001public comment I have none listed uh for public comment in the room is there anyone on Zoom okay thank you with that we will we will move forward to the approval of the consent agenda do I have a motion I move the consent agenda be approved is presented second thank you consent consent agenda is a meeting management tool whereby the board is able to pass multiple items with one motion uh consent agenda has been reviewed by the board prior to this meeting all those in favor I I I any against no consent agenda passes uh next we have the establishment of the regular agenda superintendent is there any changes to the regular agenda uh there are no changes to the regular agenda thank you okay um let's move forward our first agenda item is a
002recap of the board work study uh the board met with um members of the administration just before this meeting on el14 which is our instructional programs um this time slot is an opportunity for sharing of learnings and insights from that session who would like to get us started like we just wait for you um I um thought we had a really good conversation um I particularly liked uh when we discussed um director gallinger's point about um why do we have predictable outcomes and I think you were the one who said what would have to be true for us to have unpredictable outcomes at elementary school and I thought that that was a very rich comp conversation about what do we need to do what tools do teachers need to have in their back pockets that
003they can immediately say this is a student who has this need and this need and this need here are the things I can give him um and I I appreciated the depth of that conversation I thought I thought it was very rich thank you yeah I just asked myself like should we have this conversation uh every meeting in order to finally I mean I think what one the conversation isn't done uh but we have to get to a point where something's different and I don't know what it's going to take I but I I I know that uh we've got to do something different on behalf of students after students after students after coming through our system and I think one of the keys is when we prove to our students and our community and
004the the region that we can do it differently I think from a pure marketing standpoint it's critical like when we see we don't we see losses in our elementary education students and families we aren't seeing that in our secondary schools so I think this gives us an opportunity and should give us motivation to figure out something different in our elementary schools that will set us apart from the region for Why students need to come and uh benefit from education in our system I think the other thing we touched on was what opportunities for students to really explore their learning and um I still there's so many limitations in Middle School um and just the opportunity because of what how we've structured it our requirements around classes um that's driven by the state and how we've
005structured the schools but also in who chooses what opportunities are available for electives and is that chosen because those are what interests students or is it chosen because um teachers have five classes to teach and four of them have already been dedicated so they're the additional they have a a class they need to teach and it's a teacher selection so are the adults in the building choosing what opportunities for exploration or our students and I think that um that that's something I still didn't feel I really had an answer to so I'm looking forward to further discussion on this topic and I think to um to to roll that forward into um into high school I thought this was kind of laying the groundwork for the conversation that we're ultimately going to have with regard
006to High School 4 and Comprehensive High School 4 and what changes are we going to make at each High School to give students more um career related opportun unities and certificate related opportunities and how you know that's going to be a place where the choices will be different at each School intentionally so and how do we manage that right that isn't something that we talked about in this work study but I think some of this conversation sort of lays the groundwork for that conversation that we will be having over the course of the next year so that'll be fun yeah I think the will spend the better part of probably the next year really focused on choice and opportunity and how that shows up today we spent a bit of time talking about that even
007at elementary what is the what are the mechanisms even starting at elementary for choice and for exploration and how those can be consistently implemented or consistently available which is one of the themes and so I what I appreciate about the conversation is maybe getting to some further discussion about um what the board's communicated as a want of consistent implementation of program um and and this idea of oh where's my piece paper I liked this the idea of firm goals but flexible means like how do we make sure that we have consistent outcomes um which director gallender was talking about across our schools that we have great goals setting but that it's really the supports and the means in which to achieve that which we have to make sure are um in place and flexible and
008how do we do that on a bit more of a known and thematic way we spend I think a great amount of energy and we have such talented people working at the individual teaching an individual student support level but I think we really do have an opportunity to look at where we know we have um some consistent cases of challenges and prepackage supports pre have those available you know really immediately um available so I think that idea of flexible means um not just at the individual student level but at maybe thematic concerns we may find that multiple students have and making sure that buildings are resourc teachers are resourc to provide those um to provide those quickly and um consistently across the the building so obviously the flexibility remains with teaching but the supports can
009be a bit more Universal I think that's um that's super important as as we go forward we'll we'll continue that conversation for sure we didn't get through the entire discussion um because it was so rich so we'll make sure we have another work study scheduled as we have our runup to actually monitoring um el14 instructional program superintendent anything you would like to add as well uh I would just say we did touch on some conversation around we can't do it all but we have to focus within our resources both uh financial and human capital and time uh about where we can and should be applying our efforts to make sure that we are uh delivering on that for all kids in the ways that they need it so that was something that we talked about
010any other final thoughts from the board one thing we didn't talk about was that the very first bullet point in el14 is to ensure that instructional programs are based on a comprehensive and objective review of best instructional PR practice research so where does that step in with some of the other conversation um around are there are there research-based evidence-based programs that we um can be using is that what we're basing our current programs on and are we finding the results or is it that really if you look across the nation like the um opportunity Gap is nearly Universal are but are there opportunity but are there places where they've done something different and gotten different outcomes so I think I think it's a challenge for staff when most of most of the school districts Across
011the Nation deal with this issue and it doesn't seem like anyone's kind of cracked the nut open to be able to figure out what's what's inside what can we be doing differently but are there opportunities are there places that have and um what has that different thinking Pro produced yes uh what must be true in order to have a very different outcome is is uh I think will be a good start of that conversation so with that I think we can move on to our next agenda item which is on um resolution 128 and bond refunding um superintendent great I'm gonna believe we have folks joining us yes we do have uh folks joining us but we're going to get a preview and preface of the bond refunding topic by Mariah bassic first Executive Director
012of Finance and budget um as well as we need em motions apologies I apologize yes not a little out of order so I was just gonna ask about that okay I move the board adopt resolution number 128 providing for the issuance and sale of refunding bonds in the aggregate principal amount not to exceed $37 million and delegating to the superintendent Andor chief of finance and operations of the district the authority to determine the structure of the bonds approve the interest rates maturity dates and principal maturities for the bonds second thank you extra weight time I was giving just to make sure yeah so we there there are changes to the markets and so there's also just a preview for um this next topic and we'll be joined by legal counsel as well yes thank you
013good evening R anisic Executive Director of Finance and budget uh so in the prior year we refunded a bond that resulted in in $2 million in tax savings and uh at their last meeting Piper Sandler and Municipal advisers presented on another bond refunding that could result in upwards of um 1.5 million and at the low end it was $350,000 um so in recent it's uh the Market's always changing and uh right now the interest rates have gone up significantly so the market conditions are not at this time favor able um however we're presenting this resolution in case as because we can't predict the market um so the the interest rates might go down and then it would make it favorable to refund the bond and result in some tax savings so I would like to
014invite Scott MC Janet to come up from K&L Gates um our bond Council uh to talk about the resolution thank you so much thank thank you for having me out it's been a a year or two since we did our last Bond and it's great to be out again I love the room and someone's got barbecue back there and I really want to know where you're getting your food from it smells amazing um tonight you have in front of you resolution 128 H as with your last Bond resolution it's in the form of a delegating resolution which is not approving a sale which is already happened as we did 20 odd years ago but is delegating to executive staff the authority to complete the bond resolution when the market timing Is Right without having to
015rush you in for a special meeting ever more complicated these days is you have to post notice and get it up on your website and everything the resolution is uh as you were discussing your last meeting refunding your 2013 bonds they have two term bonds outstanding the 28 and the 29's for about 35 million your Redemption date the first available date has already passed that you could call these these bonds are callable at any point when they're in the money and after you have adopted this resolution authorizing the issuance of the refunding bonds to take them out as with your previous delegation resolution the most important features of the resolution are the box that you wrap around it in terms of limiting the authority of the district to go out and complete the sale so
016you are not going to do it if you can't realize Deb service savings your savings Target is set fairly modestly at 1% but if you're not going to make at least 1% come back and talk to the board and let's see if there's a reason why we want to go forward with this there's designated Personnel who are authorized to complete the transaction your superintendent and um your Executive Director of Finance Mariah and the sale terms in section 10 capture all those uh foundational items that limit the authority to complete the sale including the not to exceed amount the savings Target there's a true interest cost if it's going to cost the district more than a 5% Allin costs for the cost of financing this Bond come back and talk maybe that's too expensive of a
017debt that you want to take a second look at before you finish it and most importantly for money that's temporarily uh maybe looking a little less uh viable as a refunding right now there's a delegation window so you have until June 1st of 24 giving you a 9month window to watch the market see if it uh presents a strong case for refunding you're not locked into doing it this month or next month or by the end of the year you've got a limited window where refunding these bonds is on the table and if you can put together a transaction that satisfies all those criterias within the time you're welcome to do so subject to the other restrictions of the bond resolution which are really exciting only to me I recognize that no one else cares
018about so many these details but it has all the things in here that the IRS really cares about and maintaining your tax exempt status not having too much private use within the like not running out to Denny's the facilities so that or other private interests um not making too much money on your Investments which is a strange tax issue which has come back into the play as interest rates have gone up um all of which is in here here delegated out happy to run through it if anyone had any questions on any of the more esoteric mysterious parts of the bond resolution that only I read every time very carefully um outside of that if there were any other questions on the nature of the delegation resolution or the terms of the sale the delegate
019designation of the refunded bondings of the refunded bonds sorry and you can refund all or part of the bonds if only part of it should happen to come into the money you retain that flexibility and designating part of the 2013's not all the 2013's um wonderful absolutely um how about I do this why don't I do a call for public comment or input and then we'll get to board question so so any public comment in the room any on Zoom thank you um any from our students okay just checking board comment or questions no I think this answers my question from last time which was what happens if interest rates go up this is what happens that's exactly what our conversation was last meeting yes yes um I think this is pretty straightforward obviously we
020love all those boundaries that you went through to make sure it makes sense to go through this transaction at all I don't think at this time we have any more questions or discussion which just leaves us to vote on the motion that is um on the floor so all those in favor I I I uh none seeing none opposed uh it motion passes so thank you yes thank you and let's hopefully hopeful hope we get some favorable conditions to make that work uh wonderful so um our next agenda item is Works in progress superintendent with that I'll turn over to you great thank you um I thought I would continue to highlight some of the um things that I've been getting to see at the various different School sites and operational sites and program sites
021that we have uh now that we're still in the first 30 days really the school year um I've been able to also get to now 29 of our 32 sites uh they're external to this particular building and tomorrow I'll be um headed to a couple of those last sites as well um but at Pacific Cascade you know one of the first things you see as you as you enter is the commons so uh spent some time during passing which is a great thing because you get to really see kids uh in their hustle to classes and and otherwise and a got good opportunity just to check in and talk with our students um in particular though I also visited a class where there was a book Challenge and um getting getting students to think about
022how many books they were interested in Reading um by their own choice throughout the year and a discussion on their favorite book so far so that was pretty exciting and we did talk about literature as a key choice for instructional program as well uh earlier in our work study and Bieber Lake I had the opportunity to meet a new teacher uh who is actually a former student of executive director Sher Cox uh when she was uh back in the middle school as a principal and she this new teacher is now leading um the ASB at Beaver Lake and the group was discussing how to continue to Foster positive School Culture by creating themes for the different hallways and they were learning and they were deep in the negotiation with each other uh how to make
023sure that voice was included and then then allow for Dissent and different ideas uh and then I as I think I asked them a question of so how are you going to decide so they're like okay vote and they went with majority vote so um not much discussion around the decision-making models that do exist but it was a fairly quick vote uh to go with something which was pretty pretty fun to see um that work in progress um Cascade Ridge I I was greeted by a fifth grader who was very importantly um naming himself as a student ambassador and he said he wanted to put in a good word for the school um so I love when when students come up and and talk about um their excitement for their school experience um and their
024respective School Community uh and I also got to see the PTSA kicking off their work as well um in the building with some of their um various efforts being posted publicly on on bulletin boards at Cougar Mountain Middle School I had the opportunity to walk the school with uh our new assistant principal Jennifer Johnson who's not new to the role of assistant principal um but she's new to to CMM uh Cougar Mountain Middle School and she does have two students in the district and you were able to meet her with our new administrator welcome and we had an opportunity just calibrated on teaching um what we're seeing in classrooms and that was pretty fun for me to be able to to do that at Cougar Ridge Elementary School I saw some great um some great
025classroom strategies to help with linking to interest that our students have such as video games and so a lot of the incentives and uh items in the classroom reflected gamification uh how do you level up how do you unlock the next thing uh that was pretty fun to see and I'm seeing actually more of that now in other schools and I'm not sure if that's because I'm noticing it and therefore I'm seeing more of it or it's actually a bit of a new set of um ways to represent uh incentives and and learning levels so that's been pretty fun um at Grand Ridge I also glad to see you the PTSA team who were uh sharing their progress for the year so far and really excited about that so it's been great to see our
026families uh in our schools and contributing and spending their time and effort to uh contribute to the school community and to engage the parent Community as well at Cedar Trails I saw um some great math lessons just really seeing uh our teachers really breaking down the various ways to teach math and to have our students represent their learning in multiple modalities whether it was through writing through pair shares and other things and that was uh very impressive to see at Challenger I had my first rainy day recess so sadly the weather upon us as I know as we are seeing tonight uh it's very rainy so uh we got to see uh students enjoying the rain which is more fun for students than sometimes adults um and and they are doing recess now before lunch
027which is a switch some of our elementary schools are doing that and that's helping I think uh students get very hungry so that when they go to lunch they're very focused uh on their lunch activities which is just a a shift for for them over the last year and today I was at Newcastle and I um got to witness the beautiful Return of the gymnastics unit and we have not had gymnastics at the elementary school since the 2018 to 2019 school year and that was just fantastic to see the um the physical education teacher leading through that District unit and seeing the the pure joy uh of of the students in their gymnastic activities and this was the first day it was being rolled out so it was particularly exciting and I uh visited act
028today our Academy to for Community transition and and um I do want to share that the ACT program this year in collaboration with the Salish Lodge is developing an internship experience that allows students to build their skills related to hospitality um and all the things that go with that retail table service the spa services in room dining Etc and some of our third-year students uh will be cycling through a a month-long mini internship throughout the school year and I did meet one student who uh excitedly told me that because they just did some interviews that they think they won out uh compared to some of the other students from some other districts potentially who are also participating because they um they nailed the uniform which is a a black shirt and a black pair of
029pants so uh that was pretty great to hear about um and also we'll be sharing more about that in our various news channels about how that kicks off as well um a couple of other highlights this past week I was uh able to join the isqua schools Foundation board with board president director mullings and collectively we provided both an update of the school year and also a preview of this board meeting and um I've been having regular meetings with our student representatives to the board and that's been amazing to um hear the questions that that you all have around board process and how to prepare and you're showing up and that's awesome and you're I know you're uh through our conversations just curious and excited so again appreciation to you all um I do want
030to talk about some other things that are fairly practical as well so and help helpful updates for those that are listening uh but there there is a possibility of a federal shutdown uh so I do want to make sure I note that and depending on the duration there really should be minimal to no impact us but we'll continue to monitor the situation for any any impacts to the district and in particular to the King County uh which holds um uh some key uh key funds that get distributed through federal dollars so um other other key things updates around the district the banal healthy youth survey is um going to be launched in in October which is this next month and it will be uh the window of time will be between October 9th to the
03127th and that will be dependent by school but each school has on their website the exact days of when that will be happening uh overall so it's uh as a reminder the healthy use survey is sponsored by the following state agencies the department of social andth Health Services Department of Health an office of the superintendent of Public Instruction and the liquor and cannabis board um I also want to share that we are uh going forward with a partnership with communities and schools which uh we've talked about at various moments but it's really to help coordinate and provide tiered support to surround students with a community of additional support and their goal is to provide um and contribute to issaqua Middle School's progress toward goals and their school Improvement plan and address the needs are identified
032in the um their own assessment and partnership with our team members and we're in talks to um expand those services to isqua high school as well and I think that that's been confirmed as of today later in the day so uh we'll be partnering with communities and schools for both isqua middle school and isqua high school um a couple other things I want to share is that we are um excited that isqua school district has joined the guaranteed admissions program which is offered through the Washington State Council of presidents and basically this means that participation in this program allows for seniors in the isqua school district to be offered guaranteed admission to the state colleges including Central Washington University Eastern Washington The Evergreen State College University of Washington Tacoma Washington State University and Western Washington
033State University uh if the student has a 3.0 GPA or hire and is on track to graduate so that's that's a really big opportunity as well so um I see question from one of our students I I can pause or I can share my last comment okay great um and then I wanted to share that um with our with our adjustments that we've made to the Dual language program um specifically in the consolidation to one site from two sites and now at isaa Valley Elementary and with the integration of multile um instruction the program now qualifies for the first time for a grant program from OSI the office of the superintendent of Public Instruction and um that Grant right now is in the amount of 25,000 and that will go towards uh classroom support and
034program support so those are my big updates around the district and FYI for the public thank you s uh when you mentioned that there was going to be some Community program with ISO middle school and ISO High School which just recently got approved parisal High School um could you elaborate a little bit on some of the potential impacts this Pro this might have on IHS students um so it's a program communities and schools and we can certainly provide more information at a board meeting at a later date and time as well uh it's a community partner that works with actually many Area Community uh school districts to provide additional supports for students um related to uh coordinating uh outside services that might that families might need that students might need and helping to serve as
035an additional on-site uh presence to help identify that need um and be a service so it's additional capacity uh both in terms of people uh in our schools to identify areas where students and families might have a need and and a helpful coordination of those Services thank you for that any other awesome uh thank you for that update any comments or questions from the board on that wonderful okay we will move to our next agenda item which is a capital projects update oh I see a CFO joining us at the podium superintendent do you want to start with any comments uh this is just part of our regular monthly Now updates that we're returning to for capital projects and I know that uh uh CFO coo Mar attorney will be joined by Tom Mullins thank
036you chief of finance and operations Martin attorney Tom M to my left director of capital projects um we are here to give a uh oh there we go give a followup to what we brought to you on August 24th around some potential proposed repurposing of 2018 um critical repairs Levy fund so um we wanted to bring back uh after the conversation what we heard and what we see is our steps going forward so in terms of the uh we had some high priority items that we brought uh that we feel needed to be done fairly quickly uh and we had an opportunity to use some un uh unneeded funds from um these two projects 1832 and 1834 um and from your feedback it um sounded like as long as we contained those within the 2018
037Levy and we could address these priority needs that that was favorable so our plan is essentially to use those un uh needed funds from those two projects and get the uh fire alarm Replacements at the two buildings listed there and then the Dos system as well so that that is our plan uh to add budget and get those projects going the other item that we brought to you was about the um investment grade audit related to the clean buildings act and so feedback um from the board uh was the preference to start with the audit of the larger buildings uh and to keep it contained uh excuse me keep it out of using any repurpose 2018 Levy funds so u based on that our proposal is to start with those high schools um that we
038talked about last time use the designated uh 2022 Levy critical repairs Levy funds of about $250,000 that we have budgeted there um and then we can go ahead and get started um with that audit um with the high schools so simply put put the slide kind of in celiz what I just said we essentially will get started with those projects we will move those to end process including the um investment grade audit uh and then um based on what we heard we'll also make sure that anything that we have as um unspent funds or unneeded funds for these projects as we go along if we find out they we don't need as much for these projects we will we will keep a reserve in the critical repairs Levy 2018 so that we are using those
039funds to accomplish um the whole array of 2018 Levy projects that we have yet to to complete oh I do also want to mention uh before questions um that we do we have been planning to bring um and post the um one-page project summaries that we've previewed last year um and so uh for the ne for the October uh capital projects update we will be announcing that um those are are up and posted on the website and we'll also have updated um project status for the 2018 cral repairs Levy in the 2022 critical repairs Levy items so any questions thank you go ahead yeah excuse me sorry so one question I kind of have is could you kind of explain more in detail what this act entails building I can tails and how this might
040you know benefit students or impact student lives yep great I'm going to actually hope that Tom will jump up here he has a little bit more on the detail on this the clean buildings Act was uh passed by the legislature in 2019 and 20 and revised in 2020 it requires that all buildings above 20,000 square feet which all of our facilities are above that so it includes all of them meet certain um uh energy usage guidelines and uh part of that process is you go through first you do an audit that determines where your buildings are at in their in their standards then we have to go through and and find out how much that's all going to cost and then do those the actual work it's everywhere from um HVAC improvements um lighting Control
041Systems all sorts of different items like that you probably will notice possibly improved um temperatures in the building um possibly better lighting a little bit um nothing that we're doing is going to be some large glaring Improvement or something visual you come in you'll go wow what did they do it's a lot of behind the scenes systems and things like that so yeah and so is this the first time that you've audited the Isco School District boardings or have you done it before they we've audit them they've been audited in different ways never to this extent this is a a big Push by the legislature to uh as part of their green energy policy to U move away from fossil fuels everything is going to be towards Energy savings and um pushing more towards electric
042versus fossil fuels this type of thing so no we haven't done any this type of auditing before we've looked at energy usage things like that improv systems improve lighting all of that but not to this extent thank you very much thank you thanks Nathan yes director Weaver um so the last few buildings that we've opened in the board has toured with you and we've talked a lot about all of the energy efficiencies and the use of natural light and the double paint windows and y y y do we have any kind of assumption that our newer buildings will probably be pretty close to what they want versus maybe some of our older buildings would require more retrofitting or do we just not know it it's kind of interesting the initial um benchmarking audit which strictly
043takes energy usage and converts all energy usage which would be gas and electricity converts it all into electricity and puts it in a scale that they have set up we have 17 of 31 buildings that fall above that in energy usage it was surprising that some of the newer buildings um Pine Lake Middle School in particular was above it was slightly it's going to need a little bit of work we think we can tweak some the control systems and get there but there wasn't a lot of Rhyme or Reason to the list and I don't have it in front of me and it's been a while since I looked but we can sure provide that to you and show you the benchmarking it was kind of interesting some of the older schools fared well some
044of the um for example isqua High School fared poorly and isqua high is only 12 years old so it was interesting and um some of the buildings that didn't farewell we think we can get in and tweak the control systems and recommission and do some things to bring things in alignment um some of it is just isqua High gets used an awful lot it's open longer during the day than say elementary school so you're going to see higher EI energy use intensity on the scale and that's something we're having to take into account there also is how long are these buildings used during the day yeah and then this is more of a comment than a question because you're probably not going to know the answer but given I mean this is this is a
045big Bill this is a big deal it for us seems to be at this point an unknown price tag and we keep hearing about all of these little districts out there that can't even pass their bonds and it's raining in the gym and all of these other horrible things was just no thought given to how districts were supposed to finance this I mean we're fortunate that our community supports our levies overall and our bonds um a lot of districts aren't that fortunate is this just my exact question I've asked in our discussions we've had with with um kale Gates and some different different places there's 280 something school districts in the state how many actually pass bonds regularly and I don't know how the rest of them will do it now a lot of them
046are smaller so whereas we might have X amount amount they will in in upgrades they will have a lot less but still a million dollars to a small District or 500,000 could meet an awful lot I think the state's going to have to do something and step in to help now what that looks like I'm not sure and harlon is this anything that wasda is talking about at all I mean you just came back from what do they call it now General Assembly uh yeah not this particular topic with school Construction School certainly School construction was part of it because it just seems like this could be a really big deal for a lot of districts I everybody I think all the districts are addressing it but from what little bit I've seen a lot
047of them I don't want to say their heads buried in this hand but they're they're keeping a low profile because they're asking the same question what are we going to do director moraldo I would be interested in the legislature's fiscal note on this because typically when they pass a bill right they're probably thinking oh this is a policy bill but what was their fiscal note on this because um again it falls under the unfunded mandates it sounds like to me like oh we're going to make this change and we so I would be really I don't know um who would be the one responsible for doing that but really finding out what was the fiscal note associated with this bill and what are their plans I think it really is something we're going to have
048to talk about with our legislature the just the legislature funded and I don't know if they they don't call it fully funding but they funded and I think there was 72 million in early adopter money that is were we looking at and trying to get towards the process is complicated but $72 million over 280 school districts for what could be hundreds of millions of dollars is my concern is that they're going to distribute it like they do scap Y and they're going to be able to pay our sales tax back to us yep s Nathan go ahead another question I had is so you're in the kind of the stage of like getting the audit kind of approved and doing the audit so do you kind of have like a date or time or like
049a timeline on how long the improvements that you're planning on taking will take we don't necessarily have a Time but the state has dictated the timeline buildings over 220,000 Square fet now and keep in mind this is not just school districts this is every commercial building in the state of Washington which you can imagine private public whatever it might be all buildings over 220,000 Square F feet have to be the everything has to be done in the final audit has to be completed by I think June of 2026 90,000 to 20 120,000 square foot buildings June of 27 and 20,000 to I think it's 990,000 have until 2028 June of 2028 so they put a timeline out there and we're trying to figure out how to achieve that goal any other questions or comments thank
050you thank you appreciate the consistent updates um and I'm looking forward to seeing the new reports in October thank you thank you uh so next on the agenda we have U monitoring of e 15 technology do I have a motion think so um I move the board accept the monitoring report el15 technology learning environment as presented second thank you I know we have obviously a a presentation we also have some student input we'll go through um we'll then ask for public I will then ask for public input uh before some board discussion so we don't get started with the presentation superintendent uh actually we're gonna have um student representative Mia Williams go first yes oh everybody came in tight so I assumed she was second that's thank you Mia hi I am Mia Williamson and
051I am from Liberty High School today I'm presenting on student input on el15 which is technology I collected my data via a Microsoft form that I sent out to all Liberty students through canvas um the form was open through September 5th uh September 5th to September 19th excuse me and it gathered about 245 responses from a total of about 1300 students in the building and then I basically based this survey um in two halves the first half was more on the onetoone laptop policy because for students this is kind of the main thing they think of when they think technology and then the last half is uh more structured around the El itself so I'll just go through the questions I asked and the data I got from them the first one was simply if
052students were given the opportunity to check out a school issued laptop um answer was yes obviously many students if not all have St have a school issued laptop and um getting them wasn't an issue the second question was does your school issued laptop allow you to complete all your schoolwork and homework without major difficulties and this was a very positive answer um just under half of students answered very often and about 40% answered always so pretty positive response there um I know at Liberty this year we have a newer um selection of laptops we got rid of all the really old ones so I think that's helped a little bit next I asked that even if students have a school issued laptop do they find themselves choosing to use a personal device instead and um
053it was a little bit more mixed but in general students do prefer their personal device many of the reasons given were that their personal devices are faster they know how to use them better they're more comfortable with them uh things like that but I still think that the school laptops are adequate they get the work done for students um it's important to note that Liberty has no policy on whether students have to use their school laptop or not sometimes of course you'll have a quiz or a test and you need to use uh the lockdown browser which is a program on the school laptops sometimes you might need um logger pro or verer which are science programs that are used during Labs so School laptops are really useful for those purposes but a lot of
054times for um like busy work or other class work students prefer their own devices I asked if students have any major difficulties with their laptops what were they and this one was perhaps the longest response from students there were a lot of complaints obviously and they kind of fell into four big categories the first was um the Wi-Fi and connecting to the internet sometimes laptops won't connect to the internet even prior to logging in um which makes it impossible for a student to log into a laptop I've had students who got kicked off of the Wi-Fi during um a quiz and their progress wasn't saved um and so they did not receive the correct score on that quiz um things like that the next category was logging in and just how slow laptops can be
055um if a laptop is shut down it could take anywhere between three to 15 minutes to log in if it's just from sleep mode I think it usually only takes one or two minutes so that's important to note but students um have noted that sometimes logging in takes up class time maybe will take away from the notes they can collect during class things like that and then just overall the Schoop laptops are generally slower than what they're used to with their personal devices the third category was blocked websites and in my report I said that I was surprised because I hadn't experienced issues with this but um strangely enough on Monday in my AP Literature class um this came up as we were working on presentations which I thought was funny because I've never had
056any experiences with blog sites before but um talking to the director of Technology at um a meeting the other week about this report um I learned that teachers and students had the same filters um for their laptops that are on websites that are blocked or not but that this filter was um I think changed over to a different one last January so that's why students may be experiencing more blocked websites than normal um but that was just something that students complained about because sometimes when doing research or making presentations they can't access materials that they'd like to the last one was a little bit more individual um sometimes laptops don't hold a charge or they have a certain key that you have to press down super hard on to make it type um and those
057are things that are less applicable to the district and probably more relevant to the actual um technical experts in the building but it's still an important thing to note in regards to the onetoone laptop policy and then the next four uh questions were statements based around the language of the El itself and students were asked to respond with how much they agreed or disagreed with the statement the first was the district provides equable access to technology and this one was very positive um almost split 50/50 between strongly agree and agree obviously there was some neutral but that always happens um I think students yes they tend to complain about the school laptops but they understand that um having the laptops available to them gives lots of students opportunities that they wouldn't have otherwise the next
058statement was the district provides access to Advanced technologically rigorous courses for students and this one was also pretty positive again um but about 20% of students responded neutral I know at Liberty were offer offered multiple level levels of computer science courses we have a Graphic Design course and I think there are some video production courses as well um so there's some variety there um but I still think students would love to see even more especially as technology becomes increasingly relevant in our lives the next statement was the district establishes expectations of use of Technology by students very positive here I think students understand what they're supposed to and not supposed to do with their um technology whether they follow that or not um and then the last one was the district prohibits the use of
059technology for illegal or indecent purposes and uses that disrupt the learning environment of students again very positive uh which was not a surprise but nice to see because sometimes you know technology can disrupt class whether that's being distracted by a phone or a time or going off or things like that um but I think that students were pretty positive about this um and the school issue technology especially is not an issue the last question I asked students was open-ended and it was in your opinion what can be done to improve the use of technology in the classroom do you feel that the technology used by your teachers is sufficient why or why not and this was pretty positive um methods of improvement were given most concerning Wi-Fi connection and how fast the laptops take to
060load and complete certain functions um students felt like the technology that teachers use in the classroom was sufficient uh a good amount there was a debate about whether paper or um online worksheets are better for certain students which doesn't necessarily pertain to this El but was good to see that they were bringing that discussion up um there was a lot of talk about um students liking to do Cahoots in the classroom and it was generally pretty positive except the more technical aspects with the Wi-Fi and the slowness of the laptop tops so overall I think the district is doing a good job meeting the requirements of this El um and I think that students while they will always love to complain about the school laptops are satisfied with what they have thank you thank you
061Mia awesome job and that's a lot of survey results I wish I could get that in my day job I was gonna say I felt like that was really thorough I learned really high response you're getting we should talk about marketing um super superintendent I who's kicking us off from uh Rich Mish executive director of teaching learning services will kick us off and we have many team members here to to also weigh in all right thank you thank you Mia for that report that was wonderful to hear um thank you directors and uh superintendent for hearing our report today um the team effort that went into the works that we are reporting on tonight is being represented by myself uh Rich melish executive director of teaching and learning Services Martin tney our chief of finance
062and operations Kathy crop our director of it infrastructure and Diana Edgars our director of educational technology we'd like to start by thanking our community because nearly everything that we report on tonight is possible because our community supported the technology Levy allowing us schools to take this next step in our technology integration gu I forget i' gota do that all right so the 2022 23 school year marked the first year in New Journey for s schools technology program the transition to a new technology allocation plan including the secondary 1:1 was marked with new opportunities and the ongoing monitoring and support the plan was designed to ensure both Equitable access for students and consistent and predictable technology around which teachers could plan instruction indeed in our first year of implementation we did achieve those distribution goals over
063177,000 student computers distributed and we were able to begin the multi-year training and coaching program for teachers um and we did see a marked increase in the use of technology in classrooms in comparison to the the previous uh generation of of work we did with technology um we were continuously learning and making midyear adjustments during the year we investigated reports of connectivity issues we engaged with students and staff around the use of personal laptops and we worked with students and and staff to determine what issues were caused by Hardware performance versus user issues so that we could take appropriate actions to address the issues raised um I think I should have just said listen to Mia Williamson's report because it so nicely represented it but this was just one of the questions out of the
064survey that we just put in here to capture the scale uh and the kind of generic kind of Fallout of the feedback we received both through surveys and through um other engagement efforts so thank you Mia for being much more eloquent than this slide okay our monitoring plan last year um last year we did monitor the implementation we used three types of feedback we used some technical network data and did an independent audit you'll hear more about that some tech we uh paid close attention to our uh technical support requests and we did direct end user feedback through direct observations and discussions and the use of surveys um hold off um so I'm going to invite Kathy uh director Kathy crop up to share a few of the actions that her team took as a
065result of our implementation monitoring so for Hardware support um our goal is for every student to have access to a functioning laptop uh the IT department had approximately 7600 uh work orders completed during the previous school year that was for both staff uh and uh student uh Hardware to speed laptop repairs an instant replacement program was instituted for laptops sent into our Central Hardware repair facility uh to make sure the inventories were not um uh depleted um too much at at each school from from Hardware repairs additionally um as mentioned previously a particular older model with a slower spinning Drive was identified for expedited replacement um and as of this school year um I believe there's only nine still left in circulation at high schools um and then on the network side um an independent
066audit was commissioned of our wireless network and this validated the design Hardware capacities and performance for the full onetoone implementation there were say uh some Performance Tuning optimizations that were recommended and and those were implemented last year so thank you Kathy I'm Diana Edgars director of educational technology and first uh Mia I misspoke last week so um I did talk to uh Kathy here um who is our director of it and infrastructure and the filters are um a little different uh for staff members uh than they are for students so that might explain a little bit of what you were um getting in the uh report and feedback from your peers uh some key actions uh that we took we increased the number of laptops available to our to students and teachers we developed and
067pushed out information on maintaining a functioning laptop and it also goes hand inand with uh Mia's uh conversation about um it's you know if you just if you just shut the computer and and don't shut it down then it it you know opens up a lot faster when you go to your next class um however regularly restarting maybe not daily maybe not between every period but that regular restart does allow those um updates to happen and so if you if you leave it um not shut down or you don't uh turn it on and off again then some of those updates uh don't happen uh we also shifted our guidance regarding personal laptops uh so students are able to uh bring their personal laptops to school and uh teachers are also then able to require
068School issued laptops when they need that specialized software where they want to um run the the dyno or the lock down browser and then we also in the spring piloted uh what's called securely home it's an app for families to use that they can monitor and restrict internet access on the school device when it's at home so that just rolled out to um all uh secondary families I believe the message went out last week so very timely all right so those were some of the big bucket items of uh actions we took from resulting from monitoring and we know we're not done we have been doing this program for one year and we will continue to Monitor and improve the program and we would like to do that by continuing to do some surveys um
069continue direct observation and engagement we found it incredibly valuable to go in and see the computers being used in the classroom see how long it took classes to start up their computers and see what when things weren't starting up as quickly was getting in the way um systems monitoring uh will continue whether that's tracking work orders uh using our Network Matrix and then we have also put in our uh Tech plan and advisory committee work that we'll we can discuss as well but what will guide our monitoring for this year we thought about some of the questions that we want um on the educational use size side we've articulated in the tech plan six expectations for teachers to guide monitor um that we will ultimately try to get to to try to get to this
070is what we're trying to accomplish in every single classroom but for this this year three of the questions that really popped out to us were to really look at our students accessing content and and engaging with the learning using the technology in multiple ways has the technology helped them to organize their work and keep up with everything that they have to manage as students with multiple classes multiple teachers and does it help them do two-way communication with their uh teachers and other students at times to uh make sure that they're getting feedback and and able to to work C do with the teacher on the technical side um reliable technology our student laptops properly functioning as expected we will continue to look at that and do students know how to get technical support quickly if
071they experience Wi-Fi or hardware issues and do our users all know how to do that basic troubleshooting so that if it's something quick and easy we can get it they can get it fixed on their end um el15 is more than the one one to one program though and so we ALS o wanted to point out that um even though a lot of our energy about technologically rigorous courses goes into our High School courses where things kind of culminate really the beginning of of developing the the background for technologically Rous courses starts in the first year of entering our system where we want to in the elementary build those foundational skills and help Foster interest in in technology and Technology Rous uh Concepts and then in Middle School you see that increased choice you see
072that increased range about applications and a increased range of Technologies from basic Technologies to Advanced uh last slide here um a lot of next steps one is that we we are looking forward to starting a new tech advisory committee to um kind of advise how we move forward and evaluate progress towards our technology plan uh we would um we're continuing to really look at how technology supports our strategic plan so that was that was new last spring um to have a district strategic plan and we we believe there's lots of opportunities for technology to support that in the technology rigorous technologically rigorous courses to support pathway work as that unfolds in our techn Str strategic work um we are right in the midst of year two of a professional development series and our tosas and
073and um edtech leads in the schools are out there helping teachers on a daily basis in the classroom and in the schools our strategic Partners we would like to keep expanding strategic partners because we know that we live in a community with a lot of Technology experience and expertise um and we are going to be exploring emerging Technologies um the big one these days is AI but there will be something else that comes along too that we will be looking at to see where is the opportunities and how do we create healthy boundaries and how do we how do we become Learners of those Technologies um we look forward to the discussion and questions that you may have and we will be available for you thank you thank you I would also like to share
074that my computer has forced an update during this meeting and watch my anxiety level is a bit through the roof at the moment but we still I've been helped out with some backup um just had to share that that that was funny um thank you very much I think um because we have a motion why don't I check for public input and see if we have any on that t before we get into discussion any public input in the room on this subject any on Zoom thank you thank you for that um section so we can open up for uh discussion and questions board I can start with mine just because I wrote down what my questions were before this happened um so what are we doing about the Wi-Fi um that just seemed to
075be the glaring piece that showed up in a couple of them so I didn't I didn't hear the resolution on that um so first of all um I did reference um on one of the slides we did conduct um prior to the start of the previous school year so in September of 2022 uh we brought in an independent uh Network audit that did as I said validate our entire W Wireless structure capacity and authentications Etc so um from from a systemic standpoint um we have validated that um uh from an overall perspective that that our system is well performing um so hearing uh individual uh uh reports from the survey is is troubling um and so I'm also not sure to what extent uh these issues exist so for example um drops can be from
076different things like I I wasn't actually clear whether the drops were on from from a personal laptop or from a district laptop uh so I wasn't sure if the survey question was that specific um and then um the the other uh point and I believe it was in one of the slides was if students are connecting to the guest Wireless there is a uh 4 and A4 uh hour hard-baked maximum into the wireless Hardware where you will have to reauthenticate uh through the captive portal so that the the the ISD guest system um uh so I'm you know hypothesizing perhaps it could be something to that to that effect and then um then last but not least um there could obviously be something wrong with the laptop Hardware or software uh so in that case
077uh seeking technical assistance from our tech support crew would be would be the ticket um but yeah la last year overall from a again from a system perspective from a work order perspective itive um we had uh probably about I think one or two% of our work orders um referenced Wireless for the physical Hardware repairs so mostly what we see on that end are more uh keyboard issues uh LCD panel issues and that sort of thing so I'm anxious to hear uh more uh about the um Wi-Fi drop issue and really dig into that um and and take it from there fantastic thank you yeah um maybe the other comment I'll make before I go over questions is is purely a comment and um curriculum PCMS curriculum night this year was great um but I
078thought one of the things I was really impressed by was each I think almost every teacher went through some level of how students were accessing their technology what um what was available to them and um the very first the very first period which I think was like a the links life period when they were going through that they went through a lot of the basic accessibility functions available um which was near and dear to my heart so I was very just very happy to sit in the room and see that level of review so all the parents could understand what was um available to the students and how how clear they were on the use of of technology in that process um was it was my hand over here s Sedar was it you Sedar
079uh I just wanted to share um like some of my findings or my personal experiences with um securely which is the um security system um so sometimes I noticed that um especially I'm not sure whether it's securely or not but um sometimes when I'm when I want to watch like YouTube videos which my history teacher gave which is like about controversial subjects that then sometimes it just blocks it and that's really really difficult to deal with So like um is there um like is anything being done to like mitigate some of those issues like where stuff which are thought of as controversial but a teacher wants students to see the video those stuff that content like is there anything being done to prevent um those sort of Errors from happening I think that's probably tied
080to the comment about the difference in filters teacher to student yeah well is it that or is it just that teachers aren't aware that they're assigning things that are blocked right I mean it could it could be out I I think that could be both and and um I I believe it was mentioned previously that yes the district has changed uh security filtering systems um and that change actually occurred uh near the end of the previous school year so um uh we had about a decade with the former filter of ibos fine-tuning and and adding all these websites that that were being inadvertently blocked so we're kind of although we transferred uh a lot of that uh Whit listing information from the previous filter um each filter vendor has a different way of categorizing and
081doing their library and so um we're still catching up with that um but um we're we're very responsive and um uh we we do we have been making reports already the first few weeks of school here uh from teachers and and unblocking like usually within the same hour um so that that that can continue yes had a question um well I was wondering why this filter change was initiated uh actually to provide the parent benefit that was that was the big driver for the for the change um because that was really requested by by the community so that that's pretty much it in a nutshell um so what does this parent benefit like entail I can cut off my kids Wi-Fi access from my phone with securely from their school device which I didn't have
082control over before yeah I can do it in the house but I know how to do that but yes there's um On Demand controls the parent can have over the device that we didn't have before and and and reporting for the parent yeah and things like that so in case kids were wondering yes we have a bit more control okay thank you uh Bor I think uh I would like to see a more robust survey in the future that really asks students a deeper question than was asked of question 12 when question 12 says in addition to the district issued laptop do you have a personal laptop for your own use at home I really would like to see us get to the heart of is this is what we're doing and offering does it
083make sense from a feasibility and financial standpoint because when the data from that question says that 88% of our high school students have a personal laptop at home and 78% of our middle school students have a personal laptop at home if we're hearing concerns about the quality of laptops we're offering it seems like we could shrink the number of laptops we're offering offer a higher quality to students who need a laptop because it just seems like we're doing redundancy and what value are we getting for the cant cost of redundancy when by and large what we're hearing from our students is they would prefer to use their own device and there are rare moments when they need to have a lockdown browser or other specific curriculum but over the course of the year I had
084two students last year it was a very rare time where they quote needed to have their laptop because the other concern I have is the weight of the backpack in the middle schooler I really feel that's a pretty significant thing that is being ignored uh by our district and uh at least for me that's a really big deal from a health standpoint so going forward I would like to see questions like any survey question like the how you build a survey is really more important than the answers that you get otherwise you can craft any survey to get the answers you want so you really want to make sure that you're building a survey that will objectively identify whether or not this program is effective in its intent versus if we can improve it and
085deliver better products for the students who need it I understand the equity behind it and I fully support that but if we don't need to spend what we're spending for mediocre products then the question is why are we doing it other thoughts or questions certainly I mean there's so much in the e it's um trying to remember what it is I wanted to talk about but I do think that when we look at um the teaching and learning and and I think um when we got an opportunity to be with some of our our staff um at the ASU gsv Summit that we talked about future classes that students would want to take and I think um Rich we even talked about prompt engineering as a class so as you're looking at some of this
086St and planning for the future are there opportunities like this I know I saw a lot about the PD for teachers around AI which I think is really important but are we going to get to a point where we're going to have a policy I mean are there's what are what kind of are some of the discussions we need to be thinking about you about there's two different two different uh strands I was hearing there one about kind of the AI and and where we will see uses and the other about kind of the courses um uh s we have um in our CTE we had a presentation a couple weeks ago around our CTE that uh and our CTE advisory really looking at kind of those future courses and I think that's going to
087be one of our biggest opportunities to explore that um actually our online learning program this year does offer an AI course that students can take through the online learning program so we're starting to see those options uh come to fruition in terms of student selection so yes I do anticipate I don't know if it'll be a prompt engineering course I'm not exactly sure what it's going to be but I do anticipate that there will be there will be courses uh where where students will will continue to work on this I do understand some development in our CTE program around c u computer science courses also will be this is a big part of the computer science um in terms of AI we uh put in the appendix of the technology plan kind of an initial
088statement to try to begin to um come to some consensus and we're um we're looking at ways to really engage some of our teacher leaders because we have some incredible teachers who love to go kind of like experimental ground and so we'd love to get a group of teachers to really delve deep into Ai and say let's let's look at where this is leading and where the opportunities are um so there's some some things that I I I see likely to be emerging there um the ethics of AI is a really big one these days and our teachers are very interested in how do we teach students to act in an ethical man manner in this very changing world and so the ethics of AI and the safety of AI um are going to be
089right there with how do you leverage the use of AI and then finally I would say that uh I think canva might have been one of the first ones that integrated AI in so we have canvas as a tool that we have available and it integrated an AI image generator with a little bit more ed educational appropriate controls um but we're beginning to see um our vendors start thinking about how their going to integrate AI into the products that we already have as well so it's coming so I think um well actually we go to sadar and I'll go to my uh I just wanted to come back to um director gallinger's point which he made earlier about um like redundancy see in school laptops so um I was just wondering like when it is
090required to um when it is required to use like those special features like um a lockdown browser or a verer so what will the students like the vast majority of students with the personal laptop what like how would they um deal with that situation like would they be able to install the application on their own at laptops or something like that like what do you see being the potential solution to that issue I think that's the question yeah right it's one of the fundamental tensions because when we did the pilot with our middle school and when we've surveyed staff the ability it's not just the lockdown browser it's the ability to do screen sharing and there's various software that we use and that predictability knowing that those tools will be available if if if at
091night when I'm adjusting my teaching plans I know those tools are available I can plan around them if I go oh I didn't tell people to bring their District laptop so now I can't plan around them then it puts a barrier to the academic use of the technology so that's been the one of the fundamental tensions that we've been wrestling with is that teachers want that predictability and consistency that the district laptops provide and understandably students love using the technology that's comfortable and functions for them the best um so I it's attention that we're going to keep navigating so along those lines because I thought that one of the arguments against having students using their own technology is now there's 16 different kinds of laptops in my classroom and if a student has a technical
092problem I can't help him because I only know how to do the district laptops did we just somewhere along the line decide that that wasn't important or did we decide that students were going to have to solve their own problems or default to a district laptop I mean obviously we changed the guidance so how are we working around that we're working around actually no that didn't that absolutely did not go away um that's why a teacher some for some students their teachers say no I want you to have your District laptop with you every day and that way if I want to do an activity and your personal laptop's not working then you just pull out your District laptop and we can continue with the learning so there are some teachers who have gone more
093that way or they want want that available every day but at the same time some teachers have found more flexibility with being able to say well if your District if your personal laptop's working I'll let you know when I need you to pull out your District laptop um it's a it's a range and that our flexibility that we adjusted to last year was meant to kind of put the power in the teacher to communicate with their students to make sure the tools that they need to pull off instruction are in the hands of the students I have a question about uh number three about the rigorous coursework and access to it particularly ISO High School unfortunately the links that were put in the report are different than what was sent out to us on Friday
094so I can't have you refer to it but what you sent out to us on Friday for said introduction to a introduction to computer science it was that at isqua High School uh sorry I lost there's so many 111 students requested it at isqua high school and 64 were enrolled in it and so I have concerns about the access when this e in particular specifically talks about access to rigorous coursework and Technology uh so can someone talk to me about is high school's access to computer science the um I'm not I'm not sure but that to address the those three links that were added Friday should be the same as today um they're not the dates are even different like if you look at the top of the spreadsheets intro computer science okay so the
095one that looks like this with this these colors yes yes yeah if you look at the very top columns yep the column dates for us uh that was sent on Friday was 23 and then one one that was attached to 22 I have not touched that since since Friday so I'm I just give this because then I can't say it link it up there to show people because yeah no I uh will have to look and to see what happened to that document link so um but the question Still Remains why is there only half the students that requested I would have to I would have to look that specific up for you because I don't know the specifics around that course most most uh limits to course selections have to do with either um
096having the Staffing how many you know if that teacher is teaching two courses how many sections that they're able to provide and whether or not there's another staff person that we can have to expand sections or or it has to do with scheduling um and I would have to those are the two most common reasons why a student doesn't get the course that they select but I don't know that we have anybody in the room who knows that specific course issue on that one okay I mean I guess I I asked the question before Tuesday morning when I was asked to submit my questions to be answered so I guess it's a little frustrating to me because I I submitted the question to be answered tonight and I'm a Little flx by why I don't
097have an answer but it's fine you don't have an answer you don't have an answer so be it but well I would I didn't catch this because I was just using the old charts I didn't to click on the link so yeah I would be curious as to why the numbers are so dramatically different and I'm sure there's a good reason but I don't know what it is um because yeah these two charts are completely different well it's different school years that's that that part I understand the charts are different because there's school I'm sorry you're right so I'm not asking that's not my question it's not about discrepancy between the all right it's purely the enrollment from the data that we were sent from the Friday update yeah okay because my guess is inter
098computer science is a gateway class to then be able to do AP Computer Science and AP Computer Science principles and so if they don't have access to the first one how are they going to get to do the other ones and that's what's really important and so if we want to talk about riger and access we we have to be able to make sure that they can get that entry level course but sorry you have a hand from the from your students sitting yeah so I understand I guess the question is is the I just want to make sure we're carrying the right question because I think what the response attempted to say was what were the what were the various reasons why there's a difference between request and registration and those were a number
099right scheduling Etc so I'm I'm just not sure what's the additional question that we still need to have answered on that point is it for that specific class to do a deeper dive on the difference well what was the answer was like in the generalities this is what the difference between registration versus scheduled for this class in particular I want to know what was the barrier because what Dr Waldo's brought out before is is it is it teacher availability or like what is what was the barrier because that only 64 students got to take intro to computer science at high school okay or was it in fact that the rest of them decided they'd rather take something else well if you look at I mean one of the interesting things about having last year's data
100is that um 99 students asked for it last year and 91 got in so it wasn't a problem so something significant so I would not assume I would assume that most kids were asking for it because they wanted it I don't think a lot of them were saying oh that's my second choice or third choice so it sounds to me like we went from having three sections of it down to two and so that to me sounds like an adult issue and not a student access I mean not that students are not choosing to wonderful okay I just want to make sure we can get to the the specific remaining question uh so we can get that answered okay great one quick clarification though so um uh my understanding and we this need just be
101confirmed by by Rich or another team member is that the intro is not a it doesn't uh lead you into to principles so it's not like you have to take that one as a gateway to the next course uh is my understanding so they're not they're not uh dependent on each other as my point that doesn't answer your question which uh yes was asked so I just affirming that was asked but uh we have some more we had some more work to do to actually also figure that out because we have to talk to the principal as well so there's about course scheduling these other questions that you're bringing up around uh how that how that played out so we did have more work to do to find out the answer to that question so
102just so I understand what you're saying is someone can take the next level course without taking this one yes okay it's not a prerequisite thank you who was the question s uh I think I um so I've been talking to like a couple of the Cs teachers about like um CS classes in general and I think from what I've understood like the issue is a lack of um a lack of teachers which are there lack of Staff um that's what I've heard from like the teacher which I talked to about this and I think the data kind of shows like that because um like 40 40 students being dropped like that's I think 40 students is like enough for one class right so I feel that it's just not enough like they're not enough staff
103members to um deal with the deal with that situation thank you I'll note that it's also similar this year in um AP compite what is what specifically similar that that there fewer that there's one fewer section got it than the previous year I can't see your name from here sorry my vision is cutting off at about Sedar um I'd like to add that um the situation where there's more students and there are like teachers has been happening to like our school in different courses as well um where for example we have a sports med class and an an advanced Sports Med class both of them have been put together into like one class where one teacher is teaching both of them at the same time um so this is an issue which is quite overarching
104and it's affecting a lot of people thank you J so have a similar experience in my world language class and since there's not many people who want to take it um a lot of the different like grade levels or like course levels are grouped together so for example like the third level would be grouped with the fourth and like since our school is IB the SL and the HL would be grouped together and I think that's also pretty big of an issue and because the content is drastically different so the teacher has to split their time and so I know for the sportsmen class as well uh I took that course in um sophomore year and I remember that for one of their classes have the class would have to be on Zoom with headphones
105on in order to kind of listen in on what on something that was pre-recorded while the other half got like a lecture and so that is definitely something that is pretty prevalent especially in courses where either there's not enough people or there's like an imbalance thank you s Darth can you hold for me just want to make sure other questions or comments I'm the CEO well I was just going to make a comment about I think I think and I just move on to see if there's a net new point because we understand I mean that's the reason why we're asking for the information is do we have the right mix and balance so I appreciate the examples we're going to move on to other things we want to make sure we dig into um
106no I was GNA make a comment about and I now I've gotten rid of the Y um but um in regards to some of the D digital citizenship I feel like there was more details about what that involves in Middle school so I think that was a recent adoption so I do want to say I appreciate that because that's something that we've really been talking about is what are we doing for digital citizenship for students um I am curious with the high school that it's being done during Flex times so is this similar to how we were doing seal and and what does that look like because I thought we were now integrating seal lessons into classes so I was a little curious as to how that's getting implemented um Sherry Cox executive director of
107secondary schools I'm director Moralo that's a great question and I'm not prepared to answer everything that happens in the flex time because um the schools all have Flex time but it's done slightly different and so I'm not exactly sure which lessons are taught in Flex time because you're right we are integrating um the seal throughout the school day into the classroom so that answers your question and I wanted to answer the question that um director gallinger asked regarding the discrepancy in numbers um at isqua high school for that class um so because our principles never stopped working I got an email just now that said one we had a great problem at isqua high school we had more kids enrolled than we had planned for which creates a problem but it's good that our enrollment
108is up and so we didn't we just didn't have enough FTE at the start of school to get all of those students into that requested class and once we were given more FTE at isqua High School we didn't have a teacher willing to do what we call a super contract and pick up a class during their prep period so there is not anyone to take that class at this time and so that's why there's that significant discrepancy and it is correct that it's not a requirement to get into those other classes so I do want to say around my point around um what the high school is offering I think it is really imperative um we heard that part of the reason we were pulling seal out of flex time is that teachers don't are
109not required to engage the students during those lessons that is basically a plug-and play now I don't know I've not taken it my kids um the flex time came after my kids graduated um but I am really curious because the digital citizenship as you're going through it's great that we're hitting it in middle school but where I think it really impact students is in high school what's happening online I and know I sure students could share about their experiences with with bullying online with um you know what happens with mental health issues online and so part of that digital citizenship really interested in what's happening in the high school so I love the detail in the middle school and I'm hoping that we can see the same type of detail on what students are learning
110in high school other items uh my last question will be how how are you monitoring ing the actual integration of Technology into what's in front of students you know we knew last year would be as the initial year there was less integration than we would obviously want to see in our final State and my students still like brought textbooks back and forth uh so like has those have those issues been cleaned up where our textbooks are all online and on canvas and where there's more actual integration of the learning rather than just this extra device that they carry in their backpack that they open up once maybe twice a day during their middle school experience so in the um there's a couple couple different answers on that we did we did take a look into
111um currently I have not been able to find any courses where a student doesn't have the option to have a textbook at home and then a classroom set so that they wouldn't have to take a textbook back and forth so that shouldn't be the case where that's required um if a student needs wants a physical textbook at home that's available in most of our courses that require a text book um but they don't have to bring it to school that that shouldn't be the that should be the case um from what I was able to find the um the question about the tech integration so that uh that it could be it's a it's a very large conversation about how the technology um training is going so um in the year two um one one
112of the things we're doing is really rolling out those that one of the things we heard last year was to articulate more clearly not just the aspiration of what does like the Cadillac version of tech integration look like but what do we think of that minimum kind of required standard of exper of implementation and so we put some copies in the six areas what we do find is that it is specific to every course and content it's different so those six those six um areas that we hope to see every class integrate and I I can't give you a firm deadline like we're going to get there by the end of this school year but but that is our goal over this this time period is to really move towards that is to really engage
113the teachers and saying now how are you accomplishing these things using the technology um and to really get them to reflect on their next step on doing that uh we also are really tying it to our instructional model with the Universal Design for Learning and really anchoring ourselves in the in the istd work so that it's not limiting but that we are looking for teachers to be able to accomplish um the six areas in here and I could pull those out if I needed to um and I'm gonna see if you would like to speak a bit more uh director Edgar to that well in our Tech plan we have two goals that that or maybe there's two strategies within the one goal that address I think what you're speaking to and what we would
114like to see on the K12 for all teachers are those technology integration expectations that were developed uh late last spring um so where teachers create the procedures and expectations um around using the technology um how teachers are leveraging the technology um to support learner variability and it sounds like some of you saw that at the um curriculum night presentations um that teachers design activities that promote student use of technology and prompts their creativity in both um accessing their learning but also demonstrating their learning uh that teachers um use uh that digital assessments the information that they have about our students about their students uh to inform what they're doing in the classroom uh to give students uh kind of that choice and voice and the tools then to uh to um represent that and then
115lastly um that teachers are including collaborative tools and lesson activities um so that it expands what students can do uh with their peers and then uh even maybe Beyond uh the classroom walls and one of our survey questions did address that and and some of the students I think a large percentage of the students did indicate that they do use um the collaborative tools that are available to them to work with uh classmates outside of the school day on school workg and then just just add you asked how we would how we monitor that and again I'm g go back to one of our slides where we talked about surveying the experience that students have um so surveys will help us uh direct observations so walkthroughs and going through classrooms and seeing it directly is
116an important part of of monitoring um and then the surveys of Staff as well is important so um having them set goals and then reporting back how are those how are those goals coming along so direct observation and surveys are probably our primary methodology for being able to monitor this thank you and thank you to direct Cox for getting the answer for pH school that was impressive any other questions or comments with that we have a motion on the floor we'll move to a vote all those in favor hi hi hi uh motion passes thank you next on the agenda we have an an update presentation around social emotional learning Universal screening process this is one of the items we um brought up last meeting that we wanted to um dig in and understand the
117current state so I appreciate the quick turn and having this up for discussion this week uh superintendent I also appreciate the quick turn and uh our team members of our team are here to represent some of this work although uh there are many more people who also work on um social emotional learning and the universal screening process so uh I'll let my team members um introduce themselves all right thank you superintendent and board of directors we're uh thrilled to represent uh priority area one student well-being to speak a little bit about social emotional learning and Universal screeners tonight I'm Shireen Carver executive director of special services presenting alongside Melinda Ryan vanan Elementary executive director okay let's see if I can get the tech working after we had a tech presentation here so all right so
118um first and foremost we just wanted to um acknowledge and uh extend gratitude and appreciation for isqua school district's long-standing and ongoing commitment to social emotional learning as a component of our Integrated multi-tiered Systems of support and so this evening we're hoping to provide you a brief overview of oural programming and then also review the updated needs that were determined through analysis for our Universal screener and the decisions that were made for adopting a new screener so social emotional learning um I think of when I first started in the 990s teaching we focused on the whole child um we've had social skills and of course uh the whole purpose of it moving on throughout the years um went to emotional intelligence and then finally in 2015 we were using it as an approach to address
119the risk that um is preventing the risks that are providing a positive impact so we're increasing engagement and um skill development and pro-social behaviors which in return is decreasing risk behaviors distress and behavioral challenges and so uh through the years when you look at um isqua participation uh we have adopted curriculum you can see at the Elementary and high we have a second step and now we have the integrated standards across the content which was mentioned earlier um by executive Dr Cox and we also integrated it throughout our school day with relevant assemblies and school culture activities uh I wanted to note around Early Learning um you may have heard of the pyramid model and so um we're going to be talking a little bit about Universal screeners tonight and with the preschoolers they actually
120are learning the skills through um everything they do they're learning about turn taking sharing um feelings building empathy and so we're not screening at the preschool level but we are using the pyramid model and they're learning about uh social emotional learning throughout their day and so when we look at the core elements of um our social emotional learning uh we just want to make sure that we have all of the um important pieces to make a full core offering and so um I know all of you have participated along the way to see what we've been building uh in our district um but I think most recently looking at uh making sure that we're screening for the means of early risk identification and uh also making sure that it's becoming more embedded throughout uh what
121we're doing uh throughout the day with our students um creating a trust and community of belonging for our students and having that uh integrated multi-tiered system of supports for students so it's not only the soci emotional uh learning piece but it's also helping support the academics that we saw as a benefit toal and so initially for isqua we started having our screeners in the 17 18 school year we had um the uh I'm going to make sure I say it all for us uh the brief internalizing and externalizing screener for Youth and then the strengths and difficulties questionnaire so those were the uh screeners one was at the elementary level the beey and then the stq was at the secondary level and that's what we had been doing uh for screening for early risk identification
122and so um during our uh past year when we had an opportunity to talk about the budget process um we had a question about whether or not we should continue with those screeners or if we should um have an analysis to see what opportunity there might be so I'm going to pass it to stre all right in order to conduct that analysis um the team determined that we should ground um our work in utilizing the collaborative for academic social and emotional learning these are the this is the castle framework that ties in social emotional learning and integrates those key components of academics as well you'll see those components in Orange which includes self-awareness and self-management and those are those areas that we often hear the board talking about that refer back to those EX itive
123functioning skills when this analysis was completed it was conducted in the 2122 school year and really looking at thinking about where are those potential missing pieces when we looked at the utilization of the brief externalizing and internalizing screener for youth the Bey and the strengths and difficulties questionnaire some of the pieces that the analysis found is that with that Bey that there were no um there wasn't the ability for our second through fifth graders to provide self- ings which could provide potential bias and it didn't also give us the capacity to do progress monitoring which is a critical uh component of integrated mtss we need to both screen and be able to progress monitor our students for responsiveness to intervention with the strength and difficulties questionnaire what was founded is it it explicitly excluded some
124of the AC the castle components those academic components that are so critical and again didn't include the progress monitoring components this slide shows um a screening kind of the role of the screeners and a timeline so it builds on what Dr Ryan has already shared which shows that initial implementation of the bz and sdq in the 171 18 school year also shows that implementation through 1819 1920 2021 it was also implemented in the 2122 school year but that's when that initial review of the Bez and sdq took place and again noting potential areas of bias when we're only ring on teacher report absent student input and absent that student that alignment with standards and the castle framework in beginning in the 2223 school year there was a review of five separate screeners and a universal
125screener panel recommended the Sabers and I need to make sure I spell that all the way out so social academic emotional Behavior risk screener and Sabers is the acronym and again as that determination was made was really grounding us and making sure our students had the opportunity to self- rate and we use the castle framework and we had something consistent that we could use for our K through2 students um the panel that reviewed these five different screeners included representation across multi multiple departments in our district it included student interventions Department mtss staff teaching and learning staff Elementary staff secondary staff and uh members of our Equity team it included 17 staff members and three students actively participated in the seal screening panel this process took place between January and May of last school year this
126specifically outlines what took place during the 2223 school year in that full process so starting in January uh that audit that we explicitly talked about of the Bez and the sdq in alignment with the castle standards in March those screeners um were added for that comparison so we were looking at just a handful and it was expanded to five sep five total screeners to determin making sure we had a robust offering to really make sure they were meeting our criteria in April two screeners were recommended uh to be moved forward by the Ed planning team for that panel to fully review and in May the universal screening panel selected and recommended the use of the Sabers and again Sabers stands for social academic emotional Behavior risk screener and in June uh the student well-being uh
127priority area uh was able to W weave that into the Strategic plan and tying it to our outcomes and making sure that we're utilizing integrated mtss universal screening and the Sabers alongside our strategic plan so this is where we are now with our Universal screener tool um looking at the two platforms that we have on the left and then the two on the right so the two were the former that we analyzed and then created some uh current criteria and then out of the five uh the two that were side by side for the panel were the Sabers and the Desa and you can see um the Sabers wrought uh some of those criteria which was allowing for the self-report and teacher report at all levels elementary middle and high school um there were also
128appropriate versions for the elementary middle and high school and the procedures for administration scoring and interpretation um were explicit and um in part of the training so we knew that that would help reduce bias and so the key drivers for um the panel making its recommendation was the self-report um the fact that it not only had the social emotional and behavior risk but it also included the academic components uh it was easy to administer um and not up here is also the real- time information the day that it's given the teacher could go in and see what the results are which um it was very labor intensive before with the bz and sdq where the results took weeks um for that return of information and if we're looking at risk and that time Factor can
129be really important um we also have the visuals and the auditory um support so all students have um access and uh that it's aligned and it can also be administered in Spanish and so um thinking about the um benefits was you know finding the um align screener with progress monitoring um as we mentioned for that response to intervention and to also see um shortterm impacts and long-term impacts and so when we are looking at um our plan for um this fall we have um some Communications that we've um developed to roll out with our staff and our families um we've created some frequently asked questions um based on parent feedback um we'll be continuing to share information um through our bulletins and then we also have um some two-way communication between home and school um
130through an email that we've developed that's been monitored and then we also will continue to have some engagement groups in the winter along with the um other elements that are in place in the spring we're hoping uh to be able to review the year um look at what our um data analysis is telling us for fall planning and then um make sure that we're aligned to our milestones for the three-year implementation and so that means uh we are busy preparing our training plan is similar to a fall plan for our screeners we do usually have our staff um our teachers counselors our Specialists they're usually reviewing the be or DQ at this time and getting ready to implement it so instead of that training this year it will be the Sabers um so in September
131we have had our training of trainers our wonderful technology department has doing all the behind the scenes work to make sure that the teachers and the students are uploaded into the system and then we'll be able to have that um administrator training was this month in September uh so when we have our October training of all the staff the um building administrators will be able to provide report and so that means in November uh we'll be able to have the next part of our training which is going to um be reading reports using them for interventions and applying the information that we have and we are open for questions thank you questions comments thank you for all of this and for this work how do you plan on communicating this information to to parents and
132is this something that you will be able to like looking at how you adopted it and how other systems have used it longitudinally as far as to be able to identify hey this is a student's Baseline and then all a sudden wow this spring there's something different so is it more than just like a single snapshot that that the staff looking decide whether or not there's critical stress or urgency vers based on the change in Baseline yeah so for the second part about looking at the longitudinal information I do think that there's the annual information for fall winter and spring where it gives us staff a chance to look at is there um some risk factors say in Winter that are higher or lower than they were in the fall and so that might inform
133some of the tier one um supports that they're putting in place or it might be a teacher who's looking at the information and able to see oh I see like there's a high risk of perfectionism this time of year I'm going to work on that um skill with my students or I'm going to look at what my curriculum is presenting and why this is manifesting so there are things within the year that they can use with the data and then also like you said looking at the trend data um either within the classroom the school locally and there are also National Norms I think that was another benefit that may not have been listed in the criteria but it would also be really helpful to know how students are doing here in isqua compared to
134other students nationally and then in regard to the home to school communication um it is a screener it is very brief um it leads to other things if there are risk factors and so there would be a a personal connection between home and school um if there were some risk factors that the school is going to support the student on with the family um sometimes behavioral emotional information is very sensitive and we want to make sure that it's done in a way that is um out of the intent for support and so we want to make sure that um if there are risk factors that um present themselves that it's a communication between home and school and that the school is talking to the family about what supports are going to be available and then
135also next steps as you mentioned um because of the progress monitoring most students would have the three points of contact throughout the year but it can go up to five so if we have some students who we specifically want more information on we can increase the amount of times that we're screening um I know with the healthy use survey I can go to the healthy use survey site and know what the questions are can I how do I find out what the questions being asked of students are so they are all within the castle standards and so there are VAR ways you can look at them um through the bass Bridge platform you can also the teachers are seeing what the um different um components of each area are in Castle that they're being rting
136on um fastbridge does you know list like the mys saers and the Sabers um of course we want to make sure that the students are approaching it um fresh and and having um that opportunity at that time it is a screener just like with our I ready you know we have the students go on and they take the screener um but it's not something that you're going to be studying for so it's not something that we're going to be having them have ahead of time but it's all within the same castle components yeah my question is how can I find out what the questions are if you go to the fastbridge platform website you can find the questions there okay because I I tried to do that so if you could provide us provided in
137our Friday update the actual questions yeah oh I forward it to the whole group yes yesterday so it's an attachment for the board uh the full questions thank you so that's how you you can have it CU it verified okay a page a page yeah we I provided the one page which is a survey questions that's something different so I this is it might have been scanned single-sided it's a double-sided so one is the your side when is a student we okay we will follow up with that yeah thank you we make sure there's there's two portions there's Sabers and there's which is what the teachers fill out and then there's my Sabers which is what the students fill out we'll ensure you have copies of both yeah and are the questions the same no
138matter what level like Elementary yes so that's where the longitudal information will come and you could look through a you know students's career to see how they are manifesting at different times okay great thank you we have the we have the student would youde I was just say I really I'm excited about the longitudinal part with the same questionnaire I think that was always my Challenge and concern with the Bez to the sdq I didn't know what to make of that and so I'm excited to see so we can see Trends over time it it definitely has that utility I think one of the other pieces that Dr Ryan has pointed out when thinking about the Sabers as well is that ability to really think about um as students develop some of these critical skills
139in the areas of self-awareness that we may see fluctuations that's not related to risk but in this ability to recognize and internalize how they're feeling and how they're sharing that out so we may see fluctuations with that but it gives us real-time data so our staff can be responsive and put appropriate interventions and supports in place um I think for me the part that's most interesting is the self-reporting um I think maybe it's just been my experience that there's some um having the student indicate what they think is going on is helpful versus the presumptive teacher perspective or in addition to the presumptive um perspective and so I'm I'm very happy to see that component is available in the new in the new uh system yeah that inrat reliability and ability to challenge potential bias
140that may come through thank you any other questions or comments I just appreciate having all the acronyms translated I was never really sure what all those things stood for Mia you mentioned that uh it can the screening can be given in Spanish as an alternate language I was wondering if there's any other alternate languages because I know especially at the younger age for a survey Where You're expect to be more vulnerable having it in your preferred language can be more valuable yeah we uh looked actually through all of the pros and cons that the panel had listed and one of them was they would like more languages available and so we actually gave that information to fastbridge and we're hoping that they're they're using the feedback so that they understand that it was a priority
141and it was something that was being compared to the Desa which they felt like maybe had more than the one language and so we're hoping that motivates them to continue to be competitive with the rest of the screeners out there and that they add those languages so yeah okay thank you very much thank you we will uh now move on to legislative matters uh director gallinger do you have updates for us yeah unfortunately this is going to take some time so people might want to exit stage left if they want uh so what update does that include the students or no I people can say but it's it's gonna be lengthy conversation reporting on there was a general assembly uh unfortunately um there was a bit of a surprise controversy that happened and what happened
142is is that uh in the general assembly 160 school districts out the 295 showed up and their primary reason was to uh make a motion to strip the weighted vote out of the bylaws and what that means uh historically is that school districts were given votes based on the size of student population because we have school district districts in our state that have six students and their a school district so they have six of them six six students and then five School directors and they um now get the same number of votes as our school district which has almost 20,000 students uh and so it was really driven in a very I think non-transparent way and in a way that I think is is sort of sort of destructive uh so what I would propose
143is that we me and supported by you guys write a letter to the attorney general um of Washington because I think it directly conflicts with while was is established in Washington state law and statute uh as an State entity uh if you go look at the voter Rights Act uh I think there's conflict between uh that and what this new um bylaw change in wasda has done and the voter rights act really talks about representation and really about intent and it would be like having director areas that were completely unbalanced where you would have like 30,000 votes in one and 5,000 in another in order to drive a certain kind of voting patterns you would want to see it seemed to be very very clear based on intent that vot vo suppression was really really
144important for the prevailing side as an example when I pulled the demographics of the smallest 10 school districts Center State which total 2011 students compared just with the largest 10 school districts in King County which comprise 243,000 187 students uh of those students 34.5% are white in King County versus over 65% white in other districts and so it really is about marginalizing uh certain voices uh and the interesting thing is it was just short two years ago that we voted and supported the change to make sure that we carried an outsize part of the Wasa budget based on school size uh to really make sure that we wanted to have Equitable um dues from school districts to was because it's a mandatory participation and uh yeah this is this is how they think us uh
145so I I think that I would prefer that we get a a legal ruling from the Attorney General's office when there's conflict in State Statute similar to when we asked uh in was it 2018 just post mcy when McClary passed and yet it was well is special education part of basic education and are we going to get found breaking the law for funding special education out of our local dollars because they didn't really fund that and so we asked for the Attorney General to rule on that which he said yeah you can do that but it's not a deal essentially uh and then short of that I think that we uh should take uh legislative uh action to request that uh there be a legislative Tech technical fix on the bill uh for how wasda
146is established that would include language that talks about um Equitable representation and and can I just mention how this could be dangerous is they could they could come to to us uh with a bylaw proposal to increase dues in an inequitable manner so that we we as large districts pay even more and we would have the same vote that they would so I kind of equated it because you would typically in legislative assembly the first vote everyone just gets one vote right one delegate one District but you could call for a weighted vote in case you felt that that the results were not what you wanted because it didn't represent your students anybody can call a weighted vote you have to have four other districts that agree so it's not like you can just one
147District call a weighted vote and you have to do it it has to be agreed on by four other districts and to me it was like we have a house we have a a senate and a House of Representatives in the US government and one is every state gets two senators so that you have that type of equal representation of the entities of states and the other one the House of Representatives has um is divided by the number of people so C so California and New York and Florida get significantly more Representatives than Washington because it represents the PO population and that's kind of how the weighted vote was the weighted vote was our House of Representatives and they just obliterated it so you basically got a situation where they're fine with having a weighted
148vote when it comes to does but when it comes to setting policy we're going to have each district gets one vote right and four votes later they took a vote and passed vote to add citizenship into the specific language for expanding basic education to include local school boards should incorporate instruction and materials related to social emotional learning Environmental Education citizenship Etc uh so in the same way we had dialogue to remove citizenship from our language because we wanted to be more inclusive um so that was just the fourth vote past the change so wda has its own legal people did anybody raise the issue to wda itself that this might be because legal issue uh they looked at it only internally looking them based on does it follow the uh rcws and statute based on
149wasa's establishment and for that it's consistent which says that wasda has the ability to AFF bot change the interesting thing is it's also in conflict with the State Board of education which has weed votes so anyway so that would be my recommendation I'm happy to entertain other questions as well but I would like the support of the board to craft a letter to then submit to you guys all um and then the plan is is that we would ask or encourage other districts around the state who are interested in to by resolution support our letter that is we would send to the Attorney General I have lots of questions I'm sure um one of which is are we required to participate in laws though yes by Statute state law by Statute and state law but
150what is our required participation well yes dues is the required part but I think so here I I believe that we work to try and um Salvage the organization uh and and intent of the organization from the inside because short of that I think if the they' a has always been worried that the small school districts would walk away but the reality is with this move the large school districts will walk away and the large school districts walk away like we don't really need wasda as far as we don't use wasda model policies to the degree that other districts do we don't need them for professional development we don't need them for advocacy like we have our own all of that so I don't think that they really factored in like well the small schools
151won't get what they need without having large schoolish partnering with them to force the issue with our legislators in King County uh so I think to answer your question directly uh we will see the migration away from wasda from the large schools which will make it then an ineffective and unnecessary Organization for all intensive purposes but when you say walk away we still have to pay the dues yes I mean unless we had a legislative to do exactly what the little school districts always threatened and Tim always talked about but they never had the votes I'm like Eastern Washington never had the votes to make wasda optional the large school districts do like you just shifted who's going to be asking who and I don't know understand why they did it and just FYI there
152is um a candidate for the State Board of Education who has already posted a 10-minute video about how wonderful this vote was and how great it is that um got rid of the weighted vote at wasda so pay attention when you vote for state board yeah because I think it will be interesting what happens with things like our gun safety leg legis uh legislative position and some of the other ones that are really near and dear to us so I think it's um you know it's one of those things where but then the other thing is how many of those left right after they took that vote 40 school districts left right after they took the vote oh so that they didn't bother to stay for the rest of the general assembly it was announced
153in public after during some of the procedural wranglings like we all signed up here to come here for this one vote and you guys are delaying it okay H you did you have more questions you um has question I'm I'm interested to understand because so much of our like country in general runs off of weighted votes um do you have any idea of what might have been beneficial of beneficial like by getting rid of the weighted vote like why they would have done that other than um to persuade smaller school districts uh there is a prevailing belief on the the side who voted for this that uh large school districts tried to bully their way over and make small school districts do things uh have like a liberal Benton education uh trying to convince students
154to believe they want to the way they want to believe uh it it's it's really hard it really comes down to beliefs and uh something like for instance sexual education can be a really hot topic we're pretty clear we want science-based sexual education and we want parents to have full awareness of it and parents can make the decision forsel themselves and their student whether they want their student to participate but the part that would get not messaged out from other school dists that are often smaller was the State and we're not a part of the state would mandate that students have to learn X and that's actually neither of those things are true but they get votes um and also uh you mentioned that uh participating in wasda is part of state law um what
155do you mean by um larger school districts like leaving wasda and like is there a way like and how like like what exactly were the smaller School districts threatening and what potentially could that mean for the like reaction of larger school districts if it is mandated by state law sure so was a lot I might forget you have to remind me uh so there's 295 school districts in the state of Washington 200 of them have a thousand students or less and so in my personal belief was has always been a small school district organization now people from keing County we are all in one single uh part of wasa's like breakup of areas in the state and so we're all collected together now there's just more participation in education so if you would look at
156our school board and our conversations we're we're asking very deep questions luckily our superintendent is prepared and knows and expects that uh at a lot of other people other school district their their board meetings are about 30 minutes long it's like oh we passed the budget and we're done uh so it's very different as far as the level and depth of participation so what I would say is that wasda really needs people that are really committed to educational policy for every student in our state and we probably carry an outsized amount of that uh in here in King County because we're so passionate about it it's not saying that there's not other directors across say are there there are but on a pure just concentration it's it's it's certainly here in in this greater Peters
157sound metro area small school districts historically have uh come together and for instance for them it was really important that they that they passed a proposal saying that the state should have a Statewide salary schedule now we as a large school district has said well we don't need that we bargain that locally with our own uh teachers union uh and small school districts don't have that ability because they don't have a staff as big as us they don't have a legal team that can help do that and so I understand from their perspective why they came to how it is and that's where having us all talk together and come up with what's the best policy for students and keeping students in the S of the conversation was really important so while we were against
158that that one ultimately passed a few years ago and we as large school districts have not tried to overturn the will of the majority in that sense uh where we uh have strong concerns is there's a lot swirling about uh what they'll refer to as parents rights or local control uh both of which in this school district and every school district in the State uh this is why there's local school wordss because there is local control the state gives us the money based on a per student basis and other funding formulas and it is up to us to adop curriculum you saw uh tonight talk about how how the is class school district uses technology that doesn't the state saying here's how you use technology as is a class school district looks at social emotional
159learning and making sure that our students are emotionally and mentally um able to be uh evaluated to make sure they're in a safe place those are things that we do and we choose and we do we choose that locally we're very aware and very uh probably to a fault want to be inclusive of parents in any of the decision- making that we do the superintendent has committees that all have parents whether it's for curriculum whether it's for deciding how many athletic teams we have and sports we offer in Middle Schools Like You Name It We have parents there and so a lot of it again it's about buzzwords to get votes not like unlike any of the national elections or national conversation and unfortunately that has sort of come to Washington can I just add
160that wasda really serves two functions it provides training and support for school directors so we go to annual conference we go to Regional meetings um they will you know they give us courses on how to be effective Schoolboard members and things that we would need um and they provide support in terms of if you're a really small district and as somebody said they there are model policies um they have a legal team that might help you with certain things and these are all things that are really really important to small districts who don't have the staff to otherwise get those things done and larger districts we can go out and get our own training and we have people on staff that will answer legal questions and this that and the other so we and and
161then wasa's other go or other uh service that they provide is advocacy Statewide advocacy for school districts and students and to the extent that I have always thought that they um favored the small districts to the extent that they're going to do that even more they don't really advocate for us so we'll Advocate on our own and so gradually they're just becoming not very useful to us at all Now by state law we still have to pay our dues but we don't have to participate and if you get a lot of the larger District saying yeah we're just not going to bother um it becomes very difficult for was so but I hav I wanted to specifically ask you you said what did we mean by leaving wasi it's a state law it's literally uh
162negotiating and lobbying with the legislature to change the law so that wason's no longer required and for years the small districts threatened to go to their lawmakers to do that but their lawmakers for the most part didn't have enough power in the legislature to ever do that and I always thought it was a waste of time for wasda staff to be worried about it because they never would have enough votes to change the law the large school districts do and so we would actually be asking the opposite legislature opposite legislators permission to you know for them to change the law so that laws to became optional and so that's where I say I don't know what the thought process is strategically because they could have just asked for the obliteration of wasda because if large
163school districts pull out there's not enough funding for wasda to continue doing what they do to the level they do so I'm definitely fine with taking an action I guess it was with whom was my question so you had said to the attorney Attorney General is that what you said yeah the watching General would be the one that sort of weigh in on is conflict for this specific vote decision for the byw for the bylaw change but in addition to that it would be additional conversations that what we were just talking about is whether we yep so here okay that was the one piece I maybe didn't understand the difference between the two invalidates happed done got it was great this so this is the one around dues and the other one was around membership
164and representation to ensure that it aligned with dues I didn't realize that state law was this specific about how the dues were assessed because thought we argued about the dues all the time uh we put that to bed by coming up with a new du's formula that was Equitable and that changed with time and enrollment so we wouldn't have to revisit it year after year that was the Boston went nine years without raising dues I remember that yeah and so it you know when you count account for inflation it became harder and harder and harder for them to fund they went from 22 people down to 16 and then they which is where they sit even today I really like to spend a lot of time bring the last inph and then the last they
165uh not have representation and since they don't have the ability to vote since they're 18 seems to be like we are their proxy Advocate and so uh King County represents 25% of all students in the whole state of Washington and now we get 20 votes or 18 votes uh like the 18th small school districts in our state and I think that that's certainly not the intent of this and then you said that the the larger districts have a much higher proportion of students of color than the smaller districts so that you're specifically saying that we've diluted the power of the students of color families of color yeah yeah so I want to spend some time to debrief and talk about that and get everyone up to speed on that for why I believe we should
166lead this work and uh but I certainly not going to get ahead of not having a board sport do that did you talk to any of the other large districts to see if they're um kind of on the same page just yes uh so we have a meeting planned for tomorrow morning but I want to have this conversation first yeah I mean from my perspective the answer is is yes I think it's I guess maybe I feel a little bit better if there's a two-pronged approach but um well it wasn't your average session I think what's interesting is this came before the wasda board as to whether or not to promote a do pass or a do not pass and it had a due pass recommendation from the board of directors really oh well the
167board of directors is primarily small dist I mean it was a razor thin margin I mean it was like as as close as you can get uh but I think the intent was to bring it forth for discussion unfortunately procedurally it wasn't even that just this past they stopped discussion so there was a total of 5 minutes and 13 seconds since we the timer so I can add them up of discussion on this topic before they called for motion to close discussion and have vote so we weren't even able to actually deliberate about it like you know adults like the ways that we would ask our students to behave thank you for that update sorry any additional I was gonna say did anything good happen at assembly no uh but the good thing good news
168is is our superintendent and uh CFO have been doing some really incredible work that I'm sure they're going to update the board at some point on to look about if we move to you know change how we do high schools and and change Focus for our high schools we can't do that without having transportation available so students could choose which high school they went to based on the program of interest and so they've worked together to put plans and what the COS SC would be and how this would work because we're we're going to have legislative meetings and we want to talk about that and one of the things I've realized over the course of time is that public education gets bashed a lot for not being Innovative or not being you know uh meeting
169the needs of students at the time and yet when we're held to feeder patterns like we from an equity standpoint have to make sure that every student has the opportunity for same education or similar educational opportunities uh so I realized that transportation is key to innovation in the way that Washington State schools are funded and so it's a unique way that transportation is funded in the state of Washington and so we want to show to our legislative leaders in our state since they represent us in the 41st uh what that could look like uh and the cost is actually surprisingly small in the order of what we spend money on to be able to allow students in our school district choose the school that meets their needs in high school is I think a really
170unique opportunity I look forward to more discussion on that so we are going to have uh hosting uh legislators uh at our Transportation Center uh in October and so once I get those dates set I will reach out to board members to join me director moral two thoughts on that well similar thoughts if they fully funded the benefits that we provide for our staff or if they fully funded special education we would gladly use our local dollars to extend choices and options for our local students well said any yes I just wanted to briefly because it was a big deal the state um Supreme Court ruled on the wakam uh decision uh wum versus the state of Washington and I think if you have a chance to read the brief the the um uh the
171judge's thoughts on that the final piece of it was a judge that agreed but he wanted to specify some things and and the most important thing is that W kakam was asking for the state to fully pay for capital projects within their district and so the Supreme Court came back and said well no it says it's a shared cost and so the um judge I think it was Judge Johnson came through and said this did not answer a question that still needs to be answered which is what does shared cost look like and so I think it really is about we re recognize in our district that they don't really have a shared cost with us um so I think that there's still room for a more appropriate lawsuit um against the state because they're
172not sharing costs and I think it's something that large school districts would have some ability to bring forward to um to say that the state is not fully um they're not sharing the cost of capital to allow us to be able to have buildings that are um safe for students they pass laws that make us make fundamental changes to our buildings without any type of support for that that we we don't even know what the costs are going to be for us so I think it's a it's a discussion to really think about so when you're discussing with those large districts um it might be something to talk about what does it look like to really get at the get at the nut of what is shared cost because the wakum lawsuit was not that
173thank you no hands okay that was exciting all right well let's move on to announcements correspondence are there any additional items we need to call out besides what is already in the agenda for the meeting I know I have shared all of mine okay thank you uh next we have calendar and future agenda topics what we talked about at the top of the meeting was that we will schedule an additional work study to continue the conversation that we were having on um eel1 14 instructional programs in addition that I have I do have one ask for board members last board meeting we had a conversation about el1 and the potential need to do some um policy language updates I didn't know if we wanted to have two folks just go off and look at that
174potential change and come back and recommend it versus waiting until a future work study uh el8 I thought it was 11 section 11 oh was it section 11 sorry yeah it was the um I think director moraldo director moraldo raised about the language not being clear on complaints and what we would be expecting to be produced in complaints we can t we can table that to a future conversation but I don't know if that's when people um there was interest maybe two board members you know knocking out a bit more quickly seeing no immediate excitement about that topic maybe we'll wait till Anna's back and ask the question again to see if we can get an to do a little bit more policy work before um we could nominate an to do it right now
175that's I I was just putting that in the atmosphere um so okay I'll bring that one back and we'll figure out if there's a quick way are there any additional items we need to talk about on calendaring were we going to try to calendar fall Retreat we can have a discussion about fall Retreat I have I I do have some thoughts on that topic um I do we are um did we do a poll we didn't do another poll on Fall retreat no we I think we did finish finally our poll on school Improvement plan review yes the finding with the school Improvement was that it was hard to find a fall cl to come together wonder and so um I also I guess from my perspective I did wonder if this was a good
176opportunity to really look at get maybe an early in the New Year Retreat that was more focused on an onboarding um that might make more sense uh approach given that we will have two two new board members at that time but I think that is worth a discussion or folks want to have try to find time in the fall any thoughts about how you want to handle next Retreat I'm all for winter we have no idea why you might want to hold this until after December um anyway so that's what's on my mind I think unless there's a strong opinion in another direction we have moved forward some stuff we would normally do in spring into the fall and so maybe we just take the opportunity to do a good a uh agenda for a
177winter um Post January I guess Retreat that is really about onboarding and that would have also allowed the two new board members to have done the new uh new board member boot camp as well in November so I'm seeing basic nodding so I think for now we will table setting a date for next Retreat um as well any other calendaring items