MERIDIAN SCHOOL BOARD's May 27 2026 Regular Meeting

001Awesome. Welcome everybody. I'd like to welcome everyone to the Wednesday, May 27th, 2026 regular board meeting and budget presentation. Um, I will call the meeting to order. Please stand and say pledge of allegiance. Thank you. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the republic for it stands nation indivisible with liberty and erase I share in addition to the agendics Um, so earlier today we received a student travel request for our students going to DC for the national history day. >> And so they leave the 13th 16th which is before the next time together. And so um, want to make sure that you knew that you were voting as well. >> Can I ask a question about that? I know they raised funds to go initially for some of that stuff. Um, oh no, that was for

002going their DC trip. So that how do they get funded for going on >> um as a district or supporting them because they're are students. So >> Okay. >> I think sorry it's akin to students making state. Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay. That's what I was wondering. Just like state like a state tournament. Great. just happens to be a day >> soon. Oh, >> right. Any questions? Okay. Um, can I get a motion to adopt the agenda? >> I'll make a motion to adopt the consent agenda. >> Wait a first. >> The agenda first. >> Yeah. >> Oh, I make a motion to adopt the agenda. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >> I um can I get a motion to adopt the consent agenda? A motion to adopt the consent agenda. >> I'll second.

003>> All those in favor? I >> I. >> Awesome. Um, first item of business is recognition. We have the M Masonic Blanch Educator of the Year. Um, happy to have Mr. Dick Dama here. >> Desma. >> Yeah, Mr. Desimma, please come on up. And then if we could have Mr. Palmer join us. Um, so we have our educator of the year is Mr. Steve Palmer and the Lynen Affirmale Masonic Lodge number 56 always graces us with their presence and and the perpetual plaque and a certificate. And so what I want you to know is just as you were identified with the Thrive Awards, your colleagues and folks in the district recognize the great work that you're doing and want you to know that and we want to read more. Awesome. And so I'm going to

004congratulate you. Thank you. >> This is this is the certificate. >> Awesome. And then we have the plan to the south. >> There is a a renewal scholarship u and uh from Washington Masonic charities of up to $1,000 and uh that's yours for the asking. >> Okay. And that happens at the end of this year, right? >> It's at the end of this year. uh uh the uh requirements are a 3.0 and uh in your scholarship and uh uh this from a uh a large basis. >> Okay. >> And uh so a lot of people overlook this with thousands of dollars, but it's found. Yeah, that's awesome. So, if you're going to go do some more school >> and so you'll see right there. >> Okay. And that will go in your building >> and

005then I have you give him this check. >> Okay. >> And a check by the treasure of the Lyndon Ferndale Masonic launch number 56. uh payable to you for $2,000. Oh my goodness. >> Wow. >> I'm going to give this thing. >> Sure. Okay. Awesome. One time. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Oh, yeah. >> All right. I'm one way to Ferndale. I And I would like to thank uh the board uh for uh making time for us. I I know that uh you have a very busy schedule and uh and I appreciate the the time that uh you've taken. >> Thank you for participating and supporting our schools. >> Yep. You're always welcome. We look forward to seeing the next years as Yeah. >> Thank you very much. >> So good to good to

006see you. photo. >> Oh, yeah. >> Perfect. >> Bring the uh the super >> right. >> All right. >> This is for you, Bri. >> Uh this will stay the uh the uh superintendent building. It'll stay at the building level. >> Yeah. So, this will be in your building. Awesome. Awesome. That's great. Thank you so much. Okay. You're quite welcome. >> Yeah. Guess I'll hang on to it for >> All right. I mean, Bye everybody. Bye. I think just hard. Okay. Um the second item is the uh the G getting coalition recognition. Um and this is presented by Adrien Samra. >> Can you help me? I'm just we're just gonna do a recognition and um PLC guiding coalition groups. Um so as you're aware PLC teams have come and they've presented to you and they

007sort of shared our guiding coalitions are the teacher leader groups in each building that really spearhead that work. they work with their principles to do that. And so we just wanted to recognize that work that has happened over the course of this year. So that these teams really help provide structure for those meetings. They work with the principles in their buildings to help set improvement goals. They're always looking at student learning, thinking about how we can get better, and they're really leading their colleagues. So Michelle couldn't be here, but um Jeff and Sarah are her guiding coalition meeting or her guiding coalition team members. And she just want to recognize this year a couple of things. They helped launch a new PLC structure. So they had both um K content teams and um collaborative teams

008that went across vertical lines. And so she's really proud of that work that they put together there. Please um and Irene as well. um really wanted to recognize a few things about their team. They're particularly dedicated. Um they have leaders from each grade level and they this year have really been focused on tier 2 supports. So coming and thinking about those students who need more help with their grade level content has been a big focus of the work of Irene this year. And you probably remember a couple months ago, this was the staff highlight that Robert and I shared about, but our guiding coalition is kind of the hands and feet of the work that we do in the school. So they are leading teams day in day out and then every Friday they're putting

009together the agenda and making sure that dad is ready to look at and guiding those discussions and protocols. And then Robert and I also lean on them pretty heavily to be kind of the boots on the ground. And when we're wrestling around with an idea of tier two or tier three, they're the people that we run those ideas by. Super grateful for their leadership. >> I was kind of disappointed we went in and moved all of your coalition pictures around. >> I put them back. >> Disappointed. >> I think they're nice. Have a nice play. but disappointed but not surprised either. Um yeah, our guiding coalition um really doubled down on those efforts uh this year with the within the different departments. Um I have to give a big shout out to Andrea AS. She

010um took that on as the teacher leader. She organized the meeting. she she ran the meetings um and it just really increased the the buyin with the the work that the team was doing u making critical decisions around instruction and interventions and just working towards that alignment in our building and so awesome step with this group this year. >> Oops. I just want to just highlight again the improvement in the work that our PLC's have done. We've had them for many years now. And I think over the past few years, just the dedication of these teacher teams to really improving that work and making sure that we're doing the best we can for our students has made a huge difference for us. I think a lot of what we're seeing in our growth is a

011direct direct result of this work and those these teachers. So any school very early in the morning and for very little stipend and and I really appreciate their effort. Well, kudos to Adrian for Thank you. This is a shift over time. We used to have separate planning coalitions and leadership teams and because funding people got creative and I think now leadership teams are serving that capacity as well. >> Thank you. >> Awesome. Thank you so much. Um all right, next item is uh public comment. Um I will read the the policy here. So our board has adopted policy and procedure 1400 uh meeting conduct order of business and form. This policy procedure is available on the district website. Per this policy board meetings must be conducted in civil orderly and business like man banner. This

012means that whether we are school directors, district staff, students member of the community or some other guest. We must all follow the same standard of civility during schoolboard meetings. The time the total time for public comment period is 30 minutes. Each speaker has a maximum of three minutes. There's no mechanism whereby a speaker can donate all or some of their time to another speaker. No individual may speak more than once per regular meeting even if there is time remaining. Public comment period is a opportunity for the board to listen to individuals on educational issues and board members are encouraged to listen attently. Um, if public comments are are to express concerns about specific students, the board asks that you not name the students as naming the student could be invaded on privacy, violate school district

013policy related to harassment, attenuation, bullying, or discrimination, or create a material and substantial uh disruption of the orderly operation of the board meeting. Public comment period is not for the time for dialogue between the board and public. The board will not respond to statements, questions, or challenges made during public comment period, and there's no back and forth dialogue. Please know the board silence is neutral. It is neither a signal or dis or agreement. Sorry, it is neither a signal of agreement or disagreement with the speaker's remarks. Although the board will not engage in dialogue, the board chair must ask the speaker to clarify a clarifying question. It is also possible that school district staff will contact the speaker at later time to follow up on an issue raised during public comment period. Um, finally, please

014remember that your words have impact to you, not the school district are responsible for your words. We caution all speakers. It is possible that your statements could violate the rights of other others under various laws, including laws protect your privacy, laws protecting defamation. And if you are unsure of the legal effect of your remarks, you should seek legal guidance. Okay. Um, our standard policy is that everyone that needs to speak must sign the the document before. I know there's a couple things on the agenda that we're going to discuss today. There will be another opportunity to uh voice public comment. So, with that being said, uh we have one speaker tonight, Mr. Bruce Ber. >> Hello, Bruce Bowman. And I'm here tonight to talk about the idea of an online dictionary for acronyms and initialisms.

015This would be used by the school district uh and everybody employed by the school district. Uh it's not an original idea of mine. I've seen this put into practice. Um the idea is especially when you get a bigger group of people, you have different groups within and let for this example within the school district, you might have the bus garage, you have the coaches, you have uh the faculty office staff, you got medical, you got admin, and they all have different acronyms and initialisms. that they all use. And I think it would be helpful because I've seen it here at come to these several meetings. I see new board members and current board members asking what this acronym or initialism is, including conversations with some of you that bring something up. It's like, okay, I

016ask a question, I get a description. I've already forgot it now. And that was 10 minutes ago. Um, also I see, you know, you see presentations on the PowerPoint that there's an acronym or initialism, but there's nothing in parenthesis behind it to give that description. Uh, it seems normal to have that at least once, whether it's on a PowerPoint, in a presentation, or on handouts. that way you have something to refer to if you if that comes up later in that document or in a presentation. Um so the thought is to uh send email out to everybody within the school district that works for the school district and ask for input. Um this can all be done on an Excel spreadsheet. Um, so in some of these acronyms, initialisms, they can have the same, but

017they might mean again might mean something with to another department. Um, in one line you'd have the acronym or initialism. The next line you'd have the definition of that. Um, and then what department it came from. That way it's a little easier to clarify what it means and why it means that from that department. >> Very simple. >> Um and then any notes if further explanation is needed on another line. That's all I have. Thank you very much. >> Thank you so much. >> Chair motion. >> Okay. I would like to motion that the board allow for public comment at this time. Public comment period. And if there's a second, I will speak to my motion. >> Is there a second? >> So the the procedure if no one then it's not allowed, but can

018she speak to her? I'm not sure why she wants to or is that a dispute? Um, let's have that as a board director item at the end of the during our comment period. >> It's unfortunate that we have members of the public here that have made the time to come out this way and we're not allowing them to speak. I appreciate that, but it's always been our procedure that if folks need to sign up before the meeting starts. >> I would please like that on the record that during public comment session that we are not allowing members of the public to comment. Hey, first report, uh, food service reports. Help me. It's dinner time, right? Wow. Keep seeing pictures. They look amazing. been so impressed. >> Well, there's 16, so whoever >> there. >> Yes,

019of course. Thank you. >> I've always asked for >> I mean, it's five o'clock. Yeah. >> So, I am Aaron. I'm the food director. Uh, it's my first year. I worked here in 2015 to 2020 as a lunch lady. Um, and then went to the hospital for 5 years and now I'm back, which is great. Um, the overview, uh, health department, training, staffing, meal, scratch, cooking, and the future of food service. Um, so every year at the beginning of the year, we have to email the health department to request our two inspections. After COVID, a lot of times we were lucky to get one. So, it's important that you have a paper trail that you reached out. Um, we've had um inspections at all schools so far this year. Um, middle school was in October.

020Well, they're all in October. Um, we all we had zero uh high risk factor. So essentially a perfect score. They came back for the second inspection last week at IE. Um no high risk. So it's great. I'll be expecting them at the middle school and high school before the end of the school year. >> Can I ask a question? You said you have you have to have two inspections, but you don't always get them. >> No. They just don't follow up or they don't request them. >> Yeah, we have to request them. Um they're supposed to do one but and we're supposed to have to every year. >> Wow. >> Um usually six months apart. So they usually come like I said at the beginning of the year and then the permit's good for a

021year but you're supposed to have the two. >> So I know after co there was years we went with that one. >> Really? >> So yeah. >> Yeah. That's kind of >> okay, right? >> I mean, it's not okay, but >> Well, it's okay for But you guys are good. >> I mean, the stress level when they show up, you're like, >> yeah, we we we don't love that, but it's important that, you know, they come through and see that we're doing everything how we're supposed to be doing it >> for food safety. >> Um, all my staff went through training this year. Uh, we did our civil rights training. They all completed and signed it. We went over middle patterns and compliancy. Um the National School Lunch Program, we have a lot of guidelines

022to follow far as I mean primarily a lot of that's on me. It's saturated fats, sodium, sugars, primarily added sugars. They're really trying to get away from that. Um and then we went over some of our new scratch made recipes that we're doing. Um so here's our meal count. um this year versus last year, we're up. Um House Bill 1238 helps with that a lot as far as at the elementary school. Um everyone eats free in that building. So, we got a really big bump in our participation and our lunch count um um they're up but the high school we're not we're not up. We actually went down but I think more students are participating in Running Start or other programs. We are not on campus. So, that's a bummer. But our numbers have climbed

023since we're at we I've offered more grab and go items. Kids don't want to wait. They want to grab what they want and then go. And then this just talks about House Bill 1238. Um it says it's available for um schools with students K through four, but since we have the TK up to fifth grade, since it's under the building, they all um get to participate in that provision. And I found out that we are approved for it for next year as well. So that's great. And here's some of our scratch made items. Um I believe Rob brought in the salmon last year or two years ago. Um the chili, which is still Bobby's recipe at the middle school that we've had for years. May hot casserole, pulled pork hobies with kleslaw, chicken fajitas, getting

024meatballs, chicken pot pie, new this year, and the lasagna. Um, and the chicken enchiladas. We played with that a little bit. Rob started it with the green sauce. I've done it with the green sauce. Kids prefer the red sauce. So, and then here's like the grab and go. And we offer these at the middle and high school. Um just you know kids don't want to wait. So wrap salads, parfets, bagels, croissant sandwiches, uh protein boxes, new this year. Uh they we go through about 40 to 45 PB&J sack lunches at the high school daily. >> Wow. >> Yeah. >> A lot of them are sports kids because it's something that they can take and have items for later, which is great. um the new hobies and the new Thai chicken salad which you have in

025front of you. >> Feel like I want shark picking. >> So, uh these are the new items. So, it's the bento box, the Thai chicken salad, the hogies, and I found dough that I can bring in. I thaw it overnight. I proof it in the morning and we bake it every day. So, it's a fresh baked. >> Smells amazing. Um I we did the sweet Thai chili wrap kids. Some liked it. Wasn't enough for me to continue making. It has like Sriracha mayo and chili the sweet chili sauce. So and the tuna apple croissant. There's the salad. And that's the bento box. So it has kind of like a little shakurerie with fruit, veggies, crackers, carbohies. So you guys have an Italian and a turkey pesto one. These are just some of our trays that

026we've done this year. Uh the ribeye they love. It's like a McRib tater tot casserole. Um that's a hit or miss item, but And then chicken fajitas. And these are all scratch made. These we make from scratch. So, and I'd like to do more this year. We a learning year, but I've brought in a few new items and new ideas. So, um, and ask my team to offer suggestions and collaborate with me on that. There's a chicken pot pie. I had to get a chicken cookie cutter. Thank you. lasagna. The lasagna's been a big hit with students and staff. >> That's from scratch, too. >> Yes. So, we get commodity items like we get beef crumbles and Yeah. So, it's a way to use those in recipes. Yeah. We had our Thanksgiving holiday meal, which

027is always a favorite. The little pumpkin pie tarts are amazing. And we make those in house, too. And our salad bar, we've had some fun fruit, kiwi, pears, grapes, strawberries. Always go with apples when we're available. Uh I only I try to only do canned once a week. Just a freshest. Um, as of January this year, I was allowed to bring in 2% milk versus the non-fat chocolate and 1%. Um, and it was amazing how many even at the elementary school noticed the kids were like, "This is great." Um, I can bring in whole milk next year. So, I think I'm going to try to do that. As far as the sugars coming down the chocolate milk might, which that might be a riot, but I'm working around the the added sugars. So, that'll that's

028going to come into effect next year with the added sugars and the sodium that we're going to have to cut back on. We're going to continue with more scratch made cooking. I'm always open to suggestion or things you think we should try and then different grab and go options just cuz if they're the middle and high school they're so popular. It used, you know, used to be like a 7030 where they 70% would get the hot serve. Well, now it's a good 50/50 where they just want the the one item that they can grab grab a milk and go. And are all items the same cause? >> Wow. >> Yeah. It all has to fit into the compliances. So there's five there's five components. There's your meat or meat alternative, your grain, your fruit, your

029veggie, and your milk. They change it. You only have to take four because some people can't drink milk. So as long as they get hit the four components, they're covered. And then it's a reimburseable meal through the funding. He was also one of my friends like his son has a gluten allergy. Is there also options for >> We do uh so here we we do offer that if they get a care plan put in place. So they'd have to go to their doctor, have a note that they're gluten intolerant, they'd work with the nurse and get a care plan and then because I I do have one at right now that's gluten-free. So yeah, and none of this would be possible without my team and they're great. I'm losing Miss Missy at the end of

030the school year. Um, and Pam, I believe, is taking that position at the middle school. Pam for seven, so great opportunity for her. >> Great. Great. Thank you. Lot of advancements from last time. >> We're having fun. Yeah. >> You know, and if you're a student here from Ireie to the high school and you see all the same stuff, >> we want to >> I still don't see the sheet pan pizza. So, good job. >> Yeah, >> they do that. I used to squares back in the day. >> I love the square pizza. >> Probably because the sauce and sugar, but >> things have changed. >> Yeah. the creativity and continuing this >> the scratch made and the color is Yeah, it's great. >> Yeah. Well, well, after working in healthcare for the last five

031years, >> real food matters >> versus processed. So, the more scratch cooking we can do, the better. >> That's the goal. >> That's so awesome. >> It's salmon, which is amazing. >> They don't like they Yeah, it's rough. They don't appreciate it yet. IR date and the middle and the high school. >> So just at the middle and high school. Okay. IR they're feeding 520 to 530 at lunch and they don't have the capacity or the kitchen to support >> the wish. >> Yes. But they get the hot meal. >> They get the hot meal. Yeah. Yep. >> And the sack lunch. >> On Fridays they offer the sack lunch. Yeah. >> My son got back from Outdoor Red and I think they wish they had that food there. That's the feedback we got. >>

032It's been fun. I'm enjoying myself. >> Thank you. Thank you so much. >> You are like >> I love it. Great. >> I came back, right? >> Thank you so much. >> All right. Uh, next order of business is school board recog reorganization. Um we are happy to present or happy to uh call forward if Nada. >> Yes. Come on up. >> Yeah. >> Now you're in the hot looks like it. >> So we have a >> Yeah. Yeah. Can you see? Okay. >> It is quite bright but it's beautiful. >> Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for for being here. Thank you so much for signing up. Um, I guess we'll we'll kick off and and maybe I'll ask the first question. Sometimes going on back. Yeah. So, first question, uh, just kind

033of tell us about yourself. Um, your training, interest, experience on board policies, community, um, and your school activities and why. >> Well, I've been living in Watcom County since 1999. So, my kids all went to Blaine and then they went to Running Start. So, I've been, you know, busy with some school activities. My daughter was in Girl Scouts for several years and uh now that they're all gone, I've been doing mostly the um our neighborhood association, been doing the little library over there. I've also been um working on the interpreters uh society, which is like an interpreter. you would not know but it is like a Northwest interpreter and translator society in Washington state and other states in the yeah Idaho, Oregon, Alaska, Washington and so on. So I have my first presentation that I

034just did as a presenter instructor for that great other than that I mostly I've been you know I've been a member of board for a while but now I'm just a member. So other than that, I am um I'm a contractor. I worked as um I am a court certified interpreter medically and uh authorized and also a social services authorized by DSHS. And so I work full-time, part-time as a remote language interpreter. That's what I do. >> Amazing. I'll go next. So, welcome for for joining us this evening. So, um just was wondering if you could describe your experience, your training, your interests, how they can contribute to the improvement of our district. And if so, like how does it pertain to your view of the roles and responsibilities of a school board? I would

035say I you know I've been I have not been in a on a school board back in Blaine but uh I have you know since my kids are gone now I have had a lot of experience dealing you know as a parent back in the day and so I am willing you know since I have you know time I'm no longer you know raising kids I can try to you know contribute from my past experience here you know on the school board here and I did serve on some school some boards you know here and there not in this capacity and nothing like on a school board. I have not I'm not back in Blaine but um so I've been you know mostly kind of a willing to contribute to you know serve to do

036some you know um community work and put in you know my two cents worth Awesome. Thank you. >> Yeah, >> I have a question. Um, going off script a little bit here. Um, the school district had a bond that failed twice in a row. What do you think that the school district should do differently to change that up? Uh that would be a very very tough cell you know because a lot of people in the I don't know in the area where I'm from there are a lot of like a 55 plus communities and so they are you know some of them are I don't know but a lot of them are on fixed income and they are not very wealthy so any kind of a levy you know that you want to impose would

037be a very tough cell that I'm I'm not I don't know but I'm willing to bet that it would be a very tough sell and people would not be willing. So I don't know if there is like a reserve fund. I remember back in the day I heard that Blaine had something like that that people the school board members were unwilling to tap into because I'm not sure they were just kind of afraid and so yeah if there is anything like that I think it would be very hard. So I don't know if if there is really anything that can be done. It simply you know will be especially with the old prices you know going through the roof. It will be very very very tough. Yeah. >> Thank you. I think we've seen that

038happen. >> It is just what it is. >> Um to meet you. Nice to meet you too. >> Um, can you identify any commitments which might prevent you from attending like regular meetings uh participating in workshops u reviewing study materials? We do have we get our meeting um minutes beforehand. We do all review those before so we're not blindsided. Um, and we like to be educated so that we're not just like reviewing the stuff as it comes on the screen. So, is there anything that prevents you from being um present at meetings? They're every other Wednesday night usually at 5, sometimes 4:00 p.m. >> So, some it said on the uh on the website that it is actually at six, but it is at five, correct? >> It is. >> It's at five. >> It

039is. So yeah, I'm, you know, maybe like 15 minutes away from here. So it's not that bad. You know, I can always make it. You know, if there is like a foot of snow on the road, then I will not make it. And so I will not even try. But other than that, you know, I have no problem, you know, coming here every other week. And so yeah, I have time enough because I don't work outside home only at home. So I can always come in, you know, I can review whatever is needed from home. There is plenty of time in the evening for me to do that. So I have no problem with that. >> Great. Yeah. >> More questions. >> So you mentioned your your children went to Blaine. >> They did. >>

040So what is your experience with the Mian School District as far as our strengths and our weaknesses? uh my uh my daughter she was you know she was doing running stock so she only she had to register here for her senior year but then after that you know she never actually went here and so you know what I've um what I've seen is that it is a fairly small school district it seems to me but still and it's kind of a you know rather rural so maybe it doesn't have a lot of support from like a large industries like in Blaine you have cherry point refin finery and they are kind of a supporting they're paying taxes into that and all that. if for me from what I can see here there isn't that maybe

041there but not that many and so maybe it is kind of a you know one you know will draw back that it doesn't have very many large industries on that scale to support it and so that's you know I'm not I'm not entirely sure if that's even so but that's that's what it seems to me you know it's definitely you know compared to like see home you I can probably tell the difference, but I've been living here in um Biringham in the Cordata area for nine years now. So, yes, I can see it. And u you know, mostly I see the kids going to the Cordata Elementary School and that. So, I'm kind of a little familiar with that with a school down there, but you know, with school district, I'm you know, here to

042learn. But y um when we all ran for office, you know, we get we go online and we say, "Hey, I'm Jana and I'm running for office." Because if you were to say a like a public statement of why if you were running out loud, what would be like your catch phrase or you know what would be your like why why are you so interested? Well, I got the note, you know, the postcard in the mail, in fact. And I was like, you know, I can go ahead and, you know, apply. I can always try to do to do some public service. I'm working over in the the notice, which is like the interpreter society to advance, you know, to help their training and everything cuz I am one. And so, whatever works, whatever I

043can do to help, you know, the fellow interpreters, I'm willing to do that. and here as well, you know, whatever I can do to help advance, you know, to help the community, help the kids, you know, my my kids are gone. You know, they're they're no longer school kids, but you know, there are other kids and you know, you need to support them because they you know, you need them. You know, they need to pay into your social security eventually. And so, you will need to get the good education and get, you know, to, you know, be good productive members of society. And so whatever I can do on my part, you know, to help out that cause, that's why >> that's very nice. >> Yes, that's my motivation. >> Do you have any questions

044for us? >> Um that elementary school is not listed on on the website. >> That's part of the Bellingham School District. >> Oh, so they're in Bellingham. >> Yeah. >> Also, where's Irene? Mhm. Our elementary is six miles away from >> Yes. The Irene writer. Yeah. How come the um area number four is the smallest? The district four is the smallest of of the five. >> So five director districts are re recalibrated every 10 years based on the census >> to have them balanced with population. So that might be more densely populated but with area it's smaller. >> Yeah. Let's look the smallest. >> Okay. >> So u the other you know they were like we said meetings trainings and others. So how often does that happen? You know if the board members meet outside

045or you know come and support the games you know the sports games or other events. How often does that happen or during is it during the day or is it in the evening? >> Yes, typically in the evenings. I mean our meetings are are twice twice a twice a month and then we have training sessions every now and then as a board. Um we'll have executive sessions like twice a year to to uh evaluate a district employee the superintendent. Uh we have the WASA conference that happens every November. Uh it alternates between uh Belleview last year than Seattle. So Seattle and Spokane um and then we have you know trainings as a board. I think we've done one in I think a year maybe. So um and then obviously all of us are encouraged to

046be at events. I think you guys have seen your presentations. Um you know I have kids that play basketball and volleyball so I go to those. Um so all kind of doing different things and yeah being being part of the community. enormous then graduation graduation >> right but so but how often is all that and is it during the day or is it in the evening mostly or when >> I vary >> and it depends on each of us have different things we're drawn to or invited to um just to represent the board and support our students there's there's always something going on PTA and IRB has a lot of of events middle school, high school, student focused leadership roles, a lot of different opportunities for us to be present. The community does like to

047see the board. The board likes to see the community. >> But is it something that's mandatory that is you have to or you just kind of encourage, but you don't have to attend? >> Some of the things are mandatory. Absolutely. >> Graduation's mandatory. >> Okay. and our and our trainings and our different things like that are mandatory. >> But if it doesn't work, like if there's a train that doesn't work, then we would coordinate it and and do a date that works. So, and like going to sporting events, obviously that's not mandatory, but >> Okay. >> Um >> Yeah. But we have like continuing basically kind of like continuing education um certification. >> Yeah. That we have to do. So, those are mandatory state. Um, >> some of those are online, some we do as

048a group. >> Okay. >> I would say most are after business hours, but there is opportunities during school to do that. So, >> yeah, >> like winter wishes, we all went last year and dressed up and had fun times. So, >> I was on campus this morning for track send off. We have soccer send off this week. Some different opportunities to present. >> We're pretty silly group. We dress up a lot. >> We got to post the games. >> Awesome. Um, do you have any more questions for us? uh mostly you know that I was about the schedule you know how often is there anything going on you know during daytime hours because I am usually logged on you know and I can you know I can take you know time off here and there

049but it is mostly that I do you know I work from 10 till 5 or so give or take Monday through Friday and then but that's just you know being on call you know because I'm I I am not, you know, on on the clock. It's not on the clock, you know. If I'm not working, then I don't get paid. So, yeah, that's how that's how that works, you know, but it's a lot more flexible. So, it's much much better. But I, you know, I don't know if you know how that works in, you know, this line of work, but that's just how it is. >> So, would you be able to attend the 4:00? >> So, is it at 4 or is it at 5 or is it at 6? >> We have four

050o'clock. We have 4:00 meetings sometimes, >> but our meetings are at 5:00. >> Okay. >> So, sometimes we have an executive session or have to at 4. >> Okay. >> So, how how often does that happen? >> It depends. Sometimes we may need to discuss something that's private >> and we just have to decide that randomly. >> Okay. >> Depends on it depends on the issues. There are two times during the year when it's required. You would know those ahead of time, but sometimes things do surface that need the board's attention and so it would warrant having an executive session. >> Yeah, there's not not a big deal. >> Yeah, probably six times a year. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Awesome. Any more questions for us? Um well that was I was mostly wondering about that

051you know the trainings or other meetings you know at what time because it says on website you know six so then I'm wondering you know if it's five but then it's at 4 so I'm like okay what time but you know it is it is fine really it's not huge deal >> that's good feedback we'll make sure that gets changed >> okay >> awesome >> right so um it's my understanding to fill the board seat we need a motion and a second and then we will do a roll call vote. So, can I get a motion? I have a motion to approve to district position. I get a second. I think we'd have to reach out to the yes meeting and tell them we can support N. Thank you so much for coming tonight. We

052very much appreciate your time. >> Of course. Thank you. >> Thank you, Nada. >> Um, on to new business. Um, first review, US history, CWP, and civics core instructional materials. Um, this is Adrien Samra presenting. Good evening. So we are u presenting a proposal for core curriculum for to the board for adoption. So this is for US history CWD which is current word problems and civics just as a reminder and I think we have some new board members and maybe I haven't been here since we've done this our first one this year um core curriculum adoption process so core curriculum materials that are used um for kind of the basic instruction um and policy 2020 outlines the criteria for that um and we did review 2020 20 earlier this year. So I think many of

053you familiar with that. The the way that it works is our identification committee which is this group here plus we've had about five other people who were part of this committee um our content experts. So social studies teachers we spend some time together before we even look at materials studying best practice looking at the standards looking at research. they um do a lot of work to kind of take all of those pieces of information about what is best practice, what does good instruction look like for that subject and then develop criteria. And in addition, that criteria lines up as well with what's in the board policy around what's required for cork materials. So there's a lot of work that goes into just deciding what we're looking for before we start looking at materials. That point,

054this team looks at a variety of different materials. I think like seven or eight different things we looked through to kind of evaluate materials up against those criteria that they're looking for. Um, a couple of these this we actually um had an opportunity and they'll talk a little bit about that, piloted them with some students. So, they did a few units and lessons with students to see for our top materials how they went. Um, and really I just want to just emphasize how much work that the team puts into really trying to find the best materials that are out there. So that this committee makes a recommendation to our instructional materials committee and that instructional materials committee is a separate group from this. Uh that committee reviews their proposal against um the required um items

055in the board policy. So that's the document that's in there that looks kind of like this that has all the board policy elements. This is the evidence from the team and then the um instructor materials committee takes a look at that as well and they're just double-checking to make sure that in fact there is alignment between those required elements and materials and then we'll bring this to board and the board makes the final approval of crypto materials. Any questions just about the process that we've been through? So these are the criteria that are in the board policy. Um I'm not going to read them out loud to you, but you can see them there. So when you look at the um review, you'll see that we're talking about each of these. Couple things that really

056stand out here. You'll see there are a number of criteria that are about accessibility. So how are these materials good for all students? So that's really something that we're looking at. Um there's a variety of different elements. Are they aligned to the standards? Some other things. So that the team is really looking to see materials that we're choosing are helping us get to these. So a new thing that we added this year to our criteria was we actually did some um surveying of students beforehand about what was important to them for instructional materials. So we asked a couple of questions of students to see what things really stood out to them about effective materials and what they were looking for. And this also helped the group to kind of um inform some of the things

057they're looking for for so things such as projects were really important to kids. So when we were looking materials were looking what is the quality of the projects that are in here because kids felt like that was important. Um the questions about what helps when you're learning can see some some of things that stood out there. Kids really like a lot of visuals and those things help them. Um different ways to show what they learned. So when we're looking we're looking at assessments. Is it all just a paper pencil test or are there different kinds of projects and things? So, some of those um what kids told us we also pulled into what we were looking for materials. So, we have um two publishers that we're uh proposing. PCI is what we're going to be

058proposing for fifth grade and that's social studies alive. Um and then Traverse is what we are proposing for our secondary schools. So, we'll talk first about TCI and just share a little bit of um the things that really stood out to us in these materials. And I'll let Lisa kind of talk a little bit about that as well. Um some of the strengths that really came out here. They're really well. All of the things we looked at are aligned with the standards. They there's some inquiry projects in here. If you want to talk to any of these before I read them all, you want to share your note card? Why'd you share your note card? >> She's scared. Um, I just wrote down some things that really stood out to me. Um, I taught three

059lessons, also looked at the curriculum overall, and throughout the three lessons, these were the big things that stood out to me. I really like the adjustable reading levels. Um, they have texttospech audio, so students can listen to the text online or read it in text back textbook format. Um, there it comes in both Spanish and English text versions. Um each unit has an inquiry question and project for the students. So as they go through each of the lessons, they're gathering information to do that final project. And then with each of the lessons, there's an assessment that students can take at the end. Um right now it aligns with our current GLAD materials that we're already using with students. Those are our um support for English learners materials that we have for students. um differentiated with

060text support picture clues um and also enrichment activities. There's workbook pages for students to capture ideas and notes. Vocabulary activities come with each of the lessons workbooks that look like this that kids are working in. Each of the lessons that I taught had lesson connections to school and to the fifth graders um and even current events that they can then do research on that are happening currently right now. There's videos within the slide presentations, graphics within the texts, um pictures, images. The lessons are easily adaptable to shorten for a teacher or lengthen with, like I said, the enrichment activities. Um there's also a TCI social studies stories um textbook smaller than this that includes short supplementary readings to deepen the core topic. And they include primary sources, biographies, and diverse perspectives. And online there's even

061some hands-on games and activities for students to do. Um, these were a few of the engagement activities that I did with the students. Um, I really really liked how each lesson started with the engagement activity. Um, it brought it to the students level. It made them kind of think about the topic in their own lives and it was a fun activity. So, one example was thinking about unrest and tension in their own lives as a student and relating that back to unrest and tension during the Revolutionary War or the events that led up to the Revolutionary War. Another activity was the Bill of Rights and the students did like a mini skit and we just did this today. Um where they perform a little skit for each other in the classroom that has to do

062with the Bill of Rights. And then the last one was a voting card that little groups got when we were learning about why the Articles of Confederation didn't work so well and the United States needed to find a different way with um the Constitution. So if you'd like to take a look at those at the past, >> are you interested? >> Yeah. Okay. >> I saw you getting out of this bullet bill of rights thing. What have we learned? >> I think when we met with the teachers, all of the members of the fifth grade team to kind of go through this and one thing that they really appreciated was >> that there was background information for the teachers. Like some of our fifth grade teachers actually didn't grow up in the United States, so

063they didn't have US history as fifth graders themselves. So they really appreciated um having some of that background. Um, it does have both the digital and the the physical materials which I think was something that felt pretty important to folks and a lot of just scaffolding and support like it felt like was very there were a lot of supports there for for different students who had to push it. So extensions as well as supports. >> Yep. >> Any questions about this one? So each student gets one of these books and that's like there for the theirs for the year. >> They can rip those out and >> they rip the pages out, right? >> They write in them. Some of them are like Yeah. activities. Do they turn in the book or page to grade?

064>> The assessments are not part of the book from what I saw. These are just activities as they gather information for like those longer unit inquiry questions that they're trying to understand. >> Okay. And I think one thing as well with this a few different ones, but the current materials they have now, the reading level is actually higher. It's like sixth or seventh grade. Yes. We've had for a while. So these are actually at the students level. They can really they can really like support some of those as well as writer. >> And they can adjust the text level >> a few different levels, not too many, but um and have the text read to them online. >> Comprehension is the key, right? Understanding that they're and lots of engaging pictures and inquiries within the

065pictures to help them understand the material. >> So, since we're chatting, yes, I was trying to hold off to the end. I'm sorry. But, uh, based on the student feedback, which I love that aspect of what you guys did, and how exciting to see such strong numbers in hands-on activities and group projects that, um, really excites me for less screen time. Um, so that's fabulous. That being said, is this screen based or are kiddos going to get books? It's both. So they have this book as well as the digital access. So they can that provides more flexibility. Like if they need to read at a different level, they might go online because this is only going to be at the fifth grade level. If they needed the third grade level, they might go read. >>

066So the online screen time be the norm or the obstruction? Well, I can't speak to every teacher, but um as a fifth grade team, I think we prefer reading from the textbook. And as a school as a whole, we really want to practice reading fluency. And it's another opportunity where students can work together and read through the pages together and practice that fluency on their own. So, that's that's where I would lean. >> Um >> the reading out loud to each other and together as a whole. Mhm. >> But I but it it's also nice to be able to vary it. So with throughout the lessons when I did it with my class, I we did it that way one time. Um even online in the slide presentation, you can have the text come up

067onto your TV. And so we also just read it full class from the TV together and scaffold it that way. And I even tried it where it could read to the students right on the TV as a whole class just to see what they enjoy. But again, I would prefer them to do as much reading from the textbook as possible. >> What was the last year that this one was updated for fifth grade? >> This you think is Oh, for our fifth grade? Yes. >> Gosh. With history. >> Yes. Like 201 maybe or 14. Been a while. Yeah. For you guys. >> Any other questions about the TC? >> I echo what Michelle said. I love that we're moving back to books. It's like been such a pet peeve of mine that everything is on

068a laptop and I'm like, where are the textbooks? Shouldn't your backpack be heavy? >> Um, so this is great. I love this and I don't know the results of studies but I can imagine that actually having a book that our kids are going to be writing in is going to help their fine motor skills and I know that handwriting has been a big issue um because co and we haven't had any any uh practice with our handwriting. So this is great. I love it >> and I think a lot of what we're looking at is variety of different different kids need different things for access different tools and these sort of things. one way is usually not best for everybody. So that's part of it. Um the next one we're looking at is traverse. And

069this is for eighth grade US history, 11th grade US history, current world problems, and civics. And again, I'll kind of if you all do you want to share some of the things that you're excited about or that you felt as you tried with students? We didn't have a chance to do it >> web actually taught it. >> Yeah. And I'm going to say a few things for Kristen Garats who couldn't make it tonight. She's got a sick kiddo at home, but uh she sent me a few things. A little bit of feedback. So yeah, um Webb and Kristen had it in their classrooms for a couple weeks and we're doing some demo lessons. Um I guess my piece real quick as I was a part of the team for this. Um I love the variety

070like you guys already spoke to different ways for assessing students um and and accessing that knowledge that they've um found. Um and then also accessibility features um are awesome. And then just the way in which they sort of center um student inquiry um throughout the curriculum is awesome. So constantly asking questions that are uh maybe relatable to our constitution but also relatable to a 12 or 13year-old who might not care about our constitution yet. Um so they kind of find clever ways to uh make you think about things that you wouldn't maybe naturally think of um at that age. Um and here's Kristen's words here. So she said questions that spur conversation. Um and there are multiple levels of sentence starters to support our readers and our writers. Um she was working on a chapter

071u which was just like the beginning of the civil war. So in some pretty heavy material. Um she said she liked how both sides of a modern issue uh were connected to the chapter and presented with the opportunity for students to share their opinions, respond to others opinions. Um and from there she could sort of see how those responses resonated with her students um and could bring that student voice back uh into the classroom. So she appreciated that. Um, and then lastly, she just liked the way that you could customize um the chapters on the digital end of things and provide um uh certain sources and resources for the students uh without showing them too much as opposed to maybe a physical textbook where you could, you know, scroll through the whole thing and >>

072distract yourself from the task at hand. >> Yeah. I'll kind of echo what um Kristen said. Um there the scaffolding is great because you can do it for each individual individual student and so you can go you know with your ML population and you can do it with your IEP population. Um they only right now they only have one reading level down but you can also if you go to like inter beginning at um ML student like you multiple language student it'll even go a little bit lower. So you can you can get kind of the the you know kind of the lower kids reading levels there. Um the um the book um there the book has is mostly the primary sources. Um so it does a good job of having the primary sources right

073there for the kids to have access to. Um there is the thing I like about Traverse is it's not a traditional textbook as a as a whole. So it's it's really interactive in you know teacher student um discussion and student collaboration. And so it's not just sit there, read the chapter, do the questions. Um there is questions um I did this I did my um section on this one on just the great society of London Baines Johnson and they asked like you know kind of the they had like um a question they asked just give three words what you think about you know the this the great society and then they they get them and they actually created a whole document of like for each class like which words they use the most like you

074might have equality, you might have work, you might have poverty, you might have you know food or whatever it is so they can kind of see what other kids said too. We can kind we can have discussions with them. Um the teacher manual is pretty easy to understand um and kind of go there and get ideas to kind of like discussion questions and and and work with. So it really worked well um work worked well for the kids. They liked it. Um I the end of my two weeks I did one one program one week and another program another week. At the end I asked them which one they like better and it was three to one and traverse. Um, so it was, you know, pretty high like, you know, it was 40 basically 46

075to 14 and um, you the sample size I got and that they said, you know, I really like that one better because of what it just kind of the access to it. The questions they asked were they thought were better for them to kind of wrap their mind around of round of yeah around. And so that was kind of cool too. >> That that leads to one of my questions from all three of you. appearing similar keywords conversation student voice not traditional >> how are they being assessed that they've learned something >> um the assessment there is >> feeling a lot of feeling and conversation but >> yeah there still is >> each of the individual units has they have assessment questions um one thing we always do on our PLC's is create you know

076I always we always do it for every Monday is create a a form of a a formative assessment of the last week's work to make sure they you know they know it and make sure they what do we need to what do I need to teach differently and so I would still use it the same way and I think I did I also I liked about is it's easier I think for me to add more it' be easier to interject things through traverse than the other program so like you know we thought like one of the things that we talked about in 1950s is emit till well I've looked through a number of textbooks and no one mentions emtt yet if you think about so 50s he's a big part of that because what happened

077to him kind of spurred some of the things that happened later on and so I found it easier to kind of interject some things that I wanted to do through the traverse curriculum than another one so >> one of the things that the kids pointed out was different ways not just to test and so I think that is something that we looked for there's um discussion prompts in here for kids but there's also suggestions for the teachers of what to look for when you're listening to the kids discuss, right? There's things like that. Um, guides around that that help them to gather information in a variety of different ways from kids, which was something I think that was um, appealing >> as well, kind of related to your question. Um, and there's an inquiry for

078each kind of section. So, there's a larger project that kids are doing that they're kind of feeling to bring some of their own thinking and their own ideas. Yeah. Shame. So, that was something else. Um, couple other things in here. There's a lot of literacy supports. Web kind of talked about that a little bit, but another thing that stood out, I think, um, in their work was that it's chunked differently. Kids, it can be arranged. So, you know, some kids can't handle maybe as much information all at once. So, like you're saying, they can select just presenting small amounts at the same time. So, there's a lot of flexibility there. And then there's the physical books as well. Also again, there's sort of an opportunity for kids to be both engaging, but if there's a

079kid who needs to look at those sources and read them in paper, there's books as well. So, it's kind of a balance there, which I think was also something that the instructional materials committee voted and felt with students. >> These ones we wouldn't probably do that for, but they're the same resources are digital as well. So like they would have the uh >> and the other thing that I found like if you wanted to if you wanted to like change the reading level you can print them out. So you can act, you know, say you want to give a copy, you want you don't want to give a they might not have internet or they just like here just have a some people some kids just want to read paper copies and so you can

080just print one out you know and then they have a copy but it works better for like say you know it's nice for doing the other you know levels of reading and it does go into Spanish and it does read to you um it has a nice highlight and annotation tool and we did that as a class you know things like I tried out a lot of things with Okay, let's look for these kind of thing, these kind of programs and then put them on the annotations so everyone could see the annotations. So, it was kind of that was kind of a neat add-on. >> And these were your 11th graders. >> Yeah, that this was um both of them allowed translation in a number of different lang. So, there's a full translation in Spanish,

081but they also have the digital translation in all the other languages. So that was also something that was a >> well the other thing we saw too is also the the go the um Google read and write read and write over overlay worked with this one. It didn't work with the other book that we looked at. So for other students to speak other languages it gives them access. >> Any other questions? When would these be implemented is the >> next school year if it was adopted. Okay, Daniel, what's the cost? >> It's in my budget. >> It's within budget. >> It's within my Yes. >> Definitely. >> Okay. >> And um when we talk about two um having curriculum that starts in the younger ages, then goes up to older. Do these align like you

082want them to? I mean, are you seeing the crossover? I think we made a conscious effort to make sure that when we first started the process is trying to make sure that kind of we had a good vertical alignment from all the way from I don't know if we did the fifth grade from fifth grade all the way up to high school to make sure it was you know we weren't overlapping too much. >> Yeah. That's how we spent our first couple meetings together was kind of making sure we had a clear outline as to what we wanted to focus on across all grade levels. >> A story line. Yeah. connected to the standards. >> And I think that both, even though they're different curricula, they both have that inquiry thing. So the practice in

083fifth grade with inquiry is going to translate to what they're doing in eighth grade. And also the materials that we have in sixth grade are different as well, but they also have the inquiry component to them. Another question, please. Thank you for asking this brief. questions board members before >> adopting a new curriculum. I appreciate that. >> I think we're in a different age now where we're just aware, I would say more aware of the implications of of new curriculum and student learning. Student success looks very different across the board. >> Well, and the PLC's give us that gives us a betteration because we can't be in the classroom all the time. So seeing the data gives us platforms to ask questions I think. So thank you for spending the time on that as well.

084>> That's great. >> Without the VLC, we wouldn't know that it's a start to finish program. Right. >> That's fabulous. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. Um, and I do want to thank these this is a year-long process that they so they >> it's a lot of work that they took >> students for participating just like we're gonna throw a wrench in your cheers for two weeks and then we're going to go back to your regular schedule programming you know so that's cool they got a little >> and I I think the kids have been more involved in this one than than we have done previously as well and giving input and so I think that's been a really powerful new >> well the student new student voice you adopt

085going forward >> oh yeah I think it was super helpful I think it really gave a lot and Yeah, really good. I think it was 150 students who participated in that and >> and we shared it beyond um just this committee. I mean the folks that it's just good information for social status speaking in general. So it was yeah it's very helpful. I really um value. We've done a lot of student voice work this year and I think you've all we've been able to sort of see some of that and I think it's been really really helpful and supportive. >> It was a survey across 5 through 12. Is that what I heard? >> We we all done the menu classes. Yeah. Well, >> I even did freshman because I go, "This is what you

086might have when you are juniors. So, what do you I go this is your chance to say what do you want?" >> So, me and Steve Lawrence did three freshman classes total. That way, we have, you know, kind of a cross-section just not juniors who are leaving the program, but also, you know, freshmen that go, I'm taking US history in two years. What do I want in a program? I also want to say too is thank you for not being resistant because being having curriculum for a long time >> and being a legacy teacher if you will is we see that sometimes as people don't want change. So thank you for being a leader and helping the process. >> Thank you. >> Yes. I understand. >> I'm old. >> Thank you. I'm excited. I have

087a good >> job. I knew that Bill of Rights part was going to be >> a football game next week. >> Yeah. >> Did you want to look at the This is the eighth grade. You want to look at it. not right. >> Oh, I know. It makes you really appreciate it. >> Awesome. Um, next up, Dr. Kirk Arville. Um, new business person review policy and procedure fair 245 student use of personal electronic devices. Okay. >> All right. So, um, little timeline for you um before I introduce policy. So, this is yes, it's an update to an existing policy. Um, student use of personal electronic devices. Um, last year we started looking at this and in June of 2025, Lisa created a cell phone survey that went out to staff, students, and families. Um, in

088June, which is a busy time of the year, we received about 300 plus responses. From what I understand, that is the most responses we have had from other from our surveys. Um based on that survey responses, we then drafted a policy and procedure in October. Um updated that with survey feedback in November. Uh myself, Sean, Robert, Dr. Everett, reviewed feedback and continued to draft the policy procedure. In December, students provided input through their student advisories. And then we also drafted kind of the finalized version and we shared that with school admin uh for review feedback, final adjustments made. So what you see before you is really started last June and then came through to um probably January, February. Um the purpose of this policy is it aligns with the model policy from WADDA. WASDA has

089not updated their model policy since 2019. Um they're leaving it up to individual school districts to do the do the update. Um it aligns better with school procedures. So we wanted to align our policy with practice. um incorporates feedback from staff, students, and families. One of the things in and the board has the summary of the feedback in your board docs. One of the things I that caught my eye was teach cell phone use. And of the 300, that was the question. Should we teach cell phone use? And of the 300 plus responses, 113 said definitely yes, we should be teaching how to properly use cell phones for personal electronic devices. And then or 82 responded with probably yes, which positive me, I'm leaning towards yes. Um that we should be teaching. So So 195

090out of 300, even by my math, that's roughly twothirds >> of the survey responses said instead of a ban, we should be teaching the how how to utilize. And so what this what this proposed first reading of this draft of the policy does is it clearly outlines where cell phones can be used within the school day. Um at the elementary they're supposed to be put away, not at all. Middle and high school. Um it talks about silence and out of sight during instruction. They can be used before and after school, during lunch, and then during passing periods. So I think that the it clearly states that during class if you go to the bathroom no cell phones. Um and so trying to align with what is happening in the buildings. Um the other thing you'll

091notice is in the policy I believe um if you look at what was presented policy was completely rewritten um and is more explicit on when and how you can utilize them. um talks about prohibited use. Um talks about communication between students and families during the day. Um you know, one of the one of the comments that I heard from well when I was teaching um was how are my parents going to get a hold of me? And parents get a hold of you the same way they've always gotten a hold of you. They will either call the office and they will come get you. A personal story is when I was teaching freshman, I was teaching and my cell phone was going off. Back in the day, we had cell phones. The kids were like,

092"Mr. Harbble, your cell phone's going off." I was like, "You know what? If they need me, they're going to come get me." Went off honestly probably 10, 15 minutes. I should have probably picked it up, but I was not going to. Pretty soon, the high school counselor comes running into my room waving like, "Mr. Harville, your wife is in labor. You need to go. >> Kids were like, "Oh." So they were like, "Get." But it kind of proved the point of if they need you, they're going to come get you. I made it to the delivery. I made it on time. So um but the same same process happens. Um the procedure, if you look at it, um there's a new section again trying to add clarity to the front of it. And then under

093definition sexing and disrupting the learning environment, um there is some additions in there, but as far as policies go, this one's been um through kind of community, staff, student feedback um to to have what you have here now. >> And this is a first reading. >> So if you have questions, >> all my questions via email, >> you can send them via email. and we will strive to find out and and cell phones are a I will say it's a hot topic right now. >> Um >> we've heard from staff during public comment. >> You had you had Mr. Shik coming to you and didn't know so you you will probably get an email. >> Yeah. >> Um and second comment on that is policies and procedures are lovely on paper. Yeah. But implementation and

094staff training is a totally different topic. Yeah. And >> that's that's the second part of how this is successful. >> And I think I think we do have a we have a responsibility to teach our students. I mean cell phones I don't think they're going away. There is a trend of going back to the textbooks as we just as we heard, but I think our personal technology I think it's going to stay with us. So, so when they leave us and they go to college or they go into work, they they got to know kind of when if I'm an employer and I have a I have somebody answering their phone all the time, that's not going to work out very well. So, I think it's part of our job is to educate them on

095on how to do it. Part of that is we also need a model. Um, and I will self admit I'm not the best model of it, but something we we can work on. Okay. The other thing I'll say is as with all policies and procedures, as we gather information, more information, these can be updated. But there aren't very many policies and procedures that we put a survey out to the community to get students, staff, and um community feedback. >> I was going to say I like that. And obviously not every policy we we should do that with but like this one because you know family deal with that in the home teachers and students I think that's a great opportunity to involve the community. So >> I think that's awesome >> and then I thought

096it was going to be a telemarketer but it was called that story but way better. Well, and it it shows the accountability factor of that. It's class and home. >> And if if your phone has been >> confiscated as it says, >> it shouldn't be a surprise to the family. >> Yep. Okay. This is first reading, so as always, love your questions. >> Thank you so much. >> All right. Um, next item is bold business. Uh, first topic is Wacom Early Learning Center uh, discussion. So, no vote tonight, but the discussion and information um, board members will engage in a follow-up conversation with about the early childhood stuff. So, >> are you okay with an introduction to set the stage? >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> So, I think with the development of the Wakom County

097Skills Center, um what was born out of that was an opportunity to provide an early learning center to serve our youngest learners in the community. Um we're talking about three and four year olds who were supported with child care, early learning, while also providing place for early childhood education students attending the skill center to go and contribute. So they could do it in the morning, they could do it at midday or they could do it in the third session. The nice thing about this was to provide an extended day. So when we what we know from uh both the healthy children's fund and from the Watcom County uh comprehensive this is called SS CEDs. So Watcom County comprehensive economic development strategy is that in 22 to 26 they had forecasted by 2025 that we would

098have over 5,700 empty child care slots in Wak County. So when the question came up about why is there an interest in having an early learning center in Walker County, it's because it provides both economic vitality and provides families opportunities and benefits our youngest learners. Um, this has been an effort since 2023. I secured $15 million of free tax dollars to provide an early learning center to serve our youngest learners and make sure that we can have a modular district office because the place that's located is where the old district office is. So, 12 million for the early learning center, three for the district office. Um you as a board get to decide moving forward. In the past three years, every grant, every donation has come in front of this board and this board has

099approved them until the latest one from Watner County. Our district attorney has engaged with the county and given feedback to this date. I don't know if all board members have seen the responses. I haven't been able to get back to the attorney to share responses from this board. It's your job to decide what direction we go, but I would think it would be a tragedy for this board to forego $15 million of tax-free funding to serve our children and the people in this community. And I'm happy to answer questions, but I think the questions that you have to talk about are what is it that you are able to work with and you're able to feel good about, but I don't think the process with the county is done. I would recommend continuing to engage

100to find a solution. That's all I have to share. >> Thank you. Yeah, >> I I think everybody's asked really good questions. Um, and it sparked more questions, which I really appreciate. Um, and then it allowed us to ask our lawyer to basically do his job and due diligence to provide us with answers to things we wouldn't have thought that he brought back answers to. Um, I feel good with his answers. Um, I didn't there were some things I wasn't comfortable with at first and I was really um happy that Michelle asked a lot of those questions. Um, but after hearing the feedback from our attorney, I really do feel confident that we're moving in the right direction. Um, I just I think that sometimes we just have to feel that we have to give

101it to the person that's the job to, you know, like we give it to Daniel to do our money. We have to give those questions to our attorney and know that he's doing the the job of making sure that they're covering us. And I feel by his answers I I feel protected that he would steer us in the wrong direction. I do believe there have been changes to the scope of work and the perception of strings attached with some of the gifting from county. Um so I am on the outside side of that conversation where I am not comfortable with the language that remains in contract. Um it also was new information to me um that it's really all children in Wakom County and it's not necessarily Meridian school district children will be benefit from

102it from it. And when I looked at a third party provider of opportunity counselor, one of those income based learning centers, the wage ranges and median income falling between 51 and 61,000 per home to be eligible to receive that kind of care and services. The what I found for the median income for a Meridian school district within our boundaries was 91. some how many families including what was potentially our staff members or or what thought their children might be able to and actually be able to utilize those services. It's probably going to be much less than what we anticipated. >> That might Yeah, that might hurt as well as like some teacher like, "Hey, I might be able to use this simply for my kids to uh care, but you're making whatever it is at

103the middle school, then potentially not qualify." And so then the other verbiage around I know the welcome health department with not allowing us kind of say on on what the specialists are like some of the services. I know we spelled out quite a few. Those are those are really my two hesitations. So, >> but if they're in district, don't they get to use it? >> It's even based with those >> provider would be able the provider would be the one that would the provider would pay us >> and then the provider would source the Yeah, it's not accurate. So with the congressional directed spending, Alice is a factor there. There are income levels that need to be met. We as the lease would design whatever requirements would be necessary before you choose a provider. You

104get to set that up. You as the board would have that power. So it may be true to look at a provider now, but what they're doing currently doesn't necessarily mean that's the agreement we set up for the provider. We haven't gone down that road. We haven't built it yet, but it is it is both a requirement in several of the grants to make sure that we're addressing needs for early income early or income deficient early families. And we have the ability to even set aside slots for staff member kids. We could do it for foster kids. That's a huge issue in our county is placement of children that are younger than four. >> We can write all this. >> We can have all of that put in there. We're just trying to get the

105building built for all the money that's been raised. At this point, >> none of what we've done is dealing with who the provider is. That's correct. >> I think that's where there's variables that are outside our control. So, do we commit to a $15 million spend accepting grant dollars that do have requirements associated with them when there's still a lot of gray area? With all due respect, that was a reason five minutes ago you weren't willing to go with it because the providers weren't going to give them the options. So >> now you're saying that they have to give us the option, but we don't know. What you're actually saying is >> you need to read the grants. You've approved the congressional directives. No, the congressional directive grants and and opportunities are it's written in

106there and I can provide all of those to you again, but those conditions are things that that's what CSG is helping us navigate. what are the conditions that we have to have in place and it's to serve our most needy in this community and it is true it's not limited to just Meridian school district what is designed I won't be here right what is designed is up to the Dr. Carbal, Daniel, CSG, and all of you. >> Well, by design, the name is Wacom, Early Childhood, right? It's not just Meridian. >> Who's the other group for early learning at Wacom? There's another group out here. Never they've never liked that name, but it was a grant. We had to keep it the same name, but but when it gets a be a provider, we'll have

107to go through something to change the name. But >> yeah, we'll have to do a renaming. But >> but Wakom County Skill Center is that way because we don't want a student from Lyndon pulling in. It's the big M. I mean, it's a Watcom County asset, but that's different with the learning center. I don't I don't know if you'll want to call it Meridian. It certainly could be because kids from the skill center would come to the Liberate Center, right? So, after our discussion. Where do we go from here? >> I think if there's any additional questions, do we want to get those back to the attorney? Um, I think that I got a few from a few board members. Um, but I'll follow up with the other ones that haven't. Um and then the

108next steps would be yeah bring it to another vote if we so choose so or bring it to a vote. >> Yeah propos if we try to get it on the next agenda plus we can get those questions addressed that would be great. you and I suggest >> um I shared my response to our attorney's questions. I feel confident that we're in a position that we should move forward with this facility use agreement. I think in the larger in the grand scheme of things we I guess to an analogy we're in a housing crisis. The countyy's in our nation's in a housing crisis. And the irony is that we're putting up more barriers throughout this permitting process to get housing built, which then increases the cost of housing. And similarly, in this instance, we want

109affordable child care, and we want to do it for our county, but we're throwing up more barriers, going back and forth with our attorney with these questions that aren't relevant at this time, and it's increased cost. Um, they're down a lot. I think we need to make a decision now. If we don't make a decision, we're going to have providers that previously promised funding for us. Like I I sent an email to the board, didn't get a response. Um I know everyone's busy, but my concern is that if we keep putting off agreeing to this facility use agreement that providers that promised us this grant funding, they're going to find other nonprofits that need this funding. We need to make a decision. And I am terrified that we're going to lose this money and the

110project would be killed. We don't have the facility use agreement here on the agenda today. So, I don't know if it would be inappropriate to make a motion to approve that. It was in a previous uh packet. I'm not sure how >> it would need to have been put in before the meeting. I think the purpose was to have dialogue. >> Yeah. >> Right. So I I don't think that would be appropriate. >> Okay. So So moving forward, would the board entertain having a a special meeting um to approve a facility use agreement? I would hate to wait until our next scheduled meeting. Well, I think it's going to take a little bit of time to get some little bit of questions answered from the cherry. I think we have a little bit more, >>

111don't we? >> Yeah. So, it might take a couple weeks to just make sure we navigate that properly. But if we get them answered in time, there's would be no reason not to. I think we just have to have it before the next board meeting. >> Oh, okay. Which rule? >> 12th. Yeah. >> Or that Monday. I mean, we've Hey, I got to be 24 hours from >> Okay. >> Um, you just let me know the time and I can meet with you, Jerry. Okay. Any more on this topic? My next item is second review and approval policy 1440 uh in regarding minutes. Any questions, comments before we get a motion? >> Can I get a motion? >> I'll make a motion to approve uh policy 1440. >> Second. >> All those in favor? >>

112I I >> I thank you. Um, second review and approval policy 1610, the conflicts of interest districts with fewer than 2,000 students. Um, any comments, questions, or concerns? Can I get a motion? >> I'll make a motion to approve the policy 1610 of interest. I'll second. Go ahead. You go. I'll second. >> All those in favor? I Uh, last old business item is second review and approval policy 5411, staff vacations. Any comments, questions, or concerns, right? Can I get a motion? >> All motion to approve policy 5411. >> I'll second. >> Second. Any all those in favor say I. >> I. >> There you go. >> Thank you. The moment we've been waiting for the New York budget presentation 2026. >> All right. Hope you're all still awake and we'll uh engage for a little

113bit. >> Okay. So, this is the uh budget presentation for uh next year's budget 2627. Uh we will adopt the budget on June 17th. Um so we're just going through the presentation tonight. Um it's always nice when you can present it like one meeting before you adopt. It doesn't happen every year, but this year we're able to do that. Um stop me along the way if you have questions. Uh so this this first slide here is our budgeted enrollment um core programs 1540. Uh if you really it's it's pretty similar to the prior year. Uh as far as uh rolling up the each grade band to the next grade level. Early learning um is a bit interesting. We lost in the legislative session, we lost 20 FTE um in the transitional kindergarten program. Um so

114what we did is we applied for an additional 20 slots with the ECAP program. Um that's through opportunity council. Uh we were granted those slots. Um it's it's not net zero as far as funding. It's it's less funding than we were receiving from the state. Um and we are providing a similar service. Um as far as I'm kind of jumping a little ahead of myself, but the requirements um to get those kids enrolled in the ECAP program is a a little harder than the transitional kindergarten program. So, right now we feel like we can fill the 20 slots, but it's really going to be seeing what kids we actually have next year and working through that. Um, the MP3 program we have at 220 FTE. We've been hovering around 215 for a lot of years.

115the last couple years we were up at 220 and um really every aspect of this budget if if there were revenues that that we could capture or enrollment that we could capture we had to do so because it was a challenging budget year. Um on the flip side with the expenditures anywhere that we could make reductions we made reductions. Um, so we'll get into some more of those details as we go through. Um, but as far as the enrollment numbers go, there there's no u uh there there isn't really a lot of conservatism in there. This these are the kids that we expect to show up. It's they're it's not more, it's not less. It's really what we expect it to be. um where you know if in less challenging budget years you you would

116build a little bit of conservatism in there. That way if um enrollment doesn't show up it's it's not as big of an impact. So um it's just going to be a year where we have to watch things more closely. So Dan, correct me if I'm wrong, but this last year we didn't have all TKE positions filled and we paid for it from other funding. Correct. Not all of it came. How many? >> We were less one at the time at the end all but one. >> But prior to that during the school travel year, >> yeah, we we came out we had 44 allowed and we I think our average for the year ended up being 43. Yep. >> So, it wasn't an actual extra expense for the district. Everything was basically covered. >> The

117early learning program uh did have a shortfall off the top of my head. I can't remember exactly what it was for last year. This coming year it's $143,000. That money from >> that money comes from you know other pots of money whether it's state or levy whatever you want to call it but it's it's it's looking at the budget as a whole and then that is one of the factors that goes into there and needing to cover that that shortfall um Running start is probably another area to point out. Uh we last year the 25 26 we budgeted 60 students. Um in 26 27 we budgeted 70 students. Um and we actually had about 77 average throughout the year. It's um it's um it it seems like it comes in waves when where it will

118kind of really ramp up and this last year it really ramped up and um we budgeted for that. Um it's um most when you have a Running Start student, you're not retaining a lot of that funding. Most of that funding goes to the community college. We're paying out quite a bit to our u uh Wacom and um Wacom Community College and the technical college volume of BTC. Any questions on budget enrollment? Um if one thing is the bottom line of of the uh total for enrollment, it's it's going up. Sorry, I got confused myself for a second there. If you look at um these two columns, I was looking at the the one on the right instead and I confused myself, but we are up a total of uh seven FTE. That's not a lot.

119It's a little bit, but at least it's at least it's a positive number. But when you're uh when most of your funding is driven by your enrollment, that's it's kind of shows you the direction you're going. That make sense? Uh so the the general fund uh revenues and expenditures, we have we have a balanced budget. That's that's a pretty big deal. the first time uh when we went through this process, we really started by not we I don't want to take too much of of Kurt's portion, but um we we only added in the highest priority items and because we knew it was going to be a tough year. And then when we did that and we flushed out the revenues and expenditures, we were short $2.5 million. And that was kind of like an

120eye openening moment of okay, we got a lot of work to do and we've done that work and we've got to a balanced budget that that I do feel comfortable with. Um and I think we'll be successful. Uh the the fund balance um is budgeted at 3.5 million. I think that's a number that we can hit. This is the the breakdown of the fund balance. Uh that that first line that $20,000 has kind of been in there forever. That's that's some set aside uh that was committed. If it says committed, that means it's committed by um a board resolution. If it says assigned, it's it's u means it's management. Typically, it's me um or conversations with me and the superintendent. the um and then the un the unassigned I'll get to when we when uh

121we talk about each individual item. So the compensated absences that's just money set aside for um sick leave and vacation leave. Um there's a total of 700,000 for assigned contingencies. 350,000 is uh for major equipment repairs and replacement. I also put in this is new this year 350,000 um contingencies for financial stability. So because this budget is um you know grabbing every revenue that we can and um reducing expenditures quite a bit to get things to balance out. It just adds a little bit more risk. And so what this does, it it kind of gives us a little bit of a safety net if something doesn't quite come through. Um I lost my slide here. So for for example, um there well I'll get into kind of the revenues that this this will help out.

122Um but if so we've got we've had we've been pretty fortunate with our enrollment and it's it's stayed you know mostly flat and we haven't had an exodus of students but that's not the case for a lot of school districts and that so this could give us a little bit of buffer if we do end up not making our enrollment targets and again like I spoke to earlier uh we're budgeting right at where we expect the kids to be and we're we're pretty good at hitting those targets. Um, but still it's it's nice to have a little bit of of a buffer there. >> The last couple years about where our home is supposed to be and at 2030 or 20 like if you're consistently seemed flat, we were told we were going to have

123expansive growth. Are we not actually seeing >> think I don't often look at like long-term enrollment? We only do that when we're doing like a couple facilities plan. >> Yeah, that's where we respond. That's what we were sharing with. >> Yeah. And some of what's built in there for those growth points are when there's developments that are taking place and those haven't happened yet. >> And that's going to be more Cordata centered stuff that's just not happening quite yet. >> There's some small there's some small things, but I think I think the fact it's a projection, right? And so it's a best guess at a time. And so um what we've seen more accurately is there are drops in the number of students right so um you know your your question about the early learning

124the fact that the state did fund schools this year and they took well they funded schools they took revenue away has made not just early learning but lots of funds we have to find different places to fund what we need. So, the the critical piece is that he's got a he's got a black budget, which is awesome because there's some folks who aren't aren't hitting that, but those are good questions. >> Yep. Thank you. The uh the $60,000, you'll see this every year. It's it's usually pretty consistent. This is like carryover of funds. So, the funds are assigned to a specific purpose and there's some funds remaining. Um those get earmarked into into the fund balance and and carried over. Um it's it's usually about the same amount. It's usually about 60,000. The uh 2.2

125million is unassigned minimum fund balance policy. So um the board has a policy. It says between four and 5 and a half% is our minimum fund balance and then that amount is um you know set in its own code. um you know, most of that that along with the line under it, the unassigned fund balance, that's kind of like the very minimum that you need just for some cash flows. But honestly, you probably need a little bit more than that. And that's kind of where the the other assigned figures are that we have up above. >> When you say cash flows, are you talking about being able to pay >> Yeah. So, I'm uh it's like paying your bills each month. Um making payroll, paying your accounts payable questions on fund balance. >> Okay, here's

126some of the revenues. I you um there's a few kind of standout items. I'll go I'll speak to those in a little more detail and the other ones I'll kind of breeze through just because it's 7:00. Um local property tax that's up 234,000. When we go out for levies, we plan for it to go up each year. That's what that is. The aortionment that's went up by 466,000. That's uh really it's just those a little bit of additional enrollment that we have increase that as well as um like there was a state cola up to 2 2.6% cost of living adjustment. Um really no additional funding from the state that's like maybe a few dollars per kid for MSOcks. Like literally a few dollars nothing that adds up. Um, some you'll see in all the

127special ed categories, that's up from last year's budget because we had we had we were over in special ed by 33 students. So, that's a pretty significant increase from where we had bud planned on our special ed students to the actual students that we serve. We did a really good job of not having um too big of overruns in the special ed department as we went through there. Um so the special ed portionment that's up 119,000 the state speds four 447,000. Now the one under that uh special ed safety net. So what safety net is is for any student that is really high impact and you have to spend a lot of money on, you can apply for a grant called safety net. And what it does is it will provide funding above 40 the

128first $40,000 that you can target that you spent on that student. And uh we had it was pretty um it's likely pretty significant for the year that we are in um and and we've planning for for that next year. So you don't um we haven't typically budgeted for safety net because you don't um because a lot of times it's it's extra costs that you're you're getting throughout the year that that money will go towards. Um this year when we were you we had a $2.5 million shortfall. This is one of the areas that I had to really get precise on and um did some good estimates on how much we can expect to receive in safety net funding. It's $615,000. So if so that includes um things like student placement. Um I have the dollars

129in here. So student placement is like uh so well we have basically we have student placement that's about $300,000 and then we have I think about $320,000 for walk discovery that's for students. So, if if we don't end up spending the money on either of those, like we don't need to provide those services because we have a revenue tied to that, what I'm going to do is actually pull that money out of that the budget that it's sitting in. It's in the special budget right now. Put that in our capacity so we don't touch it. That way there isn't really a risk of accounting for the revenue because if the expense goes away um and we're not going to receive the revenue we'll we'll kind of wash out both of both sides of it. Does

130that make sense? >> Now is it allocated per what if we find ourselves in another situation where we need to do a second placement a third placement through the year can we still pull from that funding? >> You can pick it back up which we actually did this year. Um so there's like an initial application and then there's like a secondary application if you have you know major events or or um needs that come up that you have to um provide the um title one is showing up 54,000. So really, this is there's a couple of this is like a um this is a way to to be creative to help balance the budget. So there's this thing called transferability where you can look at your other title grants like title 2 and title 4

131and you can transfer grant funding that you have in those grants to title one. And the way that helps is in title one, you're mostly paying for your teaching staff, teachers and paras. And so it's money that goes directly to staff. And so what we've done is we've transferred um I think $48,000 from these other two grants to title one. That way we can it helps pay for h you know half of a teacher or whatever. You know it saves you from having to make a reduction. Um food service. I mean, you heard Aaron's presentation, all the things that she's doing and, you know, the scratch food as well as um I being able to eat for free has really increased our revenues in food service. um that pro so that program runs a little

132over $800,000 in expenditures and we have we're budgeting $825,000 in revenues. So it runs in the black and you're allowed to take a little bit of an indirect. So that's money that can help pay for um overhead and things. Um, but to even have a food service program that's running in the black is a is a um can be a rare thing and is a pretty big deal. So, kudos to Aaron on that, but that's a 159,000 increase. Um again it has the revenue comes with you serving more food you got to pay more in the expenses to prepare and um buy the food. Um transportation uh we're budgeting for an 84,000 increase. This is um we've did we've done some things with routing to to make it so we can count some more students

133than we did this year and um hopefully boost that up that $84,000. Um it transportation is an expensive program to run. Um it's it is there is a a shortfall um currently. Um, but we are hoping to to pull in some more revenue next year. This is one where and I'm a little less concrete on the exact number that we're going to receive. Um, but >> yeah, there's a transition right now. If you remember in the legislative session, they went from 13 year 15 year. So, I think that's affecting the >> depreciation. Yep. Oh, our expenditures are 1.7 million for that program where our revenues um a little less than 1.6. Um still not bad as far as transportation departments go. I don't know how you could run it more efficiently than than what we

134do, honestly. Um it's pretty lean. the the tech levy is so the the way the tech levy works is the levy funds go into the capital projects fund and then we spend those dollars out of the general fund and then in August or sometimes through the middle of year if we need more cash in general fund but typically in August we'll do we'll look at the actual costs that we've spent transfer those dollars over from the capital projects fund to the general fund that's what that $1.1 million are. And um right now, you probably heard Joe talk about it. We're doing a major device replacement and that's happening this summer and then next year. And so, uh we've saved up $617,000 planning to do this this uh device replacement. And so we budgeted to be

135able to spend those dollars next year. And so that's um that's what that 617 is. So that's something that's kind of a number that would I would say if you're looking at a couple of things that um would boost up that 40 million. It's it's the tech levy fund balance transfer of 617,000 and then that safety net of 615,000 are both kind of um new things. replace on an upgrade. Does that 617 cover it or is there potential for additional financial liabilities? >> I mean really that it that I mean we're not going to spend more than what we have but costs are kind of all over the place for technology right now. Um, I think so. The purchase that we're making this summer, we're getting devices on June 15th. That's about a million dollars.

136And we ordered those I think in February. Jump in if I if I speak incorrectly, but those have what they're like quadrupled the price. Yeah, we we secured devices in February with agreement that the vendor was going to hold them for us and then to be delivered to us during summer. Um but we wanted to lock in pricing that same device as of I looked last week to just see what the price was. It had more than doubled the cost in what four monthsish and so it's very volatile right now. >> Way to lock it in. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Thank you. It was good planning, honestly. That is >> It was good planning. Um, so yeah, we're not going to overspend what we have, but you know, Joe's really tracking the whole life

137of the Liby and um and planning all things these things out and estimating inflation. And so it really kind of just depends on how the inflation actually ends up being to where the estimates are. Um, questions about revenues, >> questions about expenditures. >> All right. Okay. So, Kurt's going to run through um a few of the slides here and then I'm going to jump back in. Uh Kurt just has a really great understanding of all the staffing adjustments that that we made and so he's mostly going to be speaking to that a little bit about the process here in the beginning. >> Thanks Daniel. So I guess highlights um it says up there we started the conversations in December for the project for this year. In reality, we probably first started them when the board

138approved the budget because typically we would approve the budget and then we would have we get wants and we get needs from from buildings and the writers and and what we noticed this year is there were very few of those. Um we didn't have very many postbudget ads. We had some but each one that that came went to exact team and it was discussed is there a different way to do it or we yeah can we solve it in another way and so I think that really limited some of our postbudget ads. So we started talking about this one in December but in the back of our mind it's been we knew this discussion was happening and we know it's going to be the same situation next year. So they're they're kind of ongoing. As

139Daniel mentioned, we looked at a district-wide budgeting process. So previously we went school by school and principles and and department by department and everybody got to put in their wish list and and this time we still gathered that information, but we looked at holistically what are our priorities and how do they align to the to our commitments that you see up on on the wall. Um, we had planning um for multiple contingencies if we were I have a a document if we are 500,000 in short, if we're a million, if we're 1.5, if we're two, if we're 2.5 and with different options of what's available. >> Um, you mean reductions? what kind of reductions we need to meet to hit that threshold >> to meet that threshold while serving students um in our in our

140grade bands. Um and how do we how do we make that work? Um and then the other thing we is how do we utilize our existing staff to provide those services to our students. So, if we have staff with multiple endorsements, then they may be asked to teach a class that that maybe they haven't taught or maybe it's been a while or maybe it's not their preferred, but we're using utilizing our staff's endorsements to serve our students. Um, and then finally, and I talked about this, but if we had a vacancy, um, do we need to fill if we do, can we fill it internally? Um, do we need to go out and hire somebody or how do we how do we adjust that? Um, goals of the budgeting team. Daniel mentioned when we first

141ran the budget, we had a $2.5 million shortfall and there was some bubbles and then Daniel went through and reanalyzed the budget and we reduced the budget in that expenditure which is a lot of HR by about roughly one and a half million. Um, the goal always is, and we've had this motto for, and I think it's always been our motto, but if we hire you into an ongoing continuing position, we want to maintain our staff. Um, and I feel like, um, and I'll get to it actually next. So, questions on the process. Okay. um the method we used and and this is similar to what we've used this meth method um for really past three years um when we are when we're talking about transferring staff from building to building um several years ago

142we we transferred our um our Spanish teacher from the from the high school to the elementary because they had an endorsement and then we transferred our middle school Spanish speaker to the high school based on endorsement and then you don't have Spanish teacher at the middle school, but those are some of the transfers that we utilize. Um the CBA allows for that. So if a staff member wants to get up to the high school um and they're at the middle school, then there's language in the CBA that by March 15th, if you submit a transfer letter, um you get first priority, so to speak. So >> CBA, >> collective bargaining agreement. Thank you. Um and we have we have uh that's mainly for certificated teachers that language classified is based on senior um shift we

143can shift teaching assignments in the same building. So we talk about those endorsements. So if you have a math and an art and you've been teaching math the whole time then we may ask you to teach an art class because that's where our students are. We have the higher numbers there. And then reduction. Are we reducing a position? are we either moving the person to another position and not back filling that position and we utilized all three of these methods um this year um I've already talked to uh analyzed each vacancy um and then the bottom one is reductions and we have gone through this process now Daniel this is our third year >> third year >> of going through these having these conversations and Our goal as I said previously is always we want

144to maintain our ongoing continuing staff and we've over these three years we've reduced one position for our district I think that's huge and if you just have to look at neighboring districts that that's not that's not the case in other districts and that's nothing against them they have a different story but our story is we've been able to make these reductions and maintain our ongoing continuing staff. And that ongoing continuing is important because um you might be hired as a lead replacement. So someone goes out on leave and we need somebody we need to teach or to serve those students. So you're on a leave replacement. For classified, we have temporary contracts for a one-year home. For certificated teachers, for teachers, they have what's called a provisional status and then they go into continuing. And

145so if you're a brand new teacher, you're in provisional status for three years >> and then you go into continuing. If you're a teacher from Ferndale with 15 years of experience in Ferndale and you move into Meridian, you you're hired here, then you have one year provisional. And what that provisional status does is it allows the district for what I'm learning almost any reason to not hire you back. we just have to notify you by May 15. Um and then we try not to use that um in a reduction format because we may we may need that position. So clarification y >> three years basically provisionary probation time for someone fresh out of college >> brand new teacher brand new to the >> one year for that >> yeah so I want to celebrate that

146we've gone through these reductions and we've maintained our staff how we did that some examples um leadership so building leadership changes um Irene Ryther an an assistant principal with shift ed transferred into a vacancy at the middle school. Um that middle school vacancy was available because that teacher had put in a transfer request to the high school. Um, and so during the budgeting process, one of the priorities that we outlaid for the district was Irene is a is a large elementary and we have bounced back and forth between one assistant principal and a principal and two assistant principles and a principal and we went back to the two assistant principles and a principal. Um, and when we shifted those staff into those positions, we did not backfill that. So, one of the staff members who

147went was a coach, ML coach, went into the assistant principal, and we're not backfilling that ML coach for the primary grades. Another staff member will assume will take on some of that coaching. Um, the other one was a dean of instruction. they moved up to the assistant principal and we're not back building that in construction. So some of those reductions um result in savings and when we do that we're not just moving up um we are okay who who has finished their admin program who is next in line to to step into that role. So it's very thoughtful. The other the other thing I would add is those two with the expertise that they had in those other roles, they'll still share that expertise in their new roles as administrators, but probably not exclusively, right?

148>> Instruction. How are we going to kind of still try to >> serve that? >> Both of those new assistant principles plus Tyler have a very strong instructional background. Okay. and and I will say across the board our assistant principles and principles have a very strong instructional core to them. Um, another area that we we uh made some savings from is as we know Dr. ever is going to anortis and I'm stepping into the interim superintendent role and but I'm not backfilling my position and so that from Dr. Everett's salary total salary to my salary is a savings that we that we are recognized and it helped us balance the budget. Um and then what's happening is some of my job duties will be distributed and we're working through that process now. um to Adrian

149and Julie and so we're working on that process now. Um the other change we made is um custodians are returning back to director of maintenance and operations and so Taylor is taking on that and that what that does is that will I won't say allows Bryant to focus on the athletics um and the big job that that is already question so far and then some of the teaching um we talked about the Irene AP transferred into the social studies position. Um, we talked about the two shifted TOAs. Boy, I got ahead of myself. And then we also talked about the NEACBA and those transfers that the SE collective bargaining agreement with Radian Education Association allow. Um, we also had some we have some creative um where we had some 1.0 positions and we didn't need

150a full 1.0 0 in math based on student enrollment at the high school. So we posted for a8 and then we still had that 1.0 position but we took 2 of it and we added it to this position over here. So in this particular case we used some creative bookkeeping to get a point8 math position a 1.0 CTE with another specific endorsement and then a 0.8 PE. We had a high need in PE. Um, and so we created a position for a point8. It's not a 1.0, but it's a point A. They'll support PE and health next year. Um, and that's based on enrollment and numbers of basically our sophomores have to take health. And then we are also um we also had a high number of students taking P. So that allows us to

151do those. >> Question. What does TOSA stand for? >> Teacher on special assignment. >> And what does a 08 >> teacher look like on the ground? >> Point8 teacher would be if you have five periods during the day. >> Okay. >> And both semesters, >> then that's a 1.0 teacher. So point eight of that might be you're going to teach four sections, semester one and four sections semester two. You're just not teaching the full skip. And then Daniel's already talked about some of the early learning. Um, but as a this was one of those discussions that we had as an executive team and as a budget team is we placed a lot of value in that early learning and so we wanted that to continue. um we are seeing results from those students who are

152in that early learning program um as they're moving up into kindergarten and first grade. And so we we as a district thought this is something that that's important and we want to continue. >> Um but at a shortfall of $143,000 and it didn't come before the board to also >> Yep. We we talked about it and then we also were financially able to absorb it from other areas. And I'll let Daniel's kind of talked about it. He could talk more specifically about that. But >> yeah, I mean it's it's kind of it's similar to what we had this year in 2526. if we're going to and to to drop that program would be a pretty major decision that I think would take a lot of planning if we're going to get rid of the that

153program. That's five It's five classrooms. So that's five teachers and is there two and one pair per um classroom. So that's 10 staff members that you know would be out of a job, right? Um there's there is some there is some value that the special ed department gets from having early learning program where if those kids do qualify for special services, they can receive that funding and in those instances that money's been put towards the preschool program. So there's some some benefit there. So, it's you um yeah, I I think you if that's if that's a direction the board wants to go to get rid of that program, I think it's it's kind of something we'd have to start planning for pretty far in advance. >> I I do believe other districts are cutting some

154of their TK. I think I had heard Lyndon and maybe Blaine, >> they didn't receive. So, what happened is there was a cut. So we talk about revenues from the state, they actually cut 33% of TK funding statewide based on a crazy DCYF map that was never intended to be used for this purpose. OSPI decided where there would be cuts across the state to programs. And so if you haven't had TK, you could get it now. you do have it, depending on what the housing and this map provided, you lost some of those seats. We've consistently had about 84 students that we were serving in our community. And so we knew that we were going to lose some, but we didn't know how much. We ended up losing 56%. >> Yeah. And we lost >>

155Yeah. Out of out of 44. So, so we began having conversations with ECAP, >> the child uh assistance program. Thank you. >> And correct me if I'm wrong, but that takes additional time from the teachers to document fall within the parameters to receive that. >> Not anymore. We've worked through that. So, there is some additional training and and um it may not be fully accurate to say not anymore, but we've we've got procedures or Irene has procedures now that that team comes in and they're ready to go. Um and so we we did have a conversation about do we drop it down to four classes, do we drop it below? We don't we also had to play with timing on May one when heap and DCYF was sharing what slots they were going to provide.

156And this has been a pretty strong program with the Radium School District. From 2018 to this year, we got a 250% increase in the number of three and four year olds that we're serving. And those kids are doing really well. It's an investment in the in the way our kids are learning and how they're performing as they go through our system. So that's I mean I I think Dana could go through several areas of our budget that's not funded by the state and we're using different funds to try and make our program work and we've been able to balance it. >> And do we know are all of those students already district students? >> Oh uh I believe so >> they have to go through a transfer process. Oh, >> yeah. >> There is there

157are some in that program that are out of district >> and we're not receiving funding for them. >> No, we receive funding. >> But we have 143,000 right. >> We're still receiving funding for them. But even with the students in that program, we're at that 143,000. So, and we did run scenarios with we had, you know, a giant spreadsheet that would calculate what the short pole is for three classrooms and what the short pole was for four classrooms and what the short pole was for five classrooms. And if we were to not, you know, if we were going down classrooms, then we're not asking for the additional 20 ECAP slots. And the shortfall was higher for three and four classrooms. Like this was the the best the most cost effective option. They they all had

158shortfalls, but three and four classrooms that shortfall was larger than than the five classrooms. So, you're kind of at a okay, do you completely kill the program and not receive any of the like the TK funding and the ECAP funding or do you go for the option that is is the best cost option and you're s you're serving um how many kids was it? >> 84 years. you know, serving 84 kids and providing 10 jobs. So, that's kind of that's kind of where we landed and why we landed there. I think it would not to say I think it would just take a a pretty big shift to go away from a program once you once you start that program. and um >> and with choice sorry >> we try to fill from within first

159and so we're holding off on some of the choice applicants until we have a better understanding of how many of our within this school district students we get to serve and that's that's true for all of our random choice students is we we kind of hold off on accepting as we get closer to the fall so that you can see what enrollment is, where we have space and and if we have to the students, our what I'll call legacy choice students, the ones who have been um admitted four years ago, we just they're included in our in our enrollment. So, we just roll those up here. um that help with that. >> Yeah, I just I mean it's hard for me to as we've mentioned before, we don't have a lot of revenue streams Meridian.

160We fund through levy dollars and tax dollars. So to share that we have a shortfall of $143,000 and we have out of districts coming in. That's a hard cell. >> But we receive revenue for our choice students. We see we receive the same amount. But would we if they're cutting TK? >> Not if they're if we're cutting funding for TK. We I would assume that would apply to those students. >> I see what you're saying. The funding matches the number of students we get. So the reason when when we had 44, but now we have 26. We only get funding for those 26. So what we did is we added 20 ECAP be able to make up that difference. So the way that I think what I hear you saying is where's that shortfall coming

161on TK where it came from is 26 more of TK students not coming to Meridian. So we backfilled with 20 students of ECAP so that we're able to serve the same amount of students. It is still the best investment in money that we could provide for our students in this district to spend funding on um students that are being remediated. I would say you're going to get much better investment of the funds that we have in the district and we're still able to balance a budget by using early learning for that area than you were going to do re remediation. So, and then one more topic on the expenditures. As part of that, um district-wide budgeting, we it was determined that we needed um another special education teacher at Ryder. Uh and what this does

162is this brand new teacher will help case load in the collective bargaining agreement. If a special special education, they have case loads. So as a special education teacher, I have and I've thrown this out because I don't know off the top of my head. Let's say I have 30 30 students on my case load and that's my capacity. that if I go up to 32, then they receive 125 each for those two additional students. So, we have some prior to adding this teacher, we have some special educational teachers at Iron Rider who were over their case load considerably. And so while it is extra extra dollars funds for that staff member, that's also extra IEPs, that's also extra time and that leads to burnout. Um, and so by adding this special education teacher that takes

163down that case load, um, we can identify this one I believe will be for urban learning to support that that group as well. Um and so case load reduction and then also targeting the specific population. That's a summary of the expenditures. Um questions about staffing before we move on to the the non-staffing costs. Okay. U just Okay. So on the MOC side of things that that just uh basically stands for anything that's not salary and benefits. Um I think is material supplies and overhead costs. Um the I think everybody's aware that inflation's just insane right now. Um everything costs more. Um there's there's some areas where we know costs more that we didn't add more budget to it because we just didn't have it available to balance the budget. And so, you know, in some

164ways that does act as a as a reduction because you're you're working with the same amount of money even though it costs more and so you your purchasing power is less. So that that is a real thing um that we will feel next year um and have been feeling the last couple of years. These are I wanted to include there's some really specific areas that cost are uh that went up incredibly high. Um the risk pool went up 48%. So, that's $275,000 that we had more that we're spending next year on the risk pool than we spent this year. Um, but I'd say if you're going to pull a positive, the one positive thing about this is we did get a final number before adopting the budget so we could build this in. So, it's

165not something that we have to solve next year. We've already solved that. The money is set aside to pay those bills. fuel. We budgeted for a 24% increase from where we budgeted last in 2526. Now that that doesn't necessarily mean um that's that's from budget. So we know we spent fuel has already gone up in cost. So we're already spending more than we were expecting to spend. Um, this would probably be an area that I'm I feel fortunate that we do have some money set aside in case there's some overruns in the fund balance because honestly I don't know if this would be an area that I think mid year or towards the end of the year we might be running out of fuel budget. That is a possibility. Um, even from when we set

166the budget it feels like uh fuel's going up more and more since then. um utilities. Um all of the utilities went up. Most notably is Puget Sound Energy at a they're projecting a 15% rate increase in January. Um unfortunately that that'll hit everybody, not just the school district. Uh utilities will be another thing that we're going to have to watch really closely next year. uh because I I I really looked at specific lines and tried to estimate what we need. There isn't really capacity. There isn't like an an extra amount in there. It's really our best estimate today on what it's going to cost next year. Similar to how we treat treated everything within this budget period. Um food um we're increasing 27% from the prior year. Just just the um obviously the cost of

167food but also serving meals questions on on those ones. Um another Okay. Um also in the Mox. Okay. Okay. So, here's those numbers that we talked about earlier. Um, the out of stages, but both both of these items are we say safety netable. So, it means they cost over $40,000 for that individual student and we can get some of those money back and we have budget for the revenues. Um, on the expense side, student placements we budget 315,000, welcome discoveries 320. Uh, one of the exercises after we had that initial moment of we were short, two and a half million, um, I spent um, over eight hours just going through every single budget line within the budget and looking at a 5-year trend and where we've spent and any of the any line item that

168I could make a reduction in that I felt that we could absorb and, you know, we weren't spending that money um I made a reduction and I was able to reduce half a million dollars that way and that's you know directly saves jobs and and helped us balance the budget. Um if you going through that process every department got some form of a reduction. It's not an equal. It wasn't like okay we're cutting 10% from everybody. It was more looking at where we're actually spending the money, where we need to spend the money, and anywhere that there's some capacity to to reduce, I reduced. But it will it will impact some departments more than others. And I'm kind of working through some some year-end spending on those departments right now. looking at some money that

169we some budget capacity that we have this year in 2526 to do a little bit of spending like some pre- purchasing for uh consumables and and that type of thing to to help them out next year. And if it continues, we'll we'll watch it, see how next year plays out. If if there are areas that are struggling more with this reduction, then then we can adjust in the in the following budget year. This slide is here because it's legally required to be here. Um, and a number of years ago, the legislators added some money to MSOC and and I I guess they thought that districts weren't going to spend all that money on the Mox. So now you have to do this comparison of what the state funds you for your MOCS. again your non-employee

170costs to what you're budgeting to spend. Um the state funds us for about 2.5 and we spend about 4 almost 4.6. So that's a shortfall of $2 million. Um if you look at just those four items two slides ago, that's $2 million on Mox and just utilities, fuel, food, and insurance. So it it adds up quickly. The ASB fund I feel like we have a very solid solid budget here. I don't think there's any risk of us exceeding our budget authority. So the revenues are at $46,000. Expenditures at 432,000. That's a $26,000 shortfall. Um you will see a shortfall sometimes in ASB if if um the high school or middle school are planning on spending some funds that they built up. So you would you would have some builtup revenues and you'd spend uh spend

171that in a later year. Also um the middle school has just been kind of struggling on figuring out how to generate revenue within the ASB. It's hard to do fundraising now. um um at that age group. And so it's it's something that um they're working through. Uh one of the one of the reductions that we made in that that half million dollars that are reduced in MSOC, uh we were when we got rid of fees for ASB cards, um we were backfilling that. So with the general fund, that backfilling has gone away. So that's $16,000 10 at the high school, six at the uh middle school that they will not be receiving from the general fund. So that's something that we're going to have to keep an eye on as well. Um >> is there

172is there a reason there's statement? >> Yeah. To reduce barriers and some districts have done that and to increase student participate things at school. Some districts Like we said, we've got other districts who are in more difficult financial circumstance than us that they're they're reinstituting needs. And so that might be something that we have to but but the reason why we reduced them to reduce barriers. >> We've had to play and we've had >> Yeah. But probably not for six years. Yeah. >> So that's something that we'll probably need to evaluate next year. in the budget process to see if kind of see see if the ASB is struggling and they and they need those funds and and if so maybe we reevaluate the fee schedule that we have. It's it's either that or I

173mean there's kind of three options you evaluate if they're struggling if ei one option they're not struggling it's okay you don't have to do anything. um they're struggling, then we would re-evaluate the fee schedule and potentially add fees or we would need to um budget add that money back in from the general fund to support the ASB. And there's a little bit of that same kind of thing with with um high school fees as well because they were they were charging fees and we no longer charge fees at the high school level. The last time you charged for an ASP, was it like 20 bucks a card or what was it? I see 20 or 30 >> somewhere in there. >> I'm not sure. Sorry. >> Go back six years ago. >> Right. Um the

174debt service fund. This one's pretty simple. So this is the only thing the debt service fund is does is uh pay our bonds and collect levy funds to pay for those bonds. And so um the the the bond payments that we have that we budgeted for here all related to the $17 million bond that was passed in 2010. So there's a few more a couple more years on that. Um it expires in 2030. Um, and you do see that the expenditures exceed revenues a little bit. That's just because um, you don't want that fund balance to go too high. There's kind of like a calculation that you do of based on bond payments of, you know, X dollars, you want to have a fund balance of Y. And so I work with the bond council

175on figuring that out and how much money we need to levy each year and whatnot. Um and this is kind of puts us in um that sweet spot. Um couple projects fun. This one's um I guess a little bit more of a complicated topic. Um the just going through the table up top the revenues are 8.3 million expenditures 8.1 um the other financing uses so what this is that this is that transfer out that I was talking about um from the tech levy so it gets budgeted in um to come out of the capital projects fund so of that 1.7 million 1.1 are new levy dollars that we're collecting and $600,000 of that um are those savings that we um have been saving for those devices. So the fund balance for the devices um right

176now the the fund balance is estimated to be about 2.2 million and then the change in fund balance is uh almost 1.6 leaving the fund with 640,000. So, this uh I think it makes more sense if I talk about what's what's in those dollars. There's the Wacom Early Learning Center. That's a $12 million project that's currently budgeted in the capital projects fund. Um 40% of the project is budgeted in 2627 and 60% uh would be budgeted in 2728. Um 3.6 6 in revenue and 4.7 expenditures. So, you've got expenditures exceeding revenue because we've already collected some of those donations. Um the the next one on there is the the skill center. That's projected to be a $60 million contract that's funded by the state. When it when it if it gets approved, it'll be funded

177by the state. The expected start date is 2829. So you it's nothing in this year's budget, but in the four-year budget, it would be in there. Um the the district office and Wakom County skill center classroom. I didn't I didn't realize those two projects were tied together. So, I'm I'm I guess I'm um a little confused about a statement that I'll make later on that, but that's 2 point that's almost 3 million. Um and that would be a one-year project that would happen next year if that would to go forward. Um the then there's the capacity for district works. That's half a million dollars. So that would pay for like if if something we had a something broke like for example right now um and we're able to get a grant for that. So right

178now um Irene Ryder building a B roof. So we we we got a grant from the um from the state to help us pay to replace that grant. So we were going to end up paying $50,000 out of the capital project fund. the rest of that repair will be paid for up by this grant. And so it's that kind of thing. And because we had budgeted half a million dollars in the prior year for this district works project, it allowed us to do this without a budget extension. Um then there's the technology levy. We talked about that before. That's in there. Um interest mitigation fees are in there as well. So June 17th, we need to adopt a budget. And right now, um, there's a couple projects in here that I know there's we're undecided

179on if we're moving forward right now. So, I kind of see that there's like a couple of potential solutions. there's if you leave it the way it is and just have those projects in there as as like a capacity, it doesn't mean that the the board has to move forward with any of those projects. So, that's one option of leaving as is. The other option is if you guys were to direct me to to pull that or direct us to pull those projects out of the budget so you can adopt if if that's what it takes to feel comfortable with adopting and then if we are able to move forward with the projects then we could we would have to do a budget extension to add those back in. So that's you know that's more

180cumbersome. Um, but some some form of a resolution on this would need to take place before, you know, I I want to bring a budget to you guys that everybody's okay with floating to proof. Does that make sense? >> On the 17th. That's um so I don't know if that guess I'm any discussion on that or or but I I at least wanted to bring that up. Do you want me to explain what the classrooms are? >> Yeah, that >> so a state proviso for three million does on one side 11 offices and conference room for district office. The other side has four classrooms so that we can start it takes about 3 months to put this up because it's modular. We can start providing additional skill center classrooms or programs right away. We knew

181when we applied for the skill center it would take four to six years to get it going. So it allows early childhood ed, maybe surge tech, something that doesn't require a lot of equipment. The classrooms are already there. And then once the skill center proper gets built, those four classrooms can be used for district training. You can get your schoolboard room back, things like that. >> And and where did all of that funding come from? >> That was a state proviso working with Joe Tenons and state budget committee. So, not >> not tax dollars, >> but not connected to you were saying you were surprised it was connected to something. >> I didn't think it was connected to the Walom U Health Department in any way. >> It's not. >> Okay. >> It's connected to

182the skill center. So, it provides four classrooms for the skill center. >> Okay. >> That's what I thought. when you were presenting earlier speaking to the 15 million. >> No, I was just talking about how much I have security for the two for the two. >> So I don't doesn't sound like there's um an issue with that project. Ready for the next slide? Okay. It's all smooth sailing from here. The transportation vehicle fund uh revenues uh we have budgeted at 301,000. Expenditures we have have at 250,000 um uh which would increase the fund balance by 51,000. Beginning fund balance um is 460,000. Um so that would uh we budgeted to go up to 511 at the end of the year. So um the rules have changed as far as the depreciation payments. So taking a

183step back, the only the transportation vehicle fund receives depreciation payments for every bus that we have on the depreciation schedule and then we use those funds to buy buses. That's it. That's the only thing it does. it is allowed to pay for major equipment breakdown like um you know transmission or engine failure. Um you typically don't want to do that because then you won't have enough to buy your buses like to keep replacing your buses. So, we're kind of taking it easy and only buying one bus this next year. Um, because we want to really give the the new depreciation payment schedule time to to flush itself out and then and then we can kind of make sure we have the best replacement schedule going forward um for the future years. questions on TVF. Uh,

184one of the things that we have to do is a four-year budget. This is called the F195F. I'm still working through this and in the review with the ESD, so I don't have that for you today, but I'll I'll have that on the 17th to go and I'll go over that. I won't I won't run through this whole budget. If if there are any changes, um I'll let you guys know, but otherwise I'll just run through the F195 app and and we'll do the budget hearing and whatnot questions. Thanks for hanging in there. It's late. I >> Sorry. >> Yeah, sure. speaking family. >> Um, and I don't expect you to know off the top of your head, but I had a conversation with a parent and she brought up a great question and I

185wanted to um get some clarity on the technology fund. Um, I know that you and Joe mentioned that we're getting new devices this next month, I guess it is. Um, that we secured in February and we locked it in at a great price. Thank you. Awesome foresight on that. Um, do we have that delineated by where those department or I guess if those department devices are going to specific departments or by grade level or how do we separate those that >> Yeah. >> Do you want to speak to that, Joe? I mean, I could probably wing it, but >> yeah. So, we we shifted with the levy to doing all of our devices and mass so that way we have a consistent platform for every kid. And so it makes it it's an efficiency for

186both our technical side and our teaching staff. So you know that everybody has the same makes curriculum adopted. So this is all of our student devices. >> Okay. So every device throughout the whole district is being old. >> All of our Chromebooks, they should clarify on that. We do still have iPads that are K1 or TK1. >> Okay. >> Um those are not scheduled for replacement, but all of our student Chromebooks are slated for replacement this fall. And what grades do we provide Chromebooks for? >> Uh sec through four. >> Okay. The um the conversation that I had with a parent um from an optometrist perspective and concerns about having iPad and Chromebooks at early ages um and I'm kind of wondering what amount we all lot for technology and iPads specifically um for prek

187and kindergarten, first grade um and then it sounds like second grade is when the Chromebook starts. So, moving forward, if we aren't updating lease agreement for the iPads, um when when does that come up for discussion? >> So, so we own all of our devices, so we don't don't lease. We did lease initially just to get us because we were we got the devices before our actual levy funding actually stopped. So, we did have to lease, but we no longer lease devices. Um right now the replacement cycle on the iPads um is more driven by um iOS updates and our curriculum was driven. So right now we are still okay that the iOS updates have stopped at the previous version but the devices still function fine and our curriculum software hasn't been updated to require

188a newer iOS version. So we kind of chase um both our vendors and Apple as far as when we replace them. >> Okay. >> So should we are expecting that we will be able to use go ahead pads for another year. Um but then by the 27 28 school year we'll have to look at some form of replacement >> If we want electronic breaking >> there'll be a conversation with the building and >> and there was at this round as well. We we've had that. Okay, that's great to know. I I would love to uh or I look forward to 2027 to talk about what that would look like. >> Thank you. Appreciate it. >> Okay, so let's do this as fast as I can. Main enrollment compared to April is about the same. uh

189the May compared to the budget or you know we're basically flat or we're down eight from the core up eight for MP3 as you can as we talked about earlier special ed's up 33 that's pretty big running start was up as well how to do this without breaking it just still here. So, you're okay. >> All right, let's make this a little bit bigger. Okay, we won't spend much time on this and either I'll probably talk about some year in finance stuff more next month when I haven't already talked for an hour. Um, April, we're looking at April. April's our tax month. So, you see big taxes coming in, 22 2,461,000. You you'll see taxes coming in for the debt service fund and the capital projects fund um as well. It's a big revenue month

190for the district because of that 5.1 million right here in the blue. Um on the expenditures side, salary and benefits were about um average out. It was a huge accounts payable month, $933,000. Um as you can see compared to the other months, that's quite a bit more. We paid Wacom Community College and PTC for for our running start for um for winter. And then we also paid the insurance pool. So those are the three expenditures that really jacked that up. Um the um so total expendure is 3 point almost five and we're a little bit below the um budget percent actual and ending fund balance is about 4.7. This will be like when after April hits that's always the high water and you kind of spend down from there. Um I'm doing just one thing

191to point out. So if if you look at July, $1.5 million is in here for um for AP and that accounts for those um tech a million dollars in technology devices. Um and then it's a bit higher for August. I'm basically planning on really managing our um managing our year-end spending to try to spend as close to our budget capacity as possible because there's quite a bit of needs right now and especially we can do some spending to h help offset um the budget reductions that were next year. So, those are kind of the higher priority items of things that either help with areas that were cut or if we're adding efficiencies that will save us money in the future. And that's kind of what I'm looking at right now, questions. >> Does that spending

192happen before June 17th or No, >> it kind of happens in waves where like right now I'm approving some year-end spending for the schools because their staff are are gone. So, they kind of get to go first, but they're also their ass aren't as high a dollar values. You know, they're asking for money for paper and stuff like that, you know. It's not the same as um like some of the repairs and things that we're doing across the district or whatever, >> you know. So, it'll it'll kind of most of it will happen. I I need to let the dollars kind of fall into place first before I make some some approvals. So, there'll be maybe a little bit more that I approve in July and then and then the f like a final wave

193in August um after I'm able to close July to figure out how much money we have. It's it's a bit of it's kind of a big task if you're actually spending at year end. Uh but it's it's an important thing to be able to manage your fund balance after the end of the year as well. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. We're so fortunate to have >> happy to be here. Okay. So, >> thanks for taking time away for your family to drive over here. >> Oh, yeah. Pleasure. Listen, do I have to like re Can you help get it back? Please just teach me a different time in November was how many districts across our state don't have a black that's incredible that you're able to bring us there. Thank you. >> Thank

194you. Yeah, nice job. Appreciate it. >> I'll be fast. Um really a couple things. Every year we get the opportunity to recognize students and community leaders. And so this year for the different things that Logan's been involved in and leading throughout the year and before we recognized Logan Ignasio as our student leader and then our community leader, it just made sense to make sure that we went ahead and directed the next party for his years of dedication to the board. And then Career Connect Northwest is a group based in the ESD down in Adortis Education Service District in Anacortis and they do things to help kids understand well up to 30 years old but understand how it is that what they're doing in school can connect to careers. So a good example for us is

195the last couple of years we've had the career fair here at the middle school. They put that on. So they worked with Jill or they worked with Robert to put that on. They also convene um this is a group that um it's the third time and so K12 postsecary higher ed and then economic development groups. When we think about what we've done with Limitless so we're working with Sean we're working with the um high school and beyond plan to help students understand what it is that they have aptitude for. Not just a passion but what are they good at? what things might be of interest to them. It could be school, it could not be school, it depends. You know, there are different ways to explore. Um, so that work fits really well with hearing

196what employers mean. And then being able to work with, we had presidents from Watcom, Scadget, Western, um, BTC, >> um, Wakom Scadget County, um, represented. And so um this is the group um and then um trying to think so Dr. Harville was there and then um myself we we were the only K12 system. We also had Lynette Brower of the uh Northwest Career and Education Technical Academy because that is the only one north of Snomish. And then the rest are all folks that are either part of Edask which is down in in Scadget or um Watkins County they have report um and really just talking about what is it that we need to do to help position students so that they can take advantage of Gates Foundation was there um and so uh it's interesting

197that out of all K12 we were the only ones there. Wow. And so to be able to be in that conversation is really um it's helpful. And then some things coming up. Graduation's next week at 6:00. We need to convene in the district office and we'll walk over 6:30 start and then we have the last day of school on the 10th and then um superintendent meeting on the 11th and then the last board meeting there 17 that I'm involved in and then the summer conference school. So I have >> and both of them are qualified for state. So that's why they're not here. >> That's right. So cool. Thank you so much. Um, cool. No board, no student board uh representatives here. Um, any information from board directors? >> Absolutely. >> Um, I have to

198I'm a little disheartened. We only had one uh person to the board. over the past um I guess week and a half uh since we met last um my kids and I knocked on almost 200 doors in just with four. Um great boyfriend frame opportunity and it was so much fun. Um getting to see my neighbors um got invited into a lot of homes and just that's sitting in their living room chatting for a long time. But uh a lot of district 4 is 55 plus and a lot of people that I spoke to are just like you know I am retired and I only live here during the summer or I serve my time on these boards. I'm just burnt out. Uh so it's it was discouraging. Um and it's reflected by the application

199that we saw. I'm blown away that it we just had one. Um and Nata is sweet. She uh volunteers regularly with the Cordon Neighborhood Association. I'm thankful that she was willing to to step up um when the time called, but um I can understand everyone's reservations there. Um, so I uh I look forward to learning what happens next after that. I guess I guess it's no it's no secret. I mean I I ran for this board position because I feel very very strongly about community engagement and I currently am a voting member on seven boards. Um president of two of those. I boundaries I don't know how to say no. That's that's something I'm working on. But um in all of the boards that I've ever served on, I will say that I have never

200experienced a time where we did not allow members of the public to comment if they were in the room. And that's something I feel very very strongly about talking about. The importance of community engagement and allowing people to speak and share their knowledge with us, I think is so incredibly valuable. We only meet every other week and it is a trek to come out here. And if somebody is willing to make the time, take the time and make their way up here if they're a few minutes late, but they still make it here by the time that agenda item is up. I think it is so valuable that we still allow their voice to be heard. Um, and I think moving forward if it's maybe what we need to do is talk about the uh

201policy and our uh public comment procedures. Um, so maybe that we can all be on the same page about how to move forward with that. Um Jared, you are in a pretty honorable position as chair and we respect you and we appointed you as chair because we trust that you're going to be able to pivot at a moment's notice and and we are we got to trust that you're right to respond. That's my piece. >> Thank you. Cool. I'll also say that I know that we talked about some topics tonight that we don't some of us don't disagree on. Um but I would like to you know in today's society you know civil discourse can get very aggressive and yelling and screaming. Um I just want to say that I'm very proud of all of

202us for communicating in a professional manner and at the end of the day we might not agree but we'll we'll all have our own voices and hear each other out. So um I think that was that was great and that was meaningful. So thanks everyone. >> Cool. So moving forward in terms of application uh what do we do? >> I believe the deadline is the 13th of June. We don't have a board meeting in between that. So I will reach out to Dr. Govano who is the ESD superintendent. Probably set up a meeting with him and you Jared or talk about what the process would be. I I don't know. I haven't been in this position before. So find out and then I get back to code. That sound right? >> Yeah. Is this I

203mean in finding creative solutions moving forward when you do have that discussion would it be uh what are you thinking about an atlarge position? >> I think that could be something and it came up before >> some well someone brought it up. So >> yeah so I know too >> I know another district in the county moved to an atlarge system. There are other districts who have they redistribute the director districts that have one that's at large. I think that um the fact that we have this experience now is a reason to say, "Hey, let's let's pursue what that could look like and that could also be a conversation. I wonder what Dr. Banco would recommend. Whether to do that now or to place somebody and then do it afterwards, I'm not sure, but it

204certainly can be part of the conversation. Um, I'm I'm traveling Monday and Wednesday. I land in Seattle 1:00. So, I should be back the Thursday, Friday, this week. >> Yeah. >> Thank you everyone graduation. >> Oh, yeah. >> As long as I'm not somewhere. >> You're the only one that is probably going to have >> you want to. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> Honest to goodness, for that whole class, I would take the whole class, right? Like those are my people. So, let us know. >> We've also done it before like we've had two like if there's one or two people in a row, the other director can hand one out and you can do your special people. So, two people up there. >> you guys have that figured out? >> Yes, >> that'd be

205great. >> Okay, without further ado, we will uh end this meeting. Uh sign official documents been jer. Thank you so much.