001okay thank you the um the board has been an executive session uh we finished at 603 I believe is our exact time uh regarding legal matters we will now proceed with the rest of our regular meeting we do know we have a uh we will have one change to our regular agenda this evening we have an item that is currently on the consent agenda regarding the adoption of our fifth grade uh flash curriculum adoption that will move to our regular agenda and we will I will be putting that in our what following our topic that is uh monitoring an el13 facilities so we'll go and be the new number seven in our agenda this evening so I'll hold a public comment on that topic until that time as I see we've got a couple of
002other topics signed up to give input this evening um so we will get started we will get started with public comment that's an opportunity for um the board to receive public statements on items not listed on the meeting agenda for public comment if you have a point of view for a specific agenda item I'll ask that you hold that until I request during that particular agenda item public comment time is not intended as a time to raise issues unique to any particular student staff member administrator rather it's a time to provide your insights on issues more generally or of a wider concern as a general rule the board will not respond to public comment as they begin your comments by clearly stating your name and School attendance area please limit your comments to two minutes
003we will use a timer the board neither endorses nor sensors any opinions expressed during public comment please keep your comments civil and respectful and avoid personal attacks on others the audience should refrain from making comments or engaging in Applause but feel free to wave your hands in support of a speaker um I see that we have a couple of folks for items that are not on the current agenda so I'll start for public comment in the room and then I'll go to see if there's any on Zoom so first I have um signed up tonight is Larry White so I'm back here again uh speaking against a speech against all slurs but I've consistently spoken about one in particular that's on this deep piece of paper here and I still don't understand why the district
004is so adamant about protecting the word yes I say protecting because not designating this in other words as a form of hate speech you're in fact promoting its use so I continually ask a question why this works why this word in the community that promotes diversity and Equity that the district feels so strongly that responds to my attorney with threats of sanctions rather than have a discussion this has been completely bathroomed what is the benefit of allowing minority children to use a slur it certainly doesn't benefit those children I can tell you that it's a black man it has no intrinsic value to them nor to the non-linearities around them many of whom are also appalled by the ugliness of this word what purpose does this word serve other than to further marginalize a generation
005of children who have already been marginalized so I'll continue to ask the question despite the legal threats because I'm simply opposed to this and other slurs in Issaquah schools the community deserves better thank you for your input next I have Julie Carr good evening superintendent Talia can board members my name is Julie Carr I parent two isqua high school students thank you for all you've done to provide a very good year for them this year thank you for making safety and well-being of our students of top priority I noticed safety in how our school buildings are secured and the information you provide like the King County river water safety tips that were recently published in a recent weekly bulletin gun violence is another safety topic that's tragically been in the Forefront of school conversations recently
006all school districts have a role in preventing the trauma loss of life and disruption that gun violence brings especially gun violence on school grounds last week Lake Washington school district added a gun storage safety page to their website and notified parents and caregivers of the need for secure firearm storage and I'm here to ask that Issaquah school district undertake a robust effort to share safety reminders with parents and caregivers regarding Secure Storage of firearms in the home and in vehicles unsecured Firearms are directly related to school shootings the K-12 shooting school shooting database reports that the U.S on a track to see 400 shootings at schools this year the average age of the student who brings a firearm to school is 16 years old situations of conflict are becoming more deadly with guns present and
007situations escalate bystanders are injured or killed access to an unsecured firearm is also a huge risk factor for suicide by gun the King County Public Health lock it up campaign as well as a safety program be smart for kids found at be smart for kids.org is uh they're both uh have very good materials that can be distributed and I'd like to see Issaquah school district safety and parent communication efforts include year-round firearm Secure Storage education thank you thank you for your input anyone on Zoom thank you with that we will move to the approval of the consent agenda do I have a motion as amended yes sorry I move the consent agenda be approved as amended second thank you the consent agenda is a meeting management tool whereby the board is able to pass multiple
008items in one motion the consent agenda has been reviewed by board members prior to this meeting and as we did tonight any board member May remove an item from that consent agenda and place it on the regular agenda for discussion so we do have a motion all those in favor any opposed thank you uh passed as amended next we have establishment of the regular agenda superintendent and are there any changes besides the one I've already mentioned uh no other changes okay thank you so we'll move into our our regular agenda first up on our agenda to non-student input and so we have three of our um Els or policies that we I believe we have students ready to give input on this evening we have el4 financial planning el5 actual Financial condition and El 6
009asset protection so who is giving input on these okay great do you want to start and are you gonna how about we do you have all three okay and um did you also do all three nope four and six okay so why don't you go ahead and go through all three sir just say your name and your school again okay so my name is Jacob O'Connell I'm from Liberty High School and I'll start with uh El form so it's executive limitation four details the financial planning and budgeting concerns of the district and the superintendent and this is primarily focused on the ethical and the prioritization of long-term line planning of the district making sure that we are in rational compliances and we adjust to the changing environment throughout the year so throughout this the 2022
010to 2023 school year there was significant internal and external events that affected the budget uh firstly uh there was a significant reduction in students that it equated to a 26 million dollar lesson operating revenue and as a intern that was significant loss in funding coupled with inflation that sort of the cost of goods raised by 6. 6.4 percent across that school year and then as we transition uh finally from The Proven 19 online school area into in-person school there was also the development of major projects to accommodate the new students and so I gathered some peer feedback on the kind of the knowledge they had of the financial budgeting and from what I could tell there was a positive overall consensus about the financial planning for example 91 of the students agree that the superintendent
011allowed sufficient Project funding 83 of students agree that the district is safe and capital expenditures and 84 of students agree that the district performed on the Jaws from the initial budgeting however there was one area in that's only 64 of students agreed that the district budgeting adjusted to the changing Financial climate and that kind of brings me into the possible solutions so the first one is the internal school fundraisers especially as we transition into in-person clubs a significant contribution could be to raise the amount of internal funding for those and then secondly just parent and teacher potentially student input on what we prioritize when it comes to budgeting just at the beginning of the year and moving forward okay fantastic thank you should I move to you can keep going uh so the next El
012is el5 which details the actual Financial condition detailing detailing the external composition of the district's financial situation and this is primarily being conscious of what just currently going on and what can be done moving forward so once again there were a lot of concerns regarding um the the external and the internal factors that contributed to the current financial situation once again the inflation rates the rising Capital expenditures on the new element elementary middle and high school currently in development the rise in overall operating costs and salaries uh the loss of funding and then the rise of in-person and electricurricular activities and the necessary funding so in terms of peer feedback once again there was kind of a limited understanding of the financial conditions from the majority of students um but I did I was able
013to gather some consensus uh mainly um 100 of students that breathe at the district settled debt and give them funds in a timely matter 93 of students agree there was suitable funding for Capital expenditures 93 of students agree that the district is acting ethically and reasonably in terms of financial planning and operating and 87 percent of students acceptable modifications were made to financial decision making however only 63 of students agree that it was easily accessible on Revenue cost breakdown forms and accountability from the district which was the major area of concern and frond that the solutions from a lot of students were they proceeding improved accessibility to cost breakdown structures and uh Revenue forms and then just improve broad accountability for financial estimates from the beginning of the year to the changing environment that experience
014a lot of cuts that weren't planned from and then lastly executive limitations six this details the overall asset protection and management of the district I think ethically and responsibly in monitoring all assets whether those are tangible information or digital and then there were a lot of new and internal and external consequences to manage the need for Unique solutions for um the assets once again coming from covet when we were in online learning transitioning into in person there was a lot more tangible assets that shifted from more of online into in person social media and online image perception as monitoring the overall image of these across school district is a part of the asset protection and then of course the school-issued laptops was a lot of big area a lot of students brought up and then
015property damage and vandalism as well as they would reduce in Staffing and security for protecting these tangible assets so in terms of peer feedback 86 of students agree that the district has a positive image as acted ethically in handyman assets 95 of students District never endangered its image and 95 of students agree that the assets were properly preserved and Records accurately disposed however the two major areas of concern is that only 56 of students supported the district's software protection and the stored issues laptops and 65 of students agreed that there was sufficient security of internal school activities and the prevent of vandalism so the first solution to that would be in a change of laptop software as a major consensus was that the current software would limit the research and it didn't maximize the learning
016capabilities and then secondly just an increase in security for the school activities property damage internally and then vandalism of this of the actual School that's it very much awesome thank you so sorry can you just remind me procedurally when when our students present this information do they also send us electronic copy I feel like sometimes we get it and sometimes we don't is there any sort of process or expectation just because it'd be helpful for them when we're monitoring it to build a referred to refer back to feedback uh yes we have typically gotten I think there might be it might have been one instance or we did not but typically have gotten the both survey data which is always helpful to refer back to so it can see the end size as well as
017the written comments so um Jack if you would send us your comments okay great thank you so we'll get copies thank you and sorry I didn't look that way okay well hi I'm Jordan I go to is hi I'm Jordan I go to Issaquah High School and um as far as like I'll just keep this short as far as el4 goes I emailed a member of the cabinet on the finance team and they basically said like all the finances are like pretty nominal like there's not really like any issues there as far as like like that are like super pressing or concerning and so um but as far as El 6 goes I did find two issues one of them being that teachers are kind of worried that like let's just say a kid skips
018class um and like leaves five minutes before the school like would officially release them they're then worried that like if that student gets hurt on campus that like that legal Fallout would then fall back onto the teacher and so they just kind of want to know that like they're legally protected there or like they don't really know um or have like many people to ask about like what would be the concept the consequences of that type of um situation and then the other thing I found is that um teachers are kind of worried to like lay down the hammer when it comes to AI plagiarism because they think that there's no like set rules as to what it plagiarism with AI looks like and so if a student were to um plagiarize with AI and
019you'd know because like turn it in consider can detect that type of thing um they're worried that like if they were to charge that kid and give them let's just say a zero on the assignment then that parent would like it come back and like be like hey you just gave my kid a zero but they didn't like break any like set fast or like hardened Stone rules and so teachers are kind of just like conflicted because it's like it's their job to like teach the kid how to learn but they can't really like enforce that because they can't give the kid a zero thank you thank you very helpful any or any board members have questions or clarifications you want to ask about that input all right thank you both awesome job and again
020that input gets factored into when we do the monitoring and District progress against these specific policies so what we'll do is move on to a next and very exciting section which is also about our super student Representatives um we have a wonderful opportunity to recognize them so I don't know if anyone am I throwing to anyone in particular on this one what does it mean um we have some uh certificates to recognize each of our student board Representatives who are present here and we'll make sure to follow up with those who are not in attendance tonight um and executive director of high school's Andreas year will um will share these certificates and and call the names maybe of each of the student just to formally recognize their year of service I would like you to
021also just take this quick moment uh to thank um our trailblazing student Representatives this year for this different model in an evolving model as well of student input into the board processes and um very much looking forward to continuing to work with Mia and Jack next year and involve this even further and thank you very much to Andrea Zira for her work in leading that on behalf of the district did you want to say a few words director mullings or do you want me to just go on perfect okay I will after you're done perfect first up I've got Jordan Lee Jordan you want to share what your plans are for next year um yeah I plan to get um a degree in mechanical engineering at WSU love that all right and then I've got
022Mia Williamson who's one of our student reps he's also coming back next year okay and then the wrong you want to come up and share what your plans are for next year just one of our seniors who's graduating um so I'm going to UW for computer science at their Paul Allen School yes thanks and then Jack O'Connell again coming back next year we're very excited for that thank you for doing that and again we'll get certificates to all of our student reps it's been an amazing process to reform our student rep and our student input this year I think we've gotten a lot you guys have really dug in our policies that are the core of what we do as a school board you've also given us an amazing amount of feedback on how we
023can continue to better and improve the program and even helped with recruiting and interviewing of the next wave of student representatives and I always like to say and we were quite the hot ticket in student reps because we got a whole lot more applicants than some of the other organizations so thank you so much for your work and for your contribution to the board of course yeah so I want to Echo what president mulling said about thank you for all the feedback because we I mean we had student Reps for a long time it wasn't really working the way the board wanted it to we got this great idea of let's have eight of them and have them do all these things some of that went really well some of it went less well when
024we did the interviews for next year director maraldo kept saying that we were trying to fly the plane while we were building it um and director gallinger said to me oh I think we should do a presentation it was about you know how large districts can utilize student reps and I'm thinking let's wait till next year when we've we've kind of smoothed out all the rough edges and you know know a little bit better what we're doing but I mentioned this now because hey if students come to wazda with us to you know do the oh although it's in Spokane yeah so that might not work but I was gonna because students are always a big draw um but anyway I really want to thank you for all the feedback because we know some things
025didn't run as smoothly as they should have we've learned a lot of stuff that is going to be way better next year so appreciate all your input thank you okay so we are gonna move on let me um can we interrupt just get a picture um with our four um Representatives who are in person uh and like maybe just get them sort of near the DIA so we can get a memorialize this important moment to celebrate you and uh thank you and so we can see this yeah give me very important awesome so next up on our agenda we have Works in progress superintendent over to you great thank you I'll keep this pretty short tonight but I am first of all I wanted to start with a recognition and acknowledgment that over the past
026two board meetings you've seen Bethany Rogers to my right quietly joined Diane gambari side by side in her duties as reporting secretary secretary for the board and tonight welcoming officially Bethany and her uh in her full leadership role with Diane on the side off to the side providing support so um I just want to say thanks Bethany for joining us up here solo and Bethany will be transitioning officially to the position on August 1st and don't worry Diane we will have a way to recognize your contributions um at the next board meeting which I've already given her heads up on so it's not a surprise I think it's nice to tell people when that's happening so they can prepare themselves so also hard to surprise Diane and and also very hard to make I I
027yes I've had to do some plotting I guess to make that works already so anyways I want to acknowledge that formally I'm happy to have you aside next to us Bethany tonight um a couple of just quick updates last week I attended the five chamber breakfast hosted by the greater Issaquah Chamber of Commerce uh chambers that were in attendance included obviously greater Issaquah Mercer Island Sammamish Newcastle and Snoqualmie and um I've been doing a lot of superintendent Network and collaboration opportunities over the past week including our regional Puget Sound ESD Regional superintendent business meeting one of the topics that we discussed at that meeting was the social media litigation that is asking districts to consider to sign on to and I'll be providing the board with more updates about that as we you know learn
028more about that effort also been working with a different superintendent leadership Network to continue to collaborate many of those topics are really about how districts are or how superintendents are currently preparing to reset for next year to close out this year successfully and how people are adjusting to adjusted budgets because that is a topic that is facing nearly everyone and then finally continuing work with our Center for collaborative studies which is a Consortium of different local districts here just to continue to collaborate on great teaching and learning efforts we the highlight of that has really been book studies and prior to covid um a conference so we've been talking a lot of different business items and this opportunity to reset and how we think about what is most valuable to our teachers um so that's
029been very positive and that's where um I share the uh board leadership with that with Durana Ozil from the iea here as a president so that's been a powerful collaboration opportunity um other than that um it's just the end of the year we're excited for uh graduation next week we have two cabinet members who have a senior who is going to be graduating those two cabin members Sherman Carver and Donna Hood will be in attendance uh supporting their student uh or this their child uh in their graduation efforts so you'll see them in their official capacity as a parent next week at graduation so um with that it's just the end of the year and we're preparing to just close out and do the appropriate um celebrations which was marked today by a retirement ceremony
030which was a lovely opportunity to recognize across the entire District those who dedicated many of them uh tandem family pairs spouses will work in the district together and are retiring together but also um many generations of family members who are both employees current employees prior employees and have students in the district so that was very very lovely that's it fantastic thank you uh next on our agenda we have an update on the Strategic plan I see that we have a team member joining us at the podium superintendent great yes uh this is part of our regular update we are moving now towards work plans implementation plans and making the aspiration of both the vision that was adopted by the board um and the high level set of priorities uh come to life and so we
031have had some you know adjustments and changes but also we'll you know our commitment is keeping everyone in the loop about that but the reality is is now sitting in and we had we turn our attention to that as we make plans for next year and bring that along so Marcel Hauser is here and you can introduce himself about what we're up to Marshall Hauser senior advisor and strategy good evening everybody um so today we just want to provide a brief update on the work just today where we are right now we've moved into implementation planning we started to really look at our outcomes per strategy but also our targets introductory so I'll share a little bit about where we are going and then kind of we're in draft Mode still we have some alignment
032workshops coming up next week week we also have routine workshops in the following week after that so some work to come but we're happy to provide an update on where we are today so again we're in the in the detailed delivery planning stage so it's outcomes it's you know mapping out the Milestones per strategy we're starting to look at the targets trajectories but also what are our internal routines that we'll have going forward to really track up track our progress and move the work ahead in the next three years so just this is just a reminder to refresh the different components to the strategic planning process in the different areas obviously on top you have your vision at Northstar your mission our priority areas goals strategies outcomes and then work streams so it really does
033build itself up we're at the bottom as we start to look at where we are today and what we'll focus on you know this again this is a reminder of our priority areas uh student well-being academic opportunity diverse talent I think engagement and organizational Effectiveness those are the five areas that we're focused on again just a reminder and where we are today so we are focused on outcomes so we're going to give a brief just preview of where we are by strategy some some examples of strategy outcomes but also we'll talk a little bit about some of the internal routines and also how we're going to communicate out to to the community going forward so I'm gonna spend a little bit more time here just to kind of highlight some of the strategy outcomes that
034we have drafted so far and again this is in draft mode but just to highlight if you look on the far left you have student well-being that's the priority area in the middle that's the goal so in this particular goal is students will feel safe and have a sense of well-being a sense of belonging the strategy the strategy we're going to use to achieve that goal is to analyze and refine district-wide school safety plans to include emotional safety physical safety School climate and student supports so our three-year outcome that we hope to hit on is we want to increase the number of students who report feeling safe at school by at least 10 percent and again we're still looking at the numbers and we're drafting but it builds upon sort of what we hope to
035do what we hope to achieve and as I highlight this we'll continue to work along the way and we'll see what's working what's not working what you don't see here are the milestones and the sort of action steps it'll build towards that so we're consistently iterate work upon you know have internal routines where we track and monitor see what's working and adjust and I'll just highlight one more in this particular slide and we'll jump to the next one so if we look at diverse Talent so the particular goal is that District leadership and staff will diversify our Workforce so we're more closely aligns with our student population so the strategy that we're going to employ to reach that particular goal is we're going to Train hiring managers on effective hiring practices including how to reduce
036bias so as we kind of track it down our three-year outcome in this case would be to increase the number of diverse candidates in the hiring Pools by 20 so we're working on sort of like how we track how we start to look at the data along the way at different checkpoints and again the just course if needed so just to highlight from the other areas as well we'll use one from academic opportunities in this particular case yeah we if we look at the goal here students will have Equitable access to resources and Pathways that support individualized post-high school goals if we look at our particular strategy we want to establish a baseline of offerings at all secondary schools 6 through 12 to ensure that the programs are delivered consistently across all schools and then
037by the end of three years we want 100 of schools to be offering courses identified as Baseline enhanced offerings so just to track we are also going to have our targets and directories so year one might be at a certain percentage or two at a certain percentage it's not always evenly split you may start really slow because you're really establishing Baseline protocols Planning by year two you might increase that percentage so we're working all that out now as we speak but we're starting to track and manage it and really scrutinize like what we're doing and Is it feasible to really accomplish this with Where We Are so just to move and shift I want to shift to routines and kind of where we're going what we're thinking let me pause pause for one second I
038just wanted to jump in for a moment to talk about sort of the shift from the language of metrics to outcomes um because some of this in this example that um Mr Hauser was speaking about in in this case of 100 of schools offering courses identified as as you know Baseline enhanced offerings that is about more of an input that would lead to something else whereas the um the results uh for a feeling of sense of safety is more of an outcome so you can think about it multiple different ways but we are looking at what will actually help Define what we will accomplish sometimes it is one step leading to another and so as I hope that we continue to talk about our monitoring and progress throughout the next few years then we would
039be thinking what is the next outcome we'd be looking to look at you know three years from now Beyond this plan itself so just a note about that that shift yeah I would say some are implementation based so you may have some that you know we're going to measure direct result to student but there are some outcomes that we don't have a System created yet so we need to create that implemented district-wide and have and standardize it so there's a mix between the strategies as you see outcomes and this is just to identify our iterative process so we spoke about this a bit um as we've been building so you know we've decided on priorities and goals we talked about that um we we did that alongside the budgeting process so we talked about how
040do we allocate resources you know as when in a space where we're reducing how do we also make additions in the same time and invest in areas um we're in the I would say we're about in in phase three we're starting to begin the implementation we're diving into that you know after August you know we'll learn from what we Implement we'll innovate we'll continue implementation and we'll continue that cycle so it's just to enter the process that has to remain flexible so we really Drive results for students so I'm going to shift a little bit to talk about some of the internal routines that we are proposing that we're starting to kind of build within and actually start to plan for and schedule out so on top level on the top row you'll see priority
041area strategy team meetings those are meetings by those priority areas those buckets so student well-being that's there's a priority area team with strategy leads and the primary leader will meet so they'll have conversations they'll be you know constant communication as they drive the work um there's monthly strategy tracking so we'll do some internal uh you know progress monitoring based on the Milestones so we'll start to track things that are on track off track needs support so it's just a way that we'll communicate with each other to collaborate in a fashion that we can lift things up before they get to a point of uh you know to a point where we it's tougher to implement uh we also have priority leaders huddle so we're talking about how do we collect and we come together uh
042primary leaders and share across the district and you know across departmental sharing of what's going on and then we'll also talk about problem solving so we'll look at you know if something's not working how do we put our heads together and Leverage The intellectual capital in this space to lift those problems up and support each other and then there's you know newer stock takes which is essentially just taking stock in where we are and that really is looking at the outcome data so how do we track the data so all the strategy outcomes that we're going to list out how we track them over time when the data is available to say where we are in time and if and if we're off course what do we need to do differently to adjust so it's
043a little bit on our internal sort of routines then the secondary piece is you know how will we communicate externally with with the community and folks so we'll have board meetings Retreats work studies a lot of this work is going to be built within the I think the ends in El reporting along the way it's all going to sort of integrate so we'll have those public meetings where we share how we're doing uh there's also the and one reporting which which we talked about a previous board meeting um and then there's there's District website we'll share you know build up and lift something up for the Strategic plan to share our progress and then we'll continue our our engagement with constituent groups so we'll continue to engage talk to folks gather feedback on you know
044it'll shift towards what should we do to how are we doing and we'll start to take that feedback in and shift course if we if implementation isn't going well or it's not having the impact we want to have and with that that concludes the presentation for me thank you any comments or questions from the board I I guess I have one and you got to it on the very last well I think you're getting to what my question is on the very last slide and I know earlier on in the strategic planning process there was a mapping done of the eels to strategies and I think my questions were going through is I love a good project plan more than most people so this feels really good to me on the Strategic plan but I
045think there's places where we have policy in place that I may be I'm not sure about the awareness the adoption uh and we're going to talk about you know El 12 is when we've been we've been talking about for a while so I guess I want to figure out how do we how do we maybe not lose sight of making sure that system-wide we have an understanding adoption of the Els themselves while we're talking about these particular strategies that that goes as a as a combination because I think that might I guess feel less great to me if people are like yeah we used to talk about Els but now we talk about these strategies and it feels like a a switch of context versus an enhanced discussion does that make sense absolutely thank you
046for that feedback it's great feeling I can take a First Step at that because uh we've had we've have been having conversations around um for example the ends right so ends um on academic and Foundations we do a significant review of that that's an annual review that happens mostly in January um I think that's how we're looking at the calendar even for next year so there are certain data points in there that would overlap um and so part of the monitoring would actually allow us to sort of pull forward that data um on a more regular basis potentially as it might be included in a particular strategy under academic opportunities so this is this is a mechanism to help us also Drive data review on a more regular basis and progress review not just for
047the Strategic plan so the stock takes are really about taking stock so we're trying to drive that behavior and the routines that we can have that regular update with ourselves and to assess are we on or off track I want to be very transparent with the board with our public and our team has this commitment too that we are aware of where our progress is and how we need to adjust course and invite others to help and into that conversation so those are the important values behind the system and we do have a bit of mapping to sort of continue to do and we are getting ahead also of some planning as well for the Els um as we look at the Cadence so that's going to be an important moment when we lock in
048those dates for the monitoring for next year so we'll take the same skills and apply it and I was also add to the El soar as a companion it's real-time data so anything we're doing with the Strategic plan is like a forward-facing thing whereas you may have some data that's using lagging data with the eels and then so it's sort of like here's what we're doing about it maybe that could compare companion piece to some of those reports so it could supplement I think so yes I love all of that and I guess when we talk about um the Strategic plan right part of the work that will happen in rallying people around these topics bringing groups together them doing status is they will take on a kind of a personality an understanding of their
049own right organizationally wide and so I don't I guess part of what part of what was just said maybe solidifies my my question I don't want the El to just be the reaction or the math that we look at after I want to make sure that they are the foundation of why something's in the Strategic plan and the particular policy we're trying to move forward by having a strategic plan and I worry that we might get a little disconnected that we talk about the plan is what people are focusing on and the El is what we measure by versus the reason why we have a plan is to bring the policies to life in the district does that make sense what I'm saying it does okay thank you for that clarification yes any other thoughts
050or comments I I thought you were spot on with that because that really is it that that is how the the pyramid is going and so it's like I I I'm wondering where it's beyond just the ISD Mission it is the mission and ends and where does that come into building that building that out and building that through and what I'm hoping is that we can at least identify what am I going to say reasonable progress towards what I'm just waiting and so I think that this is helping us build the foundation to say when we're measuring and we say yes we're meeting reasonable progress well how do we how are we measuring it and I think that to me is the Crux of this process should be landing on helping the board answer that
051long-awaited question if no other comments will say thank you for the update with that we will move into some good El work and our next agenda item is monitoring of uh el12 our learning environment um uh do I have a motion I move the board except the monitoring report for el12 learning environment as presented second thank you uh superintendent do we have folks joining us on this fund all right I'd like to welcome up Andrew zier and Rich melish I would also like to take this moment to recognize Andrea zier who has been a Cabinet member and a valued member of our team over the past year and Beyond but I've gotten to work with her over this past year as she is transitioning to become the principal of North Bend Elementary School in Snoqualmie
052Valley so this is uh her um I guess sort of final opportunity to be in front of the board but I want to make sure I recognize appreciate and celebrate that and hopefully that was enough time to give Andrea a moment to walk up here as well um but I just want to acknowledge that and I know that um the board deeply values Your Service as well so thank you Andrea but I would love questions Andrew um but if you want to sort of highlight where you know where we are and what we have forward and very succinct way that would be helpful or provide your commentary and then we can um go from there um yeah I think that with the work studies being so recent as well as the kind of summary of
053the work study you can kind of see the direction that we're headed but um in the work say we dove into kind of the years of the year in in the rear I don't know um that was the more richest area in 2122 so I don't know if you had any highlights that you wanted to bring um forward um but I think most of the work was really done in um the professional development of the teachers around giving them some collaborative work time to set some common expectations um and we recognize that that really illuminated some of those areas and gaps around some of our definitions and application and so you can see that in the data that was collected around what they set as their varied levels uh when the teachers submitted their grading
054practices and their alignment um but you can see all the professional development and the survey results from the students that highlighted the things that we kind of already know in the why behind el12 so with that yeah no I think over after questions yeah I think the only thing that I'd say is that taken away from the work study sessions I really appreciated having the student and teacher voice there to really speak to the fact that this is a very adaptive process I like the values-led process um that um and that our our teachers are really wrestling with it and really trying to figure out how to leverage this for learning while while um looking at what the outcomes we're looking for as a word and so we have a ways to go um but
055I feel like we've covered that really well in artwork study sessions so I guess questions are what we can answer how about I start with looking for any public input on this discussion please is there any public input on this topic in the room any on the zoom no seeing none board any questions and or discussion do you want to get started thank you uh so hopefully our students can also weigh in on this since this is a huge part so we last two students I hope the other two stay for this discussion it's probably one of the most important policies that impacts your daily life so I think I'll just start from the top uh first of all I want to acknowledge um to Rich and Andrea our student and this is not easy
056work and it's not easy to try and find alignment across our 1200 certificates so I acknowledge that and I appreciate that same time the iterative process has to come to some conclusion or some but we heard I think the language from our teachers and from our board was some minimum standard and expectation for like what is mastery what is like there's some just basic definitions that need to be I think interpreted more clearly um so in the general interpretation I would seek to say that that actually needs to probably be defined by our District I think the board language is so good because our board language is just saying we want best practices and we want equity and we want alignment and then it's up for the district to to highlight what Mastery is and
057so I think that's a missing piece of work that the district needs to do because we heard that from multiple teachers until they have an idea about what that means and what does multiple attempts to demonstrate Mastery mean it's going to be impossible to sort of a line and I can understand why our teachers walked away from those all the training and as I shared in the work study of being oh well I thought this was just sort of a recommendation like well that's actually not what board policy is uh so moving beyond the general part to the um first part of evidence for the modules so I'll just talk about that one so the October 1 module um so I appreciate seeing these things but I think if I look at number slides nine
058and ten in those if you open up the October one October 2021 module and you see the pie graphs of all of them and you know the ranges of of the sort of alignment part is um anywhere from 53 to 70ish percent of alignment and that tells me like we're not we're not there yet so that certainly is not approaching levels of Mastery in my book so I would be curious to see and this may be something that you guys need to do every couple years since this was probably now dated to see because I know there's been work done since then so in maybe fall 2023 like what would those pie graphs look like next fall because I would hope that they look different and we see reasonable progress towards compliance and then going
059to the next uh graph or excuse me the next PowerPoint which was the one for January of 20 I had two questions specifically about that one it's slide 11. and this is where I think we get into the either lack of clarity or the confusion in the communication part and I think this is the part that the district needs to own on behalf of our teachers and our students is because this work is important because our teachers and our students all have to know like what the game plan is and when they don't we don't have even application of it so on that side it says these policies focus on allowing opportunity to recover from below standard work for example our great Improvement policy only allows retaking of courses as C minus or below and
060so I think that's confusing because what you're I think in that in clarif clarify if I'm wrong that means that for if a student wanted to retake the whole course they could only retake it if their grade was below that right but this policy is talking about homework and gradient of assignments not about that so I think that teachers walk away with I don't really understand what am I supposed to do and what am I supposed to allow and I can totally see um why that is uh the other one is then wait can I ask a question on that page yeah I was looking at that because I was wondering if where you were going was the C minus becomes mastery because that was kind of referred to at least in this yeah it's
061some play in a couple of places about you know great Improvement if you had a c minus or below so is that is that gonna are we heading in a direction to say C minus his Mastery or no this getting above it is Mastery so this was setting them up for their very first time of coming together across course like groups and saying we need to actually have we need we need to develop our plan for having the same practice and we hadn't really defined recovery from what level and so we were looking at where in our system have we already defined when recovery can happen and this was just an example at the high school that was very real we say that we say at a course level that anything at a c minus
062or below you can get grade recovery on so we were using that as kind of a parallel yes hopefully in the presentation of this we we engaged in the conversation with the principal so that they could engage in the conversation with their teachers that that's just an example within our system of recovery that already exists now we're asking them to look at what because we hadn't we haven't defined what grade corresponds to to achieving rigorous standards and I just want to be really clear that we're always referring to rigorous standards not basic standards so when a student achieves rigorous standards we hadn't we we haven't to the to the point that was made previously defined what that correlates to in a grade or a GPA or a percent so we were asking them to start
063that process of what does that correlate to what kind of grade what kind of score indicates to you as a teaching team that a student has not achieved what you expect them to achieve in your course and then have a plan for if they do score below that to give them an opportunity for recovery so it was the very beginning of a conversation um that this slide was was created it was the first time we asked them to wrestle with that issue and tell us their best thinking so that that that's that's the origins of that at that moment in time but fast forward 18 months later yes we still haven't gotten to that conclusion and before we enter this next school year I would sure hope that you as the executive director of teaching
064and unlearning can tell us as a board what that is because our students and our teachers deserve to know that before we walk into another school year and so before those August lid days otherwise we're going to be here again next year with like oh well there wasn't really Clarity on that at some point we we've got to draw the Line in the Sand so teachers and students know what it is they're expected to do because I don't think there's any one of the five of us that care what the line and the number is but we have to know what it is because what we ultimately care about is that we are communicating clear expectations to our students and our families so they know and know how can they best support their students I
065have another question on more slides if you don't so number 14 . that's page 14. and that's another example so it says a guiding question for the answer will the final exam substantially change a student's final grade oh sorry the question was do we have to offer a recovery for finals and I love that this to this detail because that's helpful that's what I mean teachers want to know what do they what are the boundaries of the room and it says will the financial exam substantially change a student's final grade and so I think there's going to have to be a definition of what does considered substantially change or if a final will have a substantial impact to a student's overall grade there should be an opportunity for recovery because if that's not a finance
066left out to the student like a student could say a change from an A to an A minus is a substantial impact to their grade but the district might say well substantial impact would be Crossing two you know from uh whatever the grade bands you want to say but I think these are really important for us to just know what what is the operating agreement going to be because we have like we're not going to be able to have that Clarity we're not going to be able to move forward as a system and focus on alignment until we have those definitions in place and again I don't care what that is but I think those are things that they need to be defined and if I can just tap on to that um and I
067don't want to go back down the rabbit hole of the last meeting of what is Mastery but I do want to caution us to be you know as you talk about definitions to be careful about the words we use because if on the one hand we say Well if you get a c minus in algebra one you can go on to algebra two but we say Mastery is a b there's a disconnect so so we need to we need to Define our terms so that that we understand what we're talking about you know if those two if those two letters or numbers or whatever are not the same then we need to call them different things right if Mastery is a b then why are we promoting kids with a c to the next level
068and and I don't want to get into the rabbit hole of which one is right or wrong but but we need to have some clarity around what the words are and what we're talking about well I mean and passing is really a d right right which makes it even worse we have a bigger gap between what is passing the student gets credit for it towards graduation goes on to the next level uh if it's a sequential type course and so how how do we mesh those two together is that true I don't even know yeah so I mean can a a student that gets a d in algebra 1 move on to Geometry that's a question we we do offer um self-select courses so we give learning recommendations to students so a teacher could a
069teacher could say to a student and gets a c or a d I I think that you could use this other course before you're ready for the next of this progression um you can have a student who who has achieved a d and points but that is heavily impacted by their work completion and a teacher could say I see your skill set I wish it would have shown up more in the work that you turned in and I think you are ready for the next course so we try to give learning recommendations directly to students in courses where you're dealing with cumulative skills so yes a student can technically get a D in a class and take the next class um because we do have a self-select system yeah you could technically get in you
070could fail a class but say I'm gonna do what I need to to be ready for that class and take that next class it is it is an option but we do give learning recommendations got it and on to that one more thing on that page about finals I mean I'll be honest I hadn't really thought about finals when we say you need um multiple opportunities because I mean I can see over the course of a semester having multiple opportunities to improve grades and assignments but how is that going to work with finals especially in June when grades are due and and how will that work for teachers and how many times kids have any kind of opportunity to make an adjustment to their or retake of their final that is part of the complexity
071of this conversation that is really difficult because semester one when you're going to have that student back in a year-long course one could make arguments that there's opportunities because you're continuing education along there semester two when people are off contract at the end of that last day of finals that's a tough question so that's why that's why this FAQ came up and that's why we're still wrestling with this issue of what do we do when we have a final that can have a significant impact on a student's grade and that just happens to be the day that student is going through a tough time and has difficulty at what point do we stop offering chances and that's a that's a part of the complexities of this conversation that I don't have an immediate answer because
072there are so many different scenarios that we could talk about in this one but I would say and I only experience for Skyline but when it's only 10 of their grade like statistically speaking 10 of the great cancer will impact it very much but when it's more I definitely watched that happen so I have one class where it's not 10 and it had a huge impact on their grade and so I do see validity in both sides I don't I can't make decision I don't care what it is but right but it needs to be consistent yeah is part of it and I you know again it goes back to I don't know whoever said it you know what is significantly impacting admittedly it could be easy for a kid to say a difference of
073going from a grade to a minus or a minus to a grade that you know a whole grade that to them could be significant so it there has to be some bounds around what that really means no because I was thinking the same thing it's along the definitions of what a substantial change you know is going for I would think going from a B minus to a c plus might feel more substantial than going from a b to a B minus just because you're in that Major letter change but is it I don't know I really don't and I think that is you know interesting to think what's the student perspective on that but I also from the teaching stamp teacher standpoint of if I'm giving a final especially if I'm on the last day
074of finals how long how quickly do I have to turn around and give them back their grade if they're going to have an opportunity to retake it I think there's big problems with then you're bumping finals by like an entire week so that the teacher has time to to grade it get it back to the student and assess how the impact is and the student to retake it and great I mean I can just see how that could be a real problem and then what are you doing the last week week and a half a school if they're done with finals what meaningful learning is going to happen after that I agree with that that's why I think that the the seems to be more prudent to switch it to where the grade is only
075it can't be so significantly impacted that you would need to even consider retake number final that sounds like a terrible thing for a teacher yeah but there's also the opportunity to do some out of the box thinking and to offer a final in such a way that it can count more if it positively impacts your grade unless if it negatively impacts your grade right you can say I'm giving you this test but there's only an upside right we kind of did that at covid we said your grade won't drop below what it was but you can make it better you could do that with finals I mean I'm I'm getting out of my expertise here I'm not a teacher you know but I'm just saying some out of the box thinking could be good and
076so I think I think we're all getting to is where I always end with this topic which is yes there's a lot of edge cases and I'm going to leave them in the edge case category I worry from uh the 18 months later that we haven't solved for the things that are not edge cases and so where we can make definitive constructive clear guidance we should and then I think where we get to things that are in those edges what happens if the finals material um what it what I worry is that we don't solidify those things that can be practically my words right landed rolled out implemented because we're we're worried about that last 10 percent right that long tail of other other things and so that's this is actually the prime example of
077what I was talking about with the Strategic plan right My worry is that we may get organization we the organization we maybe get distracted by some of those new categories and not focus on some of this as the core policy work that we're trying to accomplish in that strategic plan so I think for me that's where I get nervous is how do we get to the controllable if there's 30 things we're worried about what are the controllable or answerable 15 10 17 and be clear on those and then you know there's lots of very smart brains and and folks who can get together about the rest of it but I worry that we've allowed those edge cases to not let us settle on what can be done I agree with that I think that the
078thing I would respond is I think that that's my concern is we heard very consistent feedback from teachers from both sessions from different schools across our district which was very clear to us that there wasn't Clarity to them and I'm highlighting these are the challenges uh I think what I would say though if you're a Skyline parent you don't get the same opportunity if you're an IHS or Liberty parent and so you want to talk about how finals yeah the grades are supposedly finalized in the last day unless there's a grade bum because you're taking an AAP class and you get an X grade and then they go and whatever they can do to the transcript later to adjust the transcript after because AP testing doesn't come back till after school's done and so we
079still see where the grades are manipulated after finals if you go to Issaquah or Liberty high schools and so there that's why so I do think the finals question needs to be discussed and there needs to be Clarity on it because even across your AP courses by what you got for all the feedback we heard from all our AP classes there's not consensus in D across the disciplines in AP so um last one is is on this slide presentation number eight page eight it says bullet three's late work must be scored on the proficiency being demonstrated students should not be penalized for work the work being late and so just curious where that came from because that is not coming from board policy we've not said that that's not stated I want to be very
080clear on the record the board has not said that all work must be accepted and there will be no late work penalty so is that coming from some sort of national best practice or whatnot but I think it gets to where the teachers are like oh we are precious awards that every student must be able to keep taking it until they get an A we're like whoa we've never said anything as such but I can see how something like number three could get then construed and interpreted that it's the board saying this and we've not so that that one I I do want to clarify because that one actually did lead to some follow-up communication with teachers uh because there were some natural questions because we didn't time-bound that statement and so um it did
081it does lead to uh something that we we are going to have to try to find a way to create consistent boundaries but also recognize that it's very different um different types of assignments have different types of appropriateness in terms of what that length of light works so if I have if I have to do a very large paper and I'm running late on that that might be a different Dynamic than my daily assignments so again again what we did not what we clarified is this does not mean that the teacher cannot time bound the late work okay so it's not that was not intended by this statement and then um but we did say that within the time boundaries that are set for that late work when the late work comes in if they've
082demonstrated Mastery they should get a grade that reflects Mastery that penalties for being late within that time-boundness we we do believe that the one of the guiding principles of best practice and of of our interpretation of this policy is that we are graded on the proficiency of the work that we demonstrate um and so so correct we are trying to be very clear with teachers that this is not permission to turn in late work as long as as late as you want as a student but that there is a way for a student who is running behind to work with their teacher to turn in work outside of the initial deadline especially and and recognizing that the amount that work impacts their grade you know has a difference as well so if I'm just talking
083about something that has almost no impact on my overall grade like a daily math assignment that maybe is one point having a I think you can be more strict on that late policy than it's the um final project for my Ela class or my social studies class that is 20 of my grade um so I there's some Nuance there and we're still we do need to clarify and and and bind that and also make sure that there's no lasting um impression that we are talking about endless panel in list deadlines I just want to add just that I think I've been doing I've I've been thinking a lot about yields well since our work studies and uh and doing some of this reporting and I think some of the like disconnect from the conversation the
084work study that really became apparent to me was around this whole discussion around the definition of Mastery and I really look back and I think our approach to El 12 and 2122 was really driven because by two main what's the plural of focus I was an English folk guy it just feels like a weird word to say and I was English teacher but I think we took it as more of like the hope and agency piece around students that um are struggling to pass and earn credit and that was the focus around Equitable grading practice and the like experience of a student having a different wildly different experience with a different geometry teacher so like I always think of like the twin example of two twins the same class with different teachers and so with
085the limited amount of PD time we get to really dig into this work with teachers we have to have like a reasonable pace of what we're accomplishing from year to year and so I think those are what we viewed as our biggest priorities in 2122 was focusing on working towards alignment of like classes with different teachers and the hope and agency for our struggling students to make sure that they always have hope and agency to continue to be able to find success in their classes and less of maybe like that c student who's really aiming for an a um which is kind of the ad conversation that you brought up director mullings but I do think that particularly the the late work penalty comes out of the work we started with these conversations years ago
086with gusky and some of that work around grading and behaviors because an assignment being late is a behavior of a student who maybe didn't manage their time or happen to have multiple assignments due on the same night and they chose sleep or had a really late athletic or club and so this was about Sometimes Late work is really about a behavior whether that's a student still developing executive functioning with their prefrontal cortex or whether that's something going on in their personal life but I think that part of that also came from that conversation is that if a student really has the skills and demonstrates them when they turn in the work and if it's a couple of days late because of a behavior they should be honored for their skills and knowledge and not the
087executive functioning so that that piece of that I think comes from that section of the conversation of all the work we've done around best practice is in research-based practices and I think some of the gaps in some of these Edge conversations comes from what was what was reasonably trying to be tackled in year one which was more course to course alignment and hope an agency for students that get D's and F's um and I think that's what we attempted to do which is why you see some of those things around Mastery or you see the stem of the C minus examples for which is what we model off of our summer school grade Improvement um so I think that's where like the bulk of the work is around that and less around some of the
088other big parts of the l12 like homework and stress and the edge conversations around a clear definition of Mastery and some of the communication pieces conversations we had around where can all the students find their teachers late work policies so those are things that I don't think we've gotten to tackle with the amount of time we have to address it in El 12 year to year with staff so it's nice to hear like what some of the priorities are to the papal next and what is helping us develop a list of clear guidelines and then we still have that looming piece of like the law of the teacher owning the grade book and I appreciated director mulling saying that one time like I'd love a clear list of what we can say is like required
089as minimum standard and like what is still loose and that's still work I think we have to do it's that's tricky tricky work yeah and I just want to add you know I appreciate everything that's being talked about here um I think when we started the policy we were trying to tackle some really basic things like you know and I lived this example having parented a couple of struggling students what happens when a struggling student meets a teacher who says I don't accept late work you're you're doomed right so that's the extreme example so so the first thing is we get rid of that right we don't say okay if it's a day late it's a zero and and the fact that you're dealing with sort of more refinements in here reassures me that at
090least we've dealt with with the horrendous outcomes of you know no late work at all now should there be a penalty to late work that really depends on is it a behavior thing is it a couple days late is it a monthly right that again is above my pay grade but but having dealt with the struggling student and the no late work it's like okay this class is an f and there is absolutely nothing we can do so when I do and I know it's probably steps away from this but you know around those issues of if it if the grade is related to a behavior rather than an understanding of the material what are we as a system doing to alleviate or educate amongst those behavior issues that maybe have not been learned or
091are still a struggle for that student because I think there are some probably some prevention things that we can be doing in elementary school so so much of this ends up being secondary and specifically high school but really what are we doing in the elementaries to ensure that students who have the tools so that when they get to middle school when they get to high school they have those tools to be able to be successful and grades become less about being late because I can guarantee a student in high school that is turning in work late likely was a middle schooler turning in work late likely was a second grader turning in work late I think it is something that is probably pretty common along their whole history of education with us in elementary school
092it wasn't like you were going to get a zero that was going to show up on a grade that means you couldn't get into a college so right the circumstances that the consequences were different but what are we teaching because those consequences will show up you know nine years later and so how are we really mitigating some of those problems down at the front end additional thoughts or comments before we move forward well I just wanted to ask on um yes it's the one about social emotional learning um at the high school I know I was reading through the kids the students comments and its wow comments about like Flex time so in in 2122 where the SEL lessons embedded in the courses and is that changing to be in Flex time I guess I'm
093looking at where that's that's going because I feel like I've heard that there's a change there yeah well yes so um in I'm just going to take you on a couple year journey to make sure my brain is Right without always started so in covid when we were fully remote that was when it was required by ospi to be built into the schedule and that's when we had Wednesday SEL Zoom lessons that were kind of like haphazardly designed kind of because we weren't quite expecting and there's not a lot of high school SEO curriculum out there so then that evolved into the 2122 Square we're back fully back in person to be a combination of things teachers did identify um integrated lessons that are I also so I just want to be clear teachers teach
094SEL every day they just often don't name it SEO like as an English teacher the amount of sdl skills that translate into like novels we read with characters where we talk about those things and The Human Condition and relationships and things like that so we just don't name it necessarily or really align it with the Washington State sdl Standards so in 20 20 21 school year the teachers as part of their el12 work also collaborated on digging into the Washington State SEL standards and identifying one standard that's already correlates nicely with their curriculum and embedding a lesson that school year into the classroom and so they did deliver one lesson but we didn't make them organize like which which Washington State SEO standards so they all could have chosen one for all we know and
095then not covering the other five because it was like let's just try this on for size and see how it feels um and then that was supplemented with some SEL in Flex time so but Liberty didn't have Flex time that school year so they were really just doing that and some lessons may be pushed into English classes and but Skyline and Issaquah were doing them in Flex time this year it's been all In Flex time across the board with all three comprehensives or advisory gibsonac being lessons that change this year was being developed by content experts um if you will I shouldn't put air quotes but like our Swedish people developed any of the ones on Mental Health um and so that was like an expert in that content area but our move next year
096I'm really excited about it uh is there's a high school SEO committee that has decided to take a SEL out of flex time because of the feedback we've gotten and do full integration with uh plans to like deliver all the castle standards spread throughout the courses through either integrated integration or teacher modeling we've been partnering with the Committees for children that are the same folks that develop second step to really dig into what this could look like at High School in a better way and we've had students and teachers and counselors all on the committee as well as some of our cabinet members who are experts in mtss and so that's the direction for 20 324. great thank you that was very helpful to hear the kind of both the history of it and then
097what the changes are for going into next year any additional questions yeah going back to page two um so starting from the top about homework practices should be consistent across grades and secondary departments A and B homework practices should be consistent across schools not necessarily including Elementary special programs and accelerated offerings so I don't think that the evidence provided actually supports that those are being that those are actually occurring so the evidence provided was a very loose parent survey like it doesn't you didn't match like oh fifth grade parents saying that fifth graders have X amount of homework per day on average so it's all very Global same thing for your teachers it's just the whole spreadsheet of every teacher that was surveyed in elementary school and what they said and I guess if I
098wanted to do some data I don't like some match who were all the fifth grade teachers and what did they say that they were assigning so I would say that what was provided as evidence doesn't actually tell me that that is being met uh and certainly the fact that you have 8th grade exit surveys and 12th grade exit surveys you could easily get this information on on average how many hours of homework do you do every weekday and on weekends and then you could actually have that information by school to see is there actually Equity across our buildings and across our district and for us any future parent survey for elementary or teacher survey or Elementary it's going to have to be identifiable by grades if you guys have outlined and based the documents you've
099sent us that essentially it's roughly 10 minutes per day per per grade in elementary what evidence you provided doesn't actually show that that's what you're implementing and that would then get into number three about solicit regular feedback from stakeholders on grading and homework practices with consideration for overall student workload and again if you look at what was provided to us it it's a smattering of useless it's not quite the right word but it doesn't actually provide us meaningful information because the end probably isn't big enough number one but two how it's presented I can't make meaning of it and I know we have a policy on providing us information in a way that we can actually make meaning for and so if you click on that table which is the embedded link from page oh
100gosh it takes me back when I out click out of a link talking about the secondary grading yeah page four page four pillow four uh that's the problem and so I I don't I don't think that the evidence provided for three or four actually can answer the question or say provide actually I don't believe it's providing the support for the interpretation of what superintendent has said um will be necessary to meet compliance for this so as somebody who has to write this down on our sheet yeah is it is it then board work to come up and work with the superintendent and staff should like in a work study to really come up with what would be meaningful data to provide to the board I I don't think so I mean it's up to the
101superintendent to provide the data which says like this is the interpretation like the interpretation is is that there will be consistency across buildings so therefore the evidence provided should show consistency across buildings that's not what the evidence was brought to us yeah I agree with that I don't think that's I don't think that's board work no this is I mean we can this is the first time we provided evidence for I think around two of an interpretation change for uh rewarded El so um I take this seriously as in terms of the feedback and the discussion and I know our team does as well so um that is our work to you know continue to um meet the expectations on and continue to grow this so it's very clear not only in terms of some
102of the items mentioned earlier but also the evidence that we're working towards I think I could have done a better job of instead of just giving you access to the whole survey I thought sometimes you'd like to dig into that stuff because there's all kinds of great content in there but I think I could have done a better job extrapolating from that section and making it more visual the actual homework answers to those questions from the students so that you weren't having to dig through to see all of that because there are there's a lot in there around um catching their feedback around whether their homework is consistent to their peers and their volume of homework is reasonable so I could have taken that from the full survey and probably extrapolate that better into a
103presentation of the data so I can leave that as notes and I definitely will own that part of it and that could be cleaner I also think that because it was year one of implementation the work was around giving teachers the time to align both the purpose of their homework the volume of their homework um and how homework is graded and so that's where that alignment happens so to gather that feedback would take a little bit more time after they've actually implemented it but that year was the planning for alignment if that makes sense so um I don't know if that was you know it's repeated from some of the submissions they did but that was a little bit a part of it but we focused more on the open agency pieces and the alignment
104yeah I guess I worry about the selection bias of who's completing that survey versus if you did it in the eighth grade and 12th grade exit surveys everyone's doing them and so I think you would have a more accurate picture yeah in order for us to compare otherwise I'm really comparing the students who decided to complete surveys Guy versus students who decided to complete the survey at Liberty and I'm not sure that that's a comparable subgroup versus if it was all students because they have to to graduate then I think that I would feel much more comfortable knowing like oh look here's what the students collectively at this level at Skyline and Liberty said and so the same thing is I appreciate what you're saying but also 8th graders so we don't actually know across
105our six middle schools sure there's been no talk like we've seen Elementary we've seen the high school there's this you know five thousand middle school students that we probably did one thing about the survey for this year they're on the exit survey I have to take a look in partnership with my comms friends and stuff like that but we are doing one end of the year uh survey for all of our students that we deliver during the school day to try to make sure we get robust responses and we're following up and monitoring the responses before we get to the end of the year so we should have good participation numbers but it's at the end of each grade level and I don't know if our exit survey for our 12th graders actually has some
106of those El 12 questions because so I think that we do we will have really robust data for 9th 10th and 11th that has a homework and Grading questions um but we could add them for 12 because that would be cumulative but it will be a year off from that because they the survey has already gone out for this year so so you do have surveys for the 9th 10th and 11th that's asking the that was given this year that was given this year yes okay so and we we had one last year but we have one this year that's more like Collective we did we did some survey work this year there's some last year but this year is going to be the most robust because we did a really thoughtful review of how
107many surveys we have and trying to bring them into one to have it have better participation rates instead of over serving with all the different topics so right now so is there any surveying done that has these related questions in like the fifth and eighth grade transition so we do pick up something there because that would be the other place I'll have to get back to you on that okay right I agree because I don't really care if a kindergartner has homework or not but yeah and like you know our middle school students at a minimum the 8th graders because I know we do that trans we do the surveys when they are moving grade levels um School levels like so I think from for me I'll just go back to the previous discussion on
108strategic plan but this discussion is is the embodiment of my concern when we were talking about the Strategic plan which is this particular El and maybe there's others but this particular one I think is a board we have really been trying to get to some level of deeper understanding on what is the implementation plan like to get to full rollout um and yes in early stages we may be measuring um how far we're getting in different ways than in later stages but I for me on this topic I just struggle in general with what did we think we could accomplish by when and are we on track to doing that so I don't know if it's that um I'm wanting to bundle this particular implementation is the only word I have in my head implementation
109of el12 in with the Strategic plan is maybe it's a separate thing but it gets tracked and status in the same way or if there's some other way to handle that but this is this is exactly the thing I guess that makes me nervous from the last conversation because I just feel like I can never get my arms around precisely where we are and how will we know if we're if we're getting to progress on it so all these questions would be included in that right we would have actual outcomes for where we think we can get in certain years of this implementation we would know what vehicle we'll measure those through um so we know how robust or not robust it is or what we can expect at that point and so I'm I'm
110not sure superintendent how we get to that level of clarity but I think we we have to have this particular piece of work um I don't know managed in the same in the same way so that we can get a sense of are we are we getting where we believe we need to go that's my yeah because that's what I feel like we've made progress in the past 18 months to me and when we saw teachers saying we don't really know what Mastery is and you know we don't know what late work means and we don't know what should we be accepting and we don't so and they were asking the same questions across various buildings and different meetings so it's not like they were able to hear each other as identical questions my last
111one is a number eight and I specifically have had conversations with the superintendent and with Dana Bailey on number eight and I for months now have asked for evidence for number eight that our students in particular at our high schools Skyline is where it has come up that if you are on an IEP that you have an opportunity to take the electives of your choice and I know it would be impossible it would be onerous to try and do that for every every um special education student in every high school but to choose a cohort representation whether it's the sophomores all sophomores because we're only talking about 30 or 40 students in a cohort to say for their schedule were there the single tens that prevented them in the schedule from being able to take
112their first choices for their elective classes and why this is important is because when we adopted the seven period day it was with the vision that all students would have the opportunity for exploration remediation and acceleration and if this is not occurring to where all students can do it so the evidence that was provided here again doesn't actually meet what is the interpretation of our district and superintendent for um the opportunity for our special education students to take those courses and that's really really important to me and I think to the families that have IEPs um and so that's something that I have to see as evidence and I know I've asked for it for months no director Miranda so I think that's a a good question I think um you know for students and
113families where the student is on an IEP um they have a meeting with their IEP teacher every year um they get questionnaires every year related to their students need for services so I don't think it would be difficult to add a survey you know it's easy to identify those families to be able to to ask those questions and maybe even at the end of the year after that they've gotten their selection or at the beginning of the year when they got their class selection to be able to have a conversation directly with them so I think it's something that actually is not an onerous ask of those parents and those parents are often asked questions and I think it would be one that they would be happy to be asked is you know where as
114far as this just an overall with this schedule how satisfactory is this is the schedule that your student was able to receive and are they able to re you know to take classes that will be engaging to them were they able to get the classes that they really wanted as far as electives so I think there's some questions that could be spent and and those families are used to being asked those kind of questions ask questions and filling out surveys it would be nice that it was about satisfaction with their program which is you could you'd also just say I mean we see the registration seat for every for those 30 students and just look at they they you have to rank the the classes that you want in order and so it would really
115take very easy to see like oh look at map like compared to the schedule they were given with what they requested and like are their top one or two choices there yes or no I mean so it's it wouldn't take very long to do that um I I want to acknowledge that yes you have been you have asked this question in different ways and so we've been going back and forth on some parts of the response and Dr Bailey can certainly come up here and share more about where we are but we have been going through a little bit more of a process to get some of the information in the right way it does you know work with our school buildings that kind of thing we were looking at one particular I think we
116decided at our last conversation Dr gallender that we would look at maybe one you know small cohort but maybe one grade that kind of thing so it has taken us actually some time to do that so I want to acknowledge that um and we are planning on sort of sharing that back with the full board for that request and that last conversation and parameter so I do want to acknowledge that yes it has been a conversation we've been having for a couple months and we've had different iterations and Dr Bailey can certainly share a little bit more sure and thank you very much the conversations I've been having with shooting Carver and the special education director at the high school level include this tricky part of the mental gymnastics of what are you're asking for
117in this report that had to do with last year and can we get to last year's data or should we go with this year's data and we do have an analysis of how many electives in two buckets um to share coming to you in a in a in a board message but there are electives that check boxes for graduation requirements like every child needs to have an R Credit every child needs to have a CTE credit and then there's a bucket that's maybe could be considered free electives like truly Choice like four years of music or something like that so we have that data for and Tammy unrebranet for this year's students for all four years at all three Comprehensive High Schools so we have a nice large sample set that will show you how
118many electives the students served on IEPs will have taken in this school year and I I have heard the mental gymnastics of last year and this year and 18 months that we've been asking the same question this is very hard to be today in June reporting on work that was done in last school year at the tail end of this school year so we we hear you and we want that as well we want to have a robust conversation about what the students with disabilities are able to take in the course of a seven period day how their electives show up and um in the conversation with families on the annual year about what is it that you and their child should be there to want to take what is it that is in your
119heart and your wish for how you pursue your dreams and passions and how you feel your seventh period day and I hear you on the question of The Singletons I think it's a it's a fair question like if there are two Singletons that only happen once in a student day are they lined up to where hard choices have to be made I believe and we can find a way to affirm this is that students who have complicated schedules get scheduled first I think that would be a fair statement the students who have complicated schedules so say it could be true for somebody who's got running start or something else a bit complicated schedules get scheduled in the process first so that they have the very best chance of getting the highest of their priorities on
120their schedules and then the students who have classes where there are four sections of that you know Ceramics class whatever so I I feel confident saying that there are processes in place at all the high schools to do their best to affirm that the students with disabilities who have maybe complicated schedules scheduling get scheduled into the system first and like hold their spot in that Singleton class thank you so I usually am not the one who beats a dead horse but I have to go back to it so how do we address I guess my deep deep need in order I guess to get to a more clear implementation plan around el12 how can we get there uh I mean that's the onus is on us as a district and on me and so our
121we will come back to you with um some more details about that I I do say I feel like there are embedded components of el12 in our academic opportunity um priority area um but we can I mean it's not just it is el-12 but there's also other monitoring reports too so I heard us through a larger request but this is the illustrative example and the exact conversation that was had to illustrate how we can make that connection so we have to give some you know I'd like to come back to the board with that um talk to the team and how we can make that come to life from an implementation planning and progress monitoring perspective it's a good question I appreciate it citizen just about our students it is about our our staff and
122we heard that really clearly and I think that's why I appreciate so much that we had teachers there and we should have teachers at every work City we do because they provided such Rich perspective and I want to make sure we honor their craft and their experiences and their perspectives in doing this work but we also need to honor their time and to say like okay so as you enter this next school year to bring Clarity like we've gotten to start moving otherwise they came frustrated to the work studies as well and they're rightly rightly so and to your point you know what is it we want them to accomplish in this next year I mean um and to her implementation plan very specific um what are the next steps for this next year so
123that we can know if that was achieved right and if and if part of the complexity is that we're trying to have this conversation in the context of the monitoring then we could just have this conversation outside of the construct of the monitoring which is in in a rear so um recognize the complexity after four years I almost have wrapped my head around the year in arrears thing right because I'm always wanting to go forward but I think um I guess from my perspective One how can we have it on a standalone what do we do going forward and the best way to do that and I guess since I get to help calendar we can work that out and then um and then I guess as a general principle how can we maybe be
124a bit more communicative on where things that we're asking as a board lead us into more complexity versus less I think those are things that you know we can assign maybe we pick a board member who helps us like real-time translation or decomplexifying I feel like maybe we go away and ponder it and it gets complex and then we're back so maybe if you know we join the conversation that helps speed things up as long I offer those as merely suggestions in the process um with that we have a motion on the floor um so I'd like to move to uh a vote all those in favor any against nay um thank you uh I actually just couldn't hear you sorry I okay thank you so for in favor one against thank you um excuse
125me so next on our agenda we have the monitoring of the current school year again to even make the topic tonight more complex uh for el13 which is facilities we previously monitored the 2021-2022 school year um November 22nd of 2022 we're now going to have a um a discussion on the emergency monitoring that would be as of this school year as of today's date June 8th that do I have a motion I moved the board approved the emergency monitoring of el13 facilities for the current school year 2022-23 through June 8 2023 as presented second thank you uh superintendent you have members of the team I will turn over to you the others profits us to say that um Martin Turner rcfo and chief operating officer will be providing some additional information as context um for
126this report as we share it and some supplemental information will be provided as well so uh Martin I'll let you take that as Next Step thank you um I was I was going to propose that perhaps we jump to number four there are some substantive information that we linked to in that section that I think gets to what was talked about at one of the previous meetings so I was going to ask Stephen for your assistance in pulling that up the item before yeah under item four there is the third bullet point there's a link toward the bottom it says available here and actually Stephen young you may need to follow the link from the document this is uh this is the supplemental information so while he pulls that up maybe I'll just explain what
127we're looking at here so what we've done is we have um made the effort to go back and reconstruct from the initial um listing of the 2018 critical repairs Levy items that were approved and create the project listing based on the original project estimates and in addition to that we bring forward the expended to date amounts to give a picture of where we are in those either completed projects or the projects that are in progress and in addition to those that were not completed or um had a very little initiated with them and what the estimated remaining to completion would be for those projects so that's now up on the screen so the um the first few items there are the unhighlighted completed projects the ones highlighted below are either in progress or were classified
128in previous budget status reports as future and have remaining work to do so the this was provided I believe um by request to see where we are status of which projects still remain so those that are highlighted are those projects that remain some of which are in progress and reported on our current budget status reports and some that have not been completed in addition to that if you can skip to the next document down the next document is the in progress or uncompleted projects and what a proposed timeline might look like for completing those projects what we believe is a realistic look at what a multi-year completion would look like so the um we have an estimate for how we might close out 2223 in the current projects an estimated 23 24 projects remaining that
129we could complete and that time frame and then a small group of projects that for a couple of reasons may make sense to delay a little bit one of them being that we want to preserve some budget for roof repairs that we may not know we need so we want to make sure we have that in reserve to be able to take care of those things and then we're looking at a clean building audit where there's some new standards coming the districts are going to need to adhere to and we're going to look at conducting an audit as a district under I think four of these areas that we may want to postpone because it makes more sense to do those after we get that audit and we know a little bit more about what
130the work should look like in those areas can you go to the next one please okay this is the current uh the most recent I should say um 2022 Levy so we did a very similar uh look at that this one um was a little easier because we have been tracking it this way in our budget status reports we had already had the budgets attached um the Outlook or the look of the reports a little bit different because this is how we've initiated tracking for it so we're tracking those similarly and highlighting when we were making changes from one area to the next um and some general rationale for that so that gives you a look at everything that was on Levy 2022 critical repairs and estimated cost completion and the projected total and if
131you go to the next one we have a similar multi-year outlook on when we would anticipate as of right now estimated when the work might get done some of those are simply standard amounts divided out evenly by the year because we don't necessarily know when we're going to need those things for instance Portables or some of the other uh you know Furniture some other things so those are just laid out across the years and we wanted to give you our best attempt at what that's going to look like over the course of the time frame that we intend to complete those projects I think maybe I'll pause there um and see if there are any questions just start with a basic terminology question for any of the first couple sure what is the unassigned mean
132that just means that we have not assigned a project code yet okay So eventually it gets a product code and it sits in the same list correct okay these these other ones had had a project code initiated at some point in the past okay a really basic question too which is okay so we're talking about the 2018 Levy which is a four-year Levy and then it's done and then we initiate a 2022 Levy is it I I guess I always just assumed that anything in the 2018 Levy would be at least started before we went into the next Levy and maybe that's just a weird assumption on my part is it normal that we would have that many projects not begun in one Levy and then we still go out and do another Levy is
133that just common practice or if you wanted to know I think that um I would just say that we did initiate the work on the 2022 with the anticipation that we have entered that phase and we wanted to start doing what we were intending to do as far as the previous projects I think some of these were um there were some decisions made to pause or not have the work started so without that information I I can't speak to why they hadn't been initiated yet and I guess let me throw another thing in there is is this just a coveted fluke or is this something we do routinely this is not something that we would do routinely it's covered definitely had something to do with it and my understanding these projects were for a better
134lack of a better term de-prioritized and not brought back up to be a priority until the board pointed it out and that is unfortunate it is but we will get the work done we have a plan and and where does that prioritization or deprioritization happen is that prior building decision or how does that no that's uh between Jason's group facilities um Martin and myself will sit down and we've started that process already ready of trying to get this work more of this work initiated and done and we will prioritize as needed with what we feel are the most important pressing issues to take care of I can say my thoughts are I'm just actually really stunned that there's over six million dollars worth of projects from 2018 because when I look at the list I'm
135thinking well if in 2018 Newcastle HVAC needed to be recommissioned and it still hasn't been even assigned yet what's it like for students and teachers and staff these last months in June so right when the when the 2018 um Levy was passed was was there any type of and I know it wouldn't have necessarily been with the committee but anything internal that laid out the expectation of when the projects would be because as much as the HVAC might not have needed to be replaced in 2018 right because the the levy was looking at over at least four years but it saw that in those four years it probably needed to be replaced and now we are beyond that so it was there anything done originally after we passed that 2018 that laid out this project
136plan that included these or not really speculation because they took over in 2019 this there was not a specific plan there were some of the projects going um I took over some of them and and kept them moving forward and from that point on the again covet hit there was a different focus in the district that's not an excuse but it it is a it is a fact and that and I did not pick those jobs up and push them forward like possibly I should have but at the time it was my understanding that they were not a priority uh well I'm just thinking hey I'm director um thank you for being willing to have an honest conversation with us about this and you know this is one of the reasons why I wanted to
137bring this forward for emergency monitoring is I think there was just so much that we needed to unpack to have dialogue about um so you as director of capital projects at what point were you made aware that there were this numerous about standing in 2018 Levy projects there were well when I took over there was this list was available there was part of a budget update each month and we were in the middle of again trying to get Cougar Mountain Cedar Trails Discovery Endeavor all those projects closed out started up going and again these projects were not put in front of me as being a priority and it just was not there director so my question would be is do you feel like there's adequate Staffing in your department to do what you need to
138do to keep up on things it's gonna it's gonna be a push I won't won't say it isn't it well yeah it's like we need to reset with a priority list of what most urgently needs to be done whether it's you know you could just say it's just the 28 15 thing but you could take a fresh look and what is it that really needs to be done um because you actually could have things on the 2022 that are even more critical yes right to be taken care of but to do a holistic look across the two and create a project plan that meets the needs that are the greatest but I think we're going to need that visibility if given the fact that we have 40 like by a dollar value of the 2018
139Levy projects that haven't been completed um and so I guess I want to also know Leslie we look forward for the 2022 Levy like what assurances do we have that we're not going to be here in 2020 eight having this conversation about the 2022 Levy projects well they may because if they're I mean if they have limited capacity on what they can do and they're still doing 2018 that's why we need a holistic plan over the priorities and what will be accomplished over that time I mean I think it sounds like between all the projects and the bonds and the critical repairs we all bid off more than we could chew we could we could accomplish and and yet that didn't come forward to us to just admit that it feels like we didn't staff
140appropriately for the amount of work that we had to do I would like to point out we we are currently um in the process of conducting interviews for capital projects accountant that will work very closely with um Tom's team that will help us continue this level of tracking in detail and that we will be able to present to you on a regular basis so that you can see the progress in where we are with these we also for the levy 2022 we have included all projects on the budget status report um and so we are we have everything that was included in that and approved has is going to be transparently displayed on the budget's status report here and going forward because what I worry about is if we don't get on top of this
141right 2018 are not the same purchasing power of 2023 and so we're Our Own Worst Enemy here and these are controllable factors and so if we have to hire someone that's far a better investment than being now six million dollars behind in Project completion in those projects now in 2023 May contests 9 million or more 10 12. uh so I guess I really huge concerns from a transparency standpoint that we we went out to the community said this is a list this is what we need to complete please vote for this Community trusts that those lists got done and we need to have that figured out before we do any more asks of the community for any funding because right now um I just don't think we're giving uh effort that we need to give
142in order to ensure that we're leveraging tax dollars as best we can right and I appreciate that you know when you talk about uh for the budget status report having all the projects of 2022 and for 2018 it was just the ones that were currently being worked on but really your budget status report needs all the projects of 2018. even if they're not yet being worked on so that we have the visibility into them correct I believe we will need to update this report yes the monthly report um and I believe I would suggest I would superintendent's approval that we do some regular updates um for the capital projects Department right that includes all of those specifically uh so just to follow up on director Gallagher's last point the dollars to complete listed here are
143these assumptions from the initial budget or current dollars oh can you go up just slightly is it the estimated remain remaining to complete is that your question yes now those are no those have been updated so Tom and I went through and said okay if we're looking at each one of these projects now with the available funds what would our estimate to complete those look like so those have been updated from the original estimates okay that's good right so at least we know in current in current day spend and then along with that do we do we it they are all going to cost potentially more than what they were I mean we had our collected a fixed number of dollars for those levies correct so actually you want to look on the next slide
144gives you the more accurate view so it's 6.6 of what was budgeted but for these it's actually 7.5 That Remains the total oh shoot didn't I forgot my follow-up question I'm sorry I didn't so the 7.5 also includes the the expenditures we've had previously so that's why that number's a little higher than the other yeah it has the it has the prior years column added and I guess my question is um I understand the hiring of the additional Financial person in this space but what is the actual capacity question to to actually compete to complete these items are these items that would all be all or most or some percentage that would be outsourced so it's someone to Do Contracting and management that we need to care about the resourcing in the district or or
145is it actual um I guess resources we employ right that have to execute this I'm just trying to understand the where the capacity and potential constraints there right do we have the maintenance people right do the work or are these all contracts that we bring in construction people to do it and we need construction management in the district to oversee I think that's where you're going right right yeah a good portion of the projects can be done I would say very little of it is done by The District maintenance department they may oversee help initiate but I say oversee I mean helped oversee act as a as a partner with capital projects to do the projects and make sure they're doing them for their standards these are smaller some of these are repairs some of
146these are individual HVAC issues that we need their expertise in whether they do the actual repairs or not no they would be helping us oversee or as a partner with us we may very well have to talk have a conversation with Martin about another construction coordinator but we're just diving into this now and my assistant director and I have been talking about how we can get these projects going grab the ones that are going to be getting quotes for Carpeting and refloring and getting those in line ready to go for next summer so we can release a lot of them they're not some of them are not heavy oversea projects daily their get them started let them in the building get them done get them prepared and um some of them are more intense but
147they're not like a brand new school building or a large additionary where it's a daily over overseas so we're still working our way through that other comments and questions so I'll move us along to number five and thank you for providing this table is something that I've wanted to see for years yes oh sorry Kevin are you print things out I should never have been clear because yeah I don't ever put anything else right uh so number five talks about and this is where I think about the clarity of language that gets really confusing is when we get a change order it says uh with right it always says that but this would show that it's actually not and when we look at for instance Cougar Mountain Middle School which is the fifth line here
148and it says the original project estimate was 74 million dollars the contract construction amount was 87 million 565 152 dollars so right out of the box we're out of budget but and I understand that's just reality that's why there was contingency but that wasn't communicated to the board and what was communicated the board is that we are in Budget on track and then you add on 17 million dollars four hundred thousand thirty seven five hundred twenty on change orders and every one of those that came forward to the board says this is within scope and budget but that's not true so the language needs to reflect and every change order should reflect this the original amount of the project was 74 million dollars today we're at 125 million 754.780. and so I feel misled by
149how the change orders are written so the new reporting moving forward it will be very clear it will not just talk about the construction budget it will talk about the entire overall budget we gave some examples in the uh in the El update and we will as part of my reporting we haven't decided with the board or Heather Martin how often those reports will go in the one pagers will go in but um they will show the entire story the entire budget and then when I do my updates you'll have had the information to be able to say Tom I see you are approaching your budget didn't we just break ground you know you'll know about it long before that but those things will be brought forward okay but even an example you provided for
150Holly Street Creek Bank repairs yep it doesn't match up it says original s-min project budget 1.5 million dollars absolutely and then the estimated cost completion 1.8 million dollars so when then it then says that there's 10 point even though we've already spent 1.6 million dollars it says that there's project budget remaining 10.95 and so to me that would be misleading that should be a negative no that should be a negative number I'll have to look at that I I I remember doing that one and I thought it should be a negative number anything with a balance that ends up with a running total that ends up above the original budget should show a negative no let me back up here let me back up the revised budget it's based on the revised budget and that
151revised budget can go up and it can go down now maybe we need to stick another another element in there that talks about how that negative is shown if you if you start out with a 1.5 million dollar budget and you have to revise that to 1.8 million that becomes the new budget and we we were tempting to show them side by side so you would see the increase and it's kind of hard to show we have another example where the playground had a 2.5 million dollar budget but we came in we looked at it we said that's new new estimate way too much we bumped that down to 1.8 million to show a realistic budget completion so it kind of we don't get that very often where we get to reallocate yes reallocate which
152is nice but it does happen and I'm not sure how we would show maybe we need another line item in the report that shows Delta it was on that other page right how do we how do we both accommodate adjustments in the budget but keep it tracked on that one pager because that's not what they always tell us is like well the change order is in budget because we revised the budget and that's the misleading part of it has to be advised the budget like did it come to the board to revise and at what point does it come to the board to revise I'm assuming it's the 350 000. it's the yeah so I've never never I know it didn't but when is it supposed to those are two different questions I don't know
153is there a requirement that it go back to the board or maybe we need to create one because there's not a requirement actually that the board approved change orders my understanding is that that's just been practice in Issaquah that we see change orders on consent but I don't believe even correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe there's a legal requirement for the board to approve change orders well and I would almost assume that every time we approve a change order we are approving a new budget correct Corral that is what you're doing yeah no that is well but but it's hard because the change order itself doesn't have all the parts the change order is related to one specific contract and when you have cooking rights middle school there were a whole bunch
154of different com well there's more than one contract involved because there were other pieces that were the design or the architecture design and and other pieces because you can't look at that number and know that's the whole budget that was a part of a budget which also makes it hard for us to know when it's over budget because that's only part of the budget I can't see the total except you're working your way there with your new forms that's correct that has been Martin and I's attempt is to be as transparent and give you all of the information side by side not try to um revise a budget and not let you know what the original budget was so if we're not hitting that Mark let it we need to we need to get that
155feedback and let us know how we can propose a different way of showing that right the new form than what we ever had so I don't want that to go unset I love the new noodles right yeah but maybe there is a way because I see it on the I don't know if it was this document or the one you were in before where you talk about the Holly Street playground a reduction of seven hundred thousand dollars and 300 000 of that was assigned to the creek Bank repair that was your adjustment in the budget but the um the single pager just says the original budget is 1500 and the estimate estimated cost to complete is 1.8 million but it doesn't at least not at least not the way I'm looking at it show how
156the the additional 300 000 was allocated to it yes so so yes let me yeah let me attempt this so what we are trying to do and I think we are getting some tips on fine tuning this is the original when it was put on the estimate list 1.5 million dollars when we had more information we knew about how much this bid was going to be it was apparent this is going to be more like 1.8 million now on the tracking sheet we did kind of show the change of where we made the movement what we didn't do on this sheet and that we can add is perhaps on the project status update below we need to be explicit that we increase this by three hundred thousand dollars the new estimated cost of completion is
157now 1.8 because these reasons I don't know if that meets the need but I think that's kind of for us where we were attempting to show the how things have changed in the project and I think if you could include and it can be in the narrative which is fine where that 300 000 is coming from right so it's not just saying it's going to be more but it's going to be more and I've got the money because I'm moving it from a project that's under budget to this one right yes and one example that might be kind of getting to where you're saying is on the Holly Street playground okay the first bullet says 700 was removed from the original project estimate of 25 or excuse me 2.5 million move into the levy 22
158project per CFO so it has a bit of a narrative on the movement so it looks like we we kind of missed adding narrative to the other one to to kind of help to complete that story yeah that would be helpful but you even need to stack up because that wasn't even part of any sort of Levy project this was like mother nature added this to our list so oh yeah right so so that wasn't planned for and so where did the money come from initially and where was initially allocated from and did you to what the point like were the other projects that were put on hold in order to fund this project which is fine because it needed to get done and so no one's going to question that but then it makes
159it hard for us to know and complete the story on what well these projects didn't get done because we had no choice but to spend 1.8 million dollars to fix erosion on this quadcrete okay right and I think that's why it then goes to having a good plan of what are you doing with those 2018 Levy 2022 levies to know what's your priority list um and then I think that does come before the board because I would consider that just a straight I don't know that you can just de-prioritize it it ends up probably coming off the list and that is something that would come to the board as we're repurposing you know we're repurposing the you know fixing the walls in the bathroom at a certain elementary school so we could pay for you
160know the fact that a creek is running into our Our Land yeah um so you still have this page up so I am struggling with the column that says other project costs and the it's no no take is two and the list of things that are two I feel like all those should have been project cost so I don't understand um oh construction costs other yeah because they're not construction I guess is that is that how you're distinguishing them actual construction yes and it's the it's the defining of the for the example of the your original Construction contract amount would be when we go out to bid we get a contract back we have award a bid that would be that would be that column change orders associated with that contract are in the in
161the next column other project costs are all the other costs and I did a little it's kind of hard to see there I did a little footnote that described what other project costs were we've got lots and lots of other costs in projects there's Furniture fixtures equipment Consultants design permitting um inspections um right I guess that I guess that's what I'm in order to complete the project right so is the the original project estimate should that have included everything to its right so that um on any of those yes okay so rebuild Pine Lake Middle School the original project cost 71 million dollars and we knew in that we would do the actual construction and these additional things surrounding construction to make the total project cost absolutely and so that one's right that was the
162one that made sense to me if I go down to the next one which is Cougar Mountain Middle School I guess what what has to both be increased on that one are both the original construction costs and the projected other project costs all costs correct or increased yes so I so I guess I want to make sure that as we're talking about change it's not just in the construction cost it's in the change to the total project yes right because I don't from at least from this View and maybe I don't have the detailed sheet up like again rebuild Pine Lake Middle School is beautiful right that makes sense all the way across but when you get to some of the other ones it's hard to know um you know we've got projects where we've
163spent a lot of time in things like permitting inspections testing how some of those additional costs have been increased or what's changing them because that's that's got to be a material cost change again for that Cougar Mountain Middle School it's like I don't know if in the detailed project report you're covering change to both of those categories but I know I would want to see both change to the construction cost and the other project costs so in that one pager I have a approved change orders and an amount a total amount and I've listed the change orders that would be approved I can put um another line item that talks about increase to other project costs as another one date keeping them separate yeah because that's yeah and some of these that's not an insignificant
164no change okay well it's hard to know the change though you can we can't we actually can't know the change because I only can see and hear the original Construction contract I mean we we have an original project estimate which is kind of what somebody scribbles on a napkin when we're running the bond committee right it it's a little better than that but an estimate is made and what it will to build to build a school for example and then they get closer to the actual design and sometimes redesign like as we went to build the new IMS you know it was the there was a design and it was going to come in way over budget and so they redesigned and got more clever and were able to bring down the cost so there's
165there so the original is truly just an estimate and then we get to a point where we actually have a construction cost um and because it's becoming a contract and we have this other cost but we don't ever really before we're starting to do this have seen kind of that separation of what we ever expected the other costs to be yes which would have gotten us to a total cost which is why that make in the past has made this very difficult for us to see when things are over budget because things are broken down into pieces and we don't see all the pieces especially when we see those change order come through because that's just against the contract Construction contract not the whole project except except if if the original project estimate supposed to
166include all that stuff I'm sure this is Meaningful for you but for me at the board level I don't know that the breakdown between column two and column four is even really necessary I think I want to know you know the actual cost the change orders and then the total I mean do I right you know what that's instruction and what's other you probably need that Corrado need that right no you're making my my yes we're in the same place you're just saying it the opposite way around lunch together I do want to know the changes the choice Yes except the one relevant side piece to it would be is the uh percentage of change in the Construction contract right because that's that's also an important piece on just you went into a contract and
167how much is that contract continuing to go up with these change orders right and that gets hidden if you start adding all the other the other project cost to it correct the the construction contractors tended to be the one that is focused on in all construction it generally in the past because that's the largest amount but the rest of the costs in the in the last 10 12 years have started to increase exponentially alongside those costs and it's we track them the best we can but we go to the City of Issaquah and we say how much a million dollars for permitting and if it's 1.25 million that is something that we just have to because it took longer they whatever it was that happened and uh Furniture fixtures and equipment you know we go
168in and buy a classroom worth of furniture we estimate what that's going to cost it comes in you know significantly more hopefully less and um I've made an attempt since I take over to try and estimate things I don't want to say worst case but give give some room there partner by implemented a 10 percent contingency in projects which in the industry is kind of unheard of but is needed held any other items yes sir I have a question about this sheet so the fifth from the bottom expand slash remodel Central Administration so the original 2015 Vision was that the central office space it is what is now Holly Street was going to be remodeled expanded whatever so is that line item actually what was the conversion of the building into Holly Street this the
169original I think I don't have it right in front of me but if I remember right that was a 7.5 million dollar remodel expansion of this the old Holly Street Building and it was decided as I understand it after the fact to say let's save that site for a future school we we're looking at it very hard for a middle school and let's look at a space that we that we can grow that will be plenty big and we can grow into and we purchased this building yeah I understand that I want to know what what is so then I need Clarity what is that line is that where it was converted to Holly Street or is that not nope that expands expansion slash remodel Central right right so the original was budgeted for that
170that's the that's this and the board actually did take action to repurpose that money from the property acquisition at the top I'm asking is that what this is or not that's that's my question so your question is where it says expand remodel Central admin which was estimated at 7.5 million because that's what we expected to do over at Holly Street but then it became this other thing which was the actual work in this building but I don't believe that that's right because what's missing if that is that what I'm saying if that's really the line that this is it's missing the cost of the purchase of this building I think that's happened that's property acquisition but I need Clarity is yeah and that's a good you've got a good point yeah on our new form
171if that was a um if that was a project that had been done under the new form there's a line item in the new form that talks about property acquisition cost s and for most of the projects it's zero because we own the property if we was Cedar Trails Cougar Mountain this building there would be a cost in that line for cost of property purchase but then it's so right in that second line that you referred to that only says property acquisition High School Middle School to Elementary that's not there so one if that line five from the bottom is this building yeah it's not reflected in this so that needs to be added and number two uh another project list and he's got his Holly Street campus and it should say zero because zero
172was allocated to that and that was a project that we added afterwards and then can show what the costs were yes so just for clarity we need we need those two things to really show that we can track this building as well as Holly Street because those were additions to the 2016 Bond and we did repurpose and that's fine and we're able to do that we did but it's not reflected in this form right so we're like up on that 1603 property acquisition needs to be clear if the new admin building is in yeah so we can refine this for that better understanding and I think what we're leaning on is trying to just list exactly what it said initially so I can I can get to that different level of detail that will be
173helpful it it's just why I think those one those those single page well they're not single Pages because they're long but the the the page where you have the yeah the details is really important I think that's going to be great work and just in this conversation the complexity of what we you know did we bite off more than we could chew who said that at the beginning um yes so we did actually ask for a huge amount so 2016 it was 533 million dollars we went back for money in LFE um in 2018 again in 2022 um and so I think just the complexity of trying to do all that and in the middle I do recognize that when you shut down schools for an entire year pretty much you tend to not do
174the maintenance projects that might be on the items that haven't been addressed um it's been a complex time and I I appreciate the work going into really trying to weed it out for us because we're your cover right why why is the board doing this why is the district doing that and the more we know the better we can manage that and set expectations say maybe we do need more resources in the capital projects department and so that gives us the ability to do that piece of the job so I think the clarity moving forward is going to be very very helpful uh so I have a question on number one subparty uh So based on the whole Issaquah High School experience that we've had over the past couple meetings are there any other fields
175or tracks that are beyond their life cycle in our district currently there are not okay there are not and then are there any unsafe conditions in any building parking lot athletic space in our district currently not that we're aware of I did have our facilities folks run a report today of um the outstanding work orders that are deemed critical or high importance so we are down to two one of them came in yesterday they have to do with the filter HVAC filter failure and one is a door that's not locking we've completed 55 of these types in the past year so by my understanding we are doing our best to keep on top of anything that comes in in terms of a work order that Flags it as safety or things that we need to
176take care of and other than that I'm not aware of any other safety concerns thank you and then number seven coming out of cobit I think what we've seen in experience and what I have a huge concern about is why I think our community overwhelmingly supports these projects is because they're Community assets but if the community doesn't have access to them then they're not really assets anymore so we've heard multiple times over multiple years about IHS theater not having access uh and groups being denied the ability to rent it because there hasn't been a theater manager to manage that it's all the theaters theater oh it's all the theaters okay well the ones that we hear about is from Issaquah High School so I guess I want to know like how many denials have we
177done for our various theater spaces because it seems like we are uh trying to save pennies and really losing out on the big picture about what the whole point is of why these beautiful spaces exist and before you talk that way you can answer all these questions um this school year I've heard numerous times about how athletic spaces have been canceled like the morning of the practice because there hasn't been staff whether that's custodian whoever is supposed to like let people into the building and so that's going to happen as a one-off but it seems like a pattern that is concerning to me uh and then lastly is Cougar Mountain Middle School actually in the mix are there facilities being rented and rented to the same degree as every one of our other middle schools
178thank you for those questions director gallinger Jason Morris exec director of operations um I'm still collecting data I have my team working on it and I want to make sure I deliver accurate data I do have some data that I've collected I'm going to have to follow up with a couple of our Elementary and high school rentals my staff was able to focus on the middle school question a little more today there's so they're still digging through that I have a few pieces that I can share so we did pull um the theater rental um the number of bookings that we had from September 1 of 2016 to August 31st of 2019 so that would be basically the three years prior to the covid pandemic because obviously those numbers were not the best day to
179look at we showed it and we only pulled Issaquah High director morado's crack we have theaters at all of our schools and used to have theater managers at all of our schools we had 14 bookings over those three years for that theater so you're averaging you know four to five bookings um a year at that Theater now since we haven't had the theater managers we have not been booking those sites so I'm unable to really decipher how many we've quote unquote rejected or not accepted because we haven't been booking because we don't have those so yes we don't have no theater managers so the best I could do is pull the data from previous to indicate what might be that lost opportunity from not having theater managers and what I came up for Issaquah High
180School anyway was 14 bookings in those years prior to covid now granted those are a little bit old um just but I couldn't do much without covid so that's that's where we're sitting on the um Issaquah High theater theater manager situation as far as cancellations this is where my data I'm not 100 confident that is it is to the exact number um I believe we have had cancellations in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 times across all of our middle schools this school year and I would really like to add some context to the reasoning behind that because it ties nicely into what is happening at Cougar Mountain Middle School as well we have struggled mightily this year and are overcoming our struggle I'm really happy to say but to start the school year we
181struggled mightily with Staffing and our custodial ranks we started our year with 13 and a half open positions despite our efforts to continually in our jobs being open continually through the pandemic we're hiring monthly but we had 13 and a half vacancies to start the school year and on top of that we had nine staff that were on some sort of leave from the district so whether that's administrative leave or FMLA or something like that so we were about 23 24 staff down which really stressed uh our ability to keep some of those venues open until you know 9 30 at night when those facility renters are in the building so one thing we we have done Cougar Mountain Middle School is open and it is available to rent I'd like to Circle back on
182my Staffing comments that as of April of this year we are 100 percent fully staffed in our custodial ranks so uh shout out to our custodial supervisors and our HR department for continuing to bird dog applicants and thank you to our custodial staff who have been able to hire so our service should be getting better um at Cougar Mountain we didn't open the gym space immediately upon that building opening which is pretty customary because we're continuing to finish punch list and get into the school this most recent school year um we have not rented it out near as much as we have the other schools so an average Middle School is rented out a gym anyway a gym space is rented out in the neighborhood of 125 to 150 times Issaquah middle being Central no
183surprise more like 175 times-ish in those numbers Cougar Mountain is way down at 15. now what I want to explain is at that school we had some very challenging Staffing concerns primarily with folks either being on leave or struggling to staff and so we chose to when folks called and requested Cougar Mountain Middle School we would offer them another school school because we knew that we were short staffed at cougar and that was a hard school for us to fill so it doesn't necessarily equate even Stephen of hey you you can't have Cougar Mountain doesn't mean you don't get a gym space it's more hey how about we offer you Maywood instead or how about we offer you IMS instead because we just didn't have staff to keep that going during those winter months when
184sadly enough Jim's faces most needed during basketball season um in speaking with our scheduler today we're hoping that we stay fully staffed because we want to leverage that building as much as possible it's a community resource and we want it open so we are there now and we've been able to book it more but Jim space just isn't quite as a premium when we're Outdoors for sports right now I hope that helps I do have some more data collection just to collect the high school piece and fully understand the elementary piece but like I said uh based on what I've collected right now probably 15 in some cases we were put into a place where we had to really focus on getting the building ready for the next school day thank you thank you any
185other discussion we have a motion on the floor move to a vote to all those in favor aye any against that passes thank you um at this time we'd like to move into discussion of the item that we pulled off of the consent agenda which is curriculum adoption fifth grade splash um do I have a motion I moved the board approve the adoption of the updates for fifth grade slash curriculum as recommended second thank you um superintendent do you have any do you want to do any opening thoughts or any presentation on this one um yes uh since this has now been moved to the agenda I know that rich melish executive director of teaching and learning and Michelle Picard are here to provide some additional information as you consider this thank you all right
186which melish executive director of teaching and learning Services the family life and sexual health unit taught in the spring of fifth grade known as flash has been updated over the winter and spring of the school year a material selection committee comprised primarily of fifth grade teachers who annually teach the flash curriculum closely reviewed the changes from the previous version each change was examined and discussed including discussions about how to train teachers if the updates were adopted at the end of the review the adoption committee recommended unanimously to adopt the updates with one exception and one modification to the directions of The Flash implementation toolkit the exception was to train teachers per per past practice to answer student questions only on content covered in the curriculum rather than any questions students ask the modification was to
187move a teaching point about the use of medicine during puberty from before the changes during puberty activity to the question and answer discussion period after the activity the primary impact of the flash updates was to make the curriculum more inclusive of the range of lived experiences of our students during puberty lived experiences in this context means both how an individual personal experiences puberty and how each individual understands others experience during puberty the material selection team determined that these updates Foster a more complete and accurate understanding about family life and Sexual Health in a manner that better represents the range of lived experiences of our students especially with regard to diversity among our communities family makeup gender identities and sexual orientations the updated curriculum would would better align to our gender inclusive practices that are in
188state law District regulation and teacher training the committee determined that it would be better prepare students to understand their experience during puberty and the experience of their peers especially important as they prepare to enter Middle School Elementary director of TLS Michelle Picard who co-led the material selection committee and I are here to answer any questions you may have about the updates to the flash curriculum or the review process thank you thank you I want to move to public comment I had one person signed up in the room was Christy Bennett I believe she's no longer here are you taking online comments see if there is any on the phone I have an online comment please hold one second if you have a comment online if you could raise your hand um [Music] right here do
189we have Christy online so I'm clapping they go okay so I assume I actually only have one person whose hand is raised online one person okay so we'll move to taking comments online um if you have your hand raised I'm just going to go back and give you a little instructions let's start with your introduction that will include your name and area of attendance and all rules of public deform of public comment apply you'll have two minutes to give your comments and we will use a timer please go ahead to me I can't read the name so foreign is it the online comment it is the online comment please state your name and your attendance area thank you I don't have two minutes for your comment you will we will use a timer okay thank
190you um this is Meg Morgan I'm from the cedar Trails District Five and I had attended I've also sent in a letter to um all school board members and the superintendent my husband and I were the only ones who attended um the entirety of the parent meeting as well so I felt like my concerns regarding this curriculum were um shared but the issue I had was not receiving any feedback and in return and so um I had been on this evening and was glad that there was um some give and take here perhaps um I'm new to a parent role in understanding the curriculum adoption and so I raised concerns about the quality of the curriculum that's before us I know that there aren't many options for just um in total curriculum adoption and so
191I pointed out where I felt like there were some shortcomings in this adoption not only for the general public and in our school district um but as well as minority and disadvantaged populations and I just felt like this really felt short fell short of it and and I'm wondering where there's opportunity for feedback from the board and I didn't feel like there was much there's some feedback from the elementary um teaching and learning staff but nothing that um really answered questions and in fact lesson two the family lesson was inaccurate they said it didn't actually represent what they've ever taught before and what they intended to teach this year and so I didn't feel like the public offering was accurate and I'd like to see something that better serves our community and isqua school district
192is incredible and I feel like the education my students have my personal kids have received and students in general is exceptional and I'd like to see something that is done really well and I know we don't do curriculum adoptions very often and so with a little work I think this could be remarkable and really make the strides that we want for our minority populations and for all students thank you all right were there any other Stephen okay I think you will move to a board discussion board members questions and or comments well I guess I'll start since I'm the one that pulled it off the agenda um first is I think it um this one um is important and I wanted to have an opportunity to share my thoughts um second is I didn't want
193to blow up the entire consent agenda with a no vote for one item so my first issue is and most of this information is actually based on um Rich's emailed to us with it with the the discussion that you had and I thought it was actually very enlightening so my two issues came up from that really was the first one was not using the terms male and female and instead using different terminology and here's some of the things I have about that so the history of separating gender from biological sex really came out with a study or a paper by John money um and I don't remember his co-author's name in 1972. um you should you really should do a deep dive on who John money is especially his therapy of the Reimer twins I
194think that that's a really interesting Foundation to build all of this work on um secondly the general public has only more recently begun to normalize gender and sex as being different so we've it's you know if you were to ask 10 years ago gender and sex were the same thing in our in our lexicon and so it's a more recent um normalization to separate them so the language being used where you're saying people with penises and people without a vagina moves away from using male and female and moves those male and female being non-biological terms and so for me um that's not what's in the normal lexicon and we're we're actually still in the process of people learning women does not equal female man does not equal male and we've talked about and it's really
195the kind of the normal lexicon is that at least male and female represent the biological stance moving away from using those biological terms into something that is not a common item in the Lexicon that's not how we refer to people biologically I mean is it true yes there are people with penises there are people with vaginas there's also things in between based on anomalies but it it does something different it's it's saying that we need to change our language and it in in the end it's somewhat politicizes the language because a couple of years ago Congress was dealing with well we don't want to put we have terms for mothers and what do we want to call them oh we want to call them birthing persons and I live for 55 years 54 years with
196a mom who never gave birth to anyone so I think that really looking at the Lexicon of going back and using male and female as biological terms is more appropriate than using terminology that really seems like it is outside the social norm and ends up politicizing the issue and why do I say it's politicizing is that most systems that begin to force a change in the Lexicon rather than it being um fluid tend to be authoritarian and I don't want to represent an authoritarian system my second discussion and my second concern is the discussion on puberty blockers and and I know that wasn't the terminology used in your email uh rich but I didn't go back to reference it as I was typing out my thoughts my biggest concern is current medication has been approved
197by the FDA for use in children with early onset puberty we're talking ages 8 and 9 are using puberty Brokers to make it more age-appropriate for when they do enter into puberty because there is certain biological impacts if they enter into puberty too soon the thing is there's no longitudinal studies on the long-term effects of prolonged use past the point of when it's when puberty is typically normalized and even pediatricians offering this care are not certain when to move a child from that puberty blockers into hormone therapy if that's going to be as they begin to transition and they don't know where that that space is also what they do know though is that moving to hormone therapies especially early on earlier on can reduce fertility of that child if later on they want to
198have children of Their Own um and the final thing is that the FDA actually has not approved puberty blockers to use as part of gender care so for me um this decision should be between parents children and their doctors those conversations should be there by us stepping into something that doesn't have any longitudinal data on how it's going to actually impact children almost feels like we are promoting it rather than just describing it because children will be hearing out about it most likely from us first so are we promoting something that we don't know has a scientific basis in being the right thing to do I mean technically we are experimenting on kids nowadays and there is um I don't know if you've ever seen them the TLC show this is jazz it's been on
199for nearly a decade so it really charts her course as a young pre-previncent person or entering into puberty and going through transitioning from um from being a boy to being a girl and now she's a woman and those puberty blockers actually had a detrimental effect when she wanted to have her her surgeries to then affirm her gender she had to have three different ones because the puberty blockers and the hormone therapy were not done at the right time and actually prevented her from having that done successfully so I think there's a lot of things around what we're telling kids because these kids are pre-puberty some of them will be entering into that as they go into middle school and so giving them information that could actually not really be good for them and we don't
200know is just I think is deeply concerning to me and I know that the district could say well those families that aren't interested in their kids hearing this can just opt out and it's not about just those families it's about all those kids um and the other one at the other side of that is I don't want to keep kids out of going to flash because there's so much good information that they're getting the learning that they're getting that's much deeper than what they're going to get in conversations around the table with their parents and so I think it's it behooves us to have something that is um that is scientifically based and I feel like in both those issues it really steps away from science and steps into politics thank you I um I
201did want to offer one clarification and then we can see if there's any questions in there that I can that I can address um the a shift of the language in my in my message to you I should have made more clear the context and the shift of language from uh male female uh it's in the context of the lesson where they're talking about the physiological changes that are associated with puberty and so the idea what in that lesson as I understand it is uh that they're trying to be very clear that certain changes of puberty happen during puberty are associated with the body parts you have not your gender identity and so that was a missing context in my summary that I gave you so just want to make that clarification in the in
202the other lessons they do use gender identifiers that are that are more in normal day-to-day speech and that speaks to my point because male would be the biological term when female would be the biological term other comments suggests for clarity so in the currently proposed curriculum in fifth grade we're talking about medications used to affect the normal biological process yes I believe in my summary I gave you the complete text that it mentions and that that's the part that we put in the discussion part of the changes that happen during puberty right but I mean that's a fifth grade topic not a sixth grade topic that is all all of these updates we're only adopting the fifth grade topics right now but to be clear I think I would just read the passage because it
203is I from what I read it is not addressing the specifics of medication it is addressing that some families and their children opt to use medication isn't saying what medication or anything like that so I would you like me to read the full paragraph I would read the paragraph some people I'm sorry getting to where I have to hold it a little bit further out some people decide with the help of their doctor to take medicine or hormones to change puberty on purpose to better match their gender they might take medicine that interferes with hormones so puberty changes don't happen at all where they might take medicine made of hormones so that they have specific changes let's and then it goes into introducing the activity so that's the content but our our teachers medical professionals
204to be able to answer any technical question that a student may ask about that and I guess that's what I worry about this is this is varying really far beyond what I consider the realm of Education that is the extent of the answer we ask teachers to give they if if questions go beyond that paragraph's content then they are expected to redirect the conversation to families so that that is part of our transparency is to put the content out here so that we parents know exactly what content teachers are going to be giving so teachers are supposed to stay within this content and if it goes outside this content they are redirecting questions about that to the families yeah I guess I would just share director maraldo's same concerns I think you know what I
205care about and especially where their strategic plan is that we are affirming students and that we are supporting all of our students and families and I think you can do that without getting into the technical language and know-how and I don't think that it's either or but I think by veering into this space uh without adequate I think backup uh and we have our teachers saying that they have trouble having Equity conversations and what do we do when we see or hear words that are spoken in our classrooms so I'm a little concerned that that we would have uh see 16 uh 50 fifth grade teachers that would feel comfortable to be put in the hot seat if you ask these questions in Spring and fifth grade year which probably is the most comfortable that
206students are in their middle in their Elementary School experience as far as being able to ask questions yes the um it is within the the so the the purpose of moving this was this this paragraph did generate a fair amount of conversation with the adoption committee um and that was the reason why they decided to move it into the discussion and by moving into the discussion they're not introducing that topic but when the question comes up and they are saying that sometimes the question comes up what happens for people who are wanting to change genders or are in transition or non-binary and these changes we just talked about to the body happen this is the text we're giving the teacher to answer that question and that's and if they want to take the question further
207then they're directing them to the families if we were to remove this paragraph out of the curriculum then when that question comes up they direct them immediately to the family without giving this paragraphs information so that that that was the kind of navigation that the adoption team was trying to take with this paragraph because they did feel that that would be the best place to support students in this director Moore so to be clear that's where I was going to go with my questions so this text that phrase you read is not in the direct lesson itself it's in the Q a yes we moved it from the direct lesson into the Q a that was one of the modifications we made and then is the Q a such that the Q a questions are
208like already established like as in um kind of pre-emptive to to have the questions out there or is this just in case a student says hey what about somebody who's transgender how does it work for them is is it that when this statement would then be read that is an excellent question thank you the by moving into the Q a it is it is going to come up if a student asks a question about that aspect of students that are in transition so no it isn't something that is pre-loaded the way the Q a happens is uh generally speaking with flash is that questions are submitted in writing so that the teacher can look through the questions and make sure they're appropriate make sure that they're productive and then she can follow he or she
209can follow up with students that need to have their questions directed back to the family if needed but answer the questions that are appropriate to the lesson okay thank you if we are unsure that there's Fidelity between chemistry classes how do we ensure there's Fidelity across all our elementary schools and that they stay on track with what the script says and not their own personal opinions yes so we have a very tight training and this is where I might invite you to talk about this that we are there are instructed to only use the slide deck developed by the district to only use the talking points developed by the district and to stay to to these directions so we train the teachers very tightly on this more than any other curriculum because we do feel
210like it is very sensitive matter to make sure that we are covering it with consistency and we also know that our commitment to transparency with our community is very important in this area so that parents should be very clear that our teachers seriously take the training to stay with the teaching points that we've provided and if you'd like to talk more as Michelle supports that team that's your name sure so all teachers are required to be trained so any new teachers on an annual basis get trained so every year we're scooping up brand new teachers so that they have that opportunity if we move forward and adopt these changes all fifth grade teachers will will get retrained in this new updated curriculum so that would happen before it's taught and then every year when we
211have a parent preview session we have our fifth grade teacher lead um come before and train parents in the way teach them help explain to them the curriculum and the way that their students will receive it and we make sure that they know exactly how to access all the materials it's online it's available for parents to preview and then they always annually have that opportunity to opt out if they choose to they can opt out of one lesson they can opt out of all of the lessons that's an opportunity for all parents but it's different than typical curriculum because we do take it very seriously we make very clear to teachers that this is the script that we follow this is the teaching point there is no supplementing there is no bringing in your own
212curriculum to add to this this is how it is taught we are very clear about that yeah and and I want to say our teachers understand that um we have a lot of parents who show up to the preview and we make a lot of assurances at that preview that this is the content and our teachers understand that this is not a place to enrich or supplement the curriculum and they understand there's a lot of eyes and accountability on that because it is is a strong Community interest director gallinger I have a question for Michelle uh how many of our 16 elementary schools have site counsel of site counsel yeah with like uh basically a I believe all group with principles I believe all I guess I'm concerned that there isn't enough parent understanding about
213what the changes are and so if you came to me and said hey principles all 16 of our principles have talked with all 16 of our study councils and there is overwhelming majority support from I'm not expecting unanimous for anything that we do but that there's been that touch point of parents who are very engaged who cross the spectrum of Ages because what a kindergarten parent is thinking about versus a fifth grade parent is very different but they all have that awareness that opportunity to hear that from the building leader and these are the changes that are coming uh I think I'd feel more comfortable with that I'm a little concerned that there isn't enough parent touch on this as I'm concerned with parent touch on a lot of things you hear me talk about
214that ad nauseam I'm sure but this one in particular I worry that it won't come to us oh the line of appearance until the parent preview of Slash curriculum next spring and I think that will be too late and that will show us that we haven't done our work about that serve and return feedback and we already have existing structure by which we could ask parents and I don't think ptsas though is is the right place but I think a site Council where the principal has chosen hey these are parents that we know are very engaged that are a representative cross-section because they know you guys have done lots of training to make sure you have representation in your site Council it isn't like all the parents who look all the same for example um
215so I think that would be really important because I think that what has been brought up to us is how do we know culturally that the parents that don't show up in this room have really had time to understand what the changes are and that's what my biggest concern is is we only educate 55 of our students that are Caucasian and so how much feedback have you gotten from the other 45 percent uh just one one reminder to that is that we have our uh instructional materials uh committee also reviewed this and um voted to send it forward through this process to you so that does that has made up of half parents um half staff so I forgot to mention that in the process so just wanted to mention that it isn't Apparent from
216every school in it but it is a we make every effort to make that a diverse group of parents um and to um they get a chance to read every they they get the materials and they have a month to read every piece of the materials before they discuss it and vote it through to to you so how many Elementary parents of color are on that committee I would have to pull up the list to know we have nine numbers nine nine parent members nine total so um I can get that information for you the number of people that they have present that was a forum yeah so so just I I guess I want to go back through it so in the delivery of content yes we are not teaching about puberty blockers or
217any of the areas we are we are preparing teachers with a potential answer if raised in writing and then a redirection to the family yes and that delivery of the information that I would say it's probably the of the feedback we got people brought up the most um there were some other ones I suppose but in this case in this particular feedback point about puberty blockers um those questions come in writing are answers delivered to the individual student or to the whole class they are they are delivered to the class if asked if if asked yes and a redirection to parent and if follow-up questions are needed they're redirected to the parents the the parents that we redirect them the parents daily because there's a daily I remember daily letter there's a daily conversation that
218says do not talk about these topics on the playground do not talk about them in class outside of flash time as you're learning this new material the place to talk about it is in a safe place with an adult and that would be at home to follow up with and as I understand it Kids Place multiple questions per day typically yes okay okay thank you other questions or comments no okay thank you uh so we have a motion on the floor all those in favor aye any against nay no so that is three four two against it passes thank you okay next we move to legislative matters director gallinger I think we're almost done with our break and we'll need to start thinking about legislation ahead of time I think one of the things that
219we need to get our eyes on is I think there's going to be a push to redo transportation in 2020 23 4 and so for us to start collecting data on what transportation needs could look like and what our wish list would be if we say for example had all of our high schools open to all of our students in our district and what that costs would be in order for us to do that so to look at Transportation through the Ides of equity and what the cost that is a class school district would be to do that in getting that information ahead of time so we can impact bills pre-session and so this is the time for us to get that information and look at that and the other conversation I don't know has
220have we even started doing any Pilots of electric buses I know that the challenge and concern has been our topography but I know because we have we probably have some routes that are limited to flat ground and to say so what number of routes would we project we could do that so I think this is a time for us to start collecting information so we can touch pre-pre-bill um in the legislation now that'd be first thing the second thing is for uh was the General Assembly where we go through and map out what the priorities are I'm assuming um director of miraldo and I will go and represent the board for that but this is the first year that was is not covering those as expenses and registration that was the normally has done in
221the past for us so therefore it would be the board would need to sort of by consensus say that we are going to do that and we are going to fund that first in the past we just went um so those would be the two things that I would bring up did did wasp pay at least before because you guys were on the board I always thought it was because you were on the board and you're still on the board but they're not going to cover that I'm just trying yeah absolutely they're changing it because what they're doing with general assembly is in order to address the equity of to say whether you're a small school district in central Washington to still participate is is that everyone can participate online and so therefore it seems
222inequitable to pay for some districts especially some of the largest school districts in our state to go in person but are you expected to be there in person for a board meeting for a board meeting or was the board meeting uh there's not going to be a was born meaning then because of like they've adjusted the schedule yeah so I was going to say it's also not fair to expect correct you to be there as a was the board member and then not fund that yeah we've changed we've gone back to our normal Cadence of board meetings okay this will be the first time they've done a hybrid meeting though for General Assembly we've pushed really hard for that so if this is one of those consequences and so be it so do we need
223to head now I was going to say I think this is where we go [Laughter] we enjoy your representation and so then therefore Dan will register us thank you for Bethany well Bethany will probably help us with that as well um any other items legislative items to cover anyone else okay uh malandering I have a sheet oh would I skip one sorry yeah announcements of Correspondence have been attached to the agenda are there any additional items that the Board needs to share it's time okay thank you we have done that we can move on to Future uh calendar and future agenda topics so we have a few reminders um so obviously we talked about graduations already those are coming up and then a couple of discussions so uh one the first one will be for
224the July 13th board meeting um it is currently scheduled as a regular evening session correct yep and so I guess the question is do we want to reschedule that to a morning consent only agenda for this group yes be assumed uh it could also who's even available on for July because sometimes we only just have a forum um I have no life so I should be here July 13th is what we're talking about right correct I will be there I will be here what did you say Sydney I will be there okay okay Marnie said yes oh I was planning on doing but I can't change it from a morning meeting so I will not be able to attend oh I see which thing um well we would still have Quorum and it's consent only
225so I guess maybe that's the question if we would like to make a motion I can do either is there an interest in moving it to the am yeah there's probably a preference from staff to do it in the morning I would think from staff as well I think it would be yeah easier it's the best consent I think we reserve the right to change it if something comes up and let me change it back and yeah change it back that's true okay do you want a motion then I would love emotion uh I moved the board hold the July 13 2023 regular board meeting at 10 A.M consent agenda only do I need to specify assume no because we always have a zoom options yeah that's it that's my home second all those in
226favor bye okay we will move the July 13th meeting to 10 a.m thank you very much uh the next is an el-12 wonderful for this evening um learning environment video filming so it's one of the things we wanted to get the board together to film each of our perspectives on el12 is one of the communication vehicles with the organization broadly um I believe the preference was that we're trying to get that done before June is over well is it still not the beginning of June it takes them time to before the end of June I'm sorry what am I saying wrong I think what Lesha was saying is if you want the video completed and available by the end of June it needed two of them oh it needed to have been done today okay
227just one I'm just talking about filming I'm just talking about when we film it maybe that was my confusion I think we because there's some scheduling concerns once we get into July for shooting it okay yes that's not my concern is getting it done by June but getting it completed by June and I think it would also help if we could rally around a tighter time so we could get set up and shot right as well and what is our goal with it what is our this is this was a video that we discussed doing earlier this year as a way to communicate more broadly within the district what is our goals with el12 what do we hope they are um people are taking away and to help rally the work around deal 12. our
228vision and our why like we did with the equity video way back when if you look and then scroll back through the whole thread at the beginning there are guiding questions because I made the mistake of saying are there got any questions and they were already there yeah okay but different than what we sort of did before that didn't end up producing I think there was some film I think there was some I think it is exactly what we started doing before but there were some uh filming quality concerns so it didn't make it's on The Cutting Room floor I guess okay it wasn't so much our content oh that that's where I was going and founding questions are different than last time aren't they I would hope the audience the audience was different so
229yeah so the guy the questions are as director gallander said really about why intent envisioned keeping it at that altitude I think there is meant to be a shorter snippet as well so different different content different audience so um we could do it after graduation that would be that would be like that day but like just yeah I actually was going to suggest could we do it at graduation their equipment no yeah I'm Chris stuck I was gonna I don't think we're gonna be able to all do it on the same day so I think that comms is going to have to be able to have it multiple so maybe what if we can do is respect that we need to get it we want to get it in this month and that we each
230need to select possible dates I know I did not answer the last query so yes you were the only one gold star thank you rare yeah when I read the email I was like huh I missed all um I I am happy to coordinate a date with the people who are more available understanding that those of you who are less available once available okay maybe for your own dates but I don't want them to have to set this up five times okay so we will commit to getting you good dates how about you coordinate with people who are more available send it to Harlan and I and we will see if we can tag on that same day or we will figure out an additional day so you want us to do that offline yes
231please get back to you thank you I can do that um you're in charge and then lastly not lastly uh not lastly yeah we have to do the monitoring calendar oh sorry on it you guys are so helpful that's not what I'm talking about on this list of things I have to mention for discussion I will not I will not gavel the gavel is to the side um November 16th 18th is the was the annual conference in Bellevue registration is now uh open we need to get confirmation on um attendance from the board and then um so if we could please confirm who all of um the three of us I guess will be there Harlan Marnie well actually if they accept the class that I proposed oh you would all be there to do
232then I think all five would register it all go oh okay you should go regardless of whether they accept your class or not because you are oh that's true you're still a board member of this Quest school district oh that's true it's November that's my fault so yes for all five I'm hearing all five yes yes but definitely and yes we should have a board member and yes we should can we do that without names yes names I suppose we have yeah wonderful I'm sure they must do that yes it would not be the Issaquah way to not have all five of us there all right that's correct you taught me that eight years ago you know I mean I was gonna say one let's see when I was first on you know not that
233year the year that Brian finished he didn't come and then he got Board of the year yeah that's true he wasn't there not that I expected okay he wasn't we're going to stay on top Richard we're almost done and then uh all of our student reps should consider registering them all student reps well wait no I can't take all of them well that's the question being posed one from each School yeah okay um and then it seems you've received a scholarship this is where wazda is covering our okay and so I forwarded that email on today and already to register because we're doing it differently and I have one that I haven't forwarded apparently okay so really you're just so it's worth still the local district is taking care of the registration but via uh
234registration code um I think they're just trying to make it more similar I know okay thank you for those discussion items and yes we also um and also there is a meeting tomorrow at one yes okay um okay so next agenda is um our review and approval of the monitoring calendar for 23.24 do I have a motion I moved okay sorry hold on can I share one thing about the calendar so what we this year on the proposed calendar for next year oh sorry I'm sorry we're almost done everybody's it's getting late I just got out of steps I promise yeah go meet me yes okay I move the board adopt the policy governance monitoring calendar for 2023-24 school year as presented second thank you any commentary superintendent yes I was making sure I had
235sufficient weights on the case I made a mistake on being out of sequence um the main difference here I wanted to name for the board is the consolidation of academics uh Parts one and two um there's two reasons for that one is January 11th is it half the the posting in prep preparation for that happens literally like the week we get back which is a short week from many of the holiday um winter breaks but also sometimes there's that connection that the board um has to both parts so it is literally just a proposal uh to say would you prefer to talk about them together because it's quite needy or would you prefer to talk about it separately which then you know we can of course plan for that I just wanted to note that
236that was there was a practical reason but also a substantive one as well yeah because I was going to say I think we used to do like a work oh I see I looked at last year's we did the work study in December and then did part one and two right I won't be the one monitoring those but I always thought those were sometimes were quite long and Meaty so when we when I first started on the board it was just one night and that was when we would have midnight meetings it was the only time we had midnight meetings was the two and I think that's what drove the spleen and I agree with you there's a lot of cross over uh but I think if we had work studies the two meetings prior
237where we were able to talk about it as part one and part two and then have E2 single e as a board agenda item that would make sense to me so do uh two work studies on them oh continue that we would because that's what we still have but we used to do just one work study [Music] well last year we listed just one work study on December 8th we had a work study to preview ends to part one and two and then January 12th of 23 it was scheduled for part one and then January 26th cartoon I mean it's sort of an agenda planning trick because right if you have very little else on the agenda you can probably do it but if you've got that time of year things it gets unwieldy why
238don't we go with the note that we'll do we'll look to schedule two work studies that proceeded and then if something veers from that we can make another adjustment so then just clean it up I would remove Parts one and two final just say ends to academics which is what I should say same thing like the other one about ends One mission that's what it should say yeah they're gonna do it all in one that's like the wording yes sir but I do believe that I would recommend that ends One Vision be moved down to the summer yeah I wondered that so there was I don't think we're ready to do it quite now yeah so I think it should be monitored um probably more likely maybe the June 13th maybe and another vision that's
239what I just said yeah that's why I said it she just said that okay I'm sorry there's a there's I'm used to being tuned out like you're out it's just there's yeah I agree it should be later in the year yeah yeah American Nation didn't move down below um the conversation we're having when we were talking about agenda planning was how do we ensure um we're having a conversation early enough in the year that is setting the tone for what we want to see in all of these additional monitoring reports right but it will be that way starting going forward I don't think oh so this is the first year we're ready to do that right now I think it would be premature because you're gonna you won't even have pulled your Baseline data yet
240so what will we talk about fair point so we make a note to Britain later year one switch it year two right exactly the point the intention is we'll lead off with it but yeah it would be unfair to be like okay so Heather um we want you to lead off with a completely done plan that's right with all the Baseline data I I don't think that's realistic right but so I'm thinking I'm thinking the March time frame might be better because especially if we're going to ask her to then do it in the fall that you have two meetings in one month which is nice so because it can get really interrupted between February and April um and we can have a work study on the first one and then to really take a
241look at it the second one and I'm sure we might have work studies on it along the way yeah and that's what I was going to suggest it's almost like you needed to preview where your head added earlier in the year right which that's what studies can do but I don't think we need to formally that's monitor right I'm not suggesting a monitoring whether you wanted to put a note in here you know early preview to remind us yeah of it um would have been where I was going yeah but not not the not a formal monitoring but it's going to be a process to get to it because we have nothing for ends one well right well I think what if we can leave it where like at the suggestion of June 13th what
242was what's nice about that is actually we will have had more more time of the year to get the sort of Baseline potentially um and we are still defining what some of those outcomes are uh but it would be helpful then we can change it for the year after that to sort of line up to where some of the data points will be coming in at but it does not preclude us from having those stock take kind of updates to the board um and to the public in different ways and then my second thing is I thought we talked about moving El 14 up to the beginning of the school year like we just remember there was like we just monitored we just monitored it up and I thought it was El 14 that we
243just but then I couldn't remember what that was our Note Taker to have written down but it would have I thought we had that somewhere I didn't have anymore I had El 15 as we had noted el15 move it up because I did yeah um because last time we did 15. oh yeah we just did 15 on 5 11. and 15 was because of the one to one although one to one did show up and digital uh components in both so uh now I could be uh mixing the two up because of that no you're right it I have in my notes for el15 um it was asked if this El could be monitored in September so the past year is fresh in our minds so on that before you're right yeah you did that
244you did that now was there something about 14 as well what I think 15 and 14 are very similar 15 is just the technology cut of it Focus so we want to try to do both in September because instructional programs right yes the delivery reporting the technical wording of the l14 is an instructional program so we want to try to do 14 as well in the September time frame well that um well I don't know then it becomes the the work plan in around the other would that be okay if you did the 14th example because you're moving ends one out yeah you would be moving that out and you on September well September 14 just has um you know seven superintendent succession and that's on consent right so but I thought our conversation for
245both of those were we wanted to have a much pressure picture of the last school year right as we monitor those ones I don't know yeah I would say if you if you're open to moving el14 to September 14th let's not I'm not going to get confused with dates and numbers El 14 to September 14th um then I would also want to potentially um move El to separate el2 and N4 because those are some final those are some meaty ones as well and then slot in el2 potentially to March 26 where el14 was okay just so the the level level the calendar out a little bit yeah that makes sense and then I have I have two um one is um el13 which is I don't know I lost it somebody you know November 9th
246we should take it off consent because I'm sorry ER 13 facilities given the conversation we just had and I know we'll have other updates but at a minimum I think we should remove the words on consent and then um unless anybody objects but that would be my suggestion and then the other one is we had talked about when we were doing the budget development guidelines that we really need to slot it in so that it's clear when we're aiming and I realize there are always some adjustments I mean this is not such a rigid thing but I think we should have it noted on here like we note other things like finalized monitoring calendar and you know soups evaluation and contract and normally we've done it in the early you know um January to early
247February some Play It's varied over the two January meetings or the February meeting but I propose we actually explicitly put it on some date like maybe January January would be better than February yeah like January 25th or I take feedback on where but I feel like it needs to be written down on this piece of paper well because we already approved a new budget development guideline with new language which had dates in it so I would ask for superintendent what date that should go in because that was what we did in February's approved new language I'm pretty sure I had no later than x we even know better than x so that to me would be then so we would this is a policy governance calendar with Els and M so we'd have to make
248a I mean we can actually start making a third column I think it'd be very good to have everything holistically for for the public and the board and us to know where we're having topics so we can adjust that to add that column which would also help with agenda planning um as a baseline I mean like have Els n's and other yeah move some of these other things that are mixed in because yeah we have things in here they're not in yeah because they're in here this is what it's noticing because I think actually I know it would behoove us it helps us and it helps you and it helps the public know what you know what to expect so we could slot in based on that information another category another uh column rather right
249and if we look at the prior budget development guidelines where we did it but I don't know if it's just because of where we were when we got there and so the critical steps and Target date had the um adoption of the budget development guidelines in the first February meeting but I think no later than just looking at the edits yeah that's why it was a note that's why I want Heather to win a win than when does she wants well some of this conversation is making me think around whether or not we want to actually incorporate our budget cut by budget guidelines as either a GP or an ogp or a is is there a place within our policies that we can actually incorporate it so that any type of monitoring because the other
250things that are being monitored that are outside our bsl5 and really the superintendent evaluation is an is a culmination of all of the ends and executive limitation monitoring so if the budget guidelines were somewhere within that it would be justified that it would be on here because this is kind of our policy it is and I mean I think when we go to look at policy next we need to update gp4 and gp3 to add you know like for gp3 agenda planning you know we talk about other things but we should schedule the adoption of the budget development guidelines and you know even in gp3 where it talks about you know the job description um that one of the things could be make sure we develop and adopt The District budget development guidelines because we
251were realizing as we were looking at this there's really nothing that tells us we're supposed to do this right but we do but we should formalize why we do it I agree sounds like I've heard two volunteers about that yeah is that what you heard there are two volunteers I absolutely heard that sure I really appreciate that stepping in and helping us get that straightened out I'm sorry I said what I want to change but just as a concept but yeah okay then Suzanne it's like was I number two and I didn't know about it yeah sort of surprised how I got that's okay fun um no it's good but now that we're we've said all these things I want to bring this back I would actually propose we remove the motion and let you
252fix it and make clean everything we've said instead of try to imagine what I was okay just go ahead with the water table it no withdraw it you could you could withdraw it okay I think I withdraw that motion and I approve because I'm the second yeah okay so I agree I concur yeah no I was going to suggest that but I think we'll end up in a much better place and this is this is the way I was going to remember all those amendments yeah this will be in a much better place um and it'll be clean we've had a good discussion about it for the record the budget development guidelines are by the no later than the first meeting in February right yeah yeah right but we need to put it on the
253calendar I really want it on the calendar buy that you know but you could put it earlier if you wanted it and then you have room to if if it gets pushed out or to make updates yeah um so put it at the end of January the second January one and then that gives you flexibility I put it at 125 in mine right in a separate column for other I like it and then we're you all you too will look into GP or ogp or how to memorialize it yeah thank you for that uh any further topics for the evening now that we are adjourned