General Room: That's
General Room: I would like to call this meeting to order. Obviously, chair Taylor is not here today, so I will be filling in for him. But, Miss Douglas, could you please call the role?
General Room: Certainly. Director, shoemaker here, director, sloop here, Esther way here, Director Bidal, here. Thank you.
General Room: All right. 1st up. We have communications from our high schools, so I'd like to welcome up Riverside High School, Lucia Karambaugh.
General Room: Hello, Dr. Ludwig and Board members. It's been a while.
General Room: I hope you've all been enjoying the warm sunshine as much as I have that we've had these past couple weeks. I'm so happy that winter is finally over. I'm also happy to be back to represent Riverside High School.
General Room: So far this April. We've had our crossing over play. It was on March 13, th through 15, th and it had a great turnout, with almost all almost full crowds for each showing. We thank everyone who came to support our theatrical artists and their wonderful performances.
General Room: Last weekend, 3 of our students who are part of our Skillsusa Club competed at the Oregon Skillsusa Conference in Albany. It is designed to make sure students get the right learning for real world skills. Students from all over Oregon came to compete in a variety of cte related programs. All of these are divided into different categories, leadership, personal development, occupationally related and skilled and technical.
General Room: 2 of our students won 1st place and qualify for nationals that will be in Atlanta, Georgia.
General Room: Kaylin won 1st in the job interview. Competition and Phoenix won 1st in impromptu speech.
General Room: All of our spring sports are kicking into high gear as the warmer weather has finally arrived. There have been many track meets, golf, tournaments, tennis, matches, and baseball games. Every athlete is pushing their hardest to get to the top in preparation for the rest of the competitive season.
General Room: One week ago, on April 11, th there was an art show at Wilsonville High School that many of our students, pieces were in lots of students, and parents alike walked around this art gallery and admired the hard work and creativity each student put into their pieces.
General Room: On April 11.th Some of our student scientists competed at the State Science fair. Almost half of 65 competitors came from our district. We are so proud of our 4 Riverside representatives who went and showed their hard work and dedication to the science world. I'm so happy to say that 2 of our students won awards. Val won 3rd place in animal science, and Riley got the outstanding geoscience project award.
General Room: coming soon. The long awaited prom has finally arrived this Saturday we will have our 1st ever riverside prom off ground at the Clackamas County fairgrounds, banquet Hall. Every grade is welcome to come, dance, eat pizza and enjoy our under the stars theme. It is from 7 to 9 Pm. And we are looking forward to a great evening. Thank you for having me here tonight, and I look forward to see you next month
General Room: that from Westland High School we have mia Harmon.
General Room: Hello, Westland, Wilsonville School Board. It's very nice to see you all again. I hope you're all having a nice evening. Since the last time I saw you, Westland has entered its 4th and final quarter of the school year, and we wrapped up the 3rd quarter very strong and have had a lot of success in all areas so far
General Room: Westland Asb is currently busy preparing for our annual May Day celebration. Our theme this year is a moonlit May day in Paris. We are very excited for this beautiful celebration, and there are many incredible talented student performers, and our May Day court has been hard at work to learn their waltz and their fast dance. May day will take place next Thursday, May 1st at 1 30 and 7 Pm. And I hope to see you all there
General Room: in the world of Arts. The Westland Theater program has started filming and rehearsing for their annual short productions. Asb has even had the honor of being extras in one of the short films, and our advisor, Blake Williams, spoke a few lines.
General Room: 20 of our theater performers and technicians also recently attended and competed at the State. Thespian festival. Nobizur received state. Select 1st place in costume, design, and Taryn Kepler also received State select, or 1st place in pantomime, also performing it at the closing ceremony.
General Room: Our choir fresh pitch recently competed for the 1st time at the Rose City sing-off at Sherwood High School, where they placed 4, th our symphonic choir has also qualified for state.
General Room: our symphony orchestra placed first, st and our chamber orchestra placed second at their district competition.
General Room: March was Women's History Month, and to celebrate West Lynn held a women's forum, where female identifying students were free to come in and have conversations about women's issues. We discussed subjects such as women's sports, women's history, and even difficult topics, such as harassment. We had a very successful and productive conversation, and we are excited to continue having a variety of forums in the future.
General Room: During the week of March 17, th Asb held a fundraiser in partnership with the charity St. Baldrix. St. Baldrix is a charitable organization that supports kids with cancer by shaving heads in solidarity. Cancer is one of the most difficult experiences a young child can endure, and losing their hair can be very hard as they may feel insecure or be made fun of by their peers, who don't understand what they're going through.
General Room: So to help this deserving cause, Westland held a fundraiser in which, for every $500 raised we shaved a teacher's head overall. We raised $1,500 and shaved the heads of Coach Joe, which you can see on the screen. Mr. Crake and Mr. Bogert.
General Room: our robotics team, to be determined, competed at the 1st Robotics Competition Pacific Northwest District Championship with the top teams of the district. They scored 6 and 6 during qualification matches. They won the entire event after a flawless performance of 5, and oh! Thus qualifying for the world championship in Houston, Texas. They just came back from their world's competition and had a great experience competing against some of the best teams in the world.
General Room: Last Friday the Westland Affinity Clubs hosted a multicultural night at Westland High School. Our Latino student Union Muslim Student Union Asian Pacific Islanders club and indigenous student Union set up booths with good food and fun activities for the community to participate in
General Room: our winter sports have officially wrapped up their seasons. The Westland girls, snowboarding team, won state after getting 1st in half pipe, second in slope style, and 3rd in Banks Slalom, our boys, basketball, took 3rd in state, and girls basketball took 4th in state. Our dance team competed at the Osaa dance and drill state championships the weekend before spring break, where they had 2 amazing performances and placed 5th in the State for hip hop, which is something the team hasn't done in over 15 years.
General Room: Our spring sports have officially started their seasons as well, and they have had a lot of success already. The Westland track team went to the University of Oregon for the Oregon relays where Hayden Williams, Downing got 1st place in Javelin
General Room: Cooper. Rahms got 4th place in the 200 meter Dash, and the boys Smr. With Cooper, Rahms, Peter Daniels, Silas Reynolds, and Isaac Compore got 3rd place. Reese Jensen got 9th in the 400 meter. Eleanor Wyatt got 7th place in the 1,500 meter and Aiden Sauer got 10th in the 300 meter hurdle.
General Room: Our baseball team is currently 10 and 3, and our softball team is 9 and 3. Our boys. Lacrosse is 9 and one, and our girls lacrosse team, have also had many wins. So far, although many of their matches have been rained out. Both our girls and boys. Tennis teams continue to work hard and bring home victories. Recently our boys golf team competed at the Arrowhead golf course, coming in second place with a team score of 311. Our girls recently had a tournament last week at Stone Creek Golf Club and placed second overall.
General Room: That is all I have for you tonight. Thank you so much for having me, and I look forward to seeing you again next month.
General Room: Next up from Wilsonville High School, Carter Christiansen.
General Room: Good evening, Dr. Ludwig and members of the School Board on behalf of the leadership and Asb at Wilsonville High School. I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to all of you today. This last month at Wilsonville High School, we had lots of great activities and events happening in the world of athletics. We had our spring sports kicking off with baseball, softball track and field girls and boys, tennis boys and girls, lacrosse
General Room: boys and girls, golf and boys volleyball, which is a new sport. We just started this year.
General Room: All teams are off to a great start this season and are looking
General Room: on to compete against league play. These next couple weeks.
General Room: Our Drama department looks forward to continuing to prepare for their last performance this year, as this spring they'll be performing once in a lifetime. They also attended State these last weeks last month, and said they enjoyed their time together making memories.
General Room: Our dance team also competed at State, where they placed 4th in their dance and drill style championships.
General Room: Our robotics team was very successful this last month, where they had competition. During spring break, where they competed very well.
General Room: They set not only a school record, but also a world record at the district meet with a high score of 275 points. This last week they competed at Nationals in Houston. While not advancing to the final rounds. They were proud of their efforts and look forward to taking what they learned to competing next year.
General Room: This last month we had our grand final for springfest competitions, where we saw great competition from our contestants. Surprisingly, we have a three-way tie for 1st place.
General Room: and we will crown our winner at our final assembly on May 3, rd
General Room: our Asb has also teamed up with our dual language Lidarzo and La Comunidad team and helped a Spanish music dance this last Friday with food, trucks, games, and fun to help build school spirit with everyone here at Wilson Mill.
General Room: with an emphasis on community and culture. They said they had a great time, and it was a blast.
General Room: Our leadership class also
General Room: has been hard at work planning out this year's prom with the survivor theme. Students are hard at work making different jungle themed decorations and planning out activities. This year our Prom will be held at Montgomery Park, and our students are looking forward to the dance
General Room: this last week. We also have started up our elections for next year's Asb roles in the Student Council. Many students are excited to find new ways to contribute to Wilsonville and make it a better place.
General Room: Elections were held today, and we'll have the results soon on. Who will be our next leaders at Wilsonville High School.
General Room: We're excited for this next month of activities and look forward to updating you with what is happening at Wilsonville High School this next month. Thank you.
General Room: And a quick reminder that next month is our last chance to get updates from our students. And so we'll be looking forward to to that. And we'll also be really interested to find out what your plans are for next year, for our Wilsonville and Westland reps. So it's been a pleasure, and we cannot wait for one last chance to learn from all of you.
General Room: At this point you are welcome to leave, although we do have 3 amazing students also coming up. So if you want to stick around for that, but also feel free to leave, because we know you have a lot on your plate.
General Room: So next up we have recognitions, and I'm so excited to welcome some of the participants from our primary school, international Science Engineering Fair or Isef and Dr. Barb Soyson is going to do a recognition for us.
General Room: I am just going to have the pleasure of introducing our Isef. Director, Danielle Schroeder and Elena and Mae and Senha, who are going to be sharing aspects of our program in Isef that we often have not brought forward.
General Room: Thank you. Everyone so lovely to be seeing you this evening. My name is Danielle Schroeder, and I am your district's science. Fair director. Science Fair may evoke memories of baking soda, volcanoes, and slime, and while there will always be a time and a place for those sorts of projects.
General Room: I encourage you to think of our Science fair program more like a vehicle for developing science, identity and technical skills. And when I say science identity, I firmly believe that any student in our district could grow up to be a scientist or an engineer.
General Room: But science identity is more than that. Science identity says, I'm going to grow up.
General Room: I'm going to become a citizen of the world.
General Room: I'm going to interact and be confronted with data, big, important data. And I'm going to know where to start.
General Room: I'm going to know how to make informed decisions and be a good steward of the world. That's science identity. That's what Science Fair is.
General Room: And at the primary school level perfect. Students do. Science education in their classrooms, sometimes through tanks of salmon in their school garden. But we're really capitalizing on their natural curiosity.
General Room: They do experiments in their classrooms, and sometimes those experiments go home, and when they have a project that they're really proud of, they're invited to share their learning at the High School science symposium, and my students get to interview them. It's always a highlight of the year.
General Room: When these students continue on to middle school, our science fair becomes a club and science fair or science teachers at their campuses help help! Refine their questioning, and give them a little bit more high-tech tools to follow their passions
General Room: by the time they're at high school, though, they're doing mentored investigations and creating inventions much more similar to a graduate student advising session. These high school students are getting cutting edge technical training specific to their field, and my counterpart, Tiffany and I are usually serving between between 200 to 300 students in the course of a year.
General Room: regardless.
General Room: everyone gets a very similar start in their science journey by focusing on something that they're really excited about right. And so I would love for these students to tell you about their projects. We've brought their boards along. And so if it's okay, Maeve, can we begin with you sharing about your Science fair project. Come on up.
General Room: My name is May Figliada, and I'm from Sunset primary.
General Room: The the science project that I did about
General Room: that I that I did is, that
General Room: is, about different medals and pennies in water.
General Room: in water, with the tulip, with fresh cut tulips, and seeing if it lasts if it really does last longer.
General Room: My favorite part of my science project was when I learned that pennies before 1982 have 95% copper, but pennies. After 1982 have only 2% copper.
General Room: When I tested them, I learned that
General Room: the pennies before 1982 worked better.
General Room: It's done did not put them out.
General Room: Thank you, Maeve Elena, do you want to come up and share now?
General Room: So my name is Elena Diaz. I am from Trillion Creek primary, and my project is what the short-term effects of reading are.
General Room: My favorite part of the project was giving the questionnaires to the individual people that I was asking about their different emotions before they read a specific text.
General Room: And my favorite thing that I learned was probably
General Room: that people feel most creative after reading.
General Room: And yeah, it's not fantastic.
General Room: all right. And our middle school representative this evening is Snea. Want to come share about your project?
General Room: Yeah.
General Room: My name is Sneha Kumar, and I'm from Inza Arwood Middle School.
General Room: and for my project I wrote a program that should tell us if something was written by AI.
General Room: I wanted to do this project because I felt like AI was getting more powerful, and like
General Room: people could like use it to cheat and stuff.
General Room: And my favorite thing about
General Room: doing this project was probably just learning more things about python and how to use the shortcuts invited.
General Room: Thank you so much for sharing. I never get tired of hearing about your projects and your curiosity and your energy, and it comes back to my classroom after my students go around and do their. The high schoolers go and interview the primary and middle school projects, and I just never get tired of them coming back and saying, like, you are never going to believe what students are working on. And I was like, I say, that about you all the time.
General Room: So, as the science fair director. I work with the principals, the instructional coordinators, science faculty stem professionals from our community, so that our students are prepared for whatever comes next, so that a student who loves to learn about learning like Elena might be ready one day for our education. Cte pathway. No pressure, though.
General Room: Or if you're into tech and programming. Maybe someday our computer programming cte pathway
General Room: but we also keep tabs on our stem adjacent programs. So, for example, some of you may be aware that for the last couple of summers our school garden coordinator, Helena Kilstrom, has grown flowers with students, and they nurture them and they cut them, and they turn them into bouquets, and they sell them at a farm stand. And so, if you were someone who was already interested
General Room: in making sure that a bouquet of flowers is as beautiful as possible. Someday, you might see yourself as an entrepreneur in our business. Cte pathway at riverside.
General Room: That's a multi multi-billion dollar business, fresh cut flowers.
General Room: So you will all hear from me one more time in June, because I will be recounting to you the stories of our 4 high school students that are headed to internationals, the International Science and Engineering Fair.
General Room: And they're going to be so excited I'll send a scrapbook, or maybe we'll come back and see you. I'll drop you an email that they're going to want to talk about the scholarships that they earned the upcoming meetings with a patent attorney all of the exciting things that they'll encounter. And they're going to present projects ranging from genetic engineering all the way through, using their computer programming skills to measure changes in deep space stars.
General Room: The thing about it is is that K, 12 happens so fast.
General Room: you blink and you'd miss it right. One day they are investigating who can run up the stairs the fastest. And the next day
General Room: they're genetically engineering organisms, but I'm on the team of people who are keeping tabs on these students.
General Room: We're tracking this data. We're changing our instructional practices to ensure that these students, by the time they make it to their senior year, are ready as possible for whatever will come next. And so with that, I'd love to say thank you again to our students for coming out tonight. We they have generously agreed to leave their boards behind, so that you can check them out during the break, and I'll deliver them home next week.
General Room: and I'm very excited to see you at future Science fairs and in my classroom, and thank you again so much for your hard work.
General Room: Just one second, Kelly.
General Room: so we might have some questions for some of the students or comments from the board members and then, students, we will invite you to come up and get a picture with your projects and the school board members. Okay? So any questions or comments from board members 1st to our students.
General Room: come on up and be ready to answer. You can all come up at the same time. You can all come up together. Really good. We didn't rehearse
General Room: we didn't, either.
General Room: Well, I don't have any questions, but I just want to thank the 3 of you for your presentations. They were so interesting, and I really appreciate the curiosity of all of you. So thank you so much.
General Room: Echo that, and just say, Thank you for being so inquisitive and curious and creative, and I can't wait to see what you do next.
General Room: And we're really excited that you're here, and so thank you for spending the evening with us.
General Room: and I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your love of science and the curiosity and your poster boards are incredible.
General Room: so well done, and and thanks again for sharing
General Room: in advance, for your leadership in your classrooms around science.
General Room: the collaborative work you do with other students is really valuable. So continue to lead. Thank you.
General Room: and I'll just wrap up by saying, Thank you so much for coming and sharing about your curiosity and about your research. I can tell just from here
General Room: that an extraordinary amount of work went into your research inquiry. I see charts and graphs which involved a lot of math and testing ideas and repeated testing. I see a lot of script which means you were doing a lot of reading and researching of articles, and figuring out what articles were
General Room: relevant or important. And what was a reliable research right article? And I can see pictures of you engaging in your project and probably testing ideas and theories.
General Room: And then how you communicated your research to somebody who would come up and look at your board and want to know your project. And you were thinking about the design and the layout.
General Room: So an extraordinary amount of work as a scientist, but also as a communicator of science. So thank you for that time that you took on top of everything else you were doing at school with your studies. So you are impressive.
General Room: inspiring.
General Room: and thank you for all that you've done to share your learning with us, and we know there were other students as well, and you're representing a lot of your friends and classmates who couldn't be here tonight.
General Room: Could you each take a moment and introduce who you brought with you tonight from your family? Because I'm guessing family members were a large part of the support as well.
General Room: and they gave you the tools that you needed. They probably supported you when you had a lot of questions, or maybe drove you somewhere to pick up supplies or materials. So a lot of times the people behind us are our biggest support system. So if each of you want to introduce your parents, we'd love to recognize them.
General Room: I brought with me my mom and my little sister Sloan. Okay, you want to wave mom in the front. Okay, great, thank you.
General Room: I brought my mom and my dad, who were in the second row. Okay.
General Room: I also brought my mom and my dad.
General Room: Oh.
General Room: well, if you can just let them stay for a couple more minutes, let's take some pictures, and you're welcome to take pictures as well, so we'll invite the Board members to come. Do you want to get your boards and then you can put them in front of you, and then we'll surround you with the for the picture
General Room: everyone wanted to. Oh, wow!
General Room: You want your parents and
General Room: have fun.
General Room: 3, 2, 1,
General Room: all right, parents enjoying your you didn't.
General Room: Oh, here, oh, goodness.
General Room: 3, 2, 1,
General Room: thank you.
General Room: 3
General Room: videos
General Room: each other.
General Room: Any chance. It is my email.
General Room: all right. And in keeping with this festive theme. We have another exciting recognition for one of our teachers, who has won a very cool award, so I'll turn it over to Dr. Jennifer, Spencer, Iams, and Trevor Mena from the High school.
General Room: Well, thank you so much. Board and Dr. Ludwig, we are so excited I I don't know if you've been following sort of the social media buzz about
General Room: who's more legendary Michael Jordan or Lebron? James? There's a lot of debate going on right now, but as Principal Mena and I were talking. There is no debate about who is the most legendary teacher at Westland High School, and it is Jim Hartman.
General Room: Jim is an incredible educator, which we will only touch the surface on tonight. And we are so grateful for the diac ecology education program that has recognized teachers that have shown outstanding dedication and tireless efforts to provide field-based experiences for their students.
General Room: And it is no surprise that Jim won that award. When you talk to students, and some of you may remember from our listening sessions last year with high school students at Westland High School. As we talked about cte programs, there were so many students who referenced environmental education, and what a difference it was making in their lives. And that is all due to the efforts of Jim Hartman, who started the program.
General Room: Who taught some of the teachers who are teaching alongside him in the program now really bringing that forward, finding ways that connect with students, whether it's incredible field trips work that is really connecting their students to make connections with their actions and the impact on the environment and the earth. So whether it's the Environmental Club.
General Room: the Cte enrollment, or the outstanding learning and experiences that are happening every day. Jim Hartman has been a treasure in our district for so many years, and it's exciting to see this award given to him as well, which gives us an opportunity to publicly talk about the amazing work that he's had. So I've invited Principal Mena to share a few words as well.
General Room: Well, before I share anymore, I'm gonna have Jim come join us up here.
General Room: It has been my pleasure to work with Jim my whole career. In fact, during my time as a student Jim was a teacher at Westland High School. Now I never had his class, and I regret that, because Jennifer said it well, he is indeed a legend at Westland High School, and I know he was one of my sister's favorite teachers who had him for ap environmental science. During her time
General Room: I found myself reflecting on Jim and thinking actually about our our school district vision statement. How do we create learning communities for the greatest and most thoughtful people for the world?
General Room: And I've thought about this statement many times over my career at West Lynn High School and in our district, and oftentimes
General Room: an answer to that question that pops in my head is, we look at Jim Hartman, and we look at the classroom that he has created, and it truly is living up into what we see as the best of us as the best of us in our district, as educators and inspiring
General Room: young people, to be stewards of our world, to ask the hard questions, to seek the hard answers and to experience what is in front of us. And
General Room: I think it's amazing to see how Cte has come into our schools in many different ways. But in particular, how we've used Cte as a leverage. Environmental science has been really inspiring and has put so many students on a path
General Room: of research, of science, of inquiry, of solutions-based thinking for our world. And Jim Hartman is at the center of that, he truly is. And
General Room: yeah, I'm going to turn it over to him. You don't have to. You can. You can smile and wave. You don't have to have a speech. I guess I'll say this one last piece. There's many things I could say about Jim, but how many times have you been our seniors, honored speaker, and been asked to speak and to represent our senior classes over the years at Westland High School.
General Room: 5 times 5 times in his career our graduating senior class has nominated him to represent them, and what they want to see in themselves as they exit our high school. So I think that probably speaks more than than anything I could say
General Room: for our students. So I'll turn it over to Jim. Thank you, Jim.
General Room: Well, thank you.
General Room: Mostly. I just want to say, Thank you, guys, the superintendent and the folks in charge, and especially you for saying yes. When I ask, can I take kids on this trip or that? One?
General Room: A lot of schools. A lot of districts would not support that you guys always have. And it's made a huge difference for me and obviously for the teachers. So for the students. So thank you.
General Room: Jim, stay stay up.
General Room: Yeah, we're gonna I was gonna say that the the family that I brought my wife. Yes, please do, please do.
General Room: Jim, go ahead and introduce your family.
General Room: Oh, my wife, Esther Shepsman, and our son Jamie. Yeah.
General Room: I'll I'll do comments last so open up to the board first, st
General Room: what Director Shoemaker can go 1st and thank you. I, when when you talk to students that you've had, they kind of describe you as kind of a
General Room: a a guide star right?
General Room: And and even even kids I talked to who have been out of high school for years when they think about school and they talk about you, it's always about he. He was just like
General Room: he had a direction, and and we can always count on that. So thank you for that.
General Room: Yes, and thank you for
General Room: actually acting as a steward in a manner to many of the students, and as Dr. Spencer Iams mentioned.
General Room: so many students lit up when they were sharing their experience in environmental sciences, sciences and the Cte program, so thank you so much.
General Room: It's good to hear that.
General Room: and I maintain that you gave one of the best Commencement speeches that I think I've ever heard. It was inspiring, and I think I even like Ugly cried a little bit on stage when you had students. Thank their parents. But you know, it really shows how much trust you've built, and how the connections that you've made, and I just really thank you for all your work.
General Room: I just want to echo the sentiments of Dr. Spencer Iams and director sloop. I remember vividly high school students in my group talking about how much they love their environmental science class. And when we talk about important issues today, like climate change and
General Room: really saving the earth. I think we should look to the young people who are so passionate about that. And it's because of teachers like you. So thank you so much.
General Room: So the guy on the left is Jerry Keikendall, who worked for the district for a long, long time.
General Room: You all know Jane Goodall in the middle there, and that's me and and my son Jamie. This was the presentation of the dayak ecology board.
General Room: I guess. You teach it. You do a thing long enough. You get a lifetime achievement award
General Room: 37 years.
General Room: Well, Jim, I'm gonna round up by
General Room: I think I'm the 3rd superintendent you've probably
General Room: worked with, and I know when I started in the district you were already legendary in terms of the strength and the caliber of the Science Department at Westland High School, and even as time evolved, you've been a constant. You've been steadfast. You've built that program in other aspects. But you've always advocated for an incredibly strong science program at the High School, and I know other school districts that have
General Room: been envious of our program, have come and watched aspects of it have advocated back in their own school districts. In your humble, understated way you really have created a spotlight on that program, and I thank you for that contribution. I'm glad that we went 1st with our primary students, and Danielle could share numbers of our science fair. And how many students do think about science, and then take it deeper when they get to high school.
General Room: and I know every Science fair I've been to. There's been a strong contingent of students with environmental science focused projects.
General Room: and it comes from their own
General Room: just sense of curiosity of the world but this strong commitment to doing whatever they can for the world.
General Room: And if we didn't have a strong environmental science program, I don't think we'd have that caliber in those science projects. So we've had students come back and share as they've been in college or beyond.
General Room: And many of them talk about you as an influence, and even at the science fair projects. They talk about you as a strong support and influence in their scientific thinking.
General Room: So appreciate all that you've done over the years for the district. Thank you for your contributions. I think it's great that you and Jane Goodall
General Room: are side by side again, were you when she came and dedicated the crest center? You were here? And do you remember that parade with the big dove? Yeah. And I think you had students in that parade, and you were probably there right alongside. So I think this bookend of
General Room: her presenting this award to you is so noteworthy. I'm glad that she had the opportunity to present it to you and that that she's still here for you to receive it, and I just think it's
General Room: just such a tribute to who you are and all that. You've given service to this community and to our students. So thank you so much.
General Room: Thank you.
General Room: And we're going to make you take a picture with the board. Okay?
General Room: Best possible.
General Room: Same science.
General Room: So much.
General Room: All right. Next up we have board member and superintendent reports, and so we will get started with Director Shoemaker, and I'm nursing a bit of a sore throat, and I am going to
General Room: pass tonight, all right. And then we have director sloop.
General Room: Hey? Good evening. I'm just gonna do a little legislative update.
General Room: So the House Bill 2953, which lifts the cap on Special Education
General Room: moved to the House Committee, which considers all bills that adjust the State School funding distribution.
General Room: The Revenue Committee heard testimony in support of the bill at a public hearing on May or March 13, th and Director Vidal gave testimony in Salem, and I submitted written Testimony
General Room: House Bill 2, 4, 4, 8, which adds an additional 200 million to the high cost. Disability account for reimbursement to schools was heard at the same public hearing on March 13, th
General Room: and I presented testimony in support on that day.
General Room: Both these 2 bills now need to move from the revenue to the Joint Ways and means committee, and then must pass both chambers. There's speculation. That House Bill 2953, which lifts the cap
General Room: will be amended to increase the cap on special education rather than removing the cap entirely.
General Room: The bills won't start moving through ways and means for a couple more weeks. The Oregon Economic and Revenue forecast is May 14, th which will be the basis for the Legislature's funding decisions.
General Room: Director Vidal and I will be attending the Oregon School Board Association Advocacy Day at the Capitol this Thursday.
General Room: and there will be opportunities to meet with lawmakers to speak on supporting funding for special education.
General Room: During the March Board Board meeting, Wilsonville, parent and rotary member, Kyle Bunch gave public comment about human trafficking, and shared the news about a recent trafficking bust in Wilsonville
General Room: last Friday I attended the Wilsonville Rotary gala dinner, and I was seated at table 16 with Westland and Wilsonville parents. Dr. Ludwig and Director Vidal
General Room: Kyle shared a video as misnomers, and shared how trafficking is happening in our very own community. And this is concerning to me.
General Room: I am an advocate for many things from raising awareness in mental health, well-being, bullying, suicide, prevention, fentanyl awareness, and now human trafficking
General Room: ode included in their Newsletter a link to primary prevention of human trafficking by the Oregon sexual assault, Task Force Committee paper, which also includes prevention of other forms of violence and abuse.
General Room: I am interested in gathering more information on how to raise community awareness on human trafficking. The youth in our committee deserve to feel safe and valued and not be exploited.
General Room: Thank you.
General Room: Thank you, director Sloop, and next up. We have Director Vidal.
General Room: Thank you so much. Just this last weekend.
General Room: Senator Aaron Woods, who represented Wilsonville, Charbonneau, and King City, passed away. He also served on the Clackamas Community College Board and numerous city of Wilsonville committees. I would like to offer condolences to Senator Aaron Woods's family, his 5 children and his friends.
General Room: May his memory be a blessing!
General Room: Thank you so much to director sloop for her update, as she mentioned. I'm going to be going to Salem this Thursday with her to speak with legislators about the importance of funding public schools.
General Room: This is the 4th 4th time this legislative session. I've either met with legislators or given testimony given the fragile nature of Federal funding. I'm worried about our ability to secure public school funding at the Governor's recommended funding level, and I'm hoping that our State's children, who receive special education funding will receive the funding they deserve.
General Room: Last week in Washington State they completely removed their special education funding cap, and I hope our legislators will consider raising our cap to a more reasonable percentage than just 11%.
General Room: Lastly, I would like to congratulate
General Room: our West Lynn and Wilsonville High School robotics team members that made it to the world championships. I'd like to congratulate all our wonderful spring athletes and
General Room: to our students that are making special magical memories during Prom. It's such a beautiful time of year. And I'm so happy tonight we could celebrate the achievements of our students really at every level. So thank you.
General Room: I just have a quick update. This evening, prior to this meeting, the School Board met in executive session with our attorneys.
General Room: Obviously Chair Taylor is not here. And so we were talking about Oppenlander Field and the ongoing
General Room: quest to sell that piece of property. We ran out of time, and we knew that we wanted to be a full board before we decided on what would happen next. And so we will be noticing another executive session for this week
General Room: and continuing that discussion when Chair Taylor can join us as well, and so just wanted to provide that update to the community. We've received a lot of correspondence on it. We're listening. We're reading everything and appreciate the time that the Westland community is putting into this, and we're taking it seriously, and we will be meeting again this week.
General Room: I'll turn it over now to the superintendent's report.
General Room: Thank you. Vice chair, Wyatt.
General Room: and thank you, Director Vidal, for the tribute to Senator Woods. This evening appreciate that.
General Room: I was nodding when Lucia, from Riverside High School, was talking about the District art show, and I know several of you were able to make it, and just wanted to recognize all the effort that our art teachers put into putting that together and gathering art from all all of our schools across the district. K. 12. And it was a dynamic event.
General Room: very exciting. With a
General Room: acoustic guitar in the background, and
General Room: people looking at art and expressing
General Room: their admiration of the variety of art on display and our students talent. So I want to thank our art teachers again for putting all that together and our artists for submitting their work.
General Room: For this evening. I actually wanted to just point out a couple of community events instead of student events, and in particular, on March 15th we had our capital Bond Summit. I want to thank our board members for being there, and we had over 150 community members participating.
General Room: And this was in preparation for some work that the board is going to be doing in the next couple months, as they think about the potential for a capital bond and the feedback from the community who were there. The participants representing the community who were there is incredibly important, and later tonight you'll hear from the long range planning committee
General Room: who will give you a report about that evening.
General Room: and I want to thank again Director Vidal and Director sloop for being at the Wilsonville Rotary event. Our rotaries are so dynamic in our 2 cities, and such strong supporters of our students. And as we were there that evening
General Room: in this at this fundraising event, I think 4 out of 5 of the
General Room: fundraising efforts were squarely centered on our students, whether it was interact, club or exchange programs or scholarships or events in the community
General Room: peace polls, all the all, almost every single fundraising effort had to do with our students, and the embracing of Wilsonville students and riverside students, and just the sheer admiration that our community has for our students is so clear, and I do want to note that Westland rotary is equally invested. Their fundraiser is coming up May 17, th
General Room: but beyond the funds collected, it really is an evening that is so centered around community building and community support. And so I want to thank our rotaries for showing up in so many ways to support our public schools.
General Room: Next, my report tonight is just again to provide information about the budget process. We're sending a lot of information home through Parents Square, which is a communication tool for families connected to the school district. We also recognize that we have community members who maybe don't get those communications if they don't have students in the district. So we thank the media when they are able to also
General Room: share information. And of course these school board meetings are online and available to the general public to watch, live, or watch the recording. So I wanted to use this as another opportunity. What you have here in front of you is the timeline.
General Room: We did get out a budget webinar. That explains how school district. Budgets are put together with an opportunity, then for community feedback and a survey that will stay open until the end of this week.
General Room: On the 5th the Budget Committee will assemble, and a budget message will be presented, and the Full Budget Committee will receive a draft proposal of the budget to begin studying and bring for deliberation on May 19th together for their 1st full work. Session
General Room: course, May 5th is a school board meeting, and so it's open to the public and also for open public comment.
General Room: May 19th is a work session for the Budget Committee that is also open to the public, and it will be opened for public comment.
General Room: If the Budget Committee needs more time to deliberate, to approve the budget, they have an extended day on the 21st for another work session time if needed.
General Room: once approved by the Budget Committee. The budget then goes to the School Board for adoption. So they make the final decision, and that meeting is set for June 16, th which is also a public meeting, and will be open for public comment. So we encourage our community to
General Room: review any of those documents
General Room: to share their thoughts on the survey, or to come to a public school board meeting and present
General Room: next slide.
General Room: We have shared that within the proposed budget for next year. There are significant reductions that are being made.
General Room: and to honor the request of our licensed and classified staff that we make those reductions earlier than later, so that those impacted could attend job fairs and seek out openings in neighboring districts where there are some we wanted to make those known early and go through those processes. So this information was shared out in public messages. It was also in the budget webinar, and it's available on our website.
General Room: And next.
General Room: so where we are in the process right now is staff have been informed. Those who were in the reduction process did have in-person conversations with their supervisors and individualized letters that would help them connect with resources as well as
General Room: understand, next steps in the process
General Room: for our staff, who will be here next year. We are now going through the process of seeing where there are open places for staff to fill and to transfer into.
General Room: And so there's a process for voluntary transfers and then involuntary transfers. So we're looking at. If a position was reduced. And now a staff member needs a new position where they would be options for them to go next year. Likewise, if there's now
General Room: an opening by someone moving or who was reduced then someone needs to. Now, maybe go to another school and fill a position there. They can volunteer for that transfer, and we appreciate staff who have stepped up to do that.
General Room: And then also, there are times when we don't have enough volunteers. So we do go through an involuntary process as outlined in our collective bargaining agreement, and we've been making those decisions last week and a few remaining this week. I want to thank our staff
General Room: for working through that process. These are challenging conversations.
General Room: and for our principals, our leaders and our staff, as they think about finishing strong this year for students, but also what it means for next year.
General Room: and then next slide.
General Room: Want to again recognize the efforts of so many people across the State who have been advocating down in Salem and with legislators around increased funding. Anything we can do between now and the start of next year to impact any changes with state funding just identified a few remaining factors.
General Room: while we will have a proposed budget to discuss. It's not unusual for things to still happen very late in June, or even in the summer, and then those budgets are adjusted. They're called making supplemental budgets or supplemental plans to a budget. Should there be an additional funding. And as Director Sloop and Vidal mentioned, we're looking at special education funding increase in particular. There's also a Senate bill to provide a 2 year pers relief.
General Room: It will go to the Governor, and then the Pers board needs to vote on that. That's just a temporary two-year relief of
General Room: a buy down of 1.6 8% rate to the pers rates for the next 2 years. It's not eliminating that increase. But there's just a small relief that's going to be provided to school districts. If that passes. We're also watching very closely around legislation that's passed often on the surface. It's
General Room: it has very noble intents and has worthy implications, for whether it's employees or organizations. But then there's often implementation costs with that that often are not considered in the in the mandate themselves, and those costs then get passed on to the school districts. So we're watching those and also advocating
General Room: at the legislative level that if there are costs to any of those House bills or Senate bills or mandates that those be considered funded before they're passed on to school districts.
General Room: And next.
General Room: there's curiosity about this idea of furlough days. And so we did include information about that in a recent communication to the public.
General Room: What is a furlough day, and how does it create cost savings to a school district? So you can see some definition there. A furlough day is when a school day is canceled and the savings comes from employees across the district giving up a day's wages or 2 days wages if it's 2 days, and that's where the savings comes from.
General Room: In order to do that. There are, of course, steps along the way the School Board becomes involved, and of course, labor associations, because it is the garnishing of wages. And so there needs to be voting and approval by those labor associations
General Room: when there's an emergency mid-year, and the school district is in a position where it cannot meet, payroll.
General Room: ode may step in and may grant waivers to instructional hours, especially if there's multiple furlough days. Those of us who have been in education a long time remember the years of the recession, and school districts were cutting 1015, 20, school days, and no one could meet those instructional hours, but it was considered an emergency, and so those were waived.
General Room: But ode does look to see
General Room: if school districts can still meet instructional hours when they conduct furlough days.
General Room: And then we did share with our community, and we've shared with our organizations. How much is one day of a furlough day in terms of savings, and what that would mean if it was put towards the recall of some staff for a year.
General Room: So at this time our organizations are having conversations they're surveying and taking into consideration this possibility of furlough days. It has not been initiated by the School Board or by the superintendent's office. This is something that employees are considering, and they want to bring forward the idea of whether to have a few furlough days or not.
General Room: either this year or next year, so we are waiting to hear from them.
General Room: And then, lastly, I'm just going to put in a plug to anybody who's watching while you still have time on your calendars that our middle school musical, is coming up at the end of this month, and it truly is an opportunity to watch students from across all 4 middle Schools and 3 Rivers Charter school who
General Room: audition, and I think there's an A cast and A. B cast, because there's so many students. And our amazing Julie Lane, who is our district theater director for this musical come together, and of course you can see it's Disney's, the descendants, and I will be there at one of those days and hope that board members can attend, or at least those of you
General Room: watching this can put that on your calendar. So thank you in advance to our middle schoolers for being so amazing. And all the time you're putting into this on top of your schoolwork and other commitments. And I know we're going to be
General Room: and entertained and just delighted. So thank you, and thank you to Julie Lane.
General Room: All right. Next up we have our consent. Agenda. Do I hear a motion?
General Room: I'm to the consent. Agenda.
General Room: I second
General Room: Ms. Douglas, please please call the roll. Thank you. Director, shoemaker. Aye, director, sloop. Aye, vice chair. Wyatt. Aye, director. Vidal. Aye, thank you.
General Room: Next up we have our public comment period for items related to the board business on tonight's agenda. I think we have some repeat visitors here, and so I'll do the abridged version, which is that this is a time for the Board to collect information rather than engage in dialogue.
General Room: This is not a forum for singling out district employees or students for complaints. If there are complaints, please do not mention people by name, or provide information that would allow them to be identified and use a district complaint process
General Room: this time is also for addressing the School Board and not the audience. All comments will be given their due respect by the Board, and we do ask that members of the audience be respectful of all of our speakers, and refrain from giving cheers, claps, or negative noises. When a member of our public is speaking or is concluded speaking, our public comment, time is limited to 3 min per person. If 3 min is not enough time you can reach out to all of us at a later time, or submit materials to the School board.
General Room: So at this point we have 4 folks signed up, so I will welcome first, st Athena Contreras.
General Room: Bye.
General Room: Okay, so this is hard for me. This is pretty hard.
General Room: I'm joining in with a number of voices as we face some extreme budget challenges this year. I believe that this district does so many things so extremely well, but I believe that changes are in order to. Here are some of the things that I have been most concerned about with during the experience of going through the school closure process.
General Room: I've been concerned about
General Room: some of the transparency in the processes for making big decisions. Access to information transparency is, is, you know, a big thing that I know you guys are all working on, but it's very important to the public. Of course.
General Room: I'm also concerned about solutions being presented. I believe that when a problem is presented every problem should be explored in detail by staff in order to reduce the impact of decisions on students, families, and communities.
General Room: and that all avenues should be explored beyond just the surface level. So if we're looking at budget issues, and we're just cutting teachers. Well have we looked at all of the options? Have we looked at the the levy other options in in
General Room: these kinds of things?
General Room: the furlough days, these types of things, exploring them all in detail, and I know a lot of these are, but I believe that there are options that are still not explored. What
General Room: what other options can we have to consider the levy and the bond together?
General Room: To protect our our teachers and class sizes and programs?
General Room: I have concerns about the communications with the public about
General Room: complex subjects. I appreciate the budget explanation that the superintendent does every year, but I feel like there have been several times during this entire process that the school that the the school closure process
General Room: since it was announced last year that I have felt like concerns about the budget, the bond and the teacher levy are often presented as complicated.
General Room: and while this is true, it is, it often feels like the discussions with the public might
General Room: complicate things because of a lack of public commitment to understanding like
General Room: breaking it down for everybody, the more that we're engaged in discussion about it. I think we are stronger. Basically, I think if we just throw up our hands and say, it's complicated.
General Room: we are getting nowhere, we it's it.
General Room: That's where the transparency falls apart.
General Room: As a result, many of us are requesting that the Board carefully consider looking to renew contracts coming up.
General Room: I know hard decisions are being made, but we are coming into a very difficult time, and I think that we all want to know that we are facing challenges with every possible option, being looked at in detail and finding challenge, finding solutions that are not as obvious, I guess. So that's it.
General Room: Thank you, Barb Stratt.
General Room: These are incredibly challenging times, for our district families are worried, teachers are stretched, thin taxpayers are asking questions, and through it all what we're craving more than ever is clarity.
General Room: clarity in leadership, clarity in our budget decisions, clarity in the direction we're headed. Transparency isn't optional in public service. It's how we earn and keep trust and accountability isn't an attack. It's a foundation, a sign that we care deeply about this district and want to see it thrive.
General Room: I know this job isn't easy. But right now we need light leadership. That doesn't just weather the storm. We need leadership that brings people together in the storm. We believe that begins with making one of the hardest but most necessary decisions not to extend the superintendent's contract for a probationary year.
General Room: This isn't personal. It is purposeful. It is based on a growing call from the community for leadership that is transparent, collaborative, and truly accountable to the public it serves. We are not here to criticize. We are here to rebuild. We are here to co-create a future that reflects the values, voices, and hopes of every person in the district.
General Room: because what unites us is far greater than what divides us. We all care deeply about our students, our teachers, and the future of this community. Let's move forward together with clarity, courage, and renewed sense of purpose. Let's work together. To ensure this district reflects the values, voices, and vision of the people in it.
General Room: This decision is about our children's future and our community's trust. Please hear what so many of us are asking for, and choose not to extend the superintendent's contract. Thank you.
General Room: Just 2, Lance.
General Room: So we are beginning to understand what class sizes will look like next year under the proposed teacher cuts. We've been told that primary classes will average 28 students. But in reality that's not how it works. If you merge a class of 19 with a class of 14, you get a class of 33. That's what we're facing. Classes of 33 will be common next year.
General Room: Small class sizes used to be a major selling point in West Lynn. But how do we sell our schools to new families, considering private school or homeschooling?
General Room: Come to West Lynn Wilsonville, your child could be one of 34.
General Room: Let's talk about the levy.
General Room: I voted for it, the ballot language said, and I quote, if approved, the measure would provide funds to maintain current Westland Wilsonville school district programs and staffing levels for 5 years.
General Room: If you couldn't guarantee that it shouldn't have been on the ballot
General Room: that's misleading at best, and a breach of public trust.
General Room: Did the district know the levy would, wouldn't deliver on that promise? Yes.
General Room: in the May 1st board meeting 3 months before the levy went on the ballot. The budget was presented with this message with only a 9.9 billion fund districts across Oregon are making difficult decisions. For some it means staff and program cuts for others, depleting reserves to maintain current service levels in Westland Wilsonville. We'll spend a large portion of our ending fund balance to be clear. This is not a sustainable practice. The second year of the biennium will be impacted. So yes.
General Room: the district knew, but not every voter watches every board meeting. Most voters read the ballot and believed they were voting to preserve teachers and programs not fund one unsustainable year
General Room: that budget included over 25 new hires to high school, despite declining enrollment, and we are asking our youngest students now to carry all of our burden.
General Room: abandoning an entire generation of kids.
General Room: Meanwhile, classes at Riverside some have just 3 students. Full-size buses are transporting only 4 kids. It's not efficient, and it's not sustainable.
General Room: We must reimagine Riverside as a central hub, a magnet site where students from both West Lynn and Wilsonville could spend part of their day.
General Room: We could put empty classrooms to good use while allowing those who attend their full time. Now to continue doing so. It's a win-win.
General Room: We've reached out to the elections office and asked what could be done about misleading ballot language, and we were told it's up to the community to hold the district accountable.
General Room: So how do you suggest we do that.
General Room: I would like to propose a few ideas and meet with all of you when we have time. Thank you.
General Room: Ski!
General Room: Hi, thanks for being here. Guys. Sorry it's tense.
General Room: I am here today to talk about the budget messaging by saying the consolidation of a primary school yields approximately 1.4 5 million in savings and would be directly applied to lowering class sizes across the primary level. The district's message was that not closing a school is a trade-off for teacher jobs. What other budget trade-offs has the administration offered to our community? They've canceled programming makerspace, world languages, crest. We know of another one suggested by board members. The superintendent mentioned today.
General Room: 3 furlough days, 3 furlough days will offer the district more than a school closure at 1.8 million dollars.
General Room: What this needs in order to be offered to the community as a budget solution is the superintendent's assurance in writing that she will apply the saved money to teacher jobs. If union members vote to change their contract. That is what we're all waiting for for our administration to write down that they will honor a vote if the teachers decide to forego, pay and alter their contract.
General Room: And yet the messaging is quote. At this time the superintendent and School Board are not proposing proactive furlough days to mitigate reductions. In the 2526 school year
General Room: it has already been proposed, and we are waiting to have our super write down that she will honor a vote. Then the Union can survey and vote, and the Board can approve, and we can save at least 12 teacher jobs.
General Room: We can see in this the difference of this messaging, that the administration is a proponent of closing a school to save teachers, but they are not a proponent of accepting the teacher union sacrifice. We have also not received any assurance in writing that if State legislation is passed that brings up to 4 million dollars to our district this June in continuity the Administration will call back teachers.
General Room: Here is what the Lake Osuper said to her district.
General Room: All reductions are based on projected revenue until the State legislator legislature finalizes the education budget in June. We won't know if there is a need or an opportunity for changes. We have heard none of this hope, not any reassurance that inconsistent stopgaps like furlough days this year might help us get through to June, where we can potentially celebrate callbacks. I do not get the feeling that our Administration wants to keep as many teachers as possible and is investigating every Avenue look. I also don't want our superintendent's job.
General Room: I know our top administrators work hard. I don't doubt it, but because of this inconsistency in messaging. I found myself signing a message this week to ask board members to hold off on extending the superintendent's contract for a probationary year. Our community deserves better accountability, transparency and reassurances after this chaotic year that our superintendent and the Administration really do have the students and teachers best interests at heart. Thank you.
General Room: And that's the end of public comment unless there's anyone that came in. Yes, becca.
General Room: thank you. Of course I'm gonna write your name down. Is that okay? Yep, becca Pesquez.
General Room: Hi, and I don't have any prepared remarks. I just came to say, Thank you. I've been an advocate for over 2 years now to have more discussion at the School board level of our student achievement data. I think it's something that a lot of parents are interested in and want to see. And I saw it on the agenda tonight. So I came because I'm excited to hear the discussion that you all have about that data.
General Room: And it just it feels like I didn't have a chance to look through it because it just got posted. But it just feels like there's so much room for discussion and learning from that data. And I can just think of questions I have like, I'd love to dive into early literacy and the new work that's being done in our schools and learn about how our students are actually doing. I would love to see longitudinal data like we can see this year. But how are we doing over time? How are we doing over the last 5 years, or the last 10 years? Like, which way is the arrow moving?
General Room: I'm a little concerned that we're saying that we're just not going to share high school data. I think grades are one thing, but they're very subjective, and I think it doesn't. You know there are other things that are more objective. I want to know that when my daughter goes into high school, that she's meeting national standards, and that she's going to go out into the college world and the working world and be proficient. I think just looking at grades is not enough.
General Room: and I think we need to look at different student groups.
General Room: I want to commend you all. I haven't listened to all the discussions on the anti-racism policy, but I think just using that language is really powerful, that we're talking about anti-racism and being proactive. And part of that
General Room: is looking at how our students, our bipoc students are doing and talking about it out loud, because there are student groups in this community that are not doing well. And that discussion needs to happen here. I have students that are dyslexic. That is the most common learning disability. Let's talk about it. How are dyslexic students doing? Are they getting the right interventions.
General Room: So I'm excited that you're talking about data tonight. I think there is so much room to grow for this district in this area at this level and at the school level. I think that's supposed to be happening at Pta meetings. I've been to my Pta meetings, and it's not happening at my school, so I hope that this is a start of a much more public conversation about academic achievement in our district.
General Room: Thank you.
General Room: All right. Next up we have the board business section of our agenda. Oh, yes, of course. Yes, Melissa.
General Room: Hi, good evening.
General Room: I am here today to talk about our school budget and teacher cuts as well. I appreciate what a difficult and sensitive time this is for so many involved. I very much hope that we can all work together to minimize the impact on students of the current financial straits. We are going through
General Room: first, st many parents and teachers and others in the district that we've been talking about tonight have been advocating at town halls in Salem letters and online to influence our legislators to more fully fund education in Oregon and lift or raise the special Ed cap.
General Room: Students around the district, including a number of students from my children's own school. Stafford have become involved in this and have written their legislators as well, and I have to say it was really inspiring to see students writing their legislators and telling them how much they love their schools and asking them to fully fund them.
General Room: I would ask that if more funding does come from Salem. As a result of these efforts, including our students efforts
General Room: that the special edge that the extra money that we receive from Salem is used to save teachers jobs for this coming year as much as is possible.
General Room: I would ask, too, that the district continue to pursue all possible avenues, including continuing to look at material costs, admin cuts, and furlough days. I was concerned to hear that because more teachers are being projected to be cut than admin in the coming cuts, the percentage of admin as a percentage of overall district staff in our district is projected to actually rise in the coming year.
General Room: I am concerned, too, at the significant hit that primary schools in particular in our district are taking in the coming cuts after already being cut in significant ways this current year, including the loss of language teachers and full-time librarians.
General Room: If teachers decide to pursue furlough days, which is a very considerable sacrifice, and cut to their salaries, I would ask that the district give assurances that they would use the funds available from furlough days to directly save teacher jobs.
General Room: Likewise, I would ask the District Administration to consider taking the same furlough days and making the same sacrifices as admin which teachers would make if furlough days are approved.
General Room: If administration in our district also took furlough days, it is my understanding that it would significantly increase the funds gained through furlough days.
General Room: Another solution would be to have slightly less reserves. At the end of the year my understanding from district documents, dated March 31, st 2025. The district is now projected to end the school year with a 14 million dollars, ending balance. I understand that there is a recommendation to keep a certain amount in the general fund at the end of the year, but I wonder if we could make it a little bit less this coming year. Thank you.
General Room: So anyone else.
General Room: Okay.
General Room: So, moving on, I am pleased to welcome Mr. Pat Mcguff to share with us the long Range planning committee report on the Capital Bond Summit and recommendations.
General Room: Thank you. Vice chair, white and board. Tonight we have a couple items bring forward. But the 1st one is a report on the Bond Summit and the long range facility plan and the capital improvement program. With that I'm going to ask Remo, Douglas and Ryan Ingersoll to make a presentation.
General Room: Good evening, Dr. Ludwig, and board.
General Room: We're always grateful for the opportunity to get to
General Room: speak to you all and give updates on what the department and the committee are doing.
General Room: As Dr. Ludwig mentioned earlier, we had the bond summit in mid-march, had over 150 attendees there gathered to consider potential bond projects, talk together and make their recommendations known to the community and the board.
General Room: So we have that report for you this evening.
General Room: And then beyond that, the long range planning committee met last week to talk through all of the findings and information and recommendations that they have received over more than a year's work, and ultimately they crafted
General Room: a recommendation for the board. You have a memo around that recommendation.
General Room: So, as mentioned, Ryan Ingersoll is here to speak on behalf of the committee and staff, also wants to especially note our appreciation for Ryan, and assisting with the facilitating of the Bond Summit last month, which went so well.
General Room: And so with that I'll hand it over to Ryan for a few words on on the summit and the committee's recommendation.
General Room: Good evening. My name is Ryan Ingersoll. I'm 1 of the members of the Long range planning committee. This committee represents the work of 6 community members, 6 other community members who've dedicated hours of time participating in conversations, listening and asking questions, researching
General Room: and reading hundreds of pages of documents and emails. I'm grateful for all of their work. And sort of this is what this represents today also say. As Remo mentioned, this journey began 17 months ago, in November 2023, when the committee began its work on the Board's request to update the plan. So it also represents previous committee members who are no longer on the committee because their time had expired and I I joined this last summer. So I've been getting into it.
General Room: You've been given the the memo and the recommendations, so I'm not going to go through it or read through it. But I want to highlight a few things about it. Like I said, this work has been 17 months long. We've been reviewing the long range Plan task force group recommendations
General Room: in, we reviewed development forecasts and building building capacities. We reviewed the 10 Year Enrollment projection this summer in July, which then created. We commissioned the small Schools Task force, and then, in January of this year the Board decided to maintain all of the schools across multiple themes of where the projects fit. And I just want to highlight those themes so accessible
General Room: facilities, athletics and wellness, facility, stewardship, learning with technology, safe and welcoming schools.
General Room: steam cte and career pathways and sustainable and resilient schools. So those are the themes that we're categorizing all the projects. And then, within those projects, we had 3 tiers levels of urgency of what those projects are. So category A was mission critical. 5 to 6 year. Repair, replace.
General Room: To be included in the most immediate bond is sort of the idea there. Category B is mission important. So something we should consider for the next bond. But we can wait if we need to, and then category c was deferable. We need to know about this for the future bond.
General Room: but we don't have to do anything about it right now.
General Room: It's important to know that all of these projects are really important. But the classification really helps us to be thinking what we need to know 10 years from now, and help us prepare for the future. So, as we reviewed all of these.
General Room: So sort of our recommendation and kind of how we got to that recommendation. So
General Room: we had a lots of discussion about the importance of the capital bond, as it alleviates the pressure on the general fund. As we were having a lot of conversations in the community, and I know the board has around the general fund, and what that impacts for the budget, and so that reality influenced our work and paying attention to when things end up on a capital bond that can reduce the pressure from the regular annual budget.
General Room: So based on that, we have recommended that the Board submit a capital bond that includes all projects in category, a mission critical. This addresses needed improvements, replacements, repairs, and educational tools, district wide. That's about 141 million dollars for just that.
General Room: We also based on feedback from the summit further conversations and really being mindful of the fiscal responsibility and the climate that we're in today. We recommended several projects from Category B Mission, important as indicated in the memo. I'm not going to read them.
General Room: and that was for a total of 14.7 million.
General Room: So that brings a grand total of 165.7 million. We discussed that amount quite a bit in our conversations like, what's the right number? What should we be thinking about? And one thing that did come up? We compared it to the 2019 capital bond of 206 million dollars.
General Room: And so we believe that that number needs to adequately meet the needs of our schools while being responsive to the financial climate that we're in today, and what we heard from community members and their appetite for supporting a capital bond.
General Room: We believe this recommendation meets the needs of our schools with an eye to financial stewardship, and provides the board Breathing room to consider other low cost, high impact projects that were included on the project list, but are not specifically called out in our recommendation. For example, you may see projects in there that are 200,000 or 300,000 or whatnot. So we want to provide breathing room for the board. Consider that, and we may. We recognize that you may add or remove items from the list.
General Room: And as you discern a potential capital bond, we encourage you to take our recommendation into consideration while reviewing community feedback, analyzing the Bond Summit information evaluating the project list and reflecting on the capital needs of the district. So thank you so much. Are there any questions?
General Room: A reminder that we don't have board action on this. We are receiving this report this evening, but this is a great time to be able to ask Remo and Ryan any questions that have come up in your initial review.
General Room: I may have been told this, but I don't remember. So on. Category A,
General Room: which is the mission critical?
General Room: How was that decided? Was, did parents
General Room: have feedback? Was it the principals, or like who decided the Mission critical?
General Room: Sure, the initial prioritization was done by staff in response to all of the the feedback from various sources that we had received, much of that work
General Room: is around lifecycle replacements. So the Board may be hearing around now around replacement of synthetic turf sports fields, and an urgency to do that district. Staff and operations are very familiar with this. The typical life cycle for these products, we assess them over time. And so the predominantly that work is
General Room: knowing that half of the roof at Wilsonville High School needs to be replaced because it will winter out that sort of thing. So the vast majority of that mission, that mission critical work under category A is of that nature.
General Room: and of course the cycle. Yes, okay, thanks. And of course the committee. The staff presented all of the prioritization information to the committee, and it was discussed in meetings as well.
General Room: I just had a a comment. I just wanted to.
General Room: thank the long range planning committee members. I had the privilege of sitting in on the committee while Director Shoemaker was away, and I just wanted to say that I was so impressed with your diligence and your thoughtfulness and prudence in making your recommendations, and I wanted to echo
General Room: Ryan's remarks that they all of the members of the committee were extremely sensitive to the finances of district families throughout their discussion, and they wanted to make sure that this bond was financially responsible. So I wanted to thank you all for your hard work.
General Room: Yeah, it's a good group of people who've put in a lot of hours. And I think again, I've new to it this year. But the collaboration, the questions, and then the collaboration with the district staff, like going through Mission critical like going line by line. So, Rima, what does this mean like, why do you need to do this? Why is this important? What safety thing is? I've never heard what this thing is before, and I think that we did that work together as a team which is really important. So
General Room: I love adoptmocracy exercise. So thank you for allowing people to engage with the projects in that way. I was wondering.
General Room: so I noticed that across the different themes of the mission, important
General Room: in the sub cost of 14.7 million we only hit 5 of those 7 themes. Is that just because so many of those those other 2 themes that aren't included were covered in in mission critical? Or was that something that just arose out of like looking at the the interest or the demand for that second category?
General Room: Yeah, so what I can say about those. So you'll notice in the memo as well the the dots which was linked. I didn't specifically say that, but that was an exercise during the board summit, where each participant was given a number of dots. They could kind of go vote on what they thought was really important from that category. So we took that into consideration as well as all of the themes.
General Room: One in particular.
General Room: I think, was safe and welcoming schools, which is around a specific project. But that specific project was also linked in in a. So, for example, we decided because it's already because aspects of it were already included in A, we didn't need to also add it into B. The other themes were
General Room: like a parking expansion of the high schools. We also wanted to be equitable in the sense of if we're going to add some really important projects, how do those pick across the whole district based off of individual conversations that happened at the board summit that we could remember from members that were participating, but then also the dots as well. So no, they didn't. Not every single theme was included in that recommendation. But we wanted to try and get a good
General Room: broad base of them. Yeah.
General Room: and I'll just echo Director Vidal in that. I'm thankful that you used that fiscal conservatism to look at that group B, because there are so many really great projects that it would be easy to just go full throttle. So thank you for exercising that restraint.
General Room: The one other note I might make is that the other theme that wasn't represented under category. B was learning with technology by the nature of technology devices their life cycle. Really, you're looking out the next 5 or 6 years, for the most part for those systems, and while in another 5 or 6 years, if we go through a process, there may be more to bring forward. Very likely
General Room: it is typical for us, and in general, that there's not really the 5 to 10 Year Plan studied in great detail. We don't know what the next ipad, the next chromebook, whatever else it might be, will be in another 5 or 6 years. So it's typical that there's not really that be range of projects for that.
General Room: Any other questions from the School Board at this time.
General Room: So just just to add on to what Mr. Douglas said. So the theme learning with technology, all of those items are in mission critical. A, so there weren't any. And B that came before the summit. Yeah.
General Room: alright. And so we have a work session coming up, I believe. I'm just looking at our calendar
General Room: on the 21, st and so we will have a chance to discuss. We really appreciate all of the time you put in, and so looking forward to continuing this conversation with our community. So thank you.
General Room: Thank you.
General Room: All right. Next up we have Mr. Mcguff joining us again to talk about a proposed amendment to board policy. Dn. Disposal of district property. Yes, thank you.
General Room: In June of 2024. The Board approved the deletion of policy, DNA. Because policy Dn. At that time
General Room: did address the disposal of district property, and that included textbooks and then instructional material.
General Room: When the Board approved that deletion. The request was that Staff also bring forward some amended version
General Room: to address the disposal of outdated instructional material, including textbooks.
General Room: The best way that Staff has determined to do that is to develop a new AR administrative rule
General Room: that is directly related to policy. Dn.
General Room: so what you have before you is both a policy
General Room: revision to policy. Dn, that I'll go in depth in a minute, and an administrative rule that specifically addresses disposal of textbooks.
General Room: The administrative rule was taken almost verbatim from the former policy, DNA we
General Room: took almost word for word out of policy, deleted policy. DNA and turned it into an AR.
General Room: What that will do is, of course, give guidance to District staff on what's required to dispose of textbooks, and the public could have assurance that it is following a prescribed protocol in how that's done, and when
General Room: the only significant change between the administrative rule and the former policy. DNA is the
General Room: cycle that textbooks are required to be kept is shortened from 12 years to 8 years.
General Room: that is, in alignment with the current practices of our teaching and learning department, in how they cycle, how and when they cycle out. Curriculum
General Room: curriculum can be adopted for another cycle. If it is not
General Room: one that sees a significant amount of change, and I don't want to say there's never any change in science, but usually those are are less than perhaps social studies or some other curriculum.
General Room: But the the cycle, shortening from 12 years to 8 years is the only change, and that is in alignment with what our Teaching and Learning department has recommended.
General Room: So with that administrative rule, it did.
General Room: had caused the district to revisit board Policy.
General Room: Dn. And make some changes. One of the changes was pretty straightforward. It was related to title changes. We don't have a business manager anymore. We have a chief financial officer.
General Room: Another change is that we have raised the dollar figure of what must be publicly auctioned from 500 to $5,000. That's in alignment with surrounding school districts in our area, as the value of things have increased.
General Room: Surrounding districts have limits of
General Room: 2,000, 505,000, 10,000, and $25,000 before they have to take things out to the public auction.
General Room: We thought 5,000 was low and conservative, and so that change was made.
General Room: But in review of that policy. Dn. We also found in other districts.
General Room: policy. Dn. Addresses the disposal of surplus real property.
General Room: while the district has always followed Oregon law around how the disposal of real property can be taken.
General Room: We've never had a policy that was transparent and open to the public.
General Room: We thought that this was a good opportunity to bring that forward and add it to policy. Dn.
General Room: That prescribes both how it's done and where the money could potentially go.
General Room: and to demonstrate that this is not a new concept. I'm going to pass out a memo from the Long Range Planning committee.
General Room: dated September 20, second, 2,003
General Room: in that memo from 2,003. It almost describes
General Room: verbatim what we are proposing in policy. Dn, it is that the board publicly declare that
General Room: surplus property. It serves no purpose for the district.
General Room: that it has a process for that disposal.
General Room: and what? Where the funds can be allocated.
General Room: and the only reason I passed that memo out is to demonstrate that this is exactly what we've done in the past.
General Room: It has been a process that we have followed with every transaction in our our property.
General Room: And it is historically something that that we've been consistent on.
General Room: So with that, we are recommending that the Board approve
General Room: the revised policy. Dn, this evening.
General Room: and I'm available for any questions.
General Room: All right, a reminder that this evening we either can take action on this motion, or we could consider this a 1st read, and so I can either entertain a motion, or if there are questions before we get into the potential of policy adoption.
General Room: Please ask them now.
General Room: Yeah, of course.
General Room: So I
General Room: just wanted to say that I am in support of this proposed amendment I met with Pat
General Room: and Dr. Ludwig as a follow up from last June, and
General Room: it I. It clearly has a consistent
General Room: disposing of textbook, and I just wanted that to be clear for every school, so they knew exactly how to what process needed to be done to cover that. And then, looking at other school districts in our area. They had very spelled out surplus real property, and that's 1 that our district did not have a policy on. And I think it's important that we align with the other school districts on disposing of real property
General Room: other questions or comments.
General Room: And I'll I'll just state I am like Director sloop prepared to vote on this policy this evening if a motion is made, and I just want to thank Director Sloop for being our board liaison, I guess, on this topic, and learning more and helping advance this, I think clearly it's a long time coming, and so I'm glad that her initial inquiry led to our ability to have an updated policy. So thank you.
General Room: I'm in support of this. Ar as well. And Paul, yeah, yeah.
General Room: or it's a board policy. And then also an AR, okay, great. I'm supportive both of them. I'm especially happy about giving textbooks to organizations that may find value in them. I think that's very, very important. So thank you so much for including that I appreciate it.
General Room: Would anyone like to make a motion?
General Room: I move we adopt the the board policy as presented.
General Room: I suck it any further discussion or comments.
General Room: Director Shoemaker, could you restate it with naming the policy. Just so we have it on the record policy. Dn.
General Room: yeah, I move that we adopt policies board policy. Dn, my second
General Room: further discussion.
General Room: All right, please call the roll. Thank you, director, shoemaker. Aye, director, sloop. Aye, vice chair, Wyatt. Aye, Director Vidal. Aye, thank you.
General Room: All right. Next up is a report from the business office from Dr. Hughes with a financial report.
General Room: Good evening, School Board tonight. I have 2 items that I would like to present to you. The 1st one is the updates on the general fund, and the second is the updates on the refinancing of 2015 1.
General Room: So in this report here, under the last column. It called March Adjustment. The 1st item that I would like to bring to your attention is the State School Fund. The State School Fund, like I present.
General Room: Last month State school fund and local revenue had an invert relationship. So if the local revenue go up, the State School Fund will go down by versus. So last year, when I present at the local revenue, anticipate to go up because we
General Room: we anticipate to have higher in property tax for this year than the estimate rates were 96%. And then we anticipate about 98%, because the revenue went up. So, therefore, the State school fund go down in the statement that ode sent out on March 5th
General Room: so the Stay School Fund estimate to go down by 759,000
General Room: beside that revenues moving down to the expenditure under the 200 object coach. Actually, apparel costs
General Room: for this month. Report the business office anticipate the saving of 259,000 under the pro and medical dental insurance
General Room: in the past few months. The business office reports to the Board that
General Room: There was an estimate of saving under unemployment in the amount of 800
General Room: 18,000. That report in November, and then in February there was another saving by shifting quality fte from general fund into grant that saved us around 1.1 million. So now.
General Room: at the year, getting close to the end.
General Room: We see that the per when we hire staff throughout a year.
General Room: staff with tier 1, 2 either retire or move on to another job. The new staff come in with. Observe the racing lower for the district.
General Room: and also the medical and dental insurance, although we provide cap on the insurance. But sometimes, when staff leave during the 1st few months of the year or the midyear, they not qualify for the home year benefits. So therefore, there's some saving in there.
General Room: Last item under this report is the SMS. Saving under the material and supply.
General Room: we send out a lot of message to school department, and all staff as a site into budget management, and we conservative. We use a certain inventory. We buy product in a
General Room: big bulk to get there in order to save cost.
General Room: So with that, the anticipate of saving between the
General Room: per medical dental insurance and material supplies, the SMS is 1,119,000,
General Room: also because we are getting close to the year ends, and we don't foresee any emergency happen from now until June 30.th So we would like to propose releasing the contingency fund.
General Room: So between the revenue expenditure and releasing contingency fund, the estimate ending fund balance for 2425 would be 14 million, or about 10.1 9% of the total revenue.
General Room: We will yield it.
General Room: Estimate in fund balance for this year. At the beginning fund balance for 2526, when we put the budget together.
General Room: So with that I'll stop for question.
General Room: I have a quick question under expenditures. Category, 300
General Room: purchase services. It looks like we estimated. Well, we adopted a budget of 21.2 9 3 million. But we've actually spent 21.8 3 6 million. I was wondering, what the increase in $500,000 over $500,000 is under that category.
General Room: Yes, this
General Room: report to the board, either in August or in September. That's either $500. In the liability insurance. The premium.
General Room: Yeah, yeah, thank you so much, and I am in support of releasing the contingency funds. Thank you. Thanks.
General Room: So the next items is the updates on the 2,015 refinancing. This will be short, because in last month, when the business office present to the Board the Resolution, 2 0 2, 4, 3, refinancing of Siri, 2,015,
General Room: we was aiming with the lower interest rate and estimate. The saving will be around 3 million.
General Room: But with the current market rate and a condition as of April 16, th the estimate of saving will be around 1.1 million. So just for your information, the current interest rates on Series 2015 is 4.2 5%. The refinancing rates is around 3.8 3%
General Room: interest rate reduction will be 0 point 6 9. So that is the estimate at 1.1 million.
General Room: so no change to bond home. The refinancing bond will continue to mature at 2031.
General Room: Any other questions for Dr. Hughes.
General Room: Thank you so much. Yeah, I just, I just want to comment that you know we're we're disappointed in
General Room: what can happen in a month in terms of some volatility and and concern. But it it is where
General Room: things are now when we go out, but it still nets savings for our community taxpayers. So we are going to go forward with that refund
General Room: all right, moving on to our department of teaching and learning. We are going to hear about the dip the District Integrated Plan grant report from Dr. Jennifer Spencer imes.
General Room: Thank you so much. We spent a fairly extensive time at our last board meeting talking about this plan and how it brings together several of the key State grants and initiatives in a unifying way, and it was a lot to process. So I really respected that the Board wanted to think about it. Read things over. Each of you had a pretty extensive
General Room: documentation file for me of trying to put things together in a way that would make sense. There were a few questions that came up, and so I've gathered those together and just have a couple slides that I wanted to touch back to you on those questions and see if that helps get you to a place where you feel like you know what you need to do. Have the information you need to make that decision whether or not to approve this plan.
General Room: So there are 4 basic areas that the questions came up around
General Room: somewhere around, how do these outlining of our Grant investments interface with the concerns that we're all well aware of around our general funding. Also, there were some wondering about the budget projections for the 2527 cycle.
General Room: and where the documentation is for our current integrated plans that's required by law to be posted, and then also some questions about our long term proficiency and growth targets. The acronym. I often get wrong of Lpgts. So let's just touch on each of those. Briefly.
General Room: So, the 1st there were a couple of questions that had to deal had to do with some of the things that we talked about investing in, while at the same time, which is true, we are investing in some strategies that at the same time. Some of those.
General Room: some of the cuts in our general fund budget are impacting some of the same work, and that is a difficult place for us to be as a district, and that is where we are. So an example was around some of our teacher, librarian work and the deep care and commitment and the role that our libraries play in our schools.
General Room: and we are continuing to fund a couple of positions out of our Sia or student investment account, while at the same time we have had some of the positions that were funded out of general fund were reduced.
General Room: So that is a juxtaposition that is difficult for us to hold, and we're grateful that we have the money through the funds, through the Grant funds to continue to support some of those positions in really important ways. So the best way that I can talk about that is that there's no way that the general fund cuts don't impact
General Room: the things we're trying to do as a district.
General Room: At the same time, we have incredible educators, leaders, families that are going to continue to work more and more intentionally and strategically to work towards our goals, which are continuing to raise achievement and close opportunity gaps for all students.
General Room: The next area of questions that came up were around
General Room: just overall budget. And just as a reminder to our community that might be watching or in the audience, the State grants that are included in this integrated plan.
General Room: The 3 biggest ones are the student investment account, the High School Success
General Room: Grant and the early Literacy grant, and those are the estimated amounts of the awards we will get for next year.
General Room: What if you go to the next slide?
General Room: On page 24 of the notebook I gave you last time. Is our
General Room: commitment to what we are investing in, for example. I'm going to just pull one of these out here.
General Room: In the High School Success
General Room: Act on Strategy number 7 on page 20. Okay, I was on 20. I'll go to 24. So I pull something from there.
General Room: Okay, so we have some school strategy. One is about meeting students, mental and behavioral health needs, because that's a key aspect of the student investment account. It's part of why that grant was developed, and we are funding a number of school counselors through that investment account.
General Room: what is on here shows you the general amount. What we then do is we work very closely with Dr. Hughes and Brad, Toronto, and others in the business department. To then get the exact
General Room: salaries because it. You are always estimating when you're writing in the plan.
General Room: and then a number of factors come where you try to. True up exactly how much fte you can get out of that. So we'll know some things like we know our salary schedule. But sometimes personnel change, and you might be paying someone at this step of the schedule.
General Room: and then you end up having. There's some change that happens. And you have someone at this step of the schedule. And so it may change that sometimes insurance rates or those pers rates that impact the payroll costs change that as well. So
General Room: I was hoping I could pull up. But I don't think it's going to work the the place that we do most of that budget work
General Room: for the Oregon Department of education. They use a
General Room: software called smart sheets, that holds really, really large spreadsheets that calculate this for us as we put things as we put those personnel in there. But I'm gonna just tell you it. I don't think the link will work because I'm not logged in as me on that device. It's okay. But let me show you the next answer to the next question, which is.
General Room: after we have that trued up one in the fall when we're like, Okay, here's who the people are. We made that commitment for what we were going to fund to our board. And now we know who the people, are we true it up? Then our business office works and makes a spreadsheet that we post on the website. So if you go ahead to the next slide.
General Room: When you're on the district website, there's actually a
General Room: a link to if you just Google or search in our website for Student Success act
General Room: and do you want us? Do you want to search it, Connor?
General Room: Andrew, like, live and see how it works?
General Room: So just so everyone can know where to find these
General Room: documents. So if you put student success act in there, thank you.
General Room: Click on that.
General Room: There's probably other ways to find it. That's just the easiest way for me, so you can find many of the things the reports that we bring to you as a board also have to get posted for our public to see which is fantastic. And you can see, for example, in that integrated application where it says, integrated application budget 2023, because that was the last biennium that we did that integrated budget. And if you click on that you'll see
General Room: a similar format to what we will be putting up when
General Room: you go to Budget 20 on the tab there. Fantastic. And that's where we
General Room: get very specific about the budget, and that's open for the public to see so hopefully. That
General Room: helps people understand why we put the you know the categories in our planned investments here. And then there's some truing up that happens once we have the actual payroll costs.
General Room: And then that gets posted onto that website afterwards.
General Room: I'm really, you guys are going all over the place. Thank you so much. Can you go back to the canvas slides, please?
General Room: Thank you.
General Room: Now the another question was about our
General Room: long term outcomes, where? Because the integrated plan is both about the state grants. But it's also about what are our district's big goals and student achievement. And how are we leveraging those grants to get us closer to that. You'll recognize this slide from our little scavenger hunt activity last time, where we were doing some looking at what were the investments.
General Room: And then what were the student outcomes and and what were was the community input that helped direct us towards that strategy? So one of the long longitudinal data that we track
General Room: over time are our district 9th grade on track. And so this was an example of that here. And for the board members. If I can remind you that we have a tab in here that had those 5
General Room: Pgts right there that we will be continuing to track, and those are 9th grade on track mean at the end of a 9th grade year is the student on track with their credits towards graduation. We also are tracking graduation rates. We are tracking absenteeism.
General Room: We are tracking 3rd grade reading and
General Room: the graduation rates are both 4 year and 5 year cohorts. So that's those are the 5 required by Ode at this point in time. Lpgts, so those are
General Room: here and available. And there was a suggestion in the questions about making these always part of our our regular data reports back to the board. And so that's a we appreciate that suggestion, and we will certainly be following up on that.
General Room: You'll notice on these. We're not only looking at overall for all students, but also some breakdown of different student groups, although the way they break
General Room: them down in the State. Lpgts is, they sort of put all focal students in one group. So students served by special education students who are emerging bilingual students from some economic disadvantage. Those are all in one group. So if you go to the next, so I just want to pause here, and that says, You know, did we meet our goal?
General Room: This last year towards 9th grade on track? And yes, we did. We did for all students. And we did for the focal group students. So that's encouraging. We know some of the strategies we're doing are really working on the next slide.
General Room: One of our other goals was around attendance. This mirrors things going on throughout the State. We know that statewide school attendance was significantly impacted by the covid pandemic and has not bounced back
General Room: to pre covid times yet. And we're working really hard to support that. So what we had here was a partial. Did we meet our goal where we did meet it for some groups, but not for others. So that's good information for us. We want to keep working and working on that
General Room: more as we go along. So
General Room: if you go to the next slide.
General Room: those were the main areas of questions that were brought to me to come back to tonight, so I thought I would start with that, and then just leave it open-ended if there was anything else
General Room: that would be helpful to you, and again, the the task for you as a board, is to be able to make a motion and approve the integrated plan which is due to the Oregon Department of Ed by the end of this month, so that we can continue to receive money through those grants. One other caveat
General Room: is last year or last biennium. When we submitted our plan, we had a meeting with members of the Oregon Department of Education, where we worked to co-create what were our goals in each of those performance and growth targets.
General Room: We've been told by the Oregon Department of Education that there's a suspension of that process for this year. That doesn't mean we're not still held accountable to the goals we already made, because we did make goals through 2028. So we're already have goals we're working towards. But any opportunity to revise those up or down is on hold, because, as Dr. Ludwig has shared.
General Room: there's some other kinds of accountability measures that the State is contemplating. That may impact that. So that's just we're just going to keep working on the goals that we have. And we won't need last year or last time I had to come back to you for a separate approval for those goals, and that won't happen this year.
General Room: So as Dr. Spencer. I'm mentioned this evening. Our expected outcome is that we will have reviewed this report, ask questions, and then I am looking for a motion about approving the District Integrated plan. So we can either start there and then open it up for discussion. Yeah, I moved that we approve the Westland Wilsonville district integrated plan for the 2025, 2027 biennium.
General Room: my second.
General Room: All right. Any discussion or questions at this point. In time.
General Room: I'll I'll start off. I just wanna say I'm going to be voting to approve this plan. I don't know why I keep.
General Room: I'll stay away from it. I know my voice is loud enough. I just want to thank Dr. Spencer Iams and her team for putting this very comprehensive plan together. I'm actually very impressed by it. I was impressed by it at our last Board meeting. I'm still impressed by it today, and you know I feel like my role as a director on the board is to
General Room: to encourage us to always do better right. And I I, when I look at these scores, you know I am just
General Room: so impressed in the direction we're going. And I want to thank all of our teachers and our administrators. If you look at our graduation rates, 9th grade on track.
General Room: I mean, the the attendance is improving. I just think we are. We are moving in the right direction, and I just want to applaud everybody for that. I know we work really, really hard. I guess. My, I just want to state that my hope is that the DOE will not reinvent the wheel when they are giving us new requirements. Because I know working in healthcare where we have a
General Room: lot of quality measures, we track which these are your quality measures, basically that it's so laborious
General Room: to be burdened with measures that have, like a slight tweak that we've already been tracking and working on for so long. So yeah, that's my plea to DOE and thank you so much to everyone for your hard work.
General Room: their comments or questions.
General Room: I just want to thank Dr. Spencer Iams for providing answers to questions.
General Room: I read that ode guideline thing that's like 176 pages. It was
General Room: intense. But moving forward, I do.
General Room: I do have concern about with all of the teacher cuts, including our learning specialists, literacy coaches.
General Room: eld. And then just staff that it for the circles of support with our special education.
General Room: I'm just very concerned that we, as a district, can still provide the intensive tutoring and increasing the assessment data and pivoting off of that with a reduction in all of those vital positions in in our staff.
General Room: Yes, thank you.
General Room: that is right where our hearts are as well. And I if I know that when Dr. Soyson and Dr. Pryor present some more information around some of the early literacy work and ways that is really
General Room: embedding strongly in the structures and the practices. It's really remarkable in some of those big adjustments around foundational reading skills. What has happened and what those commitments are to keep that going?
General Room: Would we like to have more money to have more people to do that. Yes, we would.
General Room: I appreciate you constantly raising that director sloop. I think it's important for our community to keep understanding that these grants, while they supplement the general fund. They ask for very specific outcomes.
General Room: and when the grants fluctuate or we don't receive as much. But we're trying to keep the momentum of programs. Then we have to draw from the general fund
General Room: to then supplement that work that we promised we would fulfill in the Grants.
General Room: So grants don't stay the same amount, and even if they go up a little bit
General Room: they pay for fewer people because of inflation, and those payroll costs so increasingly, our grants do fund fewer people, just by virtue of
General Room: payroll, cost increases, and the grants going down the grants also funded, based on
General Room: demographics of the district, and so some districts do receive more grant funding than perhaps districts like ours do that, said we, still hold that sense of urgency. We want to close those gaps as well, but it does mean we draw more upon our general fund often to do that. So thank you for being a relentless advocate for increasing budgets at the state level, and helping our public understand
General Room: that these grants are mandated, and they supplement the general fund, but often not as adequately as we would hope.
General Room: Oh, go ahead, Megan. I would just note that even though we may not have
General Room: the number of staff we would like to have, we still need a plan, and we still need goals, and we still have to keep pushing for those goals, even though we have this huge 15 million dollars deficit. So
General Room: just to echo that I mean, we're signing up on 16 assurances in this and
General Room: it's it's always that balance, I think, in public education of the accountability piece, but then the amount of time it takes to align all of our goals and data to ensure. We get the money, and
General Room: I know that sometimes it can be tempting to say you know what's happening in the district office, or or you know, who's you know? Why can't that money go to our classrooms, and that obviously, is a priority. But I think we have to realize that this level of reporting and report writing and data analysis and connecting the dots back to our goals is an essential part of getting money in the 1st place, from the State, and so
General Room: appreciate the time that goes into this. It seems like you are never ending in writing reports and reporting out on our progress. And so that work doesn't go unnoticed. And so whenever we have the opportunity to look at this plan, it really is that testament to the district's commitment to data, to setting goals and then being responsible stewards of Grant money. So thank you.
General Room: I think if there are no other questions or comments we could call the role on this
General Room: director, shoemaker. Aye, director sloop.
General Room: Aye, vice chair, Wyatt. Aye, Director Vidal. Aye, thank you.
General Room: all right. And then saving the best for last, because this school board loves talking about data. We are going to get our quarterly report on student achievement data in support of board goal number 2, and Dr. Soyson and Dr. Pryor are going to continue sharing information with us about student achievement data, no action is required. This is for our learning and continued work on board goal 2,
General Room: okay, so what we're going to do is if David Prior and Jennifer Spencer Iams, if they would sit. So we're going to go through just since this is the 1st quarterly report what we're doing and some considerations. And then when we get to questions because this is at all 3 levels, they can help as well. One of the things in doing this 1st report was thinking about doing this to share data publicly at a board meeting
General Room: visually. And so I'm passing out on paper something that you may might not have had before. And what we're trying to do is upload this, because if we put all these stripey bars up there. You really can't see. So just suggesting for purposes of this report in the future, we either
General Room: we'll have paper for the audience, so you can actually follow along and or suggest I don't.
unknown: Think this lends itself to being seen on a device like a phone
unknown: because of the size. And so having laptops available, so please know that this and you can go to the 1st slide, please.
unknown: that the purpose of this came from A from
unknown: the School Board goal number 2, which is monitor, student achievement data through integrated plans, school work, plan, school visits and a winter work session. And then this is the 1st Quarterly board report.
unknown: and, as has been suggested this evening already by someone from the community, we definitely want to look@thisfirstst What we're reporting on this evening came from an ask at that winter work session. And it specifically said, Let's focus on K, 8, and let's focus on achievement data.
unknown: However, once you start and have a baseline. Then you want to look longitudinally, and you might also want to look. We have looked at groups, or, you know, groups within our student population, but you might also have some other ways. You want to look at it. The 3 reports that we're looking at this evening were selected because
unknown: for what we have.
unknown: and they're what we use to report. For example. Jennifer Spencer Iams just talked about the integrated plan. The early literacy grant is part of that.
unknown: we do. Progress updates on that with data.
unknown: the data that is used. And some of this is prescribed by the types of data from ode and aimsweb fits the category of looking at thing that looks at foundational skills. So we are using that.
unknown: And also something that looks at this. This data is nested. Ames Web is looking at foundational reading map
unknown: measures of academic progress, looks at
unknown: overall reading and mathematics. So the other aspects of reading. How do students as they move through
unknown: K through 8 grades, use those actual skills.
unknown: This data actually goes as part of our accountability to the State of Oregon as part of the early literacy grant.
unknown: But then, where does it go from there?
unknown: When we say that we're using the data that we have, for example, in High school map only goes through K. 8
unknown: and Oregon assessment system. Osas is only in 11th grade.
unknown: And that's really not something to work with. We want data that we're actually going to use at the school level, at the teacher level, at the classroom level.
unknown: And so I'll get into that a little bit more about why, for this evening's purposes, we are using high school language arts and math grades. One other sort of overall consideration for you. We've talked some this evening about legislation and another piece of upcoming legislation. The accountability parts is looking at in Oregon
unknown: districts being required to use an interim assessment
unknown: map is an interim assessment meaning it's it's based on standards. It's not your annual assessment. They're used
unknown: 2 to 3 times a year.
unknown: and they relate to the overall accountability measure.
unknown: Oregon is in the Proc.
unknown: Mandating the use of an interim assessment, and we are teeing up for that. We've N. Wea. Map for 13 years.
unknown: and
unknown: we know that Oregon has interim assessments that we have also been starting to work with, and that can answer the question of. And they're available in reading and math.
unknown: and they're developing some in science. But those are something that down the road could be added to what we work with in high school.
unknown: So that's these are the 3 that we're looking at this evening, because this is in the reports that we get, and in looking at students being credit whole to be 9th grade on track. These are the measures that we have now next slide.
unknown: So just we're going to start out by just giving you some considerations. When you look at this and the Ames web that's the one with the triangles
unknown: and the purpose of aimsweb. We also use this as our dyslexia screener, but have expanded our use of it.
unknown: We are using it consistently and thoroughly, all k. 1, and that deviates from initially. We were using it with kindergarten students and then with students in 1st grade who had been identified. We have shifted that now, and we're using it
unknown: for all k, 1 students. And we're moving into adding grade. 2 students for this report because it wasn't always fully robust. It wouldn't have been complete to show that you're also looking at winter results. Students participate in fall, winter, and spring, but we have not yet given the spring assessment.
unknown: So the the 2 groups that you're looking at for kindergarten and grade one. The other thing that's important to think about. These are 2 separate groups.
unknown: So it's not how these students progressed from that. So you have to look at that when you look across at the triangles, the other thing to consider is the 1st grade, and then when we add the second grade. This will add on to it.
unknown: It's a more difficult test because the foundational skills. And we're talking about phonics, phonemic awareness, word analysis, those skills become more complex. So students are not working with the same assessment, each grade level.
unknown: And then, in looking at this one thing that we want to be just thoughtful about in the way we share data that. And
unknown: that's the number of students. When you look at the little print there under each tier
unknown: in the parentheses. That's the percentage of students. One thing that in publicly sharing this data, when you have a size that's under 10 that can be identifiable. So we are looking at this with some trust, and what we you know what we forward in our schools, because you'll see some very small numbers there. That is something that we did decide
unknown: to do. But we are also thinking that it's really important that we be really thoughtful and respectful of our students and families in looking at this.
unknown: So when you look at this across just the visual, what you're looking to see when you look at tier one, and that's the green
unknown: and tier one that is reading skills that are addressed daily in the classroom.
unknown: They're addressed through group work, and we are using in
unknown: K 2 and in K 5, we are using the Hmh into reading. We're also using ufly foundations. Those are the only 2 things that we are using. So this would be the core instruction in foundations using those programs. That's tier one.
unknown: And what you want to see as you go from fall to winter is you want to see more of the green.
unknown: and then you want to see less. Of the red, which is tier 3 and less of the yellow
unknown: yellow tier. 3. There are still small groups that would be within the classroom, where you have some students working with
unknown: tier, 2 tier, 3 would solely be intervention.
unknown: Small group, very small group work and high dosage tutoring.
unknown: We are using aims web to look at the progress of our students who are in high dosage tutoring. And that's part of what, through the early literacy grant that we report to the State of Oregon
unknown: in the past 2 years, when we've been doing this one thing that we have seen, and in our Quarterly report tonight we can't show it yet, because we don't have all the the data. The spring is not completed. We have seen the largest growth from winter to spring.
unknown: and again, sometimes the visual can be a little bit deceptive, because if you look at some of the numbers, and you'll see. Oh, the triangle looks like it's very different in size on the red, and you'll see when you look at those numbers. It's 2 students. So we encourage you to look, you know, at both also know that this assessment is used with all students. It's used with students who are served by special education.
unknown: It's used for students whose 1st language is not English.
unknown: And so that's something that as part of our inclusive practices, that it's something that
unknown: just to consider that when you look at that.
unknown: And this is a very useful piece for the day-to-day monitoring of students progress with foundational skills next slide.
unknown: Then, when you look at measures of academic progress, so
unknown: all students in kindergarten through 8
unknown: participate in fall and winter. One thing that can vary is
unknown: because Nwea map, Nwea map is the largest bank of common core based
unknown: assessment data in the United States. And actually, it's actually used overseas a bit as well, and it's known for what's called its construct validity, meaning it measures what it says. It's going to measure on an assessment
unknown: item in doing that. It's used by the makers of Osas.
unknown: It also is used in conjunction with other statewide assessments. And of course not all States in the United States. And I'm just mentioning this because we often hear things now about Oregon compared to other States. And it's really important to consider, are they using a measure that actually looks at
unknown: common core progress? Or are they using something that does not? So there's a little bit of an apples to apples consideration.
unknown: But we do always have to weigh when you give an assessment, because the assessments do
unknown: take time, and the Oregon Statewide assessments take several hours when you add that up, especially in for younger students. If you're a 5th grade student and you take that Oregon statewide assessment in reading and in mathematics and in science, and we're giving map. One of the things is for the spring assessment map actually is aligned so closely with
unknown: Osas that you can use. And this isn't something our district has decided to do. It's considered a predictor of
unknown: how students will do on Osas.
unknown: So in looking at that, that's why we just want to be really clear that in the spring for those grade levels
unknown: we have been and some of our some of our teachers were giving it. Anyway, because map does give you a lot of information. It actually points out, this is what the student is ready to learn next in terms of the standards and in terms of the topics
unknown: with our new language, art and math curriculum assessments. We do prioritize this because the other thing to consider is when we have gone through adoptions in
unknown: language arts, and that was K. 12. We have a different curriculum in
unknown: the 6 8. Curriculum is Hmh. Into literature, but the high school curriculum is the Savas, my perspectives, and
unknown: in looking at that, those have standards-based assessments within the curriculums.
unknown: What you have to be really careful of is to what degree are you measuring? How the students do with the curriculum, and to what degree are you looking at something independent of that? That's outside of that. So that you know that students have learned something from that and can apply it elsewhere. Which is why we're using reputable generalized assessments like Ames Web and Wea map.
unknown: and aside from the Oregon interim assessments that are being developed and they are very prescribed, they're not as comprehensive as Nw. Map.
unknown: and even in terms of the amount of items there are.
unknown: We don't have something at the high school level, however.
unknown: In looking at interim assessments there we might be using those those items.
unknown: one other thing about Nwa map. It's highly adaptive.
unknown: It changes every item. When you watch students in the classroom, take it, you'll think. Oh, my gosh, they're not all taking. They're not all
unknown: the same things, and that's because they it adapts based on. If you get a correct response. It moves you to something more complicated right away.
unknown: If you don't get a correct response.
unknown: it rechecks in that same area.
unknown: However, when they look at that across the large number of students and how they are doing with that. Then you have a predictor of where students are.
unknown: When you look at all. Those pages of stripey bars, red and the red to blue color bars are by those percentile ranks with the red being the 0 to 20.th And what that means, again is, and then orange and yellow, and the yellow is at about 50%. The range is from 41 to 60% and 50% is considered at grade level.
unknown: So when you look at that, when you see things that are yellow and blue and green, you will see that students are at or above grade level. And that's what that is showing
unknown: when we look at a student's score and their percentile rank. And you see a 67
unknown: percent. So that student would be in the green. And that means that they with those standards are scoring better than 67% of the other
unknown: base of students in the United States who took the same assessment. And it's also by group. It would be 67% better than the students served by special education
unknown: on those assessments, or students who are in the eld program, or students who are identified as talented and gifted
unknown: next slide, and just of of
unknown: few more details. Again, not only does it predict achievement on Osas, but it indicates future achievement on, say, the act or the sat. So that's again, it's it's common core orientation.
unknown: They really require students to apply skills in map. So it's something where, of course, it's not in the same context. And that's what you have to be careful of. If we give a curriculum assessment where it's within the Hmh. Program, it might be a really strong assessment, but it's showing that the student can do this within these materials that we're using.
unknown: And our teachers and our learning and language specialists use map for planning. Because
unknown: again, the results, they can see either the standard or the actual topic and unit that they're teaching. It shows where they're proficient. And then it actually lists what they're ready to learn next. And it also helps us see just both the students who are at high levels of proficiency and the number needing support. And then it also indicates what the specific skill areas are
unknown: next slide.
unknown: So high school grades. And I, you know, back when
unknown: we were, I 1st started teaching grades. Often were a combination of did you turn the assignment in on time? If not, you lose 20 points, and and that lowers your grade. Did you get extra credit? That ups your grade? But it doesn't necessarily. They didn't necessarily give a strong indication of what a student knew and could do.
unknown: and our schools, our middle and high schools for the last 3 years have worked extensively with standards based grading, as many districts have in the United States. And the reason that we have done this is because there is more emphasis now on the High School transcript than there has ever been before, and to show that that transcript means something they're looking for. Does a B in this
unknown: class mean the same thing as it be in another class, the same class from another teacher, or in a different state.
unknown: And so standards based grading which has been worked with significantly here, and the high schools invested in this with an author called Joe Feldman, who has a book grading for equity. The middle schools also participated in this, and it creates this much more accurate sense of a grade because they're actually
unknown: teachers have developed rubrics by subject areas with guidance around the strength of a good rubric and the assessments and the way they show progress towards the grade is actually showing where they are with those standards within those rubrics. And we're doing this in all subject areas in grades 6 through 12 at this time.
unknown: and again the semester one school grades does guide us in working towards our graduation rate, because, of course, students will not necessarily receive. They won't receive credit if they don't pass the classes. And also, more importantly, they give teachers, specialists and leaders
unknown: information on a daily basis about what they need for planning. And when I say, leaders, this is what are the things that we need to focus on in our work plan? What are the things that we need to really be emphasizing.
unknown: one of the things to notice is the semester one grades here
unknown: couldn't tell about continual need for improvement, and you might notice that when you look at the math in 9th grade, for example and that's something that we can say that, you know. You'll see, when you look at that, and you'll see a higher
unknown: number of lower grades.
unknown: We can say that that is actually about half of what it was when we actually worked towards. Because we use all this data also in curriculum adoptions.
unknown: we use map data. We use Ames web data.
unknown: and we use grade data in high school to look at where students are. And this actually was especially helpful to us in 9th grade
unknown: last slide.
unknown: So again, this data is regularly part of our planning.
unknown: I think you've heard
unknown: it mentioned before that schools have data teams and protocols for sharing and using the data that we shared this evening. So this isn't something that we are just sharing
unknown: for purposes of, you know, it being part of a board goal. But this is the real information that we use in our schools. And most importantly, for you this evening, we're hoping that your questions and the requests will shape what future data reports continue to to look like. And now we know that
unknown: looking at this.
unknown: we'd like to just see what your what are your observations? What are your questions? And both in terms of interpreting this data and in terms of next direction for the next quarterly report.
unknown: All right. I see everyone is poring over their their graphs. But
unknown: Why don't we start with questions or comments?
unknown: And as you get those questions ready, we just want to note for folks watching from home. All of this will be uploaded onto board book. We were
unknown: just adjusting some graphs, even right before this meeting that weren't for some technical reasons coming out
unknown: correctly and but you have them in hard copy and we will get them
unknown: uploaded for the public.
unknown: I'll start by making a couple of comments first.st Thank you for all the work that goes into this.
unknown: I want to remind folks that that this is a new board goal for us. And this is this is a work in process.
unknown: So part of what our work is going to be is to to make suggestions. If if if we want to make format changes, and
unknown: I think
unknown: I completely understand the value of looking at high school grades and the and the the real challenge of trying to look at Osas data for high school. That's just
unknown: that's not very helpful.
unknown: So I appreciate this data. And I do think it's valuable.
unknown: I might want to dive a little deeper, I understand, for language arts, grades 9, 1011, 12 represent language basically English, 9, English, 10, English, 11, English, 12, with a little Ap. Mixed in 11 and 12. Math is a little bit more all over the place. It might. I think it would be helpful for me to know
unknown: at least kind of the numbers of where students are in 9th grade math classes, 10th grade math classes, by course. Yeah. Okay.
unknown: Understanding that that algebra 2 is kind of the goal or
unknown: to to get to for high school students.
unknown: maybe you and I can talk a little bit more later about what would be helpful, because that's a pretty broad suggestion. There.
unknown: I do think that that it's really helpful to know that that we often see our greatest
unknown: growth from winter to spring for the aims web
unknown: that's really helpful. I'm really looking forward to when we can. We can see that.
unknown: and it'll be helpful next year to see where students start.
unknown: even though it's a new group in each grade level. It's still helpful to see that longitudinally that way where where they start, because it might reflect a little bit on progress. And I would just remind that overall
unknown: for me, the the question around skills is always how do we know
unknown: what we are doing is working? So this, this data is really helpful. I know that that's the question our teachers ask every day, how do we know that what we're doing is working?
unknown: And i i i think I'll stop at that for the moment
unknown: think right there and working
unknown: just. I just want to affirm one thing you said Director Shoemaker, and I also can't let it pass without just celebrating the work of
unknown: our teachers this year, because, as we were reflecting on this data, I was remembering.
unknown: this represents the work of a brand new curriculum. You know. Teachers walked into the room with opening boxes.
unknown: both the primary and a supplemental curriculum which is used for the high dosage, tutoring, assessing students to figure out where they were at who needed the extra help, how to organize ourselves. And so to Dr. Soyson's point, you know, a lot of that was happening fall to winter in that 4 and a half months from the fall to the winter assessment.
unknown: What you get is straight, straight instruction, and support from that point forward. So that's 1 reason we do expect to see that green grow
unknown: tremendously between winter and the spring assessment. So I do agree with you. We are going to see that both within a year and longitudinally. And you know, I think it's the result of just a heroic year of learning across the entire primary system as we shifted toward both a core and a supplemental curriculum.
unknown: and and we have a detail around the new curriculum. On Friday met with the publisher, and they they track what we log into. And our usage data
unknown: is unusually high for the 1st year, and we have been
unknown: very clear and working with our our K 5 schools around. This is what we're using. But again adding to what Dr. Pryor was saying, crediting our teachers of they're using it. This is really what they're spending their time with.
unknown: Is that okay? If I go okay.
unknown: so I wanted to thank you all for all this great work I have some suggestions. So for the Ames Web data, I would like to see N. Totals under each pyramid. So, for instance, I'm lucky enough to have Beckman Creek as one of my schools, so we can see that that 1st triangle or pyramid, whatever you'd like to call at least 70,
unknown: and then it goes to 81 in the winter for kindergarten. But we still see that that tier 3 is decreasing by 8%, even though they've increased the number of kiddos in their triangle by 11. I just think that would help me when I look at these, so the totals would be great. I'm just concerned that, you know, when I'm looking at, let's say, like a big N size of Beckman, or like Willamette.
unknown: that I can very much acknowledge that the N. At Bolton or Stafford is very much below those, so that would be helpful. I also, of course, looking at these results, want to give it, you know a huge shout out to all our our primary schools for incorporating the new curriculum and for the strong work. I guess I have a question as to, and this applies.
unknown: I have after I should I save my questions to the end? Or can I ask a question in the middle. Okay, my brain is like, I guess my question is for this, the schools that are doing very well in moving their kiddos out of tier 3 to tier, 2 or tier one. Are they sharing best practices with each other, I guess, is my question.
unknown: They they are is one of the hallmarks of. I think I could speak to all level. But I have direct experience with primary is that they're very interested in what each other is doing with the process of renewal and adoption that we led last year. The whole point of that was to unify practices across all schools. So, no matter where you go, you could transfer from second grade to one school to the other, and hopefully, now experience a lot of consistency. They.
unknown: the complex work of, you know, because each school has different. They're set up differently in terms of the number of sections at each grade level. And so they have
unknown: some variability this year in how teachers organize to teach the core and then build time in their day to provide that supplemental instruction, you know. And, for example, the literacy coaches have been phenomenal, but no one literacy coach is able to serve all the students in the school. So it's a school wide effort. The literacy coaches are really there to help us bring professional learning. So we know how to bring the best work to our students. So
unknown: Dr. Soyson and I were just talking. Now that this is compiled, we do want to bring this to the primary team so they can transparently see what's happening across schools
unknown: elevate the best practices, and they will be very interested in bringing what's working to every school, and I think the way we have it set up allows that to happen. Great. Thank you so much, Dr. Pryor. For the middle school. I would like to see a table of these numbers, you know. These
unknown: colorful lines are are super hard to read. I have to actually like put a line down to see the number. So I'd like a table under the graph. So I can see that also. I just would love for the
unknown: School Board directors. I'm sure you notice this, but like the the number when we're looking is different for each middle school. So like, you see, with A/C, it's 60. But then we go to wood, and it's 45. So I just want us to be really conscientious when we're looking at these graphs that, like graphically.
unknown: it, it is different. And some of the middle schools
unknown: are doing much better than others. And so
unknown: that is very, very concerning to me like, especially with 6th grade math.
unknown: I just wanna point that out, and I know we haven't broken it down. Into well, we have broken it down into tag
unknown: English language learners and special education, but we haven't broken it down by ethnicity or socioeconomic status, and so that would be helpful as well. But I guess the math scores in middle school continue to be a concern to me, and maybe
unknown: I don't know when it would be
unknown: good to show us this, but I would like to see year over year. So that's something else. So I'll be done with my, I know. Take it quite a bit of time. We can definitely do that to show a longitudinal yes, and have a table with numbers, so you can. One consideration we had in looking at
unknown: race and ethnicity is that's really skewed because of the small numbers, very small numbers.
unknown: When you start, you know. Which groups do you record? Which ones do you not? We can do that. We just have to really look. And a table might be better, because otherwise it can be really misleading. So, for example, when on the state website, when it talks about the percentage of students in a certain group
unknown: who met or exceeded an Osas, and it will say 67%.
unknown: In oftentimes there's 3 students in that group. So we can do that. But that's the reason we didn't just add all of that. And so but we don't want to obscure it either. So
unknown: and is it okay? If if board members have other suggestions after they've had a chance to look at this for future quarterly reports, we could just send them. Send them in, and we'll not. We won't pepper you with
unknown: bunch of different emails. But I mean but all of your suggestions were great and and I think that there are like some other just ways to visually show it. That would be really helpful.
unknown: I think one thing that I have always been really impressed by are those school level data teams and being able to go and like, see the big dashboards of student level data and really seeing it reinforces to me how well our staff know the kids in their school and they can
unknown: keep track of their progress. Obviously, we don't want student level data. But I do wonder if you know if there is a particular data point, or you know improvement area.
unknown: if even having like kind of a quote or an explanation from that data team about what they did. And I mean, I don't wanna sign them up to come to more board meetings. But like I would even love just kind of that qualitative piece
unknown: to go along with the data piece to say, you know, we saw a decrease of 10 kids in tier 3 at Boone's Ferry like
unknown: we did XYZ. And we shared that or or and I don't. I don't want to make it too onerous. But I just think that that perspective is exactly what Dr. Prior was talking about, which is, we know that they're talking and sharing best practices. And so
unknown: I would just love for us to know that and the community to know that, too.
unknown: So thank you for the data assessment. And for the Aims web. I think
unknown: as I'm processing through this, and I'll be processing more.
unknown: I would like to see more disaggregated data as Director Vidal mentioned. And for me, I'm looking for like growth and improvement, so like a history
unknown: to kind of look to make sure that. Yes, our, you know.
unknown: Literacy scores are constantly, you know, growing and improving, and then on the high school.
unknown: It's pretty broad.
unknown: So I was wondering if there could be more of a broken down of the language, arts, and math. And then how do we monitor that? We have our 9th graders on track. If we're not doing any assessment, is it based on grades?
unknown: Credit credits credit if they're credit whole in 9th grade? Okay?
unknown: But you don't get credit unless if you have an F, for example, that's not credit. So there is an interplay there. And I was just gonna
unknown: say that you know, we do have some other data if the Board were interested in it around
unknown: Ap. Scores and participation around, how our students who take national assessments such as sat, which our students tend to score much higher than the national average on that. But not every student takes it. So that's a little bit of where we're trying to find what's the most common
unknown: measure. But we've had increase in ap participation increase in percentage of students passing Ap tests. So you know, it's just when you get to high school, lots of things
unknown: start feathering out in different ways. Yes, a lot. But yes, I would like more information just to see how our district's doing compared to other districts in the State versus nationally. So, some of those Acts and Sats and ap classes would be very helpful.
unknown: But I, because I just need more information than just grade generalization.
unknown: Thank you.
unknown: Thank you. That's great to know we, the original ask was K. 8. But we just put this in as a teaser. It looks like it worked. And you're curious now to see where does it go from? K. 8. And so we were just trying to
unknown: feel out. If you did want high school data, what would that be? And we we could always get you more so.
unknown: As far as the high school data goes, I agree I would like to see the Ap.
unknown: And the sat. But also, I think,
unknown: the more I think about it, especially from a Wilsonville perspective. The more I would really like to see the disaggregated data, especially by ethnicity. I just want to make sure, when we talk about educational equity, we really are keeping track of our
unknown: of all of our kiddos. So thank you so much.
unknown: A reminder to the board. If you think of other ways to share data.
unknown: send those over to Dr. Ludwig, Dr. Soyson, and we will look forward to our next quarterly report. I really like having this on our agenda. So thank you for the time that you put into it
unknown: all the time.
unknown: But you've given us a good. We've taken notes of things that we can do. And yes, we did just throw in the grades because I was uncomfortable leaving out high school, knowing that we could go deeper.
unknown: Wonderful. Okay, we have reached the point of our agenda where we have public comment on items not appearing on our agenda. Is there anyone that would like to sign up for this? Yes.
unknown: I can. I can write your yeah.
unknown: Thank you. My name is Andrew Clark, parent of 3 kids in the school district.
unknown: I 1st want to say thank you to the Board members. The district particular, Dr. Soison.
unknown: Dr. Pryor, whatever he disappeared to. You've all been on the receiving end of some very persistent parents regarding reading curriculums.
unknown: data wanting to see wanting to be involved. And I don't think you can find probably a group of happier people tonight, right? We know it's just the start, right where we want to shine a light on this right? That's the point of the data. That's the point of the conversation. You know, this isn't a stopping point. But we do want to celebrate and thank you guys for helping get this across the line. You know, it's been a it's it's been a definitely a journey.
unknown: So thank you to all of you, you know, I think some of the data and the things that we've heard here tonight looking also the integrated plan that's earlier. I think there's an opportunity to use the information that you have here to also help feed into that plan to get the community more involved in the creation of that plan. I heard families are involved in it.
unknown: I would love to know when and where, because we definitely would love to be there. I think there's a lot of parents who would like to provide input on how we can do things better. The one thing I really do want to take a moment. And knowledge is the change on how we're utilizing Ames Web. That is a huge win. Making sure that no kid is going to hit that reading wall, we're going to hopefully identify them earlier with consistent monitoring and testing. You know, I watch my kids pass those tests
unknown: and end up dyslexic. So this is hopefully. So other families and other kids don't find out the hard way that their kids need additional support. So thank you to everyone up here on the board and in the district as well. So thanks for listening
unknown: long day for everybody.
unknown: especially when you lose a lot of weight because you have a medical issue anyway.
unknown: John Mccabe, Westland, Oregon.
unknown: I had to wait till I heard certain things today, but I guess the good news is we're getting $500,000 more from the 2324 year, which was
unknown: done earlier this month by Ode.
unknown: It wasn't in the report, and the question I have on the sale is, there'll be capital. That'll be need to be.
unknown: Retire the premium, and that capital may be over 1 million dollars.
unknown: So you take the 1 million dollars in interest, saved
unknown: 1 million dollars in taking care of the bond, the premium that were paid on those notes we end up with 0,
unknown: and from talking to
unknown: people in that market that deal with the because tomorrow is the day for the South Westland, Wilsonville.
unknown: And he said, Do you think they're going to go through with it, and I go. I don't know. I'm just asking the questions.
unknown: And they said, because a lot of people, a lot of offerings.
unknown: They postponed it because of the issues I just talked about.
unknown: If you're going to pay off your bond premium in the interest, and it becomes negative, you just stop
unknown: you. You don't bleed yourself
unknown: because your goal was to do the sale when the sale leads to negative value.
unknown: And so he says, do you know how much your bond outlay that you want to take care of? And I go? I don't even work for the district.
unknown: and so wasn't brought up.
unknown: and I think it's something that needs to be looked at before, because tomorrow is the sale and
unknown: the ones that were to be sold today didn't sell because the interest rates were just ridiculous.
unknown: And it's better to like all these things we've heard about keeping records
unknown: of how people are doing, and we're getting everything going up.
unknown: Let's be adults and do the same thing. Come on.
unknown: And the other issue is
unknown: Through January we earned 200,000 on the Geo Bond interest. We're looking at over half a million for a year.
unknown: Please go back to 2,016 and redo it and give the people their money back, because from 2,016 to 2023,
unknown: the taxpayers got nothing.
unknown: We heard reasons why they didn't get anything.
unknown: The diversion of the funds just are not allowed.
unknown: and I don't know why it's not being addressed.
unknown: It's critical. Thank you.
unknown: Anyone else that didn't have a chance to sign up.
unknown: Oh, Maggie, right.
unknown: Hi! I'm Maggie Traverso. I'm a mom in the district. My daughter is in 3rd grade at Willamette, and I just wanted to echo what Andy said earlier. We are so grateful. There's a group of us. Becca Peskas was here. She spoke. She had to leave
unknown: early, but she was very excited about what we were seeing tonight, and so there's a lot of people that might not be in this room, but who are cheering. So thank you again for pushing for this data and this transparency. Thanks.
unknown: All right. Our last item on our agenda is to look at our board meeting calendar.
unknown: Given the number of meetings we have coming up in May.
unknown: what chair Taylor would like to see happen is to add a work session on June 9, th in support of School Board goal number one, our anti-racism policy. And so what this would do is it would push it out a little bit, but it would still ensure that the Board could have that work session and then potentially take action
unknown: before Chair Taylor's term ends also, it would just relieve us of one more meeting in May. As you can see, we have quite a few given budget season starting. So at this point would love to hear any feedback on that proposal, to add that work session, and then we would just need a motion to amend our calendar to add a work session on June 9, th
unknown: being mindful that June is also graduation time, and so we would have a busy couple of days. But I think obviously, graduations are celebrations, and then we would be having a work session to again advance one of our board goals.
unknown: I can work session. I'm happy to participate in that. So that's fine for me.
unknown: I'll go ahead and make the motion, then that we add that we amend the calendar and add June 9th as a work session.
unknown: Great.
unknown: I'll second oops second, any other comments or updates.
unknown: All right, please call the roll. Thank you. Director, shoemaker. Aye, director, sloop. Aye, vice chair, white. Aye, Director Vidal. Aye, thank you.
unknown: And with that our next regular board meeting, and including the superintendent's budget message is on May 5.th
unknown: So with that we are adjourned.