Jan. 28 ISD Board Meeting

001waiting for the last few people to come in okay um all right I'm going to call this meeting of the isaa School Board to order uh for Thursday January 28th uh the board has been an executive session with respect to collective bargaining we have um paused that session and we may continue it after the meeting um and I will start with the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flag the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay where did my oh there we go GNA say where did my board go um all right uh thank you very much and the first thing on our agenda is student input we have um hopefully I'll get names right we

002have Alexandra saranu I probably mangled that anano Munos and Dale linum all from Skyline High School there's three of them because Skyline had an odd number of people and I made an executive decision that it was okay to have three kids so um I will let the three of you decide um who goes first what you want to say take it away and um just be sure to uh turn your camera on and unmute so we can hear you and see you hey so we said um I'll I would go first so I'll just get started then um good evening my name is nanam Munoz and I am the ASP Treasurer at Skyline uh before this meeting Mr Grantham uh the ASP advisor sent me some questions for me to think about and answer as

003I'm speaking here and I've decided that I'm going to talk about some things that have happened at school lately that my classmates and I have found challenging or rewarding um to be honest there have been very few things that in the past few months that have been rewarding uh it goes without saying that this has been a very difficult year for everyone so I imagine that doesn't come as much of a surprise while the rewards are few often times it feels like the challenges are endless I will start with the main challenge that everyone in my age is facing which is online learning uh we started doing school on our computers all the way back in April and the last time that I sat in a classroom was on March 12 2020 that was 322

004days ago I know because I've been keeping count on a whiteboard in my room and it has been 322 days since I last had a class where I was able to learn with any issues and where I was fully engaged I want to be clear that this is not a dig at my teachers every teacher I've had has done everything in their power to make the best of the situation and to make their classes as interesting and informative as possible if there's one thing that I've learned in this pandemic it's that teaching really is a heroic profession honestly it's just extremely difficult sometimes impossible to learn online it's a mentally draining experience staring at a screen for six hours teaching is a corrup staring at a screen for six hours is incredibly unfulfilling and no

005matter how many notes I take I still log off feeling like I haven't learned anything Zoom classes are awkward and breakout rooms are even more so unmuting yourself to ask a question or even using the chat feature takes a lot more courage than people think M so what often happens is that you just don't ask your question and then you've missed out on crucial information student grades are suffering from this I recently read that the ISD is giving students who fail a class A no credit on their transcript instead of an F I applaud this move I think it's a great idea and something that will help struggling students but the mere fact that it happened shows that many more students are failing classes than in a regular year while the classes themselves are difficult

006to engage in already it only makes it worse that we no longer benefit from the social experiences that regular school provides look I'm fortunate to have a family that supports and loves me and friends that I can reach out to if I'm feeling down and even with that strong support system in place there have been times throughout this year that I have been seriously depressed um I can't begin to imagine what this year has been like for people who don't have the support system that I have at home in normal times these students would have that support system at school but we don't have regular social interactions anymore at school online learning was always meant to be a temporary measure something to keep us learning until we could safely return to a hybrid model and

007receive at least some of our education in person we have now been in online learning since April 2020 which some of you may notice is almost a full year ago and this is starting to feel like anything but temporary it really doesn't help that the istd hasn't released a plan for returning grades 4 through 12 to some sort of in-person instruction I understand that there are many moving parts to reopening schools but the I should at least release to the public what they hope reopening will look like even if the final plan is different just to provide a contrast I searched the Lake Washington school district website for their plan to phase in hybrid learning and within 30 seconds I had my answer the LWSD plans to return high schoolers to hybrid model in March

0082021 I spent a full two hours looking for the isd's plan and all I came away with was a feeling of sadness and disappointment because it seems like the istd has no plan last year the ISD was caught off guard with the arrival of the pandemic and because of that we had no instruction whatsoever from March 13th to April 20th what happens if next month the number of covid cases Falls drastically and the ISD is able to vaccinate every teacher in the district will we remain in this online learning format simply because there's no plan to do otherwise to me that's not a valid course of action as I've said we need to go back to teaching students in classrooms because what we're doing right now is not working reopen our schools do it safely

009follow the signs in the experts but do it give us the education that we deserve thank you thank you very much for that um I certainly appreciate your honesty and um I think we're all aware that this is really difficult and uh we would like to shift out of it as soon as we can um is it Dale or Alexander coming next Alex can you mute no now can you unmute there you go I have the magic touch thank you thank you all right good evening everyone thank you for all for having me and giving me an opportunity to share my thoughts tonight my name is Alex Sanu and I'm the ASP president at Skyline High School my thoughts are guided from the question if you could change something at your school or about your

010education what would it be all right so this school year started off incredibly optimistic aru arguably one of the better scenarios to start with given the circumstances at the time on the first day of school cameras filled my screen and I went through the day being given messages of Hope and persistence in every class and I trusted that we were in good hands and we would find a resolution soon however it didn't surprised me that not even a week later the majority of online classrooms would went silent as weeks went on with no news no announcements of progress more and more cameras went off at this rate people realized that they shouldn't expect any news of there being progress made on plans to return us safely the relationships we thought we'd say goodbye to in

011June were ending in October November and so on I'd also add though that I'm aware of how difficult this has been to our teachers in these to teach in these conditions talking to black squares is not an easy job for anyone and their willingness to come to teaching us is more than appreciated one of the few constants we've had in all this has been our teachers presence every day their desire to be there for us teach us to answer any questions we might have has helped us navigate the online School experience one of the more difficult things that I deal with on a daily basis is telling people whether I go to school or not the second I tell somebody I'm a senior in high school their eyes drop and it's the same phrase I'm

012so sorry for you in September I was optimistic and told them there's no need to be sorry that there was so much time in the school year left to make plans well it's almost February I'm in my last semester of high school and I stopped responding to these reactions I'm a firm believer that where there's a will there's a way to speak from personal experience I decided to get a job in the spring of last year after the closure was extended work has now become my social interaction every day what school used to be for almost eight months now I interact with tens if not hundreds of maskless customers daily in the Drive-Thru God willing I've yet to come down with any sickness I've been doing this by wearing a face mask repeatedly washing my

013hands sanitizing surfaces religiously my co-workers and I we follow the guidelines we follow the CDC recommendations and it keeps us safe the will to allow ourselves to be both present and safe and our building is there so we found a way to do it properly this is what should be done for our schools as we've heard from the very beginning of the pandemic we're all going through this at the same time we're all in this together I strongly believe that this should apply to the building of the plan for us to go back to school as much as we students would love to go back to our schools we absolutely understand the teachers positions as well they have themselves and their own families to protect and coming to school in person may have the potential

014poal to put them at risk we understand that there is no guarantee of zero risk transmission anytime we step out of our homes really there is a risk but it's up to all of us to take care and protect each other so to answer the original question if there was one thing in my school I wish we could change I would urge that we start following the facts not the fears so that we can come back together safely thank you thank you um Dale hello I'm Dale l um I'm the director of assemblies at Skyline and the question that I'm going to be answering is what one thing happening at school has made you feel outside your comfort zone and helped you grow as a person so something that I've really enjoyed um at Skyline

015has been the social lunches after such a long period of time without seeing many people or interacting with people that were not my immediate friends I was actually pretty nervous to return to online school this fall I was worried that I wouldn't know how to engage with other students but more than my worry was the fact that I just miss seeing my school friends I have attended two of skyline's social lunches and I have love them both first off it's super nice to be able to see the faces of my peers and it returns a sense of normaly to my life I think that getting to choose your breakout room and what you want to spend the social lunch doing is a really cool concept because it's a lot more natural to go and talk

016about something you like with your classmates and mimics a natural classroom environment all of the awkward Breakout room tension Falls away and it's so much fun to just have a normal conversation with people that I might not even know yet secondly I think it's a very inviting environment for students it does take a bit of courage to join um after such a long time of missing that social interaction but I really do think that once a student joins once it's way less intimidating the second time after attending at least two of these social lunches I have found myself more excited about school and getting to know my classmates as I would have been in an inperson environment it has definitely boosted my mental health to Simply have fun conversations with peers again and I would

017love for these to continue and then the second question that I'm going to be answering is what is one creative or artistic project you and your classmates have participated in recently and so recently I got to complete a creative project for my 11th grade Humanities class that I really enjoyed we were given around six different creative formats to choose from and lots of creative freedom in how to carry these out I myself got to create a playlist that I felt best described the chapters of The Great Gatsby and I loved a lot of things about this project first of all I liked that it was another way for me to show my understanding especially from an online standpoint I think that it's very important for students to have the opportunity to express what they've learned

018in a way that makes sense for them another thing that I liked about this project was how much it was like pretty low stress although I had to write a justification paper to go with it I never felt too overwhelmed and it was relaxing to just listen to music and do my project after a few months of online school it was really nice to have an opportunity to use my creativity it's been quite a long time since I've had to push myself to be creative and think about things differently and I found myself understanding the book a lot better and now my teachers can see more the way I think creative projects have always been my favorite part of school in person so having an opportunity to complete one in online school provides students with

019a sense of normaly which can be extremely comforting in a time like this um thank you so much for having us well thank you very much to all three of you I appreciate your very thoughtful and considered and honest comments um I know this has been an incredibly hard year we are working towards bringing students back in a hybrid and what you're not going to want to hear is that we're starting with our youngest Learners so we K1 then 2 three we will make it to high school but um it's it's not moving as quickly as we would have liked but hang in there and thank you so much for your input um next on oh and also students feel free to hang around um and participate in the other agenda items if you've got

020input that you'd like to share with the board um raise your hand or turn on your camera do this and uh we will be more than happy to have you participate Marney uh our third student had something that had had his hand up oh I'm sorry I don't see it turned his camera off so if he wants to come back oh I see I see they're not students sorry He's listed as Megan yeah it won't let oh hang on all right there we go oh there you are I'm sorry hi yeah Megan through me yeah it's my cousin's lap laptop but um my name is Marcus ball and I was a junior at Skyland high school but recently on January 14th um I transferred down to a school in Farmington so I could go to

021school in person and so I could play lacrosse because I'm really hoping that to Purser my future in that and I'm really fortunate to have loving parents are willing to sacrifice uh letting their child go on and live in a completely different state and not know anyone it's been really hard and to find my way around meet new people and everything but it was all because I thought it was really important and I was really struggling and online school and the fact that I had to leave my I have four younger brothers and a two-year-old younger brother who won't even remember who I am by the time that I go back and that makes me really sad and I've had lots of friends that have really struggled during the online school and I know that

022it's been really hard for everyone like everyone keeps saying but I really think people should have the choice to be able to go back to school because just telling people that no you can never go back to school I think that's just not the right way to go about this and and online school wouldn't be that hard if we knew that like at least like the whole country is doing it the whole world is doing it but no there's plenty of different states that are doing hybrid learning or are in person like my current school that I'm going to and everyone wears masks everyone is doing great and if you don't want to go you don't have to you can join online and people can learn that way if they so please but I think

023that giving the option to kids is the best opportunity so I really like thank you guys for being for keeping an open mind and having us all thank you thank you right um okay so we're going to move to public input um actually I need to back up a little bit this is going to be a tricky meeting we have a lot on the agenda and at 10 o'clock everyone who's in the district office is going to lose Internet so as much as I want to have lots of public input we do have a very crowded agenda and I am going to have to limit it somewhat I will apologize for that upfront you can always always email the board we read each and every email um so if for some reason you get cut

024off and are not able to give public input don't worry because you still have the opportunity to contact us in writing um we will have a period now for public input for items not on the agenda so if you are wanting to talk about reopening schools not not reopening schools mental health graduation rates or Equity this is not the time for you to talk if you have general public input on some other topic then this is the time for you to talk and I'm going to ask that you state your name and attendance area please limit your comments to two minutes um know that the board does not respond to public input or answer questions um please keep your remarks civil because with like it when everybody plays nice and um I think that's all

025the rules so if there is public input for things not on the agenda um please raise your hand and I have hands so uh Jenna win and if you can um turn on your camera and unmute or if you can't unmute I will unmute you but you have to turn on your camera or I can't see you okay can you unmute yeah I I an agenda item so I'll wait oh okay thank you um Whitney Gardner great I'm getting my video on as you all know it's a multiple step process to get everything going I understand so I'm here to give us a brief overview of some very important terms that people don't seem to understand the first term being the freedom of speech everyone must recognize that it's not absolute and that there are

026common limitations or boundaries one of them is classified information then there was the furpa policy which is the family education rights Privacy Act which is specific to private and confidential information about students and and their families quick lesson in the difference between the state and the Federal Constitution the Washington state constitution says that we can only Grant more rights under to people than federal law which means the constitution of Washington can only give people more privacy rights not less privacy rights and a term that everybody seems to not understand which is need to know basis specifically an example of that is that if somebody from the building or issaqua School District doesn't need to have the information they're not entitled to it for example the high school football coach doesn't need to know which girls

027from the high school soccer team showed up and got caught drinking at a party and the high school girls soccer coach doesn't need to know which ones that the football players are on academic probation those are not need to know situations some recent quotes that I have found terribly disturbing from from non-district employees about our issaqua school district students this information was provided to me from a district source as a request to publish to actually squelch Panic instead of its sight Jane Doe responds to an email saying she'd seen it on there so when she's verified the info that's what she'll use and she won't use it from me I assume that means she'll be getting it from other people like Sally Smith private information about students and their family from mquan middle school and

028Apollo Middle School have been H were released I already legally completed a public records disclosure through our public records officer Trisha Rome I have looked through it none of the information that was publicly made available is in that public records disclosure the information was leaked by people within the issaqua school district another term I do what I want wow I had no idea that when you were a volunteer in a school building or a teacher you could report and speak any time about you what you want about families and children that are within the building this one's particularly hard for me five Circ example five circus animals they keep in Portables out back and further as I said bananas the Portables so now we're comparing our most vulnerable students to Circus animals sorry if this

029has been answered elsewhere but what's the source of your data I can't reveal my sources just know that it's accurate so my source was waiting on exact date information we don't post anything on that data sheet unless there are many forms of backup and information Okay Whitney it's been three minutes I'm I'm going to need you to wrap I do want to assure you that I know what you're talking about the district is looking into it well you in particular are on that web page that posted that information as is multiple people on this meeting and not one of you said anything it's a problem thank you for your input um next up is uh Emily melama okay hi everyone hello um I'd like to really thank the high school students who spoke it was

030really great to hear their voices and their support um for the teachers um and what I really wanted to say today is about online learning um and so what I want you to know is as teachers um we fall in love with our students every September we build and maintain relationships and we cheer them on lift them up and help them achieve their goals I'm sure that many students are equally just like they shared attached to their teacher I don't teach high school so I can't speak to what it's like um in a virtual Learning Classroom there I do know that mine is a happy and engaged place with cameras on um but here's the thing the thought that tomorrow could be the last day with these students is heartbreaking my K1 teachers only yesterday

031receed their remote and hybrid assignments and they still don't have class lists um this more than their own self-preservation was what brought tears to my colleagues eyes they don't know which students will stay with them and which students won't they don't know how to say goodbye and continue to keep up a positive attitude and a smile for those kids because we don't know what to expect I also want a plan I agree with you high school kids we need it and it's time but hear hear this families we love your kids we love them we want what's best we all do and that's why it's so critical for the district to work cooperatively with the Union the board the community and its employees thank you okay thank you um I didn't cut you off but

032that was actually input relating to an agenda item so let's not make that mistake again um Amy Meyer can you unmute do want need to unmute you I just wanted to give a technical issue I think there the YouTube link is not working and there's about 200 people trying to watch this via YouTube that can't watch it I don't know why um but I just wanted to let technical people know that the link um for YouTube isn't working yeah someone emailed us and um our executive assistant said that the technical team is working on it right now so they are aware I thank you for that um and they're trying to fix it as soon as they can and I understand that that would be hugely frustrating because this meeting is full so hopefully we'll

033um we'll get it fixed as soon as we can Stephen suzan the stream is actually streaming under the title The Boundary Review Committee and there's about 200 people in there I can switch it over to the other feed but it would kick all of them out oh is there any way to put up a notice so that trying to watch it they know where it is mar my concern Stephen is is that erasing what that one was because that was the boundary review committee meeting from s weeks ago that should be there still okay is there a way for people to know um it says live now on it so if you search for us it's the one that says live now so that should that should be sufficient yeah I just can't change the

034title can you put something in the old one that uh in the description saying please go to our homepage to get to the right one and just change the description on it yep great thank you so much um Andrea Darcy and this is the last one I'm going to take Andrea are you there yes okay yeah no I'm trying I'm clicking on it there you go got it thank you um so I'm coming as a parent um my children were high schoolers of IHS and I made the difficult decision um halfway through the first trimester to withdraw them after um collecting information from other school districts um they're actually thriving also in they're new they're passing they had FS um I was worried if I would see them the next day and I apologize for

035getting emotional being very personal but we hear of suicides of children that we never thought that would happen and I'm glad that I've made this decision to move them because they feel successful um in this other school um with that I just the high schoolers that spoke I appreciate that at the beginning too and um a plan is needed for them too I know everything needs to phase in starting with the youngest that's our plan but they're ready they're willing um many of them are hanging out with their friends already and working in jobs and being among the public um so I wanted to just end with what data does our district have on um how many students have withdrawn from the district how many of those were seniors um attending other schools and what

036data do we have from other school districts and um I just wanted to offer the um suggestion of it seems like we're Reinventing the will of how to do online school we've been doing that for almost a year now and how can we learn from other districts that are um reopening how can we do that sooner than later so that our seniors can graduate um my son will not graduate with IHS now even though that's where his friends are and it breaks my heart um but he is thriving in the school he's in so um thank you for letting me speak and have a good evening everyone thank you very much for your input I appreciate it um okay uh next on the yeah yes people keep telling us the YouTube isn't working I'm sorry

037um it is working it's under boundary committee um next on the agenda is the consent agenda which is a meeting management tool the board passes multiple items with one motion all consent agenda items have been reviewed by the board prior to the meeting and any board member May review an item from the consent agenda and place it on the regular agenda for discussion if he or she he or she so chooses do I have a motion yeah I move the consent agenda be approved as presented second okay it's been moved and seconded all in favor I opposed motion passes and I should have mentioned before I apologize for this Dr gallinger was here for our executive session and he went off to um dig up some data with a couple of other people and He

038will be back to the meeting presently so um he's not really absent we do expect him momentarily um okay establishment of the regular agenda superintendent are there any changes um there are none other than what you had noted at the beginning president Weaver that we are in recess for the executive session and may continue that um at the end of the meeting okay right thank you except I couldn't remember the word recess and I used something else um okay which brings us to reopening schools to imperson hybrid learning and we will have um oh and Dr gallinger is here just as I said you weren't um we will have the superintendent give us an update I know there is going to be public input and I am going to limit it to five speakers um

039in favor of reopening and five speakers opposed to reopening and I I know that doesn't feel good but we're never going to it through the agenda otherwise um and then we'll open it up for board uh discussion so superintendent haly thank you president Weaver um I did want to begin tonight's update on reopening our schools for inperson H uh an in-person hybrid option by speaking to the vote of no confidence that the isqua Education Association rep Council uh took on me the other night first of all uh I want to thank uh personally thank everyone who has reached out to me with words of support and encouragement I won't lie uh when I say the news of that vote hurt and sadden me it's made me feel this way because of the tremendous respect I

040have for our Educators in the issaqua school district I have been singing the Praises of ISD teachers for 20 years and I stand behind those statements of praise and respect I know that our teachers are good caring people as well as outstanding Educators I'm left to believe there's just simply a disagreement among both within the issaqua school district and our Greater Community when it comes to how and when we should be returning our students to in-person hybrd learning I also want to acknowledge the incredible uh challenging work and long hours that the isqua um educ uh the isqua school district and IA bargaining teams have put in over these past months this is also true of all the staff from uh all of our various labor groups and stakeholders um who have partnered with us

041during these challenging times um have a having done a lot of collective bargaining over the 30 plus year course of my career I can attest to how difficult it can be and this pandemic seems to make everything a little bit harder I did want to note though that the school board and I strongly believe that our youngest Learners and those furthest away from educational Equity should have a hybrid in-person option at this time why do we feel so strongly about this while our teachers have done a wonderful job implementing our ISD live remote teaching and learning system for many of our students and we heard some of this tonight this mode of learning simply does not work well in fact we've heard countless heartbreaking stories from students and families about how the isolation and lack

042of in-person opportunities is causing tremendous pain and hardship for them there's mounting evidence from the medical and Public Health Community that remote schooling is having a very significant and negative impact on many Learners remote learning is also causing some families to experience tremendous hardship and concern and as we heard tonight it's causing some to leave our district some and that that breaks my heart because I think many of those people and some of them have shared with me they love the ISD and and they're not leaving by they're not leaving because they want to they're leaving because they feel they have no other option our enrollment is down some 12200 students that's significant and if that doesn't change it will ultimately result in the loss of employment for teachers and support staff finally we also

043know that remote learning is causing many students to experience slower academic and social emotional growth so again I we recognize that the uh what we've asked of our teachers and their response to it has been Herculean in some instances however we just have to acknowledge um that it for many it just is no no substitute for the in-person learning um that we all experienced when we were in school I also wanted to talk about the safety because I think you know we I I believe that the board and and myself and and my team we have consistently said why we think this needs to happen and I just want to be clear again too we're not talking about and I've said it this way many times kicking the doors of the school open and welcoming

044welcoming back hundreds and hundreds of students at a time we're talking about high bred learning where there will be many safety elements people can see for themselves that our leadership team especially our elementary leaders have done a wonderful job preparing for the return of our staff and students into the buildings and those buildings will function very differently than they did prior to the pandemic families can read in our hybrid handbook or review on our covid-19 web pages or watch some of uh the town hall type videos that we've done the work and see all of the work that has been done to set up and Implement virus mitigation protocols from Health attestations thermal temperature check wearing of face coverings hand washing building cleaning and sanitizing plexiglass barriers were needed signage and room configurations to support

045physical distancing along with other mitigation strategies as well and as I said earlier there's a growing body of evidence that when done properly with those mitigation strategies we don't see a um increase in Transmission in communities I just want to point out that we agree with the Center for Disease Control Washington state public health Governor Ensley superintendent of Public Instruction uh Chris reall that it is time to bring our youngest Learners back for a h hybrid opportunity and we should also be considering this for other groups of students as well and I and in fact on on the district side we absolutely are and I believe that to be true of the Ia as well we've just been kind of consumed with trying to uh get an agreement related to our K3 return right now

046I do want the board and public to understand that we are working hard to get everything in place for the return of our K3 students as it relates to the creation and Staffing of this hybd in-person system while maintaining our ISD live remote system this work presents many logistical challenges but we can do it and we are excited to do it for our students and our families and then finally it's my sincere hope that we will reach agreement and understandings with all of our Union Partners around these reopening plans also as I stated in my letter earlier this week we believe an agreement among the parties will lead to the best outcome for our students so so I remain hopeful that we will accomplish this goal and I look forward to us all coming together

047as we welcome our youngest Learners back I will note that a number of my cabinet will be leaving this meeting momentarily if they haven't already done so because we are continuing to bargain we are at the table just as we were last night again tonight um and again I I give credit to both sides for the work and effort that they're they're putting into this I do feel compelled to share some some news that has actually come out since we just arrived at this um and I I want to share that late this afternoon the isqua education uh the isqua school district received notice that the isqua Education Association through its attorney filed a lawsuit lawsuit in King County Superior Court seeking to prevent the district from initiating in-person learning for district students at this

048time the district is reviewing the lawsuit with the assistance of its attorney and will timely respond according to the superior court rules governing such matters the district remains committed to the safety of all students and staff as well as it adherence to current guidance for a safe in-person learning environment so it is a very fluid situation um I still remain optimistic um I'm still hopeful that we will be able to reach an agreement so so that we can do this together because as I said that's the best way in my mind for us to do this so um president Weaver th those are my remarks for tonight um the team is working hard and um I I guess actually one final thought I did want to make is um we are going down two parallel

049tracks right now my team our principles they are working hard to prepare for the return of our students uh a week from tonight a week from today next Thursday and um many as I said our hybrid handb books are going parents of those K1 students are receiving information um and will continue to receive information on a daily basis uh related to modality there are new class assignments we are committed to this effort and I'm looking forward to the time when our youngest Learners will return so that's all I had for tonight and certainly um here to take any question questions um that the board has president Weber thank you I think we're going to take public input first and then we will go to the board and as I said and there's already like 30

050hands raised um I am going to take five speakers who want to speak in favor of the current reopening plan and then I will take five speakers who have concerns about the reopening plan so your hand should only be up if you want to speak in favor of the reopening plan and hands are flying around G give it one more second okay so um the first person I'm going to call on is Blakeley Ricket is Blakeley here hi I'm here can you hear me I can hear you I can't see you okay I am trying to start my video there you are thank you so much for choosing you have two minutes okay thank you um we have a third and fifth grader in the Endeavor uh Community I just want to say how much

051we love and adore and appreciate all the school staff that we've met we actually moved to the Washington area because of ISD uh six years ago from the New York area area and I was an administrator in New York for a school I helped start um for preschool elementary school and middle school so I understand how incredibly important it is to support your teachers to support your building staff they're doing the most crucial jobs for those who we hold most precious we have supported every tax levy every salary increase I've have tried to volunteer as much as possible even though I work full-time um just to be in the school environment and to support our teach teachers however in September we sadly and superintendent you spoke to this we had to become one of those

052families who had no choice but to enroll our kids in a school where they could attend full-time we were outside of New York City they are able to go five days a week in an area that was incredibly hardh hit by the virus people here take it incredibly seriously they are not politically biased or how they treat um the way that they deal with the virus since September there have been zero cases linked to an in school transmission of course there are Community cases but when they arise and when they are reported to the school a system immediately becomes intact where people are notified of any kind of contact they are um advised whether or not they need to quarantine the schools only shut down for one or two days while a deep cleaning happens

053and communication happens like literally immediately and parents and children can get back to going to school and get back to their lives and their routine the kids come home from school so happy every day that they had a math partner and they were able to play hockey in their gym class they were able to have music class outside because the teachers and the staff have decided and committed that they were going to be brave and find a way if you can wrap I'm sorry okay I didn't mean to totally cut you off but um thank you very much for your input um next is Judy GNE Judy are you there I'm here but my here I'm trying to start my video oh there you are you don't and president Weaver this this is actually JD

054Gaffney uh Judy's husband so great uh I appreciate the chance to provide comments to the board uh recently my view has started to evolve and I can see the possibility of our daughters returning to in-person school I have two messages for the board the superintendent and the community one do a better job two don't forget compassion empathy and Community for do a better job to be blunt the school board and superintendent need to do a better job you need to work harder to provide the best experience and service to the students the parents as well as the teachers and staff you may think you were doing that but you only need to look at Northshore School District to see an example of a school board being more transparent more informative more collaborative and more understanding

055this isn't rocket science this is you as a group doing the right things better than you currently are why is the school board putting forth recommendations without the support of the teachers so the teachers can be put between a rock and a hard place no one wins in that situation and we all lose you can say that's the negotiation process and I say you know it's not going to land well or get us to a solution and it just stir the pot with the whole Community do the right thing do the hard work up front to get to a solution that works do better and one specific suggestion the hybrid option of the half day in class is not a great solution if we're going back let's do two full days so the students really

056are in school message two compassion empathy and Community each of us has our own situation and challenges as well as our own opinions and beliefs the combination of all these things gives us each a view of what's best for us what we need to remember is that it's only what's best for us not our neighbors not someone at a different school or with a different job or different situation look around at the faces attending this meeting and remember this is our community this is what makes isqua a special place we're all here because it's a great place to be with good people because it's a community as you share your views in person or online remember that you are part of this community and so it is that and so is that person with a

057different view be respectful be understanding these are challenging times we need our school board and superintendent to be leaders and we need to be a community thank you president Weaver thank you very much for your input um Arlo Miller Arlo Miller okay um there we go is that working yes all right good hello uh my name is Arlo Miller and I have kids in K3 and five at Newcastle I also have my own clinic in isqua and have a PhD in biological chemistry but I'm not here to talk about science study after study shows the low infection rate in kids and the lack of transmission in schools the science is now clear which is why the CDC recommend schools reopen for in-person learning now but this is falling on deaf ears the WEA in particular

058is promoting alternative facts and fear and has essentially turned their back on science I was trying to explain our current situation with my parents in Minnesota it seems that for $900 per month you can drop your kid off at elementary school for supervision during their day of remote learning they go to school wearing a mask sit in a room with other children wearing masks spaced about 6 feet apart and otherwise follow all the do guidelines for in-person instruction while at the school's daycare the teacher teaches alone from another room my parents asked the obvious question why can't the teacher get up from their desk and go into that room and teach beats me after all all the kids in this program right now are the exact ones that the union is protesting and in fact

059today suing you to stop from bringing back in the school even though there are already a thousand of them there doing exactly what you're proposing to have teachers do and you guys have shown that it's going really well you're not getting cases in school after eight or nine months of the Union negotiations it seems like it's still a complete impass they're in fact now suing you I don't really understand what there is to negotiate just as with my clinic the schools need to follow do guidelines they aren't negotiable it's not like the district can say no we're not going to follow these every business in the state has to follow these same guidelines so science doesn't work negotiation is clearly feudal so I'm going to try to appeal to you with AEM motion with something

060that my wife wrote about the whole situation she said I especially cry for our kindergartner who told us that she just wants to know what it looks like inside a classroom who has no friends her own age who throws tantrums every single day that make me drink every single night every day on Zoom her teacher takes a ridiculous amount of time helping the children who don't have an adult sitting right next to them to help them find the next workbook page and the giant stack of papers who has a broken pencil and Cat sharpen it by themselves whose laptop is low on battery but their dad's on an important call seeing a room full of children with so much potential 5-year-olds just alone in their Dinosaur Disney decorated room just sitting in front of a

061damn screen hearing this just crushed my soul realizing how much this whole thing is hurting my family made me feel like like I was failing my kids and failing my wife certain other families feel the same three minutes but thank you for your input I know it's hard to get your thoughts in that short amount of time um thank you thank you RJ Harris and I will take one more after RJ and then we'll go to the other group RJ Harris last call RJ haris are you there ah there you are apologies the system wouldn't let me in for a moment um good afternoon good evening everybody um look as Mr Gaffney pointed out the lack of the collaboration between the district and IA is causing a lot of sphere problems and as as legitimate

062as the worry about families leaving is I worry that this constant this feeling of being seen as less and professionals by members of the teaching Community could also likewise lead to a leading of really skilled Educators from the district um more often I'd like to say that the Department of Health guidelines are very good and I understand that but they are fundamentally antithetical to what I teach American Sign Language if you tell me not to touch my face I need to ask you to not speak with verbs it doesn't make sense so there are cases in which we need to talk talk more and this lack of communication is exceptionally problematic thank you for your time thank you um okay the last speaker in favor of the reopening plan is Heidi Erikson Heidi there she

063is um hi thank you for giving me a chance to speak I'm disappointed that the last person who had an opportunity to speak uh in in uh favor of returning to school did not use that opportunity appropriately because there are a number of us out here who would like to have that conversation instead to be clear my dad was a public school teacher for 42 years in the Renton School District I am well aware of unions and I extremely upset when I look at this Union strong Banner that is on everyone's pictures the reason why it's because we're here to talk about our kids we're not here to be a union that needs to be broken the second thing is my daughter is actually in that program uh that Arlo mentioned she has been completely

064safe it does cost me $1,000 that is money I will not be giving to the districts or to teachers I want to be clear that nothing has happened and her education is suffering this is not the way for our children to be taught and the unions and teachers are losing the support of families they have lost my faith I would be moving to another school if I could find one now taking it but unfortunately that's something the wealthy in our district can take advantage of the wealthy in Mercer Island can take advantage of and that is not fair being the daughter of a school teacher I know poverty I know not having what I need to have so the fact that our teachers are allowing this to continue and continuing it through I do not

065think it was in bad faith that the board sent out that message I think it's the only thing that they can do because the teachers are not one educated enough to read the science two negotiating in good faith with the district they will change their rules and third they are exper displaying extreme privilege and that privilege is in demanding that they get the vaccine if they were not essential workers they should not be essential our grandparents are more important than 25-year-old teachers this is not a fair thing it is selfish it is what people are thinking it is what we are too kind in Seattle to say the fact that they have now done a lawsuit boils my blood beyond our children need to go back to school they need to be educated and do

066not ask for money next year don't ask for additional funding and by the way Ron thank you with 1,200 people no longer in District that's 48 teachers who should be immediately fired equaling at least $7.2 million in this budget year alone for those teachers if we need funding for next year that's where we're going to find it the only way we will get teachers back in the classrooms if they can suffer like the 4 million women in America who had to leave the workplace three of which are my personal employees their careers are in danger their lives are in dangers and their children's Futures are being jeopardized okay that's those children may not return thank you very much um it's been pointed out to me that we actually had um a couple people um not

067really speaking in favor of the plan so I am going to take one more in favor speaker and one fewer not in favor speaker which means I'm going to go to Jennifer Harrington thank you Susan I think that was wise Jennifer are you there there you are what you moved got it yeah am I on now okay perfect go ahead um um great thank you for letting me speak um to State the glaringly obvious um we are a community divided at this time um I don't know why we're still speaking for or against reopening it all based on the most Rec recent focus groups that um IA themselves did more than half of K5 staff wants to return to school and about more than half of the families want to um meanwhile we destroying the

068morale of our amazing teachers many of them are absolutely sick of remote teaching others of are sick of the lack of communication the constant changings the feeling of being under attack for wanting to go back to being in person um the feeling of being attacked for wanting to stay remote um when there's an equal group of parents that want to stay remote that we just need you to pair them up with um our kids are not back in school because we're not able to provide safety mitigation measures um we've shown time and time again that we can meet or exceed each and every mitigation measure laid out by the Department of Health our kids are still not back in school almost a year later which is still not being which is still being called too

069soon um as others have said enough is enough already let the teachers that want to teach in person's voices be heard and let the ones that don't stay remote um we need to stop sewing division in this community we need to stop with the endless surveys the delays the fear-mongering the changing metrics the moving goal posts leaking documents to Outsiders before they've even been disseminated to our staff this is not who we are as a district this is not a this is there's no other District that loves their teachers as much as we do and it's offensive that a district as wealthy as ours is being accused of not being able to provide a safe environment when kids in districts with far fewer resources than ours have been in school for much of the year

070if they've even been out at all so simply put the constant fighting and distrust between the union and the board and this was even before this most recent lawsuit which is absolutely infuriating along with the disregard of science has come to a boiling point our kids deserve better and I am imploring you all please continue the course get our kids back in school especially our older kids our high schoolers please get them back and thank you thank you very much you're welcome uh many other hands and I apologize but we will not get through the agenda um if I don't cut this short I will take four speakers who um want to speak with concerns about the reopening plan so I'm going to give the hands a minute to put down your hand if you

071were in favor put up your hand if you have concerns okay I'm going to assume that you have done that Meg there you go hi um first I want to apologize because I'm really not on either side um and I'm getting I am a school psychologist in the district I also have three children in fifth seventh and nth grade um and it's really difficult for me to see The Divide in our community um we have such a great Community here I would love to see everybody working together but what I just wanted to say um is that I feel like we have many people in our community who do not have a seat at the table and I actually feel horrible that I've been at every um school board meeting since February and have not

072spoken yet um there are students who are experiencing homelessness and there are students who are learning to speak English there are also some students um that have other barriers whether they have an i P or other options that make it difficult for them to learn remotely and I would like to focus on those students that don't have the resources and figure out how we are going to support them and help them working at the high school I know there's a lot of students that receive no credit and I especially want to help our seniors um and just know that there are many staff that also feel the same way so I'm hoping that we can unite as a community and also really think about those in our community who do not have a seat here

073at the table thank you okay thank you very much uh and thank you for keeping your remarks succinct um I'm sorry I'm having trouble reading Alandra Hansen Alandra hi hi yes it's Alandra Hansen um and I'm making sure I hit all the buttons um so thank you for this opportunity um so I'm I'm a little bit I'm like Meg I'm I have concerns but I I have to say this is this is my dream job and I tell my students that they're my real life dream come true one of my students last year asked me if I had a job he was so convinced that I came every day because I just loved it so much that I just did it for free and I want to get back into the classroom and I'm willing

074to go back to inperson hybrid for the sake but for the sake of time and consideration of of others to share um I do have concerns and I'll just share my kind of top two so first I feel like there's a lack of planning and it's not fair to put teachers in a position where they don't have the information that they need to um field the questions from families while supporting the social emotional needs of their students as well as rearrange our own personal lives I'm a teacher I also have a first grader and a fourth grader um I'm planning to be prepared for whatever the outcome of the current talks and bargaining are because I have a responsibility to my students to walk them through this change and help them come out the other

075side feeling safe stable and ready to learn no matter that if it's hybrid or remote second um there was an agreed upon metric in the most recent K3 mou which I felt was reasonable to base a return of our youngest learners back and I understand that since new guidance has been shared and data has for that metric has been inconsistent so theou has the possibility if needed to update it is there so but in regard to my first concern and this is my biggest concern is please complete the talks and come to an agreement and have a complete Plan before you share a specific date because those it effects it is it is such a upheaval of their world um that it's really hard to navigate the changes while still like I did this morning

076I looked at the faces of my students that I have strong bonds with and have built a learning community whether that's remote or in person wondering who I see when I get back into the building when that will be um so thank you for your time and um I hope that our community can come together and really work together to do what's best for our kids even though there's no perfect answer or solution so thank you very much okay thank you very much for your input um Jenna win Jenna there you are H okay can you unmute okay uh see hold on my name is Jenna win and I am a kindergarten teacher Sunny Hills Elementary and also an IA member um use and safety precautions I want to tell the board that the current

077plan is traumatizing our Young Learners element Educators strive the whole child not only academically socially and tionally the district is so focused on running schools as superintendent fely has previously a business that they forgotten to see these children and families as human beings and these teachers as well these children are Sur many were torn from their preschool and kindergarten classrooms last year thinking that they were going home for the day and they never saw their teachers again why are we compounding this trauma by setting a February 4th start date today I had angry students in class used tearful five and six year olds and their parents who have won to return to campus but who haven't had the time to proess what's happening they had fair warning they've had bits and pieces of information flow

078their way and they're desperately trying to fit it together so it makes sense for a return next week the board would do well to show some and to set a later Target we can iron out the details agreed upon mou teachers can gather their families that we work hard to build them for the transition that is to come this doesn't have to be violent but by taking the business approach that's exactly what this district has created the district may think these little ones won't remember one day and they may not remember my face but they will remember trauma and it's not to this thank you thank you very much um and the last speaker I'm going to take is Nora there's Nora hi I just um my name is k hawen and I have spoken

079to you before because I have the four kids at home plus kids who um are displaced and living in a woman's shelter who don't have anywhere to go and I just want to say that um my kindergartner and first grader were just finished and done and they've given up hope um but last night when I told them that on Thursday they were going back they were screaming and they were hugging each other and my older kids were hugging them and it was so wonderful to give them hope at least to make it for a couple days and they've already got a new backpack and they've laid out their school clothes and I'm so happy for them and I'm happy that my fourth grader gets to um continue in the private school that we were able

080to put her in we can't put four kids in private school but she's been in person and it's been working beautifully for months and today I renewed my substitute license so on your website so I'm ready to go in and be a longterm sub and actually supposed to be input for people but well I just want to say my one concern is that I still have two sixth graders at my home and one is displaced and so I'm hoping that we can do something to help um those kids so that we can make sure that the middle and high school go in so that I have the opportunity to go in and and help in your schools thank you okay thank you um that didn't actually quite work out right I am going to take

081one more speaker with concerns about the plan um so let's try to play by the rules people that would be Cara Bean Cara are you there yes I'm here sorry working on my oh my goodness I'm not on my computer like I normally am for school so I apologize um I just wanted to speak to um the thought that the teachers who are upset with this program right now um with the with the way that this has rolled out don't want to come back at all and I know that there are many teachers who do want to be back in the classroom um but they the previous mou had a process laid out and because of that process we would be able to tell hey we have seven days people would be able to start

082watching that and anticipate ahead of time when that would happen I have a first grader and a third grader and an eighth grader and a 10th grader and my first grader was sick last week last year in March when she was in kindergarten she missed the last week of school she didn't get to say goodbye to her teacher she didn't get to say goodbye to her classmates she was sick and then that was it school was done I can't tell you how many nights over the springtime she cried about missing her teacher and missing her classmates and she didn't even get to say goodbye and she would tell me that and I didn't even get to say goodbye and tomorrow she's going to be in class with her teacher and her classmates and she will

083not know if that's the last time she's going to see some of them this year because we won't know her assignment until next week we don't know if she's going to have the teacher or not she has to be remote because I'm here teaching there are details in the plan such as you've given us two masks two cloth masks to teach in the in the building Dr fouchi is saying right now that they recommend double masking are we getting more masks these are the types of details that staff need to be able to feel safe that we don't have in the current plan that need to happen so that teachers who want to be in the classroom can teach in the classroom and be safe and keep your kids safe and people who need to

084be home can also be doing the remote teaching and learning we're just asking for clarity transparency and preparation time for our kids and ourselves thank you okay thank you very much and I'm sorry to all the other hands I am going to cut public input off now and I'm going to go to the board and uh see if there are any questions or comments are there no questions on comments anyone and well I'll just say that um I appreciate hearing from um the community and their perspective and from our superintendent on where we are right now and I fully support the work the district and our superintendent are doing to prepare for rk1 students to return on February 4th I believe it's right and necessary thing to make available in-person learning for our students the

085district is still bargaining and I support that as well um I'd like to see the district and the Ia move forward together in this effort and and come to a um an agreement the data around covid is all improving the current King County uh activity level based on the governor's framework uh for K12 schools shows us in moderate the case rates are falling hospitalization uh is flat and decreasing to me now is the time to bring our students um in on the timeline that we have thank you Harin did you want to say something sure I think first of all I want to say that I really appreciate our superintendent and I want the community and all the staff that's listening to this to know that um he is a gift and one of the

086best in the State uh I don't say that because of he's great for us to work with or because he's doing a lot of the hard work that we're asking to be done um but because look at the outcomes our district has one of the highest graduation rates in the state especially for a large District that could be work if you've been part of our journey over the past five years uh that started with disproportion discipline data right this past year he provided data that showed real Market Improvement we were one of the first districts to do an equity policy and to actually put teeth into it create an equity department so there are so many amazing things that have happened under his leadership that wouldn't have happened uh in in other school districts with

087other or in this school district with another leader so I just want to say thank you for all of that the next thing I want um to ask of the administration is a report out of all the D's and Fs for grade six through eight for tri one compared 2020 to 2020 2019 as well as for Mid semester and end of semester for 9 through2 students comparing 2020 to 2019 and of course you know we'll want it aggregated and disaggregated by building and by everywhere everywh else we like it um because we're seeing and hearing about that happening across the country but I I have no idea about what is and isn't happening um from our district and you know one of the things I really I'm appreciative of this board and this District leadership

088team is that we really do use data to drive decisions and I want um everyone to know that no decisions are easy or not FR with second guessing in this era even more so um an era of distrust in government that the last four years has really driven home for most most our country but the data is very clear and consistent on where and what direction King County is heading and has headed and if you look at the preliminary data that's released that you can see the last seven days we running a test positivity range in the 3% range since January 21st and I think that's a really important thing for the community to know and we unfortunately can't be helped by the fact that the state has just as of yesterday said that they

089will not provide any updated test positivity data that's less than 21 days and therefore King County must buy by that as well so we're not going to get a updated data without us having to hand calculate even though it's from public health Seattle County forou so I encourage people don't take my word for it go out and and and look at it and calculate it yourself um but it's certainly what my lived experience is for my day job and uh it's not where we were when we returned from Christmas and that's why this board said no to wanting to bring kids back at that time because we didn't feel like we would be doing um what we were doing or following mou either in spirit or in uh metric numbers and uh we're in a

090different place now almost four weeks later and so I just want people to know that you know we use data to drive decision- making and we I do hear loud and clear that communication needs to be better I really like the last uh staff members comments about asking for clarity transparency and time for Preparation and I couldn't agree more on all of those things and to the community at large and to our our teachers like I think there's far more that we agree with and there's far more that we have in common than what we disagree with and I I I do hope that we will get to that spot of enlarging our common ground and I hope that will these next few hours and days if that's really Arlan I did just want to

091mention that we had talked about bringing that dnf data and having a conversation about that and we were balancing the agenda with that and mental health um mental health one they're both really important and I hope to see that um on our next meeting's agenda because we did talk about that at Agenda planning we just ran out of room and out of time so thank you for bringing that up yeah I wanted the mental health one too so you know yeah I know we all did Mary did I see your hand no I think I oh I'm sorry maybe you're just waving um did either you or Sydney have anything to add you don't have to I I'm I'm I'm happy to um I you know I think this is this is an incredibly challenging

092moment for everyone involved in the process um and it's it's one that goes with just a lot of significant thought significant um research significant care into what is the current state of play you know we have continuously looked at in in our conversations you know if you go back a year ago this time we were talking about needing to build a remote um learning capability within the dist District knowing that that was a way we needed to um help continue to modernize how we deliver um our education not realizing how much we would be dependent on it but still needing to look forward and think about how we how we did that we got into a time period when it became um the only option for us was to put forth a a a remote

093system in March and April that we have been steadily and dutifully refining whether that isn't how it's being delivered by our our wonderful teaching staff or the tools we're providing the training the Readiness the con the continual looking at the data around um engagement amongst our um our students progress and how we continue to make sure we're providing the best um experience in remote I I've seen you know even recently we were talking I think it was just the last meeting about I ready and as an example of a tool to look at current progress and potential um what potential there is for learning loss in the current system and how we can start to interrupt that today I you know and I see those tools and play in real life um every day and

094so that commitment to looking ahead recognizing the data and the need ahead and starting to put that foundation in into the school system is is what I'm what I think has been really important about the role um that we've played as a as a school board and we know we've continued to need to do that as we got into okay how is it possible to return what is the state of play of um of the virus our ability to react how do we plan ahead for the appropriate um protective equipment how are we looking at the regulations how are we influencing and sit trying to sit at the table with other school districts and with Public Health and actively looking forward again into what would be the future of of how we need to operate

095and still recognizing that just in our old brick and mortar system there were things we had to um try to continue to help and make sure it was an equitable experience to make sure that we were providing the services for all Learners we still have to do that in this environment and and we'll continue to do that in both the remote learning environment and how we have to bring kids back but the reality is is we have to bring more kids back in into the building and not just from a want perspective but from a data perspective of Engagement from a data perspective of um uh the science around the virus we see every metric that we have is dropping into a range that is significantly lower because we've been looking ahead and planning for

096what happens to happen next what has to happen next at each of those happen needing to look forward there has been a friction of why are you talking about that while we're experiencing the current pain and I think for me I have to believe that right now this friction point is again that point of you're trying to look to the next step and we're still feeling the current pain but that's the job is to look forward and look at the data and how it is moving and that each of those things continues to move down so I know that that's friction filled um but I also um have spent all of my time on what is the guidance can we follow it are we prepared how do we leverage the resources of this District to

097make sure that we can provide a stellar remote experience which we're doing and provide a safe and Stellar hybrid inperson experience which which we can do as well and so I I am hopeful that we can move through this point of friction in that balance of looking forward in in in the current um disruption and and continue move on and um and and and best serve the entirety of our community in that way so no I don't have any questions which is I think what you asked I don't have any questions um but I just give that commitment to saying we have a breath of need in this in this district and that as a board we're looking across that breath of need whether it's our employees our staff our kids we we have to

098look across that breath of need and find a plan forward and that's going to feel friction filled um in each moment and that's what it feels like the time we're in now but we're we're going to keep looking forward and providing the best overall experience thank you and I wanted to add um to what Parlin said um obviously I think and I think I speak for the entire board that we do support our superintendent we know how hard this has been we know how many moving pieces there are to trying to get school open for hybrid learning while managing a remote system you're basically managing two systems at once while trying to bargain I still remain very hopeful that we end up with a collaborative solution to everything um but I just I know there's

099been a tremendous amount of work done I do want to um Echo harland's statement of our support and um I remain very hopeful that we are going to find a collaborative solution and now I did see Mar's hand I think it's really important to make sure that you know I I guess I needed to reiterate the superintendent took action that this board told him to take and so when the union says they have no um faith in what he's doing what they're really saying is they don't have any faith in us and so I hope our superintendent superintendent the that you don't take that personally it's their way of telling us it's the next step of they're not happy with us and I Sydney I really appreciate your comments because it is this rub and

100um maybe I personally have not been clear in saying I understand that teachers are in a situation where especially for some of them this is disconcerting which is why exactly we're not saying every single student back in the classroom and we're not even saying every single kindergarten or first grader back in the classroom we have parents that aren't comfortable with that we have uh teachers that we want to be able to provide them the opportunity to not go in as well because it's not healthy for them that they are more susceptible we know the statistics the statistic really are if you are um older and especially if you're elderly that you are at a higher risk and you're at a higher risk of having severe symptoms that are life-threatening and life-ending and so I think

101if there's anyone who thinks that we don't hear that and we don't know that and we don't believe that I hope you hear me today go I understand that I also understand that some of our kids are doing great and we will eventually get to the engagement information that uh super that executive director melish talked about last meeting that we really do care about um what that impes and a lot of parents are like my kids's doing great and a lot of kids are telling us I'm doing fine and you know what that tells me we have fantastic teachers and they are doing a great job in doing something that is really outside their wheelhouse I think especially for all of them and if you are older I think you know how we all are

102with technology how do I do this and so we've asked them to do a lot and they have for a lot of our kids they're doing great and they're not the ones I'm really worried about right now I'm worried about the ones that aren't doing great and you know what it's not based on socioeconomic but I can guarantee that there are kids that are living in poverty in our district that cannot well and you know my take on living and poverty it should be anything that is half the annual median income which is going to tag a lot of people who aren't even free and reduced lunch those kids are struggling their parents are likely having to work if they have both parents that's a luxury I mean I grew up in a working low

103workingclass family and I'm the first one to go to college my brother barely graduated from high school and my sister didn't I know what it's like to be a struggling learner I know what it's like to want to achieve I had a drop a class because we didn't have a typewriter for me to type my papers on so I have a different empathy towards children who are struggling in this school I've know trauma that I don't share in public so I know trauma and you know what it's going to be traumatic for kids it's a certain level of trauma for them to switch teachers but the kids who aren't learning now and have to come back to school next year and get pulled out of their class for support services are going to experience trauma

104kids that are being abused by their parents but they're not in a school where another adult sees what's going on and reports it they're experiencing trauma so it is hard it is this rub there this there is this tension I can't please everybody so I have to think what is my mandate we are doing everything we can to keep teachers safe it is 13 I you can go on our website there's Pages after pages of here's what you're going to do here's what we expect we're taking three days off for making sure that they're trained it is important that they know how to stay safe how to keep themselves safe how they keep keep each other safe so we're taking this seriously my concern is that the general public and in fact the general teacher

105doesn't know all that's gone into these negotiations they do not know what we have laid on the table time and time again that shows that we care about them and so my I'm I'm going to be the first one to probably say public I think we should be like tuula and I think some Eastern Washington School Districts maybe we need to start doing our um bargaining in public and then the community knows and then there's no secret this and secret this I can't tell you what I know and it would really help you understand I think what the position of the district is and so it's frustrating I wish I could communicate more we wish we could communicate more but it's just really limited and maybe a good solution is that we start bargaining in

106public like other school districts do there's something else that I would like the administration to do because I think as a board we're gonna need to prepare for this because by the second board meeting in April we have to be able to approve a list of uh how many decreased staff we have and there's been a lot of I think disagreement amongst us and US collectively meeting the board and the leadership team on how many students and families we think we may forecast for next year so we're really good at sending surveys out so this should be easy but I think that in the next week or two we need to send out a survey saying if we are in remote like we are right now if nothing changes from the way school is today

107do you plan on enrolling your student in as class school district next year that's information that we need uh within the next couple weeks um because we have to be able to make really tough decisions but we want to make tough decisions based on as accurate data as we can and we also need families to know that at the rate and Pace we're going and I would say the lack of good faith at the table that the odds of us being in remote next year is not low and we need to be honest about that to our families to our families who are struggling um the other thing I would ask is while I know that IA did not want and were offended by the district wanting to offer uh the ability to have expedited

108covid testing they only represent 50% of our staff so I would ask that the District administration resume the negotiation to as we open our schools to have an expedited pathway for testing for our staff because we we want that information because the faster we have the information the faster we can be able to keep our staff safe and lastly I want to applaud our superintendent for being willing to jump in with both feet about being a vaccine distributor and while we haven't been allocated vaccine we're hoping there'll be some magic given to us before midnight tonight uh I think we're the only School District that has and so we're doing everything we possibly can to be able to provide every resource to our staff and our teachers and to provide every measure of confidence and

109every measure of safety that we can absolutely provide what was brought up is a good question I about like double masking I think that that's in the context of how many layers like a normal medical mask is three layers so I would really say like hey those ISD labeled maths have one layer two layers or three layers and I think that's the question and I think that it can be a risk management thing based on what what you do and how close you are do I think a a high school math teacher needs n95 probably not but do some of our preschool Elementary Early Elementary teachers who are have to get really close to kids just so they can hear them and help with reading they they might so I think that sort of having

110those and having the the PP available to provide the opportunity for people to feel confident in what they're doing I think is an important thing because at this stage of it it's not just about what what we know there's a big element of this is about confidence and I understand that a lot of our staff haven't been back in working publicly with things and so it's very different I've been working with Co for the past 11 months and so my perspective of myself as well as probably every other Medical Professional in this state who's had a lot of work with Co is very different and feels very different so but I too appreciate that there is a lot of fear out there because of just the unknown and so the more we can provide that

111confidence the better okay I think at this point I'm going to going to try to move us along because we're already 45 minutes behind um but thank you all for all your comments and thoughts and at this point I would like to move to our student mental health presentation and um there's Pam hello thank you um and um just give me a thumbs up if you can see my screen okay great um thank you so much I know you have a full agenda so I really appreciate you asking um to hear about the mental health services for the students in the isqua school district um I am the director of student interventions and um I've been with the district my entire 28 years and I mention that because I have an unwavering passion um for

112the emotional Ness of students in our district um these are highly emotional times as you could see this evening and our students need us more than ever to support them in their Wellness I want to recognize um that we cannot simply talk about the mental health needs of our students without addressing the layered impact of what's going on in our world today with covid-19 the economic crisis um significant racial inequities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic the Nationwide mobilization for racial Justice that's been reflected in our black lives um matter movement and also the recent storming of the United States capital so many of our families through all of these things have experienced enormous loss they've experienced loss of loved ones of jobs of health and physical or psychological safety or even maybe trust

113in our social institutions so we need to acknowledge what's happening in our world today and take this into consideration as we um talk about supports for social emotional Wellness of students in our district um National events such as these can overwhelm us it can almost make us feel I think paralyzed in Despair and we can head down that road where we um we can feel unmobilized and and unable to figure out what are the next steps or or what is it that we need to do and I want to acknowledge that watched our staff in this despair intentionally move into liveaction they've moved into um problem solving mode they have been uncomfortable um they these have been unpredictable times and stressful times and that it's these times that sometimes make us think outside of the

114box and um I've watched this happen on teams that I've sat on where we say well what if well what if what if all students had computers what if we could get food to families in need what if we could connect students that are new to our schools that have never met any of their peers what if we found ways to connect them with their peers and it's the one ifs like these the wh ifs like these that have allowed us to start to address some equities that maybe have always been in our district and to create some flexible thinking of our past practices and maybe even said why haven't we done this before I'm looking forward um to sharing our strategic plan this evening with you and sharing some of these stories of the

115wh ifs that have happened in our district before I do that I want to recognize that next week is the National School counseling week so um show some love to your counselors and reach out to them and and thank them uh for supporting this the emotional and um mental health needs of our students so as I mentioned tonight I'm going to talk about the Strategic plan in the isqua school district um and this plan that has been implemented to meet the social emotional needs of all students um using a tiered intervention system um I also want to take this opportunity um because I have it to talk about how parents and students can access some of these supports I want to talk about tiered intervention supports that have happened during the remote setting and then

116continued planning around meeting the emotional needs of our students um I want to start by acknowledging that our Levy pays for many of the mental health supports many of the things that you're going to hear about this evening we are so grateful uh for that funding um to be honest um it is a dream come true for me and my passion that I have around mental health and I know that our staff also appre appreciate this support for our students with these dollars we have been able to increase Staffing um and bring in more Swedish Mental Health Counselors into our buildings we originally had one at every high school and we've been able to increase that to one at every middle school and also a shared number at the elementary schools we were able to

117increase our counseling FTE from 30.5 to 47 and also um increase pbss coaches that you're going to learn more about if you don't know that already and they help to provide support for teachers and students around behavior um we were able to increase their part part-time positions to be full-time at the elementary and then we also have um part-time um positions at the middle school so the benefits have been um consistency of full-time Staffing we have all the right people in the building at the right time to be able to collaborate and to sit on some of our teams that do a lot of the problem solving around behavior um we've been able to provide more behavioral support for teachers and that could be in training or also in immediate response for students that are

118exhibiting externalizing behaviors um we also have been able to better strategically use these resources and I'm excited to share that today tonight and to be honest it has saved lives um I believe that it allows us to identify risky behaviors early early on and to accurately provide interventions prevention and appropriate ref to outside resources when necessary um this is a sample of the tiered pyramid the the intervention system that we use it is Data driven which means it's not random acts of intervention but we strategically are using our resources in a way that is the most efficient and driven by data um you can see at the bottom the green part of the triangle is universal prevention this is prevention that all students receive schoolwide and um usually it's 80 to 90% of students that's

119enough to just receive that schoolwide extra support and I will share what some of those are in the next slide um tier two about 15% of the students might need a tier 2 support and that might be like a small group or it might be meeting with one of our Swedish school-based Health Counselors um or some may need the tier three support and that is more individualized support for students um if we have a student that is needing tier 2 supports they get the tier two supports but they're still getting the universal prevention that everyone else is and similarly in the tier three level those students are getting the universal the targeted and the individualized supports in our buildings we have different teams that serve different um roles goals so we have a tier one

120team and that tier one team reviews a comprehensive set of data to determine what is necessary schoolwide so um we may have additional training for example on teachers on caring and interpersonal relationships um we have social emotional learning curriculum that all students receive we have training that we've provided for our teachers on trauma-informed practices and culturally responsive teaching practices our school counselors have comprehensive data driven guidance that they are providing to all students we have Universal screeners screeners that help us identify students that need intervention in tier two and then we also have common expected behaviors that are taught and then also um positive reinforcements when we see students that are doing those expected behaviors the tier 2 team is a team that gets together and again reviews the comprehensive data but they're looking more

121um specifically at groups of students that may need interventions and this is the early identific identification of those students that need support it's the um early intervention process and then progress monitoring to see if those interventions are working with those students um we assign a student coordinator to those students to to the teacher who is supporting in those students so we have a couple um Professionals in the building that are collaborating around these students in need and then they bring that information back to the team and we continue to progress Monitor and determine if we need to switch the interventions or maybe they are now on track and they no longer need the interventions or maybe they need a more comprehensive um set of interventions and they may move up to tier three our Swedish

122school-based Health Counselors are on this level and I'm going to save that for later and we may have like a check-in checkout process where we're just uh reminding the students at the start of the day some of the goals that they're working on and then we have an adult that's also checking in at the end of the day to see how they did on those goals the tier three is a is a team um that is really getting together and there are a lot of individuals that have experience in dealing with students that need Behavior plans or maybe even a safety plan plan it's students that often um we're supporting around suicide um uh interventions we may be providing wraparound services that means that the school team and the family and Community Resources are working

123together to support that whole unit around the student and then we may again be working also with some outside agencies to be providing that support for our students so efficiency and Effectiveness are things that this tiered system allows us all the roles in the school are working together systematically to support our students with different level of needs so this is not just the counselor it's not just the pbss coach but it's every staff member in the building has a specific role and understands um what the expected behaviors are what the um social emotional learning skills are that we're teaching the students so on a on a level one you can see remember that is what all students schoolwide would receive you can see that that might be the classroom teacher it might be the administrator

124that is reminding students of the expected behaviors in the hallway it might be a Dean that is giving out a positive recognition when they see a student that's doing the appropriate behavior um level two you can see there's a few more Professionals in the building that may be added into that that could be the school-based health counselor that is um working um to screen the student to see if they have some more mental health needs it might be the counselor running a small group it may be um uh one of the student coordinators that's working closely with the teacher on some of those interventions and then again in the tier three we even have more individuals so you can see when we when we make sure that we have a really strong tier one Foundation

125that is um really the most effective way for us to reach as many students as possible um in our school system um you've heard me mention pbes um the Nationwide um name if you Googled it you would find PBIS you won't find pbss because this is um is AA School District's Twist on this intervention system um we've added the social emotional learning component to it and so that's what what the pbes stands for um a lot of the foundation and the beliefs uh when we decided to do um pbscs came from the fact that we believe that school climate is important we believe in social emotional learning positive behavior proactive classroom management and relationships that all of these together have effective outcomes for our students and it's not just for their emotional Wellness but it

126also um impacts their success in academics there are four main components um in um pbss we have the um upper right hand corner PBI pbss is um focuses on schoolwide practices expectations and structures so if any of your kids have come and talked about uh coyote coins or bark bucks or sh Shazam these are all specific ways that we reinforce expected behaviors with our students in the school and promote a positive climate um next the bottom right yellow is proactive classroom management practices um pbss coaches support the classroom teachers which in turn supports our teacher our students excuse me in learning through coaching and training a proactive classroom management strategies this includes things like positive reinforcement um classroom Behavior expectations motivation systems things like that thirdly is positive relationships positive relationships um with students in

127peer-to-peer um connections um we are finding especially now in our times when our students are feeling isolated is especially an important skill and that's why you have you've seen a lot more of the social emotional learning being integrated into um the students's day up in the upper leand corner social emot learning um the coaches are are also as I said supporting that through the lessons in the classroom um pbss coaches um uh some of the sometimes people are unsure of what the roles of the the different support people in our building um provide um the pbss coaches um work on schoolwide expectations reinforcement systems they lead a lot of the staff training on social emotional learning curriculum they also um collect all of the data for social emotional Behavior needs we have a behavioral Data

128Tracking System that's called Swiss and they are the experts on Swiss and being able to extract really important data for us to be able to know um how to provide the tier one tier two or tier three interventions in our systems they may provide parent or family support if a family is struggling and may need some strategies on motivation for example they may be someone who is able to help um families to do that they provide staff development on many topics that are related to student social emotional needs and they provide short-term crisis interventions for students in need a lot of these um pbss coaches have been teachers in the past and they also have strong behavioral backgrounds um they have also received right response training which means that they have the um our high

129schools um are doing a lot of social emotional learning um during their Flex times and and other times this year that was inent intentionally put in place because we knew our students would be needing it during these times and it was a quick turnaround but I think our our teachers are are doing the best they can in in this short kind of turnaround that we needed to do um in remote learning um I want to talk a little bit about the Ben benefits of social emotional learning um there's a lot of research has been done um to see the benefits of why our students need to have social emotional learning um students that participate have a grade point average that's 11 um percent higher than their peers students who participate inal programs score higher on

130standardized tests less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors and fewer suspensions and expulsions we also see um students that are participating in Social emot learning have some additional coping strategies that may um result in having less anxiety less depression are less likely to abuse drugs um cigarettes um alcohol less aggressive and less likely to bully other students students also um demonstrate greater leadership skills and they're more attentive and less hyperactive in school when we practice some of the mindfulness exercises and um some of those um uh strategies for students and they also then in turn um perform better academically the classrooms at a as a whole um are more engaged in their learning they have better quality relationships with their teachers and they demonstrate increase pro-social Behavior so this helps them in um their in

131establishing friendships um they perform better as I mentioned academically so when we're looking at the K8 second step curriculum um we can see that the skills for learning um this helps the students be able to self-regulate better and be able to participate in and benefit from learning empathy is also a skill that's um enhanced with um students having high levels of empathy they tend to make better progress in school be less aggressive better liked by their peers and more socially skilled emotional management um is students who can recognize strong emotions and calm them down cope better and are less likely to be aggressive and then problem solving students who can solve conflicts with peers are less likely to be impulsive um um and aggressive also um here I I wanted to show you in a

132multi-tiered system how does social emotional learning fit into this pyramid that we're learning about so at a tier one level um this is where the teachers are teaching the social emotional learning curriculum in the classroom um and or at the high school in their their Flex time it's reinforcing self-awareness self-management decision-making relationship skills social awareness problem solving um assertiveness and bullying prevention the tier two would be where we would see those students being pulled for small groups and and working on targeted social skills instruction and then at tier three this is where that student may need some individual coaching and support um from the staff another tier one intervention is universal screening for all students um this is a districtwide uh screener that we use and um we do it in the fall and then

133we measure it again in the spring the beey is the Elementary screener and the sdq is the middle and high school screener the um Bey is a teacher complete and the sdq is the student Ste self-identify or the student completes the survey um Universal screeners are critical to schools and identifying students who are at risk due to internalizing and externalizing behaviors so um we are looking at those scores of e internalizing or externalizing to determine what interventions we need to do either at a at all schoolwide or maybe even um and at the tier 2 level and when those screeners are completed um The Counselor then checks in with that student if they scored high on internalizing and they also make a connection with the family so that the family is aware and um offer

134any kind of additional resources so this is important because we are trying to um prevent or lessen the negative outcomes for those students identified the earlier we can identify this need um the quicker we can um put put some of those interventions in place and improve relationships diminish um disruptions to the classroom instruction and then enhance um ultimately enhance the outcome of all students that are in our system I wanted to take a time and some time to talk about the universal screener data and um and what that looks like during covid times so for the last several years um we have had um two to four% in the red concern kind of the highest concerning level 7 to 11% in the yellow or borderline and 86 Plus in the green um this October November

135um we did the first remote um Universal screener and you can see that the scores in the red or concerning level did go up um to four to six% we did see the yellow also go up 9 to 14% And then the green went down slightly to 82 to 85% % um I want to also mention that we had a 10% decline in the responsive rates just because we did that you know remotely and we had some students that um didn't return those survey the surveys so usually we get an 87 to 89% return rate we had a 79% so I think it's important for us to Guess that maybe the non-responsive student scores may have been more likely to be border borderline or concern and so these numbers we may see that were even

136higher than um than presenting in the current data um school counselors so school counselors um hold master's degrees from programs spec specifically designed for counseling in the school setting um I think it's important to mention that they're not therapists but they're trained in helping students to gain skills that can help them to overcome challenges or barriers in achievement in school or in other areas of their life um they also help to um reach students help students reach their academic and career goals and to develop those social emotional SK um skills um school counselors across all grade levels um counselors seek to support students in address addressing their education um serving their needs across the academic social emotional and career development domains and they also are are kind of that conduit or they're the primary point

137of contacting connecting students and families to a wide variety of resources or maybe even being able to um bring together information from various teachers and and gain a better understanding of the needs of of that student and then within a multi- system of support model counselors actually are participating across each level of that tiered team so they play a role in tier one tier two and tier three um our high school counselors um we can see that um with around 6,500 students in our high schools we have 17 counselors so it's an average of about 385 students per counselor overall um isqua high is is um higher in their population so those counselors have 48 18 per counselor at the middle school with around 5,000 students and 15 counselors It's At 330 um students per

138counselor overall and Maywood Middle School is our larger school with 30 93 Elementary we're looking at a case load of about 600 students per counselor overall um so moving into talking about school counselors and uh continuing I'm sorry to talk about school counselors um some of the additional tasks that they do um new students and new student orientation and supporting those new students to transition into the school they provide classroom guidance lessons they are also are the KY vinto coordinator they are the um the point person in the school that completes a question year for our students who are experiencing homelessness they are also our 504 coordinator and they provide um accommodations for students that have disabilities and need accommodations to be able to access their education and they also serve as a participant on

139our guidance teams or our IEP teams which are our students that um are in special education and they're responsible for child find which means they're responsible for reviewing um data and identifying if a student could have a disability and bringing that disability to the school team um to be able to identify if that student needs to be accommodated they um do a lot of training on recognizing and responding to emotional behavioral distress in our students they train the staff and then they also are responsible um for doing the screening of the students in their school um Elementary does a lot of just in time lessons we call that just in time because the data might indicate that say for example uh a tier one intervention it might I identify that schoolwide there is a a

140certain behavior that continues to present itself the counselors May then hold some kind of schoolwide assembly or if there is a conflict at fourth grade recess and the um The Counselor may go into the fourth grade classroom and do some skill building lessons with that particular group that the data is showing needs some support um the secondary um there's supports the highly capable program um they do academic op option advising and scheduling support and then they also support the students in their high school and and Beyond plan um how do counselors support and prevention and and intervention um they conduct schoolwide trainings for staff um they provide classroom lessons for students and early learning opportunities for parents um I mentioned the universal screener already um they examine data from schoolwide needs um including the healthy

141use survey data and figure out you know what are some comprehensive guidance lessons that um we may need to do as a system as a whole to be able to address the concerns that come up in some surveys that we do um they're also available for students and parents for appointments regarding social emotional concerns with friends or peers or anything else that comes up and then they also help to connect families to resources in the community or to our school-based health counselors counselors also play a role in crisis and Trauma response our counselors have been trained in a method called prepare prepare is a nationally recognized program um by by the national school psychologist Association um that prepares counselors to be able to go in at the time of a crisis for example if we

142have a death of a student a staff member or a parent they are able to go in and complete a trauma screener um to see which students may need additional support and uh Provide support for the building on those days when they need additional um uh grief response to the in the school um they um conduct risk assessments so we have a suicide screener um that counselors complete when a student may be expressing suicide ideation um and they are trained in how to do that and what steps to take um if a student is in imminent danger they provide parent education on how to keep students safe and the next steps to take when students are in a crisis and they also collabor at with a student's outside mental health provider um It's always important

143if a student is seeking um support with an outside provider that we have a release of information so that we can coordinate care in the building and have that um really working in partnership with their outside mental health provider and then they manage classroom accommodation plans for students that qualify for Disabilities so this could also be a student who is newly diagnosed with anxiety or depression they may identify that that student needs to have certain accommodations provided in the classroom I want to take a second to talk about the district um level crisis committee and um and what the um the crisis committee provides okay sure um the district um crisis committee provides the um comprehensive crisis response in the situations that I mentioned when there is a death um in the district this group

144of in individuals um reviews all of our processes consistently um and debriefs after a crisis response to see what changes need to happen um I'm thankful for all the members of that team our school-based health counselors um are um licensed social workers and they um work in partnership with the isaca school district this is really a unique partnership that we have and the fact that they are located in I mentioned each one of our high schools or middle schools and and shared amongst our elementary schools um Swedish supervisor is located at the administration office so we have an opportunity to collaborate and to do a lot of planning and and intervention support with um with Swedish as a whole um some of the important things to mention is the early intervention that really they are

145not a tier three um strategy for us they they are an early intervention strategy and we do that um to avoid some of the crisis students that are experiencing crisis in the moment would be a student that would be um an outside referral and we would be working to make sure that we connect those students to care and that would be either with the support of the school based health counselor or the school counselor also is able to do that um our school based Health Counselors also provide um lots of additional parent nights um they um serve on our school teams also and provide that support not just to our students but to our parents that need referrals um when should parents um reach out to the school anytime um early intervention is the best

146if they need someone to talk to if they have something that's impacting their life where they're not able to function well in a in a certain aspect of their life um I would recommend that early just reach out and um and we are always willing to help I always want to take this opportunity to talk about um when a student talks about suicide um to tell people to stay calm that you don't have to have all the answers um acknowledge the courage that it took for a student to talk with you um speak directly about suicide secure lethal means if you know that you have medication in the house a firearm um anything else that a student could use as lethal means making sure that's removed from your house and then listing some of the

147resources um that you can use your local emergency room is always a place that you can take a student for a risk assessment um I know I'm getting short on time so I'm I'm just G to quickly um kind of talk a little bit about pivoting into the remote learning um the structure that I mentioned in the beginning um if we did not have that structure we would not be able to um move and and be able to um Implement a lot of the strategies that we've been able to do the data um is had changed we didn't have some of the same data of attendance or some of the State Testing um data so we had to kind of shift our practices and still use data though that was essential part of our project

148of our um strategic plan Universal screener we still use that we just used it remotely and then also our intervention um teams continued to meet and put interventions in place in progess monitor um just doing it V virtually it looked a little different um real quickly on um mckin vento data um our mckin vento counts are down um I think that this has a lot to do with the moratorium on evictions and also just students learning remotely families um can learn from other places so we um we are seeing the current count is at 86 where at the end of last school year we were at 180 181 we are seeing an increase in initial 504 plans and that's a lot of families are going and getting new diagnosis and coming and talking to us

149about how their student may need um an intervention so a lot more at the start of the Year families had had done that I think over the summer potentially we have a lower number of CPS reports and um this is not because we think that there is not um abuse that is happening out there but just because of the contact UM less contact with our students we may not have as many reports coming into us so we have 62 reports um currently there's usually 145 or so this time of year we're thankful for our Community Partners and all of the work that happens um we cannot do this by ourselves our community also has to support us during remote learning our school counselors can be accessed um by email to set up virtual appointments many

150of our counselors also on the student um the student canvas sites and things like that also have links where students are able to access their counselor school-based Health Counselors can be accessed directly you don't need to go through a school counselor we wanted to remove that barrier and being able to access them our school-based health counselors continue to Pro provide the services that they have they were able to be up and running quickly this year because in the spring of last year they had already started a lot of their forms and and tella Health a lot of the permissions that needed to happen so this fall they were um quickly brought up up up and we're serving our students um we are seeing a positive involvement of other people in students lives maybe it's a

151grandparent or a parent who are really proactively being involved in the students care and then and um we also are seeing a change in the referral resource usually this would come from the school counselors it's now a lot of self-referrals or parents asking for these Services majority of our middle and high school students want to be seen on Wednesdays they don't want to miss class despite the option for um asynchronous learning so our school-based health counselors have extended their hours on Wednesdays and are trying to meet the needs of those students we have a higher number of students being seen in transition years of the six like sixth grade and and nth grade which historically we has not been the case and our case numbers were lower at the start of the Year even though

152we were ready to be up and running um but there was a lot of additional marketing um and this now puts our numbers similar to when we are in person and a shout out for supporting your team during covid-19 an additional session will be offer offered on February 8th at 6:m on Zoom um watch your E news for more information on that our district website under family counseling services and family cultural and Family Partnership you can see where you can um access your school-based health counselor or your counselor or access forms in different languages um I think I am short on time and I'm not going to be able to get into this but there are so many Innovative things that are being done at each one of the level of T level uh tier

153one tier two and tier three and I wish I had time um to get into this but I want to respect the timeline um that we have um and the other people that are on the agenda for this evening um the last thing as we prepare to move into our buildings um we have our a lot of our support staff our school counselors pbss coaches School syes behavioral specialists and nurse nurses all are having an opportunity to attend a multi-tiered system of support Mental Health Training in March where we're going to talk about the skills that we need to reinforce for all students when they come back um after covid um I think recognizing that a lot of our students may feel anxious or may um need need some support in um the impact of

154returning back to learning so we are definitely taking in that into account um as we think about um our tier intervention system so thank you and I I'm I'm gonna cut myself off there because I know that there's I could talk and talk and talk but I want to be respectful of time thank you sorry I couldn't find my unmute button um thank you very much Pam um are there any questions from the board and I can only see three of you shout out maybe maybe Pam if you uh if you um stop the share oh there you go thank you you were there any questions Carl I was really hoping that this presentation would focus on this transition to remote so the last couple slides was actually what I was interested in hearing about

155we know all the other stuff right we're well versed in it because we've passed Levy after Levy and focused on adding that to our plan so we're well aware of that as well as the curriculum like Su St just so everyone knows that's watching this like we we know this intimately because we're passionate about this my specific question is for the Swedish Mental Health Counselors we've had presentations where you give us a breakdown of their cheap complaints how many have been suicidal ideation versus anxiety and depression versus just stress about school and we know that data what it's been preo I was really want to see what is the impact of Co and remote learning B Sure on those diagnosises sure and um I'd be happy to provide I'd be happy to provide that to

156you if you would like me to send it your way I think that would be great okay because that was sort of my question too is in terms of mental health and reasons students reached out to counselors and reasons there were interventions have those changed dramatically since we went remote and you know have they increased I um president Weaver if I could just ask Pam too I would be curious U um and certainly we would want to see the the hard data pan but anecdotally I know you're talking with counselors every single day and I I would just be curious uh to um director gallinger's question I mean are are you just again anecdotally I know you don't have the data in front of are we seeing um increased anxiety and things like that I

157mean uh I think it was you know listening to one of our student inputs tonight uh our um public input or from our student I think told a story that I sadly have heard too frequently since the uh the pandemic hit so I'm just curious if you have thoughts about that just in general Pam yeah and we do have reports counselors are reporting um an increase in anxiety they're noticing that in um in even sitting in on some of the classroom lessons if a teacher is maybe concerned about a student um and I think anxiety is definitely um social anxiety so I think you know we have some students who don't want to have their cameras on for one reason or another um sometimes when we gently explore why that is it could have to

158do with um the social anxiety around that I think we're also seeing um an impact on Executive functioning skills so when a student is feeling anxious or depressed um it makes it more difficult to organize your thinking or to organize yourself physically so that might actually present itself in disorganization or um unclear um communication or thinking uh difficulty organizing your thinking so um those are things that people are also um experiencing and that's why some of our counselors have offered things like um The Lunch Bunch where you can attend at lunch to um just have social conversations with your friends to still be making those contacts and and practicing some of those social skills they've also offered like mindfulness um rooms where you can come in if students want to do some stress reduction activities

159um they offer opportunities like that for the students to participate in some small group um drop-ins where they can do mindfulness activities too any other questions Hardy I don't know if you were at a board meeting where I talked about uh we went to our annual conference in one of the districts um they have a separate way that they have their remote learning and I don't know how this works but essentially everyone comes into basically an introductory part of it where they can essentially in the beginning of the day like as if they're walking into the building they could go to an office or to a I mean to se talk to the secretary or talk to a counselor so I mean how are we in this remote setting I think part of the the

160decreased uh child abuse reporting like we have to own that part right we we have to overcome this technological barrier so how are we having that openness that normally would fluidly exist yeah I think um I can speak to that I think there's a variety of ways that I'm seeing that happen um one is um when teachers give students for example individual work time they can put each one of the students in an individual breakout room so they can uh individually pop into those rooms and have private check-ins with the students I know that that has proved to be useful because the the students you know actually are seeing their um teacher more than they're you know not running into to their counselor necessarily in the Halls like they would in a regular school building

161we have counselors that have um drop in times um and same I think that's kind of what you're talking about we do have counselors that are offering that where students at certain times can can just pop in whenever they want to um like I mentioned on their student um their Student Center they can click and they can access their um their counselor from their canvas site um I'm trying to think of what else I had on there I'm sorry I skipped over that last page but they have lots and lots of things that they were doing to um Google um they're using calendly which is a uh like a calendar scheduling program where the students can go in anytime and they can schedule an appointment with their counselor um so it's similar to at school

162where they would sign up to see the counselor they're doing that digitally and those links are made available um to the counselors a Google form on Clever a virtual mailbox for students to send counselors notes um they're even doing like um little videos in their sign um at the bottom of their signature on things so that the students could click on that and see a short video about their counselor so that it makes it a little bit more approachable to kind of see and learn a little bit more about your counselor um those are those are a few things that I have listed here on on my list and I was encouraged um you kind of threw that at the end that the elementary counselors are working um on how to support students transitioning to

163new teachers I think that's a piece of information that's important for our families to hear just like you know we have um programs in place when um kids have to change new schools for boundaries that we have you know people ready to guide the ptas and people ready to help the students um get acclimated and all of that I think it's important um to know that we do have those things in place those supports for students anything else from the board and was there any public input on this okay I've got two so I'm going to go ahead and take them um Jennifer Bland yes thank you first of all thanks for um allowing me to speak today um I would like to speak to the part about us um having resources available to help

164the children through this transition I'm a first grade teacher Sunset Elementary um and uh I'm concerned with the fact that tomorrow will be my last day with with my first graders in this class setting with these exact children um but many the parents only found out this afternoon that they're confirming whether they were remote or in person and I am concerned about um about being the person to present to them that this is what's happening because there's so much they're little children and I feel like it's I can't I want the GR UPS to solve the pro the disagreement come together just like um parents who have a disagreement or that they're getting divorced they need to work it out in their on as adults and um come to a plan that's going to work

165really really well before the children know any of those details I think that we have um in the in the the the effort to try to inform the community of how we're moving forward in this in this plan we've actually kind of put the children in the middle of a struggle and they're deal they're being exposed basically to kind of like R-rated material I mean you know that we have people in here who are very very angry who are using swear words in the board meeting and threatening to revoke this and that and the other thing that's real scary to a six-year-old they don't understand that they need to be protected from it and I would just ask to to keep working together with the union with the board with the parent groups with the

166teachers who who maybe there's teachers who aren't in the union or maybe there's teachers who are in the union but still want you to hear what we have to say we care so much about the children but I can't as one person come in and mop up the the sadness and and make things better for them while also keeping the confidentiality I cannot expose to the children whether I am their teacher come February 4th I can't tell them oh the person you're with is soand so you're going to be fine it's not for me to do that that should be something that the parents can Comfort the kids at home or talk to them and prepare them for it a little bit before they have the teachers doing that and th thank you thank you

167that um M Mr cotton cotum sorry hard to read those yeah working on it hi I also just realized uh hadn't changed my name since I was teaching uh today uh my first name is Boyd uh I am a teacher at isqua Middle School best middle school in the district uh I planned on speaking tonight to talk about my concerns about reopening um but when I saw this on the agenda I realized this was my Thursday night um I just wanted to shout out that I think one of the best things we do in this district is pbscs uh I cannot tell you how amazing it is that we do this I am a 27y old teacher so I cannot speak uh to what y'all were doing when I was at Maywood um but I

168love that we do this and what I wanted to say is that no matter what going back to school looks like um we are obviously we obviously know that our students are suffering our students are struggling and everything that Pam was just talking about is more important than ever um and our pbss coach is amazing and she works on a 0.5 FTE um and I know that there are some buildings that don't have pbscs coaches at all um now I know that there are reasons for that but I would suggest that uh if this board and our district cares about this as much as we say we do uh one of the first things we can do to prove that is make sure our pbscs coaches are in every building at a 1.0 uh especially

169because of how necessary all of this work that is in this section is going to be uh when we get back in the building it is going to be more important than ever and as much as we can disagree on when schools get back into session eventually they will and all of these kids are going to bring this trauma into the building and the people that are going to have to deal with that other than the parents respectfully are me and my other colleagues and so I hope that we can put our money where our mouth is and make sure that those kids are ready uh or that we are ready for when those kids come in with those traumas this has been an incredibly hard however many 300 days and we need to be

170prepared for that when kids come back not months later thank you okay thank you very much and in the interest of time I'm really sorry but I'm just going to take one more um Caitlyn shriber oh wait wait wait wait I there we go sorry thank you thanks so much for giving me a chance to speak and I hope my power doesn't go off this time like last last month um I wanted to um say the same as um what's been said before we have an amazing um pbscs program and the counselors and I can say for my senior in high school down to um my kids that have been in elementary school um um we have an incredible um counseling staff and I have been just wild and impressed by them and I I

171totally concur with that um I just wanted to um tag on to what um Mr gallinger said about um what's going on right now um in our district and in regards to mental health and I the one thing I did write down um in the um great presentation we just saw was about the difference in the CPS reports we've had 62 there have been 62 CPS reports this year and normally there will be 145 um I wrote that down and I just thought wow that right there shows you there's a lot that is being missed and there's a lot that the teachers are trying to do our amazing teachers are trying to do and they can't they can't do it when you just see a screen you don't see the whole picture and the whole

172view of the kids and you don't see them in person and you don't see um what they're going through and that is why we have such an amazing um staff and teachers here at es school district and I just wanted to follow up with one um little personal anecdote um I have two kids at it's called School District I also have two kids in private school um they're dyslexic and we had to find um a a private school for them to help work with that and my two sons went to school today my seventh and fourth grader went to school today three and a half hours it was my seventh grader's first day in a year um he was so excited he was giddy he was excited to pull out his shirt um yeah there

173are nerves yeah there are a lot of um unknowns but I can just say quickly three and a half hours it is enough it is enough for these kids to get just that little bit of inperson and it is worth it and these kids are excited for the change and to see people and even though the nervousness of switching teachers they can do it they can do and I know our teachers can do it too and I've heard from amazing kindergarten teachers and other teachers in this that I've love dearly and I know it's hard to change but I know we can all do these for our kids so thank you for the time I really appreciate it okay thank you very much and I'm sorry to the other people that have their hands raised

174we're going to be here till two in the morning if I take all of you so I apologize please send us an email um if there are no other questions I'm going to move to the next agenda item are we good thank you very much maam appreciate talk to us oops and my agenda just disappeared High School graduation requirements and I think I want a motion and an is ready I move the board adopt the graduation requirements for the class of 2025 at Gibson e isqua Liberty and Skyline High Schools as presented second okay I have a motion and it's seconded and I see Miss Hood who I assume is here to talk to us about grab requirements oh did I need no got me I know Don could answer any questions the might have

175as well too so I don't know if she feels a need to explain anything I uh we ours are a little bit complicated and I really appreciated the uh the documentation that Pam provided us so we could see how it kind of steps out um um for Liberty High School and that we were able to get uh Gibson back in the rotation this year because of their waiver approval so I just wanted to share that and I don't know um Donna if you had things that you wanted to share yeah I saw I saw director moralo's hand first though was there something right away I just had a quick question that I'm surprised after 12 years on the board this hasn't dawned on me so we do the Washington history in government in seventh grade

176and what do we do you already know my question don't you what do we do for those kids that come into the school district after seven grade yeah we continue to offer Northwest studies for any of our transfer students and under the state law we're also allowed to wave it for some of our older students depending on the time that they transfer into the school if their older students Juniors and seniors may not have the time in their schedule to actually complete the course um so there are occasions where we can wave the Met not met requirement but it's not a credit requirement and so that's why we most of our kids just get it if they're at school anywhere in the state of Washington they usually come to it to us with it um

177or get it with us and for our older students we offer it and then if we can or need to we can waiver it yeah probably the only thing I wanted to draw your attention to was the the credit chart I found that really helpful last year at least for my own thinking and preparing for this and so it's showing how many opportunities each of the um graduating classes at Liberty High School will have in the actual scheduled day so it steps down based on the numbers of periods that they'll have and uh I removed the software Tech requirement that you all took action on earlier this year so I wanted to let you know that that was out of the regulation um and also out of the course guides because this really is a

178it's a funny regulation that is both technical but also has this big component adopted by the board and then in addition we publish it in the course guides for all of the kids and parents to see as they're registering for classes okay so I think the moral of the story here is that isqua high and Skyline High are staying where they were at correct credits out of 28 possible in a seven period day and Liberty High School is stepping down yep to that same goal but this is for the class of 2025 yes so that class will still be at 25 of 29 opportunities but in the class of 2026 all three of our comprehensive high schools are going to be at 24 out of 28 that's correct you nailed it couldn't have said it

179better and and actually I knew that you all knew that I kind of was speaking to the crowd um just to make really clear what we are doing because we are transitioning um Liberty High School from their igh period block to the same seven period modified block as the other two comprehensive um any other questions concerns from the board comments happy that's so good um are we ready to vote on the Motion sounds good okay so there's a motion on the floor all in favor I hi any opposed extensions we're good on grad requirements thank you very much thank you oh that was painless they should all be like that um there I I didn't ask for public input on grad rep we're done we voted it's it's history um let's I'm sorry let's move

180on to the monitoring report for el16 and I think I would entertain a motion on that as well an I move the board accept the annual internal monitoring report for el16 Equity as presented I have a second anyone second thank you nervous there for a minute and sorry I got thrown out of the meeting so I'm back now I'm sorry okay so um I will turn it over to superint and phy and uh Miss Civ Dawson yeah um thank you um we are uh both um executive director civas and myself have been looking forward to this um we've already in this meeting tonight made reference to the work that um the ISD and this board has done um as it relates to um Equity initiatives in our district and I'm incredibly proud of that work

181um you will have noticed because the board get get these reports in advance that the format has changed um quite a bit this year for this um particular report um Miss Tason has began to really build out systems in her department and um so and she she always tells me you know Ron I'm a person who really likes to build systems and uh this it's a brand new department for us I won't go into great detail but we've uh expanded from where we were originally a number of years ago having a02 uh to address Equity issues in the isqua school district to now having an executive director cabinet level position with support staff and an entire department on its own that's that tells you should tell folks how important this work is it's fundamental to

182what we're trying to accomplish uh towards our mission here in the isqua school district um Elena and um and her team have done a wonderful job creating Equity support structures um embedding Equity thinking into our system and this is really important to me without creating an equity Silo um Elena and I have talked about this and I'm doing a lot of equity um work and professional development outside of even my role um as superintendent here and uh as you speak with superintendant a lot of them want to um do the work we're doing it it actually we're we're kind of in demand in that way people are are very interested in the work that isqua has been doing in this area and one caution that um I've heard and I would uh second is don't

183allow um really you don't want any of your departments to become silos but sometimes it's a little challenging but Equity needs to be able to have that overlay over the entire system and uh I think Elena and her team are are doing a great job in that area I'm gonna let Elena speak but I before I just wanted to touch on a few things that we're we're especially proud of it it it's been a very busy time um and I'd ask Elena what are some of the highlights that you pulled out of the report as you were working and we've been kind of going through this um she noted the creation of six e Equity modules two of which are used at new hire Academy to onboard all new hires to the equity and diversity

184work and vision of the ISD so as we bring people in they immediately start to um have um an onboarding experience in our Equity work creation of Equity Building leads at every school k12 in the district so that we literally have somebody who that is their lead in the building um the amount and variety of support we've provided during remote learning excuse me that um that's obviously for all of our departments and everything we do in the system has been a big deal for the last um I believe it's 322 days building professional development focused on equity and diversity that continues to be an ongoing theme because we have to continually um learn more and refine our skills and supports provided to families via the Family Partnership Liaisons um just really um some outstanding work

185there and I know that Elena can give some examples of how that's been so critical um during this uh very challenging time and it and I just have to say um it was referenced earlier in remarks from um director gallinger and something that I recently presented on actually to another group of superintendents and it's where we are now starting to see data because we are a datadriven system with within our school system that I believe highlights that this work is starting to pay off and the the the biggest area where we have seen that is in the disproportionality rates particularly among our black male students we have we still have disproportionality in suspension rates there but we've cut them in half and for three years we've moved in the right direction and while we don't

186have multiple years of trend data we're also starting to see disproportionality um narrow in grad rates as well so I'm really proud of that work and there's just been lots of great stuff happening there but I want to give our executive director um civid Dawson an opportunity to speak to it and and maybe Elena if you could speak to the uh the formatting as well of the report because I like it and I hope the board likes it and how that it's it's been put into um these tables um format so Elena can you please uh share I thought it looked like a giant Elena to-do list which is not it is a bit of that pres yes uh well good evening everyone um I'm excited to be able to talk with you uh tonight

187about the equity work that we did in the 2019 20 school year uh I do have to just say that that was a very unique year um being having six months espe especially six months new to the position being in person and uh then the remainder uh was responding to uh the pandem the pandemic and all the equity work that came from there so uh just a very interesting year to report on I um as I was putting the information together I had remembered um from the last uh monitoring report that there had been a request just to present the information um in a different manner where you would be able to see um you know what the goals were why we were doing the things that we were doing maybe how we were looking

188at um measuring or assessing the work um and then you know what areas of el16 it related to so I uh like Ron said I love systems um I love to be organized and and so I put it in this graph but if that doesn't work for you moving forward I'm certainly open to um to changing um I think just given the the time frame that we have tonight I felt like how I was going to uh walk through the report was just to give a summary of each SE section and sort of share out um some highlights in there and then of course um feel free to stop me at any point if you have questions um or want to dialogue about things um so in terms of uh section one you know we're

189really focusing on promoting an environment and a culture that is committed to every student having the opportunity to reach their full potential through educational Equity uh what I really want to highlight uh first and foremost is the importance of doing professional development with our staff so they understand um the maybe some of the barriers or um that our students face some of the bias um that they may carry in um in their approaching um their work with our students and just some of the um inequities and just racism that exists in our society that may not be the lived experience of our staff um and we need them to understand that in order to um be able to promote an environment that does um that does ask students to reach their full potential and does

190look at things through an equity lens and so I know Ron touched on it um but we I was excited um to partner with cyborg mobile and to create uh six Equity modules uh those modules uh were um Equity cultural competency culturally responsive practices identity safety stereotype threat and microagressions uh uh Ron touched on the fact that the first two modules we show at all new hire um events so that any staff that comes to the district does have that on board to the importance of the equity work uh that we're doing in the district and where we've come and where we are now I think the um another very um wonderful aspect of the equity modules is that when we were creating the modules we were um creating them in a steering committee format

191so I was meeting with human resources with special services with student interventions and with TLS and we were putting these modules together um so that we could really um ensure that we were reading or weaving whatever words you want to use all the important um priorities and focuses of the district into these Equity modules so that people see them as um as not um separate work they're you know when we're doing inclusive practices when we're doing culturally responsive practices um when we're doing Equity work in HR th those are all um they're all the same thing it's not separate work and so really trying to um ensure that staff see that and that they see um the through line in all the priorities that we're doing so it was um wonderful collaboration to be able

192to create those six Equity modules um and and get them out to staff I think it also uh provides our buildings and our department um administrators um some immediate resources that they can have on hand to do Equity work in their buildings and to to flex it based on the needs of their building or their Department um and those modules really act as a launching pad um instead of acting asking principles to maybe come up with all of that all on their own um especially depending on where they might be in their journey and so we these modules really um are a benefit and a support to our our building staff and our our department staff which in turn um you know leads to Equitable outcomes and practice for our students we um I think

193the other thing I would say really quickly about the cyborg modules um is that we piloted them as we were building them so we would build them and we would pilot them across all staff members and our district so every labor group um uh had an opportunity to be um to be a part of the pilot and we would take their feedback to make sure that the modules um were clear were engaging um um and um and to see how we could improve on them so they were very well vetted and we're excited to be able to provide this as a resource uh the next piece I would talk to is just um in regards to the different professional development that we were able to offer throughout the district um in terms of building PD

194um we were able to offer two um every building offer two Equity or diversity um uh PDS within their building um at minimum we were able to partner again with cultures connecting um to come in um with Dr Capri Hollands and Elsa Goen to provide that professional development to our staff um some of the topics right ranged around um uh hot moments or um stereotype threat um uh implicit bias um those were just some of the topics um that uh cultures connecting covered with staff I know that uh Lura Gilmore um who is a uh tosa in the equity Department was also able to do um bring in parent panels um to give staff um a perspective um on um what it's like for parents who didn't grow up in in the US or within

195the US school system and just to create start to create that dialogue um and maybe more welcoming practices um with in our buildings and um we also were able to do um all admin PD um this year so you know that focuses on all the building and Department administrators within the district um one of the one of the things that I want to highlight um was a video that we did around discipline and I really want to give a a shout out to Andrea McCormick the principal of isqua high school um for her partnership um with me um in putting on this professional development um she was able to create a video um asking students of color um at issaqua high what their um either experiences were with discipline or their perspectives on our um

196discipline practices um within the system and it was a very um you know I think Brave and vulnerable experience on her part to get just really honest um feedback from students of color of what their experience has been like in our district um and um if there's anything that I think moves um staff within our district it's hearing from their from their own students um and what their lived experience has been um within our system um whether that's the intent or not um I think it's so important to hear um to hear their lived experience and then also um to act on it right because it can be traumatic for students to share that information and we don't want um we don't want their bravery to be to go for nothing um and so um

197I would like to you know think that um by our staff listening to um what those students lived experiences were like reflecting on our own discipline practices reflecting on why maybe there's perception um uh gaps out there um uh with our students I would like to um to think that that also helps contribute to um limit uh to reducing the amount of disproportionality within our um within our own discipline um we were also able to um talk about how to communicate with black families I think we were um getting feedback from our black um from our black families and our community um that um sometimes we were not reaching out as um as administrators or as assist system until there was a problem um which created um you know sometimes a tension um in in

198these meetings and so um I was able to uh partner with Dr Capri Hollands to really do a presentation for our administrators on um Black Culture on um and just on how to how to um navigate or break down some of those barriers and the importance of um communicating in real time um and um having those courageous conversations and not waiting until um maybe the last minute to to reach out um another uh um highlight I thought was we I was able to partner um with a man by the name of Rashad Norris I had heard from um some of our high schools that um we needed to really help support our um our black students and our Hispanic and latinx students with school engagement um at the high school level and so I brought

199in uh Rashad Norris he um specifically focused his work at Liberty High School he worked with around um 20 um students um to really um get at what were the barriers to engagement um and then also then in turn um to work and provide professional development for the staff at Liberty um to you know again help break down uh break down those barriers and so that was a great uh partnership um and well received by both students and staff um at the building um sorry I'm trying to cut through because I know we were on a time uh timeline here um so um and I think the last thing I would say was a um wonderful Laura and I were able to go and present um at IMC um during a curriculum adoption on just

200having um an a a lens for um equity and diversity as they were looking at um curriculum or novels to adopt um in the process and so just being able to um to train our um IMC uh panel on uh the importance of having an equity uh lens um in that process so um looking to do more of that in the future um and can't wait to report to you next year on the work that's already begun there uh I you know Ron touched on it I was really excited um to be able to um put together a three-year plan or propo um and proposal for um Equity Building leads um at every um school k12 in our system uh I think that like Ron said I love to have systems in place and I

201think that um my goal is to have our buildings um uh do more and more um Equity work um and um and I won't get too too far into that but I think it's helpful to then set systems up in place that will help support that so I think by um having an equity building lead um you have an in-house sort of uh Equity um uh support um within the building that could help with things such as um putting together professional development help with um maybe Equity goals connected to the school Improvement plan um to help put on um uh culturally diverse um programs within the school a and um also I think to um really be sort of a liaison between the building and the equity Department in terms of what are the the

202needs that are happening in the building what are some of the supports um or challenges um that we may still need to be addressing as a system and so um those have taken off this year it's been um very successful so far um and again excited to talk to you about that uh next year um I think the last thing that I I would um really highlight in this section um was that we um read Across America um is uh a big celebration within the district I think um we really shifted the focus last year away from Dr Seuss to sort of the real intent of um of that week right which is to encourage um a love of reading in all of our students and um a couple of summers ago I had gone

203to um Teachers College at Columbia University and I had taken a class called windows and mirrors and um there was a quote um that just uh just really hit me and uh lit a fire under me to to really change the focus of this week and it was by um someone named Adrien Rich where they said when someone with the authority of a teacher describes the world and you are not in it there is a moment of disequilibrium as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing and so um you know I just I collaborated with our school librarians just around this notion that um we need students to um be surrounded by books that have um people that look like them that depict people that look like them in a positive way and

204are written um by um authors that look like them and so when um read Across America becomes about um one white author um uh that that is a disservice to our students and um and how um how damaging can that be if if there's a week that's all about the love of learning and students don't see themselves at all in the books that they're reading um and so we were able to change the focus of that week like I said we collaborated with the Librarians um and there was all sorts of um um guest readers and book tastings and poetry and um and reading without all these activities that were done that was um really um wonderful and I think celebrated right the diversity of our classrooms and let our students um um be seen

205in that um in that respect so those were some of the highlights from section one um that I just wanted to pull out and and speak to I'm now going to move into section two uh just looking um I think in in looking in um at the time frame I wanted to talk about the covid supports um that we provided um when as soon as schools shut down in March um my I mean it was incredible and what I want to say is that I always am the one that gets the pleasure of sharing this information with you but um but I would be nothing without the team without My Equity Department team um so a huge shout out um um to to them because they helped do a lion share of the work um

206but when when schools shut down we immediately got to work so um The Family Partnership liaison um registered all the families for laptops and hotspots um during remote learning they partnered um with TLS um a and um Kathy crop and Diana agares um in that regard I mean there was lots of people in TLS that were helping as well um but our our folks were doing um doing large work there um we were also translating all the documents um in real time and I can't even explain um what that is like and and just the time consuming and just on a nature right because as soon as as maybe Ron sending something out we've got to follow up with the translation or it just reeks kind of havoc and our community for our families that

207um are linguistically diverse so um if you um when you think about all the documents that went out for um just remote learning for food services for child care um I I mean the list goes on and on it was all being translated in real time um by our folks uh we were we also um created translated videos um to help explain to families um the online platforms that were being used during covid-19 um I think many of our um culturally and linguistically diverse families um just they're more of a a collectivist culture they're not um maybe used to going to a district website to find out information and just reading things uh written so it helps to have things presented orally and Visually um and so uh trying to create those videos in real

208time was also um uh were a lot of work there um again um many of our linguistically diverse families may not be going to the district website to necessarily get information for a myriad of reasons and so um our dep our our group I wasn't a department then um but our group was um translating information and then sending um creating translated rooc calls and um sending targeted rooc calls to families in their preferred language to let them know where to look on the website to let them know about um to let them know about information um and I mean these were happening left right and Center so we were doing that work there we were helping to support buildings uh with their tier two work like um Pam had had touched on earlier so our

209Family Partnership liaison were often um helping to um reach out to families um in their preferred language to um to try to reconnect them to um to school um we also had to train Our Family Partnership Liaisons on the different um remote platforms that were being used uh right so that they could then in turn be of help to to um our linguistically diverse families in the community and help walk them through th those different platforms to be able to support them um we um had set up that online platform with album um so that we could um hire um on demand interpreters so that they could um uh uh participate in Zoom meetings um with families and help reach out to families that um that were struggling during this remote learning uh we also

210had to provide staff with uh lots of training on how to use language line um again which is an interpreter service how to use uh Google text because many of our staff um um you know didn't want to um either release their um personal phone number um when reaching out to families um and um they were not um as part of their contract right they weren't required to use their personal device to reach out to fam so we had to get creative and think and you know we know that teachers need to be able to communicate with families um and so um we had to train um our staff on how to be able to be creative to reach out to amilies um to meet their needs um we were updating our um Facebook page

211um uh our cultural and Family Partnership Facebook page um just with lots of information we were working um with uh cultural Bridges um through ISF to kind of get information out to the community um a lot of our Chinese Community likes to use WeChat and so um it's just all these different networking ways that we have to we use to get information out to families who may not necessarily come to the district website to get that information um yes so we we were doing a lot um during that time um to help support um uh just all the inequities um that are created through uh through remote learning so uh touching on that I do feel like I'm talking a lot you all I could talk all night so feel free to stop me if

212you need me to uh I think the like Ron said I am a systems person and so one of the things that I'm really excited about is um our our start down the path as a district of multi-tiered uh systems of support I really think that that will help lead um to outcomes for students and for me it really is the why um from el16 I think um mtss is really what um make will make el16 come to life um throughout throughout the district um and throughout all of our buildings so I think we um and the reason why I say that is that I think when when as a system we are looking at data systemically we are resp responding to it systemically um we are addressing disproportionality um or trying to be proactive

213um in in addressing that through mtss I think that's going to be um fantastic it's a way that we're going to be able to embed inclusive practices and cultural competency and our PBS and academic intervention work um and I just think that it's going to be powerful I can't wait for um for it to happen and I think that it um I think it if I can be so bold I think sometimes it's um it's easy to kind of talk about disproportionality but I feel like you need the systems to be able to address it um with Fidelity um across the system and I think it's also a way for us to um keep a check on um how many departments and how many requests are going out to buildings sort of oneoff to to

214look at this data and um respond to this data and and so I think what it does is it um systematizes and helps us um look at the data holistically and um and not maybe overwhelm buildings all at once yes Harlen so I'll start off by saying that I'm I I think that you're amazing I'm biased because you were my principal uh but I but you're you're new to presenting a board meetings and I think that our our preferences is that the staff goes on an assumption that we've read through everything that you've sent and just a small snapshot and then really value this time for us to dialogue with you rather than it be a report out that's my personal preference so I'm just going to jump into some questions if you don't mind

215yes perfect so uh first of all part of equity and the hardest part and we had to really push our CFO to that is dis like inequitable funding to actually do Equity work so in your the spreadsheets that you attached when it says certificated FTE in that column certificate FTE for what for both the title schools and the lab schools like what is that certificate FTE doing so the um I think maybe um Jake could probably talk a little bit um more robustly to this but for me the certificated FTE is based on how many um uh free and reduced students um or like the free and reduced percentage at a title school will help Drive how much um full-time um employment you get for a title teacher at that building and then um based

216on um your your the amount of FTE that you have um the preponderance of that FTE according to um the whack is it has to be um focused on reading um on a reading intervention um program um and then um like one school in our district um uses some of the FTE to focus on math but the preponderance of it needs to be focused on reading yeah I guess it was more rhetorical like how do we how do we use that FTE to get to Equitable outcomes right I I I I mean know the categorical funding and I know the part about that but like how are we actually in our district using it to move the needle to get to equable outcomes so like what are we measuring within our systems and so I

217would challenge us to think about in the future reporting for Equity like I think you provided a lot of detail and a lot of activities that was in my opinion a lot of work plans I want to see like how do we get to from activity to outcome and so how do we measure the activity and it may be in these first couple years we don't see any outcomes but the other example I would say is for the human resources part I I would like to see some data on I I would like to know how many people of color we have how many people that don't speak English as their primary language those kind of information because we may not see difference in our Recruitment and Retention this year or next year but like

218our discipline data I think I think that we will so I would encourage you to look as you build your department on on establishing Baseline data sets that we can look that can Trend and measure growth and I know I know not all of them will be like creating a culture and environment like those ones are tough and I'm not like I think that how you presented that is perfect but there are ones like when it comes to sustain e approaches of decreasing the inequities that we can actually probably get good data sets and leverage that because that will help motivate board members who aren't sitting here in the future continue to say we are gonna disproportionately fund Maple Hills and isqua Valley and you know XYZ to make sure that we give every student

219our district the opportunity to reach their highest potential does that make sense uh yes it makes um it makes absolute sense I think also um one thing that I would I also want to share is that I think when we're looking at a title the title and lap program I I think it's um looking at FTE but I also think it was it's looking at the program um in and of itself and I think um you know if like if we're going to move the needle in terms of um increasing uh test scores in those pieces like I think um what I also wanted to share what I'm excited about and and starting this partnership with Rich and I see it caring for this year um with him taking it over was um I think

220also moving um seeing growth and Improvement is also about um you know we took a deeper look at the program to see um how like what type of intervention is title and lab right so we need to be able to ask that of ourselves as a district and then what if it's a two-tier intervention okay do we have the curriculum um that it that matches the type of intervention um that we're that we're going for um and then looking at um how are we um training our title and lap teachers to do intervention matching right and then what type of assessment are we doing um as we're um qualifying students for title and lap um so that we can begin to um to intervention match and are we intervention matching based on um on um

221success criteria that we have decided is um essential right of course all standards are essential but what are the essential standards that we are guaranteeing that we want students to be proficient in um when they leave kindergarten or first or second grade and are we um aligning our interventions to those essential standards um and our is our model right like is pull out or is push in a more effective model so there's all of these um uh kind of Dynamics at play when we're looking at how do we um how do we measure growth um and how are we going to get to growth and so I see it I 100% see your um piece around the FTE um as being important and I also think it's looking at our program too and seeing um

222you know what tweaks do we need to make um uh to uh ensure help ensure growth as well right I don't want to speak for the board but for me like I'm willing to have us fund whatever we need to and if we need to go and as we build our Levy which the four-year Levy is coming up and we say gosh this Equity work is driving these results or needs we need to say these buildings need this much support to do that like that's the conversations that we can have with the community but it allows us to put context to the to the Money numbers which is what a Community member would want kind of like you provided the disproportional highly capable data which I know is going to be a very sensitive topic

223in our district and I know you were the principle of a building that hosted Merlin um those are real numbers uh but I guess I didn't see in this and that's way you open it up and then stopped talking to the board members and ask has there been any thought from your department on how you how we go from transitioning from just being a admirer of the problem to coming up with solutions to how do we address the disproportional because I suppose if you brought it in for Title La and special education it would be disproportional the other direction um I Susan do you want to talk or do you want me to I think she might have to be unmuted we I'm sorry I didn't see that coming it's not working you might have

224to do something on your end oh oh it almost got there I'm clicking on it I don't know what's going on maybe once she does it do you have to do it then Susan yeah try to try to unmute yourself no oh I don't know what's going on there you are okay great hello everyone yes so just to speak briefly about the highly capable program um and the idea of sort of admiring the problem um we don't want to admire the problem and yet once we've put a lot of um you know tried to mitigate the problem by you know monitoring many different pieces of it that was all listed in the report um we decided to try to go around the problem by offering and um enhancing the instructional program for all kids at

225a higher level kind of assuming that there may be students that weren't identified obviously because of the disper you can see it in the chart um so using our department to get out there and um teach the um teachers different techniques to offer gifted strategies instructional strategies that work for all kids because we are a very high performing District overall and a lot of kids will benefit from these kinds of things um and opening up opportunities for challenge groups and and guests and things like that that um Can augment and offer services to kids that may not be seen in the identification data so just wanted to add that part Sydney um so thank you for the report super helpful in your in your overview um was helpful I guess for me [Music] um uh

226one of the things that would be very helpful for me to understand and maybe clarify my interest first is and I've talked about this in the past is how are we balancing the investment and the energy even that we have an equity between um what we are doing in support of education and professional development for teachers and staff and what are we doing from a direct support of um our underrepresented populations and so I that's something I still I can't really glean as I look at the information that's here so that would be for me really important and so I'll give you an example so where I got excited and what you were saying was this um barriers to engagement at Liberty High School you know engagement is my favorite word barriers to engagement at

227Liberty and 20 students so I'd like to know in general what what are we putting in that bucket right on that side of the balance scale and how do I think about that because I do think we are overweight as much as we could always do on the professional development and the growth of teachers I will always worry that um there's things we can be doing today to interrupt the uh the negative experiences some of our underrepresented groups are having today so so that being said I'd love to get a sense of the balance but also on that particular program what I didn't hear from it was more of the outcome part of it so did we find that after that we saw more engagement from that group how you know where do I see

228that show up somewhere I think you know we obviously had um all-time high graduation rates is there there's something I can glean there from this additional engagement and Outreach work which is maybe my hypothesis I'm always working with I think what you said in the beginning about the the district as a whole not being well sort of prepared or comfortable with the Outreach to families of color I think that's absolutely true and so I do want to understand now that we've done more in that space do we see better engagement do we see better outcome showing up someplace um you know and how how can I understand that is is super important and um so those are maybe my big things like uber investment how do I think about it that program that program or

229Outreach and specific the outcome of it and and then is there a scale to the other high schools that that we're contemplating there and then maybe the last part is that I don't see here but I'm really interested in is is running start and do we see a disproportionality in the or or any sort of difference in how students are selecting running start versus staying in our high schools based on any of these other issues of I'll call it school environment discomfort so would I would I see um that people may be choosing a mode outside of our our traditional high schools for in some of these groups at a higher rate I know there's a lot in there but I ran my I I don't know uh Sydney I think you your last point

230there the demographics is just in how I put it in my notes of running start students yeah I haven't personally seen that data I don't know if others in the organization have but I think that's a great question and I mean I think we would have to um the demographics would be a top level view of that data I think we'd have to peel the onion back a little bit because I've asked uh students for years you know why they choose um running starting commerative issue I I'll be honest and this is part of my own growth Journey i' never occurred to me to say I wonder if I have more students from a particular um racial group or um or even uh type that might be choosing that and then the followup of course

231why did they choose it their reason for choosing it might be different than some other I'm fascinated by that and that just comes out of some anecdotal conversations I've had with a couple of teenagers that happen to be f or latinx that they specifically are looking you know looked for that as an out for them um to feel like they were an environment that felt more warm more inclusive for them and so I would like to explore that more deeply to see if we see any sort of pattern in that selection exiting the traditional High School building for another solution um that that tells us something else yeah I think um uh Sydney I know like we've talked in the past um about Equity work um like how much of it is sort of like

232focused on um kind of changing the hearts and minds of white people and then how much of it is focused on um providing um the the support to our um our families of our students of color families of color that are here right now and I think that um what I would say is that I feel like I see the bucket starting starting to balance out a little bit um I think that uh where uh sometimes it can be a struggle is when we're in moments of significant crisis um I think um like the pandemic and we're going and we're doing remote learning or we're responding to um uh the murder of George Floyd or the black lives matter protests um it's um I think I'm always trying to find a way with with our

233department of how do we how do we continue to build systems how do we continue to keep this Focus here and then how do we respond to um the Myriad of crises that are coming up in our district yeah um and kind of um uh supporting the here and now and so um I know that and you know and Ron can attest like we have conversations where we're like um yep we're going to do this because it's um this is about um the the black and brown uh students and families in our district and this isn't so much about um making other people feel comfortable but I I definitely think um there is still a a probably a disproportionate focus on um on doing that work but I'm I am excited um to I think

234one thing that I could speak to that maybe is an example of what you're saying is we're um this year we're working on finding a way to be able to track um microaggressions that happen within our system um and and what that looks like and how that information um follows students from building to building um and um and improving our our practices there um and so um I think also um when you know when we're thinking about um engagement right like we're expanding that definition of just like are you engaged in the lesson but we're we're talking about access um we're talking about um opportunities um and those pieces um and so I think that work is starting to grow um and I think sometimes what what you're seeing just to be honest is um

235figuring out how to balance the responding to the the crises that come up and then keeping the the rest of the work um the rest of the work going yeah I mean and and that's part of why I bra some of these specific points because I do think you know and we've had our share of crises I've been around I think it's still only 18 months I've been around and we you know it's crisis to crisis and so my worry comes in again it's not it's certainly I care about my black and brown kids but I care about my gay ones I care about my poor ones I you know there's a lot of them that we we you know while we're busy talking about equity and educating people those kiddos are having some really

236bad experiences right I came into this organiz because of my care about the discipline data so I was thrilled when we could see that starting to move and shift but I worry because of all of the you know my you get back to my why right why I Endure all these other really tough conversations is because I feel like we got to get some of this stuff right and that mix of the investment to harland's point where do we put our time and our dollars isn't very important and for me it's about we really have to we have to have a gut check over and over again are we putting that time in investment and ensuring that we're supporting the um the you know the marginalized groups and yes I want to educate other people

237but I need that pendulum I need us to be really clear on the pendulum s switching toward the kiddos um and with that but if we get back to that example the Liberty example like what was the outcome and is that something we would scale across the other schools um I feel like um I think it would be 100% worthwhile in scaling it across the other schools um the outcome um in my conversations uh with Shan the principal at Liberty was that it was um it was very successful um I think that um it hopefully oh we all know that there was or there was an incident that took place at Liberty High School last year and um W with Rashad having been on campus and having um built um that really powerful relationship with

238those students and um and having that connection with the administrators I I think it helped um uh the healing process um when that incident happened it helped just even processing through um uh with those with those students and with the administration a and some of those pieces and so I think that um that it was a very valuable um resource to be able to um to offer the students um I don't have a quantifiable U metric that I could uh provide um tonight um but I think that that is something that I could Loop and in and talk more robustly um with with Shan around um so but but it definitely was a value ad um and they Liberty has continued to keep Rashad on um uh for this school year as well because it

239was so uh effective and uh the partnership was so great not just with the students but also with the staff at Liberty as well I I if I could just add because this um first of all um Sydney you made reference to kind of like our gut check our check on this and you know I maybe it's not intended but for me often the monitoring is one of those opportunities for us to I think this dialogue is just so important and I appreciate what director gallinger said earlier and I'm going to keep working with my team as we get better at um providing presentations in advance so we can have more of these kinds of conversations because I'm finding this really fruitful right now um just a few highlights I mean I think that um

240this concept of the Direct Services to students that is absolutely how our system should be evolving there'll always be a professional development I will personally always need to grow professionally in this area but I certainly don't need the level of it that I was receiving five years ago that I've grown and that you know I've actually can get more sophisticated and I can do a lot of it myself I I can now go be a self-learner in this area as well um we have to continue to get feedback input from our students of color and thank you for mentioning all the other students that the board highlighted in their um in this policy you know in in your uh rationale statement and um we need to keep having the conversations with those students and um

241hearing from them you know how was it we brought this person in uh to do to do this work with you what was your take on it how did it work I think that's because I think I just made a note you know good teachers are good at assessment I don't think we've really nailed down the assessment of this work yet so we've got work to do there I love that part about looking at running start and then director gallinger's point about you know we are spending money additional money in places to address things how do we know we're getting bang for our buck if you will um monitoring that FTE I I just my note was how we how do we use our FTE to address disproportionality and and remove barriers and we should

242be able to come with some examples of how that happened and it won't always be clean this is not going to be as quantifiable as me being able to bring you sat data or something like that unless we're looking at disproportionality in sat data but this has been re I you know we're growing in this this is this is what this is our newest E I can't remember I was trying to think if it's third or fourth time I think we've monitored it I think we're getting better each time more importantly though than the the monitoring report itself improving under Elena and her team I think the actual work that we're doing is becoming more meaningful and better so we you know we can get better at this we'll get better at assessing ourselves but

243I just again and I've said this before over the years a lot of people don't really understand policy governance and they think that it's some that that it's a way that you all don't have to uh um police uh work of the district is hard I think it is the opposite of that I think this is uh this is this is how this work grows gets embedded and there's no better example than el16 this has been organically grown up through our system and uh I just I wanted to say that because I really appreciate it I want you all to know that uh Elaina and I have regularly scheduled um meetings we meet weekly we often meet multiple times in a week and uh we're going to have a lot to talk about this is

244it's actually exciting for me so I I really just appreciate the dialogue that we've been able to have so I have a question and it it may be more of a post-pandemic question but have we given thought to providing Equity training to the community and I guess I mean two things by that one is sort of the obvious gee this is all the work that we're doing around equity and isn't it interesting but really more the here's why we're doing this here's what a mic aggression is here's what systemic racism is because I have a feel I mean I think our community is probably all over the map with how much of this they understand and how much they're touched by it obviously some families are very touched by it they live it every day

245and others of us are just breezing through life without a clue what's a microagression so have we given any thought to to outreach to the whole Community um I would yes we've given a lot of thought to this uh I think where we've started first is with our ptsas um to provide some um professional development to them um and um just gosh I was trying to think in a in many different ways um we've partnered with the PTSA Council um to do a professional development um with individual building ptsas and then with the face chair um just to try to do some PD there I know that um like I am in talks with uh uh Scott the police of Chief or the chief of police for the isqua um for isqua and we um

246have talked about the possibility maybe of doing um uh like a town hall conversation um there was kind of these popular um uh like uncomfortable conversations with a black man and we sort of had talked about doing uh like uh conversations with uh the the chief of police a and equity and diversity um because we were we both were talking about seeing like polarization that like if you believe in equity and diversity then you must hate cops or if you're a cop you must hate equity and diversity and so um and even like having uh uh police officers talk about you know some of their thoughts on on black lives matter and just uh police brutality and policing um we we've just we thought about doing some PD or or just some talks that way

247um we have thought about doing PD and I I I want to say too that I Echo um uh Mr feely and just that I I think it's critical for us to have these conversations because there is so much e work to do um that um that having you know kind of narrowing in on like what our focuses are going to be um I think is critical um and um uh like superintendent thely was saying too is not siloing the work to just the equity Department um and how do we get that work to Branch out into into the other departments but I think us having like a clear Focus um will help because it's easy to um to get pulled pulled into the crises or to you know all the work that needs to

248be done so I think even us kind of thinking about a three-year plan or so of what we're going to be tackling I think is um is needed in the future as we go forward so just occurred to me I I I know we shouldn't be talking like this in this setting like this Elena but we have these uh cyborg uh mobile um modules we could just put those out for for the general consumption of the public somebody just wants to I mean they they bought them they you know taxpayer dollar created them let's make them available to people I would watch them um did the board have any other questions I don't kill me but I want to ask for public input because this is an important um subject there are hands up that

249have been up for a really long time so I don't know if their hands for this issue um they're not going down so I guess they are um and we are super late so I'm just GNA oh Marne I'm sorry I I know you only we only have 15 minutes till Elena's connection oh yes because I'm at the district office my my internet will shut off guess in 15 minutes so mine was just really a a couple of quick things one um I was really touched by the work that you're doing around highly capable and there was a whole description I've really not you know because this board knows I've really been about you know we have this fine cut off and there's no maneuvering around it and I think we see it in the

250data that we're capturing so I wanted to find out did you did that work already begin or is that for the work that's happening right now because if that did already happen and our end result are still what they were this year where we have like .8% of the highly capable population is African American which is you know astounding or whatever it was like one point something for Hispanic families um so I'm wondering did we start that work and this is it's still not moving the dial or are we looking for that to be something that's in the future next year so I'll have I I will have Susan um speak to that [Music] the um way we line up the tests the way we look at the results um kind of recognizing that there

251may just be some bias in the testing and therefore the idea of spreading the um instructional strategies and um you know the the expanding the program to students that may not officially be identified is just a way of um including including more students even without the requirement of the um test scores for so to speak so for example at a school that doesn't have a lot of students that qualify for the highly capable program they're still um a sage teacher there doing groups who has room to include other students in it I think to director moraldo questioning and just because she's been you know I've heard her comments and conversations for the past 5 years and she can correct me where I'm wrong if we keep doing the same approach to how we identify what

252means highly capable we're g to keep having the same disproportional results so my challenge to the district would be are we doing what's best practice for 2020 or doing what's best practice for 1990 and I'm not an educational expert so I can't answer that question so truly is I don't know but I do know that for instance Highline School District does it very differently and I'm not saying we're Highline School District but I think there are learnings across our state of where it's being done differently and this board cares ultimately about outcomes and we want to know what are we offering for our community he said it thank you Harley because I I think for me my biggest issue is that whatever our way of measuring which students are highly capable I still think we

253have a highly productive program and not a highly capable program and it's not about what students potential is it's what they've already done most of them through work and study on the part of their families have gone and trained them and tested them and tutored them so that prepared for our highly productive program and I sit here and I go I I cannot continue to look at the data of how many Hispanic kids are in our highly capable program and how many African-American students are in our program and look at that compared to the overall population and sit back are you telling me that as a general rule Latino and African-Americans kids are not highly capable because that's what our data shows is that there's so few of them they hardly even measure in our

254program and I just can't believe that that's a true statement we know it's not true director moral they make up about 9% of our student population so we have terrible disproportionality there I will say one thing because we've struggled with this for a long time in our system I actually think we have another problem here um and it it's it's actually it's difficult but it's also simple we have a transportation problem problem I think that given that we li we limit the number of sites and then we don't provide um kind of universal Transportation I've always been concerned that we have people who are self- selecting themselves out of the system and it's just I I I it's been a tough nut to crack and I have to own it because I've been here and

255um it's just something we have you know I've got Elena now who comes into my office and points these things out to me and we have to I think there's some structural things that we could do as well I I don't disagree with a lot of the identification issues and I I know there are folks that do that better than we do and we can learn from um but I do think that we've got a few structural problems too I but uh the identification part shouldn't affect the transation part will affect Merlin for example because that's a but for sage they're all contained within each School building so the identification still would show up yeah if regardless of whether they were Sage or Merlin they're still given that tag in Skyward for what's highly capable

256yeah no I I was just you're you're right um director gallinger I was referring more to kind of historically what I've seen in the Merlin program but yeah there's clearly issues of how we identify I will say this we were a district that moved early one of the first ones to mass testing every student um now we may have a problem with the actual tool that we're using to test with I understand that and and I know some and uh Susan I don't know if this has changed it's been years since I've done it but there at one time we were pretty Limited in what they literally if I recall the wack actually even told us what to use use and that was a little frustrating it it doesn't list out the tests we have

257to use but it does say that you have to have multiple objective criteria so um it does limit Us in certain ways but we've tried we've gone to a matrix um um a matrix score system allowing for higher scores on some tests and lower scores on others so that we don't have to hit a cut score on every single test which was very problematic and left a lot of kids out so over the past few years we've done that but you know you're not seeing the results in that um chart for disproportionality necessarily but those are some adjustments we've tried to make thank you I think those adjustments just continue to support the existing system and structure and nibble around the edges rather than um look at what testing instruments we're using and say are

258they the most Equitable instruments that are available for our student population Point okay do we have any other questions for Elena before she falls into the th of non- interet okay I will take public input we are so incredibly late I'm sorry I'm going to take three um so Rebecca Kim she was there Rebecca are you still there there you are hi can you hear me yes all right so um I've been listening and just taking notes and I wanted to just um share a few comments uh my name is Rebecca Kim I have two children that attend Maywood middle school and they were also students at our local elementary so from what I hear it looks like the system level work plan seem well thought out I commend the PD planning that is in

259process it all sounds enrollment specifically in some um of your schools the work so knowing that you have a mostly white employee population the work on self-awareness the volume of Silence White Privilege white fragility those are terms I did not hear but those are really important areas of work to unpack so I hope that those are areas of work that will come alongside the content I don't know if that kind of language is intentionally left out so that it doesn't offend people but again I think being Unapologetic is recognizing self-awareness of white privilege additionally bias training as an HR strategy on diversifying staff will be a highly beneficial way to bring in more diversity when the majority of your interview teams are often mostly white my own children have had multiple experiences of racial harassment

260as students in ISD despite being in a school with a high Asian population not all of these situations were handled with restoration of the damage with an apparent lack of training of Staff in their handling of these situations I did meet with some board members and I thank you Harlin um and um Marlin sorry if I got your name wrong um and I thank you for meeting with me and there was a district leadership um person there at the time about two years ago when I brought concerns about racism in ISD showing up in national news because I wanted to ensure that my children were going to be in a safe culture in the school district where I was sending them but I was told at that time there was work underway in classrooms by

261District leadership and I heard some of that today um but unfortunately I have not heard about my children's learning about their racial Identity or opportunities for them to share and find Value ensuring their cultural background my children's emotional safety and learning around their race and identity is absolutely woke in this household however I have and will continue to challenge ISD to bring this policy to life beyond words on paper or a 30- minute presentation at a board meeting thank you thank you very much um M weed oh do I need no you got it no I'm good thank you so much hi I've spoken before uh about Equity at the last uh district meeting um Schoolboard meeting so thank you for allowing me to speak once again hi to everyone present um I want to

262first of all say uh I do thank you as a staff member at isqua middle school and a member of our Equity team I thank you a lot for the equity training that we have recently received because it makes it feel like Equity is finally becoming a front and center priority for this School District um as it as it appears for all of our students our students of color our low-income students our uh lgbtqi students I thank you for that training however I want to note that much like what uh the parent who just spoke noted I feel as though while we have these amazing and empowering backstage conversations as teachers many staff still feel like it is either optional to bring into the classroom or discouraged to bring into the classroom because we're told

263we need to stick entirely to our curriculum and we can't address these issues of social justice and we have teachers who think I don't want to oh I can't do that because I'm just the math teacher or I'm just the science teacher and they feel Limited in bringing these issues to the front and center of their classroom and I think it impacts their authenticity in the room and it impct their relationship with students and the opportunity for our students to feel seen and to feel supported and to feel fought for in all aspects of their identity um and so I want to say I'd love it if the district took a a stronger stance in in making our private face public if we are committed to equity I also want to note that what that

264parent brought up about the um issues with her students breaks my heart and I would love to see this District potentially work on some trainings towards restorative justice and implementing that into or implementing restorative justice practices more thoroughly into our schools I don't know what work we've done on that I haven't been privy to those conversations but I would love to see a kind of shift in some of our disciplinary policies and in some of our conversations around harm done in our community particularly as it applies to micro and macroaggressions within the student body thank you so much for your time thank thank you um Kaye burn there Hi um I'm kayy burn I've also spoke before um I want to thank Elena and her team for all the hard work they're doing they are

265a small group that is doing the best they can with very few bodies um it's unfortunate that we cannot have an equity person in every Department because as superintendent deely addressed earlier this work cannot be siloed um Equity work is the most important thing we should be doing right now and um but I am glad to hear that we're open to funding the equity Department properly um something I'm concerned about though is our math curriculum for middle schools um our curriculum is not aligned to Common cor standards it's not aligned with our District's Equity policy and it doesn't fall in line with el16 um [Music] we and then additionally we're not really other than Alex's here we haven't really been given much to um support and embed our or we haven't given any supports to

266embed our curriculum into canvas which is our um platform that we're supposed to be using this year um also the essential learnings that were decided upon in the spring are not in sequence of the curriculum so we've had to actually create our own curriculum this year we've not been compensated for any of that work all the schools are using different resources which is inequitable um students will be at different places moving into the next school year and we'll have uh different gaps making things even more challenging moving forward according to el16 the superintendent is expected to provide Equitable access and academic support through our education system and provide a curriculum that prioritizes diverse viewpoints and cultural relevance this curriculum does not meet these expectations and our adoption is being pushed back once again on another

267note I do appreciate the professional development we were able to experience on Monday I feel like it was the first time that we were have able to have real conversations um and get uncomfortable and I I feel like especially our staff need needed that um but I do um I hope there one thing that the speaker talked about was the importance of dialogue instead of debate and I've heard you all talk about dialogue tonight um and I love that um but I do hope that there's soon an opportunity for teachers to have dialogue with the board as I feel like this input thing is just um without having any discussion is actually harming our relationship and I I think that there are a lot of teachers that want to start having that relation like that

268conversation and problem solving but unfortunately with this platform we're not able to do that so um no I'm open to talking and I know there's a lot of other teachers there too thank you thank you very much and I will say in Pre pandemic time we did go out to schools and have listening sessions with teachers and we I for one would really like to do that again um Zoom is not the ideal platform um but I look forward to being able to do that um I know we have more hands up but we're already like an hour and a half behind so um please feel free to um shoot your thoughts in an email to the board we would love to read them um we have a motion on the floor so I will

269take a vote all in favor of el16 as presented say I I hi opposed exensions and the motion passes thank you very much thank you gone but thank you very much um Tom Mullins I remember him yeah I think he's still out there somewhere in Zoom land um he he was uh like myself had decided to not be in the office oh there's Tom I was gonna bump Elena if he needed to be in the office because we haven't talked about capital projects in a really long time and I wanted an update yeah and we have a lot of stuff going on so I see Tom is there so I know we're a little concerned about our ability to maybe share some of the the slides and stuff tonight but we'll see how how it

270goes okay so I'm working from my laptop so it's not quite as easy as it is when I'm at work so bear with me yeah but if you were at work you couldn't do it at all yeah dark right now very good point power's on just not the internet and I'm sorry we kept you waiting so long I knew this was absolutely not a problem oh look that worked there you go Tom there we go all right are you seeing Elementary 16 yeah it looks just like it did the other day when I walked by there you go there you go we're moving along there um roofings finishing up exterior insulation all the mechanical electrical is getting roughed in on the inside and they're making great Headway did that switch to the second slide yes

271yes okay good there's some mechanical electrical going in roughing in and uh this is a shot from down on isqua Pine Lake Road and bringing all the conduit for power internet fire yep up the hill that's the third third trench that's had to go up there for utilities they can only do one at a time and it's the final one so w we're still waiting for the RightWay permit from City of samamish and I think we're meeting uh tomorrow with them to get an ETA Middle School 6 moving along in a tough site the building's moving along nicely we're struggling with um some of the site the weather and everything but things are moving along and uh believe it or not after eight months of construction we almost have all the permits out of the

272city of isqua I'm not gonna the field you can see the end of the football field and track you can see I just wanted to share I don't know that the board would would know this because people aren't really coming down to our office very much but if you'd been at our office over the last month you would have seen a lot of structural steel stacked up in the parking lot at 5150 people might be wondering what's that all about this site is actually so tight that we needed to store the steel um on our admin site and I'm really glad that we had that room and that large parking lot and frankly it's been kind of interesting for me at times s to be able to look out my window and see them out

273there loading structural steel and unloading it just different than what we normally see when we look out at that parking lot these days so I'm glad that we were able to do that it's an example of kind of you know um I know we've talked in the past how we um we bust the the workers from our Holly Street campus uh we store steel at our 5150 campus so there's a lot of creativity going into uh the building of this school on that tight site I will say so who knows treatment of wood beam storage and treatment of wood beams in the Bus Loop at Pine Lake Middle School and um they've stored containers of tools and stuff over at the old admin building so it's been a true partnership with the contractor just some

274underground utilities going in and uh the picture on the left shows you just how much water there is is in mud on the site High School Number Four elementary 17 we had a little bit of a a setback we had a meeting earlier in the week with the city staff and they informed us that um the site plan that we've been using shared discussed and with them for the last year plus and was submitted as part of our sdp and MSP application will not meet their far calculation and um it was quite a setback and the teams regrouping and um trying to figure out how to move forward we're uh back in communication with the city staff and um trying to figure that issue out it was so wasn't there some question of getting the

275city to wave that or something to that effect that they decide that wasn't going to happen we were hoping for the the code allows for a 50% reduction in the far and um they finally came around and were willing to exercise the 50% reduction in the far but the new interpretation they've taken of the code they've re-evaluated how they are applying the code and we can't even meet the minimal um 50% reduction the way they're calculating it so we're my our team the design team and and this and istd staff is going back into the code and trying to uh to figure out how to um give the city staff a an argument they can use to approve the um the far and approve more of the site which will bring the far calculation up

276and allow us to be able to uh meet that minimal Port the minimal far it's okay both both an and Marne had questions so an well mine was along the S same line about the code and and how they're reinterpreting their code and kind of how that happens right now at this stage um you already addressed part of that I we all had the same question and um and uh it was a shrug of it was a shrug of shoulders and um just claiming that they've re re-evaluated how they're looking at the code well but you know they but but they also need to look at our project in a fair way compared to how they've looked at other projects because what I don't want to hear that they're doing is deciding to look at

277their code differently just for our project un understandable the part of the issue with this code is it's it's a very restrictive code and it has not been used much by them and um they're finding out just how in in my mind how poorly written the code was and the issues that I shouldn't say poorly written the issues that are embedded in the code that cause conflict and um they're every time they look at it they discover something different and um that's kind of what happened when we forced them to go deep into the code to to get them get them to approve our our site they uh dug enough to find it didn't parts of the site that we were assuming would be would help us with the far they've eliminated almost all of

278those of those areas so we're back in going into interpretations going back into PPC Planning commi Commission meetings and trying to find um some backup to help us to bring some of those portions that the site back into that will assist us with meeting the far okay thank you yep Marne so two things one is that um Suzanne and I and superintendent thely will be meeting with um the leadership from the city council there so if there's specific information that you can provide us so when we have that conversation like if you how would the code need to change um or what was being considered before that has been eliminated and therefore now we can't meet those numbers and why if we can get some more details around it we can do at least some

279of our conversation or at least putting that together for us to go to the city council and and I'd have to go with Ron about what what can we talk about or can we just not even talk about it that's my fear uh director moraldo I think that the city council is going to be under that quasi judici and not be able to discuss that I had a conversation with city manager U the city manager today um and and you know I will say that um I do appreciate that um Wall-E and his staff they're they're they're receptive to uh working with us and and I felt like and I shared it um with Tom today that um we we had some advice um that you know we've always tried to go in um when

280we submit packages aligned perfectly with the city staff and and the District staff we've always felt that that helped us but you know we don't have to be we can submit and it can be considered by the decision makers remember the Land Development Department they're not the decision makers and um it may be that and I I'm just being you know blunt here I guess we're getting to the place where we've done about all we can do and and and Tom you're the expert you and your design team and so I'm I'm a little bit out of my uh you know my comfort zone here but it may be that we just have to make our case and see what the decision makers um you know how they would rule on it so it's a

281it's an interesting place because uh we have made modifications and there's other issues there's a conflict with the tree retention code as it relates to the far as well and um it is complicated this is a complicated project I'm going to speak to it at the end here tonight I recently gave an interview related to it I am still confident we're gonna we will get a school uh permitted and uh schools built on that site it's it's been a bit maddening um I won't deny that but um there is a pathway forward for us I I absolutely believe it may not be the traditional path we have taken okay and then I need to I'm trying to figure out because you know we're getting these generalities about the F far but what is the specific

282issue is are the buildings not big enough are they too wide and not tall enough is there just Lally they you know what is it that would change do they have to be flatter and take up more area what is it that they need to have occupying the land to make this ratio work the comment was made at that meeting they made a rough calculation that we'd need another 107,000 Square ft of building to make this site work so we would increase our building by 45% Mar my next question is can we split off the fields and have then ISD Fields separate from the from the schools so that they're different lots and the and one's recreational this part of the problem with that is and and I appreciate the question is whether it's a

283school or whether it's a field that needs parking associated with it and the parking is one of the things that kills you and you know to provide enough the school in the football field need the two schools in the football field need about the same parking if you for each of them so you would you couldn't split just the field off because you wouldn't have parking for it and you couldn't split the the U building off as I understand it because you need parking for that and it's um Marty it's a very very complicated um calculation and we are pushing in every spot we can to to see if we can't give them the ammunition they need to be able to go in with a with a uh supporting us in all areas of this

284when we go to the development commission I mean the city council it will be they'll support us in all the areas that they can or support the project they'll just be specific ones in this case the far you know as of today that they wouldn't be able to support so like Ron said maybe we don't go in with a a 100% staff on our side type thing but we go in with the you know nine out of 10 boxes checked where they they agree and support the project and we have one that's left up to the city council to make a decision on I mean there's a certain irony here in that our next or neighbors want less development on the site and the only way to meet the code would be to have more

285development on the site I I feel sort of hemmed in there somehow I think that um that is spoton analysis there director Weaver president and if anybody's interested on the board of of of getting a a rundown of kind of what the issues are in the calculation and stuff to help you better understand we can do that for you that might be helpful um Tom I'm I'm not claiming that I'll understand it it pro I'll probably need a tutorial on it I've sat in meetings discussing the far before and came away more confused than even when I got in so I I did capture uh um that discussion at one time about what the size of that building would need to be be and it I'm sorry it it just seemed a little crazy to

286me yeah yeah I mean if you have a little mini tutorial it it might be helpful and if no one else would understand it yeah and I think they can make it my team can make it such that it's um it's understandable it might raise some more questions from you but it it it'll give you a good General sense of how the calculation works yeah I think it would be helpful to know what we're talking about particularly since Mary and I are going to meet with the city even though they won't want to talk about it I would still like to understand it a little better okay absolutely one more question do you mind okay so where are you in the process going through the development commission and when do you expect the public hearing

287that they'll at least that's the what I remembered that they'll ultimately hold I would have to go back and look at our re-evaluate our schedule we had a schedule with all of these dates in them but it's split out so far because we can't get past this this point I can provide that that's something else that needs to be updated and um I'll have my team update that schedule with the information they know we might just have to pick a drop dead date that says we're going to apply whether the city's on our side on this issue or not and move forward and that will give us a more locked in schedule of of um when all these dates will happen thank you yep any other questions yeah it looks good okay Maple Hills is

288out to bid um we get the bids back February 10th and um we'll assess the bids and decide um the alternate and everything versus the budget we'll we'll have the final scope of work at that time and what we're going to move forward with um Beaver Lake uh the permit drawings are into the city of samamish right now and working their way through their their uh process we don't have um an update yet as to a schedule from them of when they expect to get back first round of comments or anything like that soon as we do all include it in the update Liberty stadium is moving ever so slowly um contractors struggling with the weather and the mud and everything and uh we're doing everything we can to assist him to help him along

289but uh it's moving and it's looking like about an April 1st date for a for a finishing is high stadium is went into the city we're waiting the first round of comments back from them and when we get our first round of comments back we'll see how how in line we are and we'll probably go out to bid shortly thereafter um we always like to get that first round of comments back so we can we uh we know what the general changes need to be and we can get those Incorporated in the bid dock so there isn't uh less likely a large change order to start the project with and that's just uh Press Box and stand improvements on both sides visitor and home and then schedule any other questions keep charging ahead Tom I

290appreciate it yeah we get we're going to have um e e e16 and Middle School 6 done for the start of school we're working on it yeah the answer is yes as January 28th that answer is yes there we go there we go because we are gonna have kids back in those schools in September we we're get we're we're you know as you all know we are very very close to getting the boundaries done um I know that the uh coure teams have been established and they are anxious to come come before the board and uh you know begin a process to start identifying U school mascots and uh names the school yeah I wanton to name some schools yes I do something fun for a change I W to make yeah just to clarify

291um colors is not in the uh in the that came forward to me already um for Middle School 6 because because we're going to start you know the colors can get embedded into uh some of the um like the bleachers and some things like that so uh planning principal mcke came forward and um had some uh her and her team uh provided me with I think four different examples of color schemes that they had researched and had provided a rationale for frankly they were all very good and um I I told them I said you know the board's going to name it the bo they're going to want suggestions but you know that they will name the school they will pick the mascot and again they're going to want your help and hear from your

292community of course they couldn't do they can't do that work until they actually who their Community was going to be but um I oh yeah when they came to me with this conversation about the colors I'm like what's the big deal it's the colors and they said well you know you might they might be embedded at places in the school and I was like oh that makes sense so least I'm not sure about elementary 16 Tom you might know but I know uh principal mcke was right on top of that and um I'll be honest I don't even know what the court what they chose ultimately but um looking forward to naming some new schools and getting some new mascots yeah I I stand corrected because you're right we name the schools and we do

293the mascot we don't do the colors yep they were I you know what they were all lovely schemes there was nothing crazy no no lime green and pink or anything like that I don't know maybe you like lime green and pink so I shouldn't say that all right have a good evening everyone thank Tom thank you Tom thank you okay where are we um legislation Dr gallinger there's a ledge conference coming up I heard and I think I think Diane wants to know um who wants to register for it right it's only like a 4our session and then on 1221 February 21st from 1 to 5 correct yep and then we'll be scheduled for uh sessions with our legislators that week so um I don't know are we having students participate in those again this

294year and have those students been selected and certified are we going to do students doing it remotely you know if I I I know we had a conversation about that um Harlen I I'll be honest with you I I think our students um I and I I just don't know the answer I'll have to double check but I I do know we've had a conversation about um I I don't think our students are looking for a lot of more zoom opportunities and remote opportunities right now so we certainly would not discourage it if somebody wanted to I'll have to check back through uh executive director hood and see where we landed with that yeah I think that if if they're going to want to participate in the advocacy part of our meetings that week then

295they should probably attend the sessions on Sunday so yeah I I don't care either way but if they want to be meeting virtually with legislators and they should hear the Statewide addresses yeah and then if each of you could let Diane know um if you'd like to be registered for the conference otherwise we're waiting for budgets to be dropped and I don't think there's any point in having really meaningful conversations on sort of what we anticipate the fiscal impact of this legislative session is until we see some numbers so I'll hold any sort of update on that until that happens I do want to Pivot and talk countywide uh da presented his best starts for kids Levy proposal which is much larger and you see the spin that they're doing if we did that we'd

296be get skewered um but the levy goes from being 400 million to 8811 million uh and it's supposed to fund Child Care um I sit on that board I'm not sure how I feel about this isqua school district has still gotten zero cents out of that $411 million over the past six years and so I think this is the time that we leverage our need their need for our support into leveraging funds for our community and our kids uh we pay a lot for that and we get very little back I don't think we need penny for Penny or dollar for dollar but we should get something and uh prior to uh in previous meetings with the city having sort of joint efforts at Transit Orient development and child care facilities and early learning facilities

297is something that we have a lot of common ground with the isqua city council so I think being able to talk about those things uh openly with probably our East Side colleagues would be important um the first Levy only passed with 56% you may recall that the Metro Levy did not not pass because of the lack of East Side support that was about five or six years ago so I think it's our time to sort of say hey this is what we're going to need to see differently in this next funding cycle if we on the east side are going to be willing to give a lot of taxes and not get anything in return for our students so I think less than $200,000 made it to East Side on as a total if I

298recall uh Belleview got quite a bit because I thought the only thing they uh they paid for was the Middle School screener that we were already paying out of our own L yeah the espert that was that was only only educational part there's a lot of drug Service Parts that they provide but again we didn't get that Harlin do you think that um is that a top IC we were just speaking that we've got a a leadership a district leadership and a isqua city council leadership meeting coming up is that something we should be broaching them if we can't talk about high school 4 um is that something that we might want to you know re-engage and get that conversation going with them again I would recommend it I think that that would be something

299that uh if we could have a unified front on saying if you want East Side support for this we need to see some support for for our families and students I think that's a reasonable conversation and I think that will catch Dow's attention probably one of the few times that da might actually look on the map and remember where is z is I gave him a I gave him a driving tour once several years ago I don't think it must have been that impactful um and to be clear um do do our cities haven't uh the city of isqua City of Newcastle samamish they they have they applied for did they try to get any starts money or have we just been turned down most of the r rfps as you know as we've looked

300at them have been written so that east side communties can't even qualify that's that's been that's been one of the issues yes yeah okay is that it on legislation thank you um Works in progress all right I I won't go to long here tonight I did want to say Obviously the biggest thing that I've been working on is supporting our bargaining teams they're at the table doing that that work right now so much appreciate that um also been supporting I'm really proud of the staff uh Dr gallinger made reference earlier um I just want to remind everybody we have a vaccination Center set up ready to go you've all seen the schematics in the pictures um we are basically just pleading for doses get us Doses and we will do it um also related to

301that a collaborative effort with the city of isqua and Swedish we have agreed to um let them use and stand up a vaccination Center at issaqua high school same issue though uh they they need to get doses I mean but we'll work with them I think the city is actually going to hire somebody who would manage that that project but I Mr turny has been kind of our Point person on this work and he's a logistical Champion so um and he he sits on the task force with the um with the uh um city as well so we're we're we don't we want to get our teachers inoculated we want to get our community inoculated it isn't just you know so it'll serve us all well um I just wanted to touch briefly on I

302mentioned it that I have continued um on uh kind of a personal Journey but also a professional Journey related to equity professional development um and my role as uh the Wasa Metro um vice president and President elect we've made our Focus this this year on Equity as well so we've had a few trainings that we've done with superintendent and then our superintendent group from the Puget Sound ESD has has continued in some anti-racist um uh becoming anti-racist leaders trainings as well um I did want to talk talk um I and I apologize this is a little bit longer but I did want to touch on something it came up earlier tonight in public input and it's something that I'm really struggling with um right now um when I sent the message out about our returned

303inperson learning earlier this this week one of the criticisms that I heard from some of my teachers was they didn't like that I only gave them a 30 minute advance notice on the message and i' I'd heard that criticism before so I tried to give more advanced notice and I do under it's a challenge I I do understand that um they were they were teaching and wouldn't immediately be able to have read the message if they started to get questions from parents again I my I would encourage them um just you know ignore it while you're teaching read it and then address the questions but I don't like to put them in a in a tough place and I do respect that um they're my employees and I I always have a Cadence of the

304way information goes out I will I literally will write it down it usually starts with no surprise here the board my admin team um the the staff in general before we go out with the public message but there's been a troubling development um as of late when I push out a message to to my staff it is my expectation that it that is my out of respect to them my communication in advance to them but we've had situations and it was it was um touched on earlier tonight and it didn't come from a message that I sent out but same thing taking that information and immediately posting it publicly on uh social media sites so in essence saying I'm not going to let you superintendent thely determine the Cadence of your messages we're going to

305decide when it's going to go public and we're going to immediately do it and in fact I've had board members say to me I saw a message Ron on social media before we got it from you and I apologize for that so I'm struggling a little bit right now I want to honor that in my employees but I also want my employees to honor the fact that we have a method and and uh way we do it and then the the other thing I have to say that I find troubling about all of this sometimes that that information coming out of the district directly to our employees that gets posted on social media gets modified with no explanation that it has been modified and sometimes they're very slight but slight changes can change meanings so

306I'm struggling a little bit with that right now I I'm just sharing this I'm I'm concerned about um what we heard earlier tonight and we I'll I'll just I'll put it out there it's being looked into right now there's um you know how is it that this we want to provide information but I I will say it again I said it at the last meeting maybe this is going to become something that I have to do every time now you want to know the official information will be found on official ISD sites and I know we've got work to do to uh improve our digital strategy believe me we need to have a more um better way of using um social media and our website and we're we're we've got a new website design that's

307coming it's just there's a lot of moving Parts there but I just more than anything I would ask that people be thoughtful and respectful about how they use information that they um attain through their employment with us and I'm not saying that we turn around and push these things out publicly as well I you know it's just a little frustrating to me and I I I just felt like I needed to kind of get that one off my chest a little bit tonight um but we need to have a conversation about that as a staff um an entire staff I'm talking about all 3,000 of us and um what we what would be the respectful way for us to handle uh messages and absolutely it should never be identifiable it should never be something that

308somebody can track back and be identified to a student or a staff member for that matter but most certainly to a student so other than that oh and I did have one last thing and I'm sorry it kind of came out out of public input tonight we have a tremendous stock of personal protective equipment there was a comment made about mass and do we don't have enough I want to assure people we have plenty of face coverings we bought yes it's true we have two for each every student and employee we're not talking about bringing every student and employee back right now we have thousands and thousands of mass that will not be an issue we have a great stockpile of PP and because um our district and under Mr tney and our business office

309we're aggressive about going out and acquiring it early on in the pandemic so that people don't need to worry about that that's all I have for tonight uh president Weaver thank you thank you um announcements and correspondence we have pages and pages and pages of them and I will just say this again we do read it all um we are unable to respond to it all other than to send you an acknowledgement that yes we saw it yes we read it and I do appreciate the fact that so many community members are taking time out of their days to write us um for the most part very thoughtful um emails about what's going on in the district so we do appreciate that um I would say if anybody has personal ones and I do have

310a couple I've got to go back and dig through them um to send them to Diane did anybody have any they needed to share here good um we're getting there people calendar and future agenda topics we talked about um the ledge conference on February 21st our first sip meeting is February 25th so that one should be on your calendar and I'd tell you who it is but I honestly don't remember it's we're doing them differently right it's not North South and Central it's elementary middle I can't remember anyway we have one on the 25th I'm very tired now um anything else for future agenda topics Marney um and I've already notified both uh president Weaver and uh superintendent phy I would like to bring back el2 for an emergency monitoring specifically the bullet point uh

311that States the superintendent may not so it's full point1 may not use methods of managing information that fail to protect confidential information and so I know that that will help us to address the issue that came up in public comment today um that has shown up on um social media yeah and I do want to be very clear um and I probably wasn't when um that person was giving public input in no way does anybody on the board think that that was okay um it it is a problem that we are going to have to address har and just because we oh sorry I would just say that we need to assume that less than 1% of the community actually watches this so while I totally appreciate our superintendent's response and heartfelt feedback on that

312I think without formal communication from the district the community is left to assume that we don't care or that we don't know or something worse and that's why it's important this is not the forum for mass communication to the community this is where we dialogue and sort of have conversations on you know 30,000 foot level discussions so I think we can't assume that just because we say it here that it will get out to the community nor nor would we necessarily want it to through this medium so I would request that there is a formal communication to the community about this because I think that if it's something that the majority of this board is concerned about then as the connection to the community that we we represent I I think that's a a really

313big issue that needs to be sent out yesterday um I I will share Harlen and and um U assistant superintendent Heckman who is doing some uh investigative work into this matter for us and has been um having conversations with councel she did contact me early this morning to provide me with an update and I I had to tell her that I was not in a place at that time where where I could do that we have a meeting scheduled tomorrow we're going to try to gather information because we just wanted to make sure we had that before we started um before we uh crafted the communication but we have a kind of a a broad outline because absolutely we you know and and I I still don't fully understand what you know what we can

314or should be able to do and that's why I'm trying to wrap myself around that but I I hear what you're saying around the communication and it's not just external communication that's what I was referring to but I I sure hope that there's an internal communication that I I would like to see as a board member where every staff member is been being given some clear guidelines because I certainly as a community member don't want any member of our district to be sources of information for random social media platforms the only source should be you or Lisa Engles the official yeah I agree well and there's a there is a you know um foyer request you can ask for information and there is a freedom in doing that but it also allows us to make

315sure that whatever information we do give extracts any details that might identify somebody that might be something we're not Le that we're legally bound to keep confidential and um I think our superintendent and I think our admin staff understands that but I don't know that that permeates down to to the building level and so that's where I'm concerned that there are some managerial structures that need to be either reiterate or put it in in place you know we are great about all the rules around what you do with money and we P pass our financial audits with flying colors so um we need to have the same concern around confidential information that staff members have um and I think there's more it's not this E I think there might be just more regulations around um

316and best practices around staff use of social media I mean I pretty much said that I'm I'm social media distancing really really well that's what I've done during C is I've done a lot of social media distancing instead of physical distancing because it's just too too much but we have to be in that space as a district and I went to our own site we allow people to post outside people have posted on our Facebook page and they all comment and that is it should be closed it should be a one-way communication tool and I'm not quite sure why it's not set up that way um that that's a great Point director maraldo we actually H um have had this conversation I don't know that not as a board but as a system several years

317ago and frankly made the choice at that time uh to be an open form and but you're right I think that we need to revisit that that was at a time when we were trying to be fully transparent now we could pull down uh are trying to be fully transparent you know um but the the reality is this is one one man's opinion here it just to seems that that social media space is becoming in our current situation more toxic and um we've been having that conversation what legal council has told us is either it's an open form or it's a closed form you you don't you can't decide who gets to post and who doesn't and we chose initially again to be an open form and it's been that way for a number of

318years but times seem to be changing that I mean just like the comment section on our when we went live you have people from other countries that are coming in and starting to make comments in the chat so it's like please turn off chat um and I think it's the same kind of thing we don't know who's going to be coming in and posting things on our page so I don't think it's safe for us to be just having it open to anybody can post and if it's either we it should just be we post and no comments no posting back I mean I think two different things going on um right now one is annoying but probably not illegal which is taking documents or information that comes to staff an hour before it goes

319to community and saying oh look we can scoop the superintendent we can get it on Facebook first that's annoying there's probably nothing illegal about it but when somebody is taking confidential information that they gleaned by virtue of their position and putting it making it public that's totally different and that is not okay and I'm but I maybe would I guess I agree with what you just said Suzanne but I think the first one is not just annoying it and why I've left every social media platform similar to what Marne said is because it is not going unaltered and that's when I exited my engagement with at least a couple of the ones we've been talking about tonight because it isn't just reposting they are being altered and the intent of theity communication is being altered

320and I think that's where I want to make sure we're exploring not just um internal confidentiality or Integrity questions of employment but also um the potential legality issues of altering the intention of message which is what is act you know both of those things are happening so I I it would be different for me if it was just here's the copy and paste but there's been some in my in my opinion intentional editing that's also problematic and I hope with the internal communication that it's that we lead with the why like we want to be as forthright and transparent with staff and to let them know early on out of respect for them but when this keeps getting leaked into Sydney's Point like transformed and then sent out into the community with an intent that

321seems to be our job what we need to do is quit shooting ourselves in the foot and what we've been asked very clearly from every part of the community is is to do what we can to not create divisiveness in the community and so I I hope that that's really the goal of this conversation and dialogue is the parts that we can control to decrease the divisiveness in the community on social media or otherwise is is is why we're having this conversation because I think there's internal and external communication that really needs to leave with this is why we're doing it it's because we want to protect confidentiality we want to have less divisive in our community we want to make sure that there's trust in communication because we've heard over and over about how

322teachers parents Community doesn't trust our communication whether it's too much too little but I think a lot of it has to do with how it's coming out over which we're finding we have only this much control of yeah well and I was going to add to that on that that first part as far as the communication that that Ron's providing to our staff I mean there's teachers are professionals and they want to be treated as professionals they need to act behave professionally and when there are internal Communications that needs to be respected because there is a plan to communicate with them first so that they have an understanding of the plan and what's happening before we communicate with the public so I mean I do think I think it there is an owners on them

323to behave professionally no and I agree with you I I um the only point I was trying to make was I didn't think there was a legal issue around it now to Sydney's point if they're transforming it that's I didn't realize anything was being changed I think I guess I'm not even on social media enough to see this yeah think I I my imp again one of the many things I did not go to school for was law so that's not my but I see an intentional um perspective being placed on top of material and the truth is if I I think it's the right point right there's a reason why we can't have nice things and I personally take Umbridge at the fact that the the feedback we get is somehow this is about

324our divisiveness which is ridiculous we represent so many different constituencies and can manage to have civil dis discourse week in and week out and the truth is people have to take accountability for there is intentional manipulation occurring and I do believe there's something that has to be addressed there very directly um and then internally from not only an Integrity but a confidentiality standpoint the release of that information release of information is completely wrong and should have consequence um one but also to have that come back to us as somehow we're a divisive Force I just I reject I reject 100% that is a copout and a lack of responsibility yeah and I want to make one more point on this which is um and I started this when I was running for office back in

325when was that 19 um and I joined a whole bunch of community Facebook groups because I wanted to know what people were saying I wanted to hear the comments about the school district I wanted to know what my opponent was saying about me which was happening quite a lot and and I've stayed on Facebook groups and joined some other ones totally as an observer I do not post but because I want to know what people are thinking so I'm interested in the comments that they make about various School District issues now I have never thought of my membership in any closed Facebook group as an endorsement of a position if if the world is Shifting that way then maybe I'm going to have to rethink things but the fact that I belong to a group

326doesn't mean I endorse it it means I want to know what the people in the group are saying and I just somehow felt that needed to be said because I heard some very different things during public input and did I respond on to something no I don't see everything that gets posted I was not aware that there was a privacy issue being violated or I would have brought it to the superintendent's attention um Suzanne I 100% agree with what you're saying I I joined more of these groups because even though people seem to forget it I'm a mom with kids in the district trying to figure it all out too right so oh there's resources that's going to be helpful but then to see this from my perspective of purposeful um coloring of information that's

327that's what for me was just too much like I guess I don't need this help I can go get other moms helps from other from other places I don't need this one so that's that's the piece for me that's Pro that's problematic and I do think there's a couple issues to be addressed I think for us as I as I bring it to a future agenda topic I would recommend that we talk about what does the board expect from a digital strategy yeah because I think that we have to own the part that we as a district have created a vacuum and out of that vacuum have come these various different groups so by not having a cohesive digital strategy or digital presence agree we shouldn't be surprised that this is what's happening so and

328I think that part is board work because that may be then superintendent recommendations that we're require more budget for or or whatever I I don't know the answer to that because I know Lea is just getting her feet under her and now more than ever to say so many things we need to prioritize but I do agree with you I do agree with you and it was not my intent to push her out even as as we did but a nightmare I made time schedu these meetings it's it's 10:58 so I'm sorry I think Lea wants to say something oh I was gonna say h thank you for addressing that I know it kind of came up um kind of organically in conversation at one of our executive sessions so um and I don't take

329it personal or I don't take it as if it wasn't a priority I just know there are a lot of priorities um but I do really value the feedback of the board as we determine like what are some of our priorities and pillars as far as really creating the strategy to move forward with Communications and so um yeah you guys' in your feedback really matters a lot um as we formulate what that's going to be and start um well I've already started putting some things in motions but it's going to take um it's a long ways up we're starting we're starting right now um so there's there's a lot of growth opportunities um which I am acclimating with um and talking to different vendors and getting to know the team and their strengths and our

330challenges as a department and so um I've enjoyed it and Sydney thank you Sydney and I spoke today for a while um she shared some stuff um specifically from her role right now at Microsoft too which would be beneficial for us creating some planning pieces for the team as well so um I do appreciate that um The Mention though Harlen thank you okay an did you have something you wanted to say I thought I say your hand no I I was just wondering if once we were almost done that we could um uh go back to our exec session um actually to um I I and I apologize I texted you um director Weaver uh the team has is kind of been bugging me now for about 15 minutes that they need me they need

331me in caucus so I was just hopeful that we would wrap up I don't think I will have anything U director more I mean the the board could also use a break we go into exec session we could take a break while you decide if you really want to come back and talk to us sure sure I mean they're literally now they're freaking out because my phone is ringing they're calling me I I think we should give you a chance to talk to them and decide if you want to come back and talk to us in exec session and the Board needs a break I need to so that would that would serve both sides so can we have a 15 minute break would that be enough uh that works for me and then can

332Stephen throw us into a room yeah because have Stephen put us in a room for exec session the board can go off and take a break and then Ron you can step out of the the the the room or just go in another place and decide come back so you're adjourning this meeting though yes I am adjourning this meeting the board will resume its executive session H after a 15 minute break and that may go one minute or it may go 20 minutes right we'll say 20 minutes and then if we need to extend it after that 15 minute break we'll just do that because we can extend it okay so yes I oh Jake is here so I am adjourning the official Schoolboard meeting if Stephen can put us in a room we'll go

333up there we go um if everybody can join the room and then we'll reconvene at 11:16 thank you everybody I'll see you in a few thank you for e for e