001Okay, welcome to this meeting of the Granite Falls School Board. Um, please stand for 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. I will hand it over to Dana and acknowledgement. Great. Thank you. Uh we honor the first peoples of these lands by acknowledging that the area in which we gather is within the traditional territory of the Stila Guamish tribe of Indian. The Stila Gwamish people have inhabited these lands and waters since time immemorial and their descendants have remained in this territory to this day. The Stila Guamish people have continued to practice the traditional ways of their ancestors of fishing, hunting, and gathering. The Still Bmerish tribe has
002heavy lands and cultural traditions passed on to them by their ancestors who believe that everything has a spirit and that they are the caretakers of these lands and waters. Thank you. Um that brings us to item number 1 C. Roll call. Um tonight in attendance we have director Leoo, Director Kerry, myself, Director Kate. Do we have director Gaulner on? We do not. So we do not. Okay. Um, so at this point I will make a motion that we um accept the absence of director Gaulner and director T. I will second. Okay. Motion has been made and seconded. All in favor? I. All righty. Um, moving on to item number 2A, board comments and reports. Uh, we'll start with WIAA. Um, nothing substantial from WIAA. Um, but I will say uh from a comments perspective, I've
003I've loved seeing just the the community events together. I know I sent Dana a photo when we went to uh I took my daughter to the Monte Cristo skate night. Um thankfully I don't think we left with any casts. Um that's always there were a lot of buttfalls but um but not not too much crazy from Elsa crazy from that. Um it's starting to get nice out again. Um, and we're getting daylight a lot longer. Um, so, you know, get out, enjoy, um, you know, go see some track meets. Uh, you know, just get out there and again, right, we we get locked into our homes all too often, uh, in the Northwest. Um, so really get out there, you know, support wherever you can. Um, you know, and I love to see like build
004trips and stuff coming back, too. Like I know, um, some of the classes are going to the science center at the end of this month. Um, so I love seeing all that stuff as well. So, um, just get out, support. Um, parents play just as much of a role, you know, in teachers as this stuff. So, really appreciate all the support from the community. All right. Oh, Lynch. Okay. Sorry, I thought Aren't we Aren't we in board comments? Oh, I guess we're doing votes. Okay. Comments and reports. Sorry. Um, uh, first off, I just want to um, we had a loss in the Gran Falls family recently. um uh Alex Cunningham who was a young man that graduated from Granite and I was um lucky enough to know him and his parents and uh we
005attended the same church together and um he was a big personality and and really loved in this community and um tragic tragic loss and uh I know he has some services coming up in the high school but I just wanted to say publicly to his friends and family, which is many in this community. Um, my deepest condolences and um I'm going to try to rearrange some plans and uh attend the service uh this weekend. Um and I'm I'm sure that um his family would um welcome all of us, those that knew him and and didn't know him and stuff. So, just wanted to say how how deeply he's going to be missed and how much I know people in this community are hurting right now. So, um on the reports um uh oh, also on
006the comments, thank you to the board for excuse me the last couple of absences. Sorry, dudy called and uh um was trying to get to the last meeting but ended up having to go to uh Great Wolf Lodge for an emergency elevator outage. You know, that's a that's a big deal in Great Wolf Lodge, right? Like um coming out of the water park, they need to be able don't want to climb stairs. Um so, thank you. I really appreciate that. I I have tried to stay in touch um with all that's happening as as I've talked about in past presentations. It's a it's a weird time right now um federally lo the state. Um one of the things that I'm kind of hearing clear from WASDA is that uh there is still some hope that
007we will have some uh increases in funding. Um, I know that I don't want to steal any of your thunder, Marshall. I I see you're you're there, but um that it's it's it's going to be tough that this this session is is really really been a slog just with all of the unknowns and obviously the budget woes of the state and, you know, all of that stuff. So, um there's still some optimism, but I wouldn't say that it's overwhelming optimism at this point. So, um maybe I'll I'll speak more when when Marshall's talking here a little bit later. So, um, that's all I've got. All right. Thank you. Um, I just wanted to say we are done with spring break and now we're in the home stretch. So, May is a long month, but once
008we get through it, we'll get through it. So, hang in there everybody. Um, and then just thank you to Crossroads for all these decorations in here. It looks awesome. Love all these little signs and things. It's encouraging. So, thank you guys very much for that. Um, moving on to director. Oh. Oh, he's he here. Yes, he just joined. Oh, Kenny. Yeah, I'm here. Oh, hi. Do you have any um board comments? I do not. Okay, thank you. Um so, director or uh you know, item item number 3A, superintendent report, presented by Dana Keys. Thank you. Um tonight, if we could go forward a couple of slides. Thank you so much. Uh, first of all, I'd like to introduce our new Granite Falls High School principal, Ryan Pike. Ryan is with us uh tonight. He's been
009here since very early this morning. He spent the full day um at Granite Falls High School just meeting staff and in classrooms and in the commons and with students and all those kind of things. Um, a few things about Ryan. Um, first of all, the we had a rich applicant pool, so he really um he really just won the day. And um, thank you to Mr. Vancini and the interview team. There was um 30 plus people that did first rounds of interview and then we brought candidates back last week um Thursday and it was um Mr. B and executive director Moore and myself um for some more time with our candidates. Uh he's currently serving as a middle school principal in Moses Lake. He's been an administrator for for a minute or two and um
010the thing that that really was was shining through as we as we talked with him is um just his emphasis on building relationships with students and staff and you know that laser focus on the northstar of outcomes for students. Um he's warm, he's professional and uh committed to school improvement. So we are really excited for him to to join our team. Um that picture that is you can see a little bit is of him literally today engaging with students um in the manufacturing class in JBJ's manufacturing class. So um he is at home with high school students. It's obvious and students were like hey I remember you and you know talking with him. So welcome Mr. Pike. Do you have any anything you'd like to say? Uh it was an exciting day seeing students and
011uh it was fun just to be at the school today seeing the staff and uh you're right students some of the students that interviewed were excited to see me again and uh I I met so many and I try to keep all the names in my head today and I actually was happy when one kid walked by at the end of the day and I I called them by name. So, um, anyways, I just like you said, building relationships, um, and keeping that focus on school improvement is what we're going to do. So, I'm excited to be there. Thank you. We're grateful. We're grateful that you're here. Yeah. All right. Um, next, a a quick safety and security update. Um, this is something that we've been working on for a little bit. I asked um,
012Dan Scholar to uh, research a few different systems. Um, and these are the systems that our vendors and visitors and guests and volunteers will use as they enter our buildings. Um, there's many, many wins. There's lots of words up there, but the bottom line is it streamlines the process, right? You have a governmentissued ID, you scan it, you get a badge for the day. The badge actually turns color by after 24 hours. So, you you can't wear it day after day after day. Um, that's a safety measure as well. It also will intersect with our Skyward system. So, if there is a reason that someone shouldn't be in our schools and our system knows that, it will stop that from happening. Um, you've all probably been places that have these. A lot of big districts
013have them. Um, like the city of Lynwood has it, those kind of things, but it makes it um, it's nice interface. It does have a screening um, realtime sex offender database. So, it's just another another step in the right direction of of ensuring that um everybody is is clearly wearing something that says that they should be there. So, you everybody should have all adults and our kids should know that all of our adults have a badge on or a sticker that would have their picture as well. It also helps if people are going from school to school because if they're a visitor that's going to be here all day, they have the badge, they can show it and um it looks the same at Granite Falls High School as it does at Monte Cristo as
014it does in Mountain Way. Um so we're excited to get this going. We will train staff um and you know there's a there's an initial cost to to purchasing of obviously the the technology and the items, but after that it's just an ongoing service fee um each year. So Lake Stevens uses it, Arlington uses it. There's a few systems that we looked at, they're relatively close in price, but some of our neighbors use this and that since we partner so closely with Lake Stevens on so many things, um this is one that we have decided to use. So we will start getting that ordered and in place and we'll u meet with our uh building secretaries, I think it's next week, and kind of let them know because they're the ones that are going to
015have to use it the most um and like I said, interface with it. So, we're excited to to make this switch that is uh increased security. Any questions on that? So, does this uh expedite like background checks for uh parents that also want to come in and help? And yeah, I think I think there's actually an interface there because it could help with that. Okay. Um and parents would always, you know, have to to get a badge and be and it's it's just it's also just retraining staff that if we're in buildings, if we're in spaces that we always have something that's identifiable. Um our students know otherwise if people are walking around they don't have something on then everybody should be like I'm sorry I don't know you you what you know that kind
016of thing and then either help them access this or we'll have to shore up some things if that's if that's happening. Yeah. What happens if this is this is a absurd idea but what happens you said if they can go from school to school to school. Say there's a situation in a family where mom has a kid at uh elementary school and then there's like a another kid at high school and they have like a no contact with the high school. They would still have to check in. Okay. I I think that's more for like vendors. I mean school as we come in everybody should be checking in. Um in our last system you had to show ID. Everybody had to show ID the minute they walked in. And you know Emily often uses the
017the example of the pair's like you know me and I'm like yep. and we still have to check ID because that's the practice especially for pickups and and those kind of things. Um the real time is really nice because if things happen quickly sometimes there's emerging situations and we want to make sure that you know we're protecting our kids. Okay. Yeah. So we're excited about that. Um next upcoming district and community events. kind of a repeat of some things we had last time, but I want to remind um all of the directors that the Snomish County candidate filing week um is May 5th through 9th. Um we'll send you reminders that week, too. We'll make sure that you all we'll drive you to Snowish County. No, just kidding. But we will take make sure that
018you know that you know what you need to take care of. Um the graduation events are there. I know Paris has sent that information out to you. um the Monte Cristo principal interviews we um that application pool is is is filling as as we speak. Um it's been posted for a little while and then we had the flyer um that went out yesterday on social media and I think our website um and so we have interviews tentatively scheduled for April 21st. That will be first round and then second round will be on April 23rd. We've invited um our staff um to participate and we've had a very nice response from the staff. Lots of people have already volunteered and I think we just sent that out to them on 14. Yeah, we have 14 already.
019Cool. So, that'll be great. And um we'll invite some parents to be involved. I thought that was a such a win in the Granite Falls High School principal interview um process is having number one so many students involved. Dave, did we have eight or nine ten students? 10 students involved and we had parents on all of the groups and so that just gives some other um some other input and perspective and we really appreciate the time that everyone put in. So that's coming up. Spring sports are a little bit of again a moving target because lots of rainots and things but there is a home track meet April 17th. Okay. So that's a good one to attend. And if you would like to work an event, we have just the job for you. So, you
020can work a field event, you can work a running event, there's there's all kinds of things to do. So, if you like to do a sexually track meets are really fun to to work. Um Dave and I are both parents of of track athletes, so we spent a lot of time at track meets, but I encourage you to come out that day because we don't have that many home um home track meets. Um SBA testing is coming up. Emily and team um are working hard to make sure that we're ready for that and communications um are going out from buildings to families. There's a reminder on the calendar for the end of the week for that. And then some graduation events that are coming up. A couple I want to make sure you have in
021your head is the senior presentations. If you can make that, that would be great. And then the scholarship and senior award tonight, which is a big one, um on the 29th of May. Another thing that's not on there that's happening in May is our final Tiger Cabinet, and I believe it's also on the 29th. Um we have three legislators coming. We have Senator Wagner, Representative Eslick, and Representative Low all coming to meet with our kids. And we would love to have you all there. And if we have three or more of the of you, then we'll have to Paris is going to have to send out some columns and things and and knowing that all of you are gathering in the space. But it's really exciting to have the support of our legislators. Um, lastly,
022I I met this week with uh our little league um partners, Marshall and I did, and it was really nice to connect with them, and we have some work to do to to make sure our fields are being used by our kiddos that live right here in in the district. So, we'll be doing some work on the facilities use um policy and making sure that it's available to um our community members. And so, thank you, Director Leoo, for connecting us and and making that happen when when they had some concerns. It was a really good meeting and I think we have some good plans. Great. And I'd like to thank Britney Malidor for bringing that to my attention as well. So, yeah, she was great. So, it was good to talk with her. And that
023is it for me. Awesome. Thank you. Um, moving on to item number three, the legislative update presented by Marshall Cruz. And as Marshall comes to take the podium, we did have an update for superintendent in the region um legislatively also. And um and Marshall's going to tell you about a few bills that are active. Um what we're hearing from Dan Steele, who obviously, you know, is who Director Kerry knows well. Um is that if this session the session may go into an extended session, um we hope it doesn't. The Senate has um some pretty some good momentum, but it's just, you know, the money there's only so much money in the pot and it's got to give somewhere. Um special education funding bills are still alive and well. Um but the House has, you know,
024some severe reductions in those, so it'll be it'll be interesting to see how it all plays out. All right. Um so, can you go a couple slides, Kurt? Yeah. So, um, the Senate is has presented themselves as the advocate for K12 funding this year. The the House has taken more of an approach of they want to have a balanced budget without having to raise any revenue. And so, there's been a bit of a pretty strong conflict between the House and the Senate right now. Um both both chambers have passed their budgets. Their budgets are not matching at all. So they're going to be going through the reconciliation process now. But um the Senate has three bills. The Senate budget passed with three bills in it that address K12 funding. Um the levy authority, special education,
025the MSTOCs. They were adopted by the Senate and included in the Senate's operating budget which was also adopted by the Senate. That then gets pushed on to the House and the House then decides what they want to do. And so the House immediately introduces a massive striking amendment that guts these bills and tries to make it match what their original budget was. And then they'll vote on it and they'll send it back to the Senate and then this big reconciliation process happens. But in the meantime, um the Senate is posturing that they are K12 education is their platform this time around. And so they are kind of digging in. Hopeful that they continue to dig in because we really not just Granite Falls, but K12 education needs these three bills to pass in the form
026that they were introduced in the Senate. You go to the next one, Kurt. So, um, the local levy bill, um, the House had one and the Senate had one. The Senate is the one that's currently still alive. And basically what it says is that both bills are allowing local school districts to ask for more local funding from their taxpayers. Taxpayers want to vote for it. The difference between the Senate and the House bill is the Senate bill recognizes that there are a lot of inequities between asking your taxpayers to provide local revenue. So the Senate bill puts this kind of levy floor that you are all school district are guaranteed to have this dollar amount per pupil of local revenue and if you can't raise that via your local taxes, the state then backfills it.
027So, what that means for Granite Falls is that next year, if this bill were to pass as written, we would have about $900,000 of extra money from the state, not having to ask our local taxpayers for anything additional, and then another 725 the following year. And there would always be this this floor that if we can't reach the floor in what we're asking our taxpayers to contribute, the state will backfill. So there's this certainly Seattle and more wealthy districts will be able to go way above that floor, but at least there's a floor where they will equalize it somewhat. So, we're hoping that that that one has a decent chance of passing at the end because there's less of a burden on the statewide taxpayer and it's more allowing school districts to generate local revenue
028at a higher rate, which is something that both chambers were kind of interested in this time around. And the Senate bill though has a little bit of state funding for school districts like us that have kind of a lower tax base, not much commercial um development, mostly just housing that could never, you know, we in this bill we we could ask our taxpayers to pay for to do like $9 million or something for a levy. Well, that would cost our taxpayers so much that we would never we would never even think to ask our taxpayers to do that because it would be a a huge burden. But this at least gives us uh raises us up a little more with state funding to backfill what we can ask our taxpayers to do. Um, next one,
029Curry. And just to add an extra, the nice thing about that too is it's not based upon student counts and stuff like that. And obviously, as you said, just express again, it's not coming out of Granite Falls per se's pocketbooks. Um, which would be wonderful. only challenge with it is is that it's um if you're certainly the state kicks in, but it's not the same amount of money every year. And so I I wouldn't say that you could comfortably hire staff or do big programs because the amount that you get is going to start trickling down and at some point you're probably going to have to come out of your pocket for it. So, um just couple of my cynical two cents about well and and relying on local levies to fund education in general
030is just a very inequitable way to fund education because there are it creates greater halves and have nots throughout the state. Yeah. So, if you want to do curriculum adoption or something like that with that money, that's that's the perfect um the second uh bill that the Senate passed is the special education bill, Senate Bill 5263. And we we talked about this a couple months ago. It passed in the way it was written in the Senate and then it got tremendously gutted in the House. It's it's nothing like what it is. It gives us almost nothing in the House. But um the Senate's going to fight for this because that's their their number one is special education. So um the way the Senate bill was written, it would um give us about $2.4 million more
031in revenue. it eliminates the cap altogether and then it increases the multipliers for the different tiers of um services. So it also reduces the threshold to ask for safety net and if a student will likely be eligible for safety net all year and it's a high cost student, we'll be able to ask for reimbursement quarterly for that student rather than wait till the end of the year. So right now we have a lot of high-cost students that are I think two or three that are out of state actually and a couple that are down in um Edmonds. We have to pay all that money up front and then in August we get we'll get $2 million back in safety net funding. But we've had to expend all that money first before we can get any
032of it back. And so it really wres havoc on cash flow and scares us all year long because we have negative fund balance for a good portion of the year. But this would allow us to claim those students more quickly and it would also increase our cash flow revenue based on the new funding formulas. It would decrease the amount of money we could ask for in safety net though because even if we can show that we have all these high need students that qualify, we can only ask for enough money to backfill the lost revenue that matches with the expenditures we're having for for special ed. So that leaves us about this year we would be able to claim another 700,000 based on this year's enrollment. We would get about $2.4 million in additional revenue
033that comes in monthly. then we could still claim another $700,000 in safety net. So the net gain based on this year's enrollment would be about $1.2 million, which for us is huge. It is. Yeah, that's almost 10%. Well, no, 5% of our Yeah, about 5% of our rep. So that is that is huge. And then uh the third bill that's still alive isn't the greatest bill. You can go one more, Kurt. Um the 5192, the Mock bill. Um, we kind of talked about this a couple times this year, but um, there's been there's the funding formula for insurance, electricity, food supplies, those kind of things is based on a inflator that it comes nowhere near to what the real inflation is for these items. Our insurance has gone up from $300,000 four years ago to
034$750,000 this year. and the amount of the amount of revenue that we get for that from the state has gone up by about $25,000 $30,000. It just hasn't kept up. It's the same problem for every district. It's very easy to point out and to show to the to our legislators and they understand it. They there was a nice bill that was introduced initially, but through the through the um legislative process, it got trimmed back to this bill and the way this bill is currently written based on our current enrollment, it would give us about $175,000 annually in additional revenue. Um it's not the $800,000 gap that we have between funding and and reality, but it's better than nothing. So, um, again, there's a Next slide, Kurt, please. There's a there's a battle going on between
035the House and the Senate right now. The House is wanting to not have any really new taxes. They're wanting to trim costs to balance the budget. They're not wanting to dip into the rainy day fund, all these things. The Senate is prioritizing K12 education because they understand that K12 education is drastically underfunded right now. and it is the paramount duty of our constitution is to fund K12 education. So Senate digging in the warning that we got today that Dana presented is that it might not happen during the regular session. there might be a extended session which that's problematic because we've all got budgets to do and staffing to worry about and if it goes into you know May or June that makes planning for next year really hard and uncertain and we probably have to
036be a little more aggressive in how we um deal with staffing in order to make sure we can have enough money to grow our fund balance next um probably have a big update on Friday about um the bill being sent back to the the budget being sent back to the Senate and then I think there's two weeks left in the regular session and then yeah, it's okay if I add a couple of things. Absolutely. So, um all of this is great. Obviously not necessarily hitting all of the things we want, but it would be wonderful. But as um as you very accurately said, there's no guarantee that we're going to get this get any of this money. But also, and I would say almost as big. Um when I talk to people um in Olympia,
037there there's a real concern that Washington schools might not get federal funding, right? Like it might get pulled or delayed or or something along those lines. And that's not a huge amount of money, but it's still still a couple of million dollars for us. I mean, the big the big one that kind of upsets me is that the federal government is talking about changing the C rules for free meals for kids. Yeah, we just qualified at most of our schools this year for free meals for kids. When they ch they change the rules to you have to be 65% free and reduced, maybe Crossroads still qualifies, but none of our other schools qualify. So all we'd be back to paid meals. Yeah. So the only reason I bring that up is it's almost like a
038like a like I would be super excited if we got one or all of these, but then there's still that feeling of oh gosh, what's going to happen with federal funding? Like we're we're going to be probably deep into probably maybe even into the summer before it's all settled. The dust is all settled on everything. So just yes again being cynical that's just just throwing that little dose of realism out there. We've been through this point in the year for many years together Carl. So that the ability to be hopeful is it gets more difficult every year. It certainly does for sure. This is just a dumb clarifying question on my end. Um on the insurance front why why does not a better free market exist? We actually so Mary'sville had to go to the
039free market for insurance because the state risk pool wouldn't insure them because of their financial status. And the free market um was going to cost them was it $4 million up from 1 million something like that. It was Yeah, I think it was times. Yeah. Significant increase. The free market isn't cheaper basically. Yeah. Yeah. So, we we're part of the risk pool, which is kind of a we all put money into it on a kind of a prorated amount based on our size and our our risk. We all put money into it and then it's kind of a self-insure thing. And um it works pretty well, but the insurance market nationwide is pretty broken right now. So, there there's no easy solution to this. I mean, it's try getting any kind of insurance in California
040right now. It's really hard. Yeah. Just just wondering how McCclary like uh you know backs backs into that because in in my eyes it feels like a uh feels like a monopoly in which they are saying hey we're funding everything but we're going to increase the price of something in which you have no alternative solution. There were stipulations in the McCclary ruling that required um the state to look at a line item of things that they have not done. Okay. So there's there's threats of lawsuits. There's threats that they're not meeting those requirements. There there's there were supposed to change the portable school funding model. There was there was a lot of little little things. I mean the big thing was the amount of money that got put into education and that that did change
041a lot of things. But the part of the ruling was there was a little laundry list of other things the state needed to do and needed to do on an ongoing basis and they really haven't done that. So there there is talk of further legal actions but thank you Marshall. Yeah and I think I will stay here for I was gonna say moving right along to 3C the business report prepared by Marshall. And I wasn't going to present this because I was kind of um focusing on this report, but I did want to point out that in the report is a um is what we're going to use for our staffing. It's a projection of enrollment for next year. And we're projecting a a decline of enrollment next year based on smaller kindergarten class. and
042our cooperative agreement with Lake Stevens for to be the alternative high school for them is expiring after next year. So there's going to be a roll back of kids that are coming our way from Lake Stevens beginning next year. So we're forecasting about a 90 student decline, I believe. And so we're we we have some attrition, but we may have to make more uh have more discussion about staffing at our next board meeting. Any questions for anything? All right. Um, moving on to item number 3D, prototypical staffing process. Good evening. The three musketeers. Yeah. Oh, all of you. All right. Um, we're gonna do a little one at a time. like um we are happy to see you this evening. Thank you um for letting us come up and talk with you. Um this kind
043of starts back in the spring um when uh I was blessed to receive this position and be able to sit in on leadership team meetings and start learning along with alongside of Dana and my colleagues here about Granite Falls. And one of the most common requests from building admin was um more support with the staffing process. So, uh it was one of the first things I've heard I've heard it many many times over the course of the of the last number of months and we are now currently in staffing season. So, we wanted to outline for you a couple of the steps that we have taken to put some um just some bumpers around our staffing process here in Granite. Um, so we'll not take too much of your time, but we just want to
044make certain. Can you go back up, please? Thank you, Kurt. Um, just I feel like it was last week, but that was spring break, so the week before um our admin uh for each building were presented with some deliverables. And those deliverables uh were in the form of a procedures packet with a lot of information about class formation, how to do staffing, um how we want to do staffing moving forward. It also contained our prototypical staffing allocations, which you'll see an example of in a minute. It also included some live staffing sheets that help us track the work of our certificated staff. It also included a staffing process and then some some deadlines and some timelines. We are bound by um some statutory timelines around teacher contract. So, thank you, Kurt. So, this is pretty
045small, but this is a just a version. It is uh a version actually of the current Mountain Way Elementary School prototypical staffing sheet. So in yellow um you see the grade levels that we offer at that school. Um in purple you see January 2024 and January 2025 count by each grade level. You then see in blue their projected enrollment for the coming school year. In turquoise you see that projected enrollment as the whole school. and in green that projected enrollment drives a certain number of baseline staff. So I'll I'll add that to generate the baseline staff what we use is the project to school funding model that um OS OSPI provides us with a tool that we're required to use when building our budget that generates the number of staffing that these number of kids
046will generate and then it provides a dollar value for that. So what we did is we plugged in for each school their projected enrollment by grade band and then it the the tool spits out how many staff that are generated by the peripable school funding model. Now that may or may not be a reasonable number to run a school with but that was our starting point. Thank you Kurt. So, this is super duper small. And if you look really carefully, you'll see that there are some uh for instance, Dave B is a kindergarten teacher under this. Um this is a mock a mockup of what a live staffing sheet looks like. You'll see that uh that Superintendent Gizeland is also a school counselor and that Jennifer Harmon teaches first grade. And Emily Moore is up
047there somewhere. I just can't see it. Oh, maybe I'm a special education resource teacher. So, um, so you'll see just some names because we we wanted to create for our administrators something to look at where it didn't stress them out to see their own live staffing sheet. Um, so what you see here um under Thank you, Kurt. What you see here under number one is this is our example school, Cascade Elementary School. Uh, at number two that in green you see our current allocations for the 202526 school year. So that is the number of staff um the number of K6 teaching or K5 teaching that we see. Our elementary school doesn't have CTE and so on and so forth. On the right side under student services you see the allocations for special education, speech language,
048OTP, ML services and title one reading and lab services. So what we do is we take the green and that is our allocation what's in our bank for next year. And in white, you'll see all of the positions. On the left column, our current staffing number seven is what denotes that there. It has their um endorsement area, their certificate. In the next column, it has the teacher name and their current 202425 assignment. So the job of the administrator is to take the allocation for next year in green and basically balance the staffing sheet and assign teachers uh based on their endorsement in their teaching area with the idea that at the bottom the balance would be zero that very bottom row. So this is what we have delivered uh to teachers uh not to teachers
049to building administrators and they are currently working on this process right now. really can I ask a question please? So, um, and I know that it's obviously still an ongoing discussion and nothing's been decided, but how are we also looking at it with the ongoing conversation of potentially going to K5 and two buildings, too, or how is that to not to speak out of place, but I I think that trying to do the timing to get to K5 by September is probably next to impossible. Um, we're we're in I'm working with the surveying company right now. We're identifying developments in within the county, within the city, trying to project developments within the city of Granite Falls based on what we think permits are going to be because they haven't even allowed permits to be asked
050for until the moratorum is lifted. So we have this idea of these outstanding permits that may come but they still have to come down to city hall and submit their permits once the moratorum is is or their applications once the moratorum is lifted. So we have a good understanding of the county that's within our our school district boundaries but we don't have rate projection on the city. So, we're working on that. And then we're working on um we'll provide to the board an idea of okay, here's here's enrollment projections for the next 10 years by grade level and here's how we a couple options for how we think if we wanted to go K5s, how we could equitably divide the district so that there is similar similar students at each school. But that's that's a
051it's kind of a lengthy process and we're we're in it right now, but it's gonna it's going to take a little bit of time and now's not the time to get deep into it and and I certainly trust the direction of staff. I guess the only question I would ask is if we're forecasting in our budget and declining enrollment in in those, isn't that even more of a reason to potentially have two separate buildings because you can rightsize, you know, students between the buildings and really make sure that you're you're equalized as far as staff rather than, you know, one building that's got, you know, a hundred kiddos, another one that's got 300 kiddos. I I think yes, but I also also I think the the risk for declining enrollment is the loss of the
052Lake Stevens cooperative. That's that's a big chunk of the declining enrollment. So that would be um balancing out teachers between potentially crossroads and the high school and middle school. Okay. Yeah. But we don't have to go deep into it now. Well, I think there's an init that initial loss. Yes. And then it'll be really interesting to see what the dem the demographers come back with because is it that in 10 years we're still only going to need two buildings or is it that in five years we're going to need three K5s because that changes the conversation, right? Because we don't want to move kids and then move them again. So hinging a little bit on that and how much growth is there going to be because we might see a decline with the loss of
053the cooperative agreement and a small kindergarten class but lots of things COVID birth rates are down. there's there's some there's some things that play there and those could come back up. But if we if it looks like we're going to have significant growth and projecting that out, what's the what's the five-year plan? What's the 10-year plan? And then lastly, we have you know our facilities um the group that came out to do um the work on the facilities has a report for us and I think it's in a week and a half we'll be meeting with them um for the initial report and then come before the board to you know what are the physical needs of our buildings what's the growth need and and how do those merge so live staffing sheets I think
054this is um super important that we have these structures in place for our building principles and one thing that I do want to Can you go back one? Curt, I'm sorry. This sucker doesn't work. So, it's okay. Um, one thing that's really important here on the left side of the sheet of our endorsement is we have amazing practitioners in Granite Falls School District and we have really nimble teachers that have a lot of endorsements. And so, having a system, while this just seems like paper, right? Having a system like this is really really important so that we can continue to be nimble and agile with our teaching core and and really you know that commitment to making certain that we're putting um endorsed teachers certificated teachers with the correct endorsement in front of kids but
055also the place of their real passion too. Um so um live staffing sheets and then just in terms of the process um that building administrators are following um they're reviewing they're balancing their live staffing sheet. They're creating a staffing plan. They're coming in front of um Jennifer Harmon and uh me and uh Mr. Cruz and uh we are talking through how they're balancing their sheet, how they're creating classes for students. Um I myself am working on it um at Crossroads High School. Um so but really that piece around the right teacher with the right kids at the right time and making sure that our checkbooks basically or our staffing sheets are balanced. Um we expect those to be completed the meetings and the final plans to the best of our ability by this Friday and
056then HR will take over and we'll start working on what that means across the district for the system. I guess I will add one thing that at at the elementary level. We've been kind of doing this for several years more informally and it's much more straightforward where you have just a teacher teaching one group of students all day. Much easier to balance that against what the state allocates us at this at high school and middle school and crossroads open doors. much more difficult because you're having a six period day or teachers teaching five periods. You're having bundles of classes that kids need and you're having to try and balance what you have endorsements in with what kids need with the sixth period day with teachers only teaching five periods out of six period day. It's
057a much more complicated process at the high school. So, and and middle school. I'd like to say also that it's never perfect. If the the allocation is 18.4, you know, we know that it's just never work out to exactly a little 18.4 and tie a bow on it. It's, you know, sometimes there's some problem solving um FTE that we have to allocate. And so we're very cognitive, but it's a it's a good tool to have to show very clearly what the state funds us for and what we need to to operate. Okay. Any more comments? Um just one, you don't have to go deep, but what was the process before this? um we would look at an overall kind of class like so at elementary it was very similar to this. You would have a
058forecast of enrollment. You would have um target class sizes for each grade level and that would generate how many teachers you would need. And ordinarily at the elementary school it's mostly just shifting teachers in grades. That's pretty much what's what's going to happen this year. you have the overall size of the elementary school is typically increasing over the last six years and it but it's little blocks that increase or decrease within the K5 range. So it' be usually it's shifting a teacher or if we have a we have attrition and and a teacher retires or decides to do something else for a career or moves to another district that and we have a position we decide if we need to fill it or not and either don't fill or fill it later. And the shifting
059happens at elementary when you have a bubble of kids like let's say you have 160 first graders and you have 120 second graders and so you have to shift a teacher because that bubble of kids is a different size and you have a certain number of teachers at second grade but you don't have enough for that entering class. So there'll be there will always be some shifting at the elementary level between grade levels as a different number or different enrollment number of kids. But outside of teachers because the protypical funding model does more than that does counseling does paras and all of that stuff. So let's say that the building was like hey I think I need the protypical model doesn't say it but I need three more paras. So how did they decided they
060got three more parents too? I guess what was that process in the past? Yes. current current well it's mostly been generated by IEPs to be honest you know it's it's 90% of our paras are probably either special ed or funded by a title or lap um very little of our pairs come out of basic ed although special ed is probably since we don't get enough funding from special ed that's probably basic ed money being diverted to special to answer your question though the secondary level I'm not sure there was a staffing sheet that was given and that was that to Emily's point that was one of the things that I mean I think it was day two John like you know it'd be great if we have a staffing sheet right to at least start
061from to start building the picture from because I'm just reading between lines I'm guessing that you're changing the process because the process before didn't work so I guess I'm just trying to figure out what that process was and why it didn't work I think it more didn't work because the administrators wanted greater tools than they were providing in the past and this is a much better tool for them. But it also can be a little stressful when you see what the portable school model actually generates in staffing and you know that well I can't I don't know that I can run a building at that level of staffing but and well the other side of it too is that your prototypical staffing is based on at the high school level like 31 32 students and
062when we're funding as a Grandpa school district when we're funding a class which is wonderful when we can have a class of say 12 we're not receiving the funding for the class of 12, right? So, there's there there's this balance, this sensitivity to to what we want to offer in our district and also what our students need and also balancing the funding that is provided. So, well, and what the community wants to support because in the perfect world, that's what levies are supposed to go to is that enrichment piece. Totally. Yeah. So, this is this is just more structure and more bumpers around it and making certain that we have an opportunity to meet with our administrators and we're all on the same page about what we're offering and we're making sure that we're not
063offering um some duplications between the buildings and that each building is getting what they need and the students are getting what they need. So it's additional layer of transparency also you know it it shows how the system is funded and then what is really needed and it I mean you can we can agree that the delta the difference between those two is needed well at any time we can create more of a standard operating procedure behind step I'm sure it makes it makes the district admin's job easier because then and they're syncing with, you know, Ryan or Dave or or whoever else, they're not having to relearn everything when they're sitting down and and and discussing it. So, and then also actually I' also, unless this is taboo, I would I would encourage then building
064admins to like work with each other too to say, "Hey, how are you looking at this as well?" And they're working off of the same material, same sheets. Um, and a lot of our schools honestly have similar headcount anyway, too. So, it a lot of the stuff should should equate to one another or should be be a little bit easier to see. So, and I think that's a great point and one of the things that, you know, coming in from a different system um is that all the students that Mr. Glee and Mr. Pip will have at Gran Falls High School next year have been our students at some point or other. We each school contains that grade articulation. So it is it is upon us to make certain that we're creating that sense of
065community whether it's through staffing or class offerings or the connection between a class offerings at the middle school and the high school um or the connection between Granite Falls High School and Crossroads what those connections look like so that we can give the best arc of the educational experience for our students. So thank you. Thank you. All right, that moves us um to item number 4 a items from the floor. I don't believe we have any. No. Okay, moving to item um 5A, un excuse me, unfinished business. The second reading to amend policy 1250 students on governing boards. Is there any discussion on that one? I love this. I'm gloving that we're putting a formal procedure into it and that um that it's a multiple students of multiple, you know, not just necessarily the um
066student government are able to apply for this and that, you know, they can do it multiple years if they want to. I'm I think this is great and I commend WADA for for doing this policy. So, W has had this policy for a bit and the procedures we copied. We might have copied another a neighboring district. Yeah. A few of them and kind of combined it. Um I agree with you 100%. It's exciting because it's a bunch of kids who can do it. And then also we'll make sure that there's representation always from both of our high schools. Yeah. And I just other not that I have a problem with it at all, but I noticed that it's can be middle school and all the high schools. So, are we really looking at potentially doing
067middle school representatives? We could. That was the feedback from Tiger Cabinet is is some of the kids wanted to if they if possible be a middle school representative and then move up to high school. So, definitely open to that. The other thing we we talked just a smidge about this at the last board meeting. Um I was I was talking with I believe he's the president of the the um Washington Department of Education, their board, and their student adviserss actually vote. that's not in this procedure yet, but I'd love to have that conversation. I said I talked to him at a at a training I was at and he said, you know, we had them just be advisers and he goes and then we realized we're going to we're going to, you know, put our
068money where our mouth is and they actually were voting members of of the board. I'm curious how that works since the board is elected by I don't I don't know how they're doing it at the state level. I'm curious. can answer the question because I was actually working with um one the gentleman who kind of started on this. So what they do is they take before the board votes the student reps take an advisory vote like hey if you would vote where would you vote on this and then because it is against RCWs for um a non-elected member to vote in the board. So yeah so they get their input that way in a in a little bit more formal way. So we go before we vote student reps how would you vote on this?
069I would go blah blah blah blah and then the board. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Uh well then I will make a motion that we accept the second reading to amend policy 1250 students on governing boards. I will second. The motion has been made and seconded. All in favor? I got it. I almost forgot he was there for a minute. Hey before we move on to 6A, can I just one additional thing? Um if it would please the board. Um uh I think we should remove um move from consent agenda the hiring of our new high school principal. Um I know in the past often the high school principal becomes the most popular person in the district. And I think it would be a cool way for us the board to just say we're behind you
070whereas it's not just sliding in the consent agenda. Um but you know just that's discussion. I'm not making them I'm making a motion if everyone's okay with that. I just think it would be a nice thing to maybe do under 6A in business. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I move that we remove um the uh hiring of um Ryan Pike, principal Grand Falls High School, from the consent agenda to new business item 6A. I'll second. Okay, the motion has been made and seconded. All in favor? Doctor. So then we would just go to that one. So we are going to go hiring. We're just making notes. Okay. So moving to item number 6A then. Um yeah, the hiring the hiring of our um high school principal. Is that what we're doing? Ryan Pike. That's it. Okay.
071So the hiring of our new principal, Ryan Pike. Just quick discussion again. Super happy to have you here. um couldn't I've I've I checked on you a little bit and I've heard very good things about you. I know a couple of the your board members in Moses Lake and uh um no one had anything negative to say and they actually said that we're getting a great great principal and I I couldn't be more excited to have you come on the what I like to call the husky side of the cascades. Little inside with with the board chair here, but uh overjoyed to have you here. you're going to work with an amazing principal, Mr. B, who's um like a star in this community and a great guy to work with and I just I think
072you guys, the two of you guys are going to be fantastic. Exactly what we need there. So, that's all I've got. Yeah. Yeah. Really excited to have you on board. Excited to get to know you better as well. Um but yeah, I mean the high school is most definitely, you know, I mean in front of in front of the large football crowds, in front of graduation. Um and then most importantly though, in front of the students, right? You are shaping them right before they get out. You're putting the final touches um you know on these individuals before they go out into the world and that is of of utmost importance. So really appreciate you joining the team and we're excited to work with you. Yeah, I would just reiterate what they said. I did a
073little research on you also and uh yeah I I couldn't find anything that was like oh no you know everything was glowing so very excited to have you and um really cool what Dana was sharing about how you were in there was that today the day you were in there um you know just pushing up your sleeves and getting ready to work. So that's awesome. So welcome. I move that we accept the hiring of the new Gran Falls High School principal Ryan Pike. I'll second. Okay. The motion has been made and seconded. All in favor? I I respond. Welcome. Yes. All right. So, moving on to the consent agenda with the removal. So, that will be an addition. No. No, just the removal. Yep. There's So, there's no additions other than what's on here. Is
074there any um discussion? No. Okay. So, uh that means any unanimous consent. Passing. Passing with unanimous consent. Yep. All right. Um the time is now 6:57. That might be a record for us. Um that concludes this meeting of the Granite Falls School. Thank you.