uh you know some the kind of thing that uh you know is disturbing to the neighborhood in that regard in terms of the number of buses yeah i just i would like to also just point out one last thing like because this is getting rushed through and we didn't find out to the very last minute of all this another disturbing fact is that if you go if you pull some of the child care facilities in this area it's going to affect them and what
066they can support so i know that there are families from like the tree hill uh learning center that's up there on 34th uh yeah 34th and 192nd area like they're all the kids that are going to fish landing there that now are going to be shuffled to columbia valley they don't serve as columbia valley and they're not going to serve as columbia valley so now those families are going to be impacted trying to find child care and after school care and things of that nature i just the the broad point here is you guys are pushing this through you guys didn't notify people until the very last minute and this can all be delayed and pushed and and dealt with next year when all this coveted mess and all this virtual communication is over with
067i'm just going to leave it at that because i know there's other people that are going to speak but i'm very frustrated and i think what's happening is unprofessional and i don't think that it's fair to the community and the people that were selected were not beneficial to the community i'm done thank you so much you appreciate that scott real quick um can you tell me kind of the timeline on this and i know we had some delay because of the covet thing where the some of the meetings got delayed but when did um the information go out to our families and everything about um the proposed changes the process started a little bit over a year ago um in december of uh 2019 with the uh formation of the committee and that was their
068you know first meeting the uh principals actually reached out to folks uh the month prior to put the initial committee together and then the first phase of the work i'll call it the bulk of the work in coming up with these recommendations took place between that december and the following april um at that time the if we were following timeline wise the exact same process that we had followed in phase one of the work we would have scheduled in-person community forums and begun that process there in preparation for the possibility that we would present to the school board in in june with possible action the following august that's the timeline we followed in phase one uh this time because of kovid and because of our desire to hopefully hold in-person community forums and resume what
069we believe is you know the the process that we like to follow we elected at that time to delay the community forums until this fall this last fall because at that time we really believed and i realized it you know seems somewhat naive to you know say this now but we really believed at that point that this whole pandemic might be behind us by then and we could resume and have in-person community forums and engage with our various school communities in that regard that obviously did not turn out to be the reality and so we moved forth with uh virtual community forums which were held this last fall in preparation for presenting to the school board in november and december which i'd like to point out is still within the timeline that's been public on
070our website and still you know it still fits the board timeline because there's always been uh kind of a caveat there that if the committee needed more time to make recommendations they could extend that in this case it wasn't the need of the committee to do that it was that delay in the hopes that we could return to in-person forums and so that's the timeline that we followed okay i just wanted to just make sure i had a clear picture of that timeline sure okay scott do you have a recollection of when mr parkinson began um his advocacy uh well i'm not sure i mean i wouldn't want to you know speak and make a mistake on behalf of anybody else who's participated in the process from fisher's landing that attended the uh community forum
071for columbia valley and then also attended the community forum uh for fisher's landing last fall and so a lot of the advocacy and questions and alternate proposals started to come in at that time so it was a you know obviously in this regard for this part of the work a very busy fall and not only of course for this part of what's being recommended to the school board but for the the entirety of it the mill plane and ellsworth neighborhood and those other neighborhoods as well thank you sure anything else okay do we have laurie do we have anyone else you'd like to speak um we have several um next up is jennifer klebnick okay do we have jennifer on the line here uh you actually have her husband hi thank you i i think
072yeah we're on we're on two different computers and but i think both of them have her name on it so i did sign up as well so we we both signed up to ask questions okay go ahead okay okay uh first off i want to start with one comment regarding the busing of kids from north of mill plain to ellsworth currently that argument is disingenuous considering this section that is being bust is way too far for any student to walk anyway okay that that distance is very far i wouldn't i wouldn't imagine any kid walking from where that because that's at the very north end of that section so that argument is disingenuous to begin with second comment i have is in regards to the timeline that scott just went over i know the coven
073pandemic created a lot of the issues but we were presented these this proposal to our neighborhood columbia valley slash fisher's landing i believe in late october or no early october and then the proposal that scott and the committee worked on was um was given to the board in november so that didn't leave hardly any time for any um feedback from the community it as israel said this is being pushed through way too quickly um the next comment i will provide feedback on is i emailed everybody a very long lengthy uh audit of the process that you guys went through on this based on your published guidelines and your published rules um my wife's sent in a number of proposals and it took forever for scott to come back and say why they weren't any good
074and he cited rule one rule three rule five rule six i can go through each one of these again if you want me to but this current proposal violates almost every one of your own principles so i understand the need for rebalancing the schools and that's and that's what is supposed to be the end product but when you uh automatically violate your own principles just because they think it's the best way i i don't understand why it's being done that way although the foster a sense of geographic community you're splitting up fish are you splitting up the clear meadows um safe walking routes that's specifically in your guidelines and everything you just talked about having kids walk across middle plane potentially the kids here in clear meadows can walk to uh fisher's landing we can't
075walk to columbia valley there there's no safe path okay the drive time's the same i'll grant you the bus time is the same i'll grant you but there is no safe walking route from here to there um another one of your guidelines is consider natural and artificial boundaries such as highways and waterways uh i hate to tell you this but mill plane is definitely a natural boundary in this city okay so it's 20th for our neighborhood the 20th is our extent of our neighborhood um what else that you guys have on here luckily you guys already talked about the uh hp land uh based on the information i have it is about 1200 units potentially built in there um and you guys figured out the 260 new students if you're gonna get that many students
076coming in through here don't you need to build another school down in this area because this this lower area is already over over populated as you can as you as you already know because you're trying to get rid of students from fishers landing um you guys already talked about the uh the committee where they had two people on the same uh from the same neighborhood which violates your own principles again um based on my calculations you are involving at least nine schools but i can guarantee you that those six committee members are not from each one of those nine schools i mean i i'm just going down through all this though there is a lot of your own guiding principles and rules that you just decided to ignore so i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry
077i keep repeating myself but that's that's the facts you got you guys did not follow your own process very well if at all very well is there anything else you'd like to add to your comments well is anybody from the committee or the board going to respond to why you didn't follow your own guidelines or were we just going to have to accept what you say i think what what has the guidelines are exactly that they're guidelines they're not hard and fast rules they're things that you want to always take into consideration as best that you can i live in a neighborhood that's been split for years and i think it's finally going to come back together again but well that's great for you but now you're splitting up another community no but my point
078being is sometimes the way the numbers go and the way the transportation goes i mean the yes those are guidelines but they're guidelines they're not hard and fast rules that have to be in place or things that they try and look through those filters to do the best they can to come up with the best possible solutions right but every counterpart said no we can't do because of rule one rule three rule five rule six and everything that you propose violates almost every one of your own rules so i i mean i i don't i don't understand what the men i i mean i understand the mentality you're trying to reduce school sizes you're trying to reallocate kids i get it but i hate to tell you this when you have two committee members from
079the same neighborhood which just so happens to be the richest neighborhood in the in the district in this district it looks really fishy and it it's very non-transparent i mean this is the first time you guys have admitted publicly that two parents from the same neighborhood were on the committee we tried asking that question before and you guys refused to answer the question i only know about it because that's what you've said and i've taken you at your word about it but i also know that we had people who dropped off from the committee that was discussed in the last board meeting when we when we were having the first reading that was discussed and so i i i you've got people that are also on the committee that don't even live in your area
080but they're part of that non you know unpartial um group of people that are working for the best thing for the whole area because people don't come on this committee to only do what's what they can for their own school or their own neighborhood they're coming on for the betterment of the whole district for the that particular area of schools i get that uh when your initial project was to try to fix the west side of the of the district okay that was the initial push and you actually did a good job in identifying which schools would be affected and which parents which which parents were contacted the second that you guys shifted and said well we're going to do this as well there was no reach out to any of the any of those
081schools that were being affected columbia valley um burton all the i mean there's kids getting shifted all over the place and none of those parents had a say in it no one was approached to be added in at that point could we scott can you remind us of what um where the parents were from the different committees yeah the uh yeah so we had parents uh from riverview fisher's landing marion ellsworth and fercrest as part of this committee and there was throughout that part of the timeline that i mentioned before the bulk of the work and coming up with the recommendations which was december through april there was at least one parent from each of those schools present in the work throughout its entirety so that's great for the phase two the initial phase two
082but you guys shifted midstream and based on the information i see you're now affecting columbia valley hearthwood burnt bridge pioneer and possibly burton were any of those parents asked to be involved in the process well i mean unfortunately that's you know just another example of you know some misinformation or misconception because some of the schools mentioned there were never a part of this process in fact uh three or four of them were part of phase one of the process which has already been completed the only school in terms of recommending a change to their current attendance zone in terms of removing an area that was added to this process was columbia valley with the cimarron neighborhood which we have discussed the hartford area its current attendance zone it remains intact we are simply recommending that
083we add a section to it so the current uh you know parents and families that live in the hearthwood area are not affected by this directly because we're not recommending that we're moving anybody from that area so columbia valley is the ad which and we've talked about that before well where are the columbia valley students moving to we are recommending that the columbia that a section of the columbia valley student body that you know currently reside well to the north of columbia valley that they shift from columbia valley to hartwood elementary school that's been in the recommended proposal from the beginning but yet you didn't and you didn't get anybody from columbia valley on the committee that is correct said i i i mean i was pretty resigned to the fact after the last meeting
084that you guys were going to push this through i i i'm just frustrated that you guys ignored a lot of your own processes it it it's kind of sad actually it really is because you you defined what you wanted to do and you said this is how we're going to do it but yet you didn't follow what you said you were going to do i mean you still have overcrowding of fischer's landing do you not no i i mean and i won't belabor this point but i would say that i respectfully disagree with the statement that the parent committee did not um follow the guiding principles that were set um in breaking up neighborhoods walking zones safety issues yeah yeah you followed them really well scott were you pleased with your answer regards to sorry
085rob go ahead i just wondered if scott was finished with his answer by i mean i couldn't say more if you'd like me to um no if you're finished okay i was just going to say in regards to the walking zones i think that because in every school throughout our district we have uh the radius which we consider walking to school correct and then we have bust and so all of the guiding principles whenever you put boundaries in if we deem one of those barriers then those students are always best that's correct right scott yeah that was scary and you know i think this is you know one example unfortunately of many of you know misconception with regard to the meaning of the guiding principles because if we are recommending a school attendance zone and
086there's an area within that that is clearly you know within the radius and is going to be a walking zone then we are committed as a school district to making sure that there are safe walking routes throughout that area if we're talking about an area that is going to be an area where we bus students and send buses in there then we want to make sure that we've got the bus routes and the bus stops in the right area as we've discussed before um so you know i think it's you know really just a misunderstanding about um you know what some of those mean and how we interpret those i you know but i would say i mean i mean i feel like i i must say i believe we followed those in fact i
087know we did based on how we interpret them and the work that we do you know i'd also like to say that there at one point was an invitation you know for me to uh meet with one of the parents that has been very vocal in their you know disagreement with this to do the best i could to clear up those misconceptions and uh demonstrate that and that is not an invitation that was accepted which is fine i mean it's up to you know anybody to accept or not but the offer uh was made and then related to that and what was said and and you know victoria and the school board i don't know if this is the right time to say this but um you know i hope that you'll allow me to
088say this i you know again i recognize that everybody that's involved in this process no matter what their role and what their current position and how they feel about it is doing the very best they can and i would be remiss if i did not say how disappointing it is to me that we could end up in a situation where you have one group of parents attacking another group of parents especially when the folks that they are unjustly in my opinion attacking are folks that volunteered their time and worked hard with their other volunteer parent colleagues to come to the conclusion that we've reached um certainly there's going to be you know disagreement any time that recommendations like this are made or at least there's the potential for that but to continually attack parents who
089have volunteered their time and done the very best they can and i might add in my opinion done an outstanding job of working together to come up with these recommendations i i think that is just wrong this agreement is fine but attacks on folks that have donated their time in service to the district um that's really disappointing to me and very unfortunate that that has occurred i i didn't say anything nefarious happened i just said it look it seems very odd that the two parents from the same neighborhood didn't get there didn't have to shift schools okay it just looks really bad uh all i'm sure nothing nefarious happened in that regard but i can guarantee you that had you had two parents from the clear meadows neighborhood on the committee and we said well
090you know we're going to ship off the evergreen highway kids over to um i forget the name of the school now they would be just as ticked off as we are because they're the ones that got moved i mean that's just like that that's the way it is change if i could i agree that they would but i think the point is the committee that was brought broadly represented across the district didn't come to that that conclusion because as scott has said the numbers didn't they didn't make sense so i mean i i feel like scott's done a really good job of explaining the process from the committee's perspective mr klubnick has uh represented his perspective uh and i think israel did as well if that if that's his name i don't remember um and
091i think we've got four other people that have an opportunity to share their perspective also okay can i just make one last question okay where where uh how close to the uh deemed limit or whatever are you at ellsworth right now are you under are you at are you over based on the on the changes that you just did i don't have the numbers in front of me so well yeah i'll take a crack at that sir and if i misunderstood your question after i give you these numbers please let me know and i'll see what i can find but the so you know ellsworth as you know is one of the schools being rebuilt so it's new capacity uh without portables because we want all of our new buildings to not need portables is
092550 students now certainly there are a lot of variables that go into defining capacity but 550 is the number that we're working from the recommendation as presented at the time that it was made would result in ellsworth having a projected number of students of approximately 498 which would still leave some room for growth obviously and based on the current enrollment because part of the you know discussion and the adult acknowledgement through this process has been you know the current decline in enrollment across the elementary system at least partially and maybe mostly due to the pandemic the result of our current recommendations if the enrollment there was not to increase based on any other factor it would result in ellsworth housing 466 students okay and so then at fisher's landing after splitting off um clear meadows
093to columbia valley what are the numbers there fishers landing has a capacity and i'll give you two numbers here because the the capacity of the building proper itself so we're not including portables in this number um that capacity is 420. and that's worth noting i think we talked a little bit about this at the last board meeting but once the all of the new elementary schools are built or replaced based on the 2018 bond there will only be one of 22 elementary schools in our district that within the building itself have less capacity for students than fishers does the building itself is one of our smallest now continuing with capacity though for fishers because if you consider all of the portable classrooms that are currently there the capacity for fishers would be 604 students approximately
094and of course you know again we've discussed you know many times throughout this process that you know one of the desires of the school board and one of the things that we're charged with here is to across the entire district and across these phases to reduce the number of students in portable classrooms not to eliminate them necessarily but to make sure that we reduce them which certainly will be doing at the newly built ellsworth and the newly built marion when those open so capacity for fishers those two numbers 420 in the building and 604 when you count portables and so based on this proposal or what we've recommended to the board at the time it was recommended if that was accepted and we opened the new school year without an increase in enrollment there would
095be approximately students at fisher's landing and uh based on the current enrollment and as presented it would be 506. okay so what you're saying is that you're going to eliminate a few the portables but not all the portables and fishers so here's an easy solution you take the evergreen highway people you move them over to ellsworth because they have capacity to take on those 35 kids and now you get rid of all the portables and fissures i mean that's pretty straightforward is it not well um i mean what you've said sir is scraped forward however we feel we've been very upfront in our desire not to make to make sure that in these new buildings i mean i mentioned earlier that the capacity at ellsworth is the new ellsworth is 550 and as presented it
096would put approximately 498 students there we want to make sure within that building that there is some room for growth and so we're not comfortable intentionally going all the way up to 550 or beyond but doesn't that go against your principle of getting rid of the portables no it doesn't in my opinion because our principle or rather the direction from the board is to over the course of these phases of work to reduce the number of students in portables not to eliminate them entirely all right well i i've said my piece i i apologize i took up a lot of time but as you can tell i'm an auditor by living and what you guys presented didn't follow it really well at all either you need to rewrite your principles and find them more clearly
097as to what is required and what isn't required but i it seems to me you just pick and choose which principles that you want to use to do what you need to do that's the way it feels now that may not be the case and i know everybody worked hard and i know whatever i say is really not going to change anybody's minds but i just wanted to let you know that i do believe that you guys are picking and choosing what you want to make your story look right over now thank you thank you for participating we appreciate it is there anyone else who'd like to bring any new information to the board about the subject yes we have several people patiently waiting and um the next up is monica black hi monika we
098i'm working on a little tech thing for monica hold on please go ahead monica are you with us ashton's working on it we're having she's having a little tech trouble that's okay it's like she's still muted i'm not anymore there we go hi here she is hi you can hear me yep we can hear you okay i have a little thing i just want to read real quick okay okay i'm a parent of a third grader uh my son has dyslexia and has been receiving special services at fishers since kindergarten he has established relationships with a specialist and they know where he is academically he is already behind and this move would put him even further behind by forcing him to start over with new specialists i feel like all of these parents have given
099you numerous reasons that this move does not make sense and none of them are actually being considered starting with the fact that you have not even followed your own rules by having numerous people on your committee from the same million dollar neighborhood our neighborhood has had no representation you have not addressed the fact that you will be increasing bus traffic by essentially splitting our neighborhood in half and you have not even considered the fact that our children will be going to a different high school than all of their peers essentially having them try to make new friends their freshman year which we all know can be extremely difficult i understand that the evergreen school district values diversity in their schools and prides itself on providing equal opportunities to those of all backgrounds and ethnicities by
100cutting half of clear meadows out they are going directly against those values clear motives is a very diverse neighborhood um jennifer kludnick has already presented other options that would make more sense she even made a video showing how it would actually make more sense drivewise to have the same million dollar neighborhood that i mentioned before be the school that is switched but this isn't being considered for reasons that i think is pretty obvious to everyone at this meeting um there was a woman on the committee earlier that said that she i mean on the meeting earlier that said that she resented the fact that we thought they were cutting our neighborhood out instead of theirs simply because they were the ones on the committee and had the ability to decide that our neighborhood would be
101affected instead of theirs well i kind of resent the fact that we weren't given a say in a decision that will affect all of our kids futures i resent the fact that my husband and i will now have to consider taking out a loan to get my son the specialty services he desperately needs um we specifically chose this house 11 years ago for our children and i guess my question is this um i've already talked with mr monroe about grandfathering our children in and he says that it's not allowed my question is why not uh we're in the middle of a pandemic and you are pretty much guaranteeing that our property values are going to go down at least twenty thousand dollars why can't we think outside the box and let our children that are
102affected in this area maybe walk across the neighborhood and go to one of the bus stops over there to still attend the school that we specifically moved here for and that way we would at least get to have our children attend that school in a couple years we will have phased out all of those children and you will have the desired effect that you want right now that's it thank you for your input are we uh considering boundary appeals but we wouldn't offer transportation then at that point is that correct i'm sure everything's exactly can you repeat that like are we offering boundary um exceptions i guess for people to apply for boundary exceptions well yes our boundary exception process are remains unchanged and uh you know in terms of the you know grandfathering in
103of any particular neighborhood over another um you know that by my interpretation and based on previous conversations and advocacy for that at different schools in the past you know that would cause us to violate the state law that requires us to consider boundary exceptions based on date received and based on certain classifications um and of course you know as the board knows um and maybe several others as well the um the more readable board policy and board procedure of course mirror state law and try to make that clear so the boundary exception process in terms of the application window is open now i didn't check in with our boundary department today to see you know what the traffic so to speak has been like before but people are eligible to all over the district and
104of course outside of the district to come into it are able as they always have to apply for boundary exceptions we're not at the point this early in the school year where we're in a position to begin making decisions based on those you know that will i imagine follow its normal process and timeline although perhaps we'll have some conversations you know related to the pandemic and the declining enrollments and see if that needs to change but there's there's no question nor i believe has there ever been that the boundary exception process remains an option for those who wish to apply for it whether we're talking this area of the district or of course any others it's always been [Music] thank you scott you said then um the state law prevents a grand fathering decision well
105i you know if so let's uh play this out a step further right and so you know obviously as you guys know i worked really hard not to get ahead of myself in this regard but you know to do the best i can to explain this i'll get a smidge ahead of myself so let's assume for a moment that whether it's tonight or in the future the board votes and approves the recommendations as presented which would mean that this section of club of clear meadows would now be in the columbia valley neighborhood and not in the fishers neighborhood so that would mean by definition that anybody who at that point lives in the clear meadows section starting next school year right the 20 2021-22 school year to attend fisher's landing would need to apply for
106a boundary exception and that would need to be approved for a decision to be made in you know in opposition to that process which does follow state law in order to you know to take a neighborhood and say okay you folks can go to fishers and now we will consider boundary exceptions that would be a violation because boundary exceptions are based on space available and so it's not uh it's not our right to you know affect that place that space rather excuse me by taking one neighborhood but not taking others who might want the same thing and grandfathering them in so i don't believe that's something that we can do but we can of course do as we've always done and that is to accept boundary exception applications and where space is available our goal
107remains the same again as it's always been and that is that no matter which part of the district we are talking about if a family applies for a boundary exception meaning that they want to go to another school instead of their home school then we as a district hope to be in a position to say yes to those we want to be and if there's space available we would it's like i said earlier at this moment in time it would be premature to even if this were to be approved by the board to start to make decisions based on space available because we don't yet have projections from the superintendent and he does a great job of doing that every year and giving us those initial numbers to start with and then we go from
108there so that process of beginning to look at those and start the approval process that typically begins sometime in june and it doesn't conclude until sometime in august sometime at least in the case of kindergarten which is always the most unknown sometimes we're not able to make decisions on kindergarten boundary exceptions until a couple of days before school is slated to start so that would be our timeline thank you scott you're welcome okay who is next on our list next on our list is margaret milam okay welcome margaret we're all right hi here we go so i just want to make a quick comment from my perspective as a neighborhood association leader and that is just that what i've heard today and in previous meetings has kind of shown a disconnect between the city and
109the district the district not knowing about certain developments and numbers and things development projects the city not knowing about boundary you know changes i know sue has mentioned in the past how difficult it is to get development numbers from the city and keep up with all those numbers and so i know ryan from the city suggested you know working together on some of the safety enhancement projects i'd like to suggest if there's not already that there just be some sort of protocol or monthly system where the city and the district get together and share information so that both sides are just better informed thanks margaret sue do you issue around still yeah i'm here and so we're it's not actually ryan in transportation we work with ryan and his group um on a number of
110other processes when we build new schools and um we've worked with him on the gila parking agreement we actually work with jason north in community development in regards to the development we do receive notifications through a number of different processes sometimes they come through the developer sometimes they come through cpa we do go on the city's website so we work in three different jurisdictions city of vancouver city of camas and clark county and we have had recent conversations with jason regarding more regular updates on where they are in the development process i think the biggest challenge is that we often get notified of developments but then they go on hold or they change names or the address has changed so it's a little bit more difficult to track um and we do reach out we
111we had during the construction of the last three schools we were holding monthly meetings with the city and didn't always talk about developments but have recently kind of opened those developments up again especially with the increase in the number of multi-family homes so we have recently been having that conversation but that's with a different department thanks sue did you have anything else for us margaret thank you for your input we appreciate you okay who is next on our list next on our list is shelly prothrow right hi hi shelly thanks for being with us tonight thank you for having me um i am actually one of the parents that were on the committee i'm sorry i don't know why my camera's not working but it's okay either way um and i want to say thank
112you so much to scott because this has been for us as committee members a very very long process and we put him through the ringer asking for so much information to help us try and make these decisions that there were times we're here like i don't know if i can get that but i'll do what i can so i really want to thank him for that and i also want to thank the people that he was able to get that information from because you know as parents we were put in a very precarious position we were asked to do something not even knowing what it was most of us and when we realized that what we were going to be doing would not only impact our children but impact every other child in our district
113we we knew then that any personal things that would be there had to be taken off the table and that integrity was most important and so i also want to thank my fellow committee members because we asked the hard questions we looked at everything we put ourselves our homes and our children's educations on the line just like we asked just like we had to do for everybody in fact the two people that are being kind of dragged right now theirs was the first that was going to that was put on the block that was the first boundary that was put on the block but that aside it doesn't matter i also want to thank the board because i know right now during a pandemic and everything that it is that you all are trying to
114do connecting with the city everything the city is trying to do to connect and just be able to have education still happening have our city still functioning i want to thank you all as well because you know i know that's hard and i know it's very easy for people to point out oh this and oh that but i really really appreciate every bit of effort and time that every single person has put into this so thank you very much and i will respect and honor any and all decisions that you do make on this as will every single one of my other committee members thank you thank you shelly okay do we have anyone else on the list that would like to speak um yes director bradford i have um jennifer club nick um her
115husband dean spoke earlier okay and also is that fine okay yeah she's as long as she has something new to tell us new information can you hear me yes thank you jennifer hi there first i would like to apologize to mr monroe because he did offer to meet with me i'm the one that's been extremely vocal and very uh outspoken um i apologize for not getting back to you i would like to meet with you maybe later i just felt like i didn't want to show up to that meeting without an officer or somebody from the city that could tell you how dangerous the mill playing part of the proposal was um as you probably have guessed i'm the one that reached out to uh ryan and got a hold of him to get a
116hold of you and i'm i'm very thankful that he was able to talk with you because now i can sleep at night knowing that the city will help the school make it safer for children because that really was making me have trouble sleeping i worry about children not just my own i worry about everybody's children in the community um and kids crossing the plane i just i i don't understand why that was even considered but the fact that they're going to work with you is great so mr munroe i apologize i i don't know if i said your name right um i didn't feel like my feelings were part of the problem my problem was with the safety issues and i wanted to get somebody to address that that was paramount so i apologize for
117not getting back to you um i just wanted to point out that um yeah i'll try not to cover anything that's already been covered so it'll be short now uh i've contacted the bus barn i asked them if evergreen highway towards going towards ellsworth was a no-go if it was a really bad idea or if they did not recommend that at all and i was told that that was a perfectly safe and acceptable bus route that that was something that that they were not against so i just wanted to make that on the record that the bus barn said it is it is okay for them to go to ellsworth i did that drive i made a recording 3.1 miles and eight minutes long and that's going the speed limit so there are discrepancies still
118i know that it keeps getting talked about but you know you're trying to help fisher's landing you know yes we get to move to columbia valley i find that to be actually kind of exciting it'll be new for the kids you know i don't like it but you know i'm all for adventure a change happens whatever why can't evergreen highway also get moved away from fischer's landing that would eliminate at least uh half of another portable i don't understand why it is like why they're so dead set on not having them go to ellsworth i don't know that it's that they're so dead set on them not going it's just doesn't make numerical sense probably and i know that what scott was saying about the bus it wasn't so much that it was a safety
119issue as much as it's just easier with the buses to not be going the other direction wasn't it time spent on the bus traveling yeah i think um i mean i can speak a little bit uh first of all you know you know to the best of my knowledge everything that jennifer just shared is is absolutely true the uh you know the bus bar in our transportation department were very open to that possibility which is why as shelley one of partly why rather one of the first areas that we looked at was that area you know what caused us to you know reject that area so to speak and move not move on was both the relatively low number of students in that area in its entirety even the ones that were you know on
120the east side of that and much closer to fishers but also the complexities that emerged with the possibility of if we moved that area up into riverview then riverview is already a right-sized school as we define it so we'd have to find a roughly equal number of students to move you know from riverview to another school and that proved problematic based on the just the location of where the homes were and trying to capture so to speak the right number of students um the the other thing and i think you know you kind of just hit on a little bit julie is that and it's you know a very understandable misconception or confusion point is that for us when we're talking about you know drive times we're talking specifically about approximately how much time would
121students spend on the bus or bus is when they go from whatever area to whatever school we are thinking about and so in working with our transportation department um while as i already mentioned as a and as jennifer mentioned uh previously they were okay with that um you know the the misunderstanding is around comparing drive time when you jump in your car and and take a drive from one end to the other or whatever you do versus taking that drive on a bus that has to weave in and out of those neighborhoods to pick up all of those students because with only approximately 28 students in that area it would be one bus that would be doing that and so that adds quite a bit of time if you were talking about taking that entire
122area our initial look with the committee was about uh you know could we take part of that area the area you know west and closest to ellsworth and look at it that way that didn't contain enough students actually nor did the entire area and then the other part that played a role in that is that you know during the process as the parents were on the committee were working through this you know we realized that the numbers appeared to support the possibility that we could recommend in the end that the area west of 205 in its entirety could be divided between ellsworth and marion and that was a very attractive proposition to us and the only part that gave us pause which has been mentioned several times tonight in which ryan from the city spoke
123to was that area we're recommending for ellsworth uh what north of mill plain going to ellsworth which is why we needed to ascertain with certainty that that entire area you know would be best and the last thing you know that i'd i'd really like to say um you know based on one of the things that jennifer just said is how much i really appreciate you know both personally and professionally with the last part of what she said and that was that if the board decides to approve this um you know something along the lines of welcoming the opportunity to go to columbia valley and you know i think go on a new adventure is how how jennifer put it and i mean i cannot express enough how much i appreciate that because that's one of
124the other things that has really concerned me and that i found disappointing at times throughout this process is the in in my view sometimes the the rush to judgment about one school versus another when oftentimes uh folks haven't spent time in those schools and don't know the folks in those schools you know i'm very fortunate as i think everybody knows in my current position that that i get to work with all of our elementary principals and you know even so far as to you know participating and co-leading in the process that we follow to recommend to the superintendents who should be hired for principals at schools and vice principals and so um you know i know the administrative team at columbia valley very well and i've spent time there and pre pandemic spent time in
125classrooms with them watching teachers teach and so you know i know firsthand how outstanding and how caring that entire staff is whether you're talking about the you know the teachers or the classified staff or the administrative staff columbia valley is an outstanding school in spite perhaps of what some websites might say and if we turn back the clock and my 20 year old daughter was seven or eight i would be thrilled to have my daughter attend columbia valley and so um i certainly hope pending you know the result of whatever the board decides um that there will be some parents who are affected by this certainly boundary exception requests are welcome as we've said many times but i really hope there might be some folks who will give the change a chance because i believe
126that anybody that attends columbia valley is very lucky to do so and so jennifer i appreciate you saying that and i appreciate you bringing up uh you know those questions about uh that area and i think i heard you mention too that you might um you know still want to meet with me to go through some of this um certainly no pressure in that regard but if you would like to uh please let me know because i'd be happy to do that okay yeah um yeah meeting with you would be great um i just want to i just want to hold everybody accountable i guess i want you know i know the numbers you know you guys i understand that the numbers are not always reflective of what the schools are but i i i
127hope that the district sees this as an opportunity to raise these other the schools that are struggling help them help them do better i think i think they can do as well as fishers lending i think maybe find out mr seagram and ask him how he did it because he's the one that started getting fisher's landing to do so well um you know get i i think that the whole district can do so much better and and i hope you take this opportunity to do so because i i want all the schools to be equally awesome i want i want columbia bellies numbers to be great i want elsewheres i want them all to do super well and i and i hope that you guys are able to start working towards that i can tell
128you we've we are working on that and that is our goal as well we're very committed to that and that is reflected in our graduation rates and other metric but like scott we're in schools or we were before covid but we see um what's going on in our schools and every school has its challenges and every school has its gifts and i can tell you that columbia valley is really a great place for students and they do a very good job so you your kids will be in good hands that i have no doubt i think all 22 of our schools do a great job i i i know i just i just want them to i i want them to get the recognition that fisher's landing gets and i and i know that's probably
129what you want to so how how do you make that happen i i'm going to leave that up to you guys you know because you're you're the professionals but i'm i'm i'm asking you to continue to work towards that goal and um please communicate with the city about walkings and i know that kids are supposed to be bust but you and i all know everybody knows you cannot control children especially children from homes where things are tumultuous or there's only one parent or you know kids won't listen to you if you just shake your finger at them and say you're not supposed to do that you know kids will walk to school when they miss the bus especially when it's right down the street it i did it as a kid a lot you got
130you got to keep that in mind that kids are not a program that you can you they're not robots you can program they they have their own minds they make their own decisions sometimes they're not always good you know you got to keep that in mind that that that factor please think about that next time okay well thank you jennifer is there anyone else you'd like to speak um yes director bradford we have aaron parkinson um same family as israel parkinson okay and mute her now hi erin hi hello good evening um oh hold on my husband has to believe his computer um so i have a prepared statement but just a couple of things i i'm going to clarify because um uh scott can get quite verbose and i think we get lost in
131the language first of all there will be two buses on one street in our neighborhood that is the truth uh a street is split up and the current proposal so one neighbor will be going to clear meadow or fisher's landing one neighbor will be going to columbia valley there will be multiple bus routes coming in and out of our neighborhood that is a fact second of all there was a clear meadows family represented on this committee they dropped out they moved out of district and it was replaced so but not with someone within our neighborhood it was replaced with obviously we know it's been replaced with people outside of our community so there was an attempt but there was no attempt to like find somebody else and as scott has mentioned in many many other
132meetings there aren't enough children in the neighborhood that we are questioning to transfer to ellsworth which is why it wasn't an option so clearly we have a lot of children in our neighborhood so there were plenty of families that could have been selected to be on this committee and actually plenty of families who even though they're not vocal are very involved in what's happening right now um the second point i want to bring up is that on this committee two of these uh two of these parent volunteers are employees of evergreen public school um i know that personally um so that's a conflict of interest right then and there um the second point i want to bring up is boundary exceptions uh fisher's landing is notorious for denying boundary exceptions and and denying them the
133first day of school like letting parents drag on until school starts before they give them a response and i'm sure i will be corrected but if i'm wrong but i have been told that even mr molino tried to get a boundary exception for his children at fisher's landing and was denied um so if the superintendent if this is true can't get in there what are the chances that our children are going to get in there um then the last point i want to make is that the parent who spoke the parent who was on the committee who spoke earlier had said that they started this not even knowing what they were doing and yeah um this is a job that's handled by people who have a career in logistics and planning and the district cut
134corners by finding volunteers to do it and this is the outcome um and this is now on to my prepared statement um so it is clear that this board and the unqualified and inexperienced parent volunteer committee has no interest in considering alternatives to these arbitrary rezoning boundaries um your interaction with our community has been dishonest dismissive patronizing and unsympathetic we are no longer inclined to play nice in the proverbial sandbox mr merlino keeps saying that we do this for the kids but i'm starting to believe he means baby goats and not human children nothing this board has done over the past three years has shown any consideration for our children nothing this um students in second grade and below have not experienced a single uninterrupted school year 18 and 19 was the strike 19 and
13520 and obviously this year coved now you are ripping our children from their community of learners and sending them to a completely unfamiliar place can you even consider how these children will feel after being away from the only school they've known then be forced into a completely new environment after everything they've already been through stop placating to us with meaningless platitudes like kids are resilient not a single one of you is qualified to assess the emotional and behavioral health of our children they have been put through enough already they left their schools on march 2020 without any closure and now they will never go back i know you received a letter from the before and after school care provider for many of our children they will not transport our children to columbia valley most of
136these children including mine have attended this day care since they were infants now we will find i have have to find a new child care provider for our children more collateral damage from your uninformed decision making you are eliminating less than 10 percent of the fishers landing student population and bussing them where they will represent less than 10 percent of the school's population and let's be honest since current fourth graders are not required to make this transition the only grade level affected are k-3 how much of an impact do you really think this is going to make on student population at fishers landing the answer is minimal did this committee even analyze the grade level of students in clear meadows or did you just find a neighborhood with 50 students and pick that one given
137my experience in a professional capacity with several of these members on this committee i'm guessing the latter in the last in the last meeting the board waxed poetic and now in this meeting about their love of columbia valley that's great i know it's a great school i worked there most of last school year i made a point to compliment mrs torres on the community and culture she is nurturing there but this isn't about the quality of community and culture this is about the emotional well-being of our children additionally i hear time and again from educators at shahala that fishers landing students enter sixth grade more prepared for the academic rigor of middle school than students from any other fetal feeder school is but isn't that what you're supposed to ensure from the common core state
138standards to make certain that our children are college and career ready columbia valley is currently ranked at a five fisher's landing is an eight fishers landing continuously wins washington state academic achievement awards columbia valley has not done so since what are you going to do to make sure our students are getting eight level education at a five level school it is clear that this board has no interest in acknowledging the deceptive and unprofessional and misguided recommendations you will proceed regardless of the truth but we will not forget what you have done to our children we will remember with our votes and our voices but i'm sure your arms are tired from patting yourselves on the back is there anything else aaron nope thank you okay do we have anyone else on the list we do
139not have anyone else on the list all right thanks laurie welcome okay um we've been on this so long i can't remember where we were at okay so now um i'd like to accept a motion for um for the elementary boundary changes as presented do we have emotions moves to accept the elementary boundary changes as presented for approval okay now now i will open things up for questions or comments by the board and you've asked a lot of them during the previous portion but is there anything else that you'd like to bring forward i i guess i'll start i'll just make a couple brief comments um i know that when we first had started having some conversations about it and um i think even before it was workshopped um and we kind of were hearing
140some of the things that had been coming out of um you know about the neighborhood and then we were kind of taking a look and then we talked about the different developments and then we were like well maybe we should slow down because of covid um because we didn't really quite know where our enrollment was and you know then we then we had presentation we got um you know we heard from the committee we have additional meetings um individually with scott and mike so we could ask our own questions and get clarification um sorry for jumping in but my neighbor jana signed up to be on the um guest speaker and she wasn't called victoria what do you want yeah i'm just looking at i'm waiting for laurie to tell me what sorry ashton said
141um she was not on there at the time when we asked if there was anybody else on the list so i don't know if she lowered her hand and now it's up i'm not sure okay let's if if you have something new to add then let's go ahead and hear what you have have to say um because we want to make sure everybody is heard and this will be our last our last person okay we're getting her now okay thank you lori i'm so sorry i i i just let jenna know that she needs to raise her hand again so okay is she there there's no option to raise your hand when i'm hovering over it's not coming up so she's probably not seeing it it may be that way for him because he's already
142on yeah i don't even see the name i don't either jenna said yeah she she can't see the raise your hand for some reason is there any way you can what's her last name white jana white is there a jana white even as a attendee there's a chris janna white with an icon that's her [Music] we've got her okay can you guys hear me yes that was weird yeah for some reason there was no hand there was no unmute nothing so i was like i don't know what to do um so i guess i i don't really have anything new to say um i just think it's appalling that the board is even considering this without really actually considering what parents and city officials have to say and really quite honestly not even engaging city
143officials um that that's a huge disconnect um my my second thought is that the um the group should that um scott was tied with should really be ashamed of how they went through this process um as we know they completely went against their guiding principles scott seems to keep patting himself on the back thinking that he followed all of them just perfectly well um and then once again also saying well they're just guiding principles um not that they actually need to be followed um so i guess my question for that is okay to wear like a mini skirt to school like that's a guiding principle let's say but is it really a rule that i have to follow um if we're going to hold children to those standards maybe we should also be following the
144same rules and expectations that we're setting um it's appalling to me that they did not communicate with the city um why was you know the transportation guy not in on this a year ago why is he in it now that's ridiculous and only because um one of my neighbors managed to get him in that conversation that that's a major thing that should have been coming from the school district it should not require a community member to you know bring a city official into that conversation um the communication with families absolutely ridiculous the fact that we found out october 7th that this was even happening and already been going on for nearly a year at that point um absolutely absurd that we had basically a month to not even speak our minds but just hear him
145out because let's be honest none of you not not a single one of you actually care what we're saying um and then just being open to hear from us is you're clearly not not not a single one of you and like aaron said we will remember that next time voting comes around um the the other part of this is as far as the volunteers and giving up their time and la di da okay first of all let's all be honest with ourselves they did not volunteer they were appointed um they were not qualified i i feel like there are so many people in this community that would be more qualified to volunteer for that and they would happily have done so and given their own time and not pat themselves on the back and not
146be in it only for themselves or for their children it's just absolutely absurd um that that was never even an opportunity given to anybody else um i don't even know how you guys can say you're proud of yourselves um what else do i want to say i think that we need to be given full access to the capacity and enrollment list for each school you say that you've been transparent you've absolutely not been and these numbers somehow they keep changing every time we hear them which i i get numbers can fluctuate a bit but the level that they've been fluctuating and like not really being produced in the actual document and given to us to look at how are we supposed to even um like really see for ourselves um how this all plays out
147throughout the community um it's ridiculous that we've had to like pull all this information ourselves when you guys have it all right in front of you and it's public information um janet did you request to have that information for the um the numbers for each of the schools i personally have not i know that somebody else did in my neighborhood because that is public information and with if somebody puts in a request it's easy enough to give somebody if they want it okay well then i think scott monroe needs to be made available made aware that he needs to share that information he seems to do a lot of padding on him back up padding on his own back let's not let's not get into that i i'm gonna i'm gonna stop this right now
148we're not gonna go get into personalities and how you feel because you didn't ask for you didn't ask for that information yourself so you don't know exactly what's happened it's not just that and i'm not going to let i was talking no i'm talking now i know excuse me i'm the power of this board and i will tell you that we're not going to be smearing our staff or the committee members we've heard it and we're done with that if there's other information that you would like us to consider then that's fine is jana still there up here she's gone okay that's the end of any um other comments other than from the board as it pertains to this vote do we have any other questions from the board i don't have any questions but
149i would just like to make one quick statement the assumption that we did not actually do anything in regards or listen to what has come our way um i would just like to say is completely inaccurate um and that each one of us has taken additional time to make sure that we have asked all the questions we have gone through the presentations we've had additional meetings um so to [Music] i just want to make sure that that's not that that false accusation um there was quite a few of them but i want to make sure that every single person that was involved in this the committee spot mike the board and sue and everybody else who got the information that was needed this was not taken lightly and each one of us spent a lot
150of time on coming to this decision thank you okay well i i think i'll go ahead and finish i think what i was saying earlier um anyways we we also uh looked at the timing because we knew that enrollment this year looks different we're not sure what it's going to look like next year but i really believe that because we have brand new schools that are going to be complete in the fall that this decision has to be made so we do follow um really what this board's one of our this board's beliefs has been for a long time and that's about getting as many students out of portables as possible uh one of them and i also i completely agree with what uh was said earlier we have a belief that all of our
151schools are great that we have great staff and throughout all of them and that it is one of the hardest decisions a school board member has to make is to affect a student and their where they attend school we understand that people get attached to their school communities and their families um it is very difficult decision but we also know that our schools are great and that our kids will be successful wherever they go they'll be part of that new school community and um you know i just i just want people out there to have faith in that and know that we're going to do what's best by all of our kids throughout our entire district thank you julie rod hey yes the thing that was most impactful from the comments tonight came from the
152comments about a disconnect between the city and the district which i know we've had evidence of before uh that we could have used um the kind of linkage that uh ms milam proposed when i've been thinking of the instances when the uh um i guess the was the impact fee formulas uh that event um so i would encourage mike to mike i'd encourage you to explore that in greater detail and see if we can get far more open lines of communication between our local governments because they're right that could only improve uh things for kids so i'll repeat it i was a marion kid i crossed mill plane on foot in the 1980s as a child and uh those are the same crosswalks and traffic signals i think there's a left turn signal now that
153where there didn't used to be but um felt safe doing so and and i'm taking the comments mr loposa to heart and i'm glad that the city is concerned and working on that nevertheless we are planning to bus kids from the north of uh mill plane and so that option is available if a child feels unsafe to cross the street as far as uh whether or not we understand kids i raised five my youngest is 15 years old i have i guess i accord at no weight uh that we couldn't understand kids being parents ourselves and being as involved as we've been in classrooms and with schools in my case since i think 2009 and earlier than that on ptas and so forth so there's not a lot of weight to that as far as
154our guiding principles go um i remember thinking that there was something to scrutinize i i remember thinking that the northern border of uh marion didn't quite look right to me but we went through the extra meetings with the committee members and with scott we heard the work that they had to do to balance things and i'm satisfied that in spite of what we heard tonight that the work of the committee did its best to balance the guiding principles we put what six out there but we didn't prioritize them in any particular way and i know my basic interest in changing boundaries was to get rid of a lot of those you know oak brook going to ellsworth even though they're five miles north of ellsworth kind of things in order to build communities around the
155district that the rapid growth had eliminated before so i am satisfied with that part of the work um enrollment it's never been more uncertain this year than at any time in what the past 25 would you say mike i mean ever not ever and that is directly attributable to the pandemic timing we would have been finished with this work in june and so there was an extra six months in the process to compensate for covid so i'm not according that a lot of weight either i think what we have is as with anything else as human and and huge as this is a really good piece of work that is not perfect and so we'll have to revisit it that's why boundary exception procedures and and those statutes exist in the first place is so
156that we can help students who not to be locked into places but it also sounds to me like the enrollment is going to be uh fluid enough and that there's going to be space enough that if people need an exception um then we can accommodate them somehow maybe i don't know i've seen all kinds of things but the tight enrollment days for now at least seem to have passed uh the way they were when my wife and i first moved in with our then three kids and there were a bunch of schools captain enrollment so i think there's going to be space and i think there's going to be time to cope and i would as i always tend to do ask that people extend grace to one another we defined a process that includes
157citizen input with expert advice specifically so that citizens could have input and offer their advice and so that we could rely on experts in terms of the wishes that they had and i've done a lot of talking about that but i think it's important to say so i think it's important to say our process works for us because it involves community members and volunteers and in this case they had experts at their beck and call to answer questions as they came up and i think the plan is legal and acceptable you're never gonna meet all six of those requirements at the same time those guiding principles so you have to pick and choose you have to make some hard choices and today is going to be one of those hard choices i guess but i'm
158in support of it thank you rob um the one blessing and curse having been on the board for as long as i have 21 years is i know from where we've come and i also know where we want to go and what i've seen in between before i was a board member i was a mom with two little girls in school at hearthwood elementary my young my oldest daughter started kindergarten there the first year that they opened and within one year of her being there and being able to walk to that school from my neighborhood the district wanted to change the boundary and it caused an uproar and back then it was um that's too bad we're the district this is what we're going to do and it was a bloodbath i i can tell
159you it was not pretty it would make this situation look like nothing so we come all these years later because after that particular situation where parents got very involved and were very upset about a change that was going to happen within one year of starting at a new school um we were able to come to some agreements but it took it took that incident to create a scenario that that helped us come to the process that we use now that is driven by community members that have children in our schools and as rob said coupled with working with experts in in these different areas that we need to have experts in and this is i can tell you in all the years that we have been doing this in this way this is the very
160first time that when it's come to the vote that we've even had a single person want to change things because the process has been so inclusive and i'm not saying the process is perfect because we're all human beings and it's not perfect um and i would encourage anyone that's um use this as a jumping off point to your further involvement in our school system and there's lots of ways to be involved but this has been a process that has worked for us for many years and we have felt good about it not patting ourselves on the back but the results that we've had where people were satisfied now i know you don't care about my neighborhood but i can tell you i have a neighborhood that can be as vocal as your neighborhood and they've
161in the you know over the years they've been moved multiple times and they're being moved again in this time and they're not going to a school that's within walking distance to their neighborhood school they're going to be bussed but i can tell you that this neighborhood realizes now that our schools are good that um their children will get their needs met and our schools will welcome all of you there to participate in making that a success in our schools we like parents to be involved um in the schools and i would hope that that's what you will do um our own attitudes about change for our kids is a big part of the prescription on how to make it successful for our kids and yes we have a lot of kids in our district that
162have been through a lot and we think about that and we've talked about that as as we bring our kids back how do we address the what what will be for some of our kids trauma from the effects of covid and what it's done to their families and so our purpose and everything we do as a board and it's one thing that i felt i have always felt really good about with this board is the commitment to children the commitment to our community and our commitment to the staff that serve our children and and do the best they can every day to give them what they need and so i um feel comfortable with this vote and do not feel like we need to investigate any further i absolutely am open to having any parent
163want to help us refine our process because we'll be going through this again and um we can always improve and that's important for us to have continuous improvement so at this time unless anyone else has anything to say from the board just one more thing uh-huh you know me i know i've known science but i was gonna get the last word for once maybe you'll echo me i've known scott monroe for over seven years uh he and i are not personal friends we have a professional relationship right uh we don't hang out in bars or anything like that we interact uh only at the district level but throughout those seven years i have never seen scott hacked or decide uh on any basis other than the welfare of children never and um it pains me
164to hear the kinds of things i heard about him today knowing the professional that i know um those aren't things that i can believe scott is a professional and he cares about kids and he cares about the kids in the clear meadows neighborhood as thoroughly as any other of the kids in the rest of the district he's a good man let's recognize that tonight too thank you rob very true so we've had um the motion moved and seconded and we've had our questions and and um comments so now we'll take a vote to accept the elementary boundary changes as presented for approval i'll take um i'm of yes rob yes julie say yes for me yes all right so it has been approved and we will move forward um i i know the the um
165staff will take suggestions on some of the things that were concerns it looks like we have an invitation from ryan to partner with them on that like we have on other situations that are a similar nature and um we will go ahead and make sure that this is a smooth transition for our kids next um on the agenda is board comments and i'm opening it this up to any comments by the board julie uh just one thing real quick i i wanted to say this during the superintendent's report that i didn't have a chance um i wanted to thank mike for sending us the mou so we could take a look at it um and there is a lot of safety measures in there um a lot of the concerns as we've been receiving a
166lot of emails and comments over the past several days a lot of those concerns addressed in those emails are addressed in the mou and so i think that um that will be helpful for the membership for them to be able to take a look at that and know that their concerns are being addressed and it's important can i just i'll just add one other thing because i i you know i work in a public facing environment and we follow strict um you know covered protocols all day long and um and i think that that's important and for all of our buildings and our staff and our students to make sure that we're just following the protocols and that um they're in place for a reason and we do our best to follow them thank you
167julie jenny i don't have anything to add okay thank you rob more comments right yep did you just bring a mic down yeah it's i'll explain later but i have to make videos for work and so i've got equipment for that okay oh gosh and it looks like okay the mural behind me is is protecting everybody from i'll just show you um it's okay we don't need it it's a green screen behind me but the mural was painted by uh mountain view students uh and if you saw in the news uh i think kgw did just this last week right mike yeah yeah it was just this last week it's been such a long week for everybody well with everything that's gone on nationally and in the state level that four of the classes under
168the leadership of the asb there the asb council there created murals to place around the construction zone of the new high school so i've got some pictures that i won't you know dig out and show everybody right now but they placed it where the construction workers can always see them to say things like we appreciate you and go thunder and it's so neat that we're getting a new school and you can just get an idea of the experience and experience the gratitude that the students feel that the oldest high school in the district is getting replaced um and not to forget the heritage is also getting its uh portables replaced um consistent with our values but uh this is for an alumnus like me this is really nice and i got to meet uh i
169got to meet some students and when i talked about being a graduate one of them looked at me and said do you know chuck nimi and i said he was my driver's ed instructor and he taught me sociology as a teenager and he then he said i'm his grandson how funny there was this accidental family connection and it turns out his mom works at in the counseling center and so i got a chance to talk to her and uh it was just a beautiful kind of element to a day that was otherwise nationally kind of awful right um those students uh seem to be the kind of kids who would take an interest in advising the board and i'm hoping that uh that they'll take some of them will take my invitation i don't know
170probably they're not watching right now but i can always reach it back out to their mom um to testify in some bills and that's the second thing that i wanted to tell you about is that uh melissa gomboski reached out to me today and asked me to testify on the high school credit waiver bill and i'm signed up for friday morning no idea in this new world whether or not they'll actually take as much written testimony or oral testimony but i'm scheduled for oral testimony and she tells me that it'll be a chance to bring evergreen's stories about graduation to the state legislature in connection with the state legislature the chairs and ranking members of both of the education committees in the house and senate uh signed that letter asking the teachers and all school
171employees be put into phase one february for everyone to get vaccinations um that's something that wasda's been advocating for and it's been interesting to be a part of that and start some conversations i'm really pleased to hear that other districts around the state are getting into that um i'll have a wider legislative update when the time is right and uh that yeah i think that's it oh go ahead it isn't we are located on lands originally occupied by the khalitz and chinookan peoples who have made their homes and lives here for centuries i recognize their them for their stewardship and appreciate that they've been here since time immemorial i want to suggest when the time is right that we adopt something that we read out in honor of that at each of our board meetings
172i think that'd be great okay i've been thinking about it myself so i'm glad you brought it up yeah i'm sure we can't refine it but i've been consulting with uh the native americans that i know in the area and with the cowlitz tribe they don't have a specific process uh but they were able to advise and i talked with cindy kelly who's a column she's a delaware elder and lives up in the near the columbus reservations in port angeles uh who also offered advice so i think it'd be a great step towards recognizing um that they're here and they've been here way longer than any of us that's right and they have so much to offer so much okay now i'm finished thanks rob um i think we've been going um pretty long so
173i've probably said enough of my my two cents about things so i'm not i don't have anything more to add tonight um so i'd like to just move on to future agenda items and see if there's anything else that we want to add to our list of things that we're working on okay now we move to citizen comments um citizen comments are a time for citizens to speak to the board about things that have not already been on the agenda tonight and are not of personnel or legal in nature um and we would like the comments to be kept to three minutes and i have a list of people that have asked to speak tonight let me grab that little list here victoria do you have them all set up there um i do um
174we don't have carrie liebert on so we're going to go with andrea teske and we're unmuting her now okay great can you hear me okay yes andrea we can thank you i feel like so excited my time has come i know this has been a long week it's okay um great my name is andrea tuskey hollowatz and i'm a music itinerant with the district and um i am beyond relieved to hear that specialists will be remaining remote until february 19th um this gives us time to think about the best possible solution going forward for this group of teachers um the board of education uh i believe needs to keep teacher safety and student safety as a priority and um i personally am terrified of the prospect of seeing 300 students a week in person and
175in the classrooms of 18 different teachers um it's not equitable to ask me and the other specialists to see 300 kids a week in person um when classrooms teacher teachers are only required to see probably about 20 is what it will end up being um it's just not safe for me to teach 24 groups of kids in two different schools um many itinerants have four schools or three schools um and according to covet act uh kovadaknow.org clark county's risk level is that active or imminent outbreak and there is a dangerous number of new cases at a daily rate of 35.4 per 100 000 people and i checked today and it says that cases are rapidly increasing um so i just really want to hammer home the idea that the safest solution is to continue to
176have specialist teach remotely specialists can be the in-person connection for students on asynchronous days and they can lighten the asynchronous teacher lesson requirements for those for those days for classroom teachers um this needs to continue until all teachers in the district are vaccinated and not just until that arbitrary deadline of february 19th my hope is that we really take this extra time that um the district and the union have decided upon together to really come up with a solution that works um and keeps you know us from seeing 300 children a week um because i ultimately i believe it's reckless to have rotating specialists in a pandemic and i just wonder if parents know that some of their children's teachers um could potentially be seeing 300 other children a week and i just want to
177end with that i myself and the music teachers at evergreen public schools are committed to providing high quality education to our students and um we need your continued help to make this happen safely so thank you thank you andrea we appreciate your input thanks okay did you say that care harry wasn't wasn't here that's correct so next on our list that we're going to unmute is um kristin barton okay thank you hi can you hear me yes we can kristen thank you for joining us tonight um okay so i have a statement i'm gonna try and read it as fast as possible while not stuttering because uh i hate public speaking but here we go um my name is kristen barton and i'm here to speak on behalf of the kindergarten teachers at silverstar elementary
178school the main point i would like to get across is that we are a uni unified united front and believing that students especially at a kindergarten age need to be in school our team has been in the building working with students since september and since this time we have been struggling with the workload given to us after having been extremely vocal about this with both our administrators and our union we have been promised solutions by the district but here we are in january and no solutions have been implemented we are buried in the amount of planning for both in-person and online teaching our team has been so overwhelmed that we haven't been have haven't had time to make video lessons for our students on the days they don't attend school so we are left feeling
179like we are failing ourselves and failing our students every day the fact of the matter is that you our school district and school boards are the ones failing the students and the teachers even with no solutions to the current issues you still decided to bring back more teachers pile on double the amount of work and cut our current planning time in half if you truly wanted to fix these issues you would realize the problem is the immense workload of planning in-person instruction teaching in person creating assigning and grading online assignments not to mention making paper packets because kindergarteners need to practice their fine motor skills planning lessons for videos recording those videos and uploading those videos if you wanted to fix the issues you would have your curriculum and instruction department develop and record these
180video lessons and develop the online assignments that's how to fix it our voices as teachers have not been heard or valued we have had ideas to fix these problems yet we are shut out of the decision making the task is given to people who are not teachers either they never were or they have been disconnected from the classroom for years there is no way for someone who has not been in the classroom during these unprecedented times to understand the problems we're facing and dealing with thereby they cannot come up with a reasonable solution now i'd like to circle back to my first statement that i believe students should be in the school we also believe that the plan should be appropriate for the different developmental levels of ages of the students your current plan expects
181that five-year-olds can handle the same thing as fifth graders which is just not possible you dissolved one of our kindergarten classrooms at the start of the year causing our class sizes to be large when we split our class in half we are looking at groups of 9 to 11 which i can agree sounds very manageable but in reality it's not to fit these larger groups of students we have had to get rid of our carpet space carpet space is crucial for kindergartners because it gives them another learning space that allows them to connect movements with their learning concepts and opportunities to get up and move during transitions in no way is it developmentally appropriate to think that kindergarteners can sit at a desk without transitions for five and a half hours or that they can
182wear a mask for that long especially considering that they won't be allowed to take it off at recess anymore we are already experiencing daily issues with the mask wearing and they're only at school for two hours so we cannot fathom how someone decided that five and a half hours is a reasonable amount of time a one size fits all plan does not work for elementary schools due to the very developmental stages of students k and first should have a different plan developed that considers their developmental needs for example smaller groups shorter hours more days in school ability to move about the classroom and have a carpet space i understand that it might be difficult for parents with siblings to have two different plans but my job is to protect my students and stand up for
183what is best for them the plan you have developed is not what is best for kindergarteners or first graders and due to that we will no doubt see a large amount of behavior issues arising in our classrooms we will have students who are bored and not wanting to come to school and students that are not developing a passion for learning i think that you need to look back at your plan for k and first and actually look at the feedback in the surveys that we gave thank you kristin okay it looks like next up is adam aguilera is he with us still yes he is yes okay adam i know you've got something to say you got three minutes man uh year one east 45th street uh 98663 my name is adam aguilera and i'm
184a teacher in evergreen public schools i'm speaking tonight to warn the evergreen school board that the rushed reopening of school buildings is placing students and school staff in danger of contracting covet 19 and bringing the virus home to their families i want to point out three fatal flaws to the superintendent's reopening plan that requires the school board's redirection one our students of color are being disenfranchised last year this school board passed an equity in anti-racism policy that included this language quote we will work to be actively anti-racist and to dismantle systemic racism in our schools and empower people of color but here's the problem the district hasn't done the work and hasn't empowered our students and educators of color there has not been one public town hall or meeting to invite student voice nor educator
185and community input to the governor's new state guidance we have not answered questions of what do our students need what new support services will be offered to them and what kind of education can students expect on day one of in-person instead elementary educators are noticing student segregation between their in-person class rosters and remote if we move forward with this plan without taking the time for community input then evergreen public schools is perpetuating white supremacy culture by silencing the voices of our students educators and communities of color my second warning to the school board is families have not been educated enough on what in-person instruction will look like they do not fully understand that their child may be with other students who are not wearing masks there will be no carpet time no group work and
186must remain isolated six feet apart at all times they must be quiet to reduce aerosols and they don't know the ventilation condition that many of our classrooms are in including decrepit portables hvacs that are notorious in our district for breaking down windowless classrooms with no exterior doors or windows that won't open many families do not know the reopening plan will allow 15 students to eat meals mask-less in poorly ventilated classrooms while an adult is required to supervise and breathe in that air we can't even have indoor dining in washington state because the science has shown community transmission of the virus with indoor eating this is wrong my third warning is forcing educators to return before they're given a vaccine it's good to hear the evergreen superintendent sign a letter to urge the governor to prioritize
187educators for vaccination before returning to school but the question must be asked what about the current educators who are being forced to work in the classroom right now why must they put their lives at risk before a vaccine is available to them i urge you for the safety of everyone redirect the superintendent to change this plan this is the red line for many elementary educators and the district is at risk of exposure liability and staffing shortages that will inevitably shut down schools anyway after hearing concerns from the community tonight it is now a matter of public record that this school board is made aware of this reopening plans flaws the community and history is watching thank you adam okay next we should have jason we're working on that right now okay thank you hello can
188you hear me hello can you talk a little louder jason yes can you hear me now that's great thank you welcome to our meeting tonight hello thank you for having me thank you for your time um the nature of this virus means that going forward with in person have incalculable consequences we can't hear you again i'm sorry to interrupt you oh no i actually think it's lori in the background noise thank you okay can you hear me yeah all right so um i was shocked when i heard that governor inslee's recommendation for in-person elementary school will happen no matter the number of cases in the community the data used to justify younger students spreading the coronavirus less is problematic the decision tree cites outdated numbers from last summer or last spring which the cdc has
189already attributed the low incidence of covid in youth to low testing and early mitigation strategies like distance learning and pulling children out of school according to the data from the cdc from december 30th of last month recent evidence suggests that compared to adults children likely have similar viral loads in their nasopharynx similar secondary infection rates and can spread the virus to others coupling this knowledge with higher community spread and more infectious variants of the virus going around right now makes a plan to reopen less and less safe for students and staff john hopkins university said december 28th of this last month that experts in the new b117 strain have seen an increase of infections in children both with the new strain and the old but the evidence we have on how to proceed is the
190most obvious every metric indicates that our country is losing this battle with the virus the us has three percent of the world's total population yet we are breaking world records of cases and deaths routinely if our current trends in this county continue hospitals which are at 81 capacity will stop having beds for the sick i'm from south texas i know what happens when we run out of hospitals and this is something that we do not want in our community i ask that we at least consider holding back a little bit until we have better knowledge of what's going on even a few weeks will change the way that we really feel about this thank you for your time thank you jason we appreciate your input is there oh we have one more jennifer bradley we're
191i'm meeting her now hi jennifer my name is jenny bradley i'm a first grade teacher and i'm speaking as a concerned citizen and educator i'm deeply disturbed that the district has put speed over safety and is rushing to get as many students and staff back into schools not as safely as possible but as quickly as humanly and logistically possible to the detriment of student safety and staff and community safety in a november 18 email superintendent merlino announced that we would remain in remote learning until january 28th rather than use that date to allow more adequate time for staff vaccination and to plan for a more safe expansion of in-person learning the district has chosen to compromise the safety of students and staff in their rush to return not to mention the rush to expand in-person
192learning is happening at an incredibly dangerous time in the pandemic as local national and global case numbers continue to surge in the high range a new 70 percent more contagious variant is spreading rapidly during the complete breakdown of contact tracing and coveted outbreaks in our local hospitals many of which were already overwhelmed and with projections it'll only get worse in addition to all this new research is emerging every day confirming asymptomatic super spreaders may be the key to driving the spread of covid being responsible for the spread of over 50 percent of cases and more emerging research on the alarmingly high transmission rates among silent super spreading asymptomatic children one of the most dangerous aspects of the plan is of the rush plan is unmasked eating of meals and classrooms many schools provide two meals
193a day and students take about 20 to 30 minutes to eat that's 40 to 60 minutes of 10 to 15 students eating unmasked in their classrooms where they will spend the next several hours all of this at a time when this board of less than a dozen adults is prohibited from meeting in person as is indoor person as is indoor in-person dining and restaurants because these prolonged indoor in-person contacts are not safe unmasked meals are dangerous and high risk they are not safe for our students staff and our community if indoor eating was even remotely safe restaurants would be open many students are in regular contact with elderly and high-risk family members and many others at daycare all of this when multiple highly effective and safe vaccines are on the horizon washington school boards and
194superintendents use their influence and power to pressure governor inslee into changing the school reopening metrics if you truly care about student staff and community safety you will again use your power and influence to prioritize eligible students and staff for vaccination as soon as possible eps does not have total decision making power over vaccination distribution but you do set the timeline for the expansion of in-person learning you can choose to put the health and safety for health and safety first and allow more time for better planning and vaccination i implore the board and eps leaders to do everything in their power to put safety first above all and act to protect not endanger our students staff and community thank you thank you jennifer we appreciate you okay so that was the last person that signed up
195to speak tonight um right okay great thank you lori um now we will go into recess um we will reconvene in about five minutes and we will have a board workshop on teaching and learning equity update a district strategic plan um superintendent update and a legislative update um and then at the end we'll have a board meeting debrief thank you for anyone who was with us tonight and we hope you attend another time we will now go into recess you said five minutes back yeah okay just in case anybody needs a little break okay thank you thank you all right can i go ahead and start you sure can stephanie thank you for joining us thank you all right um so my name is stephanie evans and i am a first grade parent i have
196known that a return to in-person learning this year isn't when but how after receiving an email on november 18th that said that evergreen would remain in their current state of program delivery through january 28th parents had mentally accepted this date as a return to in-person learning now that the date has been moved up two weeks with less than a two-week notice in the middle of a post-holiday surge i believe that the how to return is being rushed i am deeply concerned about indoor lunches and water breaks in classrooms when we aren't currently allowed to dine indoors at restaurants this is a time to get creative most elementary schools have covered play areas and kids should be eating outside i understand that not every kid has a warm winter coat so again let's get creative organize
197a coat drive solicit donations i have spoken to several parents myself included who said they would happily buy extra coats so their kids can eat outside as this is what the science is telling us is safest right now we as parents need to acknowledge that this is not going to be normal school and need to advocate for creative solutions i am also concerned about bathroom breaks who will monitor distancing how will you contact trey students from multiple classes using the restroom at the same time these safety questions need an answer my second concern is from the heart you have not included parent and student voices in this in-person decision this quick transition is not what is best for the social and emotional needs of young children during a traumatic global pandemic where their lives have
198been turned upside down my son's teacher katrina monroe has worked tirelessly to connect with her students she knows them their likes dislikes strengths and needs it is completely unfair and cruel what you are doing to these teachers and their students remember these first graders have never had a normal school year my son might have had his last class with mrs monroe today and he doesn't even know it many first graders will have new teachers next week not next school year with a natural summer break signaling change but next week if he ends up with a new teacher i know they will work just as hard as mrs monroe but what about mrs monroe's chance to have closure with her current students and what about my son and his classmates getting to say goodbye i ask
199you to honor the original date of in-person learning starting in the second semester and provide virtual transition time for students and teachers into their new classes one of the goals you state on the evergreen website says the following we believe that students are our priority and decisions must be made on the basis of what is best for each child this hurried and drastic return to in-person learning is not making a decision on what is best for each child at least not mine his social and emotional needs don't feel like a priority my son's amazing teacher and classmates have been a constant routine grounding him during this messy school year give our kids a chance to say goodbye meet their new teachers and classmates virtually and then bring them back to the building when all safety
200current concerns have been addressed thank you thank you stephanie okay do we have anybody else lori that didn't get heard that signed up no um no carrie said her statement in that that i've already forwarded to the board to read okay great thank you all right so um teaching or uh teaching and learning equity update yeah we're gonna start with julie okay thank you julie all right good evening um i wanted to give just a quick update as we've been doing obviously a lot of planning for in-person school right now but we are starting to think forward to what services can we start giving students this spring and summer in summer school and we know no matter what there's the covid slide and there's going to be gaps that we need to help fill for
201students so we're doing a lot of work around what summer school can look like what services we can provide we are really excited because we just got a partnership with the bill and melinda and gates grant that they set us up with an 18-month partnership with education northwest and this is the same company we were partnering with this fall for our equity work and throughout this 18-month partnership their goal is to um specifically work with our marginalized populations who are unduly impacted by covid so we're looking at what we can do with partnerships in summer and community partnerships what we have with our own resources and with their help they're going to work on a couple different layers but just some needs assessments the summer school work and then it'll continue into next year as
202well to head up to hopefully really work on systems and structures that then can continue past the partnership so we're really excited we're just finishing up the paperwork this week and the partnership starts in the beginning of february and i think we'll be able to come up with some really great ideas and plans that we can let you guys know about and creative plans to work all these parents and all these families that i think will take advantage of more things the coming year that we need to help them with and while we'll do everything we can within the school day we know that we're going to need a little bit more than that so summer school plans are going to start and we'll start getting those to you and then this foundation grant will
203start at the beginning of february so just want to let you know that we're really excited about that partnership and we'll keep you updated on it thank you thank you and i would say uh the the state is making a priority the funding of uh coveted loss you know trying to provide funds not sure if that's going to come through the stimulus money or whether that's going to come through separate state funds um but we expect to receive funding to help with this [Music] as well so um it is great to have the partnership with the gates uh foundation um and it's also and it's just good that we have the the opportunity to try to provide this additional support for students this summer i think that there's definitely um you know typically in the
204summer people are are done with school at the end of school they're not necessarily interested in coming back uh and even staff from that perspective i think it'll be a different summer so i think we will be able to access um so we'll be able to support our kids all summer long so we'll continue to have these updates thank you julie i think that's great news um and i also appreciate the fact that we're looking ahead knowing that we're going to have some students that have fallen behind and figuring out ways to get them caught back up i mean it's the it's this kind of you know here we are talking about returning students to school and we're already talking about what we're going to do this summer i mean it never stops the continual
205you know looking ahead and trying to uh deal with the impacts of of everything that we're dealing with on a daily basis so it's going to change the shape of education work for the next 10 years at least yeah i think education will likely will look different based upon what we've experienced in the last year and um we'll have to we'll have to constantly adjust to try to support our our students and but but honestly take the things that we've learned in this time and apply them as we move forward and hopefully the legislature will continue to support these opportunities because a lot of kids are thriving we do have kids thriving in this environment oh i agree and it's nice to be able to identify the size of that group with this kind of
206data but the cost is admittedly so high for all of us together and so yeah i'm really glad to hear about the partnership grant and the partnership with equity northwest education northwest sorry do you have any questions just generally about the teaching and learning what's going on and and uh um and if not we've got clarissa here to talk about the equity update as well i think just aft you know we've had let you know lots of letters and then obviously we had some testimony tonight about um the workload with with the teachers and they seem to have some ideas that i don't know if that's been relayed to you or not um yeah but where are we with dealing with that workload issue yeah so before winter break we had gotten extensive information from
207the kindergarten teachers and were planning a revamp of the program the revamp of the program in conjunction with our new timeline has all just kind of been smurged together so we're really working to help the teachers see their day as kind of a two day workshop so they see students on day one on mondays and then the students on demand on tuesday so what this curriculum instruction department is doing is helping to provide guides of how do we set up the learning on monday and then they have the independent learning on tuesday so there's not as many videos that have to be made there's not as much of the online piece because they've set it up in person on monday and then they repeat that for the new group on tuesday so they would be
208teaching the same thing on tuesday what kindergarten teachers were doing previously is they were teaching something four times and then there wasn't the same continuation of learning to be able to set it up in person and then continue it the next day so i think this it will take some adjusting for sure and we're setting up processes to help with that but i do think it will be a reduction of workload if we can plan in these two day chunks because then they'll do the same thing on thursday and friday they'll see students live on thursday and then they'll have continuation of their learning on friday at home and we're seeing students for longer so we have more chances to see them do the math workshop do the reading workshop and then give them what
209they need to be able to finish it at home so we definitely heard their voice and wanted to fix the workload and it's also going to help that we have a remote only teacher at every grade level so that's one thing we heard from them as well is how do we fix the workload and then how do we work with the students that are in person and the remote only now a teacher is working with just in person people so they see all their students so they don't have to work with just the remote only we're getting a teacher to be the remote only which will be a big part of that too okay so i'd heard that anecdotally to the needs of what they were asking and it's going to be a transition all
210of these unfortunately is another transition there's no no question that none of this is ideal um and i think we have to recognize that in the process i and anecdotally i'd heard from some teachers maybe not the kindergarten cohort of uh being assigned to teach um or have a student in live instruction at the same time as they were expected to provide remote instruction on the camera um have you gotten feedback along those lines and and ideas about how to maybe mitigate the workload there yeah so in middle school high school this is happening more there that teachers are going to be teaching simultaneously to in-person and remote students that will be zooming in and the big part of that that's one for students and for the consistency of their schedule being able to do
211simultaneous teaching will help students stay with their same teacher their same schedule and not have to have a major disruption in the middle school in high school because the how you build a schedule is so different from elementary when you have four fourth grade teachers middle school and high school we have one ap calc bc teacher so the constraints on the schedule created it so simultaneous teaching will help us with that consistency and still offer what we need to for students before we get there we need to do some work around what that looks like so one we're working with the tech department what do they need in terms of microphones what do they need in terms of their um they're dot cams i'm going over tomorrow to cascadia tech where some teachers are already
212doing this and trying it and see lessons learned from them what has she already done and learned that we can then use those lessons learned to help the other teachers in the district we've also been working closely with meade school district who has been doing this since the fall and finding out from them okay what worked what didn't work how can we do it and then we'll give guidance to middle school and high school teachers as they go or hopefully before they start really and and in the mou that was recently bargained that was it's an option for the teacher to choose this simultaneous instruction it's not a a mandatory thing that's being directed to them and it's an option elementary too so there are some cases where that would happen in elementary per the
213teacher's option but it's mainly middle school and high school well he's hoping to lift some burdens and we all need that do do we have a um i don't know an idea of how many students um we expect to see back are they yeah so in elementary it's about 75 in person 25 remote in middle school in high school it's more 60 40 60 in person 40 remote so that's pretty on par with what we're seeing and hearing that middle school and high school students have been more successful with the remote option and so they're staying with that but elementary definitely wanting to get back and there's some space we've asked parents to make a commitment to one of the models but if as they're getting into it they have wanting to choose a different
214model and if there's space and in most of the cases there should be we'll let them go to a different model but really like try out the model let's see how it is we know there are parents that definitely are wary about hybrid and coming in in person in small groups so what does that give it a couple weeks and i think once people see there's not a lot of spread students are safe teachers are safe then we might see more influx in the in-person numbers and so in our small group model 75 so our elementary class sizes right now are what anywhere from 18 to 23. i think they're probably anywhere from maybe 15 to 20 you know i mean you you have some fourth and fifth grade classes that are a little larger
215classes but you have some because of the enrollment impact you've got some classes maybe 14 15 16. is that at the 75 percent or is that no no that's full so if you had if you had um class of 20 you know think about four classes of 20 um and 75 of the kids chose to remain um you you'd have roughly you know 15 in your class and then split in over two days so you have seven one day eight the next day numbers similar to that and of course you know the the state guidelines allow for up to 15 but then realistically you know the the size of the of the classroom also dictates as well with the social distancing i was on a zoom today with um superintendent reichdall and representatives from the
216state department of health where there are other countries i believe in other areas that have have found through the science that the it's not six feet it's actually a smaller superintel was advocating for the department of health to look to shrink the size of the social distancing from six feet to a a smaller amount so that was the first that i had heard of that uh and it's not something we're doing but i just let you know that that's something that i heard today but um so yeah that that generally if you had a class of 20 and you had 75 that'd be what you'd be looking at as a teacher well and the reason i ask is i think some of our the concerns talk to kept talking about like uh class sizes of
21712 to 15 are the small groups and i was in my mind i was thinking well if we split a classroom in half um because we're doing two days that it would be much smaller and easily i mean i've been in our classrooms we can you know seven students can be spaced correct easily in the classroom that size yeah element i'm not i think we may have some at the high end maybe 26 could potentially be in a fifth grade class so then you'd be looking at more like you know 13 and then maybe 25 of those so you could be looking at you know 9 or 10 in that situation but in the middle school or a high school if we're 60 40 really that's gonna that reduces that number pretty significantly in terms
218of and i think the 60 40 and by the time we get to middle school in high school we that number i feel like that number could increase uh in person as we could you know yeah and my hope is that all the staff will be vaccinated by by the time we get there yeah um as on the governor but yeah i think it would be hopeful that we would be able to get people vaccinated by the end of february very hopeful very helpful so um then we're talking about if i think of an elementary school who in a normally or an elementary classroom third fourth grade and then a normal year might have 20 22 kids in it uh that two days a week 10 kids would come to school and in and be
219kept in a cohort of that all day yes yeah i think the 10 would be more of an outlier than the seven or eight so that's more of a higher end kind of estimate correct okay and what would the daily schedule then look like for those ten in school gonna be a similar schedule to what an elementary student would do now where they do opening talks whether it's a community circle they're doing math workshops reading workshops they're gonna go through a day they won't have specialists because specialists will be remote on their days at home but they will go through they're going to have recess they're going to have lunch and then go through workshops just like they would in a normal schedule teachers are just going to make sure again in the planning that
220when they're doing their workshop instead of continuing something the next day in school they're going to set it up to be able to continue the next day at home on demand for that student and so that um i guess that fear of having 15 kids with their masks off in us in a single classroom that's that's it's it's past the predicted top count it's more we would we would need to have if 25 of kids aren't showing up we need to have a class size of about somewhere around 35 kids in order for that to be the case we don't we contractually i don't believe we have one in fourth and fifth larger than 26 and because of the fact i might be wrong i might be out by one but because of the fact
221that we um you know we've got a thousand less elementary kids with the same teaching staff than what we would typically have expected this year so you know in some of these cases you could have as few as six kids you know uh in a class for for each of the two days and and i would say the the com the conversations around lunch and i'm not diminishing anyone's feelings but the you know we're we're we're following the department of health's guidelines the governor's guidelines dr melnick i know spoke with he speaks with superintendents i know last week he spoke with union leaders that the key around the lunch is the distancing and and you know not being within this this close contact i'm just saying what dr melnick said to that group um so
222it's a it's a time that's filled with a lot of anxiety there just isn't any question about that and it's a very difficult thing um but we've been away from school for 10 months it's a long time yes dr melnick said whether that be 117 strain that more virulent thing is in the area or is it i think he said uh um i'm thinking the notes i was reading the notes from the meeting that he had with union leaders the other day and i believe he in those notes he said it hadn't been seen in the state of washington yet okay but that was last week and i you know who i'm not a science expert no we have to rely on the epidemiologists for this we sure do yeah okay thank you julie uh
223clarissa i believe you're out there too yes i'm here he's there with her cute thing on her head i like so much i was like oh i want that great it's a wrap thank you i like it thank you very much um i am actually going to share my screen with you all just to walk you through just some of the just a bit of a visual don't don't get too excited it's not a lot of pictures but just visual some documents um to help me explain some of the equity um updates so let me give this a whirl here okay great all right so um in december as you all know we had our um equity audit report we had visitors from education northwest to share the data and their recommendations with us and
224from that data and recommendations what i did was is we created a response to the equity audit and i took the recommendations and categorized them into the departments in which they lie where the key collaborators would come from so we have a target area of human resources we have a target area of teaching and learning we have a target area of communications and then of course we have a target area of specifically on equity within each of these target areas you'll find that the recommended timelines are also indicated they're indicated one in this column but also by the color in which the the deepness of blue that it is indicates uh how quickly um that the implementation was recommended from education northwest and so this dark blue is so much end of march date this
225lighter blue is a june date and then there's an even lighter blue than that that goes into september of next year so um what's happening now is the key collaborators in these areas are reaching out to each other to begin planning the action steps for which they would need to complete in order to meet the deadline and have the recommendation in full effect if you will so this is one of this is just a sample action plan template that i've shared with those key collaborators this one is a teaching and learning item two from that area and the for all of their for all of these documents the task or the overall action will be located here and then groups are getting together and just simply talking about okay what is it that we need
226to do in order to reach this goal this particular one says to review and update the process used to identify highly capable students so that's our excel program so what is it that we need to do in order to make this happen so mapping this plan out um and having these available these plans will show up um and will be linked in that original document that i just showed you here in this column right so the steps of completion will be here and all of the plans will be linked so they'll be in one spot i'd like for this to be an outward-facing document so that our community is well informed as to how we are responding to um the items in the audit um but i also want to add a couple of things
227one these are the recommendations from education northwest but they do not limit us in what it is that we can do and will do we would do things in addition to the items that they have recommended and speaking of that just as we have an area for a target area for equity and communications and hr i really like i would really like to have one for our school board and so i love it if you all would begin thinking about some short-term medium-term and long-term goals that you'd like to see implemented with the emphasis of equity diversity and inclusion um and then we'd have these here um outward facing as well for our community to see what it is we're working on we're there sorry please were there any um recommendations by them for the
228school board that we should be not from education northwest besides the the the blanket if you will um recommendation of diversifying staff but what i will remind you of is some of the things that we had chatted about via the beloved community audit and some of the things that we can then add here for us and you know like you were saying earlier you've been here a while so i'm i'm certain you have some things that have been brewing right that you'd like to go ahead and and get into action and we can have those here and start planning and getting those things done okay you know we talked we talked last month i think it was at that meeting um i know we talked at some point in the last month about the next
229item on the agenda not that we're jumping forward but there really isn't a long discussion on the next item other than the interest in trying to create a new district strategic plan because it's been since uh december or december 2006 or 2005 since that's been really worked on and we kind of talked about some of the declaration beliefs commitments and updating it i mean i could see that being i don't know that's necessarily part of the equity audit but certainly the strategic plan and coming up with a new strategic plan that addresses some of this is probably a pretty significant thing that the board we would undertake also i think if we uh if we continue with our governance model we need uh an equity results policy if that makes sense in the model uh
230and i i might have i it's because i can't recall i might have forwarded some recommendations offered by is randy and linda about that to clarissa is that there are a couple of small and i think to me kind of insufficient changes to existing results policies like the superintendent uh will not do anything in equities or with inequity or something like that um that would really require us to have that round of interpretation and approval and i think we can do better honestly but working on the results policies to do the same thing we did to get a safety policy uh is certainly one of those action items date of completion march 31st that's kind of ambitious given our schedule but i think we're up to it well you have two other options um and
231once you put a plan together you you can you know select and mind you these were just you know they did the chunks in three six and beyond you know if it's not march 31st and it's february 15 then okay but once you map the plan out for the steps it will take to complete set goal then you have a better idea about how long it'll take now education northwest has done so many of these that their recommendations are pretty spot-on no they haven't done them in covid so we do have to take that into consideration uh but karen one of the women um who presented um was in my position in the district prior to working with um education northwest and so she was an equity director and she has a really good idea
232about how long it takes for these things to be implemented in a school district um so yes i'd like for us to begin thinking about that and rob yes those can definitely be added the the items you just mentioned another thing that i have been talking with our cabinet and extended cabinet about um is our our narratives around what it is we have done as a district as far as diversity equity and inclusion go what have we done um in the past the present and what we aspire to do yes and so this narrative is going to be um the preface for the um strategic diversity equity and inclusion plan that i am crafting and that is again to make sure that the community stays well informed about what we have done and will do
233and are doing i find myself in situations with community members and and when i tell them some of the things that have happened or that we are doing and they don't know about them one they're happy to hear it but the follow-up question is is why was i not aware and so that's a learning opportunity for me to make sure that i put these things in places that are visible so that they know and so what we have done is ask for all the department leads to place their narratives here um and this will help craft the overall district narrative for where our equity work has been and where it is going um i do just like i added a section into the other document for you all i do have one here for the
234board i have a spot so i'll share this document with you too um because uh one of the things that i remember you all talking about as we were debriefing our beloved community audit was that there wasn't a way there hasn't been a way to um share and or celebrate some of the things that have been done and so we'd like to have a place for that to live so that you can refer people um to that and it can be you know a conversation piece um what we what we want to make sure is is that our community understands that the equity work didn't start with me though the position is a new one we have we have explored other areas um such as poverty and our students who receive special education services our
235ells we are we are focusing on racial inequity right now and that hasn't been a focus in the past but that doesn't mean we haven't had other focuses um equity has several layers and we have been doing that work so we want to make sure it's highlighted and then visible for our community and one of the things that we've done is these you know sit down with superintendent and answer questions we're going to plan on doing a sit down with clarissa and and do a similar time of an interview process where there can be a conversation myself clarissa and the district on these kinds of things what are we doing what what are we aspiring to do where can you find um you know you talk about clarissa talks about the work that's occurred and
236people don't know where to find it so we need to talk about it we need to share that we need to direct people to it and let the community know about the work that's ongoing for sure and speaking of the community um our our um district equity advisory team um has met three times now and out of this work they have come up with quite the list of their own short-term medium-term and long-term actions that they'd like to see implemented and so we spent a lot of time voicing their concerns me documenting those concerns and then they they put them in categories of short medium and long and the last step for them is for them to go in and so what i did was i took all of i took all of their um
237all of their action items um categorized them into short medium and long put them into a form and they're going to go in this one is for this is the students they code a group so there's one for each stakeholder group um and they go in and they are going to rate this the each of the action items on a scale of one to five um for priority because within the short term tasks and actions that they have recommended there are so many that we won't possibly be able to do them off we have to prioritize them to see which ones we'll tackle first um and so that is what we are in the midst of doing now so um my hope is that by the next time we are speaking i have a document
238for you that shares the items that we are tackling first for each of the stakeholder group um that will include some break off and subgroup subcommittee groups that will be formed within the district equity advisory committee um and they're really excited about that especially the student one um our student representative has made uh two recommendations and basically she's advocating for herself which i love she'd like to have an additional member on the advisory team with her she enjoys our company but she'd like someone to bounce ideas off of that are that's around her age but she'd also like to see a similar committee made of up of just students and so i think that that was kind of alluded to earlier about some of these student leadership groups um and she said she'd be happy
239to co-facilitate that with um one other adult where the adult is the minority in the group um so she and i uh are exploring that and finally our dei group so by demographic our dei groups will be meeting for the second time this month in december they met for the first time to get to know each other um i had the pleasure facilitating the black and african american dei group um and i thoroughly enjoyed my film but we wanted to you know create a foundation of trust by getting to know each other and then we established the purpose of the meetings and made sure that all their questions were answered about that this next meeting they're going to be then telling us about their needs and then some possible solutions for those needs we're going
240to we're going to focus on the needs we don't want to necessarily jump to solutions i want to give them the opportunity to share with us some of the stories and experiences they have had but making sure we don't hang out there in admiration of the problems we know that they exist but we do want to make sure that uh the co-designing of the solution for the needs that they list is what we spend the bulk of our time doing um and so that is what that is the process that we will be beginning on uh this month for our meetings currently they will be uh happening on a monthly basis unless that group decides that they need to meet um more frequently but monthly is what we have um in place right now so
241again i will have more to share as we see new needs pop up here that didn't show up in the audit nor did it from our equity advisory committee and we'll have a nice well-rounded action plan that includes all of our stakeholder voices and within those stakeholder voices a very diverse group that i feel we can be very proud of um and that i'm currently very proud of are there any questions now how often is our um our our community team getting together i mean we also get together yeah we get together on a monthly basis as well they actually in our last meeting which occurred the day after the day after um the incident at the capitol we had quite the dialogue and our courageous conversation tools definitely came in handy um the level
242of trust we established helped us talk about some really deep stuff but we meet on a monthly basis um we've actually talked about how we can keep in touch in between meetings because of how bonded this group has gotten and they want to be able to talk about things in between the months but they have a lot of homework when they're not with me right because a lot of this our meetings are about two hours um but a lot of the things that we're asking um them to do don't happen in those two hours so this is a a huge commitment on their part um and speaking of commitment the facilitators for these dei groups that you see here these are all volunteers nobody these are people who are giving up their time because of
243their passion for diversity equity and inclusion and so i want to make sure that i take the time to thank them as well as the participants for our equity advisory committee because they are giving um giving up their time and efforts without you know this is just volunteer and we have people doing double doodle we have folks on our equity advisory committee that are also facilitating these ddi groups so we've got folks that are really about about their business and they want to make sure that uh that things are getting done and i appreciate it personally because i cannot um do this without without them without the community without you all without the teachers i can't i can't so i appreciate those who are um giving of their time and efforts it looks like a
244lot you know it on paper it is a lot right a lot has happened when i was writing my uh i wrote a narrative too i wasn't asking anybody to do anything that i wouldn't do and just kind of listing and talking about all the things that i've implemented because my past is a short past so i've got six months of past whereas other folks have years have passed and just to look at some of the things that we've been able to accomplish in six months you know i think i know why i took a couple of days off over the break but i do it all again and double that to to make sure that our students and staff um get what they need and get the support that they need and rebuild you
245know and restore some of the confidence that they have in us as far as equity where it goes i do it again two times clarissa has um has the community group that you built uh specified anything they want the board to do they may so we meet need the advisory committee the advisor uh the yeah the one the one that uh reviewed applications for yes yes they're currently uh ranking those in priority right now so within all of those stakeholder group surveys that i showed you excuse me um some some board asks did come up um and so you'll see those if they you know if they rise to the top um they'll begin working on those pretty pretty soon um but if not you all will have access to all of the things that
246they have recommended so if it if it doesn't sit with them as a you know top of the priority piece then we can we can add it to you else um sure to-do lists sure good okay sounds exciting i am excited i'm glad the people that are on the committee are passionate about it and because this is work that you have to have passion and belief about and and i just am happy that we have people that are working with us in that capacity feels good any other questions okay oh i do have a question i'm sorry i do have a question um there was a reference made tonight about the inequities that are happening as a result of the remote learning and i wasn't really clear on where that they were talk you know
247adam was talking about some kind of a divide and that there was and do you know what that's about have you been talked to about it and what do we do about it if it's yeah so well i don't i don't i don't know about the um the data that um adam was referencing but i think the spirit of what he's saying is is that as teachers are looking at who has selected you know in person and remote they're noticing larger numbers of students of color have selected remote um but one of the things that julie and i were talking about is that we want to make sure that that is a number that is representative what those families um are actually um their actual intent and not due to a lack of understanding or
248the messaging of um what they're selecting and so you know if so be it if that's the case if we are seeing those numbers and some of the things that julie shared with you before about our partnership with the gates the bill and melinda gates foundation via education northwest who is very well versed in our district now that they've done an audit for us yeah um uh we are working with them to implement um systems and programs to address the learning loss as well as making sure that our students who all of our students whether they're students of color marginalized or not marginalized that select remote learning have a good learning experience so that that partnership is how we are addressing those concerns okay thank you i've heard from families and it happened to my
249son that there were um there were things about the messaging and the fact that you had to go into skyward and find the page and you know it's like seven layer deep instructions uh that got in his way from trying because he couldn't get his password changed um and by the time i got into it the survey was gone and i wouldn't be bringing this up unless i'd also heard from others about the same kind of things so there were technological frictions that got in the way of people expressing uh their choice and the choice the default choice was remote learning so if you're not well versed in technology or you don't know exactly where to find one of the documents that i read today as we were meeting uh said that or before we
250were meeting said that the uh the attestation for absences uh has been skyward since 2015 and it's the first day that i'd ever heard of that we'd always just called the school secretary um and it's that kind of thing that makes me real thoughtful it's like if you don't have technical aptitude or a really good working knowledge of the district's procedures um you might not get the message in time for something that's time sensitive or serious and that could extend to things like joining a club or trying out for a sport as much as anything else so it's on my mind i also think we've been asking people at least three four times what their thoughts are at some point they stop answering there's a flood of email problems that's related to the pandemics pressures
251on the whole system uh that's causing some people to tune out i know that's a piece of it um but i think what it's doing is it's it's highlighting where the frictions were in the first place and and making them more evident than they otherwise would have been just that one other piece with the enrollment the schools did a really good job of calling every single family if they didn't respond so we know there were some issues technologically with the survey and people's ability or non-ability with skyward so there was a big push especially to get to those families to make sure that we got an actual response we didn't get to everyone as sometimes there was missed phone calls and everything but they really did try the best they could to get in all
252the different ways because we know the email and um just the automated phone calls don't always go through but the whole piece was skyward i am excited if we can get people trained on that it would the attestation we can turn on ability to do attendance we pushed out report cards in elementary through skyward so it's a really great tool once we train people on how to use it so there's going to be some good options i think in the future for it too as a communication tool i hear that and uh i feel sensitive towards having my words interpreted as a personal criticism of people there's there's none of that i'm speaking systemically i'm speaking about the fact that skyward itself logs you in it requires a password you could never remember and you
253have to make a choice of a menu of five different things that are all worded very strangely before you're logged in and then there's the windows to go down so i'm thinking of the fact that the system requires training as and coming from a place where you know professionally i design software to make it easier to you for people to use uh and that for the last 20 years skyward has not been easy to use and still isn't i was a little heartened by the app but that's that i learned about today but that's still instructions you have to have a smartphone and you have to log in and i'm not sure if the smartphone works app works with 30 smartphones that you might get on the on the federal program that kind of thing
254is is what i'm talking about and not uh impugning the good efforts the the leviathan sized efforts of all the well-meaning people who are trying as hard as they can and succeeding as much as is possible uh this is and you know this point i'm still just kind of talking about software we don't control um i hope it gets better people keep saying it's gonna get better someday whenever i ask them but that's that's the thing on my mind is that we are in my observation missing people don't have what i have you know uh the technological aptitude and even in and in my case this time even that failed us and we don't know why uh i'm gonna try again though i'm gonna keep trying um then hope that the changes have improved things
255enough yeah thanks rob anything else for clarissa or julie that's all i have okay that's good shall we move on to the strategic plan yeah so basically i kind of already said it the the main reason i put that on there was just so that we we kind of started the conversation so we could kind of figure out what process we're all interested in how do we want to go about doing it just time i mean we don't need to decide it's and i just want to make sure we keep it on the list of things to do so that we have a sense of you know end date when do we want to try to have something done by what process do we want to follow to to make that happen uh i don't
256know that we all anticipated that we'd be at 9 30 at this point in time um but we are so i don't know if if we want to have i i'm not sure how you guys want to approach it well i think just because we haven't had time to really talk talk it through i think we need to have kind of almost like a brainstorming session in a workshop just to talk to what the options are things we'd like to see you know i know i'd like to make sure that we have community input um and what that looks like i don't know can it be rolled into things that we're doing already um with our different committees and stuff such so i think we all need to give it some thought and then come
257together for kind of a brainstorming session what is the what did the rest of you think about that any ideas i think it's something uh that we're gonna need to spend some time on and um sometimes we get to board workshop and it's 9 30 and so then we try to like you know kind of rush through some of these things and i think it's one of those maybe it its own separate workshop and maybe we combine it with some of that equity work um if they coincide well we could set we could set up like uh i mean i i know that we love getting together in person but we also love zooming with each other um and i know that there's comments about the you all have repeatedly said we'd rather be meeting
258in person we don't have the ability to do it because it's the governor's proclamation there's no question about that but we could set a meeting for a tuesday night we don't have a board meeting i i although i know that we're starting to get into school improvement plans too so we may need to find just a different day period for that conversation so i can work with lori and we can propose some data i meet with i don't know when victoria and jenny and i meet again but it's got to be coming up pretty soon but we can just even email you some dates and see if something something works for you okay i think as i look around at strategic plans they start next week i believe yeah uh my thoughts are that i
259see a vision mission kind of framework around all of them and an awful lot of work going into the messaging of them i want to submit that we have finished our visioning work it's taken the form of the results policies so stating the mega result policy as a vision if i look at ospi's which is on my screen right now their vision says all students prepared for post-secondary pathways careers and civic engagement which is uh semantically the same thing that we said with our um prepared and committed motivated sentence right so that's the vision for the whole district is that students graduate prepared for their next step committed to the common good and motivated to lifelong learning that's it and that's a big big piece of all that work missioning we define by board and
260then departments and things you know whole district and then so forth um and the strategic plan can then proceed from that what i'd like to see is two things i'd like to see us uh expressing vision and mission throughout the district in a more uniform way than we ever have before it's always been very building centric here and i think that we could lift some burdens off of buildings by communicating very clearly our our support for the same things right uh we need to be all speaking roughly the same language about that uh and then the second thing is we should finish this by august 31st if we possibly can agree yeah and have a strategic plan that we amend each year and that we publish in very specific and attractive ways um with the
261results with the results i mean we've got all the dots we've got i mean honestly a lot of the work's been done it's just figuring out how to package it and make it more understandable and um like whatever word you said attractive i guess is the word you said i believe yeah i agree yeah yeah but it's work that when we fill out a board of distinction application next september i'd like to be able to point to something as clear and frankly a little more ambitious than osbi's own vision mission of course they have to put their strategic plan in terms of a federal law and we don't have to do that we can do better than that so do you still want to have a meeting where we can just talk about this as
262a topic yeah okay so i'll figure out the dates and i'll i'll send something and i'll have larry i mean i'll have larry send out larry mo and curly larry's larry's camera's off right now but i think larry's still in the office right now larry's happy to do that what is the name of my employer so you're really confusing me right now hi lori i met laurie i met laurie sorry lori but we'll get some we'll get some dates and we'll get that squared away but we can maybe add our next check-in which is on the 20th i believe it's next wednesday i think is that the 20 i do think that this kind of work is very difficult to do over zoom the brainstorming and you know trying to you know look at the
263documents look at all of you at the same time without all of so we heard on this thing the the date of the the in-person meetings is through uh january 19th i believe but you know we just have to see what happens we can't even go to restaurants now and be at separate tables so yeah i agree i mean but we can figure out the path i mean if if you know what does the timeline look like if we could be impr i mean the idea would be if we were in person we could get it knocked out in the fewer meetings than is what you're saying julie yeah i i mean generally then governors embargoed that until yeah 31st did you yeah i feel like a lot of this work is difficult to do
264over zoom and it would so in that field you know and that's why we kind of have pushed things out yeah so it's true but let's let's get a meeting set we'll start it we'll do a zoom meeting and then we'll see what we can come up with that sounds good yep all right i'll have larry on it i'll be sure to let him know the next time i email him so the next thing on there is superintendent report which basically i had on there just in case something else came up and i think we've talked a lot tonight so i'm gonna move on beyond to the next agenda item okay legislation legislated yeah um i don't know maybe rob can share the things he's talking about with wazda yeah i talked about uh melissa
265gombowski asking me to yeah testimony on the high school waivers plan or the bill i don't remember the number but it's it's to continue the credit waivers for this year as we had for last year um with only real money minor modifications she said that the district's people would be able to bring me stories and and uh district data to supply in that testimony and i'm gonna need that for a write-up by thursday afternoon if possible um it's a 10 am friday thing and i got to condense whatever i'm going to say into two minutes or less so i know that [Music] julie bill brian probably has i see juju uh yeah so we will get that information to you and um i know i think bill has shared some of that information with melissa
266even last year when this was going on also so yeah and if uh if what i have is data that's one thing but if i have data plus a couple of really good personal stories like student success stories or something um based on the previous credit waivers like we were able to bring someone who obviously was eligible for graduation by clearing out this meaningless um and i'm i'm hyperbolizing right now but this meaningless friction um and then talk about that story and here's the data i'll email it to you representative santos thank you very much that's the kind of thing that they tell me is the most impactful even more impactful would be bringing some students with those kinds of stories with me to tell those stories but there isn't time for that this time
267i want to suggest mountain view's asb council who are all three of them at that mural tv spot thing on tuesday were persons of color and mountain view would be a good place to start if they're interested in testifying on bills i can get them connected to uh wazda's student-oriented bill watch and then we can arrange for some remote testimony quite quite easily i'm also interested in uh one of the things for advocacy that we're recommending to each other is that rather because we can't come to the hill and because meetings are different because they have to be remote is that our our connections and relationships with our local legislators are going to be even more important so scheduling meetings with students and monica and students and paul harris around bills that they're considering um
268as well as senator cleveland and and uh representative vick and i could name them all you know who they are um as many as we can so that they hear those stories supported by our data um i mean a 94 95 graduation rate is pretty dang incredible during a pandemic even even with relaxed standards that's incredible yeah celebrating that uh it's not a legislative update but one of the things the students told me about is the kind of graduation that they'd like to have if they can't have a mckenzie stadium graduation uh and i believe that it'd be worth listening you know reaching out to the asb councils and asking them that question what do you want your graduation to look like because their response was very very different but somehow even also the same
269is the thing that shane put together for the august graduation so that's what i have we're meeting weekly and if there's something i i could ask you to scramble on i'll pose a question uh uh dr webb is also testifying on friday on a transportation bill that they're looking at honestly on the financial end of things it's primarily how quickly are they going to react to the stimulus money is there state money that might be laid in there instead of the federal how are they going to work all that out but melissa her texts and emails with us yesterday were for day one like really pretty optimistic in terms of how quickly they're going to react to it they think that the revenue forecast in march is actually going to be increased again so you
270remember in la in june of last year we're talking about an 8.8 billion dollar shortfall i think it's down to three and a half billion or something like that now but uh they seem to think that that's going to come down even further uh with the march uh revenue forecast so some of the a lot of building hope about the uh federal about federal action beginning in february as well we don't know what form that will take but there's more hope than there well they have the money they in order for us to receive the money they have to actually take action they don't typically do that that early but but people are saying that they are going to so it's early and we'll continue to you know like rob's having meetings we're having meetings
271so we'll have a lot more information as this moves forward okay sounds good okay where's miss jenny on the board debrief first question i want to ask before we debrief do people who thinks that we should continue doing debriefs i'm i'm just show hands yeah okay all i end up saying is it went well it didn't go well anybody have any input i mean it just i know okay so it sounds like we maybe can mix that for future board meetings but we definitely want to make sure that if we start seeing any trends of things that aren't going well that we bring it forward um so that we can self-correct ourselves did you get that larry yes i did he's really okay i don't i don't really know that we need to um revisit
272tonight's meeting so yeah yeah it was an interesting one i mean vixx you've been at this for a long time it's a good i'm glad you're in charge i did appreciate all of your input tonight that was great i did too definitely yeah it's challenging when we are hearing things that we know aren't correct but we also it's important to listen to people and hear what they say and see if we can do better in our systems and things and i think you did it all did a good job of listening and victoria did a good job of ending it too yeah when you start like beating up on people when you don't know what they've done you know that i just can't i'm just not gonna there was enough enough was enough that was
273maybe this is this is our debrief here it was it was it was enough that i felt like i had to say something about the the focus i know that scott has i mean whatever else oh yeah he is well he's just got that focus professional and careful and child oriented never been otherwise and yeah i that was a lot of invective and like he he sent me a text and and thanked me for the comments me too yeah it was yeah not it was not okay it was not okay and i think you did the right thing by cutting it off when you did and you know we had to go back and loop around because there were some people that wanted to speak but that's technology in our way honestly yeah we were
274in person we would have noticed those things and but we're always willing to go back and make sure that whoever got missed is especially if they originally signed up and were overlooked yeah so tomorrow for signing because i know larry will want to know have us come in to sign so i'll be coming in if i can come in rob's coming in and actually um julie has an appointment so she's coming in you don't have to i don't have to definitely next time sounds good all right thank you