001[Music] quit yelling at your wife okay i think we will call this meeting to order at we've got consent agenda items we have minutes from the june 7 2021 school board meeting and general fund vouchers and purchasing card transactions we request approval of general fund vouchers one seven five seven four nine through one seven six zero seven five and two nine one one zero five through two nine one one three seven and purchasing card transactions dated four twenty one 21 through 5 20 21 we have some professional staffing recommendations we have some co-curricular staffing recommendations as well as some administrative staffing recommendations i would request approval of minutes general fund vouchers and purchasing card transactions professional staffing recommendations co-curricular staffing recommendations and administrative stacking staffing recommendations do i have a motion ireland isaac christine all
002right uh then we have some consent agenda items and personnel items no not necessary for vote and that takes us right into public comments do we vote do we vote on the motion oh wait i'm sorry yeah we've got to vote on that all in all in favor uh please signify by saying aye aye opposed passes five zero okay now what's happening do we need to do a roll call no okay only for just for close session uh angie you want to explain public comments and what's going on here this evening give me just one moment yes all right at this time if you'd like to make a public appearance by speaking to the board please utilize the q a portion found at the bottom of your zoom window in the q a we ask
003that you type your name address subject of interest and whether you have discussed this item prior to the meeting with a district administrator or president howery after submitting that information i will transfer you over to speak to the board yes we can bruce yes and we heard your motion as well for the consent agenda item your vote you're both not your motion excuse me yes nope not not the motion okay i do not have anyone that has registered to them okay thank you very much and at this point in time melissa fole is going to do a just uh not a discussion i'm sorry a presentation on uh early release i think on district equity update yes all right right yep okay um so aaron tarnitzer is here with me this evening and we will
004be presenting together a district equity work update the last time the board received an update was in early march and at that point we gave a presentation going historically through the work that had been done in the district it was a very i wasn't a part of that one and so it's not self-congratulatory that i'm saying this but it was a very well done presentation that involved participation from all of the buildings and did a nice job sharing what we have done so far in the district in our work with equity this evening we'd like to finish up what has been accomplished during the 2021 school year and talk about some of our next steps so one of the things we really wanted to share with you are some of the principles that guide our
005work and this has re evolved over the year we've done a lot of learning and a lot of collaborating and learned a few key takeaways that are going to guide our work both guided our work this year and for next year so the first thing i wanted to highlight was about accepting institutional responsibility for diversity equity and inclusion and that was done in which the board has done by making it a priority and a goal also by embracing opportunities in the sense of you stated that you want to embrace opportunities for diversity and address challenges of equity and of course we have the board approved inclusive curriculum statement as well as the anti-racist resolution so those were some ways that you've affirmed that this is a priority and of course that's something as as a
006staff that we have also embraced as well and accepted that responsibility which reminds me that we have a copy of what we're looking at that i could give you which may be helpful thank you very much and right as this meeting began i did email it to all board members so bruce and your inbox you'll be able to see this either now or later this evening and there are several links on the document that you'll be able to click when you see the electronic copy in your inbox we will also post this online tomorrow so that the community has access to it as well the second guiding principle for our work is to examine the system's impact on families and students and a big priority for us there is to listen and believe we must
007provide multiple ongoing opportunities for our students and families to share their experience and be involved in decision making and we must believe what they say especially when it's hard to hear we must connect what we learn to guide our strategic planning with ongoing feedback during implementation and along with that feedback we get from students and families comes our data analysis we must review our data on an ongoing basis to quantitatively assess the impact of our system on all students but especially marginalized students in our system another guiding principle is about staying focused and with that it's about moving forward thoughtfully together i tend to want to move really fast and let's do let's get things done and what we've learned from the work in consultation with some of our partners that we'll be discussing later
008is that we really need to build a foundation common definitions for this work a shared understanding about our current practices and their impact on our students and families while also recognizing it's an ongoing process so we're going to need to start somewhere and prioritize some things do that well have clear goals clear expectations for what will be accomplished and also support for our staff as we move forward with this work also and we'll be sharing more about some of the systems work that we've been doing we know that we need to address this work at a variety of levels from larger school-wide systems and district systems policies down to individual students in our work with students so multi-faceted work but staying focused and being strategic in that work so um the next thing we want
009to share a little bit is about kind of some focus areas with some updates for you on some things we've done and some next steps uh we're not going to read all of this to you there's a lot of words on here and this is a synthesized reflection of what we've accomplished this year i think we have a lot to be proud of one of the things that we've often said is that this work is so important and we want to recognize its value it's also complex work um so when we share these these updates we want to celebrate that but also acknowledge we have a lot of work to do moving forward a major priority for us has been communication so just as melissa said we're going to be sharing this out you know
010and publishing this for families to see we also have done some things the equity snapshot was published on our newly created web site part of our website a web page excuse me to highlight this equity work and that's really important to share out that's not something we've done very well in the past so that's new for us to say oh we're doing all these things instead of being reactive and someone asking well what are you doing related to a given topic so in this area and in other important areas we're doing that also in addition to presenting of course to this group i've also presented to our ka parent teacher organization to highlight some of that work as well for them we also wanted to just really acknowledge some of the really cool partnerships that
011have developed over the course of the past couple years we've had a relationship with natural circles of support for several years in terms of being involved in the mentoring circles and leadership in the high school then on to the middle school and of course with the receipt of the grant we're in our first year of that completing our first year and we have four more years of that that's a very important partnership for the district and one that brings a lot of value to us the mcfarland equity project is another partnership those are relationships we're continuing to develop have some connections with education subgroup have met with them several times throughout the year have also had representatives present to the board and planning to have that occur in the future so that's an important ongoing
012collaboration because that's a group of you know community members and parents that can offer wisdom to us the village board of course we have a meeting coming up on june 28th so i'm looking forward to that wow that's in a week um so looking forward to that connection because they're doing some amazing work and want to make sure that we're working together for efficiency and effectiveness the dane county equity consortium have been a part of that for quite a while and those monthly meetings are really important i know there's board meetings that they are working with the board that has occurred and i think there's a workshop in july to look forward to very active member of that group and bringing together wisdom from around the area the center for culturally responsive teaching and learning
013i'm going to highlight that and we'll talk about that quite a bit in a little bit but that's the group that has is the organized group that works with dr umtraki's holly's work with culturally responsive teaching and we're going to talk about a book study but that is a partnership they're actually going to be working with us facilitating the book study with us so that's a new partnership that is developing as we speak so very exciting where does that come from i don't know where they're located i mean it's a national group they're very busy that's an it's a national organization yeah yep yep um we'll be sharing a little bit about the book study in a bit um but it is sort of a great read very practical resources for schools specifically focused on
014this culturally responsive teaching and learning the center for our i'm excuse me wisconsin rti center oh sorry bruce yes yeah i'm sorry um is that when you say book studies i would imagine each school will be doing different books i would think is that the plan actually what we'll be doing and also we'll be talking about this in in greater detail later but to give you a sense is the the entire district k-12 will be participating in this book study and that book will be kind of the the main source but we'll be doing it throughout the year so there'll be time for us to learn and then practice together and then revisit both at a district mixed groupings of district staff or staff across the district and then at a building level too okay
015i understand so it's for staff yes yes okay got it i think sorry yeah no that's a great question the wisconsin rti center is a group that we've always had a relationship with as as districts do around the state what has been different this year is that we had a five-day a series of workshops with with um work done at a district level in between them so we were one of several districts to participate in this and it was focused on building culturally responsive systems so they walked us through a really powerful process of becoming self-aware some of the language that you've heard here today is directly from our learning there and we came up with some ideas about how we might move forward that will guide some of the work that we do in
016our summer planning this year with natural circles of support and the administrative team so some some really important things but it's not separate from the work that we do it's really about coordination that you're going to hear about in a little bit um and of course the high school mcfarland high school became the first high school charter member of we are money united against hate which is a relationship that we've had we had had representatives come out a few years ago and now have that formal partnership and are looking to see what that will mean largely student led and student empowered group there um in addition to those important partnerships we want to talk a little bit about examining our system's impact on students and families and and we talked about this in our guiding
017principles a little bit but we've created an annual data review process that includes looking at our our data quarterly and disaggregating it by different populations we have done sort of equity audits which is the term that we've used before but we don't do them on an ongoing basis it's sort of like oh yeah we should look at that and then we look at it and we strategize around it but what we're doing now is being much more intentional routine systematic about that data review process um and and that's exciting for us i think it's going to take some time to flush out all the details of that and we're going to have to decide what data to look at um but that's that's something that we're really committed to we also want to really emphasize
018our connection with natural circles of support those mentoring circles that are provided in grades 6 through 12 and looking to expand to the younger grades really provide a place for students to share their perspectives and also families of students that are participating to share their perspective is it practical with the younger with the k through six kids it is it is and actually it's often implemented at the elementary level um that's very common yes okay okay i think bruce had a question yes yes i did i thank you um i that's the question i i if you could explain a little bit what what you mean by natural circles of support i am happy to do so natural circles of support is an organization that we partner with that comes in and facilitates at this
019point their role has been kind of primarily two-fold one is facilitating the mentoring circles that involve our students african-american students specifically and they meet with the students they provide empower the student listen to the students and provide some reflection on their school experience and then with students permission of course they share things with us they also reach out and connect with with families of the students that are participating what we're doing with the grant of course is expanding that partnership because the group has provided a lot of consultation for the district through professional learning communities where they provide some guidance what we're doing with the grant is expanding that to include more strategic parent involvement larger role in our professional development efforts we have two major events occurring this summer with natural circles of support
020as part of the grant the first is working with our administrative team specifically to to understand our current context and to start brainstorming ideas for future goals the second is working with not just our administrative team but district equity leaders um staff within the district to help prioritize that so they're they're a group that has a lot of expertise work in several other other districts so they have experience to bring to us so there are there are costs associated with the workshops and the sessions and yes that was that was a question i had is how how are we tracking funds in terms of our grant is 250 000 a year is that correct is that how it's doled out 200 000 a year 200 years oh okay i was thinking 250 for four okay
021so so we have a means by which we can associate ongoing costs with we're just subtracting it from that number as we go along each quarter we fill a fiscal report out for the university okay yeah we are the fiscal agent the district is for that all right thank you that's something that melissa and i have been coordinating together so when you say you're doing this annual data review that includes includes quarterly data desegregation what does that actually mean like what are you reviewing yeah thank you the the reason why we talk about it being quarterly is different data becomes available at different times so some of it is standardized test data okay so looking at forward exams looking at in the past we've used map we're looking at possibly some other assessments for that
022also discipline data attendance data we're trying to gather as much as we can another thing that we would like to add to our in terms of gathering feedback is having climate surveys which is is one of the next items i was going to talk about analyzing that data what are our students saying about our schools what are our families saying about that school so it's about taking time to set aside to as a group analyze the impact of that data throughout okay do you feel like it was more or less difficult during this last school year being the last school you're being what it was you know in in terms of the pandemic and such did that make your work more difficult over the course of the last year in this initiative unbelievably so uh
023yes um i think i knew the answer yeah it was very difficult to um both have the capacity to give give this work the important attention it deserves and also to connect with people so those two things made it challenging which is you know i i don't want that to be seen as an excuse because this work is too important for excuses however you know as we've talked about it we're pretty proud of what we're able to get done despite starting the school year three times and all of those those things that happen this year and a lot of i mean to reiterate a lot of this work is relational and relationships were strained over zoom and getting families or students to feel you know welcome build the relationships with them so that they trust
024us to speak to us was challenging and it's pieces that we were i think able to manage through but it was much easier in person i think a lot of our work that's laid out here is setting the stage for next year so planning that data review cycle process planning some of the next steps it's getting it ready and now next year we'll actually put it into practice fantastic so i'll put on the grand hat here so today all of the people who received the grant were invited to a webinar that was done on adolescence it was fabulous by the way it was an hour and a half and all of the grantees were sharing different things about their their experience with the pandemic and a number of i didn't speak at all i think
025i did a little chatting but a number of the grantees that are in different community organizations talked about how much their students of color thrived during the pandemic because they were not being subjected to a lot of the racist stuff that they were getting in school so i know it's kind of breaking the stereotype and breaking the assumptions which is a cultural change that we have to make but actually and and the friends that i have who have kids of color here have said that they actually had great experiences because they weren't getting some of that um you know from kids and others so i don't think we let i mean the assumption and the stereotypes that um you know all kids of color really it's great to hear did horribly actually there was a
026lot of stories and once again they were more from other organizations but aldane county about how they did their children involved did really well so i'm sorry i'm talking to you but i'm not i'm talking generally i understand um but it was a fabulous webinar and really i'm kind of through a couple of and that was their point is that we're talking about our adolescence right now is all of this you know learning loss and all of instead of looking at as an opportunity and what have they gained and how do we use this and how do we look at all of the things that they have um they've gained through it and unfortunately the word resilient has been used a lot with kids of color that they're so resilient we never really think about
027how resilient our white kids have come out of this as well so um it's changing also the word resilient so it was just like i said it was really great webinar that's that's it's fantastic to hear but it i'm surprised yeah you know because all you get you just get beaten to death with this how virtual doesn't work you can't be educated this way it's it's a abject failure unless you've got parents that are able to be a learning coach three to five hours a day you know with our weaver folks and there's gotta be uh parent input obviously even just with your regular zoom sessions and such so that's that's great to hear though anytime you hear that the students of color thrive i i think we have to take serious note of that
028yeah i think there's a difference in that in responding to that question of this work was harder to to get accomplished given the context however our students did very well and what christine shared i've heard as well you know i've heard that from our students that there was a level of comfort um in some cases one was we had at least k8 had smaller class sizes for much of the year which helped people feel more comfortable but also there was less fear of comments or feeling isolated than there was in a typical school year so while that's a good thing in a sense um it sort of says makes me a little sad we have a lot of work to do you know that that they they thrive because they're not together with their classmates
029as opposed to everything we've heard throughout this last 18 months is that they thrive when they are together and in the school environment right now it's correct both it's not just classmates it's also and once again i'm you know these are stories from other people i don't know the personal stories nor would i share them here about our students in particular but it was just a really uh very interesting take on this right now important the last thing i was just going to mention before turning it over to melissa who's going to talk about the last three topics is just coordination this is something that we have struggled with as a district in terms of we've done a lot of great work but not in a real organized and efficient way a lot of great
030work but largely at the building level and so one of the things as you know that we have done to help with that is to create some district equity positions to help get us started and coordinate this work at least for the next couple years and then we'll reevaluate um of course we have an equity coordinator administrator that would be ann nichols and then we have k-5 and a 6-12 teacher equity leaders to help coordinate some of this work and it's really to make sure that we stay unfocused and we stay collaborative and efficient we also have created building level equity teams we want to make you know some representatives into into a district equity team that's pretty important and then i mentioned earlier that coordination with natural circles of support and some really important
031deep thinking and hard work that we're going to be doing together over the summer starting in just a few weeks we'll be meeting with the administrative team and then meeting in august again with district staff representatives we also part of that coordination was what are we talking about with educational equity and culturally responsive practices so we've provided common definitions of those things because you'll hear them used in a lot of different ways and if we're not all speaking in the same language it's hard to coordinate our work so that'll turn it over to melissa to talk about the next topics thank you aaron some policy updates which you'll all be familiar with but just to put into one place our family handbooks were updated this spring to have a response to hate speech and incidences
032of hate and bias that is now in the handbooks for next year but our next steps will be implementing those policies and as well as gathering feedback from students and families on our handbooks are they student-friendly are they understandable by students or are they kind of unmanageable large documents that aren't as useful as they could be so those are some of our next steps there there are a few policies in early april that the board approved 2210 has to do with curriculum development to include more student voice which i'll talk about a little bit later on the sheet and then policy 2105.01 was adopting the district resolution in support of diversity and equity formally into policy so that resolution from about a year ago that wasn't the case up until now it was a board
033resolution that was passed and so now it has a policy number and is in our policy handbook yeah staff professional development this whole sheet but i would say particularly this area is very much a snapshot so i don't want anyone to think that this is all that we've done but it's just a few pieces that we wanted to highlight one being a district-wide book study on how to be an anti-racist which 80 staff were able to participate in that is a very large teacher study group most of our groups are 6 maybe 12 or 10 or so teachers so to have a group of 80 staff who are interested in participating was one that we felt was very much worth highlighting we've identified and conducted professional development throughout the year our main focus this year
034was on the area of identity development and understanding ourselves as we work to understand others one phrase that one of our teachers shared at a recent meeting was we have to do the me work before we can do the we work and i really appreciated understanding yourself your own culture your own you know place in society and understanding that well before you're able to understand others and incorporate that as well so that was a main focus this is another place where um the kovid 19 pandemic actually gave us a new perspective and a bit of an advantage with some of our professional development because it was done virtually more of our support staff were able to participate sometimes those meetings happen while they have responsibilities for bus loop or pickup when we didn't have bus
035loop and pickup their schedules allowed them to participate with us which was very nice and we hope that we're able to continue that also our professional development days since those were conducted via zoom support staff could log in you know we they clocked in and clocked out and we paid them for their participation but they were able to participate in book studies or conversations this year did that happen yes they did participate in good numbers yes um i would say one i think it happened at several buildings and so i don't want to leave anyone out but the instance that sticks in my mind is wabisa did a school-wide book study and many of the support staff members participated in the book study and then came to the virtual zoom discussions it's fantastic yep um
036the piece that we're excited about that aaron touched on recently and i have gifts for you all before you leave but this is the book study um this is the book that we will be reading this year and bruce will have yours available at angie's desk it is culturally and linguistically oh that's a mouthful culturally and linguistically responsive teaching and learning by dr shiraki holly and this is a book that a few other districts in the area have done as district-wide book studies we evaluated and thought about a few different choice texts and there are lots of great ones to choose from but this is one that we heard from other districts really laid a good foundation and they said that after reading this book some of the other books that they read made more
037sense and so in terms of not everyone in the district is certainly starting at square one but in terms of having a full inviting everyone to the table and inviting everyone to be a part of the learning this was a resource that was recommended by other districts and we have a group of about 26 staff who are doing a book study this summer and then those staff will be teacher leaders next school year as we go through the book study with the full group so that when we have breakout discussions we have 26 teacher leaders who are getting professional development directly from the authors and the institute so that they're feeling prepared to lead those discussions with their peers throughout the school year much of the work that we've done in the area of equity
038has been site-specific you know i mentioned a book study at wabisa there's been great work that's done at each of our buildings we're excited to move forward together and to have an opportunity to do some learning as a k-12 group for next school year that makes great sense yeah we're we are looking forward to it um and a lot of kudos goes to ann nichols for her coordination and getting the book study ready this summer as well as aaron fisher and ann weiland who are teacher leaders for equity who have done a large amount of work vetting the resources and planning and organizing this book study we'll close out before we reopen it up for questions talking about some curriculum updates our social studies curriculum review cycle included a student survey where students were able
039to give us feedback that survey was developed with input from students we wrote a draft then we showed it to students and said do these questions make sense what feedback would you have from us some of that feedback included we had planned to survey 612 students and our middle school students said i don't understand this survey this survey doesn't make sense i don't feel like i have the feedback to give and so we decided only to give the survey to 912 students now in a future year when we're in person and more in a different sort of educational situation we might reopen the idea of surveying 612 or we might always keep that with a high school opportunity to feedback but that was one piece of information we got just on the survey itself from
040the survey the social studies curriculum review team which is actually all of our 612 social studies teachers were able to review what the students had written to us look for themes in that survey and then use those themes to guide our work going forward as we're working on making some curricular changes to our social studies programming um over the next two years now that's this involving the students to the degree that you're involving them that's that's an exception to the rule generally speaking isn't it it is and it's brand new and it's a result of that policy 2210 that the board passed this recent this last year and the resolution from last summer that will be a part of our curriculum review cycle continuously going forward so english language arts is up next we'll have
041a survey for students to get feedback on their english language arts experience next year some of the questions you know did you feel represented in your curriculum did you feel like you had opportunities to learn about the experiences of others and it really tied back to that statement of inclusive curriculum that the board passed four or five years ago that said we want to provide opportunities for people to see themselves and others fairly and accurately represented on our curriculum some students you know said yes and some students said i really don't see you know this aspect of my identity represented or i don't learn enough about this and those were pieces that we were able to take and really a piece that students pinpointed in their social studies reflections was about being critical thinkers and
042having opportunities for choice and those were two of our biggest pieces to take away where we thought we think we're doing a pretty good job but if students aren't feeling that impact themselves it's something that we need to be more intentional about and give them more opportunities it it seems i'm i've actually been approached around town that world history curriculums and social studies curriculums have somehow turned into a very controversial topic nowadays with certain media outlets and such are putting it out there that we're teaching inaccurate history because we're talking about changing the current the current history curriculums to to include be more inclusive of the struggles of you know the people of color and things like that they've made it into into controversy i've had people approach me and pick and save as what
043the heck are you doing to world history how can world history be different now than it was five years ago well maybe if you look at world history it doesn't really include everything so those are the changes that they're advocating to make i think part of our work that with the social studies curriculum review is we have been very intentional about looking at the wisconsin state standards and seeing what is reflected in those wisconsin state standards that were adopted only about three or four years ago at this point but those wisconsin state standards call us to do the things that we're doing and to be inclusive to provide opportunities for students to see themselves and others fairly and accurately represented there is a whole strand of the social studies standards around inquiry that also call
044for civic engagement our state standards are asking us to prepare prepare students to be involved in their communities and to take action in their communities and that was a piece that was in the survey you know asking students do you feel like you've had those opportunities and we've had questions as administrators of you know why did you ask that question and it's well here it is in the standards the standards are asking us to prepare students to do this so we're trying to give them opportunities in structured ways to to be active in their communities and to make a change and i would say for world history you're you're exactly right that the world is a very big place and so the world history that i was taught or that you were taught um did
045it really encompass the world or not and so are there changes that are being made now to include more of the world and more experiences of others and i think all of these are areas you know as we talk about social studies was an area in that resolution from last summer that was mentioned in terms of critical thinking and it's just the one that happens to be up in the review cycle it wasn't put out of order it's just our our cycle is built after the new state standards are released so social studies is is where it's at in the cycle i think our social studies teachers do a phenomenal job and they're very reflective about their practice normally and even prior to the board resolution and prior to some of this national attention or
046more focus our teachers have been making some of these changes already we're just now continuing the work being more reflective and having you know the student impact or the student input helps us continue that work our curriculum process frequently references the inclusive curriculum statement and asking teachers in all subject areas to think about ways that they can include opportunities for students to see themselves as scientists to see themselves as mathematicians but also to see others contributions in those areas as well we have worked to diversify our literature choices and make sure that students are seeing novels and books that have themselves and others represented some of our next steps include continuing to look at our second step curriculum which is our i would say social emotional curriculum for the district to make sure that it
047has specific racial anti-bias microaggression and implicit bias education as directed by the resolution the board passed last year that second step curriculum only goes for grades k through eight so we'll also need to make sure that we have room at the high school to include those areas of focus that are called out in the resolution and they're included in the high school resolution as well there was also in that resolution reference to diversity days so we need to make sure we have clarity from students on what that would look like or what they were hoping for in that resolution and to talk to the board about that as well and then develop plans for implementation in this upcoming year that was one of the pieces with covid that we were not able to do this
048school year but we do have plans to include going forward that would be really interesting to see what what that's going to look like i think it'll be good i mean it's always great when students are able to share right themselves and we can learn from each other quite a bit are there any questions or comments for us on any of this information it relates to what you were saying craig and the comments that people are making and you know having taught in the district as long as i did world history changed a lot when i first came we did area studies instead of world history and i think we as the staff when i was teaching looked at it much more as this was not world history it was really western civilization at least
049the second half of the class and uh there's all been changes i mean you you know how do you how do you study the history of the world what what aspect you study what you emphasize what you leave out and uh i'm i really applaud i've heard enough from uh some of the things that the social studies team is doing that i'm really proud of some of the the changes that they've made and i was very proud of what we did but i think in some ways i was kind of horrified as i look back at what i left out in fact i guess that's part of life because you always have these regrets but i just you need to tell these people it has always been changing it's changed dramatically since when i first
050came here in 1976 um so anyway i think we're doing a good job and i'm so glad that you're going to try to this includes inclusivity um the best i i felt some of the best years as a teacher i had was when i was able to really spend time and this is something i keep talking about teachers need time um to really try to integrate this into all the different the fields um english in particular there are so many wonderful books and i want to really just praise um sheila faye she was really she got started with this and at the end of my teaching career she was just always bringing up books and we had silent reading time and we tried to weave books a lot of them were about diversity and and
051people of color and we tried to get the kids to to read those and we discussed them we talked about them but again we tried to dovetail that into the english in particular but the other mathematics and also science as well um i think there's so much to be done but it does require time and we've got to give the staff a lot of time to do this i i would agree and and it seems to me that one of the reasons that you get pushback when you try to change these curriculums is that people get comfortable you know with the current way of teaching way of learning what you're teaching what you're learning and i think some of some of the the things that we're trying to do in regards to inclusivity and diversity
052makes some people a little less comfortable maybe you know with what's being taught to their kids and i think that maybe is a reason for pushback when there really isn't a call for it change is always going to make people feel it gets people out of their comfort zone but change is good so i think it's an ethical imperative for us to teach all kids i don't want to keep looking at you it's an ethical imperative i agree towards you i'm sorry no but but but all but all kids if we knew there was a portion of science or math that we were leaving out isn't there a problem with that we are aware now that we've been leaving out things for so for all kids this isn't necessarily just about um i mean we
053want i you know you know where i stand want kids of color to be successful but this is also for our white kids to be successful to go to college to go in the military to go you know into the workforce if they're not able to understand and appreciate difference they're not going to do well no matter what they choose to do after school so i think it's for us it's an imperative we have to open eyes and give different perspectives that's our role is in education i guess so and as a state mandate i couldn't agree more besides uh yeah i'm not sorry i think something i would i would just add to that in those conversations you know when we run across people questioning my concern is do you know what's being taught
054and we have a responsibility to be transparent with people but this is what we teach and then we can have a conversation based on what we actually teach i think sometimes it's rumor or it's you know you see something happening in another state and you think well that's what we're doing um and making assumptions and i think as a district i'm not necessarily being critical of people in the sense that if that's all the information they have right it's our responsibility to say this is what we teach this this is what we're teaching and why we teach it that way and being really open transparent getting feedback and being open to those conversations because you know i think if you talk about well we've made this change in our curriculum we're now talking about this
055people go oh okay that makes sense right of course you know you should be talking about that you should talk about what happened in tulsa we didn't used to talk about that so you should talk about that that's relevant to the world today so i think you know that part is is letting other media outlets or other areas and what's happening in other states sort of drive the narrative and not being true to what we're actually doing which i think people in general you know feel comfortable with not everybody i think the example you just gave is perfect that you know i i ashamedly so didn't know much about that you know until it became a thing and it's it's i think it's terrible that that a very large percentage of our uh schools weren't
056teaching or mentioning that at all and that's a major significant event in history and how that has been kept out of the history books is kind of astonishing actually but that's a great example you raise it's very political greg i'm going to tell you the state of california and state of texas in particular texas played a significant role in what was included in not including textbooks and you would know anything else any other questions comments thank you so much if not to know where you're where you're where the whole district is at but where all of these little pieces come together and thank you for the presentation keep up the great work but let make sure that you're letting the community and the parents know i i'm just afraid that we got a lot of
057activity going on that folks don't know about out there in the community and until like you said communication is everything and i think i think we'd all be on board but we have to let them know what's going on that's important and we're excited too about having a parent input group reconstituted and i think that's going to help us with that communication because if there are more people in the community who are at the table they can help share the word you know at soccer games or swim lessons absolutely how do you choose that parent group that is some of our next work i think it needs to be a diverse group of people to get the word out and you may have to go out and recruit you know a lot of people aren't
058necessarily doers so much and and i think that's a fantastic strategy but like kate said i think you have to really be aware of who the members of these groups are and when the group existed previously it was primarily focused at the high school and so we also want to make sure we're having parents who have students all throughout our school system as a part of it too which could also help with longevity you know if we get some parents of young students as a part of the group hopefully they stay with the group for quite a while and then as you know other parents graduate with their children there's other experienced people ready to you know keep things going for us and i would say to add to that i don't want to minimize
059the importance of that group but want to make sure that we also provide multiple opportunities for people to be involved that being at a meeting isn't always what works for people's involvement and getting to hear different voices will be important but we certainly don't want to have a group you know that's called the parent equity council that's not very diverse or representative of our student population and our families will said that's important kate thank you i agree bruce do you have anything else no i'm really happy and i really would like to see it go beyond just the high school so i'm very impressed excellent thank you very much guys thank you erin melissa all right should i move on to the district administration report you may as well it will be shorter school status
060report and reminders there are no big updates to share this evening we are excited to have mrap activities and swimming lessons start today and things seem to be going very well haven't had large concerns or questions about our updated covid policies and masking requirements over the summer so things continue to go well you will likely hear from us in august as we are looking forward to the start of the next school year on what policies and things will be in place as far as a covid response for next school year but we will maybe have a few more public health orders by then and obviously updated guidance from all of our all of our guidance groups i'm sure we will we will wait until august to make any sort of final decisions for next school
061year future school board meeting dates we have a meeting next week on monday the 28th at 5 30. that is a village of mcfarland and mcfarland school board joint meeting on diversity equity and inclusion issues and updates you will likely hear some of the same information from this evening again but we'll have our added guests from the village board as well there's only one scheduled board meeting in july on july 19th and then we have two in august august 2nd and august 16th as we get ready for the school year and that board that village board school board is going to be doing they've asked for it to be a zoom meeting all right that is all i have for you for a district administration report any questions or comments concerns anyone if not we
062can move on to our action items the first is action on appointment of our 2021-22 medical advisor and i think we're gonna we're gonna table this one for this meeting um the the board is gonna get together and and have some discussions regarding directions that we're going to go here so i think we're going to table that until the board can get together and speak and then we'll maybe do that at the july meeting i think that's a great idea craig because i've been really interested to watch different districts use different models of medical advisement especially because of covet i mean covert brought all sorts of things to the issue but so to really think through this i think is a really great idea i think so too yeah thank you okay um [Music] do
063we need a motion to table that okay i would ask for a motion to table this action item until our july meeting i may i make the motion to table the action on appointment of a 20 to 22 medical you have a second i'll second that bruce any questions further comments if not all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed carries 5-0 moving on the next action item is action on 20 20 21 22 private transportation contracts annually the school board approves private transportation contracts to those district families who will have children attending private or parochial schools in the school year as defined by state statutes 121.542 for board action is requested to approve private transportation contracts as listed in the attached exhibit do i have a motion ireland second second kate
064any other discussion uh hearing none when did this start actually that was the question every year we've done we do this every every year this is your annual event and how long has that been going it's so ignorant for a long time before i was on the board yeah for a long time okay okay thank you sorry and i interrupted you no no no no you're good you're good no that's what discussion's for let's find proof anything else if not all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye opposed motion carries 5-0 i would be looking for a motion to adjourn craig before we do is there going to be any follow-up at all on the mcfarland federation of teachers proposal for um early release yes is it yes um i and since it's
065not on the agenda that might be something that we can handle outside of the board meeting this evening but yes there will be follow-up excuse me right because i i i want to just make a comment i you know i i felt bad that when i was going through and looking at jeff's note he had a very small note that if anyone wanted to talk to craig or would like to include this um contact craig by nine o'clock on friday right and i i missed that entire sentence and i so forgive me i apologize i did talk to craig on sunday and he gave me pretty much the lowdown but i just think it is something that you know i look at teachers as kind of that that frontline expression i don't i don't want
066to intro interrupt you too much but um the items that aren't on the agenda for this evening we have to be cautious as a board not to discuss um because if there were other folks who were interested in attending they wouldn't have known that it was a topic because it wasn't on our published agenda we are going to discuss this at a future date as a board all right and i did get the opportunity to have conversations with angie bazan as well so we're at we're at a point now where i think the board needs to sit down we'll figure out a way to do this in the appropriate way and and discuss this more in depth it will not fall through the cracks okay did i have a motion to adjourn i'll make that
067motion bruce in a second yeah kate discussion rarely discussion at this point uh all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye aye opposed passes five zero thank you very much everyone um this is a short meeting we are adjourned at yeah 7 58. thank you very much one and all you