School Board Meeting - October 6, 2020

001good evening thanks for joining us tonight for our regular school board of directors meeting um the time is now 5 31 and i'd like to call the meeting to order um at this time we will call do a roll call to confirm the attendees i am president julie bocanegra uh vice president victoria bradford here uh director rob perkins here uh director jenny gronwald here director rachel rogers here superintendent mike merlino here uh administrative assistant laurie stroll here great thank you again good evening um under governor inslee's proclamation 2028 in response to the coven 19 outbreak temporarily suspends portions of open public meeting act the proclamation requires that all attendance at an open public meeting not take place in person that occur remotely including the board of directors and the public our meeting this evening is

002conducted via zoom audio webinar at this time i would like to recite the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all right well let's just dive right into our meeting our first order of business is to adopt this evening's agenda director grunwaltz uh motions to adopt tonight's agenda director all right it's been moved and seconded all in favor say i is an eye for me victoria hi rob hi jenny hi uh rachel hi perfect thank you all right next is special recognition we have two items that we want to recognize tonight the first is national disability awareness month um i believe that we have a statement

003to be read um i'm not sure who is reading which one i know that there's two rob's reading the disability awareness one perfect rob you want to go ahead and do that for us i do national disability awareness month evergreen public schools is a school district and workplace welcoming the talents of all people including people with disabilities in this spirit evergreen public schools recognizes october as national disability employment awareness month to raise awareness about disability issues and celebrate the value and talents people with disabilities add to our schools workplaces and communities and this month we renew our dedication to furthering the inclusion of people with disabilities in our schools and the workforce we affirm the evergreen public schools commitment to an inclusive community for all great thanks rob all right any thoughts or comments just

004kind of goes along with all of our our messaging that we've we have in place and that we continue to do our work around so i think it dovetails with our nicely with our trajectory on equity i remember when we did this recognition last year uh it was either the city or the county i can't remember which entity actually put it on uh but there was a presentation of awards uh in connection with disability employment awareness month and i ended up in some conversations with graduates of the completion program who were gainfully employed uh with the county um it really demonstrated uh that there were programs and and uh policies procedures in place to recognize this in our system already um and uh it turned into a really good conversation the gentleman i talked to

005was concerned about how a program that he had enjoyed had changed and i think we were able to um resolve his concerns with that and we just had it's it's really kind of a shame that the pandemic persists and we can't gather together to recognize this more formally i would agree with that yeah all right anything else or should we move on to principles month i guess i would just like to say that i you know i appreciate that we specifically point this and um you know mention this in our board meeting and that this isn't just physical disabilities but you know in addition to learning disabilities which a lot of our students um have within our district so this is you know inclusion of them as well and our continued hard work at our

006special education services and providing kids with educational disabilities as well as physical disabilities uh education that they all everybody deserves that's a great point so all right well with that then why don't we move right into principles month we have a special proclamation to read and i believe uh director gronwald is going to take us through that one yes so the state of washington proclamation whereas principals create hope for each and every student in their buildings by leading culture systems and learning and whereas principals work tirelessly each day as visionaries assessment experts community builders public relations experts budget analysts facility managers special program administrators and guardians of various legal contractual and policy mandates and initiatives and whereas principals work collaboratively with both teachers and district officials to develop and maintain high curriculum standards develop mission

007statements and said performance set performance goals and objectives for schools to achieve achieve educational excellence and whereas the association of washington school principals awsp honors such exemplary principals who have succeeded in providing high quality learning opportunities for students as well as their exemplary contributions to the profession and whereas principals month gives an opportunity to honor and recognize the contributions of all school principals and assistant principals to the success of each and every student in washington schools our most valuable resource now therefore i j inslee governor of the state of washington do hereby proclaim october 2020 as principals month in washington and i encourage all people in our state to join me in this special observance sign this 30th day of september 2020 governor james lee thanks jenny and i would say that principals have a

008even more challenging job right now um and probably moving into the future as we face the global pandemic um and just all the new factors that go into you know now kind of being that social distance officer as well and doing all those other roles that they probably never imagined that they would have to do and we have some pretty amazing principles in our district we do all right any other comments about principles month just to say here here and it's never been harder to do k-12 education this year and they're bringing professionalism and confidence in space just the same thing that i'd say any week about any of the groups of our employees all right next up is the board consent agenda we will entertain a motion for approval director grunwalt's moves moves that

009we approve the board's consent agenda director perkins seconds all right it's been moved and seconded all in favor say aye it's an eye for me uh victoria hi uh rob hi jenny hi and rachel hi great thank you all right we will move into the superintendent consent agenda again we'll entertain a motion for approval director bradford moves for um approval of the board or of the superintendent consent agenda director grundwell seconds all right moved in second and all in favor say i i for me victoria hi rob hi jenny hi rachel aye perfect thank you all right so next on our agenda is the superintendent report so for this we're going to turn it over to superintendent merlino yes um i guess i would start uh by kind of expanding a little bit on on

010the the uh recognitions today um i would expand starting with the the disability awareness month just you know a lot of the first students that we've seen in our buildings have been students on ieps and uh our initial a lot of our initial staff our teachers and and paris have been um folks that are supporting those students and i think that thanks to our staff needs to go out i i've had enough to have had opportunity the last weeks to go to visit a lot of our schools i've been to all of them but i've been to a lot of our schools and particularly with 49th street which will become hollingsworth academy and and you know the staff that's was out front to meet the kids coming off the bus the staff that are working

011within the guidelines uh that have been established from the state and serving our kids every day honestly from the beginning over the summer from the first day of school i think we can't give enough thanks to amber the leadership that she's provided there as well as all the staff members that have been there on a daily basis and they're in all of our buildings and and uh jay's leadership and and the program coordinator so um i would just say thanks to everyone that's works to support our kids on ieps um principles national principles month um and i agree with what you're saying rob literally every it's like at some point every every group should have their week or their month so that they can be highlighted because there isn't anybody that went to school thinking

012about how am i a principal in a pandemic or how am i a teacher in a pandemic or how maya pera or how and everybody's affected and everybody's taking on work uh that they weren't expecting that they would take on and i've always believed i mean the teacher's job obviously is so significant in what we do but i think that the principal job in a school district is one of the most important jobs from the perspective of setting the tone in expectations and what we're trying to do in a building as as well as you know when you're just in a district our size you got people that that don't even necessarily understand that they're part of a school district because you've got schools 30 some schools out there and everybody's kind of doing their

013own work at the same time trying to be part of a bigger system so what the principal does on a daily basis is bring the the vision of the school district back to their building and then also convey what's happening in their schools back to the district to help frame what we need to be doing so i really appreciate i have been saying a lot you know we i i came into this position as an interim saying that you know our principals are our experts and we need to we need to receive their feedback as much as we possibly can and as we work through the issues that we work through on a daily basis right now and as we start thinking about hybrid regardless of when we get to hybrid it's it's critically important

014that our relationships that are um the feedback we receive from the principal is listened to and honored and uh that we we support what they're doing they're important because they're talking with teachers on a daily basis and getting feedback from teachers and they're that conduit back to us so it's um these are unbelievably difficult jobs unbelievably difficult times that we're dealing with and i just can't echo enough the appreciation for what's happening in our buildings and from the teachers to the classified staff that's that's still in our buildings um so and i agree every week i don't know what it is next month but we even if there isn't a recognition we need to figure out who it is that we're going to recognize and highlight what they do and i feel like we just

015need to figure that out there might be governor inslee's proclamations um but i think we need to just find our school board proclamation or lori or you know the mine anybody because it doesn't it's a bus drivers it's it's the food service workers it's the teachers it's the translators i mean it it just doesn't stop this is an unbelievably difficult time and i appreciate the effort that's going in from so many people and i i appreciate our classified staff that's just waiting to be called to come back because they can't wait to come back and try to serve our kids too so anyway all that being said um every week on tuesday uh at some point in the morning we get our update on our new number of transmissions per hundred thousand um i think

016we've been saying recently that that those numbers have kind of been ticking up the positive tests have been ticking up we went over 95 uh with that release today i don't know the exact number but it's over 95 so basically we've gone from where we had a number of stable weeks in the 60s in july and august to uh low 70s by the time we got to september 21st we had ticked up over 75 uh then we went to 86 and now we're at 95. so certainly the direction um isn't uh trending in the right direction and remember um our mou talks about four weeks in moderate and then we go to hybrid so this basically at this point time for k through five would put us uh out to i think it's november 9th

017would be potentially the first week but realistically um the direction that we're going isn't uh the direction that we want to be going to be able to get to hybrid thankfully um we do have the ability to bring in small groups um in any of these three categories low moderate or high um in this time last week we moved to uh bringing in kindergarten students across the district we started the week before with the four schools sifton um image crestline and york it was york um and then since then we've gone across the district i will say um i have been talking with principals and meeting with principals and there is very positive feedback that we're receiving from both families and from our staff i think our staff is is enjoying the opportunity to have

018students on site and bringing them in so i think that that's a wonderful thing and um we just have to continue to kind of work on that one of the things that we've been talking about is it will be so long before we get to the point where we're in hybrid um that when we have the opportunity to be in hybrid all the planning and all of the work that needs to go on behind the scenes needs to be in place so that when we have the ability to go to hybrid at the appropriate time and there's a lot of things to consider with that when you get to elements you get to secondary secondary schedules they're certainly a part of that um but we need to do the work uh again talking about what

019the principals do on a daily basis we need to be doing the work to make sure that we're ready when that time comes because there just isn't any question that our students benefit from being on site i think our staff actually benefits from having our students on site and our families certainly support that all of that said being done following the safety guidelines that the department of health that the clark county uh department of health has put out around masks around social distancing around washing our hands around um the group so it's it's an uphill battle that we're uh working on um i think there are at least one maybe more i i was seeing i know that kelso is in k2 actually in hybrid right now we're kind of watching what they're doing they

020went to hybrid when they were in in moderate i think they spiked into high and they're continuing uh is my understanding in that range i've seen some articles and emails um castle rock is moving forward calama is moving forward so we kind of need to see how some of that's working and if they're in high if they're doing that how they're doing that and what what they're doing to make that happen um at times it feels like uh it's it's a it's a real struggle to get kids back in even though we know that this is what's best for them and uh and what's right for our kids but we're continuing to work continuing to monitor tomorrow we'll have another zoom meeting with clark and cowlitz county with dr melnick dr dr craiger i think

021today the governor put out some more guidelines around um athletics in schools athletic activities in school we saw an email this afternoon that maybe clarifies things a little bit more allows for maybe some more practicing kind of identifies what would be considered low risk medium risk and high risk as far as the sport is concerned but unfortunately i got to be honest with you i think a lot of these guidelines that they're putting out are not really making it easier i think it's going to be very difficult for us to have kids participating in athletics based on some of the language that's coming out and um it's it's uh you know it's tough it's tough there isn't any question that it's affecting kids it's affecting our staff it's affecting everyone um and we uh hopefully

022we'll start to see some positive movement in this case transmission and give us more clarity um on bringing kids back i i taped the thing last week that kind of updated everyone on that every week we get the update in terms of when we might be able to get back to hybrid and so i think it's that's where we're at with with that um the earliest we would be in elementary at this point i think is the week of november 9th if we have a kind of significant turnaround um at some point we may have to have a conversation about if we keep going week by week by week and we're getting closer to christmas it may very well be that by the time if things went our direction it could be a week or

023two before christmas we may make a need to think about whether or not that's for a week does that make sense or does it make sense because that might be a christmas present for everybody if we were able to even get back a week before christmas but we'll continue talking about that um enrollment is another thing that we continue to watch um our enrollment typically in the month of october you see enrollment increase across the district you look at last year's october i think we're up about 150 kids we're down uh maybe about third 20 30 kids from the preliminary in the preliminary october numbers which isn't something we typically see our elementary one thing i will say is our kindergarten enrollment is it did increase in the month of october but all other grades

024one through five have decreased that's not something we typically see i would say middle and high school look more similar to what we what we might see um but at this point in time uh i think the estimates in terms of revenue impact for us still is probably in the 15 million range for us [Music] that's within basic education primarily basic education special education and transportation uh one of the other fallouts from where we're at right now is uh the furloughs that have occurred in evergreen and across really the region most districts in southwest washington participate in the unemployment pool with esd 112 and um they have increased by six times the unemployment rate uh so the .002 that we typically pay on gross earnings of all employees has been increased instead of 0.002 it's

025up to point um zero one two and each of those point zero zero two is probably somewhere around a half of uh about 450 000 so uh we've seen we will see some significant increases in what we're paying into the unemployment pool as a result of the furloughs um unfortunately that is just a something that we expected was going to happen um i will say that in conversations with principals that as we look to bringing students back as we look to bring back them back in small groups and in in hybrid preparations we are going to need to be bringing some of our classified staff back so i i expect that we will likely call some of our classified staff back in the next weeks as we um as we work on that i think

026that um it's it's a difficult time but i think we have to continue to talk about the hope of bringing students back i think it's wonderful that we've brought the kindergartners back i think our our students and our families are very happy with that we need to uh look at ways we can follow the guidelines and expand on that um because i know that that we're getting really great um positive response from those events occurring and we will be back at some point we will be back uh whether that's hybrid and at some point we'll be back full time and we will be populating these brand new schools i mean we've got wonderful facilities um we were lucky enough to have uh representative harris and representative stonier tour emerald and and see some of what's

027happening in that building and participate we've got great things in our school district we've got great things happening in our school district and i think our staff is is going uh that extra mile to try to get kids uh supported and served even in this difficult time whether it's remote whether it's in small groups whether we're planning for a hybrid i'm uplifted by the work that happens it's it's uh um something we always have to remember because we're we're working through very difficult times but we have to remember we're going to be back we will be back i'm not exactly sure what the path is um but we will be back and i'm excited for that day when that comes uh i know that we're taping another virtual groundbreaking i think or we're doing some

028virtual ground breakings for mountain view uh mountain view is under construction um one piece of really good news that we got last night was um the city of vancouver did vote to surplus their property which allows us to kind of move forward with the facility at evergreen the the baseball softball facility at next to burton so we will work in and i think even out of that i believe that the resolution had them take some of the proceeds from the sale of the property and invest those some of the dollars back into the evergreen school park which is a park just to the east of evergreen high school that's a very wooded area they want to start to try to develop some of that and bring trails and and make that a more appealing area

029for the neighborhood so we may get some support there on top of having the ability to add some of these facilities uh down below um evergreen high school for baseball and softball so we got all kinds of great things happening we got a great staff i appreciate all of you on the school board because you work your self significantly hard as well to support everything that's going on and making yourself available for everything so we got to stay positive we got to keep moving forward and figure out ways to support our kids and uh and work with everybody in the system so thank you to everyone that's what i have for tonight uh julie thanks mike does anybody have any questions or anything for mike right now mike uh i got a question about the

030enrollment numbers are those off you said we were 20 to 30 down was that off the september count or the budget september account not budget okay we're i guess what i'm saying is what i've been saying for a while is we don't really know what like usually you can look at september's enrollment have a pretty decent idea of what's going to happen the rest of the year based upon previous years and i've been saying i don't know that we can do that this year because we don't know what trends of enrollment we're going to see typically we will see in the month of october an increase in enrollment of 100 to 150 we've probably seen a drop of maybe 30. so what i would say is that that to me means we got more downside

031potential in terms of the enrollment as the year goes on with respect to enrollment um because this is just not obviously going to be any year like any year we've typically participated in right second question uh you said there was a 15 million dollar impact does that include the increase in unemployment pool costs that would not include that that uh the variable is one of the the biggest variable i think right now is going to be transportation to understand exactly what that means but if we're you know we're talking a thousand-ish kids special ed you know we're talking probably 13 to 16 17 million in that range okay we've got one month of payroll um and looking at that one month of payroll uh that's not really enough to get the trends um but in

032the next few months we'll start looking at what do we think we're spending versus the revenues and some of the reductions we've made how do they uh support us but i i've also said all all along you know our interest is in having kids on site safely and when kids are on site obviously we're bringing staff in it's it but we we need to do that i mean we're here for kids we need to get kids in appropriately and safely we need to look at how we can provide transportation to try to support that and so it's it's not going to be an easy year there is any question about that but we'll i think we're up to the challenge of serving kids and managing our funds um we did a uh uh i've told

033i've talked uh previously about a bond sale which we will do later in the month uh myself and jennifer jacobson are uh director of accounting and um purchasing participated in a ratings call and you know we're sharing the things we're doing in terms of trying to deal with the enrollment shortfalls they participate the the individuals that do the ratings participate with other districts i think that they were um they had a positive reaction to the way we're at least trying to deal with the financial issues that we're dealing with um and i think their feeling was that we're probably um more proactive in that and then then some of the other areas that they've had conversations with in these types of um sales so that makes me feel good that i i do think that

034we're trying to get ahead and trying to deal with things rather than well let's wait and see and i think we've taken them on right from the beginning i think that's difficult to do that but i think it's something that we had to do so i think that that's at least some positive feedback from that perspective which is unfortunately actually negative feedback because it means that we've got people that are furloughed and i mean it's it's a difficult time there was an um there was an employment security program to help people that were furloughed collect the difference in unemployment if the employer participates i can't remember its name but do you know what i'm talking about uh well we have the work share program i think that's the name yeah yeah so the workshare program

035is the program that we've used with uh with um our secretary group um the you know the federal government not doing anything to extend the um cares act i mean i think that the supplemental unemployment ran out early september late august and so i think our folks haven't been able to participate in that the way that some others were over the summer we are participating in the unemployment program and it's one that the federal government reimburses directly the the other half so our employees are working four hours and then the federal government um but it's not a complete reimbursement it's a reduced amount um and i don't it's not uh i mean it's it's it's difficult even it's difficult for our secretaries there's no question about it thanks julie that's all i had all right

036well i was going to say that i was um happy to see on the uh personnel reports that we did have some of those furloughed employees um looks like they're coming back as we have kids back in schools so yeah we've we've brought back staff um and and we'll be bringing back middle school and some high school staff back to um support our covet rooms um and and just have some additional hours on site to deal with uh just issues as they come out kids coming in the attestations um there's i mean the the reality is in hybrid if you ask principals they they need all their staff back and then they need additional staff so it's not like they just need the staff that they have they need staff plus um and we're in

037a situation where you you don't you can't ignore 15 million dollars worth of revenue reduction um when it's particularly when you have a fund balance that's you know we don't have a significant we have an appropriate fund balance but we don't have a sick we don't have a fund balance that's been one built to deal with the global pandemic and and a five to ten percent enrollment drop in a in a uh um one year cycle i mean we in since the time the interim till today when that occurred we've actually had we will likely have to reduce more from our budgets in a two-year period than we did in the four-year period that we did from 0.910 00809 really through 11 12. and the really unfortunate thing is i know every one of you

038and all of us believe in transparency and trying to be as transparent as possible and basically we had to wait until the first day of school to talk about the biggest reduction in expenditures potentially in any of the years i've been in the district um and likely in any time that the district's even maybe been in existence short of maybe failing a levy in the 70s but my guess is the levees weren't that big in the 70s so this is a extremely difficult time and i really do think everyone's doing their best to try to make sure that we're getting the feedback that we need and sometimes it doesn't feel like that happens and certainly not the way that we typically would do it um i i think i think we mentioned sometimes the meetings

039run together one thing that is a positive is that the state shortfall went from 8.8 billion down to maybe four and a half billion or in that range over a three-year period uh so that's a positive at least you know potentially these concerns about 2122 and how bad we might have to think about cutting beyond maybe is mitigated to some extent we'll see how that goes in the legislative session all right thanks mike all right so we'll move into board comments any of the members of the school board have anything that they'd like to say i just wanted to mention that i received a call today from someone who had been at the city council meeting that's a member of the parks commission or board whatever they're called who said that sue and company did

040a really good job in talking about how what that impact's going to be for the district and and so i really appreciated their work and um in sharing what the benefits were to have that become part of our her view can i say can i add that i apologize to sue for not mentioning that and kale pylon was participating in that as well actually listened in they did an amazing job sue did a great job of explaining and outlining uh sue actually knew the slides better than the city staff did because every time somebody would ask a question about i'd like to see this or that well that's like 13 or that slide 18 or that's like it was it was pretty awesome to see but they did a tremendous job of answering questions and

041presenting from our perspective why it was important it was it was um it was great i agree and i apologize to sue and kale both for not saying that when i mentioned the good news thank you for saying that for you well i'm super excited about and i'm glad that they they got the agreement done because i mean not only are we going to have you know fantastic baseball and softball facilities for our entire district to use but you know when you think about what it the impact it can have on your community because you know we'll have the kind of facilities that can draw state tournaments and the you know economic impact that it brings for our entire community when you bring on those people from out of town so um i think it's

042exciting all the way around not only for the kids in our district they're gonna be able to use that but just um statewide and the impact it brings for our local community and to have a nice park there too so it's a win um i was able to finally uh join in on the courageous conversations last week so i was happy to get the training done um i about 90 people in the group a lot of teachers a lot of counselors librarians there were some classified staff too from the district office that were all involved so it was a lot of fun to hear some different perspectives and really good very training it was some of the best training i've ever been to hi clarissa i was just about to talk about this i i

043ended up in a lot of conversations over the last two weeks um in part because of the general assembly it was a general assembly but this there's been since the beginning of pandemic this constant dialogue back and forth about uh the pandemic in schools and and uh how it's just roiling everybody um the general assembly went off very well they had more districts and people there conducting votes remotely than they've ever had in the past in person i mean probably the cheaper travel had something to do with that and while there were glitches and there were more than a few um they accomplished it and i was able to take the positions that passed and prioritize them according to the priorities that you all gave me last time and uh i put that into the

044into the agenda item for our workshop uh so that we can all look at that together and if there are if i made a mistake or you'd like us uh to be privileging a position above another position rather than than the order that i'm taking it in i have a couple of days to correct that um and i think they'll listen to me about that but the general assembly was really heavy on matters of equity there were a lot of votes taken about legislative positions in response to the pandemic and such as the transportation um and enrollment problems and there are going to be a couple of bills coming up uh draft language that i'll share with you in the workshop um i also met with that fall collaboration group for parents and educators that

045we talked about last time didn't happen on the thursday it happened the following monday but it's been about an hour and a half uh listening to students and parents mainly uh talk about how difficult it is for them um the students who spoke uh highlighted how difficult it is to just be at home and not have uh i call them happy thoughts you know the things that you need to have in order to fly um the group is got some drama kids as in students of drama as well as choir students band students and they really miss being able to meet and make music and uh and art together um and that came through loud and clear i was able to clear up some misunderstandings and uh some perceptions that come from uh not having

046the whole picture uh talked about the sports guidelines which thanks for letting me know that they've changed i'll be able to say something about that too but it doesn't sound like it's changed for more permissive participation and the response that i got from the parents uh who participated and who watched the recording later on i was very positive um and i think it showed uh i think it showed what's possible if if we're out there as members of the board uh listening is pretty much all uh or providing clarity where we can it it served and they thanked me a lot for being able to just listen to them and carry that stance back uh let's see there's a general assembly we had a board docs training jenny was there too maybe she talked about

047that part and i am really excited to be participating this week in uh developing um a social and political expression message a multi-district message um to go out about equity that clarissa i guess clerks is called the meeting is that true um and uh to be able to take our ideas of equity and put it into this multi-district statement that we can publish let's see some other conversations went on that we can talk about later on but i don't think of all the time the legislative committee meeting is this weekend so i'll be involved in that and if you have positions or thoughts that you want uh mazda to consider i'll listen to that and carry it in and next week is the online learning advisory committee meeting which given this year should be more

048interesting than ever before i'll be in the zoom for that uh that's what's been what's coming up from my end all right thanks rob anything else for board comments um yeah i uh i guess i'll mention what rob kind of alluded to real quick uh rob and i actually was last week uh were given the opportunity to participate in wasda's some of wasda's onboard training which is a training program that they're putting together for new board members so our upcoming conference is no longer in person so they had to try to pilot this um training for new board members online so we were given the opportunity to participate saving us quite a bit of money and taking the classes and pilots so we pilot we're piloting this program for them and giving them feedback so

049we learned about the deciphering the district's budget so we learned codes funding codes expense codes um how to read them what each digit set is for them we also got some um printouts that have kind of guidance in them you know giving us because it's in the state of washington's code so they're all very dissimilar um so that was really great i had wished i had gotten you know i'm sure a lot of us had wish we had gotten some training more like this from the the west when we onboarded or when we started uh instead of just going over governance and making sure we we learned robert's rules and and that kind of thing because the budgets in the districts are huge so that was a three-hour training that was actually um really insightful

050and i i really enjoyed the way that they provided it so i'm looking forward there's actually i think three total um so i'm signed up for all three but one of them kind of conflicts with our uh i believe it's our bond meeting so i may have to excuse myself and then watch that uh the replay on that one so i can take this class and also just a quick note um i am a parent of a kindergartener and so i have um i had my child back in school uh twice a week for two hours this is his third week back he actually is was in one of the pilot schools and i can say that he is excelling because he's more engaged um in the school work when it's not just online he

051knows at the end of the week he gets to go to class for two hours um and he absolutely loves it and and he's thriving and that wouldn't um have been possible without this this hybrid so uh i just you know i want others people in the community to know that it isn't we're not making these decisions and then not you know living up to them we are i i i have actually sent my child back to school in this um hybrid model to test this out so and it's it's going fantastic they are very cautious they have learned how to do air hugs and air high fives and um and it's the new norm for them right now and it you know and they they don't run up to their teachers and give them

052big hugs like most kindergartners do right now and they're they're very aware of what's going on and it's it's good to see and good to know that we're being able to give these parents an opportunity for this so thank you all for all of your hard work i forgot i'm i was at a meeting yesterday with the district equity leadership team um just a continuation to the courageous conversation um work and how that's all going to be moving forward so thank you to that team they did they're great all right anything else well just to mention the training that jenny and i were at turns out to have been the training that uh you and victoria and i were at last it was one of the early birds last year yeah and i didn't really

053they told me that it wasn't but it turned out to be which made it a healthy review for me i was i was glad to be on that thing the next one is foundations of state funding three hours oh they they corrected that there's a they're sending new information they're sending a new packet they actually there's an email that's that's the wrong packet oh did they oh i actually they send us this and it's sealed and we can't open it until the night of the class so well i guess we could open that one now well i accidentally did but yes and then also i forgot to mention that i um i i finished my board assignment and read the 69 um essays that were provided for our equity team and the 12 student essays

054so that was due by end of day today and i thought it was going to get real close but i actually got it all submitted this morning and i appreciated reading through a lot of those and and i look forward to the conversation that that team is going to have um in the next couple of days making decisions some good candidates yes a lot of very good candidates um a lot of very good insights and even i mean some very brave um people that put their name in the ring that you wouldn't have thought would but i i i really enjoyed reading their comments and the the courage that it took them to stand up and and apply for an equity position so that's awesome i appreciate hearing about that yeah i'm glad you were

055able to do that all right sounds like lots of good stuff is happening lots of hard work so all right uh future agenda items do we have anything that we want to add to future meetings or agenda topics i think it might be a good idea with referendum 90 on the ballot which is the comprehensive sex education referendum there's a lot of uh inaccuracies and falsehoods circulating in the community about what it means for us and some information about how that referendum if it's approved might change things uh for evergreen's curriculum would be probably a pretty good idea i'm not talking about anything long or working curriculum or anything just how would it answering that question about how it would change things if it passes um and maybe yeah that's about it because my perception

056is is that it's not it's not going to have a specific impact on us and so are you saying maybe just a uh update on what our current practices and um yeah is the curriculum we've adopted and what we've excluded [Music] addressing some of the reasonable concerns against the idea of comprehensive sex ed and especially talking about parents access to examine review the curriculum and get their questions answered and how that procedure works and how it might change if our 90 passes do you want to do that uh at the next workshop if you think it probably makes sense right yeah if it's gonna be on the ballot because that's probably about the time the ballots come out so yeah i think it'd be a good public service i i i would be okay with

057that too if we added it to the next workshop okay lori lori's got that we'll take care of it thanks mike all right thanks rob that was good uh anything else we should add i feel like there's probably some of our um regular stuff that we probably should get back to at some point that are we are we supposed to ever get back to regular stuff our english stuff is i said english or regular stuff regular stuff yes the stuff that we've kind of put on the side if there's a way to if there's a way to do um operational expectations reports in a circumstance and condition like this you could try why i'm sure with exceptions yeah we had a i mean we had kind of the path of what we were thinking about

058i want to go revisit that i know that there's the workshop the you know we have kind of a laid out but we'll need to go back and look at that calendar again yeah we'll probably have to relook at that at some point and just kind of see where we're at but yes all right well if there's nothing else we'll go ahead and move on to citizen comments at this time we will take comments from citizens you'll have three minutes to address the board just remember it cannot be legal or personnel in nature we have four people that have signed up this evening when we turn when we bring you in and turn on your microphone if you'll give us your name and address and then just remember to keep your comments to under three

059minutes uh first up we have representative paul harris great it's good to be with you um thank you paul yes we can hear you hi how you doing i just want to tell you thank you i had an opportunity to tour emerald your new school or our new school and it was just an unbelievable experience to me it was uh to see the school to see how education has changed to see the technology there to meet the principal and the assistant principal darcy and michelle just phenomenal to meet with the teachers and just watch education taking place i think it was just a beautiful experience and i want to commend you for for the work you've done i i was just uh took me back to my days on the school board serving with victoria

060i don't know that we've done anything or at least when i was serving that was quite as uh transformational is what i saw and i just want to tell you thank you for that it was it was very nice and i look forward i don't know if you're going to discuss schoolboy-based health clinics but i want to tell you thank you for setting up the school-based health clinic i know monica knight was an important issue for us and i look forward to that uh and i just appreciate what you've done there also that's really all i have great thank you so much for joining us tonight paul we appreciate it thanks for visiting our schools paul um i'm glad that you were able to see that because i knew it wouldn't go um unappreciated by

061you after all the time that you've worked on stuff for us oh my god it was it was phenomenal i can't and i i can't wait for us to get back to normal to have an open house and for uh people to see that school is just it was breathtaking it was beautiful we're excited for you to see um legacy and um the 49th street academy i just lost their new name hollingsworth hollingsworth um when those come on whenever that's a senior moment like i have all the time i know a lot lately but i think you'd be very impressed with what we're going to be doing there and we're excited for you to see that well thank you and truly it was it was it was beautiful and and just to watch the education

062with the kids with the mask on um well behaved uh things were happening it was it was great it really was it was great and we are talking about the health clinics in the workshop which is i think first on the agenda right after the board meeting paul okay but i just want to tell you thank you for doing that the health clinic is a priority for me and i really appreciate that all right deals with diversity and equity i i think it shows what you're doing that's all i have thank you all right thank you so much all right next up is amber lynn lane amber if you'll give us your name and address winter on uh my name is amber lynn lane my address is 11602 north east 7th circle years ago i

063packed the boardroom with young musicians and their families some played instruments while others sang the famous words of malala yousafzai one child one teacher one book and one pen can change the world some of you were there and may remember that you sang to the students you saying yes you can change the world i still believe they will the world is different than it was then but some things are the same last spring i put together videos that were shared district-wide to lift spirits the song count on me and the past the instrument videos involved teachers throughout the district music education is still the heartbeat of learning we are the community builders social emotional learning without any changes to our curriculum yet all of us high risk teachers who have requested health accommodations to work

064from home are having those requests denied our options are come in when told or go on leave risk our lives or our livelihoods this is inhumane choice and i don't see how you will possibly fill all the potential vacant specialized positions if we stay and teach in person due to your zealous requirements what number of music teacher deaths would you find acceptable i keep hearing the use of the word equity and that's great but when i see policy it's clear that the district is confusing equity and equality forcing the same situation on all teachers is not equitable removing barriers to success and giving each individual what they need is equity the most equitable choice for elementary music education is to keep the learning at home where staff and students are safe in person we would

065be exposed to the entire school or even multiple schools and many of us are in enclosed spaces with dangerously poor air circulation forcing children to constrict their singing and movement when they could be singing and moving freely at home is inequitable forcing a single parent with underlying conditions to choose between exposing themselves to the entire school population or going on leave is inequitable put your actions behind your words in support of equity for students and staff i beg you to let us teach in conditions that are truly safe where students can make music freely take our health concerns seriously i ask again how many deaths of my colleagues and our loved one are acceptable to you my acceptable number is zero thank you for your time thank you amberlynn all right next up is carrie

066leibert hi there my name is give us your name and address please my name is kari libert my address is southeast king road milwaukee oregon and good evening evergreen school board and superintendent mike melino my name is kari and i am the music teacher at silver star elementary i have been in evergreen for eight years and previously have been an itinerant music teacher spending the majority of my time at fisher's landing elementary school i am speaking tonight to express my concern over opening up into the hybrid model at the elementary level i will go over some of the important research out of the university of colorado boulder that has studied particles exhaled as performers covid19 is a virus that has a particle size that has been measured at approximately 0.1 micron the medium particle size

067range for singing is 1.3 microns and clarinet plane has roughly 0.9 microns as general examples of particle sizing for the study the following are the recommendations from the study in phase two while it is not finished the data has been widely circulated and is easily found when googling knowing that music teachers in a hybrid model would see a minimum of nine live classes a day with 90 to 100 students from different pods the following recommendations should be followed there are five main recommendations based on the findings of the study including mass distance time air flow and hygiene for mass the recommendations are no talking should occur in the room without a mask being properly worn mass should be worn by all students and staff prior to entering the performing arts room mass should continue to

068be worn at all times teachers should consider using a portable amplifier to keep their voices at a low conversational volume students should also ask questions in a low conversational volume with a mask teachers should wear the most efficient mask possible that is readily available and fit matters in terms of distance six feet by six six feet is the minimum students should sit all facing the same direction back to front to minimize potential exposure the time allowed for performing arts should be no longer than 30 minutes and especially if it is indoors while it is indoors there should be an allowed a minimum of one air exchange prior to the next use of the room and the recommendation is that three is the best practice most more study is needed to for prior to change the

069recommendation of time in terms of airflow outdoor participation in performing arts is best open air and allowing for tempting from weather elements if rehearsal has to be held indoors the air filtration needs to be at the highest recommended amount according to ashrae levels which is including a filtration level of the filters merv 13a in terms of hygiene there needs to be hand sanitizer soap and water available for all and hands should be washed after contact with surfaces and instruments instrument areas should be limited for the number of students available to go and access that space there needs to be 70 percent alcohol in all wipes that are used to wipe down surfaces before and after touching in the music classroom and the wipe should be discarded properly upon leaving the instrument area with all of

070these protocol recommendations and the expense that is necessary my professional music educator recommendation is to keep the music remote when the students move into hybrid and i thank you for your time thank you all right next up is megan russell are you there megan yes i think so can you hear me now we can hear you go ahead and give us your name and address please my name is megan russell my address is one 1842 northeast 19th avenue portland oregon i teach music at sunset elementary school i have approximately 400 students in 20 classes each week i teach each of my classes live in addition i create interactive asynchronous activities for each class to do the students turn in their work which i review and respond to between planning for my live lessons teaching them

071creating asynchronous content responding to student work meeting with colleagues communicating with parents and sharing and moderating content on my twenty google classrooms a typical work day for me begins around seven am ends around five pm and does not include a duty-free lunch break this is the only way i'm able to stay on top of my work rather than falling behind but i do it because it's vital that my students continue to learn music and this is how to make that happen i'm concerned about how this will be possible when we transition to a hybrid model in a live video lesson my students can sing they can play instruments made of things they have at home we will not um in the physical classroom it's questionable whether we'll be able to sing together safely we will

072not be able to play instruments because my schedule has never included time to sanitize the between classes and many of our instruments would be damaged by sanitizers anyway additionally if we have a kyber hybrid cohort and a fully online cohort during the same part of the year my life teaching time would double this would require eliminating either my asynchronous content or my live lessons with the online cohort because there simply aren't enough hours in the day to add 50 to my current workload either way my students would be receiving half as much music instruction in the hybrid model as they do in the fully remote model that model would have me teaching 10 classes a day which is more than my contract allows as we plan for how a hybrid model should look it's important

073that elementary specialists have representation on the decision-making team so their job is understood and solutions are realistic beyond my instructional concerns i have serious health concerns about the hybrid model in hybrid i would be seeing potentially hundreds of students per week i would be a conduit between all classes in the school if one student was infected without their knowledge i could potentially pass the virus from them to a student in any other class a student with whom they would otherwise have no contact this also means that i personally am at risk of infection from every child in the school our youngest students in particular are developmentally unprepared to adhere consistently to social distancing and hygiene protocols as much as i miss my students i'm very afraid for my safety and theirs when i think about

074in person teaching the risk is high even for those of us not designated high risk there are countless documented cases of young healthy people dying or facing lasting disability from this disease i do not want to be among them do not want my colleagues or students or their family members to be among them i hope that you will put our community members lives and safety above all other considerations as you plan for the rest of our school year thank you for your time thank you megan all right and then the last uh person that we have signed up on the list is stephanie holdman hi my name is stephanie holtmann and i live at 959 28th court wash shugal washington 98671 dear superintendent merlino and members of the evergreen school board this is my eighth

075year teaching elementary music in evergreen and i love my job my students love coming to music where they dance sing play games instruments and i enjoy watching their growth each year but teaching from home is hard the tech limitations mean that students have to stay muted so we're never getting to sing together i can't send instruments home for them to have that experience preparing pushing out assessing and responding to 20 classes is time consuming requiring detailed planning to make sure everything is completed in a timely manner and addresses the varied needs of my students and follows both the district curriculum guidelines and the sel needs of my students i am working harder this year than i have ever worked in my 18 years of teaching yet i would rather keep teaching remotely with all of

076its downfalls and stressors than try to do my job in person in a coveted reality you have heard tonight about the studies on the safety of singing in person washington music educators association has shared these results with state superintendent chris reichdall who has promised to consider these studies in future revisions of the state's guidelines for teaching during covid i would urge you to make the same consideration elementary music is largely experiential the students learn music through singing and dancing and playing this fall i have been able to provide precisely those opportunities to my students we sing every lesson we move creatively we play games students keep coming back for that joyful and aesthetic experience once we return to in-person teaching music class will be drastically diminished in order to maintain safe experiences based on scientific

077evidence i have been assured multiple times that all safety considerations will be followed and my understanding is the eps plans to utilize a pod system in elementary hybrid however even if i teach my current schedule of five classes per day i will be exposed to five times the number of students daily as the classroom teachers if i am to see all students live when they're in the building that that increases my exposure to something like 10 times what the classroom teachers will experience this is not a safe exposure level what i've not mentioned yet is that i am an individual with multiple high risk factors for an adverse reaction to covet which i earned as a result of a stroke in 2019. i've used up all the years of sick leave hoarded for such a

078rainy day the current options offered to me by eps are accept the plan to expose myself to an unsafe number of children each day engaging activities that increase the risk of covet transmission and do so grateful that i still have a job or take a leave of absence why is this the choice i'm forced into when not only am i perfectly capable and able and well prepared due to the multiple pd opportunities i've taken advantage of to teach from home it is also what is safest for me and my students also i have a daughter to raise and feed i can't afford to take a year off my job simply because my school district refuses to acknowledge my need for a safe working environment but even less can i afford to die from covid thank

079you thank you stephanie all right so at this time um we appreciate everyone in their comments this evening um that ends the regular part of our meeting we will now go into a recess uh we will then reconvene a short recess and then for a board workshop we're going to talk about the school-based health clinic update we're going to get an equity and inclusion update we'll get a legislative update um superintendents update and then a board meeting debrief um then we will have an executive session following that um so at this point do you want to take a quick break or do you want to go right into the workshop you need a break just a couple minutes all right it looks like we're all back are we ready to start ready to roll mike

080who's leading us through the uh student health center is that james yeah okay all righty well after a very long time uh we're we're getting to the point where we are uh able to uh move forward and open the student health center um i put a slide in the workshop which laurie is sharing here um we uh i mean there's a few things that delayed of course covent and the closure being one of them but uh in addition to that we've been working out our agreement with uh seamar who will be our provider and um also they had to do the application process through the federal government to be approved for its change in scopa sequence um which they actually did for the springtime but then our closure made it so they had to get

081a waiver and now everything's in place um and as you can see we are getting medical equipment uh installed in the uh center and uh we're working with danny and the evergreen high school team to uh begin the process of uh working with the evergreen high school community and uh getting ready to open on the 15th um some of the first things that they're going to be working with us to help address is immunizations and immunization rates and making immunization process uh more readily available holly and her team have made a significant impact in our compliance rate for immunizations uh this year and and really it's been the school folks that have helped holly and everybody do that but um we still have about uh i think five percent of our enrollment who uh isn't

082in compliance um and of course every year that will be changed because of uh ongoing requirements going into middle school and high school and then of course kindergarten so anyway that's one of the things they're going to focus on for us um and then seeing kids and students and and um even family members for services at the clinic once once we get open they do they have identified a provider which is i believe a physician's assistant and then we are already running mental health services out of the clinic so any questions was it a different organization before uh something correct um we uh we did start with cowlitz um as uh callitz and siemar are the two uh federally qualified health providers in our area um and um they have to work with the federal

083government on the territory that they're working within uh to ensure coverage in an appropriate manner um and there's other technicalities anyway mcalex wasn't able to get change in soap scope from the feds because this is kind of seymar's area and once seymour learned of the work we're doing they were ready to partner and jumped on board and moved forward and they're excited about it and khaled's was very much disappointed because they were excited to work with us too but both are great organizations and are going to work well with us and we'll provide good support and services to our kids and families are they planning to do anything with telemed um services so many of the doctors just out in the general population and i know kaiser does it a lot of them are doing

084telemed for routine kinds of things we we haven't discussed that but i will uh we meet every tuesday uh as we're ramping up to open um so i will uh follow up with them on that um i i honestly i'm sure that they are too because of the way things are right now but um but i'll clarify that for for us thanks oh it's very exciting it's been a long time in the making so yeah it'll be interesting um to see how things roll out do we have we had any discussion or are we still is it too early about um other clinics and other schools like heritage and um we we you know before the world changed on us we were we were talking about that yeah and i know uh seymour would uh

085be on board with us if we had the capacity to do that and and they had the clientele in that area to support it um and so it would just be a discussion about outfitting the school and uh you know initiating the process of planning around it yeah um i and you don't have to answer it now but i i just wondered if in the planning for the heritage um expansion that there was any thought put into the clinic potential clinic going in there so you can let me know later on that if you want sounds good soon i'll touch base i was just saying no we don't yet but it's not too late we're just finished up dvds so and the funding the the funding for the evergreen clinic was a a grant that

086you were part of correct jay and and i think represented their representative harris represents stone you were part of that and i think that part of their interest is is seeing the success of this to help try to expand that and help fund these in other areas of the state as well as even other areas in the district yeah that's all correct thanks i'll just talk and then you can just agree if you need to jay that's perfect i'll just do thumbs up [Laughter] so uh yeah and they representative stone you're in harris were total in sponsoring this and supporting us through this and and they i understand are both as he are identified very excited about this and so perhaps yeah will be a mechanism for supporting that um through that through whatever means

087that they have available to support us also so so we're really excited about getting it open unfortunately due to circumstances it's going to be a real soft opening i mean you know can't do some of the things than pomp and circumstance that you would do because it is it is a it is a exciting thing to have come to reality and will be a significant support for our kids and families and coming up with strategies to enable it to function in the environment justifiably is gonna we're gonna have to be creative including tele supports but but it will make it work so is the cmr group and they're doing the counseling now yeah you mentioned okay and they are most of the counseling they're provided there's very little in person most of it is teletherapy

088counseling but but they do do some they do do do they do some in-person supports i think they're well equipped equipped in this county to expand into golf center seymour's everywhere yeah all right any other questions for jay all right then thanks jay we'll move on to um our equity inclusion update is that clarissa this evening to give us the updates yes yes that's me good evening everyone um so many of you kind of touched on a couple of the updates already because uh you were involved which is awesome that means i am sticking to my plan of making sure to implement you and plug you in to the areas of passion that you stated to me last we're meeting um but so i'm going to start with the uh professional development which is the

089greatest conversations pd we have successfully completed um nine schools nine schools have attended the courageous conversation the experience on professional development and we have gotten nothing but positive feedback from our participants and as you all know people enter into equity work um and specifically racial equity work all across the spectrum and so the fact that we were able to get nothing but positive feedback so far um is very um inspiring and it gives us hope that this work um is going to be something that continues and become uh if you a permanent piece or the fabric of how we do things in evergreen public schools um secondly uh jenny had the pleasure of being able to read and she broke it down very good there were 69 uh essays from adults and then 12 from

090students so that's a total of 81 essays um we'll we will be meeting um this week end of this week if that isn't where people schedule then definitely beginning of next week to go ahead and select our members by looking at the scores and the rubric that we put together and making sure that the representation on the committee is diverse and with plans of having our first district equity advisory committee meeting the last week of october uh victoria had the pleasure of attending our first dealt meetings our district equity leadership team meeting that was facilitated by um uh staffing from courageous conversations nameless louise versailles and he walked us through the framework for um systemic change um as far as equity goes and that started with the personal commitment that you make um which is

091kind of what the seat i planned with you all on last time because that personal commitment will um fuel or you know kind of be a forcing function to you i'm as an individual to then have that work show up in your professional life your professional commitment um so after personal there's professional and then the last area that your commitment will show up is in um organizational organizational change um and that's where we can uh change systems and our in our system that we're attempting to change and improve upon um is our educational system in evergreen public schools um and the work that we'll be doing in the dealt meetings um because that that was one um of five for the year um is that we will be um connecting as a as a team

092in general you know getting to know each other and that piece as how we enter into the equity work but then how does that show up for us in our professional lives will be talking about that and then what systemic changes with our positions of power that we have um are we utilizing that passion to help support our students who have been historically underserved in our vision um lastly the uh we have scheduled our beloved community audit debriefs as an extended cabinet as well with um board members with beloved community and the school-based audits from beloved community are coming in as well and so that is going to give us a more complete uh picture if you will of what diversity equity and inclusion is looking like in our district so we'll have that in

093addition to our equity audit that is being performed by education northwest and they are you know trucking right along with getting their the data in and analyzing um one of the things that just closed yesterday was in a survey that they sent out to all of our building administrators asking them about the um recruiting hiring and retention process um of our staff and getting their input and feedback on that so that we can use that when we get ready to make the necessary changes to have our um to work towards our staff being more reflective of our student population so those are the those are the biggies um i did also reach out to rob this week to ask him um to join with myself um a washroom a canvas in vancouver school district representative

094that uh work with um equity in their districts to talk about the social and political expression message that we'd like to craft so that our educators as well as administrators or anyone in every school public school district for that matter um has a a unified message about what our stance is on um social and political expression um the closer we get to uh the election we want to make sure that everybody feels um as if they know where we stand on matters of that so we're have have rob helping with the with the policy piece and it's twofold so it's what policies do we have in place right now that will support this but then it's what's missing what policies are missing um as far as equity goes that we need to um add to

095phase two and work on and then implement for um in support of equity in our district are there any questions i have a question great who are the um people from the other districts so we have the um equity director from vancouver school district her name is janelle ephron uh we have this assistant superintendent from camden school district her name is charlene williams and we have the assistant superintendent from washoego school district and his name is aaron hanson okay thank you any other questions all right thank you clarissa appreciate it all right uh next is legislative updates who's taking this one mike do you have any i think rob's probably got more to talk about no uh because we're we've not really started anything with melissa necessarily it's just still the same the same stuff

096we've been saying but i know rob's got some things to talk about yeah i uh need permission to share the screen here we are is it working let's see um yeah i wanted to bring up the position ranking that i emailed to you and just kind of there you go okay is it is it there now yep okay uh it uh kind of explain the logic behind this and and uh get your feedback if there's any feedback to get i heard uh last time that our priorities ought to be around special education and supports for that uh equity and safety um the equitable school funding transportation was high on our minds uh and and so what i did there is i prioritized student experience in the highest priority so the top of the list is

097highest priority and put the single standing position that mazda has for special education uh on top we the general assembly consolidated uh two sped two sped positions uh into one um and the position essentially says this needs to be fully funded without uh without an artificial cap so that that came in on top and then the positions that read comprehensive student safety and comprehensive school safety the student safety one uh actually grew out of in part our safety policy and i figured our district would probably have an interest in a high priority for student safety and the all hazards approach including social and emotional learning comprehensive school safety was one that passed uh after the march for our lives uh conversations a couple years ago um and then i included uh the positions around equity

098education systems and equity inclusion and diversity training to include pd elements and uh general statements and positions about uh equity for students what follows there is the more or less these are the coveted response positions that were passed no mid-year school budget cuts protection for lea and a position privileging pd for basic education instruction via distance learning of course we heard some concerns about that part and then followed that up with it was just consolidation full funding for basic education and then equitable school funding one of the new position number three i think this one is the one that reads um that wazda shall oppose any reductions in funding that that fall on districts and students that have more students further from education justice as they put it um added the mckinney-vento funding it's been

099a standing position for a long time uh the whole harmless position if you make a change don't make a change that makes people lose money and then our positions on digital equity graduation requirements for students impacted wazda has basically these are technology equity issues and that was the 15. flexibility of grad requirements had to do with uh carrying forward any waivers that students might need because their education might have denied them some experiences that turned out to be a graduation requirement and there's some waivers in there for last year's students but i think that continues into this year now or is proposed to continue and then the rest of this is for sort of the systemic basis we know that we've had to make up for a lack of internet connection for at least privileged

100students by giving them a wi-fi puck or a place to come learn uh and those are legislative positions that wazda also carries so student experience followed by sort of systemic funding staff training things followed by data equity is the way that i privileged it and what i wanted to learn is whether or not that looks right given our discussion two weeks ago or whether or not uh whether i had to go back to marissa and ask her to reprioritize those choices any questions about that piece i'm fine with it i mean some of them kind of overlap um you know i think that the idea for wasa is to find out the priorities of all the districts and then they know what to advocate for um you know i i think if they take a

101long list it's sometimes hard to um and i know they do that one sheeter for when they go up to the day on the hill um with the priorities but i think it's just their way of finding out what the top the top ones to advocate for i'm fine with the list that how you prioritize them okay and i just got a text from paul harris saying that looks good i wonder if uh as i get into this uh these next two things if paul could be invited to uh paul could be invited off or feedback on the two bill proposals that was this legislative committee asked me to present to you you may have seen one of them before but the other one has to do with transportation and see if he's yeah he

102said i'm back on looks good special ed dollars thanks paul um what you're seeing on the screen here is a first draft of the first draft of the first draft of a of a proposal to modify uh the rcw related to allocation transportation funds which inserts language around fuller partial remote instruction due to state or national emergency the makes in person instruction dangerous to health or safety of students and staff changing the definition of eligible students and the definition of to and from school to include the ways that we in other districts around the state have been using buses and bus drivers to bring services to kids instead of bringing kids to services um i put it into board docs for you to look at and what i'm kind of looking for here is a

103voice of support or refinement in the language that you're seeing so that i can carry that to the alleged committee when we talk about it on friday or saturday it's one of the two um four partial uh the report required under section one shall separately identify the number of eligible students served by eligible to and from services so this is their effort to try to match uh actual rcw or the way that they actually fund transportation to the kind of the proclamation that uh inslee did around allowing for expenditures in transportation so this would actually allow us to get funded what we are doing now that this would allow us is on wednesdays we're delivering meals to marion families and we're delivering delivering supplies kind of throughout the district so those those uh routes um

104would then be funded somehow i don't know exactly how because it doesn't necessarily fit in their black box of what they call their funding formula for transportation but it at least gives us it gives us some funding for what we're doing that we otherwise won't get any money for so i think it's it's a good thing you know i'm moving the text around but you've got a copy if you want to look at it maybe i had to hold a minute for you to do that any other comments or questions has has this gone through our transportation department or do we need it to go through there you've looked at it mike yeah i think it's awesome i mean it's a good thing i mean it's it's the only way that we would actually receive

105any kind of funding for the work that we're doing and it could potentially change the way we would do things although i will say our efforts have been primarily around how do we get kids into school not how do we get stuff to them but we kind of have to continue to see how things evolve as this year goes on and this gives us the ability um we already have it in place um the first the the first count the fall count would occur i think the week of the 20th or somewhere i mean we're pushing it back as far as we can to try to take advantage of it as much as we can and so this would allow us to uh make that happen okay so what i'm hearing is it looks awesome

106let's support it yeah and and melissa had asked because this has come through so we've shared that we support this i mean it's great for watts to support it but we've also shared support for this because if we don't support it there's no i mean there isn't any reason not to i guess is what i'm saying because we're not going to receive the funds unless we get something like this i think it's it's nice in the sense that if it gets into statute there's there's no way to tell whether or not this is going to flare up a second time but in the event of future emergencies it's not only a good idea but it's also a good idea to count students who have things delivered to them i think we're going to have a

107subpopulation of students who think that remote learning is better than whatever we could have offered in person i don't think it's going to be a large group but it's nice to add to statute in my view um an accommodation to serve those students who prefer the remote or whose families prefer i was on a call this morning with representative harris and representative stonyer and we talked about that exact thing that i think that there probably are some families where the remote option is a fam an option they may choose but if they if the legislature were to change the rules to allow for it on an ongoing basis i do think that that's something that will be uh raised at some point and we'll see how that's handled um that's a good point rob yeah

108i'm thinking there in terms of things like if you have a lot of remote students what would ospi's rule requirement be about registering as a multi-district online entity or a single district online entity and whether the rules around that need to shift so that i don't know basic education includes remote components well i think ale may completely change you know could completely change because we're we're offering a form of ale through non-ale methods and so that's a completely legitimate question yeah and i got the i got the uh elec meeting next week to advise about that on behalf of wazda the state organization and good and then paul has comment well harris said we need to fund what districts have done to help students and families during these trying times so we have agreement from

109our 17th ledge district representative this last bill proposal is one that came out alleged committee and i don't remember whether i showed it to everybody but i know mike has seen it and i know that uh paul harris and monica stoner at least have seen it and it might be circulating um this has to do with student safety and uh sort of the response um anticipated around the defund the police kind of things and concerns being raised about sros in schools we um we've had a pretty successful sro program in schools and as i understand it at least while the high schools are not meeting in person in any degree the sros are not contracted to come in either so this is really considering circumstances for when we come back now what mike said to

110me the bill language here just kind of proposes that instead of having a section of rcw that says if you have an sro program you've got to confirm that your sros are trained in certain ways and here's the list changes it to we should really confirm that every employee with responsibility for safety uh is trained in that list which mike pointed out when we talked you can ratify this or refine it mike but uh that we do offer training for all of these things um for all personnel coming through at least the safe schools training and a couple other vectors correct right right um are sros considered employees no i mean they're contracted they're not our employees that's what i thought so because the way this reads now it says must confirm that every employee

111three of your people every employee with safety student safety responsibility right but if you had sros um they're not an employee and so it doesn't the language doesn't meet the criteria that i think yeah it doesn't up there it does down here oh i see okay section two says districts that have an sro program must annually review and adopt an agreement but i think there's actually a deadline of this year that got disturbed by the proven pandemic about having a public process about the sro agreement but here it's confirmation that the school resource officers have received the training under one one oh good okay well that's there and then it just kind of pushed the section four down um sro means commission law enforcement officer i it this came out of alleged committee discussions around

112legislative positions to propose to the general assembly to go into the next session so it's a really indirect thing but wazda has authority from its members to initiate legislation so there have been some discussions about you know finding out who the major sponsors of the previous modification to this rcw were and getting their buy-in um if i'm not mistaken melissa is also aware of this idea and had some advice so it's it's uh on the road to get a little bit of traction if there's room for it and how the legislature schedules its work and who knows about that part given all the emergency legislation they might be encouraged to consider um but that those are the two bills and thoughts that i wanted to bring for discussion before we get back into let your

113committee work and i'll be quiet now and listen to you say things um since this came up i'm hoping that during our equity audit and that that the topic of sros and our security people and i assume it will be um we'll be part of the audit process so that we have a good feeling about how our students and staff feel about the relationships that they have with kids how that's working out on campus i mean every sro i've ever met just always been you know a lovely person that seems to care about kids and knows our kids and but i'd like to know what kids think about it and people in the schools if i may uh so that information that you're talking about victoria will come out of the second part of our

114of our audit where we solicit student um student voice great um i will say though that i have the pleasure of providing the bias free policing and cultural competency pd this year to our sros um a couple of weeks ago and so i can say for sure that that was provided because i was the facilitator and it was received well and i feel like um a lot of the topics that i share with them and that they were able to engage in are they didn't seem unfamiliar to them and they we're open to learning more about how to do just just that um so thank you clarissa all right so rob do you are you just asking for guidance at this point or just guidance and feedback uh enough statements to support a refinement think

115things like what victoria said are valuable when we do this um i really think there's going to be a need for more than just my one voice directed at olympia or more than just melissa to really deliver the messages the thing that i'm con i'm concerned with is that we're going to see some um we're going to i think have more concerns about sros on campus due to the just what's been happening out in the general population across the united states and i don't want us to get into an adversarial situation as we discuss this i um with the public i i would like us to be able to really have a good conversation and be very clear in what the expectations would be for our security staff of any type so that as we're

116dealing with our equity work that people feel safe and know that we're all on the same page here um so that's kind of where what i'm thinking about right now yeah this statute stipulates a process that involves all the stakeholders especially students and we can use for this year at least we can use equity audit as part of that process that's good uh it looks like we have to have this clear statement regarding sros um these these items are things that i imagine are in policy and hope they're in policy i also imagine that our audit is going to root out whether they're in policy um because it goes to a couple thousand pages and we know there's a rising fear of the uniform because of what's been circulating online and around the country it's

117uh it's a real thing okay thank you all right thanks rob thanks rob for doing all that keeping track oh mike do you have another update i don't have another update okay all right um jenny do you want to lead us through board meeting debrief i think that's the last item it is um absolutely um went pretty smooth tonight i think that our um readings went well i try not to mess up too many of the big words uh anybody have any feedback on how the meeting went um i did want to make comment about our sticking to our policies when it comes to citizens comments because we kind of swayed a little bit tonight was it back and forth with representative paris yes that's what i was referring to we're not no i mean

118i get why but it's you know we're gonna have citizen comments where we continue to you know we can't respond we can't engage um but you are allowed to um ask questions and when it's a state representative and we're just thanking them and stuff it's not that's we're not like going into the whole process of things and and stuff but i get your point and i think we should also watch on the time some of the comments but that's always so hard so we hate to cut anybody off yeah well in a virtual um platform it's hard to really you know tell when someone's been on three minutes or or longer plus i know that a lot of the citizens comments they have prepared um their what they want to say in advance so to

119to kind of cut someone off when they're reading em you know especially with emotion is yeah i'm sorry i don't i don't do a very good job at the time keeping well so it's hard when i was looking in on the city council's meeting yesterday when they get to citizen comments they actually have i don't know what the platform is that they use but they actually have a three dollar a three-minute timer that shows up on the screen and it doesn't just stop them at three minutes but at least there's something for the person that's actually talking to see the time and see that it's coming i i didn't see them ever stop anybody when they got to three minutes but honestly people were pretty conscious of it and they wrapped themselves up when they

120got to the three minutes so that yeah i don't know how i don't know how that works with zoom or but whatever they were using it was just kind of a nice thing with the timer on it it's yeah i guess that would be a pretty easy way to do it we just do a timer i feel like we finally got our citizen comments down now doing zoom in the last few meetings that i'm i'm feeling pretty good about it now that we're not reading emails or you're just happy to have it working that way right yes and it is i i have to say we still have people more people attending our meeting than we ever usually get unless there's something controversial but it's nice that people are taking advantage of of the zoom

121opportunity to watch what they're interested in and see what we're up to so i appreciate it i agree i agree that how's that well i mean i don't know how they do it in the city of vancouver but i would imagine somebody could figure are you gonna put the timer on for me now sorry i gotta reset that to 22 and a half minutes if it's for you 2.2 yeah and 22 seconds might be better yeah i don't know julie pretty quick to agree was that you thinking that happened yeah that was bad oh okay it's not something i'd ask laurie to do the timer but it's just that it's just the timer in windows it's yeah ultimately i don't think that we're having i mean do we do anybody have concerns with the comments

122going too long or i do not at this point i don't have a concern with it i don't even know that we need to waste our time trying to find a timer no i i one of the things and i in person and on um virtual i have not been good about limiting people's comments because i feel like our job is to let people say what they need to say so yeah i think the only time we really need to stick to that is when there's a lot of them and we want to hear from everybody and every give everybody a chance to use their voice and advocate for themselves so i think that i mean that would probably be the only time that i would say we should probably time now in connection with

123that i know the was the guidance about opma and public comments has always been to specify a time up to which you take public comments three minutes a piece so if five people sign up you say we're gonna set aside 20 minutes total for this and everybody gets three minutes and then you're under the limit if everybody sticks to three minutes but if they want to keep talking there's something legally comforting to lost his attorney about doing it that way anything else all right so i guess that is all for our regular part of the meeting we're going to um adjourn and then we will have our executive session so we're going to sign off now thank you everyone for attending