001[Applause] All right. I'd like to call this meeting to order. If you would all rise with me to 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. >> All right. Thank you all for being here tonight. And just to let you know, Matt, who is a fire chief, is on a fire. So that is why I'm stepping in to run the meeting this evening. So hopefully he's out there safe. and Becky is not able to make it with us either tonight. Have board members been able to take a look at the agenda? And there are no changes that I am aware of. So, is there a motion? >>
002Motion to approve this evening's agenda. >> And I'll second. >> All right. It's been moved and seconded to approve tonight's agenda. All those in favor say I. >> I. All those opposed say no. Hearing none, the agenda has been adopted and now we will go to you for the superintendent's report. >> Great. Uh well, good good uh evening here. Um thank you so much uh Vice President Davidson, other board directors, uh student representatives who are here and uh as well as staff and community member. Um, I didn't start off just saying we had a really good start, uh, to the school year last week. I, you know, I go around to all the schools just checking in to see what's going on. Talk to kids, family members, staff, get inside classrooms. There's just a lot
003going on the first couple days. Uh I I uh before I got a couple slides to show, I just always like to say like operationally until you go full steam, you don't know some things that need a little bit of addressing. We had a bus with a little bit of a difficulty. Sometimes when you're that bus that's been sitting there, yeah, you might have run a route, but until you like get it loaded with kids and of course driving around, then it may may have a moment uh where it's not operating as well. We had an air conditioning unit go haywire. at Bordeaux. I don't know. We got a lot of fans. Uh only in portion of the building. Uh and some technology just, you know, sure you can check it, but the minute you
004really need to rely on it, I mean, we all know how technology works, the more you rely on something um in the moment, the less likely it is to work. Um so, it was good people. I would just want to thank the staff that jump right on that. No one wants that stuff to work more than a a bus driver or our maintenance team or our technology department. Those those folks want everything to work for everyone. They want the school to go smoothly. That that is um one of our key commitments as a district is to have things operational for obviously our staff and the students and our families day one. Um, but there's always going to be things where people don't realize like, oh yeah, there's 4,500 kids that show up and we got
005to operate and manage quite a lot of square footage. So, um, just thanks so much for the staff. Uh, and also just thanks to the families for, you know, trusting us with your kids, your babies. Um, you know, we love educating your students. And so, um, lots of excitement. So, that's a great segue to some slides I got here. So, um, this year I'm going to try to go with more visuals to match my narrative. I don't think I'm that engaging on, you know, trying to think about it. The different modalities or preferences in which people like to receive information. Got some pictures here. Some first day pictures. Welcome back. Uh, lots of welcome back signs at our schools. Uh, you can see some pictures up there. Some students inside the classrooms down low getting
006right to work. Um, and of course, uh, a lovely girl and her mother. Um that is the definitely going to be at Bordeaux. So um really nice. The next slide here is uh this was uh previous to the start of the school year. This was jump start for ele uh for kindergarten. Kindergarten did start officially yesterday. Uh but this is just a great opportunity for us to part of our jump start program where we have again our incoming kindergarteners folks. Some students have never been around other students their age to this many kids in one setting. Not everybody goes to a preschool or a daycare setting. So, this is really purposeful to have them come in, build relationships with our staff. We get to know the students a little bit more about their story, strength,
007and needs. Then we can really we do sometimes move a couple kids just to make sure we got some good fits. Nothing like 5-year-old energy. Um, and so this is just uh I know the picture on the right was over at Evergreen um as they got started. So that was um a really powerful event. I was actually in that classroom uh that day and they're going around working on what are the routines, what are the structures, how do I wash my hands, how do I go to the bathroom, how do I ask for help, how do I just even sit quietly sometimes. So anyway, want to show that. And then the last slide, uh, no surprises. If you've heard me talk before, this is going to be about literacy. So, day one, literacy instruction was
008going on. I was super proud. It wasn't like I had my foot on anybody's back or anything like that. Teachers were in it. Kids were wanting to do it. Uh, right off the bat, that's the power of going into our fourth year of the strategic plan is that kids already know a lot of the structured routines. They know the expectations. They know how to navigate a book. They already know what they like as far as genre. They already got the strategies down and they're ready to go. And I know um I talk a lot about the reading, but don't forget this is not half of this is about teaching kids how to read and comprehend. The other half is really about the love of literacy and writing so that they can be empowered about all
009the other content areas, all the things that they want to do to figure out access and opportunity um as they head into high school and beyond. So, super excited about that. Just wanted to show some pictures here of um some first day stuff along with Jumpstart. So, I thought that was really great um for us. Um other than that, just got a bunch of community events coming up. If you uh want to check out always the website, we are going to be visiting um every uh of our schools and holding a little forum there uh centered on each of the schools. Bordeaux happens to be first coming up this month. Uh, and is an opportunity for really the community of Bordeaux to come and find out and listen to what's going on at Bordeaux and
010any questions they have about Bordeaux or the district, public education in general. Happy to tackle on some of those things. So, um, I'm really excited about those opportunities. been something I've wanted to do since COVID, but I think um we are fully operational, ready to go um and so that we can most certainly utilize people's time. I know families are busy, people are out there busy. Do make an opportunity to come. It's one hour. I promise it's not forever. We'll we'll get through it, but I think some key information and at least get your key questions answered. Uh yeah, so that will conclude my remarks. >> All right. Thank you. I appreciate the pictures. It's nice to see all of that welcome back to school stuff. Um, all right. Now, we'll go into community comments.
011I don't think we have any this evening because the sheet was not brought up. I guess I'll check in online. Nope. All right. We do not have any community comments unless anyone out there would like to make one. All right, we will move into reports and recognitions. So the first one is going to be the introduction of our 202526 student board representatives and I'll let the superintendent >> kick that off as well. >> Absolutely. Uh four years now with these student representatives here. So I'll start off with our returner from Cedar High School, Allan Ramirez. Welcome back Allan. He said he was the senior member of the student representatives there. No pun intended, I'm sure. Allan, it's too early for dad jokes. Um, really good to have him back. I know he's very vested. Um,
012so the next person is Nvea Betch. Did I? Yep. Naa Bch. Um, I got a chance to meet her last year. I actually saw her working in our community, so she did have a summer job. I didn't even get a chance to ask her that this today, but I can't wait to hear about it. Really nice to have her here from SHS. So, she's representing quite a few students and a lot of activities that are going on at the school and I even hear they have a no cell phone policy for the first year. So, I'm sure she has something to say maybe about that, maybe not. Um, and then Abigail Olivus. Olivus. Olivus. And so, uh, she is joining us from Choice. I'm so excited to have you here. I'm already a big fan.
013Um, she's wearing a Billy Eyish shirt. So, I mean, we we got things to talk about. I do like Billy Eyish. Um so really good important to have our student representatives. Um I know just in talking with uh staff and also the board last year's uh student representatives were outstanding. I mean they really did consistently show up and they were engaged in some of the topics ask questions. I just encourage and empower you as much as you can to also be involved. Uh there's a lot of things going on. Um, and I think that people are wrestling a lot with public education more than more than usual. And you got a great front row seat and can inform others about how it's going and some of your own thoughts. So, um, really excited to have
014you here and again, thank you so much for your time and your interest because, um, so many students, I think, don't have that opportunity to sit in the front row of of a community, uh, forum, which, um, can be a little dicey sometimes. Um, but as we talked, they're looking forward to it. Um, that's the power of our democracy. So, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it. >> All right. Now, the next up on the agenda is actually getting a report from each one of you. And I will also say I've been on the board for 10 years. And when I first started, we did not have student representatives. And then we started to get them and get them more consistently. And it really keeps getting better and better every year. But a
015key part of that is please know that the board values your perspective even if it might seem like it's difficult for us to hear what that is. We want to hear what's happening at your school and and definitely want that connection with all of you. So with that being said, I think Alan, since you are a returning member, I'm going to have you start off today with a report from Cedar. >> Yeah. So uh thank thank you for that. And uh from Cedar High School, we've actually even though it's we've only been back to school for like what is it? Three three days now, four days, something like that. We've already gotten a lot of stuff done. Uh the seniors specifically this year, we're all very excited. We're we've decided to make this our best
016year of high school ever. So, we've already started organizing big events that are going to involve the entire community. We've also started organizing fundraisers so that we can spend a lot of money as seniors. Uh and we also had a quite a few seniors working as ambassadors to help our orientations. The uh first orientation that we had was only for new students and that was run entirely by our Cedar ambassadors which I was a part of. So I got to see the the whole process of planning out what that uh what that would look like. And we got to test out the games and everything. And it went really well. We had some good conversations with the with our incoming students and they seemed really engaged the entire time. And uh the uh the other
017orientation was for everybody just in general and that was organized entirely by the teachers, the staff which was also very good. It went it went very smoothly and I was actually really surprised to see just how engaged everybody was. All of the students were super engaged during uh all of the activities. We also tried to use the the uh new student orientation to try establishing our norms because we know a lot of these students are haven't really been introduced to that type of um that type of description of of what a norm is. They're more used to being told this is what the rule is instead of this is what a norm at our school is. So we've had a lot of fun with that. We've also had a lot of fun uh sharing a
018a few spaces with Choice High School. I know that we have this place called the Vibe Room, which is in the Choice Auditorium. Yeah, the Choice Auditorium. It's full of these It's full of like uh these fun games that that the principal Brun he he got off of like Well, he got he got them for us. And as far as I can tell, there aren't really any any there that are for like one person to play by themselves. So, it's a really good way to get all the all the people to sort of like come together and maybe if they like really like foosball bond over that. So, it's uh been really fun. And we've also tomorrow we're having our first working Wednesday, which is a very new thing that a lot of the a
019lot of the returning Cedar students were shocked by. I think it'll it'll probably be easier for the new newer students because this is I mean the entire thing is new to them. But one of the ones that I'm most excited for probably because I'm doing it is the Evergreen Elementary opportunity where we get to help out teachers in in at Evergreen Elementary. It's especially uh it's especially touching for a few of us because some of us went to Evergreen. So it's kind of like coming back home. So yeah, we've been we have a stay tuned for what Cedar High School will be doing, more specifically our seniors. >> All right, thank you Alan. We always appreciate your report. Now Naa, we would love to hear from you about Shelton High School. >> So far, I
020would say this year is going really well. We've already had a back to school assembly, which was really fun. We had a lot of new people in leadership this year especially and everybody was really eager to lead and help out and even like speak at the assemblies which is new for us because it's pretty hard to get someone to get in front of the whole school. And our leadership team actually this year went to a leadership camp in Mount Baker and we learned a lot of new fun tactics to keep our school engaged. So, one of those tactics we used at the assembly was actually skits. And we did a lot of like really funny skits on the phone policy, our new bathroom passes, and I think they landed a lot better than just reading
021the rules off to the kids, which I think we do a lot anyways. So, that was really great. And then this Friday, actually, we have something called like climber palooa going on and our club rush where we'll be introducing all of our clubs who are like freshman and everything like that. And then we also have our first home game of the year this Friday and we will be having like a little block party type thing where we're just going to celebrate our football team finally being home and like a welcome back to school, a little party and all that. And then we've already our leadership team has started planning homecoming and we've got our spirit days in order for that as well. And then on the note of phone policy, there's been some discussion about
022that at school, but I think that the ones that are like adapting to this the easiest are probably our freshmen because a lot of schools like OBJ especially already have a pretty good film policy in place. So when they're coming up to high school, it's really nothing different for them. I think the only ones that are like kind of struggling with it are the seniors because all of us are like but but we've had those. But everyone, it seems to be going pretty well. I don't think we've had any like crazy issues with it or anything. No one really outwardly opposes it either. So, it's it's gone pretty smoothly, I would say. I think this year is going to be a good year. Our ASB team's really excited. So, yeah. Thank you for your report.
023And I recognized Naa right off the bat and she reminded me I was her fifth grade camp counselor because my daughter is a senior too as Naa is. So, back in when Mountain View did fifth grade camp, she was one of my kids. So really nice to have you on the board. All right, Abigail, we would love to hear a report about Choice. >> For the 2025 2026 school year, Choice has a new schedule. 7th and 8th grade go to choice all day. 9th and 10th go to choice for the afternoon classes. Can have their AM class at SHS, Cedar, or online. 11th and 12th go to choice for morning. Well, excuse me. 11th and 12th go to choice for morning classes. can have a PM classes at SHS, Cedar, New Market, Running Star or
024online. The staff are good at helping to choose help the ch the staff are good at helping the students choose the right path for the other half of the day. The 11th and 12th are beginning school on September 3rd for a morning orientation and check-ins for Thursday and Friday. 7th and 10th began school on September 8th with with a assembly, barbecue, and games. Over the summer, Brunie made the students vibe room. the game with games, books, and comfy couch. The wall is painted with the word with the word vibe room in green and purple. Cedar and choices school color showing the schools are coming together. The vibe room is open from 7:47 a.m. to 10 to 2:10 p.m. I noticed on check-in day students were coming to school early to hang out in the vibe
025room. >> All right. Thank you. It sounds like there's a lot of flexibility and and options for students at choice. We really appreciate hearing about all of that and thank you Abigail for your report as well. All right, moving right along to the consent agenda. It's our typical consent agenda with different warrants, proposed minutes, personnel report. >> I motion to approve this evening's consent agenda. And I second. >> It's been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> All those opposed say no. Hearing none. The consent agenda has passed. Now we are down to discussion and action items. We just have one this evening and that is the proposed revised policy number 4220 complaints concerning staff or programs. And Tabitha Whiting is here with the second
026reading. And this is recommended for approval. >> Uh good evening. Uh we talked about it quite a bit at the last school board meeting and we didn't make any changes to the policy. So I'm happy to answer any further questions you have. Um but recommending it for approval this evening. >> Are there any questions from either board member? No. It was pretty straightforward. Is there a motion? I motion that we accept proposed revised policy number 4220 complaints concerning staff or programs. >> I second the motion. >> All right. It's been moved and seconded to approve revised policy number 4220. All those in favor say I. >> I. All those opposed say no. Hearing none, the proposed revised policy number 4220, complaints concerning staff or programs has passed. >> Thank you. >> And now we are
027all ready to board member comments. So, Director Dale, would you like to start us off with any comments tonight? >> Just want to say thank you to our new representatives. Well, Allan, thank you for coming back and we love the reports. Um, everybody's already said it, but I I want to echo that. please uh continue to bring reports and celebrations and maybe some of the things we might not see if we aren't there. You guys get to give us a window in. So, thank you so much. Great reports. We are looking forward to the school year with you. Um I want to echo what uh Superintendent Jesse had shared about these roundts occurring at each of the schools and say thank you superintendent. Thank you to the principles and the teachers and the community members
028that will be there. We had we had um heard and encouraged and and really wanted to see that community engagement. I'm so appreciating how much you guys have responded and and I feel like going over um the top to just make sure that happens this year and and so we see that and want to make sure we celebrate it. U thank you to all the teachers out there those first couple of days of class. Um, I am married to a kindergarten teacher and and you think you know what's going to come in and then you always adapt as you go. And so I'm thankful for everybody from kindergarten through high school, all the support staff making this be a really great year. And and I don't have any data behind this, but I have just
029heard so many positive things from teachers and students to the start of this school year. So thank you. I know that's a summer worth of work and years worth of work, but thank you to everybody who's made that happen and everybody show up to that football game this weekend. >> All right, Director Gilmore, >> it's nice to have uh the students back with us. It's weird when we have meetings without them. So, I really appreciate your reports and your your insight. Um I think it seems like the first week went off really well. Uh, I know my kids are back at Bordeaux and we were able to do the open house the night before and everybody's just so welcoming and great and literacy is out there right from the start which is just amazing. We've
030been doing great over there. I'm just really appreciative to all the teachers and staff and family that help keep it rolling. And I hope that everybody comes out next Tuesday night to be at Bordeaux. If you're in the Bordeaux community to come and let us let us meet together and and keep this community community rolling. >> I appreciate having you guys here, too. What Lauren said is so true. when that side of the table is blank, it seems it wasn't quite right two weeks ago when we had our first meeting. So, it's really nice to have you all here. I'm excited about school kicking off. I do love the banners that I'm seeing on the schools, whether it was in the picture for Bordeaux or here on Mountain View, just highlighting the literacy and the
031um you know, just something to be very proud about that that we are seeing that type of improvement and that our the benefit really is our students having those skills. So, that's really exciting. As you all have heard me say before, I have two high school students. So, hearing all about the different high school sports options that are going on right now, whether it's football games, volleyball, soccer, swimming, um I think golf is going on as well, too. There's so many different things. And I'm excited about this Friday. I I think we saw it as like a tailgate party. Um I love that they're going to have all the clubs there and just fun things to kick off the beginning of the school year as well as um going to the football game Friday night.
032So, that's that's wonderful. I also appreciate these opportunities for our school communities to come in and have an opportunity um to get together with other families at their school and hear questions that other people might ask or or get questions answered. So um I'm really thankful for that and thank you also for your invitation for board members to continue to walk through the schools with you um when you send your Friday reports to us. I I think I very much appreciate that information, but also the that extended invitation to us to come into any of the schools um when you're when you're doing that and I know I would like to take you up on that. Um I think for school board members, we are all excited as well to go. We've been registered for
033and signed up for the the WASDA meeting which is our Washington School Director Association meeting. So, it's a place where we actually get education, professional development as schoolboard members, and that's something that we will be attending in November in Seattle. So, looking forward to just learning more ways that we can work better together and work to serve our students and our community. Outside of that, we do not have any exempt or um we don't have any other exempt sessions this evening or I don't believe we do. Was you going to say something? >> I just I just want to comment because one of the key things um that you mentioned about getting out in the schools. Anybody out there listening, you can come and check out what's going on in our schools. This is such
034a important message I'm trying to send uh out there and you're you know I just like I'm sure some people like oh I'd like to get in. Just a reminder you too can show up even if you don't have students in the schools. You're like I'd like to come see somewhere. I'd like to go see Cedar. here's so much or choice like I lot of going on for those schools you know like I'd like to go see that or the reading at the early grades or whatever we invite that so um just contact the school and we'll walk you through um a quick visit we can do it >> thank you for that so you're saying they should contact the the school or or the district office >> they should just contact directly the school
035>> and say that's a committee member I'd like to come through and we will make it happen um and we have district staff to support if needed >> yeah all right well thank you for that additional comment. Outside of that, if there is a motion to adjurnn, that'll be the end. >> I motion we adjurnn. >> I second the motion. >> All right, it's been moved and seconded. All those in favor say I. I. I. I. All right, the meeting has adjourned.