001call this uh January 7th uh 2026 board meeting to order. Um can we please rise and say the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Right. Thank you everyone for being here. Um, can we get a motion to adopt the agenda? Motion to adopt the agenda. I will second. Okay. All those in favor? I I um can I get a motion to adopt the consent agenda? I'll make a motion to adopt the consent agenda. I'll second it. All those in favor? I I All right. Moving into the first item, uh recognition, school board director appreciation. So, you might notice a few things in front of you. Um, January
002is school board recognition or appreciation month where we recognize all of you for the work that you do. And um, I want to read the proclamation from the governor, but I think preceding that is acknowledgement that most people don't recognize the depth of time and energy your volunteer role takes. um anywhere from preparing for board meetings to getting stopped at the grocery store to taking phone calls and the emails and all those things. But um I recognize that and I understand what that is and I appreciate the time and energy you put in caring for our community's kids. So thank you very much and your work is policy governance and guidance for us allows us to do the work that happens in our schools. So thank you very much. what comes from the governor is
003um a broad perspective that talks about the states piece that I think is important for everybody to hear. Can you hear me? Okay. Um and then I'll share from whence these things came. Okay. So this is from Governor Bob Ferguson. So this is the state of Washington proclamation of schoolboard recognition month. Whereas the mission of Washington's public school system is to ensure that all students achieve at high levels and possess the knowledge and skills to be responsible residents of a democratic society and enjoy productive and satisfying lives. Whereas Washington's 295 locally elected school boards and nine elected educational service district boards are the core of public education governance system in our state. And whereas the districts and regions they lead lead to serve more than 1.1 million students have a combined annual budget of over
00416 billion and employ approximately 120,000 people. And whereas school directors play a crucial role in promoting student learning and achievement by creating a vision, establishing policies and budgets, and setting clear standards of accountability for all involved. And whereas school directors are directly accountable to the residents of their districts and regions, serving a vital link between members of the community and their schools. And whereas school directors and educational service districts provide a passionate voice of advocacy for public schools and the welfare of school children. And whereas it's appropriate to recognize school directors as outstanding public servants and champions of public public education. Therefore, Bob Ferguson, Governor of the state of Washington, do hereby proclaim January 2026 as the school board recognition month. In front of you, you have flowers from the high school's floral program. You
005have a also from the high school, um Marcus Montgomery is the person that created the plaques. Uh the high school has acquired a new laser engraver and he's taken it on himself to figure that out. Typically Mr. Holz is the one that does engraving and plaques and things of that nature, but student did this year. Um you have uh cards from MP3. The middle school created the poster behind you if you didn't see it and Irene Reither developed a little video. So we'll end with that. Thank you for helping my school. Thank you for caring about me. Thank you for helping us grow and learn. Thanks for believing in us. Thank you for making learning fun. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for supporting our teachers. You make a big difference for us.
006We love our school because of you. Thank you for making our school awesome. Thanks for being great leaders. Thank you for inspiring us. Thank you, Ms. Fast, Thank you, Mr. Gray. Thank you, Ms. Haugen. Thank you, Mr. Karuza. Thank you, Ms. Simmons. Thank you, Logan and Eden. Thank you, school board. Isn't that great? I think I might had a niece or nephew make this. You don't mind first. And then if you just grab one of the items and we're going to have you back here so I can get the poster behind you. Oh yeah. Thank you. Next. Perfect. Looking this way. Big smile. One, two, three. Big smile. Perfect. Thank you. On behalf of the district's employees. Thank you so much for the work that you do. We're all happy to serve some We do
007not have public comment. All right. Okay. No public comment. Um the next item is under reports, transportation report with Michelle Apeles. All right. You can just push the button, Joe. Right. Should give me a little rundown real quick. And now this this is for the big one. Yeah. Okay. All right. Hey, I like coming here. This is an awesome time for me. I I don't come often. I I probably should come a little bit more often, but I like to come talk about my world and what's going on in it. So, that's what I'm here to do tonight. Um I am Michelle Apeles. Most of you know me, but uh Jasmine, congrats. Welcome aboard. I haven't met you yet, I don't think. I maybe we've talked on the phone a couple of times, but yeah,
008but thanks. Thanks. Yeah, nice to see you. Yeah, nice to see you, too. Welcome. Uh so, first I have on here is uh just the additional routes that we've added this year. Um we have a new special education route. Our special education numbers have gone up and so that's created uh a need for another route. So, we added a third special education route this year. Um, also PK3, which is the OPCO program that we um started um and have some more ear early childhood education kiddos in the district and that's been a nice addition, but it being little three-year-olds, we decided uh we don't want to put them with gen ed quite yet. They're just so small. Some of them are still really little, right? So, we have them on mostly on a route just
009to themselves, but some of them have been added to a couple of the special education routes, too, just for logistical reasons to make so they're not on the buses so long. Um, that's been a nice addition. And then Mckinney Vento this year has kind of exploded right from the get-go. We normally have one Mckinney Vento route at the beginning of the year um full. This year we had two right from day one and then um also have added McKini Vento students throughout our gen ed buses and our special education buses to help with the growing need. Um with that being said we've had staff shortages but with the staff shortages we have been very creative. Um we have done things as far as Dr. Everett has driven so far this year. Dr. Harvill has also
010driven. Julie and Angie and a lot of staff at the district office have run dispatch for us. Bellingham School District took one of our Mckin Vento routes and um helped us out there one morning just on the fly. I called the director and I said, "Hey, I am so sure. Can you guys help us?" And she said, "Yep, we'll go get them." And then Nooksack School District has actually sent us a bus and a driver multiple times to cover Route 4, um which is one of our routes. and the driver has just been amazing. She just came right in and was like, "How can I help? Give me the route. I got this." And she has just been a godsend for us. It's been nice to have her. Um she even said, "Are you guys
011hiring?" And I'm like, "Yes, but I won't take you from Chris. He would not be happy with that." So, um yeah, that's been nice. The biggest thing about that too is just to see my staff come together and just like embrace this shortage that we have and I can do this and I can do that and let me go get this kid and I'll go get that kid and hey, how about we try this or how about we try that. It's just been I don't know. It brings a tear to my eye because I'm so proud of them and it and just I've said it from the beginning the the camaraderie and the how we just band together is just amazing and I I can't thank them enough for stepping up and and just getting
012these kids to school. We haven't had to cancel anything and that's that's a big feat. It's been a big feat this year. So the other thing that's gone up is student counts which is good. So we have more kids riding the bus which gives us more funding and it helps you know in the long run it doesn't really help us this year but next year it'll help us with some more funding. Um and so our numbers have gone up almost by 100 kids this year just at the beginning of the year. So that's pretty pretty awesome but also challenging in its own right. You know trying to make switches with routes so that we don't have routes with 80 kids on it and a route with 40 kids on it. So, we're just constantly shifting
013and making changes so that we can get these kids more comfortable rides as well and just a little bit less kids on the bus for the drivers to manage too. So, yes, I'm going to interject. I know. And I'm okay with that. If anybody has questions or anything, please like interrupt. Go for it. Just the dynamics of 100 more students in ridership. When you think of us like topping out at 1900 students and we have high school students that drive, a large majority of our kids are writing and so this may be a shift of more students writing that maybe hadn't in the past. Um, but we're only up 12 students this year in terms of enrollment. So to put an extra hundred and be able to make that adjustment midyear without funding because we
014didn't have that riderrship last year to have the funding for that. It's been a It's been a a pick one and you did a nice job. Thank you. That was my Oh, so I'm sorry. This is just out of curiosity. Um, how many bus routes do we have? So, we have Good question. We have nine GenEd routes and we have, if we put PK in with special education, we have four special education routes and then we have two Mckin Vento routes and one skill center route that goes to Mount Vernon. Every year, every year, every day they go to Mount Vernon twice. Like she stays down there. So I did the math and kind of figured it out. And to send a driver down there and back, you pay him a 2-hour minimum. Then you
015send another drive there driver down there and back. It's another two-hour minimum. We actually save money by having her just stay down there. That makes I one time too. I'm like that's I want that route. Yeah, she really likes it. You got to get back, which means you got to apply. So when you reference your short staff, is that because of budgets or because of lack of application or Yeah, it's kind of a mix of a few different things. So we'll get into staff here in a minute. It actually is better. There are a lot of positives coming our way, but we started the school year out adding routes that just didn't get filled with people and then we had somebody retire from a route. So we started the school year out with three unfilled
016routes. So that was tough. And so we just had a training program and got some people through. So that's we're going to move on to that here in a second. But yeah, that what's caused for shortage. It will be updated. It's going to be it's going to be right here maybe next. Yep. Staff updates. Here we go. Um so yeah, so Kathy Abelman, as you guys know, most of you know her, she drove I don't know the exact numbers for us, but it's 20ish years for us and about 10 years for Bellingham. So she got 30 years in and she retired at the end of last year. So, she is one of the ones that uh left a little hole for us. She is filling in as a substitute driver. Love that she comes. And
017I love that she is retired and saying, "Nope, I want Route 7 and I want PM only and I don't want to work Friday afternoons." And I'm like, "Perfect. Okay, we'll get you in there when we can." So, definitely miss Kathy. Um Lucas is a new driver for us. He actually just was hired full-time at the beginning of the school year. Um he is driving route one or he was driving route one. He's actually moved to a McKini Vento route now. He is a brand new driver. Came to us with no experience as a bus driver, but he's fitting in well and um getting to know the kids and the routes and and making an impact for sure. Um, Becky Hathaway, she actually got her credentials in the summer this summer after school ended. And
018so she just started the beginning of this school year, got into a contracted position, um, a continuing contracted position. Both her and Lucas did. She is driving Route 2. And she takes my three favorite words to heart, firm, consistent, and fair. She is nailing those ones with the kids and making, you know, building big relationships with them and just learning them really well. And she's on one of the routes that a lot of people don't care for because it travels up and down the guide only. It is only the guide meridian and then it goes through Tmont and it does a couple group stops through there. But some of the drivers are intimidated by that one just because there's a lot of traffic and a lot of things you have to watch for and a
019lot of stop paddle violations and and things of that nature. but she's just taking it and running with it and glad she's with us. So, training, we started a training program at the beginning of the year, too. Not to mention my transportation specialist, both of them driving pretty much A.M. and PM. They were also training in between all of that. And so, we started out with four people in our training program. And unfortunately, one of the candidates in the training program got her original driver's license in another country. And so she actually cannot get a CDL in the in the states at this point. And so she actually had to stop the training program, but we subsequently hired her as a student monitor. I forgot to add that slide in there, but we've got Maria
020Montteroso as a student monitor on the PK3 route. So she's working with the little guys there and she's uh she's really nice. She's multilingual, too. So she does a lot of Spanish speaking for us as well. So she's been a huge asset to to add to the department. But uh Don Visser and Brenda Ellen Boss Hickey and Trisha Cornell have all completed the training program. They all have their credentials now. U Brenda was hired in a temporary position through the end of the school year as was Dawn. Um they both have gone into two of our toughest routes, but they're they're taking it like champs and they're doing a good job. Don came to us from Ferndale School District. She had about eight years driving experience with them and then she took about a eight-year
021break and so she had to go through the whole program again. but she has some background there. So, um, little insight on her as well as Gayen Viscer is her brother and he used to be the director of transportation here for Meridian. So, she's been in the in the industry for a while and her family as well. And then Brenda, she comes to us with no experience driving. She's a country girl, grew up here in Whatcom County pulling trailers and doing all that stuff. And so, she's been fine. She did great with the bus. She learned everything really well. She's driving route four. um she's learning real quick to follow through and to be firm, consistent, and fair and and all the things with those kiddos on that bus, but they're they're getting there. We
022had a little chat yesterday and hopefully that'll help and trying to be as supportive as I can with these guys, too, and teaching them the ropes with riding kids up and following through and, you know, doing the things that they have to do. And she's been a great addition. Tanisha just got her credentials the day after Christmas. she went in and passed her test and so she just started training this week. Um, tomorrow I think is going to be her first time driving the bus with a driver with her and then hopefully she'll have it down and be on her own on Friday morning. Um, she'll be a sub and uh so we'll start teaching her all the routes and teaching the ropes and seeing how she does. And then we are going to start
023a new class. Uh, let's go back. We're going to start a new class actually next week and we have two more candidates. So, we're going right into another class, which is not something we generally do. I like to give the guys a little bit of a break, but we have two more candidates coming through. Um, Brian Van Winkle, he has been a coach for Blaine School District and stuff, but has one of the founders of Viking Food Deliveries, if you know what that is. But he said Uber's come in and all these delivery other delivery services have come in. So, now he's looking for a different switch. And so, he said, "I want to drive school bus." And I I'm looking forward to it. So, I'm glad to add him. And then uh Kinsey Dehan
024is also going to start training next week and her um dad is Jerry Sanderson. So that's his daughter. So she'll be starting stuff with us. What's that? I graduated with her. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. So she's gonna They're both going to start next week. So I'm super excited. She comes with some dispatch experience with 911 and um firefighter experience as well. So she'll be a really good addition. Um, shop updates. So, staff It's awesome. I love it. Um, but we've been doing what we can to keep the buses running and that also Nooksack school district stepped up and helped us out and we've signed anou with them through the end of the school year to help with any of our repairs. And I've taken a couple of buses up there and had them work on them
025for us. And if Craig needs anything now that he's back, he can reach out to Justin, their um mechanic up there, and he'll help him out as well. So, um, just can't say enough about Chris Hogan and the in the, you know, what he's running up there and the fact that I can just call him and he has just helped us out. It's been super, super awesome to have that teamwork with him. I went to school with Chris. Yeah. Yeah. Chris's a nice guy. Uh, we might know him. Yeah. Jen, same last name, right? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'll maybe we'll snag him. I think uh he might be retiring at some point, right? Maybe we'll snag him. He just lives right across the street from the bus garage, so yeah, pretty good logistics there. We'll
026just get him there. Um yeah, and so that's been nice to have that um in place. And then big thing for us last year, for the first time since I've worked for U Meridian, we got 100% on our state patrol inspections. And so that's a huge shout out to our mechanic. Craig takes his job super duper seriously and safety is huge for him and he is just I I can't thank him enough. He's such an asset to have and I just love the work that he does and how thorough he is and how much he cares about the safety of the kids and his 100%, you know, shows that right there. All right, let's talk about the new buses we got. We got some new buses. So, we actually have three new buses. I didn't
027get a picture of the other one, but there's two pictures there. So, we got one full-size bus come in, and we have two um little special education Mckin Vento buses that have come in. And then the fourth one was supposed to be here in September. Then they told me the end of J December and we still don't have it. So, I think it's going to be any day. We'll see. It should be really soon. But that is a another special education bus with a lift actually. So we added these new routes. We had to add some some more small buses. So we're actually going to have quite a few small buses on our fleet now which will be good. So just curious, is there special funding because it's McKenna Vento or No. Is there money
028we can pull for those services? No. So McKenna Vento really isn't funded at all. And it's one of those things that we keep it in a bus because if it's in a bus, we do get to count the student and we get the funding and we count the route. So, we get the funding that way. A lot of districts actually put their Mckin Ventos in support vehicles. And when you put it in a support vehicle, you can still count the student as long as it's driven by an authorized type 2 driver. So, they have to go through like our classroom portion of the training basically. And then you can count the student, which you get funding for that. You just don't get funding for the actual route. So when I became director, I started putting
029all of our Mckin Vento routes in buses so that we could count that and get more funding for it. But they are making a change starting next September. So September of 2026, so actually this September, um we will be able to count the routes that are in motorpool vehicles moving forward. So that'll be good. And they're actually going to give us they're not going to give us the funding up front, but if we buy support vehicles, they actually will go on the depreciation schedule now and we'll get the money back for them. So, we'll have to spend a little bit of money up front, but we'll get the money back in the long run, which will be really nice because our motorpool fleet could definitely use an upgrade. Explain the depreciation process, would you? So,
030depreciation is they give you back what the state quote is on the vehicle. So, if the state quote is like $180,000 for a bus, you will get that money back, but you get it back in a 13-year period. So, I don't know what they'll do for support vehicles because I know some of the smaller buses, um, type A's that they are on an 8-year depreciation, and I've made a decision for our for our district not to buy type A's anymore. So, we just buy the next size up small bus. We call them a big small bus. That way, they're on a 13-year depreciation with everything else. And it's just kind of easier to buy one or two every year and keep our fleet fairly new. We have a really new fleet and then to speak
031wonders about our mechanic again, a mechanic that's keeping up on all of it, you know. So, well, this is a this is a thing that hearkens back to Dr. Tim Yman's and the idea that when you have buses that are off depreciation schedule, get rid of them because the district. Yeah. And there was money, right? ton of money was going into repairing and loss of oil and things of that nature. So, you've been religious about that. I know Daniel does a nice job of guiding that, too. But I was just going to say good job on that because Yeah, thank you. We have some of the best buses counting them. Yeah, we have one in our fleet right now that's off depreciation, but that one will come off as soon as we can get another
032big one in. Then we'll get that one off. We just were in a place now where you have to keep what we have because last year when some of our buses were broke down and they were on like warranty repair and stuff like that, it was getting pretty close to where I was like, I don't even have a bus to send this in, you know, and that's a scary position to be in. So, we're holding on to this last one just for right now until we can get one more big one in and then we should just everything will be on depreciation at that point. And there was a a a period there we you know, we got eight buses at one point, too. So, we had to get all of those eight buses off
033at the same time, which was super hard to do. But, we're finally through all of that. So, that's a a nice place to be. And just a continuous cash flow kind of coming in and then just buying one or two a year to keep us keep us good. This does a smaller bus requires the deal. They do. Yeah. Anything with uh air brakes. It's not even the air brake factor. It's 10 passengers or more has to be in a bus. It's not weight. Uh-uh. Nope. Well, I'm just saying because there's some people's struggle to get their CEO. Go have your CEO. I got mine. Well, so then that's the other. Right. I know. I keep telling fine. I got to call her. Yeah. The thing about the the authorized type two position and being able
034to count the McKini Vento routes that are driven in support vehicles now actually will be a benefit because it will get some more people in here that are maybe afraid to drive the bus, but I can get them in now and have them drive a van and still pay them a decent rate. They still get to count the kids and I get to count their route now, too. So next year things will be quite a bit different and I think we'll have a little bit different support support coming through and being able to hire more people too that are just I want to drive a van. So I'm looking forward to that. I think I know some people that are that way. They're just like I don't know if I want to be I want
035a bus up and down the road. It's just too much, too long, too big. But I drive a van. Yeah. And they feel that way too because I've had a few monitors come in and they're like no no no. All I want to do is monitor. And then they get here and I'm like are you sure? Because even Belinda Hickeyi, she's one of my transportation specialists and driver trainer. She started out as a student monitor on a bus and she had did not want to drive a bus at all. And I kind of was like, "Are you sure?" after she'd worked here for a few months. And then she was like, "All right, I'll take the class." And when she got into the class, I was like, "You are amazing. She is so good." And
036I don't think she thought she was going to be that good either. And then she got through the class and she moved her way up the ranks and now she's the driver trainer. So yeah, it's pretty cool. It's not just driving the bus. You have equivalent of two classrooms of kids behind you. That's the thing that is amazing behind you. That's the part that you know it's not like you're teaching from the front. I think you say in your presentation like oh hey she got really good at writing up the students. You know those are the things that people feel like yeah I don't mind drive the bus you know. Yep. There's a parenting issue at home. It shouldn't be my responsibility. I mean some people that way, right? It is, but you also have
037to have them follow the rules on the bus, too. So, there's just a lot that you have to do. And that's why I tell the guys, too, when they come out of training, I'm like, now the real training begins because the whole time you're in training, you don't have a single kid on the bus with you. They think this is easy, right? And I'm like, no, it's not hard. It does. It probably requires a lot of patience. It does because my three words are different than yours. I guarantee you. Yep. I think I'm You're the guy. I no by saying it does require a special person to do the hot header. No, not saying I'm a hot header. Well, and I mean there are some. No, I'm telling you there are some though and then
038you just kind of teach them, right? It's a good thing we have cameras on all the buses because that's another thing. I've used that as a training tool for sure because I can pull it up and be I can show them exactly how they were and what they said and I've been, you know, and teach them like probably shouldn't use that word. You know what I mean? I can't wait for your dad to see this. Right. Too much in slow-mo. All right. So, the other thing we did is when we got in these new buses, we we sold two buses at auction. So, we got rid of bus 30 and 32 at auction, which was pretty good. Um, when we trade them in, they give us anywhere from $1,800 to $2,000 per bus. So, we
039offer them out to other school districts and see if anybody wants them. If nobody does that, then we just put them up for auction. And I want to say we got between 62 and 68 for each one of those buses. 100, which is Yeah, that's really good. Right. And then that just goes back in the TVF fund so that we can use it to purchase buses or do some add-ons on on the buses as well because they're probably what' you say 13 years old. Yeah, that's great. Older than that. I think bus 30 was 2009 and bus 32 was 2010. Yeah. Yeah. So, we held on to those ones for a little bit longer than we probably should have, but it was just the rotation, you know, put their diesel negativity. 30 was a little
040bus and so somebody local bought that one and I think Meridian Graduate, I can't remember the last name. No, they live somewhere here on Hanigan Road and they're going to turn it into a camper or do something with it. So, I'm kind of excited to see what it what they do with it when it's done. Yeah. Um, I think that's all I had for you guys though. If anybody has any other questions, I have a couple. Sweet. when you said about writeups on the bus. Yep. Can you take us through what that process looks like? Yeah, definitely. Okay. So, we've streamlined the process a little bit and it's I've worked with the schools to get to like how we want to do it exactly. So, the first ride up a kid has, let's say they're
041not staying in their seat properly. They get written up. The bus driver is required to call the parents or parent square the parents and let them know, hey, this is what's going on with so- and so. I've written them up. Um, it's progressive discipline. this is their first write up. So, at least the parent has heard from the driver. Then, if the driver writes them up for the second time, I then take that write up and it's generally I is where most of our write-ups are at. We don't get very many middle school, high school, but I will send that write up to Rebecca Kratzik is the person that's doing it this year. I'll send it to her and say, "Hey, this is a step two write up." She will then reach out to the
042family and say, "Hey, so and so's been written up for the second time. If they're written up again, they're going to lose their bus riding privilege." And then if it goes to a third write up, I come in, I contact the family, I let them know, hey, you heard from the driver, you heard from, you know, the school. Now you're hearing from me. It's still a persistent problem with your kiddo. We're going to do a one one day suspension and progressively get worse if it continues. The furthest I've ever seen a write up go or or a disciplinary action go is 5 days and after that the kids stopped. So that's good. Does it matter about the offense? Like if it's hitting, spitting. It does matter about the fence. So, if it's fighting or anything
043like that, it it automatically goes to myself and whichever school leader I'm dealing with at the time. So, Rebecca and I will call and I'll send her footage or we'll get on the phone and we'll talk and we'll both come up with a um what we're going to do. Generally, we start with a one-day suspension, but we've had a couple of instances where we've actually went straight to like a three-day suspension because they were pretty egregious um for fighting and stuff like that. So, yes, it does matter on the offense. That's awesome. Yep. Um then I wanted to say when you you talk about so highly about your team and about the camaraderie and that's a testament to your leadership very proud of yourself and and then also people talk very highly of you. Dr.
044Ever always speaks highly of you of our meetings and Chris Hogan. Oh sweet always speaks highly of you. Nice. So at Christmas we were talking about what a good job you're doing and how proud of how proud of he is of you as well. Oh, nice. So, it's great to hear that come back around um from a lot of people. So, good job. Yeah. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. You're always available. I am always available. I'm a tech, but you're so accommodating when something you need, whether it was volleyball or cheerleading or whatever, like you take the request seriously and you make things happen. So, thank you. Thank you. Yes. I just wanted to follow up with what J was talking about. um when they get the one day suspension, is the parent
045like on the hook for getting them to school at that point? Yeah. So, we're not in the business of not getting the kids to school. That's just the thing. We want them to come to school. So, if for some reason the parent can't transport the student to school, we will accommodate a different way. Whether we send a van or a support vehicle or something like that to go get them, we'll get them to school. Thank you. You're welcome. Great job. Thank you. I appreciate you. All right. And I'm normally I'm not the person to take off, but I got to go get my kids. Next up, we have Title One and LAP Grant Report with Adrian Samra, Olivia Butcher, and Jen Anderson. So, um, Olivia and Jen are going to help me a little bit.
046They are teachers who actually teach in one of the programs is supported by Lapin title. So, I want to give a chance to have somebody besides me talking about the work since they're the ones really doing it. So, start with sort of a background of these two grants. So, um, we've sort of split up our federal grants this year. So, this is two of them. Um, title one and LAP. These are both federal grants that are related to academic support. And they do similar work. Lap is state funded. Title one is federally funded, but they both kind of do the same things for kids. So on the student side or on the work side, it looks very similar, but they're all really about um extended opportunities for students who are needing additional help and support
047in academics. some also in um behavior and discipline as well. So goal area related to lap services really most of this is thinking about um how we're partnering to provide that support. So this is really around that support area particularly of our strategic plan in our areas. So we're really looking at the on track to graduate indicators ELA and math proficiency rates. And so you'll hear a little bit more about the programs and how they're supporting ELA or English reading um proficiency. Um but it also helps with things like attendance and belonging. When students are struggling academically, they also tend to feel less belonging or you'll have more absences because they're struggling in school and they don't feel successful. So they even though they're not they might be working on reading, it's having an impact
048on those other areas the plan as well. And just um we have talked about multi-tered systems of support. Jasmine, I think they're your new um bet for us. If you remember when we talk about how we support our students, tier one is what happens across every day all the time. Um tier two is when we students need a little bit more help, but it's usually about stuff that's still at grade level. So, I just need more practice with sixth grade. I just need more practice with seventh grade reading. Tier three is when we're saying we it's not just grade level. you need help with skills that came in before. So, when we're hearing about this, we're talking about students who are like, well, you're in sixth grade, but really you're kind of working on skills
049that that are maybe more at a second grade level. So, there's a bigger gap. There's more intensive need. Um, so that support fits in there, but it's still connected. So, you're going to hear too about how they're not just operating on their own. And it and this has been a shift for us as well. Um, it used to be that kids would get pulled out and they did their own thing and then they went back to class. And you're going to hear a lot of more. We're trying to do a lot more connection and integration so that they're talking to the teacher that the student has in classes. We're working with the team. They're doing stuff that's more aligned so that this intervention is going to help more with what's happening in class every day
050as well as helping to catch kids on. You want to add anything you can add about that later? Um so funding amounts, Dr. Harwell can talk about this a little bit too if there's anything additional you want to add here um around the funding for these positions and what they fund. The funding for both title one um and LAP have been consistent in my time in this role has consistently increased a little bit each year. Um but there are um as you can see for title one we fund one certificated staff 1.0 um and then two pair of educators and then there's some partial funds for two other certificated staff members. Um and and our reading specialist is is an example of that. Um where she's 0.5 out of lap but five out of title.
051Um and the the reading specialist has provided a very valuable service for middle and high school as well as our elementary. And then the lap funding which is state funding um this funds a few more staff um but it's one full-time certificated staff member two pair educators and then this year we divided it out at the high school and middle school. Um each building does intervention periods. Um the T3 and the what I need time at the middle and high school. And so our ELA and our math teachers are a portion for those intervention periods apart funded through LAP. Um and that that comes from the requirement of lap that we do an assessment um to know what our needs are and then we distribute the the funds appropriately. Remind me. Are these the buckets
052that can't be moved around? Remember there was like title one, title two, like all the different funding. A few of them could be moved to other buckets. Are these the ones? Yes. So, so um yes, I know what you're talking about. Transferability. Transferability. Yes. Title one is one that you can transfer to, but you cannot transfer out of. So, yes. So we transferred title two and title four funds into title one to allow us to have additional funds. And I was just curious when you say once a certificated staff member are they necessarily focused solely on our priority learners or the anyone in the classroom? Yeah. And I think that the these guys both talked about how students are identified for reading, but students who are identified for lab, it's based on um some sort
053of data that shows that they need that additional support. I'm just asking where is this certificated staff member. Um these are two of them. I think one here, one here. So get to your point with title one, you're either a schoolwide title one or you're a targeted title one. And so targeted, you are targeted is similar to lab where you're focusing only on the students who need support in math or reading or behavior or science. With a schoolwide that allows more flexibility in the funding because now that title one staff member can serve all the students. So part of like the shift that Dr. I was talking about where we are looking at using some of these title funds to help our a teacher who's a classroom teacher for the bulk of their day be
054more focused on that intervention block of time. That's also helping us to allow more targeted support. So if students aren't getting to the place where they're three grade levels behind because hopefully they're being caught and helped during our win time with a little bit more efficiency. So that's some of kind of how we're thinking about using this funding. So it's less someone takes them away and tries to fix them and then they come back, but rather as a whole school, we're recognizing that there's a range of needs that kids have. And so there's a number some some kids need help every day, some kids need help once a week. So that can be more varied um the more kind of thoughtful we are about how we use this. um kind of what uh Kurt was
055talking about about how we decide this there's a um a new process which is new but it's similar to what we've been doing that is required um is that when we're deciding how to use these funds we actually are doing a needs assessment. So like when the principles came and shared their school improvement plans with you and they kind of shared their data all of that is part of this. So, we're trying to be a lot more intentional about actually looking at what are what does our data say our needs are, where is the highest need, if we need to kind of shift where these programs are. So, um there's an assessment that's going to be happening. We're starting that in January again, kind of thinking about in January, we'll start looking at this year,
056this month, we'll start looking at how well is what we've been trying working, what are we seeing when we do ready in the middle of the year, what are we seeing um do we need to make any shifts for the rest of this year? And then what is that also telling us about for next year? So that's going to start here. Um and then based on that we plan support no totally based on that we plan the supports. So that's part of where um in thinking about where the funding is all of that happens based on that data. Um and then we watch and see what we need to do next. Um so wanted to there's a bunch of uh example kinds of activities here and we talked about some of these. So there's the
057academic advent um interventions behavior sport class size reduction part of this like allowing the core teachers at some of the schools to have that for when time allows us to keep the classes a little bit smaller than they would be. Um and then we have our reading support. So, I'm gonna let these talk about reading support and then I'll also share a little bit about a new math support class that we have going on at high school. So, you want me to you can tell me to push you. Um, hi, I'm Jen Anderson and I used to teach first and second grade at Irene Ryther and I've also taught other grade levels at other schools, but um I've been the lap um person for the last this is my fourth year I guess. And um
058this is my team right now. my team's been shrinking actually, but so now it's down to Jennifer Raml and currently at Summer Spear um so they are amazing um and are like part of the lap team but then there's a lot of other people that work together um with us part of the MTSS team um to provide support that I'll talk about. Um we last year supported over 115 students um for small groupoup reading instruction as well as we partner with the kindergarten teachers um to push in. So every kindergarten teacher has one of us support staff certificated or um paras that are you know kind of doing this day in and out day out the the reading instruction. We go in the kindergarten classrooms every day for four days a week when they're teaching
059the core like phonic skills and we're there supporting and helping engage the students because you can imagine when you're five sometimes it's you know easy to be distracted. So we're there um trying to help them really get the most out of that tier one instruction. So, kind of to answer your question, Michelle, a little bit of like um my job is kind of small group in some ways, but it's really also um like Adrian is saying, we're really working to align this support right into the classroom in tier one every day as well to try to support that. And my role also is um been added to include coaching. And so, I currently coach six teachers at our school as well. So, I'm responsible to go in and and observe and support in their classrooms
060um regularly um at least every other week um as well as meet with them every other week and provide feedback and to try to strengthen tier one instruction for classroom teachers as well. So, um my job has many facets and it's the goal is to improve instruction and help student learning um tier one, two, and three. Um, so traditionally laps kind of been thought of as like this pull out tier three, but it's really, um, there we're trying to have that alignment and support across the board. So, um, Jen, is your coaching specifically for reading or just instruction in general? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so kind of, um, more of the traditional, um, reading support, we start by, um, looking at student data for the whole school, um, which keeps growing. So, a lot of a
061lot of data that we're looking at for the I Ready um diagnostic and also this year we're giving a um fluency benchmark three times a year. So, I'm in the middle of that right now getting the second round, but um we look at one minute timings to hear how many words per minute students are reading. Um so, we're assessing um you know almost 800 kids on that. It takes some time, but um we look at that and then their ERA is the the teacher gives each student a reading one-on-one when they're reading with the students to know their reading level. So, we look at that and um we're our goal is to support students that are two years or more behind. Sometimes we can't get to quite all the students, but that's our goal is
062to get those kids that are two or more years behind. Um and then we give them what's called a core phonic screener. And so, one-on-one my lab team will meet with kids and find out what do they already know. Um so, up here, this is a sample from one of our students. Um where you can see like the the checks mean they've already got that skill. are reading those words. So they can read CBC words or they can read these blends and then the the red zones up there where they were missing a significant amount of the the skill is kind of breaking down. So they need the R control vowels or they need long vowels. So we can know exactly where that instruction needs to happen. And so then I form the groups based
063on what skills the kids need. And so then um those kids are kind of in smaller groups with myself or one of the the lab um support staff to um meet with kids. We meet with kids for 15 20 minutes a day, four days a week um kindergarten through fifth grade. So that is a lot of um our time is doing providing that support. And we use what's called UFI, which is our phonics um curriculum for um K12 now. So they're getting that tier one. And like I said, and there's a picture of the top left picture, there's Jennifer Raml supporting in a kindergarten class. So, we're in for that tier one time helping kids get that. But then we're using that same curriculum um for kids that have not mastered those skills or didn't
064get those because it's a newer curriculum. So, kids, especially three, four, or five, we can go back in and and see what skills they need um and do that in small group. And we're providing lots of opportunity for kids to be reading out loud and building that fluency. Um and um this year we have added um like I said this this uh fluency benchmark that we're doing three times a year um for the whole school, but we're also monitoring and and tracking it in I Ready um progress monitoring to know how kids are doing in our groups. So the kids that are in our small groups every week or every other week, we're one-on-one hearing them read for that one minute timing again to see, okay, are you getting those skills at that level? Are
065you making progress? So um yeah, so that is a little bit of what we do um at elementary school and that progress monitoring really you started doing that in that more detailed level of it with I Ready last year. That was something new that I read has added that we've been able to take advantage of is a is a digital progress monitor. So instead of it being a lot of pieces of paper, they're going, "Oh, I heard this." So yeah, it's been great as well. Yeah. So do you see like Jennifer there who's also alumni? She's amazing. And she didn't go far. I mean, she grew up there. She got married in the same chapel I did and then lives right next door. Yeah. I can't say enough about her. She's incredible. I beg her
066every day not to retire and to stay forever. Yeah. And her husband's great, too. He's such a great guy. No, weird sub. All right. Progress monitoring. Oh, this is my progress monitor. Oh, yeah. That's me, too. So, this is just an example of within I Ready. This is some of the data for one of our students. Um, so the students have that um the passage in front of them, like treasures at the beach, and then right on the computer, we're able to mark any words they miss as they're reading out loud. So, we have that specific again how they're doing their progress and then it tracks and the kids love seeing their growth and knowing their target like how many words per minute a third grader should have at this point and they're working towards
067that and so they get to see their progress um as we measure them. So, and can I ask how did you come up with the time frame the 15 to 20 minutes? Um that that is just like best practice like research. Um and it varies like for kindergarten right now we're doing about five minutes um one-on-one. So, we kind of alter it depending on the age, but that 15 minutes for the um repeated like that intense intervention is a good um research based amount of time. Yeah, because they're sp they're if you think about it, they're working on like a sound specific skill or a so it's a really very small um skill they're looking at 15 minutes they can get the wiggles out. I struggle with that. It's it's also that balance of not
068wanting them to miss the tier one that core instruction. So pulling them out of class. Um the day goes by so fast with all the the schedules and and recess and lunch and transitions and so we don't want them to be out of class at 10 either. So that's part of why it's 15 to 20 minutes. Yeah. Question. Okay. I'm Olivia Booker. I teach extended reading here at the middle school and then I'm also um the reading specialist at the high school where I do more pull out support here at the middle school. Um my class is whole class intervention so it looks completely different than it does at the elementary school. Um I have sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. I have two sections of just sixth grade. And then this year, I have been
069trying to kind of shift what I do for seventh and eighth grade because thinking about whole class intervention, it's very hard to target need. So, this year was different in that we combined seventh and eighth graders. They didn't want to add sixth graders because they're still hanging. But Exactly. But seventh and eighth graders, it's been nice to kind of um create my own sections and having trying to create a a section for phonics or for morphology and comprehension. I'm really excited for second semester because I've worked really closely with Robert and we have it dialed. So, this will be the first time that I will have a class just dedicated to students who need phonics and a class dedicated to just students who need the comprehension piece because for the last five years, I've been
070having a whole group of kids who have needs everywhere from phonics to comprehension. And it's challenging to try to get everybody what they need in one class period, right? So, I'm really excited moving forward because I feel like we are really getting it dialed. But what it looks like is like Jen talked about, we use the the ERA, which at Ire the classroom teachers do that um give the students that assessment. I give each student here that assessment plus if I feel like I need to go deeper, then I do the corporatics survey. Um we follow the scarboro's reading rope. So looking at background knowledge, vocabulary, language, all of that. So at the middle school, it's very interesting because we have such a wide range. We have students who still need phonics. I still have
071students who are at a first grade level. And then I've got students who just need an extra boost in vocab and background knowledge or they can read beautifully, fluently, but they're just kind of missing the comprehension piece. We focus on that. Um, so here at the middle school, I see my students every other day. So it's twice a week and then Fridays alternate and then it's 45 minute blocks. Um, and then at the high school is more one-on-one support. So I have I have about 60 kids here at the middle school and I have about 20 kids at the high school who I see on a regular basis. And like Jen was saying, it really like the timing of when I see the kids at the high school. Um, I have more flexibility there. And
072when I see them varies. So I still have students there who are at a second grade reading level. And I will see them for 20 minutes three days a week. And then I have some students there who are further along, more like a sixth, seventh grade reading level. And I'll see them once a week, maybe twice a week for 20 minutes. Um, so it just kind of shifts by what they need. And over there, I'm able to either pull them individually into my office for really intensive like exactly what they need. If I'm looking at the corresponding survey and they are missing, I know exactly what they're missing and I can start from one place and follow the scope and sequence. It's really awesome because I can just target exactly what they need and go
073from there. And then I can also pull students who need very similar things. So I have a group of four that I see. I have a group of three that I see. I see a few of them individually. Um and then I also push into classes. So there's sometimes where I'm not pulling people and I push into ELA classes. I have a couple students who read beautifully um but their writing and their spelling is at a third grade level. And so I will sit and work with them while they're working on whatever their task is for ELA. I can just jump in with them in that moment and we can do spelling in the moment and help support writing actually in the classroom. So it's kind of the best of both worlds. The flexibility allows
074me either to pull out for like very intensive intervention or I can push in and support that way. And then I also meet with both departments at the high school, their ELA department and here at the middle school so that way I can also know ahead of time what they're doing in classes and can provide support that way or like Jen was talking about provide coaching just to make sure tier one practices are up to where they should be so that way they get the support they need just right off the bat. um because some of these kids just need more more chunking or more, you know, sentence starters, things of that nature where they that just supports them in their general ed classrooms. Um so that's also extremely helpful. Um I I'm not sure
075what I put on these slides. Sorry this before winter break and I'm like I'm not sure what's even this is actually just Jen's slide because it was a perfect example of what the uh correspondics survey looks like and then the data. Um so this is also what I use. So that overlap is nice because she uses it there. I use it here. I use it at both schools. Um so this is just an tiny example of what the students do in class. Um phone name mapping. This is one strategy for older kids to chunk out multi-selavic words. So if they're still working on the automaticity piece, we chunk it out and we we just kind of work backwards. Sometimes we have to work backwards. They have gotten this far. Like middle schoolers and high schoolers,
076they have learned how to get this far, which is a miracle to me sometimes. And so sometimes we do a lot of like working backwards. Um we do a lot of spelling rules going back to prefixes and suffixes, six syllable types. Um there's so much overlap of and I'm really loving that last year and this year we're really focusing on just K12 and making sure we have that alignment piece. That question your comment kind of intrigued me. How does someone get to high school at a second grade reading level and we're getting ready? What is the graduation requirement there? Like what's happening? I have no idea. And there are some students who have a disability. There are some students who I think also a lot of kids learn how to hide it. Kids learn how
077to use different strategies and tools to get by in some cases. And then we also haven't had it's your sec third year now at the high school having intervention. So having at at the funding changed for lap initially it had to be focused at the elementary level. So there wasn't the same sort of flexibility for us to have the funding supporting kids older. And then also as we've been paying more attention to our needs, we've had more data. We've recognized this is a need. So shifting to more intensive support up at the secondary level is something that has been a response to us being I think more intentional about paying attention to what we need. But that's what I'm saying like we're in a situation where we're graduating kids with second grade reading. Okay. It's
078not it's unfortunately not unique across across the country. Oh it's across the country. I mean for a long time the national reading level has been sixth grade and it's plummeting. I did read that that newspapers are written at a sixth grade level or still it's going down. I think this is a testament even in a you know we'll talk about the town hall but even in a time of scarcity to be able to be creative with the funding to be able No, I absolutely appreciate it and what a what a red flag that you like verbalized that. So thank you for doing that like Yeah. Well, I think it's great too that you get to see the kids coming from the middle school into the high school so you get that alert sooner. Yes. And
079in that case too, how when do the kids take the ERA in the school year so you we know how quickly they get to your hands right away. So I work with Jen at the end of the school year. So I know who my incoming sixth graders are and then first week of school I spend the first it takes about three weeks to Earl and Corfonics assess all the students and anytime any teacher has concerns too they stop like I just had someone come into my classroom today. Hey can you go grab so and so they're really struggling so I will assess them. Um, and then right now at the semester break, I'm working on my midyear assessments and then I'll do it again at the end of the year. But what's been really really
080amazing is me following the kids to the high school. Yeah. I I still see there's some they're juniors now from when I first started teaching who I will still check in with. It's great. But it's really nice because I already know them. They have a very established relationship with me. And that's huge because they're in high school. They're like, "It wasn't you, Miss E. I wouldn't be doing this." As I'm like, they're doing letter tiles like on a sound board. Like, I would not do this for anybody else. I'm like, "Come out." I know. And that is a like you imagine that that's a pretty risky thing by the time you're a junior to say, "I can't help that trusted community." So they are able to say that to you about Yes. Exactly. And then
081the students that I have in groups together, they were already together in the middle school classes and have been with me in sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade. And so now they're they're okay with also being with each other as ninth graders or 10th graders because we've had that established community for all these years, which significantly helps. And when they get to the high school, they're like, "Oh, wow. I should have taken this more seriously." middle school and I'm like that's what I've been trying to say. But um that's tough. I mean that's it is it is so it really is. It's difficult. We could all go back to our 15year-old self that we could say. I mean I say that all the time in my classroom. I'm like guys I promise you if you
082don't if you don't take this seriously and put in all the effort now you're going to be begging for my help as freshmen. And that's I mean that's exactly what happens every time. So you have interventions with about 60 students at the middle school and 20 still working with you at the high school. I think another thing that's important to think about at the secondary level is are when you go to learn to be a teacher at the elementary school level, you learn how to teach reading. If when you go to learn to be an English literature teacher, you don't necessarily learn how to teach reading. So like like having um these guys be able to be part of a team and work with those teachers is great because they you don't necessarily learn how
083to teach your graphonics when you're learning via Romeo and Juliet. Yeah. And so now the the teachers here at the middle school they've started incorporating some of my work like the phone mapping and like dividing words into syllables. They've created like bell ringers as part of that just because it it doesn't help just my students but it helps all students because big words are hard. So yeah, you used one. I didn't know what it meant but I wasn't going to say that. You can say any of them. Yeah. Very complex. Yeah, it is. And it's it's hard like they've had when you're it takes so much longer to make growth when you're a middle schooler and a high schooler because I have to spend a lot of time breaking their habits. Like even just today
084I was assessing one of my 10th graders who last year she was reading at a second grade level. I just assessed her today. She jumped up to a fourth grade which is amazing. But she had to stop herself a couple times because she was guessing. I'm like stop it. She's like I know. I know. No, I'm sorry. Cuz you're like, you have to sound it out. Stop just guessing what the word is, but that's been drilled into them for so long. So, a lot of it's just habit breaking and the time it takes to really have intensive intervention. It just it takes longer to show growth, but they're all showing so much growth. It's amazing. Any questions for these two? So, I did just want to highlight kind of one of the things that this
085is just one of the pieces that lap title funds. Um, there was one other thing. Oh, here's your growth. It's nice growth overall as well. This is you. Um, another thing we started this year that is a lap funded as a as a math tools class at the high school. And I'll just talk a little bit about this. Um, the teacher shared with me this is our first year trying this. What we recognized is that students particularly with algebra, there's a group of students who they aren't necessarily in special education, they don't have that level of support, but they also are really struggling to be successful in algebra and there's been kind of a gap there of ways that we're doing that. So, this is a new class which is a parallel. So, they're in
086algebra, but they also have this tools class side by side with that. So, they're getting extra individualized help. So, um, this is a new class and just a little bit of, um, the teacher has done a little bit of surveys of students of how well this is helping them this year. Um, but I just wanted to share that this is something new that's happening. I'm going to be excited to see kind of how it goes after the first year. Um, but this is another way that we're using lab for academic. Dave Schik is teaching. And when did this when did this launch? This year. This year. This is our first year. Yeah. Doing this class. And so students in that it's a smaller class but they'll work with the algebra teachers what's coming up next
087week they'll pre-teach post teach and then there's also some skill development because kind of just like in reading maybe I missed this one concept of you know multiplication of nines or something else. So kids are missing a range of little things here and there by the time they get up to there. So part of what they do in this class also is identify specific skills a kid might be missing that's helping prevent them from being successful in algebra. So that's that's another new kind of lap funded thing that we're trying this year. Definitely it is better. Yeah. And it'll be exciting to see how that works as a process. First time we've tried having a class like this in recent we've tried a few different other things. Any other questions about lap Tylon? Mhm. I
088curious um what's communic with students at home if they're having um you know these significant gaps of second grade reading life on Facebook are are there um I guess implementations that are being used at home too and are the families involved and what what's that piece is there communication we want to talk about kind of how families know um at the elementary level I use parent to communicate with All families that I serve, I individually message each of the families that are in lap and let them know what they're receiving. And some families are more, it's more two-way and they'll reach out more or there's more communication. We send home um in the elementary the lab, we send home passages, multiple passages every week and ask parents to practice that with their students or just
089read out with our students um with varied um levels of involvement um or family. But um so I know in elementary they're at least being notified from me as well as our classroom teachers are also of course communicating at conferences and and whatnot but they're behind but I don't know what it looks like middle school high school if you want to add anything. Yeah, there's I mean there's communication home just that your child student is in my class and why and what it looks like and there's updates periodically. Um I I honestly don't get a lot of replies back. Um, I can't speak to what their home life looks like and how much they practice at home. Um, most of my students are not multilingual. They're native English speakers. So, statistically speaking, I'm reading things
090where it does say that parents reading to their children is decline at home decline sign. I was read all the time and I still got pulled out when it was like you got pulled out until they were ready to figure out why you were big because I was the kid. Um, but that being said, do we still have a I'm not in the elementary school, but I volunteered all the time when my kiddos were little and read to the children consistently. Is that still a big push at that adults are coming in and reading with the children? It's kind of dependent on the class and the the teacher and the parents that all the little paper books and we just read those kids. Yeah. Like I do see parent pair volunteers for sure. Um I
091would say it seems less than in the past but I think you speak to such a huge part of the problem is that like I just think there's so much less of that oral language development for kids and that read if you can't say it, you can't read it. And so if kids haven't been talking or having those conversations or hearing the academic language of books, um that puts them at a huge disadvantage for learning to read. And so I think that's a contributing factor for why so many kids are struggling to and part of LAP and title funding does also include kind of family engagement activities. So things like during the conferences there are conversations about being different things go out to families but it certainly is something that we could continue to think
092about different ideas or ways to get families involved in different in more ways. Last year like I did math nights which was which was a way to kind of get families involved with math instruction and snuggle up and read. Yeah, snuggle up and read. Those kinds of things are um some of the types of opportunities. So, not the consistency that we've seen in the past of parents coming in likely to read with kids. I would say it seems less than it was. Yeah. Miss Bernson at the high school with her Latinos and actions class, she her class goes every Thursday to a kindergarten classroom and those students read to those every Thursday which is amazing. That's their volunteering that they're doing this year. Any other question? I appreciate what you do. I love the advancements
093that are taking place and serving the needs of those that have been produced. Yeah. And I just want to just celebrate having these two. And there's a number of folks on the team as well, but um really loving, you can tell just by the technical jargon, it's very complex all of these things. And having some folks who are kind of digging in and just love all the details about it are helping us all grow. So just really show the work that they're doing as well. Okay. Thank you. All right. Uh next report is um health and uh sorry family and health services report with director of special services. Hi everybody. Like I was just here. Welcome in. Yeah. And um so this is obviously there's multiple reports I give to you guys each year. Um
094the first one's special ed. This one centers around our family and student health services. So if we think about our family center and our nursing staff. Um and then the third one I'll do is is around our mental health services and supports for for our um students in our our community. So um first I want to start by saying and if if I mean I know some of you guys last year for example I was able to come and introduce members of the staff. Um the members of our family services staff are Alicia Roberts who's our family um services coordinator. We also have Avita Tropman who's our uh cultural liaison. Um in our health services department we have um Amber Erdman who's the uh school nurse at the high school. She's part-time at the high
095school. We have Stacy King who serves uh Irene Ryther completely because we have kids coming out of our ears in that building. Um and then we have three health services assistants, one in each of our buildings. Jenny Kudson at the high school who's there Monday, Tuesday, and every other Wednesday. And then Brena Almond at the middle school full-time and Rachel Berdan who's at our elementary school full-time. So, um, there's a lot of folks, a lot of moving pieces that that happen in in each of these departments and and this year they become more integrated into some of the school improvement stuff. So, I'll I'll talk about that as I go through. Um, but that's while that's leading to great things for kids, it's also leading to new challenges and things for us to be thinking
096about for the future. So um first things um talking about some of the trends we're seeing in our department. Um if we go back to 201819 which is my first year in this position um we look at the number of students in our district identified as ML. Okay. Um not all those families need language support. Some of them do. Um we had about 10.1% of our student population at that point were qualified under ML. Um last year that number was 15.9%. Now again not everybody's le needing language support but that just goes to illustrate looking at the growth of the district looking at um the growth in just in terms of that percentage it's it's kind of outstripping the growth of the district. It's proportionately increasing as we go and so um that's increased just
097it's just added to this layer of need around language support. So Mrs. Tropman has been very busy um attending um IEP meetings, attendance meetings, uh things like that. Um gratefully or thankfully um Lisa Gilchrist has done a tremendous amount of work around language access in the district. She's added a ton of um interpreters um whether it be Arabic um Spanish speaking uh Punjabi um trying to think there's not sure but but yet there's more right um also access to services that do um some of the one-off languages that we come across. So some of the maybe some of the dialects from from southern Mexico or or Central America. Um, and then also I want to thank um the board for approving the work of the grant with Foundry 10 last year because those devices that
098we have in each of the buildings and in the family center have been a really valuable tool and those were funded solely out of some of that grant um work. So, thank you for doing that. Um, I know it paid for other things, but in terms of this part of of the district, it's been it's paid dividends a lot. Um, quick question. Yeah. blows my mind. How many languages do we support? Um, that's a great question. At one point, at one point at Irene Ryther alone, it was 13 different languages. Over 104. Yeah, it I mean we we can get that for you. I've heard that we had 17 17 that we actually we could actually interpers and and some of it's Yeah. Yeah. And some of it's, you know, we may have three dialects
099um from from whether it's Waka or Guatemala or one of the other um regions in Central America. There's so many different um dialects down there that, you know, we we have students who at one point, I think at the high school, we had students that were speaking four different, you know, which aren't written languages, right? So there's some complexity around that even. Um so that that's been something that that our our staff and particularly in our our family services uh department's working through. Um is there anything we can do to partner with other districts may be experiencing the same to share resources? We do. We do. When I was volunteering with the flooding, that was one of the things and so mass know exactly the different dialects out of out of Guatemala and how do
100we serve the families because It's not the same as having a Spanish interpreter or Yeah. And unfortunately, when we talk about some of those dialects, when we talk about needing translation services, we're relying on computer. We're relying on people who are who you're calling in or or zooming in to meetings and things like that. We don't It It is one of those things where it's hard to get boots on the ground and and to be in person for some of those things. I didn't know if there was something you could share with no sack that they're obviously in the same we Yeah. And I know um like for example this time it didn't happen because of things that were going on at the time but like when the flooding happened in 2021. Thank you. Um
101because this is what round three. Um like Alvita was out there doing like a lot of the MRT work and helping out with stuff like that. So she's I mean yes we we work actually we work really closely with Noosack on a lot of things including some of the early childhood stuff. So um okay uh next one is um with the SIP goals and school improvement goals around attendance and increasing attendance at each of our buildings. that's really pulled on both of our family services and our student health services um department to be part of some of those meetings with families to talk about how we can better support getting kids to school. It's also resulted in our family services department doing a lot of going and picking up kids and bringing them to school.
102Um and so that is we'll talk about it being a trend. It's also one of those problems we're going to have to solve later because it is becoming um it it is taking chunks of days for both um Alicia and Alvida and if that happens it's great work. It's work we need to do but that means something else might not be happening in that moment or time and we might have to look at and shift things a little bit um going forward. Um we are having an increased prevalence of chronic conditions in students. So things like um type 1 diabetes, seizure disorders, um autoimmune um illnesses and and different uh conditions like that. um a lot of CGM monitoring kids with type one. Um if you ever you probably wouldn't be able to see it,
103but if you like our health services staff will have their have the district phone up and have just a list of CGM numbers that they're monitoring for kids throughout the building. Um and sometimes throughout the district in any given moment. Um and then when we talk about mental health impacts, that's really hitting our health services department in particular a lot. you find our nurses being involved in a lot of conversations with students and finding out um mental health conditions and and working with the counselors or with me to to help um find ways to help support uh those kids. So, that's something that's kind of been growing um over the last several years is, you know, I think that we have an added focus on mental health in general, but we're with that we're seeing
104an increase in it. Um some of the successes um you know Adrian's right behind me the ML night um Alvida and and Alicia and Bonnie and um our our ML staff and Adrian spend a lot of time putting that together. Um and they both of them really looked at that as a huge success for their department. Um, one of the things they were able to do this year was bring some outside agencies in to to expose our our families who have language differences to um some of the resources in the community so that they're able to access those resources and better support their themselves and their kids. Um, and so that was something that both of them are are very proud of the work that's happened. Um, one of the things that happened was, you
105know, they did giveaways. Is that what it was? They did like a raffle. Um, and there were 46 families that participated in that that night, which, you know, we have more families than that that that would qualify as ML, but it's it's it feels like that continues to grow each year we do it. So, that's been super positive. Um, this year we added an adult literacy class that happens at Irene Ryther. Um, we had uh 15 uh students in that class. Um, and it's been pretty successful. I think that that um, Wacom Literacy Council's been happy with with the um, with the way that's gone. They're looking at adding a second class starting this month. And, you know, I'll talk about a little bit later, how can we better use that um, space over at
106Irene Ryder to increase ed educational opportunities for our families um, to help them better support themselves and kids in the schools. um you know with the increase in attendance and I talked about it a little bit at the my special ed presentation um we we've had a reduction in the overall number of health related um absences and and some of that's directly attributable to the work that Amber and Stacy did around creating some triage um systems around how students are referred to the office and not just sent because they have a cough it's this is what's going on at the student, the school nurse is able to look at it and then kind of plan out, okay, I'm going to deal with this so I can manage these critical situations and we'll come check in
107on this student in a little bit. Um, that's led to some interesting things that I'll talk about in a little bit also um, as we come out of COVID and some of the feelings that have existed over the last 5 years. um because we're having a shift in the past. Student was sick, they went home. Now it's we're doing an assessment to see if the student is is um able to continue to stay at school. Um, and then I talked about it a little bit on the previous slide, but the the that collaboration that both of these parts of the district have done with building leaders to help support kids in being at school, staying at school, and being successful at school has really increased this year with the added um focus on on attendance
108for kids. So, um, one thing I do want to talk about on that bottom one and, um, we had a pretty tricky situation earlier in the year where we had a student who entered into our school with a, um, condition that we didn't know anything about. Um, I was on the phone a lot with OSPI. I was on the phone with the school nursing corps um representative down at the ESD turn trying to learn as much as possible. Um working with the outside agency who was supporting the family. Um you know there were there were some staff just didn't know how to navigate it. um student has a lot of needs and the work that um Amber and Stacy did collaboration with the the the outside providers, myself, the classroom team, you know, it was
109bumpy to start, but once everyone got on the same page, I think I'm really proud to say that that student's been in school being super successful. Uh I spoke with that parah who's been supporting that student a lot over winter break and raves about how that student's done with entering into our system. So it's kind of a testament to the the work that that that team does um to support kids getting to school and being successful once they get here. Um talking about areas of growth, we live in a great community. We live in a place where people donate um resources a lot which is a great problem to have. It's also a challenge when you have a portable that you're also sharing with opportunity council as an office space. Um, and so one of
110the things that I think is going to continue to just be something and it's a problem we're going to willingly accept is the the gra or the the graciousness of our community and just being able to store the things that we get to better support our our families. um it is just going to be a problem that we'll gladly accept, but one that we continue to problem solve around and and Jay Joerger's been awesome working with Alicia and Alvita to find places for those things to go. But one of the things that that makes hard for is like it's hard to collect mattresses for when mattresses are needed or furniture when a family is in a flood and loses everything. Um, and so, you know, this year I think we we may have an opportunity
111to to share some of the resources. We we made our family center available to the folks out in NooKack to come if they needed um clothing and different items like that. So, we may be able to clean up clear up some space. Um, but it's going to come right back because of the the folks who live in our in our in our district. So, um, we're looking at expanding community education opportunities. I talked about adding that second literacy class here this month. Um, we we've talked about, you know, in the past we offered stronger connections, um, which is a class that's, um, WSU puts it together. Um, and we've had varying degrees of success with running that class in the past. Um, and so, you know, we've talked about doing that again, bringing that back
112around, which is a way of supporting families and just being more cohesive and and um, supportive of each other. Um, medication administration and safety is is is a challenge. Um, there are some regulations around keeping um, some of the medication that we administer to students at school behind two locks. Um, we've had a lot of custodial changes. We've had a lot of um staffing shifts and stuff in general. And so, you know, finding ways to keep the health room door locked as well as the cabinet where the medications locked is is an ongoing we just it's it's something we're we're constantly um needing to be on top of because we are getting more and more medication orders. Um, so you know, hopefully we don't get to a point where we need a second place to
113store medication in a building, but who knows? I'm really hoping not. Um, one of the things that's an area of growth that that I I really am going to continue to work with our principles on and our health services staff are going to work is just use of systems to support access of the health room staff. Actually, I would say that for the for the family services staff also. One of the things again talking about great part of our community is that we want to get folks help. And so it happens to me. I'm walking down the hallway, someone walks this way, I get a driveby. Hey, so and so this situation um and then I'm on to my next thing and in the meantime so and so's name is rolling around in my head
114and then it comes out of my head at 3:00 in the morning, right? Um and so we've created some systems um for for staff to refer kids, refer families for support is just reinforcing the use of those systems so that we can fall back on those systems and kids actually do get the support they need as opposed to we have a driveby conversation that that ends up getting lost in the flood of driveby conversations and then somebody slips through the cracks. And so, um, you know, specifically when I talk about this, there's been some some some challenges with using the the triage form and students being coming to the health room, being assessed, and being sent back to class and and staff. Well, why? They they're sick. And it's like, well, in the past, like
115four years ago, yes, the student would have gone home. right now looking at what our guidance is that student is okay to stay at school and and continue to to be here to access their education. And so that's going to be an ongoing thing. And I think it's it's just a byproduct of of you know this movement that happened before um the pandemic to the pandemic to now we're coming back out of the pandemic and it's going to take some time for people to settle into that. Um, but the positive thing is that kids are staying at school. And I I I know that when we get towards reporting on the SIP goals, I'm I'm really excited to see what some of those percentages are going to look like in terms of the number of
116kids who are at school 90% of the time or more. So, um, two things that I want to talk about as as future challenges. Um this year when we look at family services, one of the things that had to get let go this year was the hygiene closet. Um as we came into the school year, there's a lot of questions around things like SNAP and food insecurity and different things like that. And so a conscious decision was made to focus on making those resources available, not knowing what was going to happen with some of these things. Um, also knowing that the economy is getting tighter for a lot of people, right? Um, and so the the decision was made to focus on food and clothing items for families. Um, will we be able to bring
117that back in the future? Hopefully. Um, I think that that was that was a decision that wasn't easy to make because the hygiene closet was something that that families were accessing. it's just there's only so much space and so many hours in a day for us to be able to provide resources to folks. So, um that uncertainty continues and and it kind of comes into that next piece, you know, when we talk about it systemic uncertainty and James mentioned the meeting last night in Blaine, you know, as we we talk about uncertainty around school funding um and whether or not resources are going to be available for for certain things. Um, I mean we are very lucky to have the health services staffing that we have in this district. There a lot of other district
118like when I I'm almost guil I almost feel guilty sharing it sometimes when I meet with other districts. Um, you know that's going to be a tricky thing for us to continue to to support at the level that we have unless some some resources are freed up for schools to better support the needs of kids. And you heard me talk about it with special ed. You're going to hear me talk about it with with both family and and um health services. And you'll probably hear me talk about it about about it with mental health. Um all of these are critical areas of support our families and our kids need. Um unfortunately everything we do in a school is something that's critical for our families um to need. So and our kids to need. And so,
119um, you know, just my goal is to sustain as much as we can, um, because they're doing good work. Um, but that is going to be an added complication that our our our staff are going to have to navigate as we move into the next school year. So, and I worry about, you know, this the stress that puts on on folks um, as they get pulled in more and more directions or more and more things happen and, you know, feelings get frayed. You know, I I think I talked about five years ago just kind of the conversations that were happening with our health room staff around things like sending kids home. That that was hard for them to navigate. Um they understood, but no one likes getting getting chewed out, so to speak. And so,
120you know, as we as we move into this new era, hopefully that'll happen less, but uncertainty doesn't help it. So anyway, oh last thing I have on there for Oh, it's not Merch, too. Is it Joe? What? No, I I can put it. Oh my goodness. It's in our copy, though. Okay. So, there's So, there's some there's some information on that sheet that just kind of sh Sorry, Joe. I Joe gets unfortunately Joe gets blamed for everything. Yeah. So there's just some information around some of the work that Family Services and Health Services has done over this course of the beginning of the school year. Um there's information in there around some of the donations and some of the food um and community um outreach work that that they're doing in family services as well
121as what the health services uh or the health room visits um are looking like. I will say on the health room visits, I would love and and maybe this is something I can get to James or Angie to send you to go back and find the information from my first couple years on the number of health room visits and then send that along with where we're at right now. And that number has gone down so far. It's unbelievable how different that number looks right now. So it's all I got for you guys. even even though the ed other she didn't look there the McKini Vento um from the OSPI that created I think well I I've watched them before but I sat and watched it for like an hour and just watched one after another
122after another cried cried you know and I think most people assume that that's not happening in our district and your numbers stay different and I'm sure glad you shared it I think it's just a good for us perceive reality. Well, thanks for sharing that. Yeah, I so when I moved from the classroom, so first of all, I was a special ed teacher and so I got to know a lot of things about my kids that I worked with as a as a teacher. Um, but when I moved out of the classroom into the office, I remember Dr. Harvel sharing with me, you're going to to learn things about your kids, the kids that you don't necessarily want to know. Um, and that is one of those things like hearing some of the living situations or
123some of the things that happened to some of our kids um, as a result of, you know, being unhoused or being in in in uh, unstable housing. It's it's heartbreaking and um, yeah, it does happen in our our community. It it's based on our numbers, it's a little bit better than it had been, which is is positive, but it's, you know, one is too many um of our kids to not be in a stable housing situation. So, yeah, it's it's easy to overlook and forget about, but it's it's definitely there. So, um the space you were talking about for the storage for donations, can it be offsite? uh for like the larger item. Yeah, that's that's a conversation that I feel like somebody involved in risk management would have to find out. Um but yeah,
124if we had if we had a place for that, then the trick's going to be getting Joe's truck. Yeah. When class had their garage sale, we were in that situation. We were blessed with four bicycles. Yeah. That we donated back to the family resource center because it just seemed like that was a better place for them than raising money for Disneyland. Yeah. Um but again it was where are we going to store those? They want these but where do we store them? I didn't ask after that. I mean that was that became their problem. I think they I think they got rid of them. I mean not I think they I think they used them for for the benefit of families. Um I think um very apparent. Yeah. Yeah. And we're we're really lucky to
125have Laurel Church being involved in helping us with the clothing closet. I mean that's been really really helpful for Alicia and Alvida and to have that partnership with with the church. Um, I'm intrigued and and Alicia and I haven't been able to really sit down just being back from winter break for a few days. Um, to find out exactly what has some of the outreach from from NooKack looked like. Um, you know, I I think that was one of the things that we really wanted to do was let the the Noosack community know that, you know, we're here to help them. Um, being somebody who has I have a sister who teaches in NooKack and friends who are out there. Um, you know, I I'm was able to hear firsthand some of the things that
126were going on with individual students and different things. So, you know, it's it's definitely a way that we can we're we're lucky we did don't have the same impacts um in our district to the same degree that they've they've had to experience the last 5 years. So, it's it's helpful for us to be able to do that. And based on your numbers that I see here, and this a little off topic, but of all the statistics and the families and the children and the services that are being provided, I hope there's some kind of collaboration that way in conjunction with Winter Wishes and the $50,000 that are raised each year. Yeah. To make sure that's priority. Alicia Alicia and Alita work extensively with Patrick and the leadership class. They do a lot of things. back
127to the get before you get they there's kids going over and doing support for win um for family center also did the support center this year she that was her favorite year was working in there like doing the clothing and all that. So they're they're they're integrated into that. Yeah. I just want to make sure there were recipients there all funding. Yeah. I I think they do I think they do um wishes themselves. So yeah, that's good. So thanks. Thanks. Thanks for everything you do. Yeah. Thanks guys. All right, we'll proceed on to new business. Uh, Dr. Kurt Harville. First one is retiring 0000 series of policies and procedures. All right. Good evening. Like a Caroline Bradford slide right there. So, yes. Um I mentioned briefly uh during the last presentation that WASDA had retired
128um and I'll just call them the zeros um based because they were redundant um and so what was retired a policy for a couple reasons. Number one no longer aligns to new court decisions uh no longer reflects state and federal law and then reducing redundancy. Um, when I reached out to WASDA to say, hey, what's the process for doing this? They said it's a first and second reading. If it's in a situation where we have to get it done in one reading, they said it's that's fine. We can do that, but best practice is they recommend the the first and second reading. One is just awareness for the board. Um so as Jared mentioned um these are the they they retired all of the planning documents. Um these were all discretionary um and they retired
129them because they outdated or they had been woven into other functions of board governance. These are the list of them. Um, and then when I went when I went back and revisited them, um, the the 100, 300, and 500 were what we're used to for board for board docs or for board policies. Um, they had WADA's language in them. the 510, 520, 530, and 550 referenced our either our old mission statement or vision statement or reference was a direct link to the strategic plan. Um, and so these are being and and 700 is just the plan evaluation and it says each year the board will review the plan uh to make sure that progress is being made. Um, and so these are the ones that was retiring. Um, so if the board has any questions,
130we'll follow the normal practices and go from there. Is it like it's after a certain amount of time they do that? I mean I just noticed on most days were like 2012 going 10 years so it's like maybe I think in it doesn't have to be time because many of the um some of the the thousands which pertains to the school board when I started this a lot of those when I look back at them they were adopted back in 2011 and 13. Um, we have some adopted policies prior to that that are still the laws haven't changed. They're still relevant. And so, Wazda just hasn't updated them. So, it doesn't have to be time. Another question on that. Okay. So, we have three. We're going to retire several and then we're going to update
131several. Uh so we have three policies for first reading. Um and two of these policies are really MSD driven and one of the last policy is driven. But uh the first one that I bring forward you is 4110P and this is citizen advisory committees and task forces. Uh this is a discretionary policy. It's an update to an existing policy. Um we revised the policy to provide a process and requirements of committees. And if you look at the policy um the first the first chunk of this is in red and that's the new portion and it really does it does three things. Um one it aligns 4110 to our commitments. Um two, it provides a reason for the committees. And so what is the difference? The reasons for committees are policy or law. They can be
132for research, oversight of activities. Um they could be serving as vehicles for community input, information or exchange networking. Uh the second thing it does is it defines what the groups are. So an advisory group is long-term. A task force and focus that's more short-term. They have a specific time limit and they have a specific purpose. And then working groups and planning committees, those are ongoing. Membership may change and those tend to be MSD employees. Would that potentially be instructional committee? Could be. Could be. And then in the policy, um the last section states that the district will also develop and implement a comprehensive outreach program to recruit a diverse pool of member representatives that reflects the district's demographics and learning needs to the greatest possible. So looking for um variety in these committees, looking to
133get community input from various parts of our community. Um but creating a process to do that. The other change is on the on the second part of it. Um it adds and it aligns with 4110 but it changes the language to superintendent and or the board. So those are the the major shifts to 4110. Yeah, I had a question. So I read contracts all day and so fortunately the way I'm doing this, the superintendent andor the board will appoint a committee member. And so I can trust Dr. James, but 10 years from now when it's a different board and there's a different superintendent, could the superintendent like unilaterally appoint their own committee? I think because it says and or it said and then and we'd work together or mean superintendent could appoint a committee or
134could be both. Looks like Dr. Ever did respond. Well, I just said would it'd be pretty shortsighted to say I'm going to do something against the board. Not you. No. or or anybody, right? Because you you who you have control over is the superintendent. That's all you have control over. So it would be silly for someone to not partner or work with the board in that way, right? Yeah. So, so Jared is the concern that what Okay. So I guess what the word or. Yeah. Right. If he has the word or what is the board's protection in making sure that doesn't happen? What is the that that action has been taken? Yeah. Well, you have to take action. You have the ability to request updates. You have the ability to ask for reporting. You could
135you could require those things. Um, we have a lot of policy that says superintendent will and doesn't doesn't give any difference to the board, right? So, yeah, that's another thing I read that I like that's that's different. So, yeah, it's just going to recontracts all day. So, yeah, that's something you can look at. Yeah, we can we can revisit that and I feel like it's more collaborative and again, it's not about this board or the superintendent or anyone here. It's it's 10 years from now. So, yeah. And it's kind of a a subject matter that we've discussing pretty regularly about the need to have committees because I see you have it stated in the policy. I'd love to see the process. What is that process going to look like for attracting diverse groups into our
136committee and confirming that it's a diverse group that we committee okay we can okay I can I can look into both of those curriculum and hiring would fall under say that again curriculum committees and hiring committees would fall under this publicly I don't think hiring hiring may not hiring curriculum administrative action. Yeah. Okay. Has it own policy as well that talks about that maybe like there's a lot and when we talked about 2020 the it is very specific I think it was 2020 is that correct? It was very specific that the parents have to be x proportion of the committee the percentages. Yeah. So it's it's has its own this would be like for the strategic plan committee who came together um and back in when I was athletic director I convened a hall of
137fame committee those type for those specific activities. Okay but thank you for the questions. Next one. Okay. Uh the next one is procedure 3122 which is excused and unexcused absences. Um and this one it's a combination of both WASDA and and MSD. First, the was the change is if you there's you go through this. It's a it's I'm going to say it's a 10-page um procedure. And on page eight, it talks about expelled or emergency and they change one word, they change removed um because that is the new term. Um, and so there's only one change that WASDA made to this procedure and that it aligns with the discipline updates uh that we did a few weeks ago. So that's the only change from WASDA. You've heard you've heard Mr. Jacobe and Miss Samra talk
138about attendance and relating to LAP and title and you heard Aaron talk about relating to special services. Um, this year and the past two years we've had an attendance committee. um that's made up of myself and and Adrian and our building principles. Um this year that attendance committee has really been focusing on attendance. Previously it was it was getting our data to match OSPI's data. So that when we were collecting data when we said we had 90% attendance and then we looked at OSPI the state report card and it shows I'm going to say 70. We were like oh what's the difference? And so it took us quite a while, a majority of last year to get those aligned. So now what we're doing is when we're meeting with those principles, we are focused on
139what strategies are we using. And if if you could sit in the room and listen to those principles, they get along great. And I think part of the reason they get along great is they are so competitive with one another. They are, you heard Aaron talk about home visits. If a student is out, we are sending f we are sending a employee to go check on the student and if need to bring it bring the student to school. Um we are talking about ways to improve attendance. And so one of the ways that this team talked about was with when we have unexcused absences, we have a we have a process that we can use the VA process. But with excused absences, if we have if we have students who have 20 excused absences, they're
140still missing school. And so what what we've been really working on this year is looking at language that how can we address those excused absences if there's if there's um in here and you see the language that we've that we've landed on. And so if you have 10 or 15 excused absences within a single school year, our administrator will conduct a formal attendance review and that'll just be an internal review. And then what we talked about is we have the option to if we need to dive deeper, then we can we can take an additional step. If we know why that student's excused, then then we just leave it. But we have communication. What the team really landed on is whether you miss 10 to 15 days excused or whether you miss 10 to 15
141days unexcused, you're still missing days and you're still missing instruction. And so the team was really really excited about this language. Um, and it allows the and if you read it, the district may require additional documentation such as doctor's notes to continue excusing further absences. I did have questions about that. Yes. Um because from an employer standpoint asking for adoptive people can be a financial burden. So how does that apply to schools? Can we ask that? We had that same discussion about equity and that burden on the family and that's why we when we originally talked about it, we said we will. Um, but as we talked about it, we our principles know their students and their families pretty well. And so they have that they can figure out or they can choose to yes,
142this one we want to see and no, this one we won't. Um, and it could be based on that. It also could be based on this last step. It could be based on we have students kind of what Aaron talked about with the pandemic. if you were if if you were sick, you were sent home. And now it's it's re-educating families that if it's a sniffle or if it's a they just don't feel well in the morning, but they don't they don't have a fever, they don't meet certain criteria, let's let's get those bring those families back and bring those students back. So, we did have a similar conversation. Um and this is a first reading, so we're also open to Well, question then. this maybe omit the 10 absences letter that we send like
143there's the printing of the letter there's the mailing of the letter I can tell you my daughter's absences are excused they're school related she has a lot of opportunities to do extracurriculars and we're wasting resources on sending you a letter for the for the 10day excused I mean Gracie misses 10 days every year you know she she gets to do extracurricular activities So it just seems like a resource we could save for something else. So if you can actually look at them one at a time and not then those when you know it's a school related situation that'd be great. We can we can bring that to the team. Other questions? Well I was just wondering about when you spoke about equity. How do you decide who gets to miss 10 and who gets to
144miss up to 15? That's the window. That's the window. That's the window. Okay. So, we have situations and and we talked about it. We spent I want to say we meet we started off meeting twice a twice a month um just to kind of get the get going and where we wanted to go and now we're meeting monthly and our last meeting was really on this language and the different scenarios that that could happen. So it just the 10 to 15 it's it gives the principal some some some room to make those decisions. I just worry about like so Marty and I get together and like well my kid missed 10 and got this process why miss 15 and it didn't trigger that process. So then obvious then Marty goes to you know wants to
145know why. I think it's also the intent isn't to be punitive. the intent is to encourage them to come to school, right? And so I don't know if if in a non-punitive manner I would solicit that kind of but I think the flexibility and maybe it doesn't need to be five days but okay absolutely something else I think we talked about was um it says at that point the school will do a review. So actually this is more on this is more about putting responsibility on the time esteem for school when a kid hits that level to actually do that kind of more intensive review which is I think most people's practice but it it helps by that. So I think that's it was moved from we will require doc no to when kids miss
146that many days we are going to require ourselves to do a review is kind of more I think that makes more sense. Yeah. Thanks for clarifying. Yeah. And I didn't I didn't do a good job of clarifying this. The 10 to 15 is internal. It's our internal. Great. So that we eliminate the letters home for someone like that and we know what's going on for illness or non-illness related things. And what we're also hoping to do is to align if you're an IE family and if you're a high school family, you're getting that same in that same window. You're getting that same alignment. That's good. I appreciate the feedback and welcome further questions. And then the last policy I have for you tonight is um we shared I think this was coming um and it's
147the oath of office and I brought this before the board I think in November. Um the board had questions about if we have to do these things why is it discretionary? Uh, I emailed Walla that night. They got back to me with they had those same thoughts. Um, they landed on they're going to make it important. Um, which is not the the critical, it's important. Um, and in that article they kind of share why. Um, and then WASDA also made some I think they call it they made some minor changes. Um what they did is they included adding in person or remote op option to the oath or the affir affirmation. Um and then they they added two paragraphs down below about if a board member has written appointment um and proper filling with the
148county auditor. They assume office immediately. If they are elected during a general election, then they assume office following the certification of the election results. So they added some clarity in there as well about when the when the new board member takes assumes their role and it's I guess because I'm I'm learning to really enjoy these. It is nice to to say when the board has a question about it and says why is it this and I can reach out to to my wasa contact and they're like hey yeah we're thinking the same thing and then to see it happen. Yeah. It's it's rewarding in a way. Yeah, I was going to say good job board. That's every train for do it every year. We hire somebody new. So, as always, if you have questions, please
149let me know and I appreciate the feedback. Thank you. Great. All right. On old business, uh, second review and approval, behavior consultant, uh, personal services agreement. Do we have any questions? Can I get a motion to adopt? I'll make a motion to adopt the behavior cons consultation personal services agreement. All second I and just to preface I will abstain from everything since I wasn't um second policy and review second review and approval policy 10005 key functions as a board. Do you have any questions or feedback? Do I get a motion? I'll make a motion. 5 motion support. I'll second it. All those in favor? I um next up is the second review and approval of policy 2110 annual organizational meeting. Does anyone have any questions? Okay. Can I get a motion? Yeah. I'll make a
150motion to approve the 1630 evaluation of superintendent. 1210 12. Well, 1210. What did I say? What did I say? You're one ahead. 16. Yeah. It's like an older achiever. Yeah. Take a second. It's trying to get down. Can we get a second? I'll second. Okay. All those in favor? I abstain. All right. Next up is the second review and approval of policy 1630, evaluation of the superintendent. Does anyone have any questions? Make a motion to approve policy 1630. Okay. Okay. Second. Second. Okay. All those in favor? I abstain. Um, next up is the second review and approval of policy 1820, board self assessment. Anyone have any questions? Okay. Can I get a motion? I'll make a motion to approve policy 1820 board self assessment. I'll second. All those in favor? I I All right. Last
151one. Um, second review and approval policy 1821, standards of individual school directors. Does anyone have any questions? Okay. Um, can I get a motion? I'll make a motion to approve policy 1821 standards for individual school directors as detailed. I'll second. All those in favor I I right policies. Um last thing on the the agenda tonight, well last presentation is uh Dr. James. Okay. Thank you. The um it's hard to come up with things when you have a twoe break to say this is what's going on. So I have a few things that hearken just before the break and then uh a couple things since. And so it'll be um a little bit more brief than normal, but um winter wishes give before you get winter wishes um on the Thursday and the Friday and actually
152left Thursday evening to go be with my son in Colorado for his birthday and then to start the holiday. So I miss winter wishes and it's it was hard to miss winter wishes because that is such a great event. And you mentioned 50 grand and I understood that they raised 25 Or maybe you were just saying a lot of money when they when they have donations. I saw but I saw I saw a slide. So I'm not sure how much was raised because I didn't attend but it is good. It is always just remarkable how the community and the work that our kids do and um in an effort to provide for other students without knowing who they're providing for. Right. So you were right. is 25,000. Anyway, it's still fantastic. I I saw it
153on a slide, so I was trying to, you know, do my homework last couple days, but um so the the photos on the left are just capturing a couple of the efforts I knew before get the photos on the right. And I I certainly do appreciate board members attending that event as well. So, thank you for that. I was there for the picture. He just left. Yeah. So, for the slinky ears, so he excited. No one got a picture. I was like, "Try to get me. You guys are so far forward." I'm like, "Yeah." Anyway, thank you for honoring our kids by being there because they really do enjoy having board members there. Um, and then just the ability for us to continue to do that work as a district. It's really great. The other
154thing that happened over the break was recognition for our middle school. Um AWSP and Association of uh Washington student leaders um identify different schools and who I believe had applied to say, you know, we actually consider culture in our building when we started the school year. And so, um, they're doing a really nice job at the middle school around how they're serving kids and what the experiences are that they're having. And so, it was great to see that they had some recognition there as well. So, bring that forward for your awareness as well. Now, it turns to the dark side of my presentation. Um, so it's uh I'll just I'm not going to mince words. super frustrating that our governor comes out with a budget that includes by some estimates hund00 million cuts of basic
155education when we are trying to survive. Um and so this will trigger one thing about a governor's budget is it it's not set. It is just the first budget that's released. There's also a Senate budget and a House budget. And then all of that is information that the two houses have to come together and develop an operating budget at the end. But the difficulty is that when you're governor comes out with those cuts at the outset, it opens the door for other entities like the House and the Senate to say, "Hey, basic ed is fair game." And so that's the frustration. and um things that were included in that. I'm sure you well I don't know but I would assume you've seen the the press releases about the Balmer group saying that they were going
156to donate millions and millions of dollars towards early childhood and and some of the some of the conditions were that they couldn't eliminate ECAP slots but his budget has an 25% elimination of TK slots but picking up some ECAP through through the Balmer donation we'll end up with a net 200 00 increase. So there the way it's it's broken down is we'll pick up 2,000 ECAP, but we're going to lose 1,800 TK slots. And the TK numbers across the state are blowing anything away in terms of student achievement outcomes. Our kids at 5 years old are coming in better equipped to join the K12 system than ever before. and the amount of investment that provides the opportunity for our kids to excel and not go into retention, not be need to be served by special
157services, not have to go into any kind of um behavior programs because of the the pre-learning that they receive in TK programs and the resistance of our state to fund that is super frustrating across the state. We are working um Dr. Dominguez and I and others are working on a letter to send to our local uh legislative representatives um talking about that specifically. Um we are also countywide working on a letter to stop the unfunded mandates. Um we have a number of unfunded mandates that we're required to do and it's debilitating our our our budgets and so um we're working on that as well. And I'll be sharing those with you. Um the other thing that's included and I I specifically it worked well with her transportation presentation. The depreciation schedule is 13 years. So
158his proposal says let's move it to 15. So again it makes districts have to manage with less to be able to save just a little bit of money money now. And so um so that's his proposal. um OSPI made a request to increase mtocks you know um supplies and operating costs and his budget does not do that and so um it does not look good for the budget this year just doesn't look good in terms of state funding and and how that's going to apply for basic ed. Now, when we talk about the event last night, this was a town hall meeting. Um there's a group called Fund Now. Five um women from Blaine and Ferndale um have gotten really well informed about school finance and actually started this event last year and and it
159was Ferndale, Mount Baker, and Blaine. And I was I was reached during the break last year and it was a similar situation where it was 2 days later after break and I just said we I don't know where my people are. I don't have I don't have time to be able to put it together. I I'd love to do it in the future. Well, it's now the future. so participated and um really appreciate Angie and um Marty were there manning a table and supportive for people just coming by and seeing um Lisa did a great job collecting um artifacts of things that she's had in newsletters about heads of the bond or the levy or um what are we doing with our budgets and things that nature just um you know of course our strategic
160plan information and being able just to answer questions. Um, and we had about 40 minutes. Uh, Logan was was there. We had a student from each of the districts as well, and they all stood up and talked about how they see it happening in their schools. Um, and Logan shared, you know, and Cascadia Daily did an article and it was it's on their website. I don't think it's on their leader, so encourage you to look at that. But um Logan said, "You know, it looks like it looks like our middle school students being in a 100-y old building where where things are broken apart." And um a student from Blaine said it it looks like 36 kids in a classroom where there's not enough desks. And so seven or eight kids, was it seven or
161eight? Mhm. Are sitting on chairs with TV trays. Yeah. Class of 37. Yeah. So really strong sentiments from our kids because we have this notion I think generally that we're making it and it's on the backs of teachers and parents and administrators who are doing more with less and higher expectations and trying to not make it so the kids feel it. But it's evident our kids are feeling it. So um how to advocate in a system where individuals may or may not have expertise on what happens in education systems. It's really difficult and I appreciated I didn't I didn't I hadn't experienced this last year. I didn't know what the format was going to necessarily be and I appreciated the dialogue. We had we had questions about the big three and I I put a
162printed copy in front of you. Um, and each of our districts had a big three and and I could tell you, um, Mount Baker is the smallest and they have about 1500 students and I think their budget was something like 28 million. Their deficit was 20 million. They're in binding conditions. They're still trying to get out of it, right? Um, we have a $37 million budget and we had a nine $9 million deficit. And this is over the last five years. So 21 to 25. I actually put their hand out. Yeah. Um, Burndale has a $90 million budget and their deficit is 24 over the last 5 years. And then Blaine has a $40 million budget and their deficit I think was 18. Um, so percentage-wise, we're doing we're doing better if you just I
163mean the purpose isn't to compare yourself with the other three, but the idea is no one's killing it because they're just isn't funding. And this notion that we're mismanaging funds or we don't we're not being funded. Fundamental piece and in the article it says let's not go backwards, right? Let's quit talking about whether the funds are being used appropriately and give us the funds, do it appropriately because we're we're having to operate in scarcity. And that's really the bottom line of what it was. I'm super proud of Logan um and my colleagues and um great comments from our legislative representatives. They, you know, they um to one level say, you know, we are committed to doing it and and I also know they're only three people out of the whole whole body, right? So, um,
164in any case, I thought it was a great event for us to participate in and I and I'm looking forward to the opportunities in the future. I would love to see more events like this across the state. Um, so I Marty, I'd invite your thoughts. I I don't know. Well, I was surprised how many people actually showed up and even after I told Jane I was really impressed that he I found the word now. expressed professional um frustrations with what's going on and basically make make clear especially hearing the the students thing and the the TV tray is what it was that was I think it was Mount Baker blame blame and um you know because the basically they couldn't fit another desk in the room so like well a TV show fits like you
165know people in the hall you know it's just but then then some of the other students talking too it's like you know last year I only got two AP keep to AP classes, you know, how how am I supposed to prepare for college if I don't, you know, and we keep saying to our legislators and they all listen and and Sharon, she was taking good notes and she addressed every student which I thought was good. But um but yeah, when it comes down to it, I I think the best analogy was from the superintendent from Blaine and too a lot of these superintendents exception of James, they only been their district for less than a year, maybe two years as a superintendent. I think Dr. makes his four year fourth year for at Ferndale at
166Ferndale to win this job, right? Okay. But anyways, I think the announcement that he's been playing um he said, so imagine a situation where Okay, Michelle, I'm going to give you $1,200. Jasmine, you get like 1,100. You only get 900. You and I get like 1,500. Okay. And we're all going to leave. We're going to be driving from Seattle to Chicago. Get there. I don't care how you get there. Yeah. pay 800 bucks. What are you going to do? You know, well, I can't drive the car I'm driving. I got to get fuel economy car, so I got to make cutbacks. Well, we can't eat along the way, you know, because that's how I take it. Like, you know, they're just expecting like, okay, Seattle to Chicago and Chicago is graduation day. Here's your money.
167Just get from point A to point B. And they're not thinking about, you know, we sharpen our pencil so much now there's no pencil at so it was a good event. I would I would encourage I driving up there I'm like I get it right because it's the blind deal like nobody can ride plane nobody for Tuesday for well first off they did a fantastic job organizing this one of the one of their spouses was the moderator and yeah um you know there was I I guess I just want to make one more point there is the idea that there's a single um cookie cutter solution is is so far off base because no district's the same. And um you know, we can talk about cess values and what businesses exist in different things, but
168even just talking about transportation, we're five square miles and we're pretty tight, right? Ferndale is much bigger and they traveled over 64,000 miles last year. Mount Baker said that they're half the size of Rhode Island, right? And it's just nothing is the same. We look at staffing, our mix of staff may be more experienced than another district or we get regionalization but very other very seldom to other. So there isn't an easy way to fix it, right? And then there's a prototypical model. I was really worried. I one of the things I said is the prototypical model is assign. So I was worried that was gonna be the least common ever. But it really it really is. These are funding formulas from over a decade ago that haven't been updated and never ever staffed a
169building adequately and only staffs it by the number of adults. It doesn't look at the needs of the kids. And you heard from Aaron, it's it's different now than it was three years ago. And we're talking about formulas from 2010. It's assignment. So that pie you show me uh was a good one too about the operating budget. So 2019 the state budget 52 and some point something% was for education. 2025 it's 43%. Lawmakers Yep. lawmakers say, "Oh, we're giving education so much money now, so much more." Yeah, it's true. But it's still 10% less and all those costs that have gone up for society go up for schools, too. Right. Well, even when we attended Meridian, I don't remember any of the resources that we now provide to our students. So to even just pay
170those specialty bills for the different occupational therapies and physical therapies and speech therapies and none of that was offered in our little district before. So I don't I don't know how we pay those bills. Doesn't make sense to me. I'll tell you when you look at the big three and and we did have a discussion about the big three why we picked the big three is because they're required. They're not discretionary funds. If we're talking about librarians and that came up, I have to decide what whether I'm going to keep the lights on or pay for a librarian. I got to keep the lights on, right? Well, if we see that Meridian has had to pay $9.3 million over the last five years because the state hasn't provided it. It's coming from levy dollars. Those
171levy dollars are for enrichment, not for not for required costs. Right. And so it's not by way. It's almost required. It's required. Like we don't we don't have it. We don't have it. Right. So where are the lottery dollars? That's a good question. Where's the gas? The lottery was specific for education. it it is or even I mean you need to look at the um you know mccclary law you know all things that that they're supposed to be doing which it hasn't been doing at all but and I think I went to one I went to a you meeting or something like that we went for Ferndale summertime you and I Kurt went uh it was but there were explaining how it's just it's just so easy to take money from education it was such
172a big pool of money like okay well we can't cut services we don't want to do. We don't want to raise taxes or the tax doesn't happen. It's just easier to take. Well, they keep pulling from that pot. There's nothing to take back anymore than there's nothing left. So, but I I thought our legislator spoke well for I mean is Alicia spoke very well. I'd like to see that happen. I'd like to see some action on action. But I I wanted I wanted to be sure that as we're talking about the state's not, the state's not, the state's not, that people heard that our legislators have been good partners. Joe Timmons was instrumental in us getting $3 million for our new um district office. Right. Um funding for the early learning center, part of our
173legislative group helped us get that. Right. So I I wanted to make sure they weren't getting lamb based while we were talking about that. And I I I made a comment like they didn't cause this, but they certainly want to be partners to help us get there. Where I get super frustrated is that notion that because a legislator went to school, they're an expert on education and they're making decisions that they don't fully understand. And we have some who do understand, but we're not able to move not able to move it. Can't move the needle. So, um I think Joe totally gets it. He totally and he went to school to ed Yeah, he does. Yeah. So, um anyway, it was a great event. It was a really good opportunity to have a conversation and
174share and I think the students were an integral part of that. Um and um you know she she didn't just talk about the middle school. She talked about kids who don't necessarily um meet the threshold for special education services not getting the services they need because we have to divert funds to make sure those who do qualify get what they are legally required to get. So she hit a lot of the good categories. So, um, well spoken. Did a nice job. And you set up the best table, hands down where table was. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. And and yeah, it was good. We We did. And this is an annual event. It's an annual. This Yeah. Um moderator was pretty funny. He goes, you know, this is year two and next year becomes a
175winning streak. So, yeah. So, it it looks like they're going to do it each year. Seems like a good location for centralized meridian. It could be. Yeah. I think it I I'd also want to be cautious because they they started it the whole thing, right? So Oh, out of blame. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Um and then the last item I have is Marty is going to join me uh this Friday and Saturday for the legislative conference. It is different than it's been in the past. It's going to be concentrated focused on these issues at the state level in uh Seattle. And then on the 29th of January, Barney and I and I am going to ask both of our students, Logan is super interested, um are going to go down and then go visit with
176lawmakers in DC, nope, in Olympia, and have a conversation where what our priorities are. And so um you know this is the just just the piece that typically is talked about at the legislative conference. But um the piece now is how to make the legislature do no harm that's the piece. Don't take anything away. Get rid of the mandates. So, and then upcoming um tomorrow we have a superintendent uh meeting uh in Bellingham. Erin is going to join me and tell you one of the things we'll talk about is um the evolution of discovery where um the county works through the ESD to support students who struggle to feed in our schools. Um and so we'll have conversation there to talk about that. Then as I said, legislative conference. We have a holiday coming up
177and then we're back again on the 21st. And just a reminder, there is a executive session to review the performance of an employee at 4. And we'll meet here and then we'll open the doors at 5. And that's my report. Um, we don't have any student board representatives. Any information from board directors? One thing I'd like to say is uh last week and if you see I'm giving a pat on the back, but Brian Michaelelsson ran outstanding tournament last week. We had 18 games in three days. You know, he managed all them. He was there from like 7 o'clock at night till 7 o'clock in the morning till 10 o'clock at night. And not only that, he had there too, huh? That was there, too. He was there. Yeah. By the he was I say
178he was the last one to walk out. We walked out with them. But still, I mean, even to in between nights, I mean, get volunteers to clean the gym, take the trash out, do the dumpsters, get ready to go because he said, "We our first basketball game tomorrow at 8:00 in the morning. Our custodians don't get here until 8:00 in the morning." So, and then the custodians got there and put the uh paper towels in, but it was great. or the fundraiser to um give a new scoreboard for the South Gym. I'm not sure if you mean that or not because how you know funny is or what not, but I just encourage you to give him an attra effort into it. And then so that was an ASB I think. I'm not sure. I
179don't know. So yeah, you have to Brian, but actually it's run. But like a lot of the workers, you know, you don't get paid by the hours, it's paid by the game, you know, is what you did. So a lot of workers just donate, you know, the money for the school board and stuff like that. So they were, but it was actually fun, too. I mean, joke about 10 o'clock at night, we're just exhausted going home. We wake up in the morning, couldn't wait to come back. So it's pretty cool. Thank you. Um, we can adjourn and sign official documents. Thank you. I did. Respect.