Springfield School Board — September 28, 2026

0:52 Yeah. Thank you. Welcome everyone to the, uh, this September 28th, 2026 Board of Education work session. Do we have any online yet, Jeff? No. Okay. All right. Well, we'll go ahead and start with the pledge of allegiance, please. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

1:39 Welcome, Matt. And Director Cole will read the land acknowledgement. We acknowledge that our district is situated in the traditional homeland of the Kalapuya people, specifically the community that was known as Chifen, the area that we now call Springfield. Kalapuya people who have lived in this region since time immemorial, were illegally dispossessed of their land and forcibly removed to what are now the Grand Ronde and Siletz reservations over several years, but most notably in treaties between 1851 and 1855. The Kalapuya are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.

2:26 And members of the Kalapuya still live, work, study, and thrive in this area, and continue to make important contributions here in Springfield, across the land we now refer to as Oregon, and around the globe. This information is shared out of a responsibility to prevent the erasure of Native culture, heritage, and people, and to ensure a quality contemporary education for future generations. Thank you. And again, welcome to everybody who is here physically in the room. Jeff, anybody? Not yet. Okay. Well, thank you for checking. We're going to move into agenda item two, action item. This is the approval of policy KN, immigration enforcement on district property.

3:11 Superintendent Stover. Chair, I would ask that also that we amend the agenda. It was mistakenly put KN, and it should be approved policy KNA. I would ask if the board would entertain that. So moved. I can't make the motion. Yeah, so... You have to hold... So, I move that we amend the action item to say "approve policy KNA, Immigration Enforcement on District Property." I'll second. Moved by Director Brew, seconded by Director Cole.

3:56 Any discussion on the change? Hearing none, I'll go ahead and call for the vote. Please indicate if you're in favor by saying "Aye." Aye. Were there any opposed? Okay, that motion carries five to zero. Okay. Now, Superint. Yes. Thank you. So this is the actual third time that you've looked at this policy, and we have made some slight changes, and I should probably bring those up. So I'll need to have... Can I get the, uh... Are you already hooked into the system? No, I'm

4:42 pulling up the right thing, so I can be hooked into the system. Yeah. Oh, I did? No, I did. Oh. Something's not... I know. A lot of cables behind me. Okay. My computer was being a little bit fickle this today, so let's hope it... There we go. Okay. So what you have is the policy, and we sent it. This version we have updated for you,

5:30 strikethrough where we thought there was information that was redundant. So for instance, the first part right here, where the district will ensure a copy of the Oregon Attorney General's model public school policies, and this policy and accompanying administrative regulation are provided to staff. That's articulated in the, um, attorney general's policy as well as state law, and in other places. So we took that out. Got feedback from a board member that we can add some language here, and I provided that, a copy of it for you right there. We just added immigration liaison. It calls for it in the policy, but- The model

6:15 policy had the designation of primary point of contact and didn't have immigration liaison, and those two things are interchangeable, so we just put it in the heading so it wouldn't be confusing. Thank you. That was in my notes. Yep. It was a little bit confusing. And then I mistakenly made up a position as the alternate, alternative point of contact. Actually, the director of operations, which we don't have, I've turned that to the chief operations officer, which we do have. Would it not typically fall to the assistant superintendent, or is there- Well, it could. The reason I'm choosing the chief operations officer is because currently because of the way we have our emergency preparedness, it goes through him. He coordinates a lot of...

7:01 Or the chief operations officer coordinates a lot of the responses, has relationships with law enforcement already, and we thought that was the most prudent backup. Okay. Thank you. Yep. And I keep pretending. And so then we took, again, same thing. We took out three because that was redundant and not needed. And then you can see we switched. With taking out three, then we had to renumber everything else, two, three, four, five, and six. We took out reviewing and responding to requests from federal immigration authorities in coordination and under the direction of superintendent or designee.

7:46 That's self-evident throughout the policy, so we took that out. We clarified the notice that is required. So, the required notice will be provided as expediently as possible using email notification. This, to me, the except when required sounded-- It was difficult to understand, so I just changed that to unless otherwise prohibited by law or court order. It just read funny to me, except when required by law or court order.

8:36 So, moving down. Again, we just struck out the district's policies with respect to student records can be found in board policy. We didn't feel like that was necessary. We don't refer to other policies as a general rule in policy, so that's why I took that out. And those were the only different, very minor differences from the suggested policy, the proposed policy that OSBA gave to us. Any questions about this policy?

9:24 Before you vote, I want to quickly just go over the administrative regulations, and the form we're using, just for your awareness. But, I will take any questions or suggestions the board may have for the policy. I have a couple of other questions. Policy notification needs to be sent to all staff, correct? So, once this policy is in place, all staff will be getting a notification of said policies? We have to notify staff of this policy. That's in the policy. So yes, we will be sending them out. Okay. Whoops. Don't know what I just did. And then it says in the policy that the required notification,

10:10 that it will be sent via email. And do we have any way of sending a group text to that effect? I know that a lot of people at work, or they might not be available, not readily checking their email, and it seems because of the immediacy that that would require a text might be a better way. I don't know if we're set up to do that. We are. Sometimes those are not as reliable because people change their numbers. They also change their email addresses. I realize that. We chose email. If this actually happens, we're going to use our multiple modalities. We just had to designate something, and so I

10:57 used using email. Can we include both in the policy, text or email? Well, it's- And/or ... We can, but it is email. This would require email notification. We will notify in all ways. We can add that. That's up to the board. I think the more that we put specificity in the policy about the way we can get ourselves, because if there's something that happens and we don't provide that text notification or someone didn't get it, that could lead us into some difficulty. But we certainly can do that. No. Because same thing could happen with email. Yeah. Well, and I'm not saying what the best way is. Yeah. I don't even know if we, when parents enroll their children, whether

11:44 we are asking the question: What's the best way to contact you? We absolutely are asking the question. Okay. And we're providing reminders for them to update that often. And I'm saying that right now. If there's any parent, please update your contact information as quickly as you can. It's still this number? That's right. Okay. And then it mentions staff training. Has there been any conversation, if we are approving tonight, then when would the training take place? We've already had some preliminary discussions about when we can provide that training. Typically, most of this type of training is done at the beginning of the year. The way the legislation has-- We have to enact this by the 30th So there wasn't a whole lot of time to develop

12:31 training. Mm-hmm. We will more than likely put this into our beginning of school year training. I'm going to work with staff, and again, we've already had conversations about providing this training that's needed. Yeah. I think there's language in here that says that new employees within 30 days, right? Yes. But for existing employees, when we were running up against this situation last year, I know that the district reached out to building principals and administrators. And there was some conversation from staff saying that they would also like to be included in the training, and I think because we're just at the very beginning of this year, I would like to urge us to do the training with all staff, and sooner rather than

13:19 later. We don't disagree, and there's certain staff who we believe are prioritized over others. Like for instance, bus drivers, who we think that- Sure ... that may be someone who encounters any immigration enforcement, more so than at a school level. We'd want to get them trained. So we know the policy. We've been thinking about it. We have not yet developed, sat down and put a plan in place, but our plan is to provide the training as expeditiously as possible, starting with those who we feel need it most. Since we can't predict when or if officials would show up, I think the training is really a key element, making sure that in the adrenaline of the moment, that people are able to

14:07 respond appropriately. And I think, Chair Lait, one of the things that we mentioned when we first introduced this policy in August is that Springfield has already done a lot of training already- Mm-hmm ... for staff members. And much of what is required has already been done. We need to get some opinions on if what we've done has met the standard or if we need to provide more. And so that's really what we're waiting on. Thank you. Was this policy proposal, was it run by the immigrant community? Did we get feedback from that group of stakeholders? We have not directly run it by the immigrant community per se, but we did have staff members

14:52 that work with the community look at it. Okay. Other questions from board members? Jonathan, I guess I- Director Cole ... have a comment or a concern, I guess. If we're doing the texting thing, particularly if it's employees, then it seems like that's a use of work. Are we requiring them to use their phone for work-related issues, and does that become an issue about us then having to pay for employees using their phone? I guess I was referring mainly to families. Okay. People outside of school property. Sometimes in the instances of disturbances on campuses that the email or the texting actually has

15:38 been an impediment to a response from others. But definitely families I think should know, and I would favor sort of an and/or or both. Whatever's going to be effective. But that's a good point and probably to be determined, right? So I would recommend that we... And I'll take a look because administrative regulations are how we enact the policy, and this really does fall under more of how we enact it. So I'll make sure that in our administrative regulations if they're not already in there, I don't know them by heart, that we will use multiple means of modalities of communication. Okay. Thank you. Director Bru- And I think given the questions, I would then advocate,

16:23 I would just advocate I think we're fine if we just take that out and just say "The required notice will be provided as expediently as possible," and just take out- Okay ... the using email notification. Well, and who knows what the next modality is, right? Right. Exactly. Mind control maybe, I don't know. You had a question? Yes. Thank you. I was not necessarily in favor of taking that out. I was in favor of leaving that but not expanding it because I think probably if OSBA put that in their model language, it's probably a minimum requirement of the law. We added this in, for clarification. This is something that I added in.

17:09 It's in red, so I added it in because I thought it would be helpful to clarify, to make sure people knew that we were going to send it out and it wasn't just a statement. But I think it's better taken care of in the administrative regulations. So yeah, OSBA did not have this in theirs. That's why it's in red. Other questions? Okay, I'll go ahead and call for the vote. I will poll individually, and we'll start on- Is there a motion? I don't think we've had a motion yet. Oh, we only had a motion to change the title. Thank you. Yeah. I'll entertain a motion at this point. So I move that we approve policy KNA, Immigration Enforcement on District Property as presented.

17:58 I'll second. Moved by Director Cole, seconded by Director Bru. Now I'll call for the vote and I'll go individually. Director Cole? Aye. Director Bru? Aye. Director Langworthy? Aye. Director Brandt? Aye. I also vote yes, and the policy is passed- Thank you ... and approved Would it be okay if I share some of the administrative regulations? That'd be great. No, by all means. All right. So again, not a lot of changes from... And there are even less changes for the administrative regulations. We, of course, put in the superintendent is designated as the immigration liaison. And this is one where I got feedback because of what we've done, and because of the nervousness that some of our stakeholders and immigrant

18:46 community rightly have. I thought there was a lot of extraneous information, but we'd rather overexplain in our administrative regulations. So, the only thing we did differently is really add the date and the title of the superintendent as the designated, so we didn't change it at all. Same thing, which I'll show you, we did not change. I don't even think we added anything to the form that we're using. Again, just the date. Those are the only changes. So we thought OSBA did a good job with it. It was thorough, and we appreciate their assistance as always. Okay. Any questions about the administrative regulations or the

19:35 request log? I would just encourage us to reach out to the immigrant community and just make sure there's clear understanding. And I know we have Taylor Madden and Xavier reaching out. Just want to make sure, again, when things happen, they can happen fast, want to make sure there's a real good understanding between all stakeholders. And I appreciate that. That's why I really appreciated the board having a policy committee process because we can have that as part of our policy committee, making sure that we're hearing from those stakeholders. Sure. Okay. Moving in then onto the presentation part of the program, agenda

20:21 item three. We have the Summer Learning Engagement Programs. Melissa Locke. Me? It was working earlier. Okay, let me try again.

21:08 Well, it was me. The power is flickered. Ah. Ah. There we go. All right. Good evening. My name is Melissa Locke, and I have had the privilege of serving as the summer administrator for the past six summers. That's how long we have been doing this now. And it is always a highlight of my work here in Springfield. So I'm excited to share with you some of the things we did here in 2026. I know some of you came out and visited, so thank you for coming and seeing our programs in person, and excited to share the recap.

21:55 Oh. Sorry. Okay. So this year we served 907 students across all of our programs, pre-kindergarten through 12th grade plus that participated this year. This is down from previous summers, and part of that is due to the funding that we received from the state that came in late, that we actually weren't expecting to get. And so that came in late. We didn't have as much time to plan for the expansion of our program, and so that number is down a bit. But still, a considerable number of students took part in summer programs and benefited from it this year. Funding sources, as I mentioned, we got the state summer learning grant.

22:42 That is $1 million per summer for 2026, 2027, and 2028. So we are set for the next two summers, to continue these programs. Because we had a smaller program this year, we concentrated our services at two sites, primarily, at Maple and Hamlin Middle School, with our SPARK students in kinder through fourth grade at Maple, along with our Life Skills program and along with our KITS pre-K program. And then at Hamlin, we served Hamlin students in fifth through seventh grade, and also our secondary Life Skills students. And I also want to point out that for our SPARK

23:27 program, we drew students from selected schools this year. Not all schools were invited to send students to SPARK, because of our limited funding and late notice. And we prioritized Title I schools and students needing additional reading support, and also feeders for Hamlin. So we offered KITS again. We have been doing KITS for many years, like almost 20 years. So this is exciting that we continue to have families involved in KITS. We had two groups at Maple and one group at Thurston Elementary and one group at Mount Vernon this year.

24:12 And those students came on the same days that SPARK kiddos came. They got two hours of programming, and they learned some essential skills to help them be ready for kindergarten this fall. And the family component of that is a critical piece, and we consistently have 20-plus families that participate in the online parent groups and family participation portion. For Spark, this is a 16-day camp, and we served 490 students across those two sites, Maple and Hamlin. And almost 400 of those were at Maple. It was a very

24:57 busy school setting this summer. But again, 16 days, it goes super fast, but we pack a lot in there. They get breakfast, lunch, and a snack, transportation. We have specific reading curriculum that we are using and reading goals as required by the state summer learning grant, and we also embed enrichment and recreation activities throughout the day. I wanted to share a little bit of the data from our program. For kindergarten through second grade literacy, we use magnetic reading. And, this chart shows each grade level as a group,

25:42 the average percent that they got correct on the pre-assessment compared to the post-assessment, and we saw gains at all three grade levels. In addition to that, I also looked at the number of individual students that made personal growth. And 78% of first graders made personal growth, 97% of first graders, and 82% of second-grade students made personal growth. And this might not be in your packet if you're looking for it because I added some things after it was due. This says summer 2025. Is that in for 2025, or is it actually 2026? This is for 2026. What we have in our packets. I don't know.

26:27 What I sent? Looks the same. It looks the same. Okay. I don't know if it said '25 somewhere. Okay. For third and fourth grade, we focus on comprehension and fluency, using some of the pieces that we use in Springfield during our core literacy time at those grade levels. Again, growth, in both passage reading fluency, correct words per minute, and the average percent correct on a RACE comprehension task. And individually, 68% of students improved on their passage reading fluency from start to finish, and 45% improved on their comprehension skills as measured by those assessments.

27:12 Melissa, I presume RACE is an acronym for something? Yes. It is a graphic organizer that we use to teach students to read, go back into the text, answer the questions, cite their evidence, and explain their answer. Read... Yeah. Restate. Okay. So it has to do with going back and citing evidence out of the text when answering a question. Yeah. And we use it in, I think, up through middle school as a comprehension model for students. For our middle school students, we assess them again on passage reading and RACE comprehension and growth in both

27:59 areas. This was really interesting to see tremendous growth on the comprehension at Hamlin this summer. And 52% of individual students improved in passage reading, and 66% of students improved on the comprehension piece. So we are not just keeping kids where they are at, but we are helping students gain literacy skills over the summer. And then the other really exciting thing from this summer is that for the first year, we had a family celebration and end of summer showcase. We had 154 students from our programs attend with 448 total students and family members in attendance. It was huge.

28:47 It was packed at Maple. Our superintendent came and visited, and it was a big event. We had student performances. They got to show us some of their skills. We had book giveaways, Lego giveaways, barbecue for the families. It was amazing. And, I'm glad that we were able to finally bring it to fruition. I've had this dream for years, and we were able to make it happen, so it was great, and it turned out amazing for our first time. Many thanks to Maria, who helped me organize that. So, community partners. We continue to have strong community partners, Willamalane, Lane Arts Council, Springfield Library, and new this year, we

29:32 partnered with Fetch Therapy Dogs, and if you didn't get to see students reading to therapy dogs, you missed the cutest thing ever. They were so sweet. Those dogs were so amazing, and kids were just so excited to come and read to those dogs. So, good addition to our lineup. We continue to have a strong partnership with the Springfield Library and their cultural events that they do on Wednesdays, bringing those into the schools in the afternoon with assemblies, taking kids down to the library in the morning to see their performance. And so with two sites, we were able to get a lot. All of our students every week were getting this

30:17 experience, so that was really exciting. Usually, we have to rotate through, so they only get it one time, but they got it every week. High school programs actually had more students this year than in previous years. We had 351 students earn 390.5 credits. And we had six additional seniors graduating on time thanks to this opportunity. Not as many seniors as we normally get graduating from this, but the amount of credits earned is huge compared to previous years. So doing a great job of keeping kids on track

31:02 for graduation. And those programs are housed at Springfield High and then Thurston High, but students from Gateways can also attend at those sites to get credits that they need. Feedback from families. With that family event, we did a survey. We didn't get a ton of responses. We got about 40 or 50. But I wanted to share just some of the feedback that we get from our families and the community. "The kid loves school again. Every day he's excited to go and then tell me about his day. He said he wished his school was like this one." "We loved the care that is provided along with the curriculum." "The teachers are great, very caring and involved." "Helped with my child's

31:48 confidence." "We love the art classes, the cultural presentations on Wednesdays, and the STEM activities with LEGOs." "My child has loved the enrichment activities, including the cultural presentations and the science classes. Her favorite thing was dissecting a squid." "We also really liked the family celebration." And, "I thought the program was great. My child enjoyed it very much and met a lot of new friends." Families get excited for this program every spring, and it was really hard that we weren't able to accept students from all schools this year. That was hard for me, that was hard for the families. And so, going forward, it'll be interesting to see what we are able to do with the money from the grant. "Have it be longer than just one month."

32:34 Of course. Parents would love for it to be all summer. Or maybe just have year-round school. ODE came and visited our sites and did a site visit. And there's a lot of text that will come up here, but just some of the highlights I wanted to share with you that they gave us as feedback. Positive student culture and instruction, some of the strongest they've seen during site visits across the state this summer. And so we feel really proud of how we're doing with our summer programs. Customized curriculum and enrichment. They noted our thematic units and the enrichment of marine biology at Hamlin, and

33:20 how much we're embedding content in with literacy. Standout arts programming, which thanks to our partnership with Lane Arts, has been an incredible asset to the summer experience. We get high quality artists that want to come back summer after summer and work with our kids. And robust family engagement initiatives, culminating family event, wonderful for the community. And then, "We've applaud your proactive approach in getting family feedback." Which this is the first summer we've done a family survey as well. So that is summer 2026. Again, thinking of the kids who say, "Why can't school be like this?"

34:08 Thank you for supporting summer learning in Springfield. I noticed that too. Why can't schools be like this? That really stood out to me that the ODE lady, Molly. How do you say it? Lajoie? Mm-hmm. Oh, okay. Yeah. So, yeah. Why can't school be like this? This is great, and the pictures are phenomenal too. Yeah. We have an amazing communications team that comes out and get some pictures of our kiddos each summer. Oh, I meant the paintings. Oh, the paintings the kids did. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yes. And they did a good job, too. But yeah-

34:53 Yes ... the paintings- Yes, paintings. Okay ... it's- Yeah ... it's- They were producing very quality and a lot of it, producing a lot of art with the artists. So, yeah. Your kids are hungry for art- Yeah ... and so this is really great to see what you had brought together. Yeah. Thank you. Uh-huh. Is the ODE grant the only money that's used for the summer program, or do we allocate part of our regular budget for this? For this summer, it is the only funding source that we used. We also have the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant, which can cover summer programs for Guiley, TRDR, and Hamlin. But we did not utilize those funds this summer.

35:44 Oh, and then ESY is general fund. Yeah. And KITS has been title funded in the past, but with the state summer learning dollars, we were able to switch that over and fund it out of that. Does every district that applies get the summer learning grant? No. It was very competitive this year. They used a different priority rating system for districts, and we scored pretty low on the priority. So we did not think we were going to get the grant. When we first got it, they gave us three quarters of what we had requested, and then a couple weeks later, they came

36:32 back, and we got the full amount. So that's kind of where the The stop-start was in the spring of expanding, but not too much, and then we get more money and we expand more. So hopefully moving forward, knowing that we have the million, we can plan for that a lot better. So would it be fair to say that if the state gave us $2 million, we could double the capacity? What's the threshold for entry into this program? Is it an invitation specific to the student, to the family? Previous years, for Spark, the kindergarten through seventh grade was open to every student in the district. This was the first year that we limited it

37:17 to certain schools, and we did extra outreach with our students who were getting reading intervention, families who are multilingual learner families, Spanish-speaking families. We do extra outreach with those. So this was the first year we limited it. In previous years, we've spent up to 1.7, 1.8 million on our summer programs, and that's when we served nearly 2,000 students total. Okay. And that was using 21st Century grant funds in addition to state funds? Those years, we had some ESSER funding. We also had state summer learning funding. We got 1.5 million from the state two summers ago. So the amount has decreased from the state, and then also ESSER

38:04 funds went away, and 21st Century, we try to be flexible with that so that we can have it for our after-school program, too. Yeah. Yeah. So do we track the kids doing this to when they get into fall and to see if there's progress? And do they perform better than their peers or- I would love to see that next step. Yeah. Okay. That would be definitely an area of opportunity for us. Yeah. So board members, I would suggest that encouraging legislators to step up and fund more broadly. Like Melissa was joking, we're probably not going to get them to go to a year-round

38:51 calendar, even though it makes sense. We're still stuck in the agrarian model. But this would be a way to maybe not have the learning drop-off that we have. And when I was in a similar position with this program a few years back, same comments. Why can't school be like this every day? And the learning, the kids were so engaged. So rather than leave that as a rhetorical question, I would like us to have a conversation of what do we need to do to get students engaged, loving school? What do the parents say? It was like, "My kid loves school again," right? Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty powerful, and when you see that engagement in real-time, it's incredible. So

39:38 we don't know where the state's going to fall on the budget thing, but if they do targeted funding, and maybe we should encourage targeted funding so that all kids around the state have this opportunity, and we can include more kids because I think it really does work. Mm-hmm. All right. Are there any other questions or comments? I will just say I got to go out to Maple, and it was very cool to see all the kids involved and everything and all the activities going on, and it was eye-opening. The amount of groups, the different groups that were there and yeah. So it was a good thing, I think. Yeah. It's very real when you get there.

40:26 And I think, again, that we need to really be asking, how can we scale that up to the regular school year? What lessons can we learn from our summer program that are applicable then to our regular school year calendar? Because I think there's some insights there. Yeah, because these were a standard aligned curriculum that you all had put together, correct? Yeah. Yep. Now, are you guys able to track the elementary students for this coming new year on seeing how they're doing? That would be something I'd love to do in the future, and have a process for following up with their teachers, doing some sort of feedback.

41:11 Our 21st Century grant has a built-in mechanism for that, where we talk to their teachers and see how they're doing as far as engagement. So we could potentially use that tool with our classroom teachers in the fall with the students that attended summer, and rate their engagement. I'm wondering whether that tracking might be possible through Synergy- Mm-hmm ... whether there's ways that a teacher could add a note or whoever participated could add a note, this student participated- Mm-hmm ... in this summer and- Yeah ... get a bit more data there. We do load them all in Synergy, so on their enrollment history, it would show- Okay ... if they were in a summer program. Okay. So potentially working with tech services, I could find a

41:57 way to pull a report for those summer students, pull some of their data as they go into the fall. Okay. I just wanted to understand how it works with the high school students that are short of credits, because obviously they're probably short of credits in different classes and across two high schools. Mm-hmm. How do they provide the appropriate education for them? Yeah. So the counselors will start generating those lists of students in the spring based on student history and also how they're doing in their current classes. And then the administrator that oversees those programs at the high school will Look at that, analyze it, and decide what courses are needed

42:44 to fill the most gaps for the students that counselors have identified. So usually the courses are heavy language arts, heavy math, one or two science classes, maybe randomly an art class or a PE class if the kid is missing elective credits. But they're primarily in core content areas. And because students might be in there of mixed grade levels, they use a thematic approach to teach the standards across the different grade levels that might be a little different than language arts 10 at the high school. Director Brew. I can add to that. Having been across multiple districts, many districts use commercial

43:29 products like Edgenuity that are not as high rigor. I was really happy to see when I went and visited the high schools that it was actually real summer school classes. Mm-hmm. So teaching the content from our students, that is an anomaly, to be honest. So I really appreciate that. And to me, it's better credit. Do they bring in someone that teaches science the rest of the year to teach the science and so on? Yeah. It's our instructors that teach and that have taught in that. We'll look at where the gaps are and give credit. I think they probably do some pre-assessments. Mm-hmm. But they're actually teaching the content that they would get during the year.

44:14 Yeah. Instead of just sitting in front of a computer- Yeah ... answering questions. That is one strength of our program, is the teaching staff that we have that are Springfield staff, that know the students, know the schools, know the curriculum, and that have, some of them, been doing this every year- Yeah ... that we've had summer. Is this a similar circumstance that if we had more money, we could help more students at that level also? Or were we- Yeah. I think- Okay. What was that? Not from credit recovery, I don't think. Okay. It's just a matter of how far down can they go.

44:59 Can they get down to sophomores who are behind in their credits? Or do they just focus on juniors and seniors? So, the depth is where more money could help with that. That helps, thank you. Mm-hmm. Any other- Because we did actually have an increase this year in high school. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I think it's a fantastic program. My kids did Spark when they were elementary, and my oldest, she did it going into the middle school last year at Thurston, and it was a great way for her to get into the middle school right off the bat. Awesome. I think it's a program probably worth looking at making sure we have baseline funding in the upcoming budget,

45:44 so that we're not dependent on grants or things like that, just to ensure. Because it is a quality program, and it makes a big difference over the summer. So I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you for all the hard work. Thank you. Yeah, I wish we didn't have the limitations of funding, because you can also use summer programs for other, for tag types of activities and- Mm-hmm ... other kinds of enrichment activities. So it'd be nice if we had enough money that we could really, really do the summer program. Mm-hmm. It'd be great. But thank you for what you did. It's great. Thank you. Feels good, doesn't it? It does. I love summer, and it was a great summer. So it's gotten better every year. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. And thanks for the presentation. Yep.

46:31 Okay, so we'll move on then to agenda item three under presentations B, English Learner Local Metrics, and this is presented by Dr. Magert and Taylor Madden. Yes, we will address that. Thanks. All right. I have to say, I've taught in the Spark program the last four years, and it is a lot. And Dr. Stover came and saw me doing some hair

47:16 extensions at the family night. And so he remembers that. I had never done it before, but... I could certainly use them now. You want to use that. And I think it might be off there. You just need to flip that button. Okay. Let me put on my glasses. There you go. Thanks. Okay, thanks. All right. Hi, everyone. Good evening. The agenda lists Dr. Magert and I as your presenters, but we've got a little bit of a change. But I want to invite Brian to jump in as needed. It's nice to be with you all tonight. I know that you all know me in some other capacities, but something that's probably worth mentioning as we jump into this is that, as you're aware, we've had or we experienced reduction in administrative staff last year, which resulted in

48:03 some shuffling of district-level administrative responsibility. So one of the things that I'm working with this year is oversight of our English Language Development program from the district level. That's why I'm here to discuss this topic with you tonight and share this presentation. But also, I'm really excited too. This is a great opportunity for me to introduce you to our certified ELD TOSA, our teacher specialist, Sarah Ferrin. Sarah will introduce herself to you in a moment. Over the last couple of years, we've always had an ELD TOSA. That staffing has been distributed among a few different staff members who are teaching part-time and then also operating in the capacity of teacher on special assignment for ELD. In this last year, we consolidated that staffing again into 1.0.

48:50 And so Sarah is that certified teacher specialist who's working with me this year in that capacity here out of the admin office and in all of our schools with our teachers, our bilingual Lias, and even some of our students still, too. So Sarah, before we jump in, do you want to just introduce yourself so the board knows you and who you are? Sure. Yeah. Well, I'm so happy to be a part of the team that is supporting our ELD staff and students and families. I've been teaching English language development in Springfield for 16 years, and I became a teacher at age 35 because I wanted to make a real difference in people's lives, and I definitely feel that our Springfield ELD program does that on many levels. We care for our students socially,

49:35 emotionally, and academically. And Taylor is going to share some of the statistics about our program, and we also invite you to get to know our teachers, staff, and students. Those are the faces behind the numbers. And we look forward to partnering with you to continue to create bright futures for the hundreds of multilingual students in Springfield. Great. So if you're curious what this is, part of this presentation is rooted in state law. There is an ORS that requires districts to provide school boards with a copy of the ODE's English Learner Report. And part of why we're here tonight, I think this is a great opportunity is, when

50:20 that was initially floated, I think it was Director Cole who said, "That's great. We'd love to see this state-level report," and what would it look like to look at what some of the local data that mirrors what that statewide report looks like. And so that's something that Brian and I talked about a bit over the last month or so, and Sarah and I have been putting our heads together around and we're going to share that with you tonight. So really, this is purpose and goals of our time. And our design is maybe a 10 plus, 10, 15-minute presentation for you all with if you have questions, please feel free to interrupt, but we'll also have time for questions at the end. Like Melissa before me, I've made some really minor updates to the slides as I've

51:06 gone through them, so you may not see exactly in your packet what's reflected here on the screen, but we can also provide that to you after, too, if there are changes that you need. So really our purpose and goals for this, one, are to help you understand the purpose of and content inside ODE's Oregon English Learners Report. What that is, why ODE produces it, and what we see at the state level. To understand the demographics of our own English learner population here in Springfield. To examine how English learner outcomes here locally compare to the statewide data. To examine outcomes across different stages of the English learner experience, and that's going to be an important part of our conversation, that not all English learners are the same. They have different experiences. And also the way that we and the state examine

51:52 the data and outcomes for our students differs by what their experiences are as well. And then also, this is just a great opportunity for us to identify and celebrate areas of progress, but also for us as a district. And I'll just say for me in this new role to look at what are the areas of deeper inquiry where we can grow, where we can learn, where we can be more curious about what our data is telling us around our ELD programs. One of the things I want you to keep in mind about this, and this is a little bit tricky because what we're looking at is the '24, '25 English Learner Report, right? And I know that just last week the state released a lot of data related to '25, '26 for us and all other districts across the state.

52:38 In a way, this is a lagging report, right? This report was released in June of 2026, but it's a really deep and detailed comprehensive look at what the English learner experience is in the state of Oregon for school year '24, '25. So it's important to keep that in mind that if you've got your head really in the data that just recently came out, this isn't that same year. It isn't those same group of students. It's a deeper, wider look. But we're also going to look at our own data looking back to that year. This is a statewide report that's really intended to provide the Department of Ed, school districts, and communities at large a clearer picture of how Oregon's English learners are experiencing progressing through their educational system, including where disparities might exist between student groups and what our opportunities for improvement might be.

53:24 I want to recognize, and Director Cole and I had a conversation about this even at the beginning of the meeting. The data is tricky in this because we've actually had to look at a variety of different data sources to pull together the local data. It's not as easily found as the statewide data that comes in this report. So if you have questions about what this data is or where it comes from, please ask that. But I'll also explain as we get into some of the data, and I've noted this in the slides, what the sources of our local data is. All the statewide data that you're going to see comes from this report or links that can be found within it, and then we'll reference a couple of different local reports that have helped us provide those district comparisons to the state-level data.

54:09 Okay. Sarah's going to jump in and give us some definitions just so we know who we're talking about here. So these are some of the terms that are used throughout the reports. Current English learners are multilingual students who are currently in or were in an ELD program in our district in '24, '25. Former English learners are students who were in an ELD program, but they have exited. They achieved proficiency on the state English test, the ELPA, English Language Proficiency Assessment, and they exited the program. Former English learners also includes monitored students. Those are also students who have exited, and we continue to monitor them for four years after they've exited. We do checks on them a couple times a year in their content

54:57 classes to make sure that they're still doing okay. And then Ever English learners, that is a combination of the current and former English learners. So it's anyone who's ever been in ELD. Maybe they were in ELD in kinder and first grade, and then they exited, or maybe they're currently in ELD. So it covers a lot of different students. And then the Never English learners are the students who, either monolingual or multilingual students, who were not eligible to receive ELD support. So they've never been in an ELD program. We really want to encourage you to think about this and ask questions. If you have them, we can come back to these definitions, too. And the reason I say that is part of the complexity of the data is

55:42 different reports group English learners in different ways. Sometimes the state reports on Ever English learners, sometimes it reports on Current, sometimes it reports on Former, and those could be very different groupings of students. And also students move through different categories at different times in their educational experience, so that's important for us to be mindful of. And it can be confusing as we're trying to look at the data and make sense of it. I had a question about that. Who determines where they fall in this chart? As far as whether they're current or former? Or- Well, let's say they come into the school and they speak virtually no English. No. Well- Or maybe they've had some. Mm-hmm. So is there a test or-

56:27 Yeah. Okay. So when every family registers, part of the registration process is the language use survey that is a state document that every family answers. We find out what their child's first language learned was, what language they use most at home, what language the adults use at home, and what language the parents would like the school to communicate with them. Those are the questions on the survey. And then based on those answers, we might give the students what's called the ELPA21 screener, and that is a statewide screener. It's on a computer. The first part of it, the teacher's sitting one-on-one with the student, and you're asking them some verbal questions and then scoring how

57:13 they answer it. Describing a picture, for example, we ask them questions about the picture. And then they have some other reading comprehension, spelling, listening questions. And then that is sent off somewhere, and someone scores it, and then we find out whether they qualify to be in ELD. And they get a level. They get a one through four. So one is a beginner. Okay. Two is early intermediate, three is intermediate. The ones, twos, and threes all qualify to be in ELD. You have to have a four or a five to be proficient. Now if they get, say, this is pretty common, to have a four in listening and a three in speaking- Right

57:58 ... you would still qualify. You have to have fours in all the areas to be too high to qualify. And is there an average time that a student who comes in without- Mm-hmm ... would one be the learner, the very basic thing? Yes. One would be the most basic level of English, and even if they didn't understand any English, they would still get a one. That's the lowest- I see. Okay ... score that you can get. Yeah. And then, typically, they would exit the program at some point in their K-12 if they had enough runway. Meaning, if they came in as a sophomore or something, there might not be enough time- Great point. And we're going to discuss that. You're going to... Okay. Because students enter at various times, right? What you're saying, in theory, if a student comes to us with enough time,

58:46 but we have students who are joining us- Right And there is- ... junior year of high school, right? So- There is a state report that we use. It's called OTelP, On Track to English Language Proficiency. And what that does is say, well, if they got a one when they started, it should take them, say, two years, three years to get to a two. Another two years to get to a three. And then what if they started a three? Then they should be able to exit a little sooner, because it can take five to seven years or longer to achieve English proficiency and be able to pass the ELPA. That's the big one. Okay. The state test. Thank you. And some of the data that we share will address that, where our students are currently falling on that progress toward English language proficiency based on that- Yeah, I see the dots ahead. And those assessment scores determine whether the student exits and becomes

59:33 considered a monitor or a former. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So that's the ELD graduation ceremony we see. Yeah. They're transitioning from current to former. Yeah. That's why we see students- Of different grade levels Yeah ... that might be in third grade all the way to 12th grade participating in that ceremony. Yes. Bonnie. Oh, sorry. It's still my turn. Good questions. So right now we have about 8,900 students overall in Springfield, and about 13% of those have or are currently in an English development program. And I think it's interesting for people to know that there are 32 languages identified in Springfield. Most of our English learners, our multilingual students, speak Spanish, but that's definitely not the only language that we have.

1:00:20 We have Russian, Vietnamese, there's 32 languages represented. Mm. And you can see how that compares with the state of Oregon, where about close to 19% of students are or were in an English development program. And then this shows how the English learners in Springfield are distributed across the grade levels. Our largest number of multilingual students in ELD are in elementary school, and then you can see the number decreases as they get older. But I know that at high school, for example, over the last few years especially, we've had a big influx of recent arrivals and newcomers in our high school programs.

1:01:10 So yeah, just to build on that for a moment, that kind of reflects your point and question, Jonathan, that we have current students. When a student is identified as current in middle or high school, that may mean that they're still progressing and were identified as qualifying for ELD services in elementary. It may mean that they've just joined us, and that's why they're in that current classification. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So continuing, we see the exact numbers and percentage breakdown. This previous slide is where our students are by each grade level. Here we see where they are by those categories in comparison to the state level. So you see where our percentages of students in that current, former, ever, or never compares to the broader

1:01:55 Oregon statewide context. So moving out of demographics a little bit, we'll get into some academic data here. These are six of the big metrics that we're often looking at when we're looking at academic success for our students, regular attendance, grade three English language arts proficiency, grade eight math proficiency, ninth grade on track rates for students, four-year graduation, and five-year completion rates. And as I mentioned before, you'll even see that Oregon Ever EL five-year completion is tough because that data point actually appears differently in some different ODE reports based on who we're talking about, whether it's formers, monitors, currents. But all of this data that you're seeing related to our students

1:02:42 comes from the data packet that is included and linked within the Oregon Learner's Annual Report, as well as our district-at-a-glance profile, which is like the school report card, essentially. The two-pager that you see that shows broad scale district metrics and then breaks down by different student demographic groups. So we can see here a comparison of our Springfield students who are Ever EL in comparison to our overall numbers in each of these categories, and then Oregon's Ever EL population combined with Oregon's overall. Something to keep in mind too, and that could be clearer, but also isn't here, is within the Ever EL for us compared to Oregon, we don't know exactly what the percentage of the rest of the

1:03:30 district are of current, monitor, former, et cetera. A couple things, and we'll come back to some trends in a moment, like narrative trends that we see in this, but I think that some of the things that are quite promising is we see our ninth grade on track for our Ever EL students actually quite high here, hovering at 79%, actually higher than our overall percentage. And we see our four-year grad rate, our five-year completion rate, not far off our other overall percentages. You may be looking at, "Wow, grade three ELA, that's low." We know that most of our elementary students are current ELD students, right? They're students who are actively learning English as part of their academic

1:04:16 program, and so we may not expect them to be proficient on the state English language arts assessment while they are performing at a level one, level two on ELPA. They're still in that current state of progressing toward proficiency in the language. This is statewide data, just so you know. This isn't local. But this I think is really telling when we look at the current versus former versus never of our grad rates, right? And I don't know what jumps out to you about this, but something that we've been talking about and looking at is that actually former English learner students outperform never English learner students when it comes to some of these metrics. And so at state level, we're seeing students who enter Oregon schools as English learners,

1:05:01 proceed through that, succeed in the program, exit or graduate, are graduating from high school or completing high school at rates as high or higher than their monolingual peers who are never ELD identified. Do you know if that data is consistent over time? We're going to look at- Encouraging, right? Yeah. And I'm not sure how that relates to the two or three years prior to that. That's something we could look at. It's a really good question. Again, this is statewide data because it really has the ability. We don't locally have this broken down in quite detail. It's something that I'm curious about and would be interested in looking at. But we can see our current versus our former versus also monitors.

1:05:46 Remember, monitor's included in that former. As we look at different English language arts proficiency across grade levels here too. So can I just ask one question? Yeah, please, Director Bruc- On the bottom line where it's saying they've never had any English language... Rest of the students. Yep. Any student who has not been in ELD. Correct. But they're not proficient in-- Only half of them are proficient in English at that point? In the English language arts statewide assessment currently.

1:06:33 So I'm confused. What is the monitored EL? They have exited the ELD program as proficient on the state English exam. But only within- But so how is that different from former, I guess ... within the last four years. Within the last four. They've exited in the last four years. And former, maybe they exited six years ago. Or 10. Yeah. Okay. That's why monitored and former together are inclusive of Ever. So we could have a student who is in ELD in kindergarten, first grade, second grade. They're now a junior in high school. They are still counted in the Ever EL category, and they would be considered former here. If a student is currently in sixth grade and they received

1:07:18 ELD services K through four, and then exited, they're considered monitor. Brian, do you want to add something to that too? Yes, and also sometimes monitored students, the year after, they will become a current EL again. Mm-hmm. So as we're monitoring them, they may have to take the ELPA again, and they may test back into receiving ELD services. I don't believe that we ever te- Waived students have to still take the ELPA. Mm. But we don't test... Once they're monitor, they-- I've never seen a student brought back to ELD after they go to monitor status. Oh, good. Okay, great. Maybe Melissa... Oops.

1:08:03 Yeah, it's very rare. Okay. Yeah. Good. So if we're looking at students in grades three to five, and they've already graduated within the last four years, then they must have been fairly proficient when they- Yeah, they passed the ELPA test- Yeah ... which is a rigorous test. Yeah. Yep. Right. So yeah, if they're considered monitored or former, and they're in that grade three through five, they achieve proficiency fairly early in their schooling with us. Mm. Here's that progress toward English language proficiency that Sarah was talking about, where we have different metrics based on where the student's starting point is. And I think that this is important because it looks at growth rather than just an overall final benchmark achievement. So we can see, and here we see a little bit of, not

1:08:51 super far back, but a little bit of longitudinal data as you were asking about, Director Light, where we can see for the last three years leading up to this report, how our students in comparison to all students in Oregon, by grade level, ELD students, where they are on that progress toward English language proficiency. A lot of what we see here is reflected, we'll get to trends in a minute, but in statewide trends, where we see that progress really accelerated at the elementary level. Currently not as much at the middle and high level. This is a pretty significant gain. And this is what we want to see, is that they're making adequate progress on the ELPA toward proficiency. So any thoughts on reasons why we're seeing the middle schoolers and the high

1:09:39 schoolers decrease here in Springfield? Well, my reaction off the top of my head is that when a student has been in ELD since kindergarten, and they're still in ELD in middle and high school, sometimes there are other issues at play. The state only just came up with an alternate ELPA a few years ago for students who are severely challenged with... What's the term I'm looking for? Delay, like a delay or severe speech problems, things like that. They previously had to take the same test that everyone else had to take, and now

1:10:27 the state has a different test for students that have cognitive delay. Not reflected here. Uh. I don't know about that. No, that's not part of the OTelp. That's not part of the On-Track English Language Proficiency. Okay. Except I'm just saying that, once they get into middle and high school, sometimes, maybe there are other issues at play. Yeah. I don't know. But I guess I wouldn't presume that we'd have more of those kids in Springfield than there would be, as a percentage statewide. Yeah. So, where statewide the scores are steadily increasing, here in Springfield, for our kids, we've lost some ground in those- Yeah ... those two groups.

1:11:13 Did you also just a little while previously say that we've recently had an influx of a lot of English language learners coming in at the high school grade level? I wonder if it's- So that would make them probably drop that percentage down. Right. Unaccompanied minors, people here with- So to move us into that, and then we can also just have other questions if you want. These are some statewide trends that are highlighted within the statewide English learner report that are also mirrored here among our students in the data that we've presented or other data that... We haven't given you an exhaustive amount of data in this presentation, but it is true across the state and for us too, that the vast majority of current

1:11:59 English learners are Latino, Latina students. A majority of current English learners were at the time of this report and are still in elementary grades, not in secondary grades. The number of recently arrived English learners increased substantially during the prior two years leading up to the report, and we've seen that continue into this school year as well. Regular attendance rates are higher for former English learners, but lower among current English learners, particularly in high school. Again, that's a little bit to what Director Cole was speaking to. Former English learners show strong and consistent growth in ninth grade on track to graduate rates. We saw that in our data. That's a consistent trend across the state. Younger English learners are more likely to be on track to English language

1:12:44 proficiency than their older peers. We just saw that. It's a pretty strong trend. Former English learners consistently have higher four-year and five-year grad rates compared to their current or never ELs, and we saw that a little bit earlier too, right? So when we have students who have come to us, have been eligible for and received ELD services, have exited and are now moving through their academic program, there's a strong indicator that those students will graduate in four years or complete within five. These are some trends that I think are really worth examining here. These are some things that are highlighted in the state report, and just to be honest, I don't think we know right now where we sit with this. It's worthy of some greater explanation, some

1:13:32 deeper digging into the data. Even some qualitative work that could be done with students and families and staff to understand the experience of students. But this is true across the state, that former English learners in high school are enrolled in Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate courses at higher rates, while current English learners had the lowest rate of enrollment among all students. Current English learners are enrolled in CTE courses at a lower rate than all other students, whether that's monitored, former, or never ELs. And never English learners were more likely to enroll in post-secondary ed than current English learners. However, former English learners had comparable post-secondary enrollment rates as our never English learners. And so to me, again, I think that's a strong indicator that

1:14:17 when we have students and we are identifying them and providing services to them, we can help them reach proficiency as quickly as possible, move into that former category. Then they're truly multilingual students. They're always multilingual students with us, but they have strong levels of proficiency in both languages. And they're primed for post-secondary education, whatever that is within their choice. So, there's a lot here, and there's a lot in the report, too, that we also haven't discussed tonight. So happy to answer any questions now or also in the future, too. And I just want to say that multiple different departments are actively working. We're always working at improving our

1:15:03 instruction, collaborating for the benefit of the multilingual learners, and that's just getting stronger and stronger. I have a question. I might have the terminology wrong, but is it the biliteracy seal of approval? Yeah. How does this tie in? Do these students that we show exiting, do they end up, many of them, getting that? It seems like it would be an advantage in the job market. That's a good thing. I don't know the number, but that's definitely something that we encourage because I think they get credit for that, too. Mm-hmm. Certainly something that students would be eligible to. It's a question I have- It's a case that they take ... in terms of, yeah, in terms of looking at what percentage of our multilingual

1:15:49 learners are accessing Seal of Biliteracy and what we can do to increase that. So, in Springfield, we have 32 languages spoken. The vast majority, I'm sure, mirrors the state in that the highest percentage is Latino or- Mexican ... uh, Mex. Yes. So are many of the languages represented, are they single families or one or two kids? And if so, do we get any additional funding for having to cover that, or is it just out of our regular program budget? Brian, you might be able to speak to that funding piece. Yeah. I do not believe there's additional funding beyond- There's not ... tied to number of languages spoken, no.

1:16:35 But- So yeah, any student who qualifies for ELD is funded at a 1.5 ADM. Okay, there is a way. Yeah. Okay. And I think there's communities. We have a Ukrainian community. Mm-hmm. When I first started in 2010, there was a large number of Marshallese students. Mm-hmm. So I think it just kind of goes in waves of different immigrant populations. Do we have some kind of an online support for families who want to work with their student in addition to what they're getting during the school day? Have we taken a look at that at all? Well, we've had different programs over the years.

1:17:21 We've had Spanish literacy programs that we created here in Springfield by now-retired ELD teachers, created a home literacy program that the family would take home a packet every day and listen to stories and complete work together. That was successful. In my classroom, I had a lending library where families would read bilingual books together, but we don't have a district-wide initiative that I know of. I'm thinking that, and not just for English language- Uh-huh ... learners, but in all areas, in math or science, if there's ways that we can extend the school day through the family and partner with them,

1:18:06 it would seem like it might help or something- Yeah ... to take a look at. And because the work schedules are so varied with families and it might be something that, again, we use technology to help bridge that gap so that you swing shift and you get home at 11:00 and you have some time, you can then get up to speed so you can help your student. Well, even though I'm not a general ed teacher, I do know that in our math curriculum, for example, there are home activities in there. You can dig around on the teacher website, and there are one-page kind of games that you can play at home with your student to practice whatever they're learning in class. So there are resources. And I know that schools will have like a math

1:18:54 night where families will come- Right ... and play math games or, a lot of the schools have literacy nights where the families come, and we do literacy activities. Yeah, all of those things are good. Okay, thank you. So, I have to acknowledge my ignorance here. So if a student comes and they speak a different language at home, and they're- Um, age appropriately fluent in that language, but they don't have any English or much. What's it look like for an elementary school student? How does school look to them? How is it different from a native English speaker? Do you want to- Well, that's where our bilingual educational assistants come in,

1:19:40 and our ELD teachers. The students would be in class during the core instruction, but we would provide extra English support. So instead of going to ELD for half an hour, they might be with us for an hour and a half. Just so that they can get the support that they need, or maybe the EA is in the classroom with them. Sometimes the ELD teacher will collaborate with the classroom teacher. That's kind of what we're hoping to move toward, is more of that collaboration between the ELD teacher and the classroom teachers to create lessons and things that benefit the English learner and the rest of the class as well. But their day would look like any other student's day, but they just might get more support

1:20:25 from our... Yeah. And we have specific portions of the day that the student is actually being taught the English language. Mm-hmm. And that's what the ELD teacher- Right ... is charged with. And that's the expectation from the Oregon Department of Education and the Federal government, is that there's specific time set aside for that, among the other supports that are provided. Mm-hmm. That's happening at all the elementary schools? Yes. Yes. Correct. Yeah. And that's why we have some concentrated supports at both Hamlin and Springfield High School for students who might come in at that age where they're not proficient in English, and they're a newcomer, recent arriver, and they can choose to go to that site where there's more concentrated support

1:21:10 for teaching English. Great question. And so at elementary school, we usually use what's called a pull-out model. So the student will come to the ELD classroom for half an hour, but there's also some push-in where the teacher goes into the classroom as well. And then in middle and high school, they have a designated class period, where they have a full-length class period of ELD, English Language Development. Okay. Any other questions or comments from board members? Thank you so much, Sarah. Nice to get to meet you. And Taylor, thank you. Yeah. You're very welcome. I wish I'd just brought some pictures of my student. I miss those. Already I'm missing my students, but

1:21:55 I know. But you're doing a lot for our teachers. Yeah. I'm going to do a dual update. I think so. I think it's next on the agenda. Am I right? I think that's- Yeah. Cool. There's a couple of pages. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, because I don't have that, though I do have it on the agenda. Is it Francis? My camera isn't- It's right there on your computer, man. There we go. Maybe you can pull it out the board. Board members- It was in my back.

1:22:40 Oh, it's in your back. That's right. Do you think we can? Yeah, it was just not... Didn't follow the agenda. Follow the agenda. Okay. So, agenda item three, presentations C is Dual Language Advisory Committee update. Thanks. Unless I get it wrong, I'll- This is also Dr. Meg and I on the agenda, but I think I'm going to take this one. It's- Oh ... relatively short. Again, please feel free to jump in. We have just a brief update for you tonight, but really glad to be able to provide that and to see board-continued interest in this. I know that I was not here about at a-- Earlier in the meeting month, Brian provided a brief update follow-up to

1:23:25 the August 27th parent community meeting that we hosted, and shared some of the outcomes from that meeting, some of the feedback that we received from families. So just to kind of briefly update you on where we are right now, we have an active interest form that's out there that has been sent and shared with all parents, guardians, and caregivers of dual immersion students across K12. Our plan is to convene the Dual Language Immersion Parent Advisory Committee for the first time in mid-October. That form has been out a little over a week now, maybe more. And we've asked folks who are interested to complete the form no later than October 9th so that we can get the committee running. We assured folks that we wanted to start this, this fall, and we met on the 27th of October, and that's our plan.

1:24:14 Still, dual language immersion classes are up and running for the year at Guy Lee, at Hamlin, and at Springfield High School. And just also as an update, we're still awaiting notification from ODE about the status of our Pathways to Multilingualism grant. Based on that ODE timeline, we should know that next month also, which I think will align nicely with convening that committee for the first time mid-October. I think that the application... We were in early, so I kind of lost track of when the deadline was. We were in the day it opened, so I think it just closed last week, and then they'll be notifying people as we come into the beginning of October. So that's where we are. Not a lot of immediate action right now, but we intend to be pretty active in October as we learn more about the grant and pull a group together.

1:25:00 Questions from the board? I'm sure that at some point we'll be developing a charge to the committee, correct? Yeah. And, since my understanding is that the sustainability and the future of the program will be part of the conversation. Yeah. So sort of our end date around that is when we start getting into the budget conversation- Mm-hmm ... in case There's an impact there. So, I would just request, keep the board in the loop as far as when they're meeting and what the charge will be. I think we were a little underrepresented, if I remember, in the Latinx community at that actual meeting. So, are we

1:25:45 sending information out so we have a broader representation? Yes, and I've not yet looked at... Communications is managing the JotForm. So this week, I'm hoping to get in there and see where we are in terms of representation. We said this at the meeting, and I know this was shared by Brian in the last update. We're committed that this is a representative committee. We won't move forward unless we have folks who are native English speakers, heritage Spanish speakers on this committee. Mm-hmm. I think it's really important that if the 50/50 model is in place at school, that we have a parent committee that's representative of our students and of the community. So, we'll get in and see who at this point has filled out that interest form and

1:26:31 do extra outreach if needed to make sure that happens. Given that we received quite a bit of public comment, I would think that there would be a great deal of interest. So I'm looking forward to the future work of the committee. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Other comments or questions? Thank you so much for the update. Appreciate that. Thank you. Then moving on to agenda item four, discussion, board and agenda priorities. Superintendent Stover. Yes. Thank you, Cheryl. Ryan?

1:27:19 Thank you. Cool. Okay, we're going to try to do a little bit quicker because we've been doing this a long time. So what we have is the board priorities that we worked on. And what's new is priority votes. You're going to pick your top three. We're going to record those votes, and then you're going to tell us where it's a quick hit, comprehensive, or deep dive on which of those priorities that you have.

1:28:06 And we have it here to record them. A couple things I want to point out. We're already working on or making progress on some of them. So where this is blocked out, board meeting calendar, we handled that last time. Superintendent evaluation process is, we met on that one time before in executive session. Legal counsel at meetings, that's coming up next. Policy BG DFA, I have some work on that I can share. And policy development process, we figured that one out because we have a policy committee. Superintendent selection process, the board is working on that.

1:28:51 And then we also added an AI as well priority. So I added that on. So that's where we are. The way I have it set up is that you'll let me know your priorities, I'll record them, and then we can go from there. And we can hopefully come back, and I want to work with staff to say this is when we'll start putting it on the calendar, and for what level. I have a question. For the AI, I thought we also had screen time and data safety. Yeah, that goes in within that whole thing. So I can certainly add that.

1:29:36 Thank you. Why don't we end that one when we get there, because there will- Yeah ... be some other comments. Mm-hmm. This was from the last meeting for outline, if you want me to- So, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage because this wasn't in our packet. This is a lot to take in. This is the running document that we've had. And you should have access on the Google. The only thing I added was the priority column, the votes. We have not changed anything from what we've discussed for the past three meetings. It is a lot, though.

1:30:34 So the idea is, I guess I'm trying to make sure, priority, we give it a one, two, or three? Yeah. Say this is my first, second, third, or you can just say, "These are my three priorities." Ah, we're just saying pass. Yeah. Okay. And if you know, like I'm okay with a quick hit, that would be helpful, too. Because for some of these, for instance, if they're all quick hits, then we might be able to do more of the priorities. If all of them are deep dives, that's going to take some doing, and that might limit the number of priorities we can commit to. Well, I think some things, and I'll use sites and facilities as an example. That's a long runway.

1:31:20 We've talked about making it more or less a permanent ... committee. So the work can start on that without necessarily a definitive outcome at this point. Whereas some of the things, yeah, elementary curriculum is going to be probably-- There's so much work to do there, but some of the things, again, can be prioritized. So, I think sort of that walk and chew gum, I think we can do some things, and they might get pushed off just because we don't have time, but I would hesitate to not make them something that we're very interested in, but maybe not fit in the convenient three,

1:32:06 top three. So, let me take a rewind here. I woke up at the equivalent of 1:00 this morning to get here. So I don't know if I was sharp. So this is our ongoing, and this is a living document, that's why all board members have it. What we're trying to do right now, what I'm seeking to do is let's get us started, right? And let's start putting some of these priorities on the calendar. This is always going to be an evolving, living document, because what happens in schools continues to evolve. But what we're trying to do is have a common language of what we're going to work with you on so that we can be efficient with our time, and that you can have presentations much earlier.

1:32:53 And we can go deeper into some of the subjects. So that's what this is. There's nothing finalized about this. These are your priorities. I'm just trying to come up with a system to get us started. These are all just educated guesses. It might be a lot longer than we think. It might be a lot quicker. And so I just want to get a sense from where you need me to start on the priorities so that we can develop something. And I'm coming up, I'm scheduled on the 26th to present to you my big priorities. So that timing would be really good. So I apologize, I didn't really introduce this well, Director Brew. Does that make sense to you now? It does. Okay. Thank you. And I'm ready with mine whenever you'd like. Okay. So I'll let our chair decide how we

1:33:42 do this and I'll record. Okay. Well, since you sort of raised your hand, Director Brew, we can start there. So my top three priorities are a family survey- Okay ... of families that have left the district, the student behavior issue, and the survey on staff wellbeing. Okay. Got those. The last one, staff wellbeing. Thank you. Left district discipline. And out of those, the family survey of staff who have left the district,

1:34:27 is that more of a start with where we are, just the lay of the land, and then maybe pivot? Or is that you want to go deeper? Let me find that exact... Got student behavior. Here it is. So we have the quick hits, reporting using added fields to Synergy to compile information from exit surveys using other districts as models. We think that's six months. Surveying current families about why they're staying, entry plan, talking to families, calling and holding focus groups for the full time. Doesn't mean we're not starting on this immediately, because we're already taking some steps. That's a comprehensive from one to 1.5 years, and then the deep dive would be highlighting

1:35:15 an outside firm. And for me, that's also a priority, the exit surveys, but a much more expedited timeframe. I think we need to know before the budget cycle, because when the board is allocating funds or giving direction, if we don't have more explicit information in that arena, I think it's hard to target money appropriately when we need it. I also think that exit surveys could show that it's related to student behavior. Could be related to the elementary curriculum. So I think a lot of these things are entwined, but

1:36:01 I see us as having about a four-month window on the exit surveys. And I know the longer it takes, the better you can get, the better the quality may be of your information. But right now, I'm just looking for trends. I want to know where the homeschool folks have gone and why. And I think the why is a very big question. So you couldn't have said it better myself. So thank you. Ready for... I'll go next. Sure. Okay. So, my first priority would be, and I'm not sure, student performance outcomes updates. I know our hand is forced to start to do this now. So I don't know what the timing on that is.

1:36:49 And so I don't know whether that should be... I guess my inclination is it's more of a quick hit. We'll see what we start to get in the way of data. Today was great in terms of getting some data, some history, and some longitudinal data for some of that. So I'd like to see more of that. So I guess I'll wait to see what the format is of these interim assessments and presentations to see before I say we need to do something comprehensive or a deep dive. My second priority would be the Sites and Facilities committee, getting that up and going. I think there's a lot of issues that they could be addressing concurrent with other board work And I guess

1:37:34 my third would be more community involvement listening sessions, opportunities to hear back from the community. I don't know that it needs to be comprehensive. It's just something that we provide opportunities for and can relay that information. Those would be my three. Does that help? Yeah. I can drop mine in if you're ready to. Mm-hmm. So my first one was going to be getting the operational levy up and running, and that's my top priority with a deep dive emphasis on that, because I'm a firm believer that the best time to plant a tree was several years ago, and

1:38:20 the next best time is today. Right? If it's going to be a long pull item, the sooner we start it, the sooner it can bear fruit. So, I'm deeply concerned about the future of our budgetary process if we're in a declining enrollment state. So the sooner we can propose something to help stabilize the next half decade of funding, I think it's worth our time. My second item was the elementary curriculum, and I'm between a comprehensive and a deep dive. But I do say that I likely believe that things actually are shaping up really well on that front, but just continuing a focus on that is high priority for me. My next one was between land development and sites and facilities.

1:39:07 I was a little iffy if we landed on whether we were rolling the two into the same item or not, as one being kind of like a sub-item of the sites and facilities. But by far and away, I would prefer sites and facilities to be my priority if we're keeping them separate. This has been really hard one to go through just because of the backlog that we have. But my very top priority is the elementary curriculum. I also think within that elementary curriculum, that we need to look at report cards and if we can get...

1:39:52 Well, anyway, I would like to do a deep dive on that. Let's see. The other one is student behavior. And I know there wasn't that much time to go over the AI screen time and student data, but I think that's really important. The world is changing. I think we've all been hearing the news and it's pretty scary, and I just want to talk about the direction that we're going to be going with our students.

1:40:38 Are we going to be continuing to be online, or are we going to start teaching within ourselves with textbooks and which direction are we really going to go for our future? And I changed that on our form so you can see develop AI guidance, screen time. I'll put limits so it's even more protection of student data. Thank you. Yes. I guess it's my turn. I guess. And I put you down there somewhere. Yeah. Exit surveys are- Yeah ... a priority. Students, families, staff. We just need to dial in on that.

1:41:25 Elementary curriculum, they're almost inseparable. So that would be my second, and the third would be the behavior. And having said that, though, I think sites and facilities need to start now, but I think I would look at the local option as being part of the result of some of that work. I would look at the feasibility of solar panels. As part of that, I would see the discussion around land or vacant property use and that. As all stemming from that and even to the point of forming subcommittees to expedite in a certain area, do a limited scope run. But that's because

1:42:14 Springfield is similar to many districts. We have aging facilities. So I think we need to look at this committee in a more permanent way than we have in the past. Primarily in the past, we brought the Sites and Facilities Committee together to inform us and our community around bond types of expenditures. But given the trusses that we just ran into, the problem there, and just the ongoing maintenance and/or replacement, maybe even school consolidation, I think that's a critical committee. So when I prioritize, in there are some of these things that are going to be much longer in duration and maybe permanent in duration because I think the work is so important,

1:43:00 so... Great. Thank you. I think I'll be able to work with staff to get a start of where we're going to go. Again, this is a living document, and so where we see opportunities to get started on some of the work, we will. It's just a matter of staff time and how deep we want to go. But this is certainly a doable list. There's some commonalities in there. And so- I'm not sure. Let me see, because some of it we're going to literally have a presentation on the facilities, for instance, in just a second. So,

1:43:45 let me get back with them, and it'll either be the 14th or the next work session where we'll have something. I'm thinking about actually folding that into my report to the board that I promised. And so board members, I again want to take Dr. Stover's interpretation of this as a living document. To me, it's almost something we could have a conversation at every meeting, just to sort of update where we at on this and that, and do we need to rearrange priorities? Do we need to give a more explicit charge? I'm in favor of putting end dates, completion dates on some of this work so that we hold our own feet to the fire. Right. So, I think this gets us going. I think so, and then I would recommend to the board that the ultimate goal is,

1:44:31 as we get into some of these things, maybe some of these things we can just say, "We'll just give you a little bit of a taste," that did not make the top, for instance. And then, I think the biggest opportunity is when you start thinking about your strategic plan, which again, to what I presented to you, your long plan of action would be around February, March, where we'd start that process. I'd make some recommendations. So that's why I also need to get comms to make this much prettier than I'm showing right now. I think these are work session-- This is definitely a work session document. We need to make it a more visually pleasant and simple document for everyone to understand.

1:45:18 Okay. I would say to that end, too, and listening to what you were saying, Bob, Google Docs and the Google domain are not in my wheelhouse as far as expertise. And so, the form, whatever form and format it is, needs to work for the board as a whole. So if you have suggestions or observations around how we can do this and do it better, do it more efficiently, effectively, I think the board will be receptive to that conversation. Yeah, I don't have a problem with the Google Docs. I know some people bring their documents from prior meetings to this meeting.

1:46:04 Had I been known to do that, I would've done that and all would've been fine. But I didn't know to do that. And so... We just want to make sure that this whole process works for us. Right. And I appreciate that suggestion, Chairman Light, and I think once we have a more comprehensive laid out document, it'll be easier and we can make sure we have copies of that all the time. Okay. So then moving on to discussion item 4B, attorney present at board meetings. Let me find my document here. Okay, this is the start time.

1:46:50 Here we go. So we present it for you, this is one of the things that was coming from our retreat, and also the short-term parking lot, from the retreat. What we did is-- I'll start from the very beginning. The background is the board requested that we provide them some options. What we did is we really provided two. From a local firm, and then from Hungerford. If the board wants to go in this after looking at some of the pros and cons and considering it, another option we have is actually even putting out an RFP for those services. So we have not put one out.

1:47:39 So a process question. If we move forward in the direction of whatever usage of an attorney we would have, does that need to be put out to an RFP then? No, that wouldn't. We can just have a contract. What I'm saying is if you don't like any of the options but still want to have one, that's an option that we have for you. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Right now, well, let me just go through them. So have our current attorney, which is the Hungerford firm, and working with Camellia, present at all board meetings in person. And I'm not going to read all the pros and cons. The biggest thing I will point out is just the cost of travel back and forth is $750.

1:48:27 And that's a lot of money. Hourly rate of $365. And you can see the pros. Any questions on this option? Okay. Option two would be to have the current attorney present at all board meetings via Zoom. Same pros as above, but this would take out the cost of the travel fee, which is significant. And we got that from our last bill where she came. So we're pretty confident of that as a consistent travel fee. Cons, again, there are not consistent legal

1:49:15 issues that require attorney consultation on a regular basis and/or time urgent. Here's some other... We've had Zoom issues before. It doesn't mean we'll have them again. And then makes private consultation a little bit more difficult when we go into executive session or if there's certain questions. And then a final one would be to have current attorney present as needed. So all the same, but we could look at the agenda and say, "This is where we would need..." She could join via Zoom or an executive session. We did that last executive session.

1:50:01 That was an example of where it was needed. I haven't gotten that bill yet, so I can't tell you the exact cost, otherwise I would. But I'm sure it was much less than $1,200 or so. Do you happen to know what the increment period is for Hungerford or attorneys? Is it- I'm not sure if it's 10 or 15 minutes. 15. Is it 15? Okay. So, I guess I was the one that brought this up initially, just because my experience with the city of Springfield, city of Eugene,

1:50:49 always have an attorney there. Mm-hmm. I think Selah always has an attorney there. Willamalane, I think it depends. So it just seemed prudent to me. I recognize that it's expensive, but it's, in my mind, at some level, it's also insurance. And so when we see things like, "Well, I'll buy the insurance right before I have the house fire," right? Because otherwise I don't need it, right? It's like, if we're only going to say, "Oh, we're going to have the attorney here when there's a legal issue," then it's... Yeah. Anyway,

1:51:34 I'm indifferent. I just thought I would throw it out there for discussion because there's a good reason to do that, but at the same time, I recognize that it's expensive. That being said, I see no reason for the attorney to drive down. I think Zoom is perfectly fine. But also, I recognize that when we have one of our five-hour meetings like we had last time, that cash register starts ching-chinging really quickly. So, thank you. And so it's not an... Director Brew, my experience is you also have an attorney present at all meetings, but the cost that there is, I'm used to...

1:52:20 That's why I suggest an RFP where they'll say it's this much that includes this many board meetings. There's some attorneys that say, "We'll give you this many free consultations, staff development on legal issues," things like that. I don't think that's the case in Oregon. And so we really are with this model. So it's not different. I think if we continue to do a good job with our prioritization and our planning of meetings, then the surprises where we would need legal representation hopefully will go down, and we can project when that might be.

1:53:06 Things like with discipline, maybe when we have those, that might be good because there are some real laws of what we can and can't do that are specific to Oregon. And so, but again, if we have it planned out, we can actually say, "During this time to this time, we need you." And they seem to be very open to that. Now, I haven't given the last option, though, which is working with a local attorney. So we've contacted a local attorney, Thorpe Purdy et al, 305. It's more economical. Obviously no travel fee. Understands the local context.

1:53:51 Not sure about this last part. This is a may, and I haven't contacted them, so that might not even be, and/or their cost might go up slightly if it's an as needed, right? And there are the cons. So may I ask a question, which is regarding that last con? And I think, and you may have mentioned something similar elsewhere about, would there be a conflict of interest if there was one attorney at the executive session that they couldn't be at the regular session? Or why would they be different attorneys, I guess? Well, just because of there doesn't have to be. And that's why I said could have to, right?

1:54:37 It might be a situation where we think one attorney would be better because they have just more experience in an executive session. Like for instance, I know there have been executive sessions before where there was some special ed law involved in that. And so that might make more sense to have not the local attorney, because they don't have that level of context. Oh, so you might have someone who was like a, if the exec session had something to do with personnel, it might be a personnel attorney. But we're talking about real estate in the board meeting, might have a real estate- Yes ... expert. Okay. And that's always an option as well that the board has. It's better if you can go with a generalist, but sometimes, and especially when we

1:55:24 get into the facilities work, it might not be very prudent. It might actually be a good idea to have a local attorney for those things. So, and that is an option we have. But for the core education issues, there are some firms that Um, specialize in this. Now, they have been certified. You have to be certified to be a education attorney, and so this firm has been certified. So it's not like they don't know. But as far as the breadth of experience, the current firm we're working with has much more. I guess I would lean towards more or less the status quo and then we have attorneys here as

1:56:10 needed and kind of schedule that out, I guess is my preference. Yeah, and that is my recommendation, just so the board knows. I think if we're proactive and we're looking ahead to our agendas- Right ... that we can predict some of the slippery slopes we would want defined by having an attorney present. And rather than wait until we need an interpretation of, it'd be better to put money ahead, and Zoom is probably the more efficient way to do that. And that's why we have, to be honest with you, a lot of our legal issues do not actually pop up during board meetings. They're happening well around board meetings or

1:56:56 before and after. And so that's why it's a little bit different because we have things, especially with special ed complaints, that we're going to need someone on call pretty much all the time, and that's what we currently have right now. And whether they're here at the meeting or not, that's a different level. So one of the reasons that I was, and I respect Ken's position and I don't disagree, but one of the things that where we didn't but we maybe should have, we got some complaints filed with Government Ethics Commission about the way we handled our interim- Mm-hmm

1:57:42 ... superintendent recruitment. Had we had an attorney in the room at the time advising us and saying, "Oh, no, you're good," or, "No, I recommend something different." But we didn't even think of it. I don't know now if we would maybe think, "Hey, these kind of meetings might be worthwhile to have an attorney in the room." I would strongly recommend that. For things like that, you want to have folks who really know the law if you're not 100%, and especially for that issue. But again, I think a lot of those things are somewhat predictable. I would hope I would've advised you, if I were in a different role, to have had an

1:58:28 attorney in the room for those to make sure that you really covered Oregon law and that you didn't make any errors. Yeah. And that's a great point. But keeping in mind that both searches did have legal advice in the process. But again, knowing what we know now, we might want them more intimately involved in that process from the get-go. Yeah. Yeah, I think, again, the reason I made the recommendation for three is with enough notice, they can be here via Zoom, and if you really need someone, they can

1:59:13 come down, but we also know what that cost is- Yeah ... as well. So. And that's really what we just asked you to- Yeah ... to present to us, so. Okay. I think I'm up next, too. So any comments from Director Brandt, Langworthy? I tend to lean towards not incurring unnecessary costs, so keeping things as status quo is top of mind for me. I think it's fine for us to call them in as predicted. Right. If there's things that we're certainly unsure. But at every board meeting it does seem a little extra. Predictably, most board meetings are not going to involve, as Superintendent Stover says, right?

1:59:58 Most of the issues we're going to need their opinion on are happening well outside the boundary of this once or twice a month meeting, right? So having that extra cost doesn't make a lot of sense to me outside of executive sessions where we clearly know, "Hey, this is a sensitive topic. We need an opinion," right? Yeah. It would be good to have a in-person conversation about. But I think as I understand, that's status quo, right? We can call them in as we need to with our current contract, so? Yes. Yeah. So that's just where my head's at. They'll be happy to come down whenever we need them, too. Oh, sure, right. Yes. Yeah, nobody's ever paid me $750 to drive to Salem and back, but hey. So Director Langworthy, any additional comments? And do you have enough direction to move forward?

2:00:43 Yeah. We're just looking for consensus. I would say that if you wanted to do something beyond that, we would probably want to vote. Okay. But okay. Next thing is time. Yes. Okay, same thing, much shorter. Basically, went back and looked at the tape. We said 6:00, but it wasn't 100% clear whether that was just a good idea or that's what we wanted. Obviously, we acted that that's what we wanted because we've been starting at 6:00. And so I think it would be helpful for me to know, the spoiler alert, I've already given my recommendation that I don't have a strong recommendation. I think staff would appreciate earlier start. Fans of Monday Night Football during football season might also, but I don't think

2:01:31 that's a contributing factor. With DVR. Yeah. For those that have that. So I wanted it to be an explicit board decision. And paying attention to families, the impacts on families, I share Dr. Stover's opinion about keeping staff here later. But want to make sure that if you've had a chance to poll any of your constituents or had the conversation with your family, you've got input there. So... I guess you could also split the baby and- Start 6:30. Start 6:30, yeah. So do we need a motion if we want to be explicit, and can we take

2:02:17 action if it's not looking like there's a second? I don't know that a motion is necessarily required. Okay. I think an understanding, an agreement that I like 6:00, or I'd like 7:00, or I'd like 6:30, or I like 6:26. Yeah. So I guess I would just point out, I think we did take action on the board calendar that I think said 7:00 for meetings on the board calendar. So seems like we have that- Yeah, well, and that's when I looked at- Yeah ... I wasn't- Yeah. I was not 100% clear that that was what we did. Yeah. So maybe that's... I don't recall, so I don't have that in front of me. I'm okay with 6:00. Doesn't matter to me. And I really do think you have to think about there are some

2:03:02 times that we have executive sessions that might run longer. And if you start at 5:00, that's running. There's no magic that says you have to have the executive session at the beginning. I think the practice here is to do that, but there are other districts where you have it at the end, and you just have to come back out and vote if there is any vote required. So there's some variations within. Yeah. And I think it really depends on the board. If we can really realistically, worst case scenario, if we have an executive session that needs to start as early as 5:00, can all board members get here on time?

2:03:48 In talking to people in the community, just to state a couple of comments. One was if we do it at 6:00, maybe move the public comments to a later time in the meeting. So if people that have families want to come and speak, they could have time to do that. I've also heard from people saying it's an advantage to be able to get home to put the kids to bed. And so sort of runs the gamut. The other consideration is around public comment, and it didn't make it onto this particular decision point, but it's at the board's discretion to have public comments at any meeting. Yeah. We have that on the agenda later on, public comment process.

2:04:34 At F? At F, Jonathan. It's different than public comment. Oh, I thought you were talking about public comment. Yeah, no. Well, I was talking... Yes, but this is about the process and the getting back to people. Okay. But just something to be thinking about. Don't have to do, make that determination, but even our public comment period that we have in our regular meetings is an option. But most boards I know do that. Some have comments at work sessions and some do not. Those that do usually have public comments, it has to be related to something on the agenda, so something that we're talking about today, and I can see

2:05:19 where that would be an advantage to get input. There's the possibility of taking public comments for a work session, but it must be submitted only in writing, so no time period's spent for the oral presentation or online. I don't know if that's even allowable anymore with the change in laws. So- Well, according to your policy, you have wide latitude. Mm-hmm. I reviewed it prior to this, and- Okay ... you've got pretty good latitude on what you want to do. I think some consistency would be helpful just for the public. Yes, I agree. I would lean towards allowing comments at work sessions that are pertaining to items on the agenda only,

2:06:06 because it's sort of our last opportunity. We don't take action, so it does give board members a little bit more of a runway with information before we have to actually make the decision. I'll go with Director Brew and then Director Cole. So, I like 6:00 because when we have a five-hour meeting like we had last time, it's better to be home at 11:00, I guess, than 12:00. That's going to be an anomaly. And I appreciate, I really value the public comment, even though it's sometimes uncomfortable, I really value it. And so I tend to lean more towards the side of more than less.

2:06:52 Mm-hmm. And also, when the agenda doesn't come out till Friday, and we want your stuff in before the meeting, that makes it really hard on working families, too. Mm-hmm. So, anyway, so yeah, I'm in favor of 6:00. And I wouldn't object to 7:00 if we do that. I like the idea of keeping the executive sessions before the meetings, but if we know it's going to be a long executive session, then retain the flexibility to move it to the end of the meeting also. Okay.

2:07:37 So- And again, your policy gives you some flexibility with that. Yeah, I kind of echo what- Director. Okay. Sorry, Ken. Yep. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Just trying to keep order. Sorry about that. I would also be in favor for the 6:00 start time. And I I've been thinking about the executive session. Yeah, if we were to have executive session afterwards, it'd be great to have a recess, because I know some board members really like to go out into the audience and talk to our stakeholders. So that would be my

2:08:23 only concern is make sure that we get that on there. And, yeah, ditto, Bob. We get these agendas on Friday and it's a marathon all weekend to get this written, but I know that- Our goal is that we will start for next meeting on Tuesdays. Yeah. I look forward to that. It will give us some more time to actually ask questions during the week time. Over the weekend- Right ... it's just far too rushed and has been consistently. So, okay. Thank you. Thanks. Yeah, I already talked about the start time. I guess with comments on a work session, I'd be concerned about limiting them to the topics in the work

2:09:11 session. I think that overly complicates it, and I think that it'd be a little bit much to expect the public to know, oh, you can only comment on what we're talking about today. And I think that sets us up for some problems. So I wouldn't, if we're going to add it to our work sessions, I wouldn't limit it to just the topics of the work session. I tend to agree. I think some folks that might not have realized that rule would show up and then feel frustrated that they don't get to speak their mind on whatever they came down for. I also am fine with 6:00 PM, so long as you're fine with me eating cheese stick and edamame in the middle of the meeting. It's a bit of a challenge to make dinner for

2:09:59 folks before I take off down here, and then get here on time and stuff. So I just tend to bring a snack for myself and eat dinner when I get home. But I'm perfectly happy to do that so that the evening is a little bit more predictable. So if it... And I echo, as I was mentioning on the public comment, I actually am in big favor of all public comment. If we want to extend it to all of our meetings, I'd be a big proponent of that. Okay, so- So I guess I would lean towards just having it at our one monthly meeting, the business meeting. I would- And not at work session ... and not work session, and focus the public on having the comment at those meetings. Yeah, and other districts have done this with work session comments and

2:10:45 limiting the scope, and you just have to be explicit in that. But I also agree that all public comment is good public comment, and allowing the opportunity to do that. Sounds like we're all in pretty much agreement of the 6:00 start time. I don't favor executive sessions afterwards because in a long meeting, and this is from experience, you sort of get brain dead. So now you're going in to hear information. But I think, again, folks with families, that's more of a can I get there at 5:00? But what I'm hearing is-

2:11:31 Yeah, for me personally, speaking as somebody that's got the work 9 to 5 and the kids, I can do it as long as it's predictable. Okay. So as long as I know that there's an executive session, my wife and I work out the logistics, right? Sometimes it's a little snip snap, like are we at 5:00 today or are we at 6:00 today, at 7:00 today? So it's been a little bit unpredictable on that front. But yeah, if we're going to stick to a consistent 6:00, executive if it happens, 5:15 or whatever, that's totally fine with me. Okay. To be clear, I only advocated for executive sessions afterwards if they're going to be longer than an hour or something like that, we have multiple items

2:12:16 or something like that, where we would have to start at 4:00 or 4:15 in order to- Yeah ... meet a 6:00 meeting time. Well, and in the distant past, we did them afterwards, after the meetings, and so it can work. But on the public comment part at work sessions, I'm a little less clear on that. The suggestion for having written only is then, and we can again, when's the cutoff for the meeting? So you could actually say, "Well, it's going to be Friday at 4:00 PM," or something to that effect so that we have the information. But sometimes public comments can generate some interest, and so sometimes if we've scheduled a real heavy work session, then I just

2:13:01 want the board to be aware that that can push the time of the meeting overall. Yeah. And so on your policy, it says the board may choose to hear public comment at special meetings or during work sessions. So you already have that- Mm-hmm ... option if you want it. Where I think you might want to clarify policy, and this would be good for the policy committee if you chose to do that, is a person speaking during the public comment portion of the meeting may comment on a topic not on the published agenda. However, speakers who indicate a desire to speak on a topic on the agenda may be given preference if the number of requests to speak exceeds the allotted agenda time. That's already in there. If you want to just keep it to the allotted agenda, you would probably need to add some language to your policy that

2:13:47 says during work sessions we would only do... But right now you have the ability to say, "Well, the first people we're going to allow to speak are the ones who are speaking on the public agenda. We're going to keep it at 30 minutes. If we don't go to that time, then we're going to those people in the order." Okay. That's also an option that you have, and you wouldn't have to change your policy for that. Director Laneworthi. Yeah, I never addressed public comment, but I'm for public comment, however it comes to us. I would rather hear what's on folks' minds and not put any limits on them. And I think that's sort of the leaning, right, of the overall of the

2:14:32 board. Just wanting to make, making sure that we're leaning a certain way. I would think that maybe just keeping it also optional, right? I think there are certain meetings where it's pretty clear from public sentiment that there's a lot of people gearing up to show up at a meeting to voice their mind, that, yeah, well, let's make it available, right? And if we have meetings where it's pretty clear it's a boring work session and nobody's going to show up, then we don't worry about it, right? Right. So you keep that latitude on the agenda in advance, I suppose. I would advocate that you are very consistent with what you do. Okay. Yeah, and that's fine. Like I say, I'm always to the side of at least keeping the space open. People choose to utilize it- Yeah ... welcome it. Well, and it's

2:15:18 literally not carved in stone, so we can try it, see how it works, and if it becomes burdensome in some way or another, we can- Yeah ... address that. In that case, I would probably announce that we're going to try a three-month trial or something like that for public comments at work sessions, and then go from there. Or some other thing. And again, these are just suggestions. These are totally your meetings. I'm giving you the benefit, trying to keep you out of any trouble. We like trouble. I've got a head nod there, so I'm fine with that and seeing how it works. Yeah. It's okay. Christmas, yeah. Okay. That give you enough direction? Yeah. When we plan for it, we'll just- Yeah ... plan for the public comments. Great. Okay. I think that takes me out of the rotation now.

2:16:05 Okay. So then, moving on to the facilities commitment, uh, committee. Yeah. Okay. That's agenda item 4D. Yeah. Thank you. So, I provided in the packet a five-page concept paper on what the facilities advisory committee process and timeline could look like. This is based on past experience in this district and some other places that I've been. I want to be very clear that this is not a proposal, this is just a concept paper. Just my effort in assisting moving the conversation forward. The process that is outlined in this paper ties

2:16:51 several things together, rather than addressing each issue in isolation. So obviously the structure involves both staff and community members. It's fairly large group that this outline would consist of. I am outlining two sub-committees. One that really is focused on facilities-related issues, and one that's focused on more specific instruction-related issues. So for example, some of the things that I heard tonight would likely be focused on a facilities-related issue. But when you get into a conversation around potential school consolidation, I would recommend

2:17:38 leaning heavily into the instruction side of the house because you're talking about what school makeup construct would look like, what a ideal learning environment would look like, what ideal class sizes, school sizes, things like that would look like. And that's really more on, from my perspective, more on the instruction side of the operation. In this paper, I've obviously identified that district staff would generally serve as technical resources and not be voting members. The voting members would be more the community members. Ultimately, it would roll up to the school board, which would be the ultimate decision-making

2:18:24 body. I've outlined some concepts on different phases. Some really key questions around the next 10 to 20 years, school boundaries, all of the things that are going to get people really, really interested in this conversation. School boundaries, Jonathan, you probably remember this. We will move this meeting to a school site because this room wouldn't be big enough to host that conversation. That's what we had to do before. Do we have the right number and configuration of schools? Talked about that ideal learning environment. Talked about SPS property needs. What property we need, what property we may not need,

2:19:12 repurposing property, land banking property, disposal of property. Lots of questions around there. Talk about financial sustainability over a 10 to 20 year plan. The impact on district and school operations when you start making some of these decisions around number of staff needed, number of assets needed. School buses, for example. That's an important conversation, and as that price tag is approaching $300,000 per bus, those are really relevant conversations to have when you're needing to make some of those decisions. The outline that I have presented here would have a number of

2:19:57 meetings. It would take several months to do. But then there would also be check-in points where while there would only be one or two board members involved at this because you have to be very cognizant of quorum, there would be check-in points where we would come back to the board in, like a work session and have reports from those committees, decision Points, recommendations, things of that nature. And then I did have some outlines of what success measures could look like if the board so were to choose that. And then some different issues that I think are important that the board would need to have some opinions about. Obviously, the charge to the committees or sub-committees

2:20:43 is going to be really, really important. Very clear charge to each of them. What are the roles? What are the outcomes that the board is looking for? Selection of facilitators for these processes. In the past, we have used co-chairs. They were community members. They were influential community members, people that had been around for a while, people that had held different positions in the community. I think there needs to be consideration for a budget to support this. Consultants, things of that nature. Remembering that if this is as comprehensive as what I believe you want it to be, or what I've heard,

2:21:28 this is going to be in addition to what staff can provide. This is a significant amount of work. Yeah. Timeline and meeting dates. To your point, Jonathan, working backwards, what's the identified date for a final report to the school board? I think if you had some of those check-ins and final dates, then you start calendaring that backwards, that would inform this. Obviously, there's going to be sufficient time in between meetings, because community members also probably are not interested in coming to meetings several times a week or a big time commitment. I think you need to schedule that out. And then decision points for the board, and then identify dates for implementation.

2:22:14 So, if you had an opportunity to look at that concept paper, it is exactly that, just a concept paper. But I wanted to help where I could, just get this conversation continuing to move forward. And I think what we would appreciate is what do you like about this? What do you not like about this? So that we can refine it and then actually turn it into a proposal for you. So, I think there's a lot of great detail in here, and I really appreciate the work that went into it. I think as we're laying out a schedule, what seems to me, there's a lot of work here, the projects we've talked about, the solar panels and different things. To me, one thing we ought to have as a short timeframe

2:23:02 would be forming the committee and having them look at do we even want to consider the need for boundary adjustments or school closures for this next year? So, they could make that decision, could do some work around that, or project out. And so that's something I think that early on we'd want to work towards and try to get some information on to start, so we know as we're heading into the budget, are we talking about that. So, I would just add that as a schedule component. I think I'd also like to, when we list the membership, lean on also Team Springfield and the resources they can provide, and hopefully the city in particular,

2:23:50 because I think their planning department and that expertise, that could really help with this. So, having that conversation with them to make them be a part of this process. Bella Lane uses our facilities. Mm-hmm. The infrastructure that goes in and working with sub seems to be important to me. But I do like the broad list of participants. The one thing I didn't see in here that I would like to see added is a capital improvements plan, and evaluating the needs and have that committee come up with- Mm-hmm ... for 10 years or 15 years or whatever, and we have a good basis in terms of the work that ODE did on all of our

2:24:37 facilities, and the reports for all the facilities and the work they envision we need to do over the next, what I think goes out 20 years or 30 years. So we could leverage that. Those are, I guess, my initial thoughts. Mm-hmm. Would the board have any objection to, I have a meeting coming up with Team Springfield to share this concept paper with them? No. Please share. Yeah. I would think that that's actively soliciting their- Yeah ... volunteerism. Well, just to give them a heads up. Yeah. And we'll tell them, depending on how much we do tonight, it is just a concept paper. And engage their willingness to help us out. Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah.

2:25:22 With the City of Springfield, we have also shot that over the bow already. They had an inquiry on some of their planning. They inquired as far as surplus property. I did let them know that this conversation was coming to the board work session, that right now we don't have any surplus property, but the board is very interested in a sites and facilities committee. So, I think staff members are aware. I don't know if that's gone up the chain or not. Yeah, this is in draft form, and I appreciate the work. It does give us a good framework to look at. I'd like to see other things in the feasibility of the local option levy.

2:26:07 There's a lot of work behind that. Some of it could be staff, but some of it can be- How does that relate to sites and facilities? I'm confused to how the operation levy would- Usually in a levy, you define what you're going to spend money on. Yeah, so a local levy specifically, Jonathan's right, you have to identify exactly what you're going to spend those resources on. Typically, it's staff Or it can be technology, or it can be curriculum. Right. Mm-hmm. But I think there's the concept of a local levy option. I think if the board is really leaning in that direction, I think just bringing factual information, how much could we potentially raise with a local levy? What's the timing? What's the timeline? The process. What does all that look like?

2:26:53 I agree. It just seems to have- I think the question's a good one, Ken- Yeah ... because typically a bond would be a sites and facilities, but a local levy is more on the operational side- Right. That would be my- Supporting the budget ... yeah, that I feel- That's really used more as a information gathering tool. Same with the possibility of us buying down our energy costs with solar arrays. Okay To me, that makes sense here because then- Yeah ... you're dealing with our facilities and sites. But the operating levy, I think, is generally going to be around funding resources, not really capital, not buildings and sites so much as it's going to be- Yeah ... paying for staff and- The one thing I would say is we have, like Lemmelaine passed a levy, so maybe leaning on them if we

2:27:39 use teams, what are some things that you would recommend we do, not do? That would be where I think they would be valuable, but past that, I think that's kind of- Yeah ... a lot of this stuff, it's symbiotic because operations support the educational program, and it's chicken and egg. But- Yeah, we'll be leaning into- Yeah ... legal counsel and underwriters for- Yeah ... the local levy information. I would advocate maybe a different committee to look at an operating levy if that was the case. Okay. I think that's too much to add on to here. More like the budget committee, I would think. Well, and I see- Correct ... I have maybe a little bit different vision of the Sites and Facilities Committee than I did at one time because of all the pressing needs that are going to continue to come in.

2:28:26 So I see the actual committee as being not a final report, but maybe a final report in certain sub-committees. So we want to look at the surplus property. We form a committee from the greater committee to take a look at that and put an end date on it. Or certain other projects that we may want to do. But I don't think that the financial challenges, capital improvements and otherwise, are going to diminish over time. They're probably going to accelerate. So having the committee just there at our disposal, and every we give a charge to go in this direction, here's the sub-committee that's going to take a look at that. Here's when we'll get that report that will inform the board on possible decisions. So

2:29:12 want to make sure that we at least consider maybe a broader use of the committee than we have in the past. Director Bruno. So Director Yancey, I appreciate this work, and I know there was a... I'm sorry, I keep forgetting to hold this microphone button down. It's annoying. I appreciate this work. I know there's a lot of work that went into it. I have to say, and this may have been my preconception, that I envisioned something really different for the Sites and Facilities Committee. I viewed it, as it's laid out in the proposal anyway or the straw man, if you will, it's kind of a goal-oriented

2:30:00 committee that has a specific outcome in a certain amount of time. And I envisioned this as kind of an ongoing committee who may have different projects roll in and out of that committee for the capital improvement plan or the facilities status report. I'm sorry, I can't remember your exact language. We've talked about other things that make sense to go through that committee. Couple other thoughts. I had proposed a

2:30:47 surplus property committee that was really different and really heavily leaned on subject matter experts, not so much, if you will, civilians, and really goal oriented, that could feed into this committee. But if there's one thing I've learned from 35 years of government work, if you want a project to die, you just bury it in a very overworked committee. And the work of this committee as laid out is really huge. And

2:31:33 so I think that that would get short shrift, and we wouldn't have answers by budget time. Yes. And I like the idea of a local option levy. I like the idea of exploring a local option levy. The surest way to bury it is to stick it in some committee that's already got a huge task, and it will just wither on the vine. So those are my thoughts. Well, and to answer your concerns, that's why I would suggest you would take that work and you break it into pieces with a specific charge

2:32:21 to that much smaller group with the idea of being able to move quicker, get answers back, and not exhaust the whole committee. Because you're right, when it's a huge committee and you get together, and yeah, it doesn't get the results if you want And in fact, I think in my view, maybe even entertain the idea of giving participation in the committee similar to our budget committee where they serve a term. So it's not a sentence for life, but something they can look at at a shorter term basis, whatever we determine that would be. And you just keep replacing positions, the expertise and things like that. So it's a little bit different view of a sites and facilities committee than I'm used to.

2:33:08 But I think in these more modern times, maybe that would serve the purpose. So that's what I'm exploring. So I'd have to say, I think I agree with Matt and Bob in talking about if we're going to look at a local option levy. That to me makes more sense to give to something like the budget committee. Have them do extra work or some other committee rather than, again, there's a lot of work here and maybe it warrants setting up, rather than just one umbrella committee, setting up individual committees to look at some of these things. Yeah, it's a great suggestion at the board's discretion.

2:33:54 This is our committee and we can add or subtract whatever we want to. Well, and I would also encourage the board to look a little bit more expansively, right? Because we're just talking about this committee and these priorities, but remember, this is all getting towards what your strategic plan is. And so we're doing the plan to plan part of the strategic plan. And so it could be that as part of the strategic plan, one of your things is to explore and implement in two years a local option levy. The more clear direction you can give staff, the better and the more targeted. Because if you want us to do six or seven different things, we maybe will do one or two things well. If you want us to do

2:34:39 two or three things that are big, then that's... And I would advocate, I'm just giving you a spoiler alert, that you don't have a five-year strategic plan. You have some pillars and then that's changeable year to year based on the realities because I think what we know is we don't know what's going to happen from year to year. And so the old standard model of a five-year plan is not as effective as it used to be. Having real core pillars of what we want as a community, like great options for our kids could be one, right? And then lots of things can fall under that. So I don't want you to think this is just the start to help us get really prepared. So it doesn't have to be either or, it can be both and, but I'm going to continue

2:35:27 saying that with the staff, and we want to keep it as lean as we can so we direct as much of our resources to the schools. We can not do everything. I wish we could. Yeah. So again, I guess as I look at a schedule for this work, to me, evaluating whether or not we're going to need to at least consider school closures, I think is going to be imminent. And so I don't know if we already know how enrollment looks compared to what we projected, I think it was about this time of year. So are we on matching our projection over or under? That could inform part of that decision of the need to-

2:36:14 We're going to be very close to being able to share those numbers. I want to make sure that- September 30th, right, is the end of the- Okay. Yeah. End of- We'll know shortly then- Yeah ... we're right on that. Yes. Because if we're continuing to see- Right. Take action ... downward trends, then I think we really need to plan what actions are we going to need to take, potentially need to take for next year in the budget, and when do we need to have that information? And... Well, and that's why I think determining before we have the school consolidation conversations or the boundary changes, I think we have to do due diligence in determining why our students are leaving.

2:36:59 Without knowing that, we're going to, in my opinion, just perpetuate the downward spiral. And I think it's critically important that we get that information up front. My goal would be to stop the exodus and even turn the corner on that. But we have to know why are the families leaving. And then if it's inevitable, if it truly does come down to declining birth rate, then we'll be able to see that trend clearly in our elementary enrollment, then everybody knows, not only the board, but the community and staff all can see this because we've explored possibilities. I think the key is that the board trust the information we give them as well.

2:37:51 I've taken some notes. I will have to get with Brett to figure out where we go from there, but what I feel like is we need to get started. So let's get started is what I'm hearing. Let's be open. Maybe it's a planning of an omnibus committee and then getting some advice from them on what needs to go, what can be an entity of itself. For instance, it's pretty clear that if the board wants to pursue a local option levy, maybe get advice from the committee on, do you think that's a good idea? Is the climate right?

2:38:36 And then push it out to its own thing as a priority, for instance, would be an example, right? Land use- Alternative or innovative uses of district land, that would be something like is the environment right? And if the committee feels so, I think that would also be a good thing to just pull out and do on its own. Is it possible? Because I would certainly like to see the board take action at our next meeting to establish the committee, because I think we have to take formal action to establish that committee, because time is- So the only thing I would say to that- On that

2:39:21 ... that I cannot promise you for- Okay ... a Tuesday before the board meeting. Yeah. That would be a new thing, so that would be right, probably more of a Friday before the board meeting to get that to you. Okay. And I personally, I need more time to sit with this and take into consideration some of the things said here at this meeting. I think we need to continue that conversation and not keep kicking it down, but let's- So can I make this- Explore the possibilities. Can we take this and make it into, after hearing this, can we just give a very draft proposal, and then get some time for you guys to have comments on that, and we can take what we heard-

2:40:07 Sure ... and make a draft proposal out of that, at least to get us started? I'm in support of it. Yeah. And to please send Brett, copy me any comments that you have on the concept paper. The sooner we get those, the better we can make the draft proposal. Is that in PDF form only right now? I can send it out in Word document. Okay, thanks. If that works for everybody. In a what? In a Word doc? Word doc. Okay. I can also throw it into a Google Doc. It's up to you guys. I prefer Word, but- Oh, yeah. What does the board prefer? Not just me. Oh, yeah. I'm fine with whatever. Word doc usually is easier for me to work with.

2:40:54 A little Google, but yeah, me too. Mm-hmm. Okay. Just one comment. I also wanted to share that I envisioned a facilities committee, and I don't know if that was... Maybe I just misunderstood, but it is more of a permanent committee is the impression I get, not like a limited duration with a set expiration at the end of next year or something like that. I envisioned the need for this committee being a multi-year mission at the very least, right? We did not-- I didn't get-- Either way- I just- I was thinking more of a permanent committee as well. Yeah. That's what I wanted to make sure I was on the same page. I think the makeup of it, Matt, what I heard is some comments on- Mm-hmm ... the makeup, and we have to be very cognizant of the time ask that we- Yeah ... for outside folks.

2:41:39 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Mm-hmm. To your point, Jonathan, I do think that a definite output from this committee should inform any local option levy- Mm-hmm ... other committee, right? I think it's absolutely- I think there's a piece to it. Yeah. Because there are- But I think- ... operational costs and suggestions- Probably ... that we would go, "Yeah, this is something you should put on your this is what we would spend that money on." Yeah. So maybe they're not in charge of the actual levy effort, but they're certainly- Oh, yeah ... working in tandem. Right. Yeah. S- Group ... from my perspective, I feel like that there-- I was recently on a Lane County Public Safety task force,

2:42:25 and the setup's similar to this. It was four months before the members even understood the terminology, right? They're civilians. They're not educational experts. They're not going to know what's involved in a boundary change or what's involved when you're talking. So it's going to take a long time to even ground them before you can even get them knowledgeably talking about any of these other issues. And then if you're only then going to start about looking at what's the value of our surplus property, right? Or does a local option make sense? You're way down the line.

2:43:11 I think it makes more sense to have multiple things going in tandem. Then this other committee comes to them with the surplus property and says, "Okay, here's the lay of the land. You can make decisions about or make recommendations based on what we should do with them, but we have taken the time to give you information on what's possible," right? Same thing with the local option levy. Because if you wait until they're up to speed enough to make an educated recommendation, then you're two or three months down the line, and you've done nothing on either of these things. So my perspective-

2:43:56 Just so I understand, are you suggesting that we have a bunch of separate little committees with a specific charge? Yeah. Specialized committees that have expertise, right? It doesn't make sense to try and take 15 people and educate them on what a local option levy is and all the parameters and how they get passed, what kind of polling you have to do. I would rather get some folks from Lam Lane and City of Springfield and others that have recently done it to advise some people

2:44:41 that can then take that information, gather pertinent information, and have it prepared, so when whatever committee is making the decision, they have the information prepared, right? Mm-hmm. Okay. Director Cole. Excuse me. The thing we'll have to think about is resourcing those committees. If we have a lot of committees, we're going to rely on staff to provide a lot of the work and the information, right? And do we have the resources to accommodate that? I guess we'll have to defer to our superintendent. Well, I think there's

2:45:26 overlap in all of these areas or the possibilities of, so I think the information that one committee, if you had a small micro committee, would want to make sure that that information is shared amongst that. But- I think it depends on what you take on. I think if you're taking on facility consolidation, optimization, however you call it, that's never going to be a quick process. You're going to have pushback no matter what you do. That I can tell you. I've done this four or five different times. When you have a thoughtful process and people really feel like they've had the

2:46:11 ability to weigh in on options, that's when you're going to get better community support, and that's not a thing that can be done quickly. So I think you have a smaller committee planning something like that, and then going out and they're planning how we get the feedback, how we can make sure we're explaining the need really well. I think we're also learning from other districts. Luckily, there's a couple of districts who've done it successfully. I'm going to actually be in a meeting where two of them, Corvallis and Bethel, will be giving a presentation to other superintendents, and we can learn from some of the mistakes, to be honest, of the ones that are doing it now. Portland and Salem are going through that right now, and I've gone through it

2:46:58 in other districts, and there's a way that you can go without a lot of drama, and there's a way that you can have to go to another school to hear all the comments people will- So I guess one other thing, if we're talking about that, that's something I look at enrollment declining and thinking, "Okay, eventually we're going to have to do that." Yeah. But I haven't necessarily heard from the administration or staff whether or not they think the timing on when they think it needs to happen, or if it's now's the time, or we should wait. So that would help inform the decision, too. I think we're getting close to the time we need to seriously consider options.

2:47:44 Thank you. And Ken, to your point, at least in regards to the vacant property currently owned by the district, I was envisioning a self-managed committee. I was imagining experts that work in this every day, and you hand them a list of properties and you say, "What is possible on these properties? What is not possible on these properties? What is legal? What is not legal?" And then they give a report back to whatever committee uses that information. But I was not imagining that that would require much staff effort at all. In terms of the local option, that's a different story.

2:48:32 I could definitely see that because I think most of the information on our properties is readily available through county records. We have where they're at and how big they are and their assessed value and all of that. So, yeah, it doesn't seem like that would need as much in the way of staff time. Other than knowing if we have agreements, right, for use on those properties and how they're currently used. Yeah. So are you suggesting an expert volunteer group? Is it all volunteer and that expertise? Yeah. So I think I presented a paper a couple of meetings ago. Basically, someone from the real estate community, someone from the city, someone from the

2:49:18 land lane, one person from the school district, someone from the building committee, someone from the board of realtors, people that have expertise in property that not only know, "Gosh, this is a great piece of property, but there's a huge wetland in the middle, so it's probably not buildable," or "Yeah, this is a great property, but there's not city utilities to it, so that would be a detriment to being able to develop it or anything." Just an update on what are each of these properties, how are they currently used, what are the limitations on their use, what's their current value, that kind of thing. But yeah, having people that

2:50:06 have expertise in land development, land restrictions, and things like that. I would just throw out, I guess if we want to form a committee and get volunteers, that will take some time and staff effort. There's always the option, too, of hiring that out. There are consultants that will do that analysis and give us a product and probably more timely and pay for it, but that may be an option to consider if time is money. And maybe it's a hybrid situation.

2:50:53 Because they will be interested in potentially purchasing those pieces of property, which means they can't be involved in the process. So- To Director Cole's point, that would be my recommendation as a consultant, that can quickly identify uses, values, things of that nature, and then if you decide to go somewhere with the property, you haven't excluded certain factions of communities. The city will have conflicts of interest. They've already inquired on some of our property. So you just need to be very careful about that, is my only caution. I put that back at the top of everyone's inbox as well, that

2:51:39 proposal, Director Brew. I just forwarded it to the board. Okay. So Brett's going to send out this document. So mark it up and make your suggestions, and we'll return to this conversation. So, any other final... Okay. So moving on then to agenda item 4E, SEA, OSEA board meeting, says attendance or participation. So this was brought to us last year, I think maybe, about the possibility of having

2:52:25 a slot on our agenda at our regular meetings, I'm assuming, but it hasn't been determined, for our partner organizations, the SEA and OSEA, to give a, I will use the word presentation, or it's been stated as maybe a public comment slot, semi-permanent. From my perspective, I would want it more participatory than that. So I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on that. Yeah. I'm totally for it. I think it's absolutely a spot that can be there, right up there with the student leaders that present from high school, right? Where they're given date as just part of a regular part of our-

2:53:13 Mm-hmm ... meeting cadence. And I imagine it would be very beneficial for everybody involved to constantly keep them from having to sign up for a public comment slot, versus just having a known quantity, right? It seems like they've expressed a definite interest in wanting to do that, so I don't see why we wouldn't want to extend the offer to them. We allow other staff at the table, and the people who work front and center with our kids and have those relationships, it would be important just to hear what they have to say, what's going on in their world. I felt like we had a little sample from the vice president of the Springfield Education Association last public comment,

2:54:02 and it was short and sweet, and I would love an opportunity to have some dialogue and ask them. Of course, it would exclude bargaining. There would have to be some guardrails there. But we should hear from the people that work with our kids. Thank you. Dr. Brew? These two said exactly what I was going to say. So- Shame on them. Yeah, I know. I know. Yeah. Director Cole? It's fine with me. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, my thoughts are in agreement with yours. Just a couple of maybe more specific things. I think if we start out by allowing five minutes, but not timed, so not the same as the public comments.

2:54:49 And I would also want it to be interactive so that we can ask questions, we can have a dialogue again, so- So, I do have some things I would like to present- Okay ... to the board. I absolutely agree that dialogue is helpful. I'm not sure in the public comment section. I think there's going to be a lot of unintended consequences that you're going to have to be careful of. So, for instance, in your policy, you can't talk about specific things like personnel issues. And then when we get to bargaining, there could be some problems there, and those are all risks that you want to take. I'd be very careful, because it's going to be hard to, if someone starts talking about this is an unfair condition at the school,

2:55:36 then are we talking about a principal? And then do we have to cut them off, would be an example, for instance, right? And so I'm wondering if there's other ways for the board to have dialogue. I know, for instance, because he copied me on this, Brandon had a dialogue, invited conferences with the boards. Do we want to set that up? Something like that. That might be a better way to have that. I just think as I looked into this and thought of this, because I don't have a problem, and I think we have to be partners with all of our organizations. It's just the way that we have the board meetings and the policies that you have, you're going to have to really think about this very carefully.

2:56:21 And I'm wondering if there are other ways to solve the problem, and I think it's really clear we want to get clear on the problem, and what I think I hear is that you want to be able to have ongoing dialogue with all of our employees, which is important. I want to as well. I think, for instance, Brian and I are taking steps to meet with SEA regularly. I would prefer to do that than have public comments because I think you get on a real slippery slope. And I think at first it's not going to be a problem. I think it could be a problem when we come closer to bargaining, which I hope is very collaborative. Or when you have someone

2:57:06 accidentally start talking about what would be prohibited in your board policy. How do you... Are we going to say, "No, you can't talk about that," and who's going to be the person that says that? Well, I think, yeah, it's valid points, obviously, the big risks. But I think we do make the same disclaimer for public comment right beforehand. Chair Light reads out the disclaimer saying that, "Keep in mind, the complaint process has to be here. We don't discuss personnel issues." And yeah, I think that's probably the remediation, is we just have the chair interrupt and say, "Oh, I'm sorry. We can take that offline and follow a formal process regarding personnel issues." Right? Just follow the normal procedure. And I appreciate that. The other concern that I have,

2:57:53 and again, these are just problems that are to solve, right? Yeah. Is, we do have a complaint process as well. And so, do we ask if it gets to a complaint, have you done that? Because there are complaint processes for individuals, but the unions also have complaint processes, and we want to be careful that we don't merge the two. And then if you're allowing dialogue in a public comment type of setting, then you're probably going to have to do that with anybody who comes up, and that would vastly change your policy. So those are the things that I think, I'm wondering if there's a better way to achieve that goal of dialogue, other than a public comment period. There's lots to think about.

2:58:42 And I feel like I sound like I'm anti this, and I'm not. No, it's fair. It's smart. But my job is to tell you the truth and give you- Yeah ... and there's some real landmines that I see. Sure. And this is nothing against our unions or the people who lead them. It's just human nature. So personally, I feel that, I appreciate what you're saying. Personally, I feel that if we can communicate to, whether it's from SEA or OSEA, or whomever, these are the things we're concerned about. And so we're going to want to be really careful, and we're going to ask you to be

2:59:27 really careful about them, too. Because really it's easier if you're concerned about someone crossing one of our policies about complaints, we can police that a lot easier in a public meeting than I can with Jonathan- Mm-hmm ... meeting one-on-one or me meeting one-on-one. Right. The other issue is if we're meeting one-on-one with the same person- Yeah ... it can really easily turn into a serial communication. Yeah. And so I think it's easier to manage at a board meeting. In terms of the dialogue, it really depends on how

3:00:12 deep we get into it. So, I'm kind of ambivalent on that, but I think it's easier to manage some of these problems in a board meeting. And if we want to make it, yeah, sure, we'll do a six-month trial and see if it works, and if it doesn't, we'll just go back to the way it is. But, I think it's important also for the representative from employers to hear their representative- Mm-hmm ... in seeing that communication in real time between those people and the board. Yeah, and as I- I- As I understand it, this was a past practice too, that Nancy Golden had done. Is that...?

3:00:58 We didn't ever do it in board meetings, but we met monthly with two board members and the superintendent and- Yeah ... key leaders on a monthly basis. And so there are other ways to do that. But 4J has been using this particular strategy during board meetings for a long time. So I'm assuming that at the outset, they came up with a shared agreement on the do's and don'ts kind of thing. And, I want to make sure that I'm not viewing this as an extension of public comments. I would put this under reports. With the ability to ask clarifying questions, not a huge discussion on it, but we don't have that opportunity in our regular public comments.

3:01:45 But in a partnership, I think it's a little bit different. And you do that with the high school students. Yeah. And you do that with the high school students, and this would be the same. I would feel much more comfortable if you would allow myself and the team to meet with the representatives. That's a good point. And then to start it off with giving each one an opportunity to do a report type of thing. That allows for the dialogue because it's a report. We can help coach them on, "You absolutely cannot. Let's make sure, because in your policy it says you can't talk about things that are already in the contract." And so that helps us with that. We can do it as a trial run and then go from there. I'd be much more comfortable with that.

3:02:30 I'm really uncomfortable with public comment dialogue back and forth. Yeah, no. But a report, I think we could probably work something out with that. And if you would allow me some time to maybe work with them and maybe start this November, December, I think it's something we could probably do. If that's the direction the board wants to go, and seeing that this was an idea all five members liked, it seems like that's probably where you want me to go. But that would be my ask. Yeah, that would be great, too. I also feel because I heard there's not much interest in changing policy with communication with staff. I really feel this would be important. I would love to review that policy About communication with staff.

3:03:16 But yeah. I would appreciate SEA, OSEA, everyone coming forward and be able to have a time to discuss what's going on. And I'm ready to have that whenever. I don't think now's the time, but I actually have two proposals for you for that BG policy. Well, and we've heard from SEA, but only in the public comment part, which is sort of a stilted conversation. So I appreciate the willingness to outreach. And then OSEA, we have not had as much communication, so I think we need... The question is, what do you want to gain by this, and what information? So that we can, again, set those ground rules.

3:04:01 If I may, there is a third employee group that- Yeah ... is not represented, and SAC. We're not part of SAC, but that does include our operations supervisors, managers, the building level principals. So that is an employee group that- Yeah ... you could consider hearing from. Well, I was actually... That's why I said are three groups. Mm-hmm. Yes. Thank you for stating that. Yes, you're absolutely right, and I think it would be important to hear from everyone. And yeah, I like the report idea. The more the merrier, too. I think if they have any of these groups that want to have an opportunity to speak up, because I think it , like Amber was saying, it's incredibly important, I think, also for people that

3:04:49 belong to those organizations to see their representatives speaking on their behalf on a regular basis in a public meeting, so they don't have to feel like, oh, well, they are talking, but it's behind closed doors, so I don't really know. Yeah. Right? So I think it's nice. And it's a healthy move forward for this community- Okay ... feedback and trust. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to reach out to the three major representatives. I'll work with the team, see if we can come up with an idea. It seems like this would be a good work session report, since it's a report and discussion. And we'll try to give you another concept paper for this after we talk to them. And maybe starting at a work session where it makes sense, when we're ready to do that.

3:05:38 Okay. Thank you. Then moving on to the final item under discussion, 4F, public comment process. Sorry for the lack of clarity there. What I want to do is be a little more formal in our approach to those folks who do come to public comments. So in the distant past, it was the board chair's responsibility to reach out and acknowledge their participation and the work behind that, and then point them in a direction. Okay? But I feel that the board, beyond that, is not really understanding what was the follow-through, if any. Was there a closure? So I'd like to be thinking about what would that look like.

3:06:25 In my mind, I'm thinking of a job ticket, basically, and you sort of go through, and somebody is assigned responsibility to follow up. It may not be that the closure is we choose to disagree. However, I think it's important for the board to know where these end up, and that's why I put that on the agenda. But what does that look like? As chair, I'm willing to reach out and thanks and do the initial thing. But from the board, I want to know, well, what does it look like to do the next step and actually know that our constituents had this full follow-through? Yeah. For myself, I had no idea you were doing that. I just thought they spoke their piece and left.

3:07:14 Usually it's the board chair's responsibility to respond to even letters of complaint or letters. And sometimes those aren't sent to the entire board, but I do try to follow up and at least acknowledge the time it takes to write out whatever they're going to speak about, and then come and take their time and come before this scary audience and actually speak. So I think that deserves acknowledgement, but I also think it deserves some kind of a follow-through and closure. I agree with that. I like what you had said. Long before I became a board member, I had questions and

3:08:02 wanted to come before the board and just share. I encountered a barrier, so I wasn't really able to talk that night. But it would be nice if the board had-- If I wasn't interrupted and I was able to come in and speak, that the board would direct me where to go. So not only would a person be able to share what's on their mind freely, but they would be directed by the board to where to go from there. Mm-hmm. I think it would give people peace of mind, and right now, the community's really craving being heard and wanting the ability to take action.

3:08:47 Well, and the feedback I've gotten from people who have come in is that they were unclear as far as where they were left. And I'm not designing this for me, but as a district thing, that this is what we do. We follow up. We let them know. We might not be able to meet their demands or their requests, and that's sort of a given, but at least we say, "We can't meet what you're asking, and here's why." And then they go away with more clarity around whatever they were asking for. So I realized that you were wanting to get everyone's email address. Mm-hmm. So I don't think people realize if they were to put their email out there, on the sign-up sheet, just right out in the little hallway there, that you

3:09:33 would then get back to them. Is there some rewriting that we could do to let people know this is a purposeful reason here? Well, I think we can maybe be a little bit more explicit in why we would want this. Most people do. My understanding is that most people leave their emails, but some don't, and if they don't, then I don't feel as compelled that I need to respond necessarily. And a lot of times when they don't leave an email or any kind of contact information, they're not really requesting something, but they want to be heard. So it's nice, and I think we could probably be a little maybe include it in the directions, "Please leave," or whatever. I don't know what our directions actually look like.

3:10:20 I guess I just think just responding to let people know they've been heard, because they just come and talk at us, and we don't respond. So if we can follow up and say, "We heard you," or, "Here's a resource to pursue or..." Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think that would be great. Bob, you look like you were going to say something. Yeah, I was going to say a couple things, but one of the things I wanted to say was when you do that little introduction spiel about public comment, you can say, "And if you'll leave your address with the board, you will get a formal response." Okay. Good idea. Yeah. There are many times where I wish

3:11:07 after someone has spoken and you could respond right then and said, "No, that's factually wrong," it's this or that, but you really can't. So having an address and letting them know that we will get back to them, I think would be meaningful. Well, I've been to board meetings in other districts where there is a dialogue, but in Springfield, we've never had that dialogue, and I'm not saying it's good or bad, but I've had people stand up, seen people stand up and board members asking questions, but I think that sometimes that creates a slippery slope. So I'm just thinking, though, that we should at least do the more formal process of getting back to them.

3:11:53 So if it's okay with the board, I'll ask Dr. Stover to perhaps we can do this in the chair/vice chair meetings and come up with some kind of more formal process. Yeah, I have some questions. Yeah. Because I'm trying to think of a time where we didn't follow up with someone who had, like we had a comment last time that was factually inaccurate, but we did follow up with them. And so that's my concern. Well, and I'm not saying that the district is not following up, but the board has not been in that loop. So I want to figure out a more explicit way we can loop the board into that. I guess that's the thing, yeah. Yeah. No idea this was going on, so if somehow the board can be looped into

3:12:42 the response so we know it did get responded to, that would- That's a little bit of a different thing than I'm hearing. Yeah. So to get some more clarity would be helpful. Yeah. Okay. Would it help if you're generating a response to some of these public commenters to send a note to the rest of the board that say, "This is what I'm going to send off to these ones. Did you want to add any feedback or comment to send with it?" Or are we skirting some rules there for that, but- Well, again, I'm going to say from- Yeah ... a superintendent's perspective, you're really getting into my area. Again, this is the policy to say that we want to make sure there's been feedback is one thing. You guys giving the feedback was almost always going to be operational issues is going to be problematic.

3:13:28 I'm not talking so much... Well, okay, so I guess in my opinion, one of the community members came out and expressed concern about how her student had gone astray during class time, right? Yes. And I just felt like it would've been appropriate on behalf of the board to at least share that we've heard you, and thank you for sharing your feedback, that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. But more general purpose and not necessarily speaking on behalf of anything, right? Obviously, we have- Right ... no control in that space. But- And so knowing that we did give feedback and followed up with that would be helpful because we did in that actual situation. Yeah, perfect. To Ken's point too, I think maybe we just don't see necessarily some of that follow-up. But it would be nice to know that we can share some of our thoughts, even if

3:14:16 they're just thank you for sharing it. If they're talking to us and then we don't know anybody's responding, it just- Yeah. Okay. Yes. And I think that there's a way to do that, but I really want to make sure that we're all staying in, like, because- Oh, I'm staying in my lane. Yeah. So yeah, I'm not- I didn't say lane. I was trying to think of a different word, but sure. I understand what you're saying, though. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not looking at trying to encroach on anything that's- Yeah ... inappropriate. Well, and it's not really encroaching. It's efficiency- Yeah ... and it's protecting you because remember, we have an appeal process, and ultimately you are going to have to do that, and if you have any type of interaction with that person, then it's just exactly the same-

3:15:02 Yeah ... horse of a different color of what Brett talked about with the land. Right. You don't want to be put in a position where you do not have your final appeal rights, right? And so, I think Brian's the first thing I did as soon as I heard her, I'm like, "Well, why didn't I know about this?" And we found out, and we did not loop back in the board. I looped back in the chair But we can do that, and that's easier. I think that wouldn't be as big a burden, but that's again where there has to be trust, too. Mm-hmm. To know, if we tell you we followed up on it, the board believing we actually followed up on it. Oh, yeah. I'm not even-- I assume- And I know you weren't saying that, but I think I'd love to get to that spot that we could just get to that and you would just say, "Great, thank you."

3:15:49 Yeah. And knowing that is a reasonable expectation is, "Did you handle it, Superintendent?" That is a very reasonable one. Having the board say, "We'll handle it," gets it into a different level that I'm not comfortable with. Oh, I'm with you on that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So then my question is, what's the question for us if you're handling it? I think what I'm hearing from a direction is you want, when there's public comments, you want us for the ones that leave email to give you a report saying, "That we handled these comments." And if there's information, it's like-- and we're not going to do that now, but I've made some changes to our agreements. I think some of these follow within what we've already considered in the work

3:16:35 session. So one of the things we said is if there is follow-up needed, that will be sent to the whole board for light concerns. Is one of the working agreements. So if someone comes up to you in the store and says, "I can't believe blah, blah, blah, this happened." Unless it would compromise your ability in a hearing, then that's probably something you should listen to, then report to us, and then we should report back to you. We've handled it. And if we feel like we can, we would, but we're going to report to the whole board, not just one board member. So yeah, just formalizing that process. I think we can do that.

3:17:20 And it'd be consistent with the operating agreements I hope we will adopt. So we'll be bringing this back then and with a more formalized process. Moving then to reports and information, board communication and comments. Just a couple of things. One, I will just, I guess, remind that we approved policy KNA today, and I think by policy, we're supposed to make sure that gets attached to the minutes for this meeting. Yeah. So I just want to make sure that happens. The other thing, I attended the LCOG meeting last week. Just a couple observations. It was interesting to me.

3:18:07 There was a lot of discussion about regional broadband and the work that goes into that, and at some point, it might be good to know how we fit into that. They did list partners being City of Springfield, 4J, and Lane County and other partners. I didn't see us on there, and I don't know if we would fit into that regional as a partnership with LCOG on regional broadband, but it's something I'd be interested in. And I guess the other interesting thing I heard was they just executed a new contract with the SEIU, and it's a five-year agreement, which I thought was interesting. It's a long agreement.

3:18:52 So. Okay. Anything else? Nope. Okay. Director Brew? Just a couple of things briefly. I had happened to be thinking the last time, I don't know if you all are familiar with systems development charges. So the City of Springfield charges systems development charges on their roads, on their stormwater system, and their septic system. Willamalane charges a systems development charge on-- And basically what it is, is when you build, when you develop in the city, you basically buy in, you buy your share of the existing infrastructure,

3:19:37 and you put some money away for new infrastructure. Right? It's a way of buying into the existing infrastructure. In Oregon, schools aren't allowed to assess an SDC. And in municipalities and utilities, it's a critical way that they fund capital projects. And so I would like to throw out there that when we're talking to the legislature in the coming year or years, that we advocate for systems development charges for schools. At least allow schools to be able to propose those to the voters. Because the voters ultimately would decide.

3:20:24 So that was one little thing. The other little thing that I would want to throw out there for us to be thinking about is, before we know it, it's going to be budget season. And there is some information that I would like to have as we go into budget season to consider. And so I would like to ask my fellow board members to think about, is there stuff that we can be putting a list together for staff so that they have plenty of time to pull that stuff together before budget season is on us again? I think that's it. Thank you.

3:21:12 Director Langworthy? Yeah. Let's see. I went to Thurston High School's greenhouse ribbon cutting. It was quite special. It was great to hear the story of how they were able to get the grant in the small amount of time that they were able to make it happen. So kudos to them. They were able to get $26,000 to fix up an old greenhouse, and it was quite lovely. I look forward to seeing what it

3:21:57 looks like come Mother's Day when they go to sell the flowers and raise some money, and I think it'll be fun for the students. I also went to the homecoming game at Thurston High School. That was pretty entertaining. Really packed. Good time, though. The other thing I want to mention is I am excited for October. I know Dr. Stover and I, we've talked about the agenda coming out earlier. I just can't tell you just how excited I am to receive information way more in advance than what we have.

3:22:43 It's just been challenging to ask questions on a Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then there's Monday, and we're at a board meeting, and we just got done reading gigantic packets. And we have so many questions, it's hard to get the questions out, process, and get it all answered. So I do really look forward to that, and I've been appreciating the collaboration that you've been bringing. It's very much appreciated. Thank you. Can I-- Do you mind if I make one comment? Go ahead. I appreciate what you said about the greenhouse. I'm sorry I missed the ribbon cutting. I would be remiss if I didn't say I think the reason we were able to

3:23:30 make $26,000 go so far is because the work our maintenance team did. I just happened to walk up. I was going out on tour with Brett, and they had someone help them assist with the concrete, but they did almost all the work themselves. And so it was a great synergy between the Springfield Education Foundation and the maintenance team working together. So I want to make sure that they get their credit, and I know you would feel the same way. Yeah. I wish I wrote everything down. I left that paper at home. Everything I learned from that conversation. But yeah, maintenance, they were saying how they learned how- Yeah ... the concrete company was giving all the tips. Yeah. So now they know how to do it for now on.

3:24:16 So it was a good investment, yes. Yeah. Director Brand? Sure. Yeah. Just having a lot of great kids back in school and went to the open house. My daughter at Thurston Middle, and ran into Sean there as well, who was seemingly everywhere all at once, all the time, and it's just fantastic to see. I'm not sure how you do it, but I appreciate it, and I know people appreciate it, and it's just awesome to see our administration so involved everywhere. It's fantastic. It's eye-opening. And maybe that's just because now that I'm looking for it, I see it more often now. Not to criticize anything in the past, but it is nice to see

3:25:02 the involvement, and I think people really appreciate it. I am myself going to be out of town for our next meeting, so I plan on joining virtually just so that there's no surprise there. Taking my family on what's turned into an annual tradition for us over to do a Halloween thing at Disneyland. So we put off any vacation over summer in lieu of picking for our favorite holiday season. But otherwise, yeah, I think things are going well. I'm happy with how things are progressing. I got my plug in for the option levy was spoken about many times tonight. So I'm very happy about this. Thank you. Yeah, I had the opportunity,

3:25:47 was with Dr. Stover at Hamlin for a visit, and also with Brandon. And great touring the school, and during the lunchtime, very active time. That was fun. And then later, was it the next day or a couple of days later? We went to the Relief Nursery for the Chamber of Commerce Business After Hours. And so that- It was that same day. Huh? Was it the same day? I think so. Yeah, they all run together, but it's like we've got a quick meeting like this. But again, it's great. The community is having the opportunity to meet Sean and discover what a wonderful person he is. I think it's good for Springfield schools, so am enjoying that.

3:26:33 Was at the grand opening of the greenhouse. That was great. It's always fun to go out to Thurston. Was out there for the game. We missed each other, though. I think I was sitting on the Springfield side the second half, wanting to be equal. And it was a well-played game. It's nice to see Springfield High School be competitive, and it was good. Want to just make the announcement that the Eugene Symphony is having their youth concert. You might get it on your calendars. All board members and the superintendent are invited to participate. That's Tuesday, November 17th at 10:30. And sometime they do an afternoon show. This will only be one. But it's really fun to see

3:27:18 3,000 kids. So excited, and they do a different but equally good program every year. And then this is Hispanic Heritage Month, as I think we heard earlier. And again, it's got me curious. I want to give a shout-out first to the newsletter that I think that Taylor and Xavier put out. It really highlights a lot of the great things, and got me thinking about can we leverage it even more? Can we invite... There's Native American Heritage Month is November, Black History Month is February, Women's History is March, Music in Our Schools Month is March, Asian

3:28:04 American Pacific Islander Month. I think I sent maybe this list to you. There's a link there. But how can we sort of leverage that opportunity into the social studies area, invite speakers to come out and talk to kids? Maybe even feature the food from that culture in our nutrition services, in our lunch programs. And I think there's ways that we can really utilize this and maybe help our students grow from that experience. So just a thought on that. And that's all I have. We're going to move into the last item on the agenda, which is the superintendent search. And so thank you, Sean, for participating in this portion of the meeting.

3:28:57 So it's something that the board has a responsibility to do. We've done an acting search, we've done an interim search, and the idea with each of those is to allow more of a runway to do the proper search, and I talked a little bit about it before. So at this point, as I see it, the next step, correct me if I'm wrong, is for the board to agree to put out an RFP for a search firm. And I see as a possibility is perhaps October 12th, which gives us a couple of weeks, and then we can talk. I think we had a 10-day opening on the interim. Do you remember, Brett?

3:29:44 Yeah, I think so. I'd have to go back and review the timeline, but I would say that you'd want a solid two weeks to have that advertised. Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've got to put the RFP together, which I want to make sure that we're not missing any critical- Right ... components of it. So does two weeks give you enough time to do that? Yeah, I haven't talked to Damian yet. She's aware that this conversation's going. She's probably actually, I don't know if she's watching that or not. But 100%, first thing in the morning, I can let her know that we need to get an RFP put together for a permanent superintendent search. So just as far as a possible schedule, October 12th issue the RFP,

3:30:29 wait a couple of weeks. October 26th would be our next work session. We could add an action item if we need to because that is a work session, but maybe select the search firm at that time. Then the calendar from that point on becomes sort of a shared collaboration between the search firm and the board. How much input do we want, and what different mechanism surveys or listening groups, focus groups, et cetera, do we want to do? But that usually comes with facilitation of the search firm itself. And the only other date that I have as a possibility on there is a hire date April to May in there. And again, that can be driven again by what the board wants to see as far as

3:31:14 prior information coming in. So that's all I really have on that. Is there anything else, Brett, that we need to talk about at this- Just a consistent, and maybe it's you as the chair, Jonathan, but it would be nice to have a board member representative that we could be communicating with on this. And I would see that Damian would be from our office, and I would see that Dustin would need to be involved just from an HR office to make sure that we're hitting all of our legal requirements as far as the human resources side of it. On the search firm aspect of it or- Only on- The RFP on- Yeah. Not the selection, just making sure that we're following Oregon revised statute because I know that

3:32:02 it's been a little bit of a bumpy road lately with some of the stuff that the board's going through, and I want to make sure that we can avoid all that- Indeed ... in the future. Well, and to that end, I think that's the point we'd want to engage a- Yeah ... a legal counsel and make sure that there's agreement between all parties. Yep. So. And I'm wondering if it might not be worthwhile to somehow include or cite the Oregon requirements in the RFP- Yep ... so that people know you're going to be responsible for getting us following these steps. And I'll make sure you guys hear this now. So when I looked at the contract with the prior

3:32:48 search firm, it expressly articulated follow the laws of the State of Ohio. That's where the mistake was made because the search firm based in Ohio was following all of the requirements under the State of Ohio. I did not catch that. Yeah. I had not seen that contract before it was signed by a former administrator here. But that was a big critical error because I'm sure that they were compliant in the State of Ohio Was that a contract we drew up or did they draw up the contract? They drew it up and presented it to a former administrator. So that's a good point. We want to make sure

3:33:36 and we'll keep an eagle eye out on that one. Yeah. Okay. But I'm really looking forward to a lot of public comment, a lot of public outreach and so on. And I think that's going to be really important, though, you articulate in the requirements of the RFP, is that you want the search firm with board involvement to reach out to these groups and this many meetings and regionalized and if you want to involve staff. I know that in the past there's been staff meeting opportunities where you've maybe held four or five around the community for staff to come to and solicit input, all of those things. So Jonathan, would it be you that they would work with on the RFP? Typically it's the board chair, but- Okay. Just want to make sure

3:34:21 ... it's at the discretion of the board, so it doesn't necessarily have to be. How much of that detail needs to be in the RFP? Do we need to, or do we just give them general parameters and then we can work out the- Yeah, the general parameters on what they're going to be responding to. So there'll be a matrix on how you guys are going to grade the respondents, and I think one of those is public involvement- Yeah ... community outreach. But the details of how many meetings and all of that- It'll be worked out when you guys meet with the- Is definitely- When you select the search firm and then you- Negotiate the final Yeah, negotiate the final agreement. The more specific, however, we can be on the RFP up front- Mm-hmm ... it's both an advantage to the district, definitely an advantage to the company- Yeah ... that'd be submitting the RFP.

3:35:06 And you guys, from my perspective, I think you guys are still in pretty good shape as far as the timeline goes. Again, it's- You can't let it slide any longer, but I think you guys are still in pretty solid shape. Yeah. I just want to get moving on it because some other districts, and it is one of those situations where the early to the table has- Mm-hmm ... the best picking. Not exclusively, though. I think there's a lot of attractiveness to the district, so that'll help. One of my suggestions would be that for a permanent superintendent, I would also build in site visitation. Mm-hmm. I think that's really important. For board members to go to their site. Correct. Just to make sure we're clear there. So you- Yeah ... and that's something we didn't have the time in the interim to do

3:35:53 that typically we would. Yeah, I think get board members to go and then typically it would involve, it has, you guys can decide, Brian and I as the two people leading instruction and operations. We just have different conversations with- Mm-hmm ... you guys are more community and policymakers, and we tend to be able to dig in a little bit more on staff. Mm-hmm. And again, just so we know, usually you do a divide and conquer- Right ... kind of a thing, so it's not like we all five go. Right. We might have three candidates, and we probably should visit- Yeah ... all three. Mm-hmm. Yeah. However you guys decide. If it's in state, great. That just lessens it. Out of state,

3:36:38 a little more coordination involved. Okay. Any questions or comments, thoughts moving forward? Come into the next meeting with some ideas on specificity of what we would like there so we can give clear guidance to Brett and his team. I would anticipate getting contacted by Damian, maybe even tomorrow. And that's fine. Yeah. The RFP process is not a commitment to actually selecting a search firm at the end of the day, right? We're just- It's a solicitation for interest. We're just getting search firms drawn up that are interested, and then we can pursue them if we need to. Then, yeah, you evaluate the proposals and- Yeah. So I think when you issue an RFP, there's a

3:37:23 reasonable consideration that you'll actually select a search firm. I think that these search firms do put a lot of effort and resource into presenting those proposals, so it's not performative. It's in good faith- Mm-hmm ... that that's the goal, is that you're going to be hiring one of these. Now, that's 100% up to the board whether or not you do. We've done lots of RFPs where we've failed the search or failed the process for lack of respondents, for whatever the case may be. So there's always that option. But hopefully we'll have a good candidate pool because, of course, if we decided none of them were going to fit what we wanted, then you start the process over, so

3:38:09 it's at least another month beyond that, and so. You were going to ask a question, I think. Yeah. And I've only mentioned it briefly before, but my concern continues to be that do we have a definitive timeline on when we decide that maybe that may not even be necessary, that we're perfectly content with our existing interim that we would like to offer an extension to? Right? And I'm saying this candidly because I don't know directly, but the impression I get is that if we continue to pursue a permanent long-term search, that he may not throw his hat in the arena, which is something that I take as a strong consideration for how we proceed with this

3:38:54 before we make formal decisions, which is why I ask about the RFP being a relatively expected commitment. So yeah, I get the process. I understand the need for the amount. I certainly understand the need for community feedback in terms of shaping that ultimate decision, but- Well- ... how do we go about the order of operations, I'm a little- Yeah ... iffy on. That's all. As you know, we had a bit of pushback on our processes earlier. At that time, the process Basically, the commitment to the public was that the permanent search will allow more input. For myself, I'd want to have pretty explicit direction from our constituents that if we weren't going to follow

3:39:40 what we had committed to, there's reasons behind that, so we'd need more information. The superintendent evaluation moves in parallel almost with the superintendent search, so hopefully we'll have some opportunities to converse about that. Matt? Are you on? Yeah, I'm on. Okay. So Matt, I'm totally sympathetic with what you're saying. I'm concerned if we're actually legal to not... I don't know that we could just transition him to a permanent

3:40:25 position. And it may be that even if we can, it may be a kind of a, I hate the terms with the baby, but it may be that it's like, okay, if we hire a search firm, we go out and we say, "The community's interested in A, B, and C," and we think that Sean hits those marks, A, B, and C. We may say, "Based on what we are hearing from the community, doing our due diligence, we don't see the need now because that we would need to go out." If it's legal for us to do that. So this is my personal opinion. The other thing is, though, that if we do decide to

3:41:14 do a full-blown search, I personally will encourage Sean to throw his hat in the ring because, as a former employer, I don't know that I would make anybody permanent after six months. I'd want to see a little longer probationary period. But that being said, I think he's done well enough that I think he would compete well, okay? So I would say that. Even if, as he's warned us, it means we would get less of a pool if they knew he was in the mix. So I think that's all I wanted to say.

3:41:59 Yeah. Okay. And just to reiterate, with all of the finalist candidates for the interim position, they expressed interest in being a part of the permanent search. So of course, you can't say that that's necessarily the same today, but going on that information. And then I think we'll know more after we've had the evaluation conversation. Yeah. Sounds good. And just so I'm clear, these were my opinions. I'm not an attorney. I'm not a- No, but I think what it- I'm just expressing my views ... we talked about including the attorney in this process. That would be one of the questions we want to make sure up front. So.

3:42:46 Okay. Anything else on that topic? If not, I'm going to... Well, we didn't hit five hours, but we've been here a while. Just want to remind people that our regular meeting is October 12th, and it sounds like 6:00 PM. Then we have the work session on the 26th, and then I think that the Lane ESD, the OSBA regional is at Lane ESD on Tuesday the 13th. Pretty sure that's it. It's the day after. And that's when you get sort of a statewide overview and definitely a regional overview. And you have the opportunity to meet board members from other districts, from our 16 school districts in Lane County.

3:43:32 Just for clarification, though, our next meeting on the 12th, we didn't do the executive sessions today to review Sean's performance stuff. It was... Yeah. So it will probably be on the 12th? I would say there's a likelihood of that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. All right. So this meeting is adjourned.