001I pledge allegiance to the flag so uh first item is public comment and this is for items that are not uh on our agenda for tonight and uh I will start here with AA shafik if you would state your name and student attendance area you'll have two minutes to speak and I would ask that you wrap up as soon as you hear uh the timer Salam my name is Aisha shafik and my daughter goes to Pine Lake Middle School I was quite disheartened to hear previous speakers here site the international Holocaust remembrance alliance's working definition of anti-semitism as a guideline for determining what should be permissible speech as a political scientist myself I strongly urg the board to instead focus on the Jerusalem Declaration on anti-Semitism which is a definition more rigorously formulated by academics
002across the world including those from Israel these Scholars have concerns that the IH working definition through its examples conflates legitimate criticism of Israel with racism against Jews the IH definition has been pushed into Political venues for adoption to dampen criticism of Israeli occupation and human rights abuses of Palestinians but doing so lead leads to separate systems of justice and I do not want my child to have to Grapple with why she cannot condemn oppression and human rights abuses in certain spheres lest she be labeled anti-semitic she should be able to simultaneously and clearly condemn oppression and anti-Semitism we have seen recently the amount of pressure exerted on universities to suppress criticism of Israeli policy control over language has been used to twist calls for equal rights as calls for genocide education systems are being intimidated
003to Tamp down on criticism of Israeli policy even as today the international court of justice heard why Israel's actions in Gaza constitute the crime of genocide and the UN has warned that if current conditions in Gaza persist a quarter of the population will die this year I am here because I want my child to maintain her simple and straightforward sense of justice a Justice that stays true even if you anonymize the victims and the perpetrators to this end I hope our curriculum and school policy is rigorous about the definitions that inform it thank you thank you next is fisa tasn and Zara hello alaykum we are here today not as Scholars on this genocide but just as three sophomores who believe in a cause that resonates with many the call for a liberated Palestine while
004death counts are disputed by those who want to downplay the transparent genocide in Palestine the Goden Ministry of Health has recorded about 30,000 dead in the span of three months as Muslims ourselves we have a strong connection with our brothers and sisters in Palestine and believe we have duties as humans to speak against the genocide of the Palestinian people those who came from different religions backgrounds and all have the same Rich lineage that stems back centuries in the same land of Palestine as sophomore is the beginning unit of the Humanity's curriculum revolved around the holocost and the atrocities committed against the Jews we read a book by author Eli weizel who survived multiple death camps and who returned to the public eye to explain the impact neutrality has on victims of Cruelty many parallels can
005be drawn from the Holocaust to the genocide happening in Palestine today one of weel's speeches called The Perils of of indifference lists the impacts of neutralities on victims he says indifference elicits no response indifference is not a response indifference is not a beginning it is an end and therefore indifference is always the friend of the enemy for it benefits the aggressor do we honestly as a society believe that our actions are anything but indifferent Ellie wasel's words resonate with the present situation today as most of us who decide to watch the news and decide to be educated are fully aware of the ongoing brutality happening in Palestine yet we can we continue to sit comfortably in our homes scrolling behind a screen to videos of kids Without Limbs and acting as if this is usual
006and that it isn't our problem as Americans the indifference is loud we constantly teach in our school system the idea of not repeating history but we don't apply it and our future Generations will ask why and we will not have an excuse our silence is shameful the overgeneralization of knowledge is frequent in our schools and often we face a Common Thread of an unspoken bias and imp plain unsympathetic presentation of the situation we believe in our cause the freedom of Palestinians and are going to stand up for it regardless of the indifference shown by others thank you thank you so we would ask that Applause be done this way if you want to do so we can see agreement right they're here to speak to us not to you H and if you can't do
007that then we'd ask you to uh find it for place to listen so the next one is nada Alid good evening everyone my name is n Alward my kids attend ISD schools I'm of Iraqi descent as I sat through public comments in the previous board meeting the air in the room felt so thick you could cut it I witness speakers denying the existence of Palestinians and the atrocities they're subjected to audience members booing speakers of Arab Palestinian or Muslim descent for sharing facts about their identities experiences and the suffrage of their families this reminded me of Professor kamski's words education is not memorizing that Hitler killed 6 million Jews education is understanding how millions of ordinary Germans were convinced that it was required education is learning how to spot the signs of history repeating itself
008when I made it back to my car that evening I took a moment to reflect and shake off how toxic it felt I reflected on on how unsafe I felt in that room despite having the protection of ISD staffers who intervened that night I reflected on how students must feel in their classrooms when their cultures and identities are dismissed or belittled and this is based on increasing number of incidents we see at our some of our schools to this end I am asking the district to start enacting positive changes number one diversity and inclusion staff trainings um currently aren't inclusive of Arab and Muslim cultures and it really needs to be number two cultural material materials used by teachers should be produced in partnership with the people who belong to that culture our community is
009eager to collaborate with you and this endeavor thank you for listening thank you next is Sarah Duke on Zoom so we will allow you to unmute yourself let if you a turn on your camera so we can see you I'm am trying to it's saying you cannot start your video because the host has stopped it try again pleas okay I'm trying and it's still saying you cannot start video let me try one more time okay okay now it's align okay good evening thank you um my name is Sarah Duke and um I have a child at Pine Lake um I'm here to talk about um the parallels of the messages from Dr Martin Luther King uh Jor in celebration of his upcoming birthday and um unfortunately the tragedy that uh we are still facing in
010the world um and to make request of the board and supporting um students activities towards the path of Justice um and equality in uh among our our students uh among our society and throughout the world uh so in 1962 Dr King delivered a speech at the American Negro leadership conference and he declared and I quote colonialism and segregation are nearly synonymous because their common end is economic exploitation political domination and the debasing of human personality uh I grew up listening to uh Dr King's I Have a Dream speech uh every year uh and his words I can hear them echoing and resounding um in my head still today um his speech I Have a Dream uh referenced free and freedom 26 times uh and one of the famous uh ending of his speech goes when
011we allow Freedom Ring when we let it ring from every village and every Hamlet and from every state and every city we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual free at last free at last thank God Almighty we are free at last I listening and thinking about these words and what is happening in our world today and what our what our children are witnessing uh and bearing witness to and I know our children are trying to express their support and they have done some expression but I would encourage and request that the board uh and the school district teachers staff everyone continue to support their moral courage and speaking out against the injustices
012that are currently occurring especially the brutal and inhumane genocide in Gaza which has thus far killed over 30,000 people um 70% of which are women and children so I as in closing I would just in addition to to requesting that you continue to Foster their support for freedom of speech and expression which is calling for the freedom of segregation the freedom of freedom of aparte and the freedom from genocide that you support their their efforts and even consider supporting a a Justice Conference for these children um thank you so much uh next is vered uh Miss Ronnie no I no I I get to choose the order yeah uh so this is the time for the person I called to speak if you don't want to speak tonight then that's your choice but like that
013this this isn't where people select the order that they get to speak in that's not actually how this works because again you're speaking to us that's the intent is this is directed towards us no problem thank you okay hi I'm uh vered and my daughter goes to Skyline and she's a junior and I want to say say that I believe uh that learning facts and separating them from lies is Paramount for us as parents Educators and ultimately for the kids anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews which may be expressed as harded towards Jews um rhetorical and physical manifestation of animism are directed towards Jewish or non-jewish individuals or at their property towards Jewish Community institution and religious facilities anti-Semitism is not a matter of different political opinion it is bled B bot bigotry against
014Jewish people simply because they are Jewish Zionism is a simple belief that the Jewish people have the right to selfdetermination and Independence in their an Central Homeland so if you agree with that then you are zionists like me Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel dating back thousands of years with archaeological um and historical proof everywhere simp similar to the Salish and the samamish people being indigenous to their land fact being anti anti zist is being anti-jewish people thank you for listening thank you next uh Jason masman go hi there Jason massman 12-year parent of an IHS senior right now uh so why is all this relevant we're hearing a lot about Israel and Gaza here for a school district that's a thousand miles away from the Middle East anti-zionism masquerades a social
015dust justice but manifests his bigotry and hatred of the Jewish people everywhere and we do see examples locally hence it's a concern for us as parents uh in the isqua school district and there's clear examples of nonprotected hate speech which violate School District policies and title six of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of race color religion and national origin and programs and activities uh receiving federal financial assistance we need to urge School communities to be vigilant about students right under title six and provide support services for students experiencing anti-semitic bias harassment and other forms of discrimination we need to hold perpetrators of hate speech accountable we need to collectively enforce zero tolerance for anti-semitic tropes and hate speech within our community thanks thank you next uh Cara
016musquet hi I'm Cara moskovitz I have a son that goes to Skyline and two Skyline graduates um as anti-semitic rhetoric hate speech and anti-jewish sentiment spreads across the world our public education system plays a critical role in fighting ignorance hate speech and discrimination a primary pillar of the US national strategy to counter anti-Semitism calls for an increase in awareness and understanding of anti-Semitism including its threats to America and to broaden education about Jewish history and Heritage throughout the ages we respectfully request that the school district increase the time and attention that is devoted to these topics within the high school social studies curriculum and identify this as an essential learning objective to incorporate into staff trainings and orientations for new and current students we need to ensure that our students are provided the historical Foundation
017they need to navigate a world of misinformation to empower them with critical thinking skills regarding the social media that they're consuming and to enable them to recognize and call out these anti-semitic tropes and hate speech we have enough knowledge expertise and resources to ensure that all students can have the opportunity to learn in school communities that are safe and free from discrimination we are here to support and uphold the issaqua school district's commitment to providing a safe safe and inclusive environment where every student can Thrive academically socially and emotionally thanks thank you next Holly wax today is 100 days 100 days since men women and children were taken out of their introduce yourself in your tendance please absolutely my name is hie and I have two uh students in the isqua school district thank you
018100 days 100 days since men women and children were ripped out of their homes and are still hostages in Gaza 100 days yes we would love to free Palestine free Palestine from Hamas the terrorists that use their own people as human Shields and deny them of supplies in their own country we are on your side in the school district district we would like the school district to take a closer look at the the type of education that that's being taught in the schools and the outside groups funded by Hamas that are giving students in groups like The Care Club on student grounds Powerpoints and videos calling for the genocide of the Jewish people as well as the fact that Israel does not have the right to exist so we have several asks that we'd love
019to partner with the school Dr District to combat this blatant anti-Semitism happening on school grounds we would like to hold a teaching for students and faculty and guidance counselors to talk to around by and be able to ask questions and better understand the conflict and why students feel very unsafe in their school systems today we would like to provide free passes to the Holocaust Center as part of this ongoing education we would like to collaborate with the school to set a rigorous set of policies so if someone wants to come on school grounds and do a sort of teaching calling for the genocide of any Community any population that they would have to set be inherence with these guidelines and not that they do not violate make sure they do not violate title six so
020calling for the genocide of any people is just not appropriate on school grounds or ever and we would like a liaison a direct liaison to the school often times when crisis occurs and children are feeling unsafe that we have one person that we can go to to share our concerns and collaborate and partner together we have a lot of resources that we can provide to help the school system create a safe learning environment for all children and all minorities and we really appreciate your time we'd love to partner with you moving forward thank you thank you next is nor badron hi my name is nor badran I'm a senior at Skyline High School and I've been a part of the isqua school district since kindergarten today marks the 98th consecutive day of the ongoing tragedy
021in Gazza where death has where the death toll has now reached 9,000 children and Counting while the casually count in increases daily we can't forget that these are not just statistics or numbers on a graph these are children's that have these are children that have stories names and now unfulfilled dreams as students we have the right to speak up against genocide and demand justice for all or is that or does that only apply when it's convenient the reason I'm speaking here today is to Advocate and ask for the board to establish a more inclusive curriculum that addresses the history of Palestine and other current Global events the school board and the district have a duty to ensure that students have a well-rounded understanding of the world one that encourages critical thinking and open discussions one
022that isn't filtered through biased media and one that allows students to form their own informed opinions as we remember Martin Luther King junor next week let's remember what he once said the function of education is to teach to think intensively and to think critically intelligence plus character that's the goal of our true education thank you thank you Amir aad if you would make sure when you introduce yourself if you would tell us your attendance area yeah my name is Amir Awad and I'm part of the Skyland School District I'm a senior in high school and I would first like to thank you for listening to my concerns I'm Palestinian American and today the issue I'd like to address is the representation of Palestinians within School the frustration I feel towards the school districts inability to
023educate on sensitive matters is immense how many Palestinians need to be killed before we discuss this matter in school common theme I've been made to understand within school is the importance of learning about history as to avoid repeating past mistakes however it seems as though the school district struggles to address modern-day problems that are happening as we speak I understand the sense ity of the subject so I have tooken upon myself to come up with a solution for educators the simplest and most Fair basis of Education would be informing students of all sides of this conflict I urge for both sides of this conflict to be covered to the utmost extent let the students be informed that 1,162 Israeli lives were taken through this conflict one-third of which being military personnel however do also inform
024these students about the 23,8 lives taken in Gazza nearly 34s of whom being women and children this is not my opinion nor have I taken this from a website of bias these are factual pieces of data all of which are listed on El jazer United Nations office of coordinate humanitarian Affairs committee to protect journalists and Jewish telegraphic agency anyone who wishes to deviate from these facts is not a believer of the truth nor do they have the intentions of pure coverage to be broadcasted I refuse to sit here and watch as the school district stays silent while the horrific events inza continue to unfold I ask the isqua school district to be active informers as learning from the past holds no value if you refuse to act on the present thank you thank you Ella
025Hassan again if you would St your attendance area since it's not listed here hi my name is Ella and I'm a Community member yeah Community member where in which C Redmond Washington okay is okay thank you I'm here to ask the district to incorporate teaching about the nakba catastrophe in Arabic which is the expulsions of the indigenous Palestinians out of their land this is personal to me as I'm a third generation Palestinian refugee my grandparents come from yafa Palestine a beautiful vibrant City on the Mediterranean my grandparents farmed orange trees and olive trees for Generations my Grandparents were violently expelled out of their home in 1948 by violent Zionist terrorist groups called the ergon and hagana my great uncle was executed because he refused to leave his house two great aunts which is you know
026my grandmother's sisters became refugees in Gaza Palestine which is literally a concentration camp my family in Gaza is hardly living they're trying to endure starvation disease and dehydration Israeli military strikes have bombed the apartment building where my family is living and they've killed 36 people they bombed the ambulance that was carrying some injured as well you must include teaching about the neba because it includes the stories of 700 750,000 other Palestinians similar to my grandparents maybe maybe teaching about the neow will produce empathetic leaders who can choose Justice Freedom equality over money power bullying colonization and imperialism thank you thank you B re I Canute state where you're from my name is B Riad and I'm a Community member in esqua so uh I wanted to start by saying thank you so much for hosting
027us today uh first of all it's 100 years since the first initial NE happened when Palestine has been occupied by the Israeli forces I wanted to kind of elaborate on 100 years and we are here today still discussing who and who has not the right to the land 100 Years of fiction and I would like to kind of invite everyone to kind of move and counter that Fiction with fact as an educational center uh here in Washington and even around the us we should start looking at the future and where do we go from here how do we get out of this cycle of violence that has happened and and cursed the Middle East uh for ages I think education is the key I think education uh to our kids to not repeat the same
028mistakes that their parents has made throughout the years is a key our success education is based on facts and facts are recorded united nation has recorded the history of Palestine in the middle least I would encourage all everyone to kind of look at the United Nation websites look at the resolution that has been established in 1948 1967 some of the facts that I would like to elaborate on Palestine was a country prior to the occupation 1948 Palestine was mentioned in the name and the Declaration of pfor the Palestinian flag is a recognized flag internationally and is flying proudly in front of the United Nation offices around the world the cofia is a symbol of the Olive Tree and it is partially uh it's partly a symbol of the Middle East the cafea exist in Jordan
029the cafea exist in Lebanon and Syria and Egypt so it's not a symbol of terrorism as it is uh considered today Palestinians um are educated Palestinians would like to share this education with the rest of the world we would encourage the the board of the board here to uh to incorporate some education of the Middle East in their curriculum uh as this will help us to kind of pass beyond the last 100 years and get into a peaceful uh future uh soon hopefully thank you so much thank you AR hi my name is Ari and my children attend Discovery Elementary one of the coolest things I'm proud of my kids learning here has been in their first grade the difference between facts and opinions and I think that that's increasingly important for us as parents
030Educators and ultimately for the kids especially when lies are used as a form of hate speech so what is the meaning of some of the terms we've been hearing the last months from The River To The Sea Palestine will be free essentially seeks Israel's destruction through violent means as it's fundamentally a call for the Palestinian State extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea territory that includes the state of Israel which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state it is an anti-semitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination including the removal of Jews from their ancestral Homeland the only Jewish state in the world globalized intifa calls for violence against Israelis Jews and institutions supporting Israel actually the last intifa included Palestinian Terror attacks like suicide bombings in civilian areas like a pizza
031shop and passenger bus while they intent of the person saying this phrase may be different the impact on the Jewish Community Remains the Same and last apartate Israel is a multicultural democracy and minorities participate fully in public life Arabs represent 21% of Israel citizens they are represented in the Parliament and have equal rights under the law including voting rights Israel is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote with a quarter million attend is the pride parade of Tel Aviv is the biggest Pride Celebration in Continental Asia on the other hand Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza are not citizens of Israel they are governed by their own leaders in Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to point out one of the cultural differences in gasa coming out is
032a death sentence because police don't act against qu phobic violence thank you for being receptive to the difference between facts and opinions thank you thank you everyone tonight uh for your public input this closes uh this section of our meeting as you guys are welcome to stay for the rest of our meeting uh we have a lot of exciting information to hear from our students but if you choose to go we just ask you continue to model the behaviors that we want to see amongst all of our students and families across our district thank you so the next uh is approval of the consent agenda I move the consent agenda be approved as presented or excuse me yeah as presented second any discussion okay all those in favor say I I I passes unanimously next
033item is establishment of the regular agenda are there any changes superintendent there no changes to the agenda okay uh first item on our regular agenda is the work study recap but actually uh we are going to continue the work study and Dr Bailey is somewhere nearby if she wants to join us up front if there's some facilitation uh but my understanding is the next part that we wanted to hear is uh we have student representatives and they have a question that they were prepared to provide uh input and perspective on and the question was how do you the students feel the classes you have taken in the past have prepared you for the classes you're in now did you feel well prepared to enter this school year in what other whatever pathway you were following
034and I don't know what have you prepared for how the order or what not so I was going to let you do any facilitation you wanted to do Danny Bailey thanks kids take it away students you are prepared to present on that question number one okay um can everyone hear me okay um my name is naiu I attend is call High School um I'm currently in pre-calculus um as a junior um in my experience in the isak high school and as well as just like isocol School District in general I feel like our math curriculum has um a has done a very good job at uh keeping us updated and like uh keeping the flow between math courses as we move up um through the grades a very smooth um the math curriculum and the
035math subject in general at my schools um do a very good job of this by um just like reviewing uh past content um that carries over to the next level um and throughout all of my math classes over the years I've seen this the same way um and it's very helpful to students because over the summer we usually tend to forget or like um become lacking in some skills so then the review after summer and into the new school year as well as into new units in the school year um are extremely helpful to carrying over uh skills and I believe that's done been done very well U my name is sart boser and I'm the senior representative um for isqua High School uh for me I um Echo Naomi sentiments about um math I
036feel in General that there's quite a lot of overlap between the course material and um from what I feel I think it's pretty useful for kids to review um the one of the more Awkward transitions in the math curriculum for me me in my opinion was um that segment at the start of high school between Algebra 1 geometry and Algebra 2 mainly because it to me it feels like Algebra 2 is more of a continuation of Algebra 1 and then then there's like that one year of geometry country just stuck in between and I feel that um it's difficult to actually be able to apply algebra one Concepts in Al two because kids will forget that as they're taking geometry um I'm going so that was my opinion um students in general um also had
037mixed opinions about whether they were prepared for this year or not um it seems that a lot of kids have noted that it's about that the teachers they have matter a lot and whether they choose to review the concepts or not they most of the students um really appreciate that extra review time that happens especially at the start of math classes um especially among those who are not prepared um they cited that science classes were typically not that and well prepared for and it's kind of makes sense to me because um even I um sometimes much struggled but um so there's I see that the regular curriculum includes bio chem and physics and starting starting three classes that most kids in is School District would take and um these classes they I don't feel they
038overlap a lot in terms of content so it's not like bio prepares you for chem and chem prepares you for physics so perhaps that's um that's why um I found transitioning to some of these classes more tricky um hi my name is Aida and um I do think that to some level there is a good continuation of the material that we learn and how it build up into um the following years and I think it's done really well in math especially um something I would like to point out though is for me the biggest discrepancy was probably um between my language classes in Middle School versus high school um I don't think I personally was very prepared for um the rigor of high school um language arts um so I think it might be helpful
039to look into that and from what I know from other students I think that there is a good continuation in most classes I do agree that the Sciences um are a little bit disconnected um but they're since they are such different subjects I don't think they really interconnect with each other they're just different science courses you take um but overall I think the district's doing a good job so thank you uh hello so I attend Gibson High School and it's a very different curriculum I would say again the way we can see the most um kind of difference and overlaps of classes and courses is in the math curriculum as well um it's all done online and the overlap of the different courses are kind of so half of it I would say is repeating
040and the rest of it is kind of taught in a way that's a little bit confusing and I've heard from many students that um they would like a personal like a personal connection with the teacher that could kind of provide them tips and tricks for that so I think uh that's probably the way we can see the most um problems I could would say is in the math curriculum in the rest of our classes we have what's called dlabs and they are just scheduled for six we courses so they're only supposed to be like one Course Long there are some cases where they're supposed to be longer than six weeks and in those cases they're very specially um planned out so that it overlaps really nicely but most of the time it's only six weeks
041long um so I think that's done pretty well and you can get a variety of different topics and I mean they're taught by either like an expert or um or a student who has done a lot of work with experts in that sort of field so I think that's it's pretty unique and cool aspect of Gibson but again um yeah the math courses are kind of tough overlappers again yeah thank you um I'm Hava alorn I also attend Gib um we uh like Lani said our classes are a little bit different and um building class like stacking classes uh work a little differently our math program uh a lot of kids do struggle with that um and personally I came out of home school so for me the math program works really really well um
042as someone who struggles in math it's been nice to have the support of my advisers through the Alex program for and they are able to help me see the connections and the way that the different math courses lead into each other um in at Gibson I'd say the biggest um example of stacking um a stacking course would be our actual competencies and our process through the design thinking method in our first year we every year we have grade level and in our first year we are taught specifically how the design thinking method works and as we go through our years we're um kind of guided in a way that helps us uh think more complexly uh if about how we might use the design thinking method to drive our learning and to um sort of
043structure our projects and so through that while our dlabs can seem a little scattered to an outside eye and seem like there isn't a ton of consistency because I'm being guided through the design thinking method um my entire School Journey High School journey is a big design thinking method and my teachers are able to guide me um through those scattered dlabs and say well you learned this last session um and so so to build on that it might be helpful if you do this um so that's we don't have stacking classes in the same way that's the best example and I feel that it's really working in the support of our advisers um is very helpful hi I'm Mia Williamson and I go to Liberty High School I don't have too much to add I
044feel like the sentiments of students across comprehensive high schools are pretty similar in regards to um these kind of Pathways but two specific points I have is when interviewing a focused group earlier this month a few students said that foreign language has been difficult for them um because it's such a new subject that moving from year to year they don't feel like there's enough review to support them and give them that the the base that they need to continue learning the next level of foreign language so that might be an instructional area that could be improved um and to end on a high note a lot of the students I talked to said they thought that teachers did a great job of transitioning through online school and the pandemic to adapt the curriculum to make
045sure that students could still learn while online um and then making sure that they didn't speed back too quickly when we came back to school thank you before I open up to the board to enter into this dialogue now that you guys have heard each other speak and share did that make you want to add on to anything or add other examples I so um also I don't take uh foreign language but a lot of my friends do and the way it's formatted um we have like half of the year is so well to preface we only have one Ford language and we don't have many teachers and it's really cool that we're able to provide this program because we have a teacher who's also an adviser who's teaching Spanish um however half the year
046is started in Spanish two and then the other half goes back to Spanish one and it's staggered in this way so that students coming back can start Spanish in like they can start Spanish like Midway through the year and then when they come back the next year they can start Spanish in Spanish to the next year and so students that are just coming in or just decided that they wanted to start learning a language in the beginning of the year have to wait until the Spanish one session is offered so I think that stacking is sometimes beneficial if they decide like later in the year that they want to start and sometimes it can come across as a a bit of a problem so students have to wait a little bit longer so yeah yeah
047um adding on to um lani's Point um about and um Mia's points about um foreign languages I actually um thought the opposite when I was taking this class um span my my Spanish classes at IHS um I felt that there was quite a lot of overlap especially but that might be be because of covid um I feel that most of the grammar Concepts like present like all the tenses present tense past tense um so a lot of that was covered in Spanish too and then it was covered again in three as well and this is even for the honors classes which was pretty surprising for me um again this is just my opinion and I feel that I would not be surprised if there are people who would think differently and maybe this review is
048pretty helpful for for those students op up to the board uh any wonderings or I say one of the wonderings that I had based on our conversation especially with a large number of students um in math one that were on IEPs 504s um and U multilingual language but more in the special ed is how do we then track how special ed funding is recognized if I have a classroom that's 50% students on either an IAP or 504 how does that get translated in like where where are their services then if that's cons if if if that ends up being a support class for them then how is that measured as far as how are we spending those special ed dollars I always had a question because my son uh was a specialed student but he
049had one class in which he was pulled out and I thought well how do we account then for the cost of services for him if that cost is only 20% of his time and now when we have a classroom that is half of them are on IEPs or fire for Force how are we accounting for those expenditures when we talk about how much we're spending on special ed are we expending any additional dollars for them or are they losing some of that funding that we get that we should be spending on them because now they're in a a Consolidated classroom and I don't know if I'm clearly making my sense but I feel like there's a there's a math calculation thing that seems to be missing in tracking how we're really spending our special ed
050dollars on students that clearly need special ed services thank you so I I think for me if I just maybe go back to the context a little bit because that was important to me in our work study which is being able to have a couple parts of a conversation about our ends to it's really important about what we do here academics and Foundations um but I think the conversation was really helpful um to start out with having both our student Representatives as well as teachers um in the conversation at both the elementary and middle level and so I think it was incredibly helpful to have insights of teachers who are in elementary who are uh focused on early literacy and how that's been going and how we've been able to change some of their support
051systems and then how they're supporting their students and then hear from the Middle School perspective about um math and the updated math curriculum so I think just the structure of the conversation having teachers students us and the ability to talk about the variance and curriculum over levels very um helpful conversation particularly as we go into tonight's conversation about our our budget and how we a lot funding to your point about how does it all show up um I think what was really great to be able to hear is about how some of those early interventions some of the newer ones um starting to see the decreasing need for additional support services for older elementary students because we're catching some of their concerns earlier and then I was very pleased to hear about some of the
052additional literacy supports as it relates to math and the literacy intensive components of math in both Elementary and then in middle so for me it just felt like a really full circle conversation to touch on all the pieces and they give us a really good sense that um the Investments we have been making over the last few years are making real impact and then to help direct what are some of the additional um things we may want to do to continue to strengthen that model uh thank you for summarizing our work stud I really appreciate that uh thank you superintendent and Dr Bailey for arranging that I think it's really uh powerful for us to have students at our work studies as well as to have teachers the more times that we can have our
053Educators join us no matter what the topic is their perspective is really invaluable uh great I also want to thank Rich malish for helping to support that um content and getting prepared with Dr Bailey uh I sorry I have a I realize I have something my a mint in my mouth to help my throat um I also wanted to say it's really great to have student voice at those times and I want to thank our teachers for their time and a lot of good discussion came out around um how we continue to understand both the um impacts that are positive but there are also times where we notice something that was unintended and how we then surface that in a way that helps us move forward to address those unintended consequences and be in a
054learning stance to uh with each other to receive that information and to make forward progress uh as we look to our next step of this work study for E2 will be formally looking at the data that was all attached for this um now you have a lot more of cont context uh to place the data in scaffold what questions do you have based on today's discussion you want to make sure that we capture and can get answers for or have more time for discussion or dialogue about the today prompted if any so maybe staying with my Continuum mental state of the day or of this session is um and I was flipping through some of the data packs as we were having that conversation and maybe for me if they were in a little bit
055more order like of how how an individual student is experiencing that over time or or through grade level um because we kind of jump from seeing all of the grade levels of reading but then we're looking at math in a separate place and so it would be kind of nice to try to pull for me um you know a grade level across subjects together and then what the supports are at that level if students are either ending above grade level here's the things they can go and accelerate and do or if they're having challenges here are some of the supports for them what does that look like at second grade versus fourth grade versus seventh grade right how could we take a couple of examples um at a at a point in time I guess
056would that be helpful for other board members as well so we can get sort of a head nod of how to organize the information and um advance that I I would agree I would just tack on to I think learning and hearing from the students and teachers is very helpful but I think as new board members having it tied to the data so we're we're kind of we're getting that information and then tying it back to the data would be helpful and having it more closely tied together so we can make that connection would be great thank you we promise the next one will be longer so we can actually do that piece but I do think that espcially highlighting what Dr M said about the supports piece about if you're gonna say hey this
057is what sixth grade math performance looks like so what are we doing for our math one students and what are we doing for our students that are above Park he it was really great the conversation about you know practical roll out of our ends really appreciated that a lot of conversation understand why for Math and literacy and English language would really like to hear though also about the other disciplines at the ends cover you know world history social studies all those things as well language um I'm just curious as to you know how those disciplines are going as well yeah I I think you know E2 we know is really broad we split up into two different uh reporting which I can understand I think for me it's really tying the Strategic plan to that
058so um you know when we talked about the Strategic plan and we talked about well how is the board going to have oversight we really measure the district through our ends and our executive limitations and it's like the the discussion was the tieback between the Strategic plan and the ends and so I think that I I'm just curious as to when that piece if that's going to be if there's going to be conversation and work study time around that or if it's simply going to be in the reporting because I mean we did have that data was was provided to us of um here's here's the strategy and here are the measurements um but how we're going to have that that conversation about those those things yes to everything uh we're gonna build out more
059worst daytime as well as schedule some time for a retreat to to do probably especially that tied together piece uh we just kind kind of be both thoughtful and methodical about this as we onboard two new amazing School members so we can have time to get both the narrative piece as well as the objective data piece because I think they're both equally important and having the understanding of both will help lay a stronger foundation for you guys going forward did our students have any final Reflections on the work study I know this is one of the first work studies that you guys have joined us for as far as did it feel uh how did it feel to you I think that the work study was a great experience for me personally it was um
060good to um just share share how I felt and share how other people felt um to um not just the board but to other members um who work for the District either me like there were teachers there and there were other executive directors there I feel that was a great opportunity and I think I was pretty uncom um uncomfortable starting out with it but um I think again as I do more work studies I feel that it'll become better for me um I agree with sarth I found the work study to be a wonderful experience I especially appreciated bringing um having teachers being brought in from elementary schools and middle schools and as student representatives were're in high school it's a nice chance to like just reflect on our past experiences within isal school district
061and then just bring back how those skills that we were taught in primary school and middle school have transferred over to high school um I completely agree with both Naomi and sadar I think it was a great experience um and having a lot of different voices there I I think I really appreciated um to see what teachers saw as well as what students saw to kind of um see how things work on both ends of the spectrum and I think um it changed my perspective and I hope I was able to um offer some valuable insight as well and I am excited to continue contributing well I wasn't able to attend this work study but hopefully I'll be able to attend the next one sounds like it was it was um very valuable to have
062your Insight be heard by all the board members um I really enjoyed hearing from the teachers and hearing like how passionate they were about the um pieces that they were talking about um I didn't like really participate in the school system before I went to Gibs neck I was homeschooled through Middle School um and but hearing what they were talking about uh it like kind of rang true with me because I felt like like I was one of those kids they were talking about and I really appreciated hearing how much they um empathized with their students and um how much they cared about their Learning Journey and it was also really valuable to hear like the pros and cons are like this is working and this is a great idea but it's not done yet
063um and I just uh I really enjoyed hearing from them and I really enjoyed getting to be a part of that conversation so thank you follow our students who are both well spoken here as well as well spoken ones at the diet they did a great job up there too yes there's a lot of pressure um so I'll start with a few key updates and announcements and then I'll talk a little bit about the uh board policy and District work overall and some of those connections uh so we've had several monitoring reports delayed due to the delays with our audit and Audits and specifically the accountability audit is still in progress ress this audit primarily focuses on the use of bonds in relationship to the authorization of school board resolutions and we expect that this
064will be finalized in the next month or so uh we are working to prepare for the 2024 2025 school year that is underway and that's evidenced by having high school graduation requirements on the agenda for tonight and consideration by the board as well as we are um behind the scenes going to be having midyear budget reviews with cabinet um after tonight so that we can further take into account those budget development guidelines and prepare for the budgeting uh cycle for next year so weather is top of mind this week our operations team has been monitoring the weather as has every single person um in isqua school district and uh we are preparing you know uh as always for the possibility of any school or program interruptions our process for responding to winter weather and Poss
065possible school delays or closures so was posted again early in the week in our um weekly ISD weekly bulletin and uh as a reminder the decision for any delays or closures will be communicated by 6: am so take note about tomorrow morning everyone and um for that possibility in various ways you can always find out about what's happening about our notification on weather impacts would be through social media through text messaging our website and also our bulletins so in terms of board policy and District work connections um I do want to share that in support of all the boards ends as well as specifically NS 2 and it's always helpful to reground ourselves on what actually ns2 is and that was you know a helpful reference always call it ns2 or E2 but it's about
066uh graduation and upon graduation students will be academically prepared and confident to pursue higher education or specialized Career Training and the district strategic plan has several strategies to support this one strategy is to create and communicate unque Pathways to graduation that ensure students understand opportunities as aligned to their pathway and to post high school goals in this week on January 8th one major Milestone was accomplished for the strategy to support NS 2 we held a hybrid Pathways to graduation family information night at issaqua high school over 100 families attended the in-person event in English and Spanish as well as there were over 100 participants on Zoom this event shared information about the high school and Beyond planned its contribution to a student individualized graduation pathway and facilitated conversations among students and their caregivers to talk
067about interest and expectations around students plan for high school and Beyond as a result of this 170 8th grade students logged into Zell and explored the tools that are available to them as a um as an appreciation I would like to thank this partnership between uh Lisa neighbors who is our director of Career Technical education uh with the equity belonging and Family Partnership team uh specifically Melanie bonano and Liliana Medina and it was a partnership to make sure that it was smoothly and operationally facilitated content wise and accessible um in the two languages the work study also today also highlighted the connection to ends to for the district um and we are going to be furthering our conversation around some of the data sets that were just referenced and specifically uh on some of those
068meaningful Milestones uh we can track we do track a lot of data and we continue to do so but being ble to look at third grade reading um Algebra 1 and nth grade on track to graduation are helpful opportunities to make sure that we are decreasing any opportunity gaps that do exist in our system We are continuing to hear um more from our students graduate staff family members and community members through empathy interviews which I spoke about at our last meeting and at that time we were just preparing to launch and we were investing in training and the effort now is under way this effort does support the district strategic plan area of authentic engagement and continues to help us make progress towards the board vision of all students Thrive as they engage in meaningful
069learning that unlocks their passion and potential to positively impact the world the World Outreach has begun after the new year and even before to individuals we've had over a 100 consent form signed for individuals to participate which is a precursor to being able to have the conversation I've been hearing some positive feedback from those who' have conducted interviews already as an affirming opportunity to further build relationship and listen deeply to what people are telling us I'm hoping to conduct five interviews myself I have two that are scheduled before the end of next week um other efforts on uh authentic engagement and support of that effort uh for our strategic plan is to continue to Foster relationships and uh leverage purposeful Partnerships one example that's um underway and about to kick off is to participate in
070an AI Community or artificial intelligence uh not use acronyms community of practice with approximately 101 districts across the country and team members will be joining me that are from the teaching learning service team our technology team secondary Innovation and Communications um as this doesn't just impact the work that our students do in their classrooms and how you leverage technology but also how we do our work as an organization and as a district this will be about five sessions and it will really be about leveraging a framework potentially to how we can approach the work of AI in a district across all aspects defining those system objectives learning from systems where there are uh further Works to experiment and further the AI applications and then to begin you begin and continue to test um cases and
071examples in our own district and get feedback from others on that effort um I'll talk a little bit about student well-being and we have several updates aimed at um accessing resources that really support meeting our students basic needs in particular care Solace which we've talked about before um which launched in the middle of the Fall has booked appointments for 5507 57 members of our community since November and this is really exciting news because we talked about the the burden of having to coordinate identify Services coordinate schedule um and then actually show up at the appointment and so this really has saved our school community members over 150 hours of time coordinating just on accessing finding and making appointments for care our counseling and student well-being team was also able to fulfill many wish lists for
072a handful of families prior to winter break items that were purchased um utilizing funds from a mckin vento grant included clothing coats books and gear um in particular for an internship a student was participating in these items were wrapped and distributed to families right before the break in a uh exciting and presentable way and um finally the breakfast program has expanded that we've been talking about over the past year and a half to meet our goal of serving breakfast at um more schools and that um update on that is that we are able to serve breakfast now and and have doubled that number since last year uh of students being served at Clark Elementary isqua Valley Elementary Sunset Elementary challender elementary Apollo Elementary isqua Middle School and isqua High School that wraps it up for
073me on the updates across the district thank you uh for those I think we'll all be eagerly awaiting what winter will bring for us in the next few hours it's never wrong to let us know earlier rather than later uh the next item on our agenda is Bond planning update great so as uh um Martin turny and Tom mullen's approach and are at the podium I just want to share that we um officially have confirmed and notified those members that will be joining us for the bond advisory committee there are over 60 individuals on the committee that does not include the team members who provide technical expertise and um information that's required at those meetings and we were really excited because we had many more people apply with a really large number of students who
074applied as well and we truly have a diverse group of individuals who have affiliations across the district geographically by level and um they wear multiple hats so you're not going to see a specific affiliation for one person for one school or one area or one uh grade level because many people have um had graduates of the district have been a graduate have worked worked here have kids here um and and and so there therefore we are just thinking of them all as um Representatives across the whole district and with multiple um hats that they wear so we're really eager to kick that work off and I'll pass it to um U Martin and Tom thank you superintendent um as mentioned we had quite a few applicants I think just under a 100 we almost had
075100 so that was great um we sent the email out on Monday to those who were selected so they understand uh that they were part of the selected group and to come by the district for those meetings kicking off January 30th and then we'll have them every couple weeks up until April 30th uh which is the date will conclude those um have them here in the administration building so that'll be nice um we um are doing some planning work our internal team's been meeting to look at what we need to do in preparation for that first meeting um one of the big things is doing some building assessments and I thought Tom could give us a brief uh overview of how that works going the building assessments and facility assessments were set up in basically
076four groups The Architects went did the general assessment of the buildings the Interiors those type of things along with the mechanical electrical engineer to look at HVAC and electrical systems fire alarm systems intercom all the various systems in building we had another team go out they were strictly Roofing and envelope Consultants they look at all the buildings look at roofs um Windows those type of things we had another group go out and look at fields and all the sporting um facilities at the middle and high schools and then we have a um bear with me I'm drawing a blank we had a fourth group go out and um it's it's it's gone the moment's gone now but needless to say oh kitchen Consultants went out and looked through all the looked through I should I
077should have brought my notes but um kitchen Consultants everybody is wrapping up this week I think we have two days next week then they'll start compiling all their information put getting pricing and um estimating put to it so we have some good information for the bond committee at the end of the month thank you Tom obviously a lot of work happening in um preparation for this first meeting and Beyond so um we just wanted to fill you in let you know where we're at and uh wonder if there are any questions for us there any questions yes Dr Taylor curious if um any of the Green Building act costs are in scope for the B are you considering that as you're going out doing these it's yes um MC Miller is going to be doing
078some of that work they're reviewing our buildings and they will be giving us um uh cost estimates for getting that done yes yeah so as a board we were wanted to insist that the high schools all got evaluated prior to this and then we could extrapolate based on what the impact was to our largest buildings what those costs may be for our middle and elementary buildings many of which are newer right uh in order to be able to generate some reasonable estimates for that so yes that absolutely is a huge part of the scope of this under the safety part of re Bells thank um so I almost lost what my question was as well I had to get it back I was like wait a minute this topic so I guess my question is
079maybe School Community input we've had overtime we'll hear from different buildings communities that they were hoping for looking for believed they needed a level of enhancements to those buildings is there a step in this process to hear from I'll call it community members around each of our buildings about what might be needed or or I I don't want to use wanted but what some of those questions were yeah I think uh so Tom is TE team with um the Consultants are help are asking the building staff and the folks that work in the building but in addition to that's part of the representation that we have on the committee is that they draw from those different building and those communities so they'll have the chance to that community and also um we'll ask that those
080folks reach out to to others that they know and their constituency that they can bring their questions and feedback to us through that process as well great thank you any other questions or input any question questions for my student Representatives thank you we know that this is going to be a sanning item on our agenda as is a big part of 2024 yes and uh trying to decrease all the pressure of space in all of our Comprehensive High Schools as much as you enjoy all your friends maybe not so tightly packed and parking spaces what would that be like okay thank you superintendent uh next item is the 20242 budget development guide guidelines I move the board adopt the 2024 25 District budget development guidelines as presented second and before I hand it off to
081our superintendent uh just for our uh newest board members uh we start this off uh to follow Robert's rules about uh you know do making a motion and making a second that doesn't necessarily mean that we will pursue and go all the way through to approve at any moment so we have the ability to so this may generate a lab discussion we say hey we aren't ready to make a vote on this and then we withdraw so want to make sure you understood that it wasn't like we automatic and we'll force a vote great um Martin tney is continuing on to support the board any further discussion and I know that we did a presentation to help set up for this conversation to support the board and eager to hear uh what you might need
082more of or less of or if it's yeah yeah so uh Stephen if you would mind getting the redline version up on our screen and as we do that maybe people might want to start off with Reflections based on our discussion we're having in work study and how that like ties in to this broader discussion about what we think about the budget and its importance in representing the values of our district I am happy to start that conversation um because I think what you just said uh president gall is um really important right some level the most one of the most important things we get to do besides having a great superintendent is is Leverage The our the Community Values and how we distribute funds and how that shows up in the programming and what
083we think is important and so during the conversation we were having earlier which was all about um our ends for students their academic progress and leading to graduation it becomes really important to understand what program are working what need additional Assistance or support or how to the point about um maybe unintended consequences when you accelerate in one area you may need additional supports in another how those that conversation then translates into how we set the budget or how we set guidelines for the budget for the organization and then the superintendent and her staff go about actually filling out that um that budget so I think it really is a well-timed reflection to have that conversation about the ends for students and how some of those key and critical programs are being executed and what what
084else we might need to be doing as we lead into this um budget development guideline conversation as a board thank you and as this continues Steph you want to scroll up till we get to the first set of where there's uh yeah thank you you just go back to where it says a program that allows students to and can you remind us the blue is which and the red is which the red is uh adjusted new con or edited content uh and then the blue is resequence content so I think there was some feedback to consolidate potentially but then to resequence within so uh that was what we attempted to do to set you up for the discussion perfect thank you can I say something before we talk about this detail of course and the
085other thing um that's really important is in that motion document that's also attached is also the overall critical steps and Target dates Etc so this is a process that's going to stretch well into August with the with the budget so there'll be many conversations on this Target on this um topic that the guidelines are just one component of so for those following along at home or with us we're going to basically be in conversation for about six or seven months until we get to the final budget for next year so just to set that that context thank you so opening it up either for further uh connection or thought about our work study conversation uh or to make commentary on uh the revised version of this that uh we hope is a reflection of board
086discussion from our last meeting I I'll start by saying that um actually for me what the bullet point right above this the one that says overall growth in student learning towards state and federal learning targets as well as growth for each of the disaggregated groups um this includes students work working above standard I think that helps really clarify um like we were talking about um examples of of the work that we've done already so how we're supporting um some of our schools maybe maybe getting a little bit more funding based on their student population and needs so that it's not a one-size fits-all solution oh you have this many students therefore you will have this many staff members and this many title teachers Etc so that bullet point really is to the point of what
087does it what does it look like to truly support those students and is there going to be needs for us to to switch things up yes you might have some classes that are going to be 15 students because that's our way of providing additional supports that we think are necessary and there might be ramifications elsewhere within the system but how do we highlight that so I think that's a really important bullet point for me and when we talk about Equity our Equitable work um and Equitable funding that we talked about way back at the very first part of the conversation I'd say probably 2011 when I first started um talking with staff in the board about Equity this is one that caused the most pain in the system that even discuss is well what do
088you mean how am I going to budget equitably what does that mean and that was really I think the first place I heard resistance about Equity work was right here in in this topic so actually it was in the other building because it was so long ago but yeah and it Contin contined to be but there continued to be resistance and so that is why it's really important and I think for me highlighting when we do finalize a budget that understanding how that bullet point is being achieved is going to be really important so it's a few number of words with a big Power powerful impact and it's reinforced in the third bullet that's in blue here which says provides targeted resources for social emotional supports student safety Gap closing and learning loss can I
089ask a question please this this is you know me learning on the job but I'm just I'm curious on that bullet point as to the wording around learning towards state and federal learning Target is there something that has been decided previously that those are the best targets for determining how to close gaps for instance I don't know if I'm making myself clear but I've been wondering if there are other targets that were considered previously that would be more successful in closing gaps or providing some of these other um you know goals to equity so to speak I guess it's a history lesson anything is what I'm asking you know if I might I I think what that is referring to is the state educational standards that were then required to make sure so we we
090want to have a budget that make sure we're addressing all of those state standards and then the reason Federal uh learning targets got in there is because the federal government decided to get into the business of Education through the common core standards so many of our state standards emanate from those Federal standards that they just felt well actually so that when we get students from other states Texas um that they're at the same standards as our children we have to align uh certain parts of our curriculum and our assessment uh departments in order to qualify for certain funding streams but in general what Dr Mar just said with common Cory standards and then the next Generation science standards all of those are National I wouldn't say Federal because it's not like they necessarily emanated from
091federal government Department of Education but they have been widely adopted and now since had assessments which are like smarter balances what Wasington state has chosen aligned to those standards so am I hearing a request to change that word to National rather than Federal no I just was answering history that's all other thoughts comments I think maybe what I would add on to that or tell you what I think about when you ask that question is is that really our our standard in the esqua school district and I think um that is table stakes in the standard and make and our goal at getting all student groups to that standard but obviously overachieving that is where we do a lot of our additional and extra effort and work in expectation setting but I think we have
092to also make sure that we are ensuring that all of our students are getting to that basic standard which is one of the things that we'll continue to review and plan for does that me that's what comes to mind when for me when you ask that's just what I wanted to know that's you know if that is what these are our budget guidelines that's right this is what we should be trying to attain so if if if that's the goal I understand that but the question is though begs the question should there be a higher standard an isqua standard just asking the question I think for us if we can close that gap between what we see in our performance for our students in our general general education classrooms versus our students in special education
093which would be a federal mandate and a state mandate then that would really uh be setting the stage for just broad success across our district and so I think that uh one there's alignment and two I think we really our district and our District administration takes that very seriously and really does the Investments not perfect but really wants to make that happen and I think you see that in the performance over the past five six years on where our special education students and their graduation rates and their transition points between elementary and middle middle and high and really seeing intentionality there while again not perfect certainly demonstrated remarkable progress right can I make one quick uh suggestion um when I look at uh the the bullet point saying meet the requirements for Washington State high
094school diploma I'm wondering if we could move that um above um where it says a program that allows students to I think uh to director Taylor's point I feel like isqua specific items are listed under a program that allows students to I think that's where we kind of create our own kind of unique impact in this community and I think the table Stakes I think the Washington State high school diploma component um as director mulling said should be you know that's one of those I would say it kind of lines as I look at this I've been kind of going back to that that doesn't obviously need to notate it but it feels like it's maybe in the wrong spot so just a thought there sure other thoughts other editing [Music] suggestions accurus on student
095perspective as you read these and see this is how we want to develop guidelines for how the greater than $350 million is spent for you every year does this seem to be consistent with the values that you hear us talk about or does it make you pause and give question on well what about this I don't see this yeah um I would say probably the bullet point right now that I feel like we really closely align with is the non-core options that are offered I feel like our schools um well especially our Comprehensive High Schools do a great job of offering classes that are not core classes that are across a range of subjects that um students can explore for fun or for future career learning but um especially like the Arts and CTE and
096that kind of stuff and then the bullet point that I would say uh there's the most discrepancy in would be um social emotional support which I know has been something that's been difficult and lots lots of changes made to the integration of those kinds of things in the past few years um but I think that's probably where students would look at that and say I don't know if I feel that impact in my school life can you expand more on what how you students would want to see that impact it's difficult because I especially in my surveys last year students are like oh we want more mental health supports that kind of things and then they're also really horrible at opening up to adults about mental health and those kinds of things um I think
097that would be something where um either more research into methods in other districts and other areas of the world that have been helpful for students um or that you know like implementing something seeing if it works that kind of thing is the best way to do it um yeah yeah that's great I think we it's really others are looking at us like we are leaders in that area we invest local Levy dollars or over a million dollars a year just have Swedish uh School based mental health counselors in every one of our middle and high schools and we're only a few school districts in the state that do that and so little lot of the districts are looking at us how are we screening students how are we doing and integrating that into our counseling
098offices uh not say we can't do better but uh there's to answer your question directly there's less for us to look and see like oh it is so so schools are doing we're usually the one hosting yes sorry um so first I wanted to um talk about what MIA said about um the variety of classes that we have in our um high schools um like squa high skyen high and um Liberty ey um and I when I was doing the surveys for ns2 um I I noted that a lot of people really appreciated that um the amount of classes that we have the variety of classes that was very good and I I also echoed the senent that the district's doing a good job in providing good opportunities in the in terms of the classes
099um and then looking at these points I feel that they align pretty well with a couple of the goals if I think about the ends especially ends to I can see a lot of stuff over there but also a couple of other ends there's something about Equity over Equity over there um and yeah student well-being is addressed so I think this is a great outline for how we could spend like in theory other yeah um I just like to say uh for the Equitable access to resources and Pathways that support individualized post High School school post High School grades um earlier in the year we talked about how like uh 35% of our students um opt for a non- Col pathway After High School and I know I definitely see that in Gibson it's very
100clear um and just being able to have opportunities like wanic and um other things to help us decide our Pathways and discover what will be the best way for us to learn and go on through our lives um I think the ISD does a really good job of providing that um and it's a really great resource and uh yeah thank you other thoughts on this page for the board if not Stephen you want to go to the second page where the added bullet it's in Red so this was also an addition that was a result of board dialogue and certainly you've had you've provided us email updates on things and how this has impacted our district uh of late so it seems like that's a really important thing that you've heard from both Bond rating
101agencies anything from your perspective hearing the dialogue I think I heard one one change and that's helpful and this is why we discuss it because the world evolves we evolve and we hear new content and we have had much we've had student voice on this topic now this year for uh in a very meaningful way so thank you yes D moral so I heard two specific things one was changing the word Federal to National in bullet three and then in bullet 4 the last bullet moving that to be bullet two are those the two changes that I heard yes so then um if somebody because I made the motion so if somebody wanted to amend the motion I don't know if I can amend a motion I made I think you can yeah you think
102you can so then I move we amend bullet number three removing the word Federal and inserting the word national and on bullet point four the fourth the last bullet move that to be bullet number two a second okay and before we do any further discussion or voting I do want to open this up for any public input from anyone in the room or anyone on Zoom see none is there any more board discussion no do I seem like the board is ready to take a vote on this item or at least on the amendment and then you can still have discussion after that oh even better okay any more discussion on the amendment okay all those in favor of the amendment say I I any opposed no okay so the amended motion is before us
103any discussion see none all those in favor of the amended motion say I hi post there's your unanimous approval over the budget development guidelines and as Dr Mullen said this is uh yet an early step in a very uh long uh process long in a good way because it allows lots of conversation and lots of open uh dialogue so uh the next item on our agenda is high school graduation requirements for the class of [Music] second superintendent great we have Sher Cox here to provide a overview of some content and she'll have a lot of other talking points that are um in support of just some anticipated questions that we know are um uh on people's minds in the community but also potentially the boards and I do know that we will likely have public
104comment as well so I think we have one person signed up great thank you um directors for having me here this evening thank you superintendent um tonight I'm here uh presenting but I'm not alone in this I just want to give a shout out to uh our TLS Department our Equity belonging Family Partnership our high school leaders and our staff for their input in this presentation and I should also thank the students tonight because they really did a great job of um highlighting some of the things um that they've been working on in the CL as the class of 2024 2025 but tonight I'm here to talk about um the class of 2028 which are our current eth graders out there um and so uh the purpose of tonight is listed here um but I'm
105going to take a step back uh as a new High School director myself and we've got two new board directors I just want to go back a little bit and so that we all have the same common understanding of what the grad requirements are and what hopefully tonight you're going to approve um and then ask questions about I do want to call out though before I go on that there are three pretty significant changes to tonight's graduation requirements first from last year that is um I've added Echo Glenn I don't know why in the past echogen has not been part of this process but in fact the students at echogen are isqua high school our isqua students and they have the same graduation requirements as the students in our Comprehensive High Schools so that is
106added in your notes tonight um I've also included maybe for our student up on the dice tonight the G details about the Gibson e requirements though they're not going to be changed from what they previously were but they've never been spelled out in as much detail as you're going to see this evening and then I'm going to talk a little bit about um high school math credits that our middle school students are earning right now and I'm going to propose a change to you in how we see those credits you know my first Passion is in fact middle school so with that I'm GNA go on um these are the three things that you as a board approve there is nothing that I'm going to present to you that is um different from the state
107of Washington um our students are uh required to complete these three things as are all the students in the Washington um Public School System unless they have a waiver like our Gibson X students this slide is kind of hard to read but I just wanted to really highlight um you can't see can we move the dialogue box at the top because what I want you to notice is that the state and and we is squa have the same graduation requirements across the board as far as how many English mathematics social studies Etc um I want to tell you what the asterisks mean because you can see the slide is a little bit full here it it just tells us that those three credits of Science and the third credit of math are chosen by the
108student based on the students interest and their high school and Beyond plan which is part of um our process and I'll talk a little bit about those in a second and then the double Aster is the personalized pathway requirements are related courses that lead to a specific post High School career or educational outcome that's chosen by the student based on their interest um and their high school and Beyond plan these may include Career and Technical education and are intended to provide the focus on the students learning so that these are where our students have choice and voice in these decisions um and these can include things I've heard uh you directors talk about financial literacy that is a course that's offered and students could certainly pursue that course if it aligns with their personal Pathways
109that are spelled out in their um high school and Beyond plan I want to call out two places here that I'm going to come back to in slide eight and um that is the math requirements and then the social studies on this chart and I'm going to come back to them but I want you to note the requirements for social studies in particular require one US history and government 0 five contemporary world history geography and problems 0 five um credits and Civics and then the 1.0 in the electives and I'm going to just I'll come back to that um also in slide a I'm going to talk a little bit about how our strategic plan is helping us align the courses across um the high schools so kind of keep that it's a coming in
110action for you the other thing Stephen can I get a little technical assistance here thank you um as I had mentioned the other thing is the high school and Beyond plan um that all of our students are required to take the state has this same requirement and we're going to continue to roll out some new things um that they have more clearly spelled out for us for example all eth and nth grade students are in the process of getting a lesson that helps them create a four-year High School plan that's aligned to their goals and meets this High School graduation requirement um students do all of this data entry and exploration in a program called zel it's just the software program that they capture this um and then we have a strategic uh plan strategy
1112E that has a three-year goal of using all of the student interest data that they're putting into Z as a way to build our course cataloges so that our high school course cataloges are as aligned as tightly as possible to the student interests that's captured in this tool and then the last graduation requirement is our graduation Pathways and superintendent talked a little bit about the um parent presentation that happened uh earlier this week at isqua high school I think I heard one of our students mention it tonight um I don't really have anything else to add about it except that these are the four Pathways so I'm going to pause here because this is um what you're asked to approve is these three things the credits the graduation Pathways and then the high school the
112completion of the high school and Beyond plan and just ask if you have any questions regarding these things before I go on to where oh actually sorry I don't want to miss this here's what I said I called out more specifically in your documents the graduation requirements for our Gibson act students um we currently have a waiver for Gibson um it is on its last year so we will need to go back and apply for this waiver um because our Gibson X students do not complete the three things that I just mentioned this is their graduation requirements um at this time the recommendation from The District administration is that we continue with these uh graduation requirements both for Gibson e as well as for the class of 2028 and then now I get I'm ready
113for questions on just this part uh could you go back to the slide on Career Readiness you bet um yeah this one um um so I found these terms which you've mentioned career Readiness military Readiness college readiness is kind of vague Could you um elaborate on like how exactly you're measuring each of these things great question and it's not really we're not measuring it I can give you some more detail about each of those if you'd like but it's not so much as a a measurement as that um they have to complete um a PA one of these four Pathways so for example I got put my glasses on here um the career Readiness pathway is for students who intend to go directly into the workforce Apprentice ship Community College or Technical Training they complete
114two or more of the CTE credits in the same te CTE program area that include either a dual credit course or lead to a certification the military Readiness one is for students who plan to join the military for Career Training and education and they have to take and pass the ASVAB and sorry superintendent I don't know what that stands for um with a score of 31 or higher and so th those are just two examples of the requirements in those first two um categories do you have a description of the performance base because that was going to be my question keep reading my little document thanks to Lisa neighbors um the performance-based is uh still being defined but right now what it says is for students who demonstrate math and English language arts proficiency through
115a portfolio so I know um uh Gibson e the state is about to Pilot this and Gibson is um asking to be considered to Pilot this particular graduation pathway so that's actually still being defined by the state and then we would help that is correct it is under it is well underway to the point where they're now ready to roll out pilots on it yes what would that lead to then I guess it would lead to our students meeting the requirement of having a defined graduate pathway would it be career or college or would it be a mix or do we know what that would be I don't know the details I'm sorry I can I can oh it's okay I just curious I can answer your question okay uh so you in order to
116graduate what's missing here uh is you must pass state test as part of a graduation requirement uh Thea that you take in 10th Grade so this gives you an alternative so it's if you pass that state test 10th grade or you get a certain SAT score or pass ASVAB at a certain rate or now Performance Based it's really trying to make permanent the waivers that districts were given the flexibility to do during covid it's really L trying to make that permanent but to give students the opportunity who they they will never be able to pass the test but they demonstrate competency through other ways in ways that are very individualized and uh part of their colge high school and uh Beyond plan uh that aligns with that other questions before we on I do so
117having a senior and now looking at this because this is my son's year which is fascinating the thing that I guess I'm not that still seems a bit a Miss to me and maybe it's in the college readiness pathway is what at least by my reading is the difference between our graduation requirements for the yeah for college specifically and what are the the KRS for acceptance into college specifically there's an additional math requirement for senior Math and so how do we make sense of that and does it show up in that pathway um great question I can read to you um I'm just going to read to you what it says for the college readiness pathway because it's a curiosity and I actually was just um having a conversation uh to get some information back
118to a parent about that very thing is while these are our graduation requirements they are not the what for example the University of Washington requires a student to have completed in order to get in and so I can only tell you that I'm hopeful um and I believe that our counselors are and I'm I guess I have got some experts sitting right here in the room with me students that our counselors are helping have those conversation with students who are I see nodding heads that's great great news um who are having those conversations with students about well this you only need three science credits if you are going to go into science and college you want to pursue the fourth one so um the college readiness um it says for students who plan to complete
119two or 40-year degree in a college or university they can use any combination of math and Ela options um so the first one is state level assessments smarter balance or the Washington AES assessment second bullet is dual credit it's one credit each in math and Ela um AP IB earn a C+ or higher CTE dual credit must earn High School Credit in math and Ela and college and the high school are running start course another bullet point is College admission so if you score um certain scores on the SAT or the act or dual credit exams in the AP or IB realm so um scoring a three or higher on the AP exam and a four or higher on the IB exams are the credit and I'm happy to this was what was presented to
120parents that I'm reading from so I'm happy to get you all copies of that yeah so for me going through this process this this one feels like an odd Gap I think you end up particular when we talk about the percentage of our students who don't end on end on a college-bound pathway they also will never be able to end on a College Bound pathway or I think so I I I just think it's an odd Gap that we put in there's very few there's very little daylight between our graduation Pathways in the state of Washington and what the state of Washington requires for college entry it's not like individual schools it's the same basic um base set of requirements that across the schools and so it feels like we leave that up to individual
121counseling when it's I don't know that that's necessary like it's a fact that there's this Gap and so that's one that I would really like to see us look at a lot more closely and be more explicit about um particularly if you have students that math is not their Joy space they are going to duck out of that last this additional senior Math requirement because they can and graduate but it leaves a gap and so we I just don't want us to base um our thinking based on students who are going to finish all the math in the catalog because we have those or students that are gonna by happen stance pick that up in another way whether it's and taking physics their senior year and taking something else but it's a it's a real
122for me it's a strange step Gap we leave in the middle to not just be explicit about hey if this is if you're on a college readiness pathway there is something in between your graduation requirements and College acceptance in the state of Washington and I'm obsessive compulsive so I read all these things because yeah I'm just trying to think to school is this something um and I don't uh course cataloges for the class of 2028 are just about to be published we're literally working on them now and so I'm just wondering if this is something that I work with that team on and rich is in the room here to more explicitly in the course catalog call out these are your graduation requirements these are University graduation requirements for students wanting University entrance ENT University
123entry requirements in the state of Washington and that is certainly something that we could add to the course cataloges that I think that would be amazing and and not just for for Washington State based schools I mean having a sophomore the whole question is do we really need a third year of the same foreign language or not I feel I get a lot of conflicting information and I would love for there to be a source of Truth which it should be the school district yeah and I don't know how we would do that for every single graduation or uh College entrance throughout the 50 States but I think um it's very close right I mean I don't know I haven't applied for a college and my kid is going to college in the state of
124Washington but we could certainly um put the easily add the college entrance requirements for the state of Washington and then you know maybe an aster about in Washington it is too I have it I mean put an aster for those of you interested in please look at your state requirements um in those States um I don't think that that would be a hard thing for us I know that's not part of what you're officially approving tonight but I don't think that would be a hard piece of information for us to add to the high school course catalog um where it kind of spells out some of these things there sorry so I was wondering um I had actually a lot of different things but I'll just focus on what we're talking here so I think
125for the college readiness just even having a disclaimer that our grad require requirements aren't necessarily the same and maybe a link to the heck board and to be able to say this is what your wonderful school counselor please you know please please set up an appointment and meet with yes right utilize uh the staff members that that are really trained in this um around the Performance Based you know at some point I would be interested in seeing a you know a a dummy version of a Gibson neck uh diploma because they are very different and part of that performance-based is that they're documenting projects that they work on um how do you get you know it looks completely different it's a big circle of the competencies and how do you how have you done how
126many of those competencies in those areas have you achieved um so I think it would be really interesting for the board to see because I'm not even sure that the old board ever saw a version of it let alone now we have new members on here to see what that what that transcript looks like because we all are Imagining the transcripts of the comprehensive high schools and the Gibson one is extremely different I just want to be sure I have your question captured so I can do you want to see the an example of the their report card or their transcript transcript okay because a Mastery based transcript looks very different and how yes yes that's it's an artifact of example yeah yeah and then I had just a couple of other questions around Gibson
127X so um the career they that there's mentioned career Crossing or create Career Cruising instead of zel so are they not utilizing zel in their high school and Beyond plan or is that just a it was the one that didn't get updated um that's a great question I'm looking at our Gibson yeah let's let's have our answer student are you using z um they only used it last year it was not super effective with our goals with your goals um so we mostly do that work through our internship and LTI program so um yeah we don't we don't use Z we used it last year um but we just found I think we found it wasn't really affected okay yeah so I think it's because the um the uniqueness of what's required of a Gibson
128X student is very different from what is needed from a uh a student in our Comprehensive High Schools so I think zel is probably built to better support our students in comprehensive high schools with the State graduation requirements so schools like Gibson and other schools across the state that have waivers it would make sense that it would be hard for zel to support them as well oh and by the way I did look it up armed services vocational aptitude battery I couldn't remember what the Beast did for thank you thank you it's a very military word any other questions on this before I go on to we do have yeah I just have one question I just want to be really explicit so that I understand you said three big changes from last year to
129this year in the report yes oh in the report okay so do I understand that the math requirements changed that in 27 three math classes between the grades 9 and 12 now three math credits one of which you can earn credit for potentially in middle school did oh that's a great question you're leading right into my next okay set of slides um but yeah but yes that is exactly and it's um it's something that I'm proposing to you to the state hasn't done any changes this is a internal decision that I'm proposing that we change and I'll and I'll give you a preview the reason I'm proposing we change it is I hear the board of directors I a theme I hear from you all is we want to give students more choices and open
130up some space and schedules and so I'm going to make a proposal that we accept the Middle School um math courses the the High School courses that are taken and completed successfully by middle school students that we allow those to count towards their math credits in high school I can jump right to that bullet if we want to start there it's the third bullet up here um do you have a question before that because it's if it's about that topic we're gonna go through the rest of the slides before we get to that topic if it's it's about the graduation Pathways okay okay um is this okay um soorry I'm just a little bit I'm wondering about like the student facing aspect of the graduation Pathways is that only encountered by the student if they
131haven't taken um or if they haven't taken or passed the state testing or any of the other options is that when they're given the option to fall into one of these categories is that chosen four of them or I'm just I haven't encountered this the graduation pathway before um I'll be honest that's a really great question um and I don't have the answer to it on how I mean do you want to answer the yeah so I think we want every student to be prepared to pursue and be ready for uh foryear college to be ready for a career pathway or to be ready to join the military successfully yeah where the performance base is it really belongs if you for if you look at our board packet page two of all of them lists
132the state quote Pathways to graduation with which I mentioned sat uh AP IB passing grade uh as lab uh Ela math SBA and then now it will be this performance-based pathway option and that is a requirement that the state has for graduation that is sort of just the Bas line things you must do kind of like you must do 24 credits and you must do one of these things that demonstrates competency the actual Readiness part is more what we locally live and want and hope for each one of our students oh okay okay cool gotcha yeah and if you if you're super curious about this if you go on to the Washington State Board of Education they have a nice diagram that's kind of a talking points for um all of the things that director
133gallinger just listed and we capture many of these in our college readiness one so while there's only four bullets up there and there's uh eight things on this piece of paper in front of me many of them are captured under what we've defined as college readiness okay um I for me what my confusion is with this is not the actual requirements themselves and how they constitute Readiness but how and when are students are being told that these kind of things exist I know for me like this is the first time I'm hearing of any of these kind of graduation Pathways things and I'm assuming that's because the default is the kind of State Testing that pretty much everyone in this CL School District goes through but I do think it would be helpful and more
134transparent to our students to at least communicate these alternate Pathways to them maybe even when we're doing the the course catalog for the incoming freshman yeah yeah so our um thank you for that our students uh who are currently in eth grade are going to start those conversations at the uh end of February where I don't know if you remember the high school counselors come down to the middle school and have conversations and then there's an evening event at the high school for um parents and care Akers and students to go and ask questions and that is exactly where these things will be discussed with the class of 2028 I can't speak to how it happened um for you um but I do know that it is part of the conversations that the high schools
135will be having with the current eth graders and to your point it it really is that the overwhelming number of our students just automatically check that box with their SBA testing uh so it's really the counselors generally work with students who didn't check that box or what is the pathway by which you're going to do that I also think the pathways are around classes so I'm not going to take a world language because my plan is to go to digipen they don't require it and instead I want to take compai one compai 2 you so so that's also what those Pathways might in in be inclined is around which courses because our standard is probably pretty close to HEC board requirements um for the for the basic graduation requirements and then all those places where
136it's asteris and says about personalized Pathways that's what they mean by those personalized Pathways yeah oh this is a quick question but um so I when I came to this District um um I actually came in 8th grade so so I was forced to do wa State history um over my 11th to 12th grade summer I noticed that that's not on any of these grad requirements so um has it been removed or is it hidden under something um it is hidden under something it is still required and it has required you take it in seventh grade that's why you missed it that's why you had to take it yeah that I get I got that and and also on the documentation that we received in the link if you look at each one if you
137scroll all the way to the last page there's the there's the math and World social studies stuff that's kind of extra and I'm sure you have lots to say about that now yeah so for students that move into the state to answer go a little bit further with your um an 11th in 12th grade they that class can be waved but for any everybody else that class has to be completed and and so yes you had to take it over the summer okay if we could get through the rest of this that would be awesome great I could think of nothing more delightful um so I just want to talk a little bit like I said I hear you talking I hear a theme that opening up space for students to have more Choice uh
138in scheduling is important to you it's important to us and so there's a couple places where I want to call out that we have opened up space um and the first is that seven period day for IHS and shs so that that has created some space in kids schedules for them to select more courses now we did limit it for Liberty because we went from an eight period Day to a seven period day so there's a give and take there um the other thing um where we have uh uh the internal um District staff is limited um is our world history we ask that all of our current ninth graders uh in the isqua school district take a full year of world history meaning world history one and then World History 2 and then we
139have an the world history 3 the state actually only require s um the content that is currently taught in world history 3 um as we have it scoped and sequenced in the ISD and so um I don't recommend that we change that requirement because we are already starting to get ready to register kids for the following year and that would pretty substantially change the system as it's currently set for students I do think however that we should look at it for possibly the class of 2029 or even further and I also want to say that I talked with principles and I talked with teachers about the possibility of changing this world history and nobody is in support of it at this time um it will require some Communications some exploration and while the state doesn't
140require the additional world history they do recommend it and the state is also strongly recommending in ethnic studies and so we have some work to do in the social studies Realm to really dig into possibly what it would require for us to offer an ethnic studies course or what would it require us as a system if we were to ask students or not require students to take the full year of world history as nth graders so I'm not recommending changing that at this time um I just want to call it out and be transparent with you all what I am asking you to consider changing is that previously our um graduation requ requirement stated that math credits taken in the Middle School um were transcribed for students but they only counted as an elective credit
141they did not count towards their math graduation requirements I would like to offer that um we allow students to move those credits over in the math category towards graduation um we see data that supports this decision in that our students who took high school math and Middle School are as successful if not more successful in the algebra 2 classes as they enter uh into high school um we also see that students who complete one or two years of math in middle school they go on to complete four more years of math typically and so we're not going to suddenly not have a demand for higher level math courses so that's a proposal that is in the documents um for you to consider today um we also have some places where we limit student Choice um
142to be fiscally responsible our course offerings are driven by student requests and then sometimes they're just driven by qualified staff for example at the middle level I don't have a Spanish class at Maywood because we simply could not find a teacher um to fill that spot so there are limitations on our system that are sometimes outside of our control there are some places where um I've also heard you talk a lot about aligning across the system some courses that should be aligned that is also a place that could limit um but it could also expand and so I just want us to be thoughtful because sometimes we do have unintended consequences however I also know there are places where we can align and should align for example AP Human Geography at one school can replace
143base nth grade um the nth grade social studies requirement at a different school that class can only replace the third year of world history makes no sense why one school hasn't could replace two different courses than at a different school so there are places where the system needs to clean up um and we're doing that work along uh in our priority 2D uh strategy and our strategic plan so with that um I'm happy to talk more uh or answer any questions that you have on this particular category I'm actually going to take public input at this time sure so if there is public input in the room or on Zoom we would love for you to come up to the Das state your name and attendance area hi my name is Natalie shien I'm the
144department chair of social studies at isqua high school um and I'm here representing every member of the isqua social studies Department uh unanimously uh we were very concerned to hear about the possibility of making world history 1 and two into an elective course um I know that's not being asked for next year but the possibility even in the future is concerning to us uh we did send an open letter by my colleague Derrik best to the superintendent to uh Miss Cox as well as some other uh I think rich melish as well uh expressing in depth our concerns um especially around Equity but I'll just paraphrase some of that for you um we believe that removing this credit requirement even though it's not required by the state would be a mistake um it would worsen
145educational outcomes for students and perhaps most most critically decrease Equity um one of our most important goals as a district right now is equity and the reduction of inequity amongst our students um and as you all know this is articulated in executive limitation number 16 uh so one of the strategies we've all been talking about is increasing choice but I want to emphasize that often choice is not Equity right ensuring one does not always ensure the other uh in this particular instance it is our professional opinion that allowing students to opt out of world history in favor of electives would not result in Greater Equity but less Equity it will result in the deao tracking of students and height the heighten the disproportionality between the highest and low ACH lowest achieving groups uh I strongly
146recommend that you do not consider removing world history one and two it is we consider a foundational course for the rest of our social studies uh years uh is a class where students learn how to take notes where they learn how to write essays or they learn how to take tests how to study um to examine uh bias to think critically which is so critically important in our uh social media age um we are all very concerned I know that Skyline has also expressed their concern I haven't heard from Liberty um but this is something that would be an extremely large and negative change We Believe for uh all three Comprehensive High Schools thank you thank you is there any more public input in the room on Zoom yes okay Al righty Gwen Lloyd do
147you wna turn on your camera and unmute and introduce yourself in your attendance area oh I don't know if this is working well there we go um yes uh good evening and thank you for taking comment on this important subject my name is Gwen Lloyd I'm Humanities teacher at Sky hear any volume oh am I muted let's see there's no indicator there's no indicator okay so you're not muted ah can you hear me now can you hear me now you might need to make sure that Zoom under the microphone yeah oh about that it's actually looking at her her microphone something else on her computer did that there you go there we go okay all right sorry about that um good evening thank you for taking public comment on this important subject my name is
148Gwen Lloyd I'm a Humanities teacher at Skyline High School and I'm a parent of a Skyline graduate there's a few points I want to make I'll try to keep my my comments as short as possible but while the suggestion for world history um that the district is proposing does meet the requirements of OPI it does not meet the recommended setup for those credits in Social Studies by OPI and to Echo what the previous speaker said the district puts a lot of energy into claiming to embrace and not claiming I don't want to say claiming into embracing diversity equity and inclusion but when you really think about that where is that reflected in our curriculum and the humanities is an area where it is very specifically echoed in our curriculum in world history where teachers are
149able to teach students about the diversity of cultures in this world that we live in cutting world history 1 and two belies that commitment well it's true that we could offer some great electives um the reality is the students who most need to take classes like um cultural studies of other areas are not the students who will enroll in those electives the place that they get that is in our world history one and two classes starting all students at world history 3 means that our world history curriculum is destined to be primarily e uh Euro focused and making this change would put our students at a disadvantage as compared to nearby districts Belleview requires three and a half districts for so excuse me credits for social studies to graduate half a credit more than we
150do including three semesters of world history two in American history uh one or a half in excuse me one in um semesters three semesters of World History Two of Us history one of American government and one in current world issues Seattle School District allows for more student Choice by having all students take world history one and then students can choose if choice is what you're going for between World History 2 ethnic studies World History 2 AP World History 1 or AP human geography and the choices are similar for world history 3 but students are still getting the content from that time period student choice is important and it's true that education is not a one-size fits-all solution moving to a seven period day did much to give students choice in their studies that said history
151doesn't happen in a vacuum and students need the foundations of the past to learn about the present and the future they're going to live in we can't possibly teach about the rise of dictators if we don't explain the conditions of the world at the time beginning before World War II and how are they going to understand those conditions if they don't understand what the world looked like coming out of World War I history isn't a place for student Choice students only take courses they're comfortable with and frankly if you're comfortable learning about history you may not really be learning history we don't give students choice in early math courses they have to take Algebra 1 before moving to algebra two and this is W up okay thank you um that basically I appreciate that you're
152putting this off until next year and not making this requirement this for the next year's graduates thank you thank you who's the next speaker okay Deborah Walters if you wna turn on your video and unmute I do hang on one second I'm like you know I I was like so so so intuitive with Gwen's uh you know thing so give me give me one second sorry I just want to talk about the uh the uh social requirement uh so we have a concern at at Skyline that uh our kids are required to take world history one two and three which you know the state says we don't need to do and we have uh we have block scheduling and integrated learning and I just want to talk about how we can maybe like you know
153reschedule that um because our students don't need to do that and so I'm hoping that we can have a conversation about you know how that impacts our students um uh moving forward so uh any thoughts on that we we we have uh submitted data showing that the integrated block schedule um impacts our students and we're hoping especially our students with uh IEPs and so we're hoping that we can get something on the table to uh have a conversation what do you think thank you for your feedback any others the RoR on Zoom okay thank you now I wanted to open up to board questions and discussion I think it would be easiest if we focus on just one piece at a time uh I think the math part would be first uh and again this
154is just Administration proposal what the board president has been over at least the time I've been here has been three years of math in high school um maybe I'll start with a question and then go to a comment so of other courses taken in Middle School High School courses taken in Middle School um is math currently an outlier in yes being used for and so what are the other areas that can take in your Spanish class often is taken in that is transcribed over as a World Language credit is that the only other Science Biology bi Science Biology biology okay yeah um so I guess for me if I go back to my earlier concern about the gap between the math requirements and college I feel like I get further apart with that ch change
155um I understand I I actually as I asked that question I was like well I guess I don't understand why there's a difference in their treatment um between classes that are high school classes taken in middle school but that's I guess my concern is just do does that Gap that I'm already concerned about which is getting to the algebra based course in senior year does that widen because I only have to do my fresh and sophomore year so that would be my concern or some students just freshman year which correct would be highly problematic if they want to go to school like University of Washington which requires that you do high level math or science course in your senior year and they explicitly spell that out so we would be potentially doing students a disservice
156who haven't navigated our system before um I see student I want to hold off on that make sure I hear um me look like director Taylor was going to say something based on again very obvious question same curriculum I mean is essentially same curriculum and the data shows that are again the middle school kids go on to do very well in the next series of courses at high school which I would say that if this if the if we have a student that's doing algebra or algebra and geometry in middle school odds are they're pursuing multiple years of math they're doing that so they can pursue multiple years of math in high school so I'm not sure the change would be meaningful for them number one and then I worry about the equity appearance for
157oh why do some students not have to take three years of math in high school and others do and I want all of our students to feel like they're not at a disadvantage or uh have a different requirements for graduation if they didn't take X math in middle school and I I think that impact is more concerning to me especially when aligned with I'm not a senior parent but that whole concept of there's college readiness and then there's college readiness so sorry director Point yeah thank you uh just a point of clarification because I I guess I was getting this confused I was thinking it would only be the eighth grade year but is it it to me it's sounding like it could be your seventh e8th grade and then freshman that would potentially be
158the only time you'd have to take math in high school is that correct that would be correct okay although the data does not show that that plays out the likelihood that the kids who are very successful in Middle School High School courses in middle school math go on to pursue math throughout yes our students are pretty smart like this class students have learned which state tests they don't need to take and therefore we see widely variances and I just want to be clear like I personally don't have very strong feelings either way on this it's just an opportunity that would allow students some flexibility in their courses it would allow them to perhaps um pursue math uh higher level math we've got some you know it would just open up opportunities for students another point
159of clarification because I have an elementary school students so this is all new to me so you could get potentially a middle school kid could get two years credit of math correct well could we just say one I mean is that a possibility saying that you can get one year oh Max Max and that would then require two years of high school I mean we can say whatever we want as is the answer to that I think it it does address the concerns that I think that director Mullin has brought up about what message is that sending directly or indirectly as especially to your point of a rising Middle School Parent who for me now have being a sophomore parent and still feeling completely clueless of this whole concept of what's next and February is
160terrifying to me that I have to do registration again for the the junior year and that that message might send the wrong Dr coin looks like you're ready to yeah have another one I guess hypothetically speaking though if we look at the different Pathways and we're looking at the career pathway if a student is looking at that career pathway it seems to me it might make sense for them to be freed up to take more courses so maybe this math option would make sense I guess I see a plus with that but then I also see well what in middle school or early high school that make that decision might be too soon and then if they suddenly decide into sophomore year junior year oh I think I do want to go to college that
161could be a bit of a challenge because they've kind of pigeon hold themselves into a certain track so just a thought I'm thinking out kind of contradicting myself but kind of broader concerns I'm saying thank you want to open up to Mia um I think that a lot of what we should also be looking at is that those while we get you know the Spanish and the biology credits that you can take in eth grade go into your um transcript as SP Spanish and science credits you just get elective credits with math and um at that point you know it it almost you know not discredits because you should be taking the class for learning for the sake of learning but it almost discredits the work students are putting into those math classes only to
162get elective credits out of them and I understand the worry with that gap between um high school and college if students you know only take math for those three years and don't take it for the other three years of high school but I also don't see any student chooses to take High School level math in seventh grade not continuing math in their High School career that makes sense completely makes sense was was my my point of if we make the change what benefit would that be versus then we have to look and see then what would be the risk so if it doesn't provide any benefit but it does provide potential risk that's the policy part that we live in and that's the tension that we the space that we're at right now so it's
163you bring that up can I go to students before absolutely I think it seems that the issue is with the um High School what like what's required to graduate high school versus what's required to graduate I mean go to college and I think I think in general I think whatever should be whatever we need to go to graduate to college at least in Washington and at least in Washington state that should be I think posted very clearly on our webs on a website or some of some sort like very close by to the um I to the high school grad requirements so that people who do want to um go to college will know exactly what they have to do and I mean I don't think colleges would accept taking only one year of math
164in high school I think they still have the three years of math and High School requirements so maybe that should be made pretty clear um and I mean hopefully that would minimize the risk of kids not um going to college because of their math credits yeah I think that highlights what director Mullin was mentioning director Taylor um trying to remember my question now um is there any evidence in the reverse or a concern that if you didn't give the credit you'd have a chilling effect in Middle School meaning kids why am I going to take advanced math when I'm just going to have to go to no that's not a con it wasn't at least I can speak as a Middle School Parent and like who took two years of student took two years of
165math like algebra and geometry in middle school I then three more four more yeah yeah I mean for for my kiddo that went to Liberty it was you know algebra and geometry because it was really that was the M that was the that was the advanced track right so that was back when every student was pushed towards um algebra in 8th grade and then we went away with that with common core now we're sitting back there so I think we are going to have a lot more kids that are going to fall into that taking algebra in seventh grade geometry in eighth grade because we really do have so many students that are capable of that and they don't I don't know anyone that comes out and go yeah but I'm going to be I'm
166really good at math but I'm going to become a a lawyer or an English teacher so I'm not really going to pursue those higher maths so I think that's why we continue to see it to me where this would be effective if we started talking about about opportunities for project-based learning in high school in which I want my algebra class or my geometry class to count because I want to take an elective that's going to be a project in which I'm going to use you know I'm going to study the thickness of the Arctic over time and be able to do all of these high level calculations like we did have a student do several years back um and had this whole used Excel to be able to watch over time the melting of the
167ice sheets it was fantastic and really high level math so if we were looking at that as the option so I think it to me what's more important is what would we be replacing it with and I think even with the next conversation around social studies it's not so much about what we want to do with what we have but what is what goes in that place so I think it would depend on what the thoughts are around what are the options for something that might be a highlevel math that's just different from calc AB or calc BC and what you're describing though isn't that what we already have with students that can go into CTE into computer science and Advanced Computer Science so I think I I guess I'm putting myself squarely and the
168I I don't like the change because I think the whole point of accelerating in middle school is to open up the options at high school and those may include yes I did three years but some of those years are computer science or some of those years are another discipline um that would take me further down a different exploratory path the kids who can handle algebra and geometry in Middle School can handle algebra and geometry in Middle School we're not adjusting that but it does by doing that it should open them up to additional choices to use those three credits for um and so I guess I've walked myself too I I don't like I'm not in favor of of the change because I don't want to lose the potential of that acceleration to get them
169either to count goodness that terrifies me as a words person but to Cal PC or to advance computer side in high school or to my dream of them actually being able to get certified to work in computer science before they're done or to work in something else so which so I guess for me I don't I don't love it see whereas I almost hear that and see the opposite like if they could say my algebra and geometry are already done that leaves me two holes of electives where I can say and I'm going to fill those electives with compai and then compai project we don't take away that they're done right and and they would they still can do the compsite and that still counts as high Lev math their High L ma that what's
170that that's a current pathway that exists today what I don't want to do is take away the incentive to stretch at the top end of it because they're already going to be done and so um yeah yeah I tend to agree yeah so I do want to keep this separate uh discussion before we actually talk about social studies because I think this is what's before us uh so I would love to get to conclusion and if we don't think we're going to get to conclusion tonight and don't want to take a vote on this that's also okay but any more thoughts on the math discussion um so I don't think I don't think we're gonna get there tonight I'm there I don't think we're gonna get there but we you could be different um and
171I think maybe there is an additional piece of like actually seeing the the the data on choice for for students like where are they actually laying out of making Choice across the potential acceleration middle school and then the four years of high school like I I I think that would be maybe an additional enhancement for others although I I'm there oh I think there might be more people there than you think okay so yeah other thoughts or okay then I think I'm ready to entertain a motion and then we can open more discussion or I guess we are I work have to modifier motion is what we're have to do because it's you can do an amendment to your motion to actually I want to ask Marty so would this be cleaner to reject what
172we motioned and then start with a clean motion I think if we are only changing the grad requirements around math we can be specific that we want and and and to be clear is the amendment that we want to amend it so that that it is three years required in the high school yes okay so I move we amend the graduation requirements for echogen Liberty Skyline and isqua high school to include three years of mathematics in the high school I think last time it was listed as grades 9 through 12 but grades n through2 second okay and before I open up for discussion just to be clear to our students and Community this is actually a a vote to not change how it currently has been for perpetuity for all intens of purposes okay yeah
173okay uh board discussion on this amendment so I must have missed do we know what year did we say that it wasn't the third year wasn't required to be algebra 3 or Algebra 2 I'm sorry has that been a while did I just miss that over time because that one I'm like oh it's not too okay I but there do not know the answer that was a state board change yeah okay when that came because that's where stateboard dictates what we must complete no I'm doing a happy dance about that any other board discussion on the amendment okay uh yes I was just wondering what was what was the what would be the general student opinion on um this like would they be supportive of it and like how would that compare to for example
174Math teachers and how would they be supported like do we have that data by any chance just curious we have six students here so well oh oh I was talking about um the St student population as a whole so like more like a greater number of responses probably than six yeah we as uh as Cox uh said this is for current eighth graders so I'm not sure that that would be the Right audience that we would want to ask the question of to have that I think understanding that they would need to have about what director M said is as now you're applying to college and what is that gap between those two so I appreciate your sentiment um I'm not sure that that would be um something that would change our opinion I would
175suspect that the Math teachers I actually talk to them um and they are supportive of either changing or not changing it doesn't have an impact on them right because I think that that they would believe like we do that the students who take early higher level math in Middle School will keep on taking it so they don't worry that they're going to not be filling those courses uh we worry about again if it's not a benefit what are the p risks of which I think have been highlighted by director points other for discussion all righty uh all those in favor of the amendment say I I I any opposed okay uh now we're moving to vote on the amended motion for adopting the graduation requirements for the class of 2028 Areo Glenn Gibson isqua Liberty
176and Skyline High Schools uh any discussion further oh I think the only question I had jotted down for myself was around PE waivers what do we allow versus what the state allows because there was a whole thing somewhere and I'm trying to remember where I read it saying that except for athletics if they're involved in athletics or there was like a list of things where you could wave the PE requirement and I'm not sure are we doing that are we is that something new which it wouldn't apparently it isn't because it's not on your new list it's we follow the state guidelines for the waving of PE PE okay that was my question now I'm done other questions or for discussion okay heing none uh all those in favor of the amended motion ahead of
177us say I I I I any oppose there are your graduation requirements for 2028 before we move off from this topic though I do want to move back to the social studies part because I don't know what uh interest or desire and this is where I would really do want to hear the student voice since you guys at this level have already experienced the social studies curriculum and you've heard from teachers already as well so it really would be your perspective on if freeing up another semester of elective would be valuable to you that's really the question in front of us I think we can always customize and scope and sequence specific learning targets we want our social studies curriculum to embody uh and we wouldn't want to miss the things that have been highlighted
178by our our teachers and counselors whove spoke uh but the question is is now that you've experienced what you've experienced in our system what was the value versus is having another semester of flexibility and just to clarify and it would be flexibility as to a social studies credit not just a random credit um I personally didn't take the world history one and two because I did ninth grade I did AP human geography and then I went into AP World History so I can't speak for the benefit of those classes but I think it depends on the range of social studies classes offered you know if are there really that many more social studies electives um that students would really want to take over world history one and two I don't think that they're bad classes
179to take I think they're great classes to take so um I think s and I did have a thought um we both took world history one and two um something that we discussed and noted was that a lot of what we learned and what a lot of what we retained from those classes was a lot of European history we didn't learn a ton about the cultures of other countries around the world and other nations around the world specifically the Middle East and Asia um so hearing something about ethnic studies that sounds like something I would be interested in I do think that uh some of our teachers in the public comments they brought up good things about um um having World histories want into to they do teach basic foundations about learning about bias and
180about imperialism and it's just about um like dictatorships and how like basically how great civilizations came to be I think those are great foundational skills for observing uh history in the coming years and those classes in the coming years um just building skills like writing essays um stuff like that um but I do think that having more diversity in our history curriculum is could be very beneficial especially like in recent events we don't uh in schools we don't hear a lot about um the cultures and histories of other countries besides those in Europe and the US yeah um I I would agree with what um Naomi said about um world history especially um world history 2 um as I remember was mostly um basically the same thing as you learn in um the first semester
181of AP Euro but with less detail so it's very very European focused um if uh I think though yeah I do agree also with the sentiment of the social studies teachers that the that um world history one and two they teach you essential skills and I mean I also think it's um it's good to know about um the ancient world which I think is world history one and then um the more well I think world H to focuses more on the Renaissance period um onwards but yeah um I think it's good to know about those periods and especially how they shape because the what happened in those periods directly shapes The Next Period and then each of those periods would then shape what's happening right now so I think it would be very useful um
182to keep that yeah sorry the Gibson model is very different and we achieve our uh social studies requirements through projects and stuff but I think it would be really important to open a space for current world event discussions and I don't know exactly what is talked about in social studies like and world history like one in two versus in three but I think it's really and I mean public comment and just events around us and what have been talked to like by other students in my schools and also in at Liberty I've been talked to by some friends who have talked about how like it would be really important to be able to also like learning to disagree and stuff like that I don't know uh I think it'd be important to open a space
183for that so I don't know if it would be within world history or an elective or something like that yeah since Leilani mentioned current events I actually would like to add this but I remember that um in isqua high that we do have or at least um when I was in junior year we did have a current events class but that was an elective so yeah I just wanted to throw that out there thank you oh Mia youe I guess I think the main thing that we're saying overall is that um making world history 1 and two optional is kind of only a viable option if the electives offered are also Val valuable for um like the cultures and current events offered and teach those foundational skills that are really essential to learn in world
184history one and two any board uh thoughts especially if you a lot of current High School parents here oh I I'm is someone talking about making world history one and two optional because that seems to be the basic gist of this whole discussion we're having in in in the future because it is not it's option in um in the state requirements have changed actually changed several years ago but we didn't so that it's optional to have some type of social study requirement and we have continued to say yes uh your social studies requirement is a world one world two class and not something else that follows the standards but might be different but we are not currently talking about changing it I I think what we're looking is is there head nods to have further
185discussion of this or is there not that's I think really what I would love to walk away from this as someone who has to do agenda planning with our superintendent I think um well I have the luxury of I had a discussion with uh executive director melish um last week and I do think that it's something to consider um and and part of that is because I'm very much of the just because we've always done it doesn't mean we need to continue to do it I would like to hear what would that look like not that I value what world history 1 and two are but I'm like is there a way to frame things differently so that when your choices your choices might be about um governmental structures over time right it might be
186uh a world history that really talks about migration of peoples over time right so how can you look at world history in different ways teaching to the standards but in something that might be completely different than the way we've done it before but really capture so so many of those topics I think too just as a point of clarification too I think with our world history curriculum I'm envisioning it basic you know from public comment too I think it will evolve over time too to cover some of the ethnic studies we've talked about I think you know some of the other broader topics as well I I guess I have concerns with the idea of not making it a requirement I'm pretty staunch in my belief that we it absolutely needs to be a requirement
187um one and two I mean I'd be open to hearing more broad conversation but I'm pretty set in my belief on that so I will say from the macro level I think this type of learning is very important for the some of the public comment that was brought up about equity and cultural awareness and things of that nature I'm open to a discussion as to are there other ways to get to those learnings I mean I I can see that there could be other course offerings perhaps but as of right now I'm probably with director coin and that I would not support a change right now without at least a lot more information along those lines what that would look like but I I you know talking to a history major here so um I
188just really believe that it's very very valuable right I mean you move into words it's my L my Lane the math pathway my goodness I I could barely survive geometry I guess we we we have these unusual conversations where they kind of come in backwards for me so I guess maybe if I can try to make sure I understand what the forwards conversation is so the state has changed the requirements set we have not yet changed our requirements up there is as with any other curriculum some ongoing discussion about where we should be or where we should not be from a requirement perspective it seems that which makes sense to me how many credits is an interesting conversation but then there seems to be a discussion about what are the right things to fulfill those
189requirements and how committed are we to those individually I think what our students are saying and certainly in my experience we have classes called world history that tend to be more eurocentric so my hope would be if we are going to uncork what's happening in that curriculum yes we should uncor what do they cover what's the ground they cover and to what end whether that's in the coure world history one and two and I'm sure the professionals will look at that versus what are the additional add-on electives I'm happy to have that as a future as a future conversation it seems like we kind of for me like we got there through some weird innuendo about potentially something happening so if that's the discussion I'm all in I I think for me I I don't
190really have a strong opinion either either way I think when you look at slide four of what was presented when it's listed as 1.0 credits of social studies when in reality at all of our comprensive high schools it's not an elective we probably need to just call this out as saying 1.0 Credit World History freshman year and I think that's the rub for me it what we present needs to match with what we act what our students actually experience yeah because to say there's Choice when there's not really choice if that's what we believe that our community which we're here to represent wants and is best for our student body then I'm buy for us to plant that flag on the ground and say this is a graduation requirement but I think what's misleading is
191when it's LED with on our presentation tonight as 1.0 elective does does that make sense and I think that's that's why for me I I don't know where that comes from or what the intention is of that but it sends a message of I think it brings us to why we're here talking about it yeah so I will say that in the last page where it talks about the math and the world history it still says that world history one and two are required so I agree so it doesn't match what's up what's up above yes when you look at that individual schools one that you open up they all says it gives the blurb saying this is a requirement at which insert whatever name of school um so I think that having that be
192required uh is good I I don't think that I'm hearing an appetite for us to be moving in Direction except I think the question that's been before us through all the public input we've heard over the past month as well as what students have elevated is how do we do it yes and how do we also ensure that our students are getting a comprehensive view of current events and being able to apply all of those things that address bias and how to accurately look at information and then use those lenses to look at today and I I I think we're hearing how do we how do we go forward in that and that's where you get to do your good work yeah I mean the yes and uh the question has come before us of
193what are we requiring above and beyond the state requirements and this was the right opportunity to have that conversation as we considered that and discuss that in the context of the context of today uh as well as the future of potentially where we need to go to prepare students and support students in their voice and choice as well so it is going to always be a tension of choices as we continue forward but we wanted to lay the foundation for that conversation um and tease that out together moraldo I I if if we do have a conversation with about this which I I would appreciate I would like to understand why the state Ed uh State Board of Education changed that because if they're offering flexibility and we want rigidity I need to understand why
194they wanted that flexibility and what we're saying when we don't offer it yes I I don't want us to leave the topic but it helps us know that how direct will correctly said is like seems like we're entering this backwards Mak sense is what is it that we want to have the discussion what are the boundaries of it and what is what do we want the outcomes to be and sounds like the appetite is not to change what we have necessarily but to further explore why do we have auxil what is it that we keep and how do we do guessing um I can't I of course can't find it now but on this topic in one of these documents I think it says that IHS is the outlier IHS had a slightly different requirement
195in one of these um so on social studies there was one it's IHS because that's why it piqu my interest but one of of them had a slightly different social studies requirement and now I can't find it I do we even an answer they don't think I I'll find it but in one maybe it's one of the matches in the document are you referring to the the third page of the uh grad requirements documents where it says uh isqua requires an additional point. five credit of world history yes that is actually stated in all of them oh so that's not isqua high school that is the isqua yeah it's not calling it as an outlier compared to their schools it's calling it out because it's the the target audience is that high school because it's
196saying that we're also requiring that above and beyond so yes so it says skylines is different yeah so it'll say the same thing with a different that's so weird well that's just weird language sorry well I I agree especially since it's world history 3 so this this is this this is bringing us back to where actually one of the queries has has has been which is what are what are we requiring above and beyond and this is trying to make that clear but I hear your point on the language and it's repeated through each course C each as if it's it's yeah but it's I understand the interpretation of how that could be and I think it goes back to director gallers Point too around making sure we have that consistency because it is something
197if you read it out of context it appears that this High has something different so yeah it just proves that point in we would just replace that with the isqua school district requires at the high schools including or something like that to make that yes that might help okay okay so I've captured uh so State flexibility versus local rigidity I think so we can certainly have a a really nice work study about that and I'll try and reach out and find a state board or OPI person to come in and talk about to be to be able to bounce questions off of as well as you know we obviously want to have our our district leadership and staff and teachers and students there okay uh any other comments on this topic before we move on
198to the next the only one I had is z i don't really still know what it is as a parent of a sophomore i' not convince my sophomore has ever actually open Zell uh and I've seen headshakes from I can confirm that there is a lot of Zell entry happening as we speak for senior because I think it's Reed so your senior's doing it for yes and all of and all of her friends yeah if it's something that is important it would be great can this live with our canvas homepage where parents can also visualize it like we can visualize things that we see in other courses good question is that technology ex we will we will find out more yeah I mean the Lisa neighbors is a expert on it so we can we
199can follow United Way like thermost that thing so you know like the first year got done the second year got done the third year got done uh a progress monitoring visual that's yeah uh by by 25 50 75 and 100 okay the the uh this and this is why one of our strategies is to make sure that we are leveraging all of the tools available for high school Beyond planning to ensure that we are and and so this is this speaks to informing that thank you okay uh the next item is legislative matters does AJ I'm gonna say that AJ and I had a meeting was it yesterday it was yesterday yes so and his question was so what's my job as legislative advocacy and then number one on my list is connect with har
200so perfect uh we will definitely need to do some very aggressive planning for legislative conference in three weeks time y as a reminder that's a day on the hill do you want to share what that is just so for those who are listening oh sure yeah uh so uh end of this month we will be down in Olympia and it's a two-day conference one day as we're all together there's some sessions where you get to hear from speakers in order to prepare for the day the second day is where we go and do local or visits with our local legislators particularly in the 5ifth and 41st legislative districts in the past we've also tried to have Governor meet and greets and we've met with other uh Executives uh in Olympia so that is that and
201I think you have students that are identified yes we do perfect and is there any other Federal updates as far as you want to just map out what's coming up so um also coming up at the end of the month same time frame is advocacy Institute so I will be um at that and the um beliefs and resolution committee which I happen to chair um has come up with a priority list so rather than uh basically looking at what Congress is doing and trying to put our messaging around that um in August at Summer Leadership we did a whole prioritization like what are issues that are important to Schoolboard members that are federally related and so we've built backwards and which is really the way we should have we should be going to them to
202talk about here's what our insights are so we have um meetings that we'll be attending uh with uh representative shrier and representative Smith as well as uh Senators uh Murray and um kwell so that will that will all happen but I think it's really going through this process with the beliefs and resolutions committee I feel like we're at a point to really talk to our membership about what to advocate for and how to do that and so we've been doing a lot of prep work so I think that's a big thing I'm excited about I get to go on day on the hill uh two days in a row so I'm uh with another organization so I'm really excited about that thank you for that update uh next item is announcements and correspondence generally sent
203everything to Bethany is there anything else that isn't that you need to present not seeing anything uh last item is calendar and future agenda topics uh thank you Bethany for adding these can you clarify what the first one is is that is that just with Sydney and I that is not a formal linkage meeting between two public entities but it is a linkage meeting between uh some a p portion of the board with the uh the council uh so board leadership of council leadership yes have we reached out about a linkage potential yet okay so we definitely need to prioritize that uh so uh the next one is the 2024 PTSA General and it's not General it's PTSA Council meetings in our building yes okay so uh those are ones that uh historically were attended
204by director Weaver I think it would be great to open them up so Council leadership so it's the PTSA presidents from all of our buildings uh have a chance to get to meet us and so my preference would be for each of us to take one of those dates and then the same thing with the 2024 PTSA general or or leadership meetings and that's with the council president and the superintendent and a school board member which again was uh classically director Weaver my preference would be that we also did up those dates the times uh and location are are already identified there so if you would mind taking a look at that uh we already calendered the executive sessions for superintended valuation does that mean we have to take action on those is that why
205they're here did we not take action I thought we took action on okay okay so those are those are done and then now you've listed sit plans and my question for you is uh you listed just one elementary school because you plan on having all 16 of our elementary schools yes and then secondaries combined because they're they're collaborating together so that's why there's two instead of three because in the past when we did it by level it was elementary middle and then High we did and we did fourer it was like two we we split up uh that's that's why I was asking yes so fair we were wanting to do it all together yes okay no thank you so we asked for our Administration to give us dates long far in advance for those
206jumping out those two I guess we need to look make sure wasda isn't on because it often starts early when we're in can so maybe you can look at that November 28 see where look at if You' look at Wasa right now would we would it be possible to separate those out I'm just thinking workwise with wasda with all of that concentrated right around that time of November would be hard I don't know if there's a way to move one of the sit meetings in October or yeah I mean I think that's why we're doing it far enough advance that these are proposed dates that feedback here um so it's really looking at those two dates and I think it would the that second one is gonna be I bet that's we'll have to come
207back to a proposal October is such the beginning of the school year still that it's and and we'd want to do them earlier so it's more about being able to look forward into the school year and Tak into feedback so November was kind of The Sweet Spot but we can we can come back to you with some other uh options on that second date on November 20th and then conference is the 21st through the 23rd right but that means that means there'll be a was the board meeting theight for right there's two of us best just looking so okay so means we'll be find out like the morning of that right okay uh does anyone uh have any of these states if not we can always do this off F but if someone wants to
208claim any of the PTSA General membership meeting or council meeting dates or the leadership with council president meeting dates this is the moment to do that for the PTSA General meet uh membership meeting um I'll take the March 21st meeting I can do the February 15th as well okay and you're capturing all that's okay any am I wrong wrer is for the leadership meeting dates PTSA leadership me is it March 3rd a Sunday or is that a meeting on a Sunday I haven't looked that far ahead March 3rd is a Sunday are you working every day I'm it's meant to say March 7th for the PTSA leadership meeting yep no worries okay so March 7 well I can do that March 7 yeah okay so director Taylor's claiming March 7th look at January 18th right
209now and then we will end this meaning so I think I can do January 18th and then uh lastly would you uh for the next time send our foundation date meetings so that way we can make sure that those are all covered because there may be dates that I can't as soon as I see them I'll let you know okay if there's anything else for uh calendar or future agenda topics I'll take the uh May 2nd PTSA leadership meeting I'll do that one did anybody claim that one already okay I'll take that easier to start planing ahead now yeah that's why asking as much calendaring ahead of time as possible that'll be easier for all of us okay perfect well uh if there's nothing else