0016 PM. I'd like to welcome you to this meeting of the Granite Falls School Board. Um, where am I at? Oh, will you please stand for the All right. for our land 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 Still Gormish tribe of Indians. The Stilg people have inhabited these lands and waters since time immemorial and their descendants have remained in this territory to this day. The Stilg people have continued to practice practice the traditional ways of their ancestors of fishing, hunting and gathering. This little gorge tribe has had these lands and cultural traditions passed on to them by their ancestors who believe that everything has a spirit and that they are the caretakers
002of these lands and waters. Thank you. Um, I'd like to take this moment to excuse Director Kerry and Director Goffman from this evening's meeting. Second. Motion has been made and seconded. All in favor? At tonight's meeting, we have Director Dane, Director Leoo, and myself, Director Canc, and our superintendent Dana Gen. Um, moving on to item number 3A. Um this is educational education support professionals week and we have a little statement. So from March 10th to the 14th of 2025 it's education support professionals week which was formerly called classified week. Um the tradition started in 1975 by PSSE to recognize the contributions of education support professionals in the public school system and it is a statewide celebration to recognize ESPs for the difference they make in our schools and universities. So we'd like to thank them
003at this time. Okay, moving on to item number 3B, board comments and reports. We'll start with WIAA. Uh no meaningful updates from WIA. Do you have any board comments? Um, nothing nothing really prepared. Um, I would I would just say, um, I've made this call, you know, several times across other board meetings and I feel like I'll just, you know, continue to make it again, right? Um I don't want any of us and I'll I will speak on partial behalf of the board as well too like our emails are readily available on the website and everything. Um we really do try to make an effort to be available to be um you know at at events and everything to discuss anything that's on top of mind for a new parent educators anything along those lines.
004Um, if you can't find us at one of those events, email us. Um, I am happy to meet with coffee if there's anything that's on your mind. Um, anything along those lines. So, I just really want to make sure that that is open and clear. Um, I can't really email everybody in the community, but I can receive any email of people that are interested in talking with me. So, I am more than welcome or willing to to meet up. I'll even treat you for coffee. Although, we don't have lilas anymore. So, buzz in. So very you have any comments? Well, I yeah I I want to speak to um the uh news of the day which is uh on our state level uh concerns about state budget and and financing of schools. And then on
005the federal level, there's uh a lot of news that came out in the last two days about um our federal financing of schools in our area. And there's a lot of of um speculation about how funding is going to um affect our school district. And I just want to assure the staff, the the the families of our students that the board and our administration are working diligently to make sure that our funding is stable. Um I started on the board about two years ago. We we're we started down a rabbit hole of funding crisises and over the last two years working with the staff and the board um we have stabilized that. we appear to continue. There are going to be hard choices um hard decisions to be made over the next couple of years
006as uh our funding models change. Um and and and you know, everything that we do, we're going to make some hard decisions as a as a a group um the five members of the board and and I hope that you guys can trust that we're doing everything we can to the best of our students and our staff and the families that were supporting us. So, if if you know, hold on for a tough ride, but we're going to get through it. Thank you. Um, I just kind of wanted to repeat what Peter said that we are here. We're on email. Contact us because I know there's a lot there's always a lot of chatter that goes around, especially on Facebook, and we never hear any of it. No one ever emails us. So, we would
007like to know what's going on. Um, so just reach out. We're We come from all different backgrounds. We all have different strengths and and things like that. Um, we're all parents. That's kind of the big thing. We're all parents. We all get it. We all understand. So, reach out to us and let us know, you know, what kind of concerns you have or even if you just want to chitchat. So, yep. All right. Um, moving on to item number 4A. Um, it's the Monte Cristo Elementary student presentation. So, every morning when we do the pledge of allegiance, right after that, we do the Monty Crystal pledge and Megan was so kind to write it out for us. Thank you, Megan. Um, and so my kids are excited to be here. Thank you for having us
008here. You guys ready? discount at your hotel. That's the kicker. What kind of place? Beach, mountains, desert. That would be awesome, right? Director A. Yeah. Just um with my background, tell me one thing that you guys look forward to every day that helps keep the school safe. [Music] Fun Friday. Fun Friday. Friday. Everything but recess. Really interesting. Okay. He just likes to learn all day. That's awesome. Thank you guys. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you third graders. Thank you, Mrs. Fennist. And thank you families for them here. Thank you. Excellent. Be a nurse. Welcome board of directors and community members at Monte Cristo Elementary. The 2425 school year continues to be a year of collaboration. We welcomed a handful of staff members and we have eight third grade classrooms. We continue to enroll more students and
009our fourth grade classrooms are almost reaching 30 students. Due to the new students and staff members, we are cognizant about the extra effort that needs to occur in order for everyone to feel a sense of belonging, safety, and trust. We continue to focus on increasing student achievement, especially with a new adopted reading curriculum amplified. We have a team of committed school leaders, adults, and students, and a passionate staff to make this work possible. Our leadership and equity team, professional learning communities, positive behavioral interventions and supports team, attendance team, schoolwide interventions, office team, the MCE associated student body and MCE boosters club, community members and families contributed to the changes made within these walls. The Monte Cristo teams are focused on social emotional learning, bringing clarity to instruction, and tightening up our behavior management systems. Collaboration
010is the key for our school system to function well. Currently at Monte Crystal Elementary, we have 49.51% female students enrolled versus 50.49% 49% male students. Our student races are two or more races at 5.44%, Hispanic at 14.76%, white at 75%, and African-American 1.36%, American Indian 39% and Asian 1.75%. Our school's program and characteristics consist of 6.7 79% of our students who are bilingual. 36.5% of our students are in the free reduced subgroup and students who are homeless are 5.8%. Our students with disabilities are 19.02%. 4.27% are in the title program and 20.38% are in the lab learning assistance program. In addition to 77% in the gifted program for the last two years, the Smarter Balance assessment data results in reading and math is hovering around 30% for third and fourth grade. Fifth grade's data is
011around 20%. There is a decline in the FPA data for most of our grade levels. The science walkus Washington comprehensive assessment of science data is hovering around the high 40 percentile. The wisest data results increased slightly during the 2324 school year. These I Ready typical growth projections show the approximate percentage of students who would place in each state test level based on different amounts of growth achieved. These projections will help give teachers early insight into students potential success on state assessments which can be critical in getting the right resources and instruction to the right students as early as possible. Analyzing the beginning of the year I Ready diagnostic results. The top graph projects a 32% proficiency rate in reading and the bottom graph projects a 24% proficiency rate for third grade students in math. For
012reading, we will focus on phonics, vocabulary, words, comprehension, literature, and comprehension information of texts. For math, our goal is to push our level two learners, also known as our bubble kids, to level three. We will focus on number and operations, algebra and algebraic thinking, measurement and data and geometry. This graph projects the SBA smarter balance assessment proficiency rate in reading. Third grade at 29%, fourth grade at 29%, and fifth grade 37%. This I already graph project the SBA smarter balance assessment proficiency rate in math. Third grade at 33%, fourth grade 18% and fifth grade 19%. For our birth goal in our school improvement plan, the percentage of third, fourth, and fifth grade students achieving annual typical growth will improve 57% to 70% in ELA and the percentage of students achieving stretch growth from 24% to
01340% in ELA as measured by I Ready by June 2025. Our school school goal is to increase the previous year's outcomes through collaborative efforts with the leadership and equity team. We expect to see 3 to 5% increase with the outcomes by the end of the school year. Students will increase in literacy learning and activities from the new Amplify literacy curriculum. Students are in small literacy groups. They're reflecting on their goals and learning with their teachers, also known as data chats. For our goal number two in the school improvement plan, the percentage of third, fourth, and fifth grade students achieving annual typical growth will improve 37% to 60% in mathematics. And the percentage of students achieving stretch growth from 13 to 23% in mathematics is measured by I Ready by June 2025. Similar to goal number
014one, our school goal is to increase the previous year's outcomes through collaborative efforts with the leadership and equity team. We expect to see 3 to 5% increase with the outcomes by the end of the school year. Students are engaged in math activities from I Ready Math, small math groups, and math goal setting and data chats. For goal number three, during the 24-25 school year, using data and collaboratively thinking, collaborative thinking with our staff, students, and families, Monte Cristo Elementary will have an attendance rate of 80% of students attending at least 90% of the time. Our school goal for attendance is to increase the attendance rate to a higher rate than last year's rate of 72.7%. With the collaboration of our teacher, staff, and the leadership and equity team, students are accountable for tracking their attendance,
015checking in with adults, morning meetings, and leadership opportunities. Actually, our hero, Mrs. Megan Rice, is here tonight. She is the lead of our attendance efforts. Let's give her a round of applause. She's in the blue. And not only that, but we've had three teachers in the past few days have perfect attendance. Every single student was here in those three classrooms. Our parents are involved in the school improvement planning process, the leadership and equity team meetings, MCE booster club meetings, parent survey, and during the parent teacher conference meetings. Students are also encouraged to participate in the ASB student council meetings, the schoolwide student surveys, and the MCE student council meetings. They have many opportunities to be involved in our school. That is the end of my presentation. At this time, do you have any questions for
016me? Uh, yeah, I'm curious. So with let's see if I go back up. I'm just looking down here. Uh with the math data for this year. So it looks like yeah there's declining in third and fifth. Fourth is increasing. Is there anything that you can point to for that? Is there anything different happening in the fourth grade setting than others? I believe that with our teachers, we're all doing small groups and the more we do small groups with students, that's where the targeted interventions are. So more targeted intervention, small groups will change the outcome. So some teachers are doing more of that. Mhm. And also fourth grade is a smaller team. Third grade has eight teachers. And so it takes more efforts to do the planning and to collaborate when the team is so large.
017But we do have a third grade teacher here, Mrs. Bennison, and she can speak to what you asked. As soon as you asked the question, I thought of I I think a piece of that also goes to that we don't have those small group math groups going out anymore. Um and so I think that's why we're dropping the lap. Yeah, the lap. Um I know the kids that are in title and they get pulled out for reading. Um I've seen huge gains this year. I mean, they are doing so well and but those are the same kids that need help with math and they're not getting pulled out of small group anymore and I think that has something to do with our percentages. Yeah, because yeah, that was kind of my my followup on here
018is so we see that was it 24% of students I'm assuming this is student bodywide are considered proficient within math. How are we seeing those numbers compared to previous? Because I know this year math is now, however you want to quantify, like as a Sure. It is it is a like we see numbers and we can we can compare them relatively to other years. But what does that actually mean? because I see this and I see that you know across the school you know there's 208 students in level one which make up 43% of our population right but that's just projection that's that's what they're expecting it's going to be in spring yes that's not the current results is that math winter 2025 oh so that's yeah so that's that's most recent oh and so
019like and again it's like if you know to your We'll spend like if if we're not if we're expecting them to test on things that they haven't learned yet, like I mean wouldn't the actual measure be to test on what they have learned and should be expected to learn at this point? That's also the thing like I'll stop again on my I Ready rant yet again, but I don't understand the whole we're labeling them as one year behind when that's actually where they're supposed to be. And like again, I just I'm trying to figure out again because I I don't I'd imagine if I'm Miss W or Miss Bennison and I'm looking at these, I'm kind of racking my brain trying to figure out like what do I do with these numbers? Like how do
020they actually help me help my students? So, can I ask you a question too kind of on the same line along the same lines as that? So I'm familiar with Ira as a parent um but not really the back end on the teacher's point of view. My school does map so I'm familiar with like the back end of that. So you as a teacher when you get their results in I ready did they does it break it down by like so if they're doing math like they've got this amount in I don't know adding and subtracting and this amount in geometry. So you can see where they're struggling at. And they they have so much bunch of details to it. They they will break everything down. They give you ideas of how you can help
021them. They have a a section where and I did it for conferences, printed it out for parents, how the parents can help at home in these certain areas. Yeah. Um but like I said before, when there's four areas of math and we've only taught two, that's that's an issue. I do want to provide some clarity though. It is a dynamic test. So it might give a third grader uh an end of third grade problem type for math and if they don't perform accurately on that it will resign down. So the diagnostic is meant to find students where they are performing. It will give them problem types that are outside their range and then it will center down on problem types that are within their range. So it's not like an entire test of, you know,
022variables for third graders. It gives them one or two and it it kind of is a little bit smart. But yeah, because I mean I think ultimately like if because I'm just I'm sitting here seeing, you know, the results and but like if we were to go and individually survey each teacher, for instance, and they say I'm getting everything that I needed out of IRA, then I'll shut up. But if it's I know that there's this other thing up here and the majority of teachers are saying I would much rather get this sort of information out of this. It will really help me with my students here going forward and I would I would want to go right I'll take the lead or I'll I'll I'll take my marching orders from the people that are
023actually doing it. I just don't want to continue to go down the path of like because and I completely agree, right? Like more holistic like collaborative work and all that stuff and I'm not here to get into like the tactical details and whatnot, but at the end of the day like what does that mean? Like what are what are we doing? You know, we talked about I think at the last board meeting like you know a million people is a statistic, one person is a tragedy, you know, sort of thing. like each student here is their own individual and like how do we move that individual forward, right? Like these people that these students that are in level two that are like how many of them are right there for level three or like how
024how do we move that needle the best? And again, I think that's just like a thought experiment for, you know, administration and for the teachers to be like, do I really have the tools that I need to evaluate where I should take my next step? And J, would you just just to follow up on a 24% that's 24% assessed in January? It does not take into account all of the teaching and all the growth that will happen between when they took the screener and when they will actually take the SBA. So there's a little disclaimer that you can't see because it's on the website not on the presentation that if everything were to stop right here and we were deliver whatever day that we delivered that Sean like you know that would be the score
025but it does not count account for the four months of instruction. Yeah. Between then and May. So, it's just a projection based on January's screen and nothing is the be all and end all, right? I know that Paige feels this way. I feel this way. It is a coma compilation of of so many things that's in the classroom, right? Um, and so I Ready is a good diagnostic tool. It gives you a lot of information about your kiddo that you may or may not have learned. It allows them to make groupings. It allow it gives you strategies. It gives I mean, when used in its entirety, it it does. And we want instruction to be in other ways as well, right? We would never just plug a kid in and go, "Oh, you know, just
026go do I ready, go do it." Like, of course not, right? Because many different ways. And then the special that we have, the math specials, I mean, that's what we heard at Mountain Way, right? How excited kids were about math. And that was, you know, I think directly related to what's happening in the classroom and directly related what's happening in the in the specials. Um, so and then we hear today and whatever they're working on. I mean, their favorite thing is fractions. Oh, you're working on fractions, right? like it's you know it's kind of that so but it is it's it's an indicator of and it's and all of those things but we need to we need to use it with fidelity we need to use the data that it gives and we also need
027to be I mean we have professional educators who who do things and pivot all day long to to meet the needs of kids other questions from just as I look at the numbers this year and comparing to the two previous years. We we're we're assessing at this point, same time of the year. And um this point doesn't seem to be getting any better. And we're projecting that at the end of the year we should be here, right? Five, seven, eight, 10% above. And yet we're still we're we're behind. and is concerning. So way outside of my league as far as why it's happening, but when we see those pres presentations and and it starts off with we're behind this year when we've been putting because as much emphasis as possible on trying to get these
028numbers ahead. Um you know that it it feels and I think this the teachers are probably you know as frustrated as I get when I look at these numbers. um we have to figure out how to get these kids pushed ahead, you know, it's it's for each one individual. So, as a board member a little little down right now looking at these numbers. I appreciate that. And I you know, I said at Mountain Way, every instructional minute is precious and um you know, I think about the waiverss that we've had that are five less days of students in front of us, right? And the minutes that we have with kids, it every every minute matters and that's bell to bell. that's 180 days and that's every minute of every single day um you know working
029towards you know those outcomes. Um it's it's important to me as an educator. Yeah, that's it. That is that is the critical piece right. Yes. I'm just taking a look at data. I know. I I am just because I pulled it last year's I can't tell if this is math or this is everything. You even read that sometimes. It is. But yeah, it's hard. I guess I guess I'd have to take this offline. It can be a little apples to oranges, too, between um between grade levels. I mean, you can watch cohorts, but the fourth grade test is like if you're looking at SBA, like this year, like the fourth grade test is different than the third grade test. And so, even with the same cohort, it's it's still out. So, we're as cautious, but
030you do see trends with with groups. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'll just have to dig back through and compare Because I I think because Bill brings up a valid point that like if you look at winter because this this everything from this winter should apply to last winter as well. Like well we still haven't done everything but you know it's going to it's like so if we're at 24% this year but last year we're at 43% like what's happening right? Like there's and again I just go back into if if we feel confident in the tools that we have in place then great but then like we want to see that not going from 43 to 24 we want to see that going from 43 to 46 to 52 to you know so on and so
031forth. So um that would be the dead course. Yeah. Anything else? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Um, moving on to uh item number 4 C, business report presented by Marshall Cruz. I wasn't planning on presenting tonight. I just going to ask information, but if you guys have questions, um I will call up that I did change the projection to 5.1% fund balance based on we got our transportation allocation and it came in on the high side of uh 2.13 million instead of the 16 1.6 million we had forecast. Okay. So, um we're still waiting for Yeah, we're still waiting for um safety net to be finalized and um and community impact. So those two numbers once we get those firmed up, we'll have a really good number. But I
032I'm I'm more confident than ever that we'll make our 5% this year. Um is this still a conservative? It's still conservative. Thank you. I I do want to give um an amazing shout out to the whole team who has worked on safety net. I know safety net intimately and I'm really glad it's not me this year doing it for my system. Um, so thank you Rachel and Marshall and the whole team that supports our student services. It's it is cumbersome. Doesn't even do it justice as to how much work it is. So just access money that we should have been given in the first place. So thank you. Thank you. Yes. Yes, it is. Thank you. Amazing. You don't get to a number like 1.6 6 million is what we're looking like we're going to
033ask just for just for the high need safety net without having great records, great detail, and spending a lot of time working on the submission. I mean, it's it's hundreds of hours. Okay, moving on to item number 4 D, superintendent report. All right, and thank you Dan for putting that up. Dan's going to um help me with this a little bit because we're going to get to some tech stuff and there's going to be some things that I may not be the expert on. Um all right, here we go. Thanks. Oops. Whoops. See? All right. We will start with the safety and security updates. Every every board meeting, we talk a little bit about safety and security and and sometimes communications. So, I asked Dan to put a blurb together and this is his blurb
034here. But one of the things that when I first came into the system that I was concerned about was um um our many of our students have have access of course through our Chromebooks and we want to have some filtering and monitoring tools that help us um intervene when we need to intervene. And so Dan is um has has put forth this piloting program and it's already proven um incredibly helpful. So of course we everybody should be safe and secure on the internet and um a lot of times it is something that you're trying to use and you'll get um something that says nope, you can't go to this site. But the the additional pieces that are in some of the the new filters that we have um alert us if a student is, you
035know, accessing information that could prove to be harmful or um cause self harm or harm to someone else. Um I'm going to let Dan walk us through just a smidge of this, but we're piloting it right now. Um and then the great thing is is that the way he has worked it is he's worked with some vendors to have this be costneutral, which is always something that um a superintendent loves to hear. So Dan, yeah right um so we've been using one product for 11 years now and it's kind of hard to break out of an ecosystem. Um but I wanted to change how we manage Chromebooks and the product we have is a suite of apps and one of the apps we've been using for managing the Chromebook fleet but I want to transition
036to one that other districts are using has it's much more robust. So that would break me out of the sweep and then you know it opened up the thought process and then talking with Dana about some other issues it all came together. Let's look at another ecosystem. So linewise is the one um I met them at a a trade show with Mary'sville and um yeah they have the s same features as what we've been using but u this one seems to catch a lot more. Uh we've had a lot of things that teachers call like, "Hey, the kids I can't see what they're doing. Uh they found workarounds and and this one's been, you know, I got both layers currently working." So they get past the one, but then they hit this one. So and
037and we're using the monitoring feature, which alerts you to, you know, someone that's talking about violence or uh self harm, those sorts of issues. and and it gives a currently it goes to me and then I I delegate it out. Um but once we if we you know go with this it'll I'll have it talk to buildings individually and get me out of the picture because I don't want to be the I don't want to miss something too. Um and the the nice thing is is uh there's a human element to it. the product we were using has this feature which we haven't been using but they have all these tears and they have a human at this place look at what's come up and say oh this is um you know this is obviously
038not a self harm thing or whatever it kind of stops there but if they determine yeah let's send this on they send it back to us I like having that human otherwise we get so many false positives that you kind of you quit checking them because there's so many things coming your way. So, that's another nice part. Um, and yeah, it's budget neutral. And they have they seem to have more innovations. They have this new thing image blurring feature where you kids could still look they, you know, like can't look up pornography, but you know, like bras or swimsuits and stuff, it'll still blur the images. Um, and that's kind of a neat thing. it. Uh, and there's also they're coming up with a video blurring technology just helps catch some of this stuff before
039it gets to the kids. And ultimately the goal is like Dana said, every instructional minute is precious and and I I hate having technology derail learning or become a distraction. So hopefully these tools will help help us get a better grasp on on that. That's uh kind of it in a nutshell. But this allows me to pursue this other product to help manage Chromebooks with uh vandalism and responsibility physically and and I'll use a different product for that. But this one was a a big that's a big change. So if we go with it and we're piloting it, but very happy with this so far. I got to get some teachers trying the classroom management piece now where you have little thumbnails of what your kids are doing on the Chromebooks in the room. Um,
040I got to get them playing with that, but it's very similar to what we've been using for that part. Have any questions? Yeah. The so the the tricky part with um with anything tech nowadays is because like I always my my thought process behind school as well is like preparing kids for the quote unquote real world as well. Um, one other thing I've noticed with like a lot of Chromebook filtering that schools use is either yes there are workarounds or it is too prohibitive right to actually like again I say like a real world situation like if for instance like I'm helping you know my daughter or son with math and I'll be I'll jump on and say oh I'm just not understanding it and I just don't feel like either the virtual textbook or
041the actual textbook is explaining it that well and I'm just like well especially in like more complex math you're not just like I'm not just going to Google the answer but I am going to Google like what is the thought process behind this and you'll Google it and there will be a link that will explain you know you know differential equations or something like that and you click on it and it'll be blocked because it's not part of like the ordained and so I'm just curious like I I know we'd rather be more like so long as the kids can access their textbooks and extremely safe content like that's better than the opposite. Uh but I'm just I'm just curious what's your experience been with this? Like does it still allow for like exploring into
042like how how good is it at like oh because this one doesn't have like a edu at the end of it, we just won't let you access it yourself. Hack off that old Right. Yeah. Um, it lets you do whatever you want with the product. You could and and coming with the boilerplate uh setup from it. You know, it was blocking all kinds of things. Teachers kept calling me, hey, what's this? You know, and so, you know, and you know, you can you can massage it to get it to where it works for us. And and that's almost an ongoing thing is some thing. And it's the hardest part is like educational games. I get teachers, can you please turn that off? It's such a distraction and then I turn it on. Hey, what happened
043to this? I let my kids use it, you know. So, finding that balance and you can get granular with permission levels if you want and actually grant that to the teacher themselves. They can say, "Okay, you can go to this, they can throw that site that may be coming up blocked, they can throw it into a, you know, it's like, you know, just type it in, boom, then the kids can do it for the hour that they're with the teacher or, you know, all day." Um and then uh and then you know you can al uh pass it on to us like hey I really like this resource isn't blocked. So it it allows you if you come up with a class lesson and then you know doesn't work because it's blocked you can override
044that as long as it's not know there's categories that you can't override. Is it possible for you to give uh certain like world uh role level access to like teachers to be able to allow or disallow? I believe you can. Okay. So like maybe eventually get to that point. Yeah. Especially if they don't want to wait three days for me to get back to Well, and and also believe that like my personal opinion is your job should not be complete gatekeeper stuff like I would hope our educators could, you know, decide like yes, this is an okay site. our kids should be able to access that. Um, and then also this is kind of like in in the weeds detail is is so for like line wise monitoring um like so tracking the stuff does
045it track it to like the IP of the of the laptop itself or is it associated with like the student ID? Yeah, it goes with the student ID. It might have some IP uh address with that. I haven't done that. I haven't looked at that. Well, and I I would I would prefer like because I just think Ben too of you know we we talk about just the responsibility that school districts hold with you know students accessing things and this that the other and just as we have you know monitoring like is there an auditable trail for us to like and if it's if it's following the student ID then it doesn't matter if Chrome Chromebook gets broken or year after year they switch switch on to a Um, so again, I go to like
046it could be something where it's like, hey, this is a recurring issue of ex student like circumventing things like maybe they're fantastic and they're able to like completely skirt some of these some of these systems. Um, but yeah, just just Yeah, no product's the be all end all. There's all this there's all this a whole and it's better when they patch Yeah. vulnerabilities. But yeah, and that's part of classroom management. If a kid's spending an hour trying to, you know, it might be a classroom management issue and not necessarily a tech issue, right? What do you do with your time? You're sitting there all day trying to find proxies or so it's a but yeah, and it has reporting. You can set up all kinds of reporting tools and there's a there's a parent element
047too that you can use families, you know, want to pause access on their Chromebook at home until 8:00 time and they can control that from their phone. if you turn it on. Well, that's a lot of I will say we've already had um a few a few times where we've been able to intervene in a very helpful way and make um really significant contact with family of that or a child that is that needs some help. And so there's I won't give any specificity, but it's been on a number of occasions and and so really grateful that we've started because then right now we it's already paid some dividends. So that's really good. Thank you, Mr. Scholar. All right. Teaching and learning. Oh, it's back down. Um Emily, there we go. Um, great. Uh, we
048are just in the middle of our second benchmark of student wellness screener. That's from the Center for Educational Effectiveness. Uh, congratulations to Crossroads who got it completed actually yesterday. Well done. Um, and we are working through that as a district and um, I think I'm looking at a couple of my teacher colleagues in the room that it's going to go a little smoother this time. So, I feel like I took care of my business. I'd like to take a moment to thank our best teacher mentors for all their work. There's a lot of hard work this year. We're part of the ESD 189 consortium and that's been a little bit tough and so we have opportunities abound, right, directors? Um, so we're going to be taking that back for for the coming year, but our
049mentors have been working really really well. We managed, they don't know this yet, but we managed to release some some of the ESDA ESD89 funding to provide some possible subre for some some visiting of classrooms. Imagine that. So, um they are doing a lot of really hard work with our our new teachers who are working really hard as well on instructional coaching and and just teaching them about the systems of support that are here um uh in Granite. So, we're I'm very grateful to them. Uh just met with our technology team uh yesterday and we are conducting a broad systems review uh speaking of technology um on our software and applications. we have some redundancies in the system and we have some things that we're paying for and so we're you know we're looking for
050every dollar and um so we're it's a it's a mixed group of teachers and staff and so we're really excited for that work we're looking uh at some of those products and some of those ways that those products are duplicated across our system and we're paying for both. uh and finally uh met with our 6 through 12 ELA curriculum team yesterday. Um they are in the room and doing the work on that HMH intelllet pilot. Um and I'm super proud of that work. Um so we're conducting that regular in-person feedback loop and they're giving the good, the bad, and the ugly. Uh which is really really good. And then we'll be meeting again uh actually quite soon to do an assessment on a very specific rubric of that u pilot information and then they will
051be coming to you in May with a recommendation. Yay or nay. If there is a recommendation they'll be coming to you and if there's not a recommendation then we'll move forward with uh next steps for us. But it's very encouraging to have 6 through 12 ELA teachers in the same room talking about the English experience for our students and we're really looking forward to having um as John Thompson would say we have not had an English curriculum for secondary in 31 years. So opportunities to have our Granite Falls Tigers with a comprehensive English literature language arts experience. So that's my report. All right. Thank you. Yes. Um just a little update on student voice of course that is of huge value to to all the educators in the room. Um tomorrow our entire cabinet is
052meeting and we get to have um a couple of school board directors there only two so we don't have to have a quorum but thank you to uh Director Leo and Director Dayne for volunteering to be there. I want to give you a quick heads up. there's going to be an icebreaker that our students are going to answer and then they have a load of questions um that they have for you. So, it's going to be great. They will also be popping out to do some videos. Um they are students, we have students grades 3 through 12. As you know, we have about 54 students that I meet with almost once a month. And um they will also be doing some videos um for principal recruitment. We um are going to have a new principal
053at Micros. We're going to have a new principal at Granite Falls High School. And so, um, our students, you know, what do you want to see in a principal? What works for you? And they'll they'll do some things and that'll be part of our recruitment process. Um, and then we're meeting on April 17th as well, um, ongoing student action work that we do at Tiger Cabinet. And then probably a little bit more videotaping um, for recruiting Tiger Cabinet for next year. And then lastly on May 29th, and you all are invited to that as well, we have um Representative Lowe, uh Representative Esleck, and uh Senator Wagner are all going to be here. Um I met with them maybe a month or so ago with the city of Granite Falls and just some legislative action.
054And I I can't say enough about how supportive Representative Low has been um in some of the initiatives that the district's working on. So we we are really grateful to have them in front of our students and connecting our kids with um their legislators that do the hard work in Olympia for us. Upcoming upcoming district and community events. This is not a comprehensive list, but our spring sports have kicked off at Granite Falls High School. Let's maybe we could get some nicer weather. We could really um maybe get some games and things in um final week of winter sports. I was at the Oops, there's a small G there. Should be large. Um, but I was at the middle school girls basketball game last night. Always a good time. And quite frankly, the snacks that
055they have in the concession center at the middle school are topnotch. You would love it, Paige. Um, Paige is my go-to for snacks. So, it primo. Um, the empty bowls event is rescheduled and it is this Saturday. And if um you want to go to the community coalition um website, there's details there for that. Our next school board meeting is on March 26th at Granite Falls High School in the performing arts center. It is a a success in Ednight and Bridgeuilder Awards and our nominations are still open for Bridgebuilder. So, if you would like to nominate someone who makes um a real difference in in building relationships with our students because we know that adult student relationships are what starts um you know all these positive outcomes that we're looking for for our kiddos. Um
056we have a local coffee shop that I'll name um on the 26th that has offered to a nice little gift card for all of our winners from here on out which is just incredibly thoughtful. So um shout out to them next next time we meet. But again, that is at Granite Falls High School. There's a band concert this Thursday night. Um, high school band concert. We are in the middle of our CTE WASA review that we have talked about a number of times. Um, this the staff from WASA will be on site in district on Friday and they will be interviewing staff and um we've already um given them lots of documents and different things. We um CTE is a very complex. It's career technical education. It's complex. The funding model is complex and the
057requirements are incredibly complex. I cannot say enough about Candace Ward and Josh Benson. Benson, yes, we just call him JV. So, I'm just like he has a last name. Let me think of what it is. Um they have done such a fantastic job um leading that work and that CTE review and I just I thank them um dearly and they are they'll be guiding the um the people that are coming out from WASA. And then lastly, um last week I sent out some surveys for um actually Paris sent out surveys that I gave to her um for our staff at Granite Falls High School, our our families and our students to give input on their new building leadership um you know what they're looking for and those kind of things. And we will use that
058feedback which is now I don't know how many it's up to but we had maybe 85 students had already responded which is amazing again student voice but we'll use that data to drive um interview questions and screening applicants and all of those things because this is the feedback from our community. Um and then Monristo will send um some surveys a little bit different than the Granite Falls High School ones out next week. And thank you Principal Lynn for all that you have done uh for Monte Cristo and um but she's still here. she's still here till the end of the year. So, um we will continue to do this work and um get people in the seats to leave our bells. And I believe that that is it. Any questions for David? Empty bowls is
059fantastic. Not not going to give away my secret, but I've got some great artwork there at the the option auction over the years. Yeah, I saw you did that last year. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the soup is really good, too. Yeah. Okay, moving on to um item number 5A, items from the floor. I don't believe we have any. Okay. Um 6A, unfinished business. There is none. 7A, new business. There is none. So that moves us to the consent agenda. Um are there any additions that aren't on? No. No. Okay. Uh is there any discussion on agenda? Okay. Um, so since there's no discussion, all says that passes with unanimous consent. Okay. Um, and that means that it is hold on 6:55. Good job, guys. 6:55. That adjourns our meeting of this grand