Springfield School Board — October 12, 2026

6:22 Welcome everyone to the October 12th, 2026 meeting of the Springfield Board of Education. I apologize for our tardiness. The executive session we were in previous ran a little bit late, so thank you for your patience. Please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

7:07 And I have the honor of reading the land acknowledgement. As you know, this is National Indigenous Peoples Day, and we want to make sure, especially today, that we honor the land we are on. So we acknowledge that we are 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.

7:52 The Kalapuya are now members of the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. 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 quality contemporary education for future generations. Thank you. At this point, we'll move on to agenda item two, the approval of the agenda. Are there any changes or additions to the

8:38 agenda? Do we move approval first, then? First we, yes, move for approval- Okay ... and then we'll have a second. Okay. Move for approval of the agenda. Second. Okay, moved by Director Bruce, seconded by Director Cole. If you'll notice, we're missing Matt Brandt, our fifth director. He got caught in the weather in Anaheim, so he's making his way back, and we'll bring him up to speed at some point. So we have a motion on the table. Are there any, again, changes to it? So I have a couple of adjustments. One would be to

9:23 add, I guess, 5AB, which would be to take action on what we discussed in executive session. Okay. So noted. I'd also like to add an item, that is the June 8th, 2026 special meeting minutes. So noted. And then, I would like to pull consent agenda item number two, the June 22nd, 2026 special minutes for discussion, and item number five, the financial statement for discussion. Okay, so noted. And I will be pulling

10:08 action item 5A7, the personnel report. Okay. And I'll be pulling action items 5A from consent, 5A number six, the financial institution resolution, and also the ODE restraint and seclusion report, which is number eight. And Mr. Chair, I would like to pull action item 5A3, the June 8th business meeting minutes. So you would like to pull it, and we will be adding it-

10:55 That's one that was already requested to be pulled. No, I think there's two different sets of minutes. So those are the business minutes that were also in our packet, and in our packet from the previous meeting, special minutes. So actually, the meeting was convened, so we have minutes from that, and then we went into executive session, and then we have a separate set of minutes for the business meeting when we came out of executive session. It's confusing, I know, but- So, Director Bruce ... in our packet, there's actually those minutes, but they're not listed in the agenda. So the special meeting minutes are being added.

11:40 The business meeting minutes are being pulled. Okay. Yes? Yeah. Yes. And then, are you pulling the business meetings from consent? Yes. Thank you. So do we need to now... If we're done with changes to the agenda. Yeah, so someone could restate the motion with the additions and deletions and pulls I can take a stab at it. Yeah. Move that we approve the agenda with the following changes, that action items 5A2,

12:28 3, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are pulled for discussion, and we're adding item 5B1, the action on the executive session, and 5B2, which we discuss the June 8th, 2026 special minutes. Or just action item C. Yeah, could be C. Yes. Okay, that'll be better. We'll do it and keep it- We'll do C, that's better. Thank you ... separate. I'll second. So moved by Director Cole, seconded by Director Light. Any further changes to the agenda?

13:13 I'll call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Are there any against? Hearing none, motion carries four to zero. Okay, so moving on, one of my favorite parts of the new year is the welcome of our student representatives to our board meetings. Thank you for being here. We appreciate very much. Wanted to give you just a little bit of a history. When I first came on the board a few years back, we didn't have student representatives. In fact, there were very few districts in the state that had student representatives.

14:00 But I went to a national conference, and I believe it was in Arizona, but there was a presentation put on by a school district in the Kansas City area, and they had this innovative idea of having student representation attend their board meetings with the intent of informing them on their opinions on policies and procedures that the board may be looking at from a student perspective, what that would be, as well as introducing things that the board might not know going on in your school where the board could be supportive of whatever. And so, we came back and ran it sort of through the board at the time, and that's when we started having student representation.

14:46 It has been very, very valuable. So, I would like to urge you, just from my own perspective, if you would like to stay for the whole meeting, that would be great because we used to actually routinely refer to our student representatives in real time at a board meeting on certain topics that we're going through, or they could weigh in, say, "Here's something you might want to consider." So, with that sort of mindset, if you're willing to stay, we'd love to have your participation. We understand you have very busy lives and very busy schedules, so if that doesn't work out, that's fine. But again, it would be great if you're here, and

15:31 we can enjoy your expertise as representation of your peers or answering questions and that kind of thing. So without further ado, please introduce yourself, and we'll just move from my left to your right as far as the presentation. And thank you again for being here. Really look forward to the partnership that we're going to have with you as we move through the school year. You might have to press the button there. Is it working? Yes, now. It's good. Do you want me to just introduce myself or start with the presentation? What? Do you want me to just introduce myself or start with the presentation? Yeah, introduce yourself and then go through what you have for

16:19 tonight. And again, sort of looking future forward on things you might want to include in your report. I know we're just getting out and we're caught up in the excitement of the schools opening. Good evening, chair and members of the board. My name is Dortis Diaz. I'll be representing Willamette Leadership Academy. Willamette Leadership Academy has had a great start to the school year. Cadets have successfully completed basic training and we have already held multiple promotion ceremonies, both company and battalion wide. These promotions recognize cadets who have demonstrated the effort, performance, and dedication required to advance to the next rank. Intramural sports. WLA has also started its intramural sports tournament. This season, cadets are competing in soccer. The sixth and seventh graders teams have recently faced off, with seventh

17:05 graders coming out top. They will now advance to play the eighth grade. Picture day. Picture day will take place on Monday, October 12th, today. November. Important November dates would be November 5th, we have our first ever homecoming dance. On November 10th is the Marine Corps birthday. November 11th is Veterans Day. For Veterans Day, our color guard may participate in a small parade or ceremony similar to what WLA has done in the past. We also want to remind everybody about our veterans wall. Anybody who has served in the armed forces or has a family member who has served is welcome to bring in pictures from their time in the military to be displayed on the wall. We have high hopes for this school year and are excited about everything still to

17:51 come. We look forward to another successful and memorable year at Willamette Leadership Academy. That is all. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. Student reps, the mics are very directional, so you really have to talk into them. Just an audio check from the audience. Can you hear okay? Could be up a little bit more so. Speak in your student voice and thank you again for your input. You can take back to WLA if there's anything that you think is appropriate or your administration thinks is appropriate for board members to attend, please let us know. Mm-hmm. And that goes for everyone Good evening, members of the board. My name is Tegan Roche, and I'm here for Thurston High School. The 2026 through 2027 school year has started off very strong.

18:39 We have 92% average daily attendance. Students are happy, campus morale is high, and students are excited to be back at school. 71% of incoming freshmen attended our Colt Kickoff, which familiarized them with THS campus culture, expectations, and life in high school. Many of the freshmen began to build friendships which have carried over into the early school year. Freshman orientation day was also massively successful. During our freshman assembly, student participation and engagement was noticeably higher than in years past. Additionally, the old dilapidated THS greenhouse has been extensively remodeled and rebuilt thanks to a grant in coordination, I think that meant participation, with the Springfield Education Foundation. The remodel has been positively covered by KEZI 9 News.

19:27 We successfully organized and executed two club rushes within the first month of school, which gave incoming students an early opportunity to get involved and make an impact on the Thurston High School community. Our homecoming football game was also the rivalry game against Springfield High School. The stadium was overflowing. Students are showing up to participate in ways that they haven't in past years. Students are dressing for the theme, staying respectful, and keeping Thurston's Springfield's friendly rivalry alive. The homecoming dance was also a massive success. It followed the trend of increased student engagement with high attendance and ticket sales. It was well received by students. Students are being challenged academically in College Now and AP classes, preparing them for college and life after high school. Seniors are feeling ready to move on to the next step in life. Some are already making plans and submitting applications.

20:14 Our biology classes continued the annual field study, gathering samples in the field to analyze in the lab and back in the classroom. The weather was on our side. Student athletes have reported an easier time balancing sports and academics. And also, we had more than 100 attendees at Beyond High School Night and the Financial Aid and Scholarship Night, which are events that help seniors and their families prepare for life after high school. We are setting some big goals for 65% of students to complete their FAFSA this year so that they have the information they need to make an informed decision about college education and training after high school. Some upcoming events are our National Girls' Night Out. It's going to be celebrated by Thurston's Women's Empowerment Club on October 16th.

21:00 Our annual Halloween carnival is also coming up on Friday, October 30th, featuring games, snacks, sweets, and a Halloween costume contest. The fall musical concert is on October 22nd at 7:00 PM, and "Seussical the Musical" is coming up. Opening night is December 3rd. Thank you. Thank you, Tegan. Good evening, school board members. I'm Ariana, and I'm here on behalf of Springfield High School. This past Saturday, October 10th, we hosted our homecoming dance in the commons with this year's theme, A Night in Vegas. Our senior leadership team worked hard to plan and create a memorable experience for our students, resulting in a great turnout and a fun and successful evening for everyone who attended. We also incorporated our 85% to Thrive initiative as an

21:48 incentive, offering students a discount for meeting the attendance goal. We are proud of our students and staff for their efforts in making this year's homecoming a positive and memorable event for our school community. We are also beginning to see encouraging signs in our student attendance data. In October, period attendance measured by the percentage of class periods students attend has increased by 0.6% compared to September. This is a positive shift from last year, when period attendance declined by 4.3% over the same period. While it is still early in the school year, this improvement is an encouraging sign as we continue to reinforce the importance of regular attendance through our 85% to Thrive initiative. Our homecoming pep rally took place on October 8th on 10th Street from 4:30 to 6:45, right before our homecoming pink out game. We had a few different food vendors there, along with our clubs running games and

22:34 activities for students and families. It was a great opportunity to bring our school and community together. In athletics, girls and boys soccer, football, and volleyball have shown resilience and steady improvement as they head into the home stretch of their seasons, and we expect them to finish strong. Over the past three weeks, we have hosted two senior-focused events, our senior class meeting and senior parent night. Attendance at both was higher than expected, and the focus was on giving students and families the information they needed to make the most out of their final year and prepare for success after graduation. We also kicked off senior year with our annual Senior Sunrise on September 18th at 6:00 in the morning at Silky Field. Our senior leadership team was there at 4:00 to set up, with staff and administrators on hand to help supervise and support. We had over 200 seniors show up. Looking ahead, on October 31st, we'll host our annual Trunk or Treat in the student parking lot on 7th Street

23:22 from 5:00 to 7:00 PM. It is always a great community event that brings together our clubs, teams, students, and families. It is a busy and exciting time at Springfield High, and we're proud of the great things our students and staff are doing every day. Thank you. Thank you, Ariana. Hi, I'm Azayla. I'm the representative for Gateways High School. And in September, Bratton Campus students were excited to be back at school and start a new year. The first week was all about getting back into the school routine, meeting new people, and getting to know each other. During advisory, students played team-building games and did activities to help everyone feel comfortable. Teachers were also encouraged to start the year with icebreakers and fun questions,

24:08 so students could get to know their classmates and feel more connected. Many students are excited and are on track for graduation. Two GE students have already graduated this year. Other students are taking night school classes, which include the history of rock and astronomy. Cosmetology students started the school year by opening the salon back up Monday through Friday, 12:30 to 3:05 PM. And after school hours on Tuesday from 3:05 to 8:00 PM. We also started our William Alane Day of Beauty, which is a day for senior citizens and community members to come in and get a free service. September was Suicide Prevention Month. In advisory, we learned about resources. We're excited to announce that we're starting two new

24:53 clubs, Latinx Club and GSA. These clubs will be a great way for students to meet new people, make friends, express themselves, and feel supported. We are excited to get started and build a welcoming community for everyone. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening, board members. My name is Eduardo Avalos, representing the A3. This year, like every year, we started off with Headwaters. Headwaters is a few days of the first week that we spend rotating through different classrooms to give students a good feel about their classes. We got to spend our time learning about STEM through a mini escape room. During the escape room, we had table groups tasked with separate things, such as

25:38 decoding a word to spell creativity, solving a dilemma problem with different resources, solving a sudoku, doing math to find out the area inside a square, and making a paper airplane to land in a certain area. We also got to discuss our thoughts about what truly is justice to us and learn about the different types of means of justice in our society. Another activity we did was improv exercises, giving new students a chance to get a taste of some of the activities done in the performing art classes. For Humaniqueries, Humaniqueries is a combination of humanities, language arts, and social sciences and inquiries to the sciences. Humaniqueries is what drives Confluence, which is the finals weeks at A3. During Confluence, we work as a team using the process of EDCRO to show our learning. EDCRO stands for explore, design,

26:25 create, refine, and own. Each Confluence has a theme, and this year's theme being justice for all. And the theme for this specific Confluence for this term is something civil, with the focus on civil rights. Our ones, which are freshmen and sophomores, will be working together to create a spoken word presentation, and our twos, the juniors and seniors, will be creating original board games. Confluence is open to the public and will happen in early December. For our advisory, this year we started with World Peace Day coloring pages. For this activity, we went around our advisory tables coloring in pages and rotating every few minutes so that everyone was working on different pages. Then on the 18th, we did a school-wide cleanup of our streets. Students held garbage bags, wore gloves, and used garbage pickers to clean up trash

27:11 on the streets and sidewalks. Last week, we participated in Spanish Heritage Month by doing activities such as learning about different people and different majors. Liberal arts was a poet, Pablo Neruda from Chile. Performing arts was a dancer named Rita Moreno from Puerto Rico. STEM was an astronaut named Ellen Ochoa, a Mexican American. And visual art was Frida Kahlo from Mexico. We also played Loteria for Spanish Heritage Month. Loteria is a Mexican traditional game similar to bingo. And for our events coming up, the marine biology class has an upcoming trip to Newport Aquarium and the Hatfield Marine Society Center to learn about marine technology and will also be working with local conservation groups. We have a few important events coming up towards the end of this month as well.

27:58 On October 21st, we will be having our fall dance. This will be followed by our student-led conferences on October 22nd and 23rd. These conferences are like parent-teacher conferences, except they're run by students, where families will be welcomed and come in to meet with us and our advisory teachers. We create a slideshow around our grades, the credits we have and are earning, our goals for the year, and we talk about our EDCRO process for the year as well. Finally, in the month of October, we have our ACT and pre-ACT testing on October 27th. Thank you. Thank you. Any comments or questions from board members? Seems like- Welcome. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say welcome.

28:43 Yeah. It's great to see you guys. Seems like we're off to a great start. I like the sort of common theme. It seems like we're really getting students engaged, and anything we can do to help support that effort, let us know. Look forward to the partnership for this next school year. So, thank you so much for being here. I'm sure you don't have anything else to do the rest of the evening, but again, thanks for being here, and we know you probably have to leave. We'll see you in a month. Thank you. Next up under presentations is the Springfield DECA

29:30 Club. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Thanks. Yeah. Google right there. Okay. We knew he was Greg. Good evening, school board members. It's not on yet. Oh, no?

30:15 Yeah. There we go. Good evening, school board members. My name is Greg Fisher. I am the CTE business teacher at Springfield High School, where I've been in that position for the last five years, so this is entering year six. This is my 27th year, technically, as a high school business teacher, and I'm very excited to be here tonight to share with you hopefully something that Is uplifting and exciting moving forward after a year of a lot of not so exciting news that all of us had to deal with. So last spring, you approved the opportunity for myself and four

31:01 Springfield High School students to attend the International Career and Development Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. That conference, I think I've been there at least a dozen times, maybe more, is pretty incredible. Over 25,000 students from across the country, as well as teachers, as well as business professionals, alumni attend and come together for competition, for growth, for learning, for college and career development. And it is a fast action-packed three to four days that really is life-changing. And that's one of the reasons we're here tonight, is to share a little bit about

31:47 that experience. Now, as those two would tell you, if you give me a mic, I can probably talk for a really long time. So I'm going to try to keep it short and let them do most of the talking. We qualified four students last year through two different avenues. One of them was our school-based enterprise, the Miller Mart. So this is our fourth year. We've been gold certified for three years. Essentially, if you have a school-based enterprise at your school, you can submit a report about your operations and what you do in a variety of areas, and DECA, as an organization, will certify you either as gold standard, silver standard, or there's an honorable mention category too. So we've been gold certified for three years with the Miller Mart, and as a result of that, we qualified two individuals to go to this

32:35 International Career and Development Conference. We also qualified two individuals to go as part of the Leadership Academy. So we have two of those members here with us tonight. Unfortunately, the other two were not able to join us, but I'm super excited for them to share their experience with you. Just to give you a little background, and I did submit some information, so if you're not as familiar, I know some of you are, DECA is one of many career and technical student organizations. It serves both high school students and college students. Its mission is to prepare emerging leaders and entrepreneurs for careers in marketing, finance, hospitality, and management. It connects classroom instruction, and this is the key part,

33:22 with applied learning, business professionals, leadership development, and competition. I always tell students it's co-curricular. So the concept is what we learn in class, we're able to now go apply either through competition or attending conferences where we're connecting with all these people outside of school, and that's kind of the key, getting outside of the school. It also offers opportunities for students with a variety of interests. There's over 42 different categories students can choose to compete in, in addition to the conferences that are available to them. So it's not always just straight driven business tact, or business careers. Okay. So one of the things that I wanted to mention, and I already mentioned a couple of

34:09 these, but this opportunity with DECA is so important because of what it offers students the opportunity for, and one of them is opportunity. But it gives them confidence, and I think you'll see that in our students tonight. It gives them connection and networking, to not only students, but business professionals, alumni. It's a pretty unique experience. And what I would say, before I hand it over to our students to chat with you a little bit, is that in my 27 years as a high school teacher, there has not been a more impactful experience that I've been a part of than DECA. It still gives me goosebumps when I talk about it. And I remember in my high school, we had FBLA, which is still a thing, but I

34:54 knew nothing about DECA. And my first DECA experience, all I could say was, "Wow." I was blown away at the experience and exposure that high school students had the opportunity to be part of. And I truly believe it's life-changing. Let me share with you, so one of our students, who wasn't able to be here tonight, wrote something. I want to read that for you, and then I'm going to turn it over to Rylan and Ari. Okay? So this is from Victoria Washington. She's a senior, three-year member, I think, of DECA for us. And she says, "Attending ICDC was one of the most memorable experiences I've had through DECA. One of my favorite parts was getting to meet new people from all over the country,

35:41 network with other DECA members, and explore the city, Atlanta, while experiencing a new environment. It helped me step outside of my comfort zone, become more confident when talking to new people, and realize how important it is to build connections with others. I also got to see firsthand how DECA brings together students who share similar goals, interests, and passions for business and leadership. This experience showed me that DECA is about so much more than competitions. It is about developing real-world skills, creating friendships, learning from others, and discovering opportunities I might not have experienced otherwise. As Vice President of Marketing for my chapter, I want to use what I've learned at ICDC to encourage more students to get involved, help our chapter grow, and show others how much DECA can offer them.

36:27 I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunities and support that made this experience possible, and I hope to continue growing as a leader and helping other students have these same opportunities. Thank you for investing in our education and giving us experiences that prepare us for our futures." And with that, I want Rylan to talk to you Okay. I'm Rylan. I was able to attend ICDC through the Thrive Leadership Academy, which we applied for, and we were accepted. I was very nervous going in. I'm not a super social person. Well, I didn't used to be. And going there, I didn't know anybody, and I never really do anything

37:13 like that. And it started off with a lot of team building. We sat at tables. You weren't allowed to sit at a table with anybody. You couldn't sit at a table with more than one person from your state, and there was nobody from Oregon at my table, so I only got to speak to people that I never would've met before. And I got to speak-- It was just amazing to be surrounded by people that have the exact same goals and passions as me, and that's not something you can always do at school. It was so nice to have something that was very focused. And the things that I learned there motivated me so much. I know we actually, together on a bus ride home from one of the big conferences, signed up for Business Week through Oregon Business Academy, which we attended this

37:59 summer, which was another amazing opportunity where I got to connect with so many business professionals in the real world, build so many connections, and build my skills. And I now know what I want to go into for the rest of my life, and I've gotten so many skills to use to... I'm forgetting my words. To follow that path. I can create that path for myself now because of what I've learned from these opportunities that we got through you guys. I'm Ariana. So yeah, like they said, I have been in DECA for three years, and going into it, ICDC has always been the goal. And when we found out that we could go this last year, it was very exciting.

38:44 I went on behalf of Miller Mart, so we presented the student store, and it's way bigger than State. When we went in there, it was a different experience. It was like, there was way more people. I met a lot of people there. Going anywhere, there's pin trading there. So you get pins, and you go trade with other states, and every state has a different pin. So you meet different people. All the adults there also have pins, so you're just meeting people, and it's really fun. So outside of business, we also have fun there.

39:30 And going on the-- Like you said, on the bus ride home, we signed up for OBA, and OBA was probably one of the best experiences I've had. It was a week, and I met a lot of people, a lot of business professionals that I still talk to and still send me opportunities that they're having, whether it's through their business or other business weeks that are happening. And it just connected me to a lot more people. And yeah, kind of taught me what I wanted to do and what people I could reach out to if I needed help with that. And just to wrap that up, thank you so much for sharing that. Our purpose of being here tonight is just to say thank you because you made the opportunity possible, and to let you know that there's

40:15 so much good going on with what we do in our CTE programs. I'd love for you to ask any questions that you have, to be answered by myself or the students, about the experience or about what we're doing. I know we're very motivated for this year. They're super motivated because this year it's in Anaheim. Everybody gets excited about Disneyland, but it's been a great experience for these young people, and they're really leading this year. I'm hands-off supporting their leading, which is incredible. Thank you so much. Board members? I can just feel your excitement. I'm really excited for you. When Greg was speaking, he said it was a life-changing experiment,

41:01 and I see you both just nodding your head. Very excited. So you guys had presentations that you had to do at this conference? What was that like? Well, we present at State, and then once you present at State, you go to ICDC. Mm-hmm. Two other kids presented the Miller Mart, so going to ICDC for it was kind of new because I wasn't the one who presented it, but they did a really good job. So being able to work with them and figure out what we wanted to say, kind of what we wanted to show off of the store. I feel like I learned a lot about the store, and it made me more connected in a way.

41:46 Mm-hmm. So I just wanted to speak just generally about DECA. I screen for a large scholarship, and I have the opportunity to interview amazing students from all over the state. And one thing that I've noticed over and over, the kids that seem to rise towards the top, that are well-spoken, that have real leadership ability, a lot of them have DECA on their information. Just very impressed with the program overall, and clearly, and I'm glad it's happening at my alma mater. So thank you very much.

42:32 I just really appreciate how excited you are. I wish we could do this for all of our students. I think there's real value in being able to travel outside our area, where we're going to approve a couple of travel for a couple of groups here later. But I really wish we could do this for all the students. They could find their niche and find those things, those opportunities. So, and it's great to see how excited you are. Great. And for me, thank you for reminding us of what education should be. Just pure joy. Director Langworthy and I had a conversation earlier. She wasn't familiar with DECA, so she asked, "Well, what is DECA?

43:18 What's it stand for?" Any of you know what DECA... It's one of those- Do you want the answer? The real answer? Well, they used to- Do they know? Do you know? Yeah. Well, then you do it. The Distributive Education Clubs of America. Right. And everybody just refers to it so much as DECA that it's just DECA. But I knew Mr. Fisher when he was out at Thurston, and he was doing the DECA club there. And we talked about how these student clubs engage and give students a reason to attend, and then particularly those conferences, it's a whole other level, right? It's just like whoa. Very professional in the presentation and just being amongst all these

44:06 people that are pursuing that professionalism, that excellence. So, so glad you got to go. Are you both seniors? So hopefully you can encourage others to attend. Do you have any other of your peers excited to go next year? Yeah, we've been doing meetings every other Tuesday at lunch, which is getting a lot of kids excited. And at all of our club drives, we've had a DECA table there, and we've had a lot of signups from younger kids. So it's very exciting to see DECA grow. Good for you. Well, thank you so much for sharing with the board. Thank you, Mr. Fisher, for being the advisor to the group. You obviously have some great kids. Thank you.

44:56 And our final presentation is from our partners at Willamalane in the city of Springfield. I'm not sure who's leading. Are you just jointly all leading this? So anyway, welcome. It's always a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. That's a tough act to follow, for sure. Let me just start. Okay. All right, well, good evening school board. My name's Michael Wargo, I'm the executive director at Willamalane, and I'm really excited to be here with my team to share, one, as a proposal, but really just talk about an amazing collaboration

45:42 that occurs between Willamalane and the Springfield School District. We just got back from a conference, and when we talk about the way that this collaboration works between the school district and the park district, there's a lot of jealousy, and a lot of people are like, "How do you do that?" And it's really about the leadership. I've had the opportunity to talk with Shawn a couple times. He's jumped into Team Springfield meetings with both feet, but also the continued support of Brett and Brian. But also, I just wanted to thank you, the board, for your continued support of this partnership. The first part of this is going to be we're going to talk about a proposal for native plant nursery over by our Game Bird Park. And then the second part of it is, we've got a lot of exciting

46:27 information to share with you about what that collaboration looked like all of last year, with some amazing numbers that we're super proud of. So enough of my talk. I'm going to turn it over to Christina Bowe. I'm not sure you can hear me. Okay. Hi, I'm Christina Bowe. I'm a planner and designer for Willamalane. I'm joined tonight by Eric Adams, who is a supervisor, and our natural resource staff, and we have staff from Springfield also joining us in the audience today to talk about this project. We have been working together doing natural resource related projects throughout Springfield.

47:12 So what you're seeing on your screen right now is an example of a collaboration where we installed a rain garden. And increasingly, we find our agencies installing voluntarily or mandatory green infrastructure projects in Springfield. And those require lots of plants and time and resources from our agencies. And so there's been some excitement about our agencies collaborating on a native plant nursery to help provide plant material for all of our projects going forward. And so as we started discussing this opportunity, we started looking at places that we could build and host this native plant nursery, and one of the options that came up was the potential to install it where the youth farm used to

48:00 have their gardens at the Game Bird site. And that was an exciting opportunity for us, or one of the top locations that we were looking at, for a number of reasons. One, because it has some established infrastructure there for farming and gardening. There's some shelters there and a potential for some storage. There's good access for volunteers to engage. And there's also some really good adjacent uses. So the Game Bird Community Garden is a community garden that we help manage on the site. That is actually run by Plaza de Nuestra Comunidad.

48:45 And then the Springfield Public Schools Farm-to-School program, which runs there, which is really amazing. If you haven't been out there to see how much beautiful produce they have out there, it's quite amazing. So those two are both adjacent uses that would be very supportive and ... help. We would be able to support each other, I think, if we were to locate there. We have similar needs and similar uses happening on that site. So we put together a little concept for what this might look like. It would include some storage areas for storing plants. We would have some materials, like soils and compost stored out there. We'd have a potting area,

49:30 two shade structures, one for each agency, and then some raised beds, just to start us off. And some of the benefits that I wanted to just highlight of this combined project is the ability to combine our staffing and budget resources between our two agencies so that we can effectively manage a native plant nursery. It's not something that either of us are feeling like we can tackle alone necessarily, but doing it together makes it more possible. It would reduce our plant material cost for projects. So when we have to replace plants in our green infrastructure throughout our city,

50:15 we can use these plant materials. We can also do it for our restoration projects. We have over 1,000 acres of natural area that we regularly do native plantings in. And then expand storage for our plant materials. So we can actually accept donations and potentially store them on this site, which would be really exciting for us. We have staff on both agencies that have the ability to collect native plant seeds and to propagate native plants from local sources, which produces a much more successful plant stock for us to use. So that would be exciting. And then we'd be able to have volunteer groups.

51:00 And for Springfield Public Schools, we feel like we could probably supply surplus plants for your projects on your sites as well. There could be potential for collaborations with students to come out to learn and volunteer at the native plant garden. And it would also help having, I would assume, help having additional staff on site just for extra eyes and security of that Game Bird garden area. So, that's our proposal. We're really excited about this collaboration and hoping that we can include you all and collaborate more with Springfield Schools as well as part of this. So if you have any questions, we're not necessarily looking for an

51:45 answer, but wanted to share our ideas at this point and see if you had any thoughts or questions before we go forward. I'm not sure, Christine, I have a question you can answer, but I guess I understand that we've had Food for Lane County was out there, so I'm not sure how much the site is currently utilized. Is it just vacant for now or? The site that Food for Lane County was using is primarily vacant. We have our youth farm that we have some part-time staff that are on, that's shown in that diagram. We don't have the ability with current available staff to really occupy a lot more than what we are occupying right now.

52:30 And so this gives the opportunity to really utilize a portion of the property. It is very good soil out there, as I think people can attest to. And as was mentioned, for any agency, and if you've experienced this at your own home, plants are very, very expensive. And for us, when we have similar to the two agencies, City of Springfield with Lane, we have hundreds of acres. And to put plants on those that are acceptable to the city, because there's a review process, that budget can be really stretched. So this would be kind of a pilot. Is there thoughts that it would expand if it does well, or you think that that plot is going to be enough for a

53:18 while? In our initial conversations, this is a good starting point for us. Okay. I didn't mention that we did get some preliminary approval for an $80,000 grant through EPA funds, through the Urban Waters Partnership, to support this project. So there's that for us to get started, and then I think we could see where it goes. If there was demand for expansion and there was interest for it, we would be open to that. Thank you. Total size of this property is 10 acres. 10 acres. So it's split between two parcels, a six-acre parcel and a four-acre parcel. You can see that over half of, even with this concept, well over half of the property would still be available for expansion.

54:07 I did want to highlight one thing that was mentioned in the presentation, and this is a really, really big concern for us. I know it is for Joyce when she's out there, and that's the amount of transient population that goes through that piece of property. Having additional eyes out there and additional people that are helping manage that property would really be beneficial for us. I know that we've talked about additional security fencing, and that may be an opportunity. More development of some natural paths into the Game Bird Park that may make sense from connecting neighborhoods on the Cloverleaf Loop. So there's just a lot of benefit to this. I also don't want to get ahead of ourselves because I also understand the board is considering a facilities advisory committee. So, and that's been shared.

54:53 So just a couple of advantages for the district as well, because that's the first question I asked was, "This is a great concept. What does the school district get out of this?" Because we want to be a good partner, but we also want to have some benefit to the project as well. When I opened my packet and I turned to the early page there and saw that proposal, I thought, "Wow, this is great. This is really a good use of a property that was formerly used for agriculture." So I love the concept. You had mentioned this is in the proposal stage, so what do steps forward look like? I think our first hope is to

55:38 confirm which site we're going to be on. So if this is an opportunity, because it is such a desirable site for all the reasons that we mentioned, we'd probably follow your lead on what a good timeline is. And if it wasn't an option, we would start moving forward on identifying our next location. Okay. We're pretty flexible. Well, and on past projects that the district has done with Willamalane, I think we've been able to come to some agreements that work for both entities. So again, it's great. If this comes to fruition, has there been any discussion around education activities for our students? We heard the excitement, saw the excitement of our earlier students who had gone on a field trip.

56:25 A little more extravagant than maybe going out to the farm, but I'm just thinking for elementary students, this would be really fun. We haven't gotten to that point yet, but I think all of us are open to it. I know our partners at City of Springfield, too, are also very excited about that potential. Yeah. And- the map, so this would actually create a lot of different- Can you actually come up to the mic and identify yourself and your affiliation with this project? Oh, sit down. That looks... Sorry. Hi, I'm Joyce Douglas. I run the SPS Farm. So we do have students that come out for work experience and for field trips to the farm, and so this would enhance our ability

57:12 and the educational opportunities for students because we want to integrate more STEM and those kind of projects at the farm. So this would actually be enhancing a program that already exists. And I think we have the same goals in our school district with our students, is connecting them to the land, connecting them to the food, and stuff like that. So a shared, at least a want at this point. All right. Any other questions, board members? Okay. Next up, we're going to show you what happens once you plant seeds that we have many decades ago and really bear the fruit of successful collaboration. So up next is Kenny Wygant, our

57:57 Recreation and Community Services Director. Kenny? So this is a really good parks to rec presentation that we have here, and really what this is, I think with the exception of you, Director Brew, this is very similar to what we presented last year about really the return on the investment for the school district in partnering with Willamalane. That return really comes from kids who stay active outside of the classroom, and at times are outside of the regular school year, but still in the classroom. So a lot of this will be numbers based. I will go through it and I'll answer questions at the end, but you can also follow along in the materials in your packet. So this is a high level overview of youth program partnerships that we have. This is not every partnership that we have, Willamalane and Springfield Public Schools, but we really cover childcare programs, youth

58:44 sports, swimming, teen programs, adaptive and senior programs. You'll see a photo, I know it was mentioned earlier, about the Day of Beauty. That is one of our really great hidden gem community programs that we offer. And then the One Pass program, which is where I'll start. So if you are not familiar with the One Pass program, it is a summer pass that we have done since 2012. Willamalane runs this with the City of Eugene. Springfield Public Schools a few years ago came on board to fund passes specifically for SPS students. We were able to do that again this year. The One Pass really covers all of those destinations. You do not need cash to access these things all summer long. It's a program that we

59:31 run at Willamalane. We administer all these contracts, we recruit these partners, and then we have a pass. It's a card that kids can use all summer. So, this year, Springfield Public Schools funded 2,225 passes. That's out of the 5,500 that Willamalane has to sell. City of Eugene sells the other 5,500, so there's 11,000 total passes. This year, and I have to give so much credit to your communications team, we ran a lottery based on the number of passes we had and the demand that we had. That lottery was executed in coordination with Springfield Public Schools, so it was very clear that this was Springfield Public Schools that were funding these. Of those 11,000 passes, we set a record this year. They were used 85,725 times. So that's 85,725 times that children were doing something that we

1:00:19 know was positive, had something to do with health, wellness, education, during the summer months. So it is the ultimate tool that we use in parks and rec to keep kids busy in the summer, and Springfield Public Schools directly funded to give kids better access to that. The other thing that we really wanted to share are the school-based SPS and Willamalane programs. So I'm going to go through a series of these, and these are really numbers based, so you can see just how many students are utilizing these programs. The first are-- Actually, this is not summer camps. These are our youth care programs. So Kids Club are childcare programs that take place at Springfield Public School sites immediately after school. There's no transportation needs for families. Their children go to school, they go straight to Kids Club right after school.

1:01:06 So you can see that we've increased almost all of these programs a lot across the last year. So 457 kids took part in Kids Club last year. 212 kids took place in Winter Blast Camp. So Winter Blast Camp is winter break. These are programs, again, these are taking place at school sites, run by Willamalane staff in your buildings. So it's places that people are familiar with, it's closer to home, and it expands the number of kids that we can serve through these programs. And then the same story with Spring Break Camps. The only one that went down, and this is a part of actually kind of a good story between collaboration, we found out that our No School Day program was actually causing operational challenges for school districts. So we actually moved those to the Bob Keefer Center.

1:01:51 In agreement, we then said, "Okay, the bigger need that we have is that we can assure those winter blast camps and those spring break camp locations." By working with school district admin and Willamalane on that, we're figuring out how we can serve the maximum number of kids across Willamalane facilities and school district facilities. So numbers are going up. Demand is going to be high regardless. These childcare programs are really sought after by families. By having them in school sites, it's making them much more accessible and it's making them much easier for families to access. The other thing that's important to note is that, while schools are out for the summer, they are full of kids and Willamalane staff. So we hosted summer camps at Douglas Gardens, Riverbend, Ridgeview, Centennial, Two Rivers, and

1:02:36 Maple. We partnered directly with the school district to support your Spark program. So the Spark program were grant funds that SPS received. Willamalane helped staff and run those programs during one week of that summer. And I apologize, I flipped from the last one. So the summer numbers are now in the middle. We increased to 322 kids took place in summer camps across those school sites this summer. That photo is a school site and kids having a foam party. So it is very much summer camp. The other thing that we need to give a lot of credit to the Springfield Public School staff is that there were a lot of projects that were being done while these summer camps were going. The staff that were there, I visited every one of these sites, and the staff that were there doing school-based projects from custodial and work from SPS staff, were

1:03:24 accommodating to our families and kids and staff. We were able to set up secure drop-off and pick-up locations at those, and were able to really work together seamlessly, even though it might not seem like this is an ideal childcare location during the summer when they're doing projects. We were able to make it work, and the output is that we were able to serve about 150 to 170 kids throughout that summer, every single week. You can also see that there's a lot of those. So of those 322 kids, that accounted for 1,700 registrations. That means there's a lot of families that were having their children come week after week for the summer. It became really an essential part of their life for that summer. The next up is our sports programs. So, we have elementary school sports and middle school sports. We used to call elementary school sports After School All-Stars.

1:04:09 It was very confusing for people, so we changed it to Elementary School Sports. We offer fourth and fifth grade basketball, boys and girls. We offer K3 basketball and track and field clinics, and then we offer fourth and fifth grade track and field. We had 503 total participants take place, and that was all 12 SPS elementary schools had teams. This is also another supplement for childcare. These practices take place at school sites. It is immediately after school. They go and they get to take part in their school for practice. The games then take place either at SPS sites like Hamlin's Track or Bob Keefer Center for basketball. So it's again, it's that shared space usage, which is the only reason that we can get this many kids through these programs.

1:04:55 The other thing that is really important to note with our elementary school sports programs, we are giving kids their first chance to play. We are not catering to elite athletes in this. This is usually a spot where kids get their first chance to play. A lot of teachers and staff, from SPS are our coaches. That's by design, because it's making kids more comfortable to try their first time. And then middle school sports. So this includes volleyball, flag football, cross-country, basketball, track, and soccer. We had 1,079 participants. The biggest increase in that is volleyball. This is really, really important. This is again, an opportunity for kids to not only represent their school, they wear their uniform that has their school name on it. We are

1:05:41 hiring coaches from school sites that is not only giving kids that friendly access to know who their coaches are, but it's also giving an extra opportunity for some staff to pick up some hours and coach kids outside of school hours. Most of these sites, so there's practice that takes place, and most games also take place at SPS sites. Transportation is something that we've also been very collaborative. I give a ton of credit to your staff. While you're going through construction challenges, we've had to pivot middle school sports. The communication has allowed us to know that, and we've moved volleyball practice to Bob Keefer Center at sites that are undergoing construction right now. That partnership and collaboration with staff is the only reason we can keep that league going. We've worked really closely and communicated with parents to make sure that they understood that it would be a little bit different.

1:06:27 We've had nothing but sport. So I think the goal from parents is "Keep my kid active and playing." If there are things that we need to adjust to make this work, we're going to make it work, and that is almost a triangle of support of SPS, Willamalane, and parents figuring out that this is how we can keep kids active. And then the last thing I have for you is fourth grade swim lessons. So this is the program where every elementary school's fourth grade class gets bused as part of their school curriculum. They get bused to Willamalane Park Swim Center. They get two weeks of actual swim lessons. They learn water safety. So you see the kids there in the boat. We are not just teaching them swim lessons, we are also teaching them about river safety, what to do if your boat capsizes, and we put all of these

1:07:13 children through this program. There were 687 participants from all 12 schools. That's great, but the thing that we're most proud of is they're actually graded. We saw a really good increase this last year in the number of students that graduated to a higher swim level. So the goal is not just to get them through in the water, it is the quality of those swim lessons. This is the 63rd year that we've been able to do this partnership. This is one when we were-- Michael mentioned that we went to the National Parks and Recreation Association. There's a lot of park and rec agencies who are trying to crack this type of partnership. They ask how we do it. We say it's because we have a very good working relationship with our school district partners. Without that, none of the programs that I just walked through can function. It requires understanding of space and

1:08:01 understanding of how we can share resources and budget, and it all comes down to what's the common goal. And in this case, it's to keep kids active outside of the classroom hours, and your parks and rec agency is the perfect group to come in and pick up the slack on that piece of it. And then this is our final one. We mentioned that cosmetology, that Day of Beauty, this is what Day of Beauty looks like. So that is a participant from our adult activity center who was bused over to your cosmetology lab, working with a real cosmetology student. The joy in that room, if you haven't seen it, is pretty special, and it's really cool, and it's one of those things that our seniors from our adult activity center, I think they really enjoy that they get really well taken care of. But also, I think it's the fact that they get a day to meet some high school kids

1:08:46 who are really trying to learn something. And hopefully it's supportive on both sides, but it is one of the more popular senior programs that we offer. There's one thing I wanted just to clarify regarding the tremendous support and those free One Passes. That was grant funded from the school district, so just wanted to make that clear. And that's our presentation. I sit here like a proud parent of all of these, but what we're able to do for our school-aged children in our community is really something special. So, really wanted to thank the school board and the administration for your continued support. Happy to answer any questions if you have them.

1:09:34 I would like to applaud your efforts and your team. It's a huge deal. I was going to ask how many other parks and recs have this program. Did you model it on something, or is this homegrown? I think it's homegrown, it's organic. As many of you may know, we were the first special park district in Oregon, and every year, just to have something like the fourth grade swim lessons. For 63 years, we've had grandparents that went through the program, and now their grandchildren are going through the program. So, that's something that you can't replicate, but it works, it's important, and it's something that we just love growing our programs. Well, I think not only are you an asset to the district, obviously,

1:10:21 but an asset to this whole community. So thank you and your team and your staff. Everybody's always so nice when I run into a worker at any level, and I think that's a reflection on your organization. Excellent. Thank you. Thank you. Happy to do it. For your programs, are they available to non-SPS students also? Some of them are. The Kids Club at school site, the Kids Club programs are for students in those schools. We do open up to spring break and winter break camps. And then some of the sports, we've made exceptions to that. But the ideal model is that it's a student in that school, so they can go straight from their school day to that program. And the One Pass?

1:11:06 The One Pass is open to anyone- Anyone in the- ... that gives minds that if families are in need, we try to find ways to- Right ... match them up with scholarship funds. The One Pass is a $60 pass. SPS has fully funded that for that number, and then any families that meet pretty basic qualifications for scholarships, we have a scholarship program to help offset that. So those are open to anybody that can buy them. Well, that 85,000 number is incredible. Yeah. So that's a lot of kids being involved in something- Really nice to hear about the cooperation between our

1:11:51 organizations. Yeah, that makes me feel good. Thank you. Thanks. I actually learned to swim in fourth grade in the Lamb Lane pool, and my kids did, too, and now my grandkids. And when I hear all the programs, my grandkids played fourth and fifth grade basketball at their school. And all of these things that you do, and they are real, and they're tangible, and they're meaningful to parents. And so thank you. Yeah, I want to thank you as well. I definitely purchased the One Pass this year, and it's pretty normal for me to have a gaggle of girls in my car. Us parents are always swapping off One Passes with one another. That's how we survive our summers.

1:12:39 Yeah, it's also really inspiring how well you communicate with your families and our community. I'm always seeing you guys reaching out. You guys cover the bases really well, and that just shows how much trust do parents have in leaving our precious ones in your care. A very valuable commodity, that trust. Yeah. And they learn so much. A lot of the neighbor kids, they're just always excited to be going to climbing camp or just Sparks or just whatever it may be. You guys really make a big difference in lives that some kids just don't have the means or ways at home. So, thank you very much.

1:13:24 Oh. I really appreciate everything that you guys do. Thank you. And I just wanted to say that while I'm impressed with the partnership between Team Springfield in general, but when I look at the One Pass, y'all are working with the U of O, you're working with private business, managing those relationships in itself is a big deal. So, hats off to you for that. Thank you. Thanks again for this annual report. I think it's important for district patrons to see the great work you're doing in the broader community. So again, thank you. Thank you.

1:14:09 Moving now to the next agenda item, which is public comments. We have four who have signed up to speak. I'll go ahead and read the preamble This is the portion of our agenda for public comment. The board provides three ways for community members to share public comment. Written public comment, in-person oral public comment, and virtual public comment. Written public comment is received via email. Public comments received via email for this evening have been reviewed by the board and have also been posted on the district's website. The deadline for submitting a request for oral public comment was today at 2:00 PM. Those who requested an opportunity to speak this evening were notified by the board secretary

1:14:57 about their request. Time permitting, which is often the case, the board may also hear public comment from individuals who sign up in person right before the board meeting. We encourage groups with a common purpose to designate a spokesperson. If your comments will be covered by a group spokesperson, please indicate so when your name is called. I want to remind again those members of the public who have indicated desire to make comments, that our policy provides for a limitation of three minutes per person, and Vice Chair Langworthy will be the timekeeper. The board will not hear comments regarding any school personnel, whether named or implied. Any complaints regarding a particular

1:15:42 employee must be processed through the procedure set forth in board policy KL, which requires that complaints be submitted in writing to the superintendent. This procedure must be followed before there's any board involvement with such issues. A compliment involving a staff member should be sent to the superintendent, who will forward it to the employee, their supervisor, and the board. And again, just a reminder of the three-minute time limit. So, the first person that we have is Kate McGuire. Welcome, and thank you for being here.

1:16:34 Good evening, members of the Springfield School Board. My name is Kate McGuire, and I'm the yearbook advisor and intro to journalism teacher at Springfield High School. We are a growing program. This is my seventh year of teaching and seven years of doing yearbook. We have won national recognition. I really wish that my program would've had the same support that DECA had earlier this evening. That's what I'm here to talk about. Last school year, I proposed an out-of-state field trip to Minneapolis in April 2026 for the JEA&SPA National High School Journalism Convention. In April 2025, I had taken 20 students on this same

1:17:19 trip. We had no issues or hiccups in the approval process. When I returned from maternity leave in fall 2025, I submitted the proposal for the Minneapolis trip. After some small edits, my principal, Mr. DaSilva, approved it and forwarded it in January. A few weeks later, in a meeting with my bookkeeper and principal, I learned that my trip would not go to the school board. It had been denied at some point at the district level. The reasons were given only verbally in that meeting and never in writing. They included concerns about student safety in Minneapolis, but the main reason was an alleged new policy. All field trips must now be fully funded by the program, and students cannot pay for anything out of pocket.

1:18:05 My bookkeeper and I were both shocked. This would be a huge departure from previous trips. It would also put an even greater burden on educators as we work to get grants, sponsorships, and organize fundraising to provide these opportunities. What makes this even more confusing is that the board has approved other trips since mine was denied. For example, the Thurston Cheer Trip openly states that families need to pay out of pocket for anything not covered by fundraising. Even the DECA trip, students had to pay for some portion of that trip. If students cannot pay out of pocket, how were those trips approved? If they can be approved, why was mine denied for that same reason? Since this denial, program leaders in the performing arts and CTE at SHS have become worried that their future field trips

1:18:53 will be denied under a restrictive policy. With no real communication or documentation, gossip, speculation, and mistrust have run amok. I am asking the school board to help us uncover the truth by clarifying whether any new policy prohibits students from paying out of pocket for an out-of-state field trip. If this truly is a district policy, please make sure that it is clearly communicated to school administrators and staff. If it is not policy, we need that clarified as well, especially at the district level, so trips can be approved and move forward. Field trip planning and coordination is simply not possible without this clarity. As teachers and program advisors, we understand that these trips cost money, but they give students,

1:19:40 as you have said, so much opportunity to build skills, share their work, and grow. Thank you. We want students to attend this. Thank you. We appreciate you coming forward and letting us know of this situation. So, we'll get some clarity there. Next up is Courtney Steed. Hello there. Hello, can you hear me now? Great. Good evening, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. Four years ago, when my daughter entered kindergarten, if you had told me that I would eventually leave my six-figure career to homeschool my kids, I would have

1:20:26 laughed. But over those four years, I've watched the number of students in her class nearly double. I've also watched her struggle academically and slowly lose confidence And despite being a very involved parent, I had no idea what she was learning in class, where she was struggling, or how I could help her. As a former fourth grade teacher and math interventionist who spent seven years working in public schools, I believe deeply in public education, and it was never my dream to homeschool. I am here tonight because I want to bring my kids back to SPS, but for that to happen, I would need to see meaningful change. First, class sizes. This year, my daughter would've made 31 students in her fourth-grade class. Her current homeschool co-op has 11. In just four weeks, her co-op teacher has developed more of a relationship with

1:21:13 her than I've ever seen in previous school years. She has built my daughter's confidence back up to the point that she's willing to raise her hand, ask questions, and is comfortable saying, "I don't understand." That matters. Research on class sizes is not as simple as saying there's one magic number, but some of the strongest evidence has shown meaningful benefits from smaller classes, including more individualized instruction and stronger academic outcomes. I'm asking the district to make reducing class sizes a real priority, particularly in elementary classrooms, and to develop concrete plans for getting there. Second, early math intervention. As I mentioned, my daughter is in fourth grade. She recently took a placement test, which placed her at the second-grade level. I had to spend the first month filling in gaps from prior years, teaching my fourth

1:21:59 grader how to add and subtract. As a former teacher, I have seen how quickly those foundational gaps become bigger problems. And I also know that children don't simply catch up just because we move them to the next grade. I'm asking the district to identify these gaps earlier, provide meaningful instruction before students fall years behind, and regularly measure whether intervention is actually working. Lastly, communication with families. Last school year, we had one formal conference toward the beginning of the year. At that time, I was told my daughter was struggling in math. That was all I was given. When I expressed frustration, I was told to ask more questions. But what about the parents who don't know what questions to ask? Parents shouldn't have to be former teachers to understand how their child is doing

1:22:45 or how to help. I am asking for more regular academic communication, specific information about what students are learning and where they're struggling, and meaningful opportunities for parents to partner with teachers throughout the year. I am not here because I've given up on public schools. I'm here because I haven't. I want to bring my children back to SPS. I want to be able to say our district listens to families, addresses concerns, and makes meaningful changes. And I want other families to have the support they need so they don't have to make the difficult decision that my family has done to leave public education. Please give us a reason to come back. Thank you. Before I bring up the next speaker, Jeff, how many people are attending

1:23:32 online? I meant to ask this question earlier. 25. Thank you. Oh, 15. Okay. Thank you so much, and a belated welcome to those folks who are attending online. Next up to speak is Ingrid Nordstrom. I'm here again tonight because my concerns about the K five curriculum continue to go unanswered.

1:24:18 The ODE's decision that the district is out of compliance with requirements related to science and social studies should have been a serious wake-up call. Instead, you continue to dismiss our concerns as communication breakdowns, and you point to a corrective action plan that I have heard very little about and certainly have never seen. And yet, my major questions remain unanswered. How will you support kids who have missed years of science and social studies instruction? And how will parents be able to verify that every student is receiving the instruction they deserve going forward? For example, when will we see a revised report card that represents what kids are learning rather than whether or not they are demonstrating effort? Adopting a science curriculum is a positive step, but it's a small part of the solution. I still don't know how science is actually being incorporated

1:25:05 into the school day. I'm including a photo I took of my kids' daily schedules so board members who don't have kids in elementary schools can see the problem for themselves. The only subjects on these schedules that have dedicated instructional time are language arts and math. What about other core subjects required by the ODE, like social studies, art, health? And where is science instruction happening? You are putting teachers in an impossible position. They cannot provide a well-rounded education without enough time in the school day to do so. For any parents who are listening, I'd encourage you to share pictures of your kids' daily schedules too, so that board members can see that this is not a teacher problem, it's a district problem. At the last board meeting, three of you identified the K five curriculum as a priority. Thank you for taking the community's concerns seriously, but

1:25:52 three out of five is not the same as the full board and district leadership treating this as the urgent issue it is. Parents should not have to raise the same concerns over and over just to call attention to the fact that our kids are not receiving the education they deserve. You should know that parents may be reaching the point of considering whether legal action is necessary. It's embarrassing that we are even talking about suing our own school district just to prod leaders into providing our kids with a well-rounded education and complying with requirements that are already in place. But parents have already protested in all the ways we can. Writing letters, showing up at board meetings, signing petitions, pulling kids from schools, and yet we're still not seeing any tangible progress. So what else are we supposed to do?

1:26:40 Again, I appreciate those of you who have made this a priority, but our kids need action. They have already lost instructional time and should not have to lose any more while the adults responsible for their education decide whether this is urgent. It is. Please act accordingly. Thank you. Final speaker is Linda Nordstrom. Thank you for your time to be here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.

1:27:25 I am Linda, and I live in Eugene, but I have grandchildren in the Springfield School system. They like their teachers, and they enjoy being with their friends during the school day. But when I ask them what classes or subjects they enjoy, their tone goes flat and none come to mind. Further prompting does not end with an enthusiastic response. This is really disappointing to me. I had hoped after the challenging two years of COVID, being in a classroom, being introduced to new subjects, engaging in projects and activities would stimulate an interest in learning and curiosity about the big world out there. But they appear to be dulled. Where is the curiosity and the joy

1:28:11 and the imagination in the classroom? The focus of the school system appears to be on increasing standardized testing. I looked at my grandchildren's daily class schedule. It's a repeat of reading and math, with a small amount of time for all of the other subjects that they should be introduced to. It seems that the curriculum is limited to the successful achievement of standardized tests. I asked someone who supports standardized tests if they believe these tests add value, and their response was, "We have to hold them accountable." It wasn't clear to me whom they wanted to hold accountable. I'd like to know who has decided that these tests are a true indicator

1:28:56 of what students are recently. I recently read that out of the 30 states that use the standardized test we use in Oregon, only 11 states continue to do so. Has anyone looked into that? And if so, we'd like to know what the results and the rationale for continuing them. I'd also like to know if there's been testing of the success of having students spend so much time in front of a screen to learn math. Does this system increase their understanding of the underlying concepts? It's my understanding remedial education is needed throughout the grade levels because students aren't being introduced to subjects at the appropriate grade level. This continues into college, where

1:29:42 students frequently do not have basic study, critical thinking, and writing skills. Perhaps a focus needs to shift. You hire professional educators but give them a strict schedule on when and how they should teach. This has to destroy any enthusiasm they have for teaching, as well as a loss of their professional knowledge, discretion, and creativity in meeting the needs of students in their classroom. There seems to be a tendency to blame problems among the groups, on administration, the superintendent, principals, teachers, the students, or even their parents. A lot of money is being spent on searching for products and ideas

1:30:27 to make improvements without evidence of seeing these groups work together. And I just hope that at some point I can ask my grandchildren and they'll tell me something that they're excited about that they've learned. I'm hoping that all of you can do that. Thank you. At this point, then we'll move to the agenda item five, action items. And up first, item A is the approval of the consent agenda. Johnson, I'd move approval of action items

1:31:12 5A1, 4, 9, and 10 as part of the consent agenda. I'll second. Okay. Moved by Director Cole, seconded by Director Brew. And I'm assuming this reflects the change we made in the approval. Yeah. By my records- Thank you ... it does. Yes. Is there any further discussion or questions, comments? Hearing none, call for the vote. All in favor of the motion indicate by saying "Aye." Aye. That's myself included, so the motion carries four to zero. So we'll take

1:31:58 those that were excluded from the consent in the order as presented in the agenda. So first up is the June 22nd, 2026 special minutes. Yeah. So we were provided with a revised set of minutes at our table that addressed the comments that I had. There was one other comment I had that I didn't make previously, that there's a couple of items that reference Director Yancey, and he was not at the meeting. So I think those references should be struck from the minutes. I think those are... Yeah

1:32:44 So when those questions are resolved, then we can bring this back. Okay. Do that. Table it until those are fixed. Okay. Okay. Then item 5A3, which is the June 8th 2026 business minutes, and this was pulled by Director Baru. Yes, thank you. So on page nine of those minutes, at the bottom, there was an action item. Director DeGraff declared a conflict of interest. Then the other four directors voted yes. And the motion says, "Motion passed four to one, with Director

1:33:32 DeGraff declaring a conflict of interest." That should either be, "The motion passed four to zero, with one abstention." Okay. Or, I don't recall her saying, "I'm declaring a conflict or a potential conflict, but I'm voting." I don't think that was the case. I didn't have a chance to review the video. My memory of the event was she did declare the abstention, and I was in error by not saying it passed four to nothing with an abstention. So with that change, that was my only- Do we need to bring that back at a later date, or

1:34:19 make the correction, or what do I- No, I would not. We need to bring that back ... Okay. So we will then bring that back with the correction. You can say an abstention is correct. Yeah. And that's why I want to take, just to make sure that... Because in some jurisdictions, there's a declaring of it can be considered no vote. So I want to make sure I'm clarifying that for Oregon. I don't consider it a no vote. An abstention is- Right. Then that's what I need to clarify. Yeah. Okay.

1:35:05 So if I'm understanding, is it correct as stated, then? I'm not 100% sure. That's why I say, I think we should table this one. Let me do a little research- Okay ... and then we'll bring it back. Okay. And I think that's better, just so it's accurate. Then action item 5A5, financial statement. This was pulled by Director Cole. Yeah, I would just point out, we had to revise the table. So we know that was corrected for dates. But I did have a question in the report. I know we're expecting, we have a lower enrollment than what we expected, budgeted for, I will say

1:35:53 that. Last year when we did that, I know it was a larger discrepancy, but I'm just wondering, are we anticipating that it's going to affect our revenue, and how so? Because I would like to know if there's going to be impacts associated with that. So the information presented in this report is accurate as of the date of the report. We have received no revisions from Oregon Department of Education on state school fund. Anticipate, I can't anticipate. I don't know what all the other districts in the state are reporting to Oregon Department of Ed, because remember that they revise those numbers based on 198 districts across the state. I can't project whether or not we're going to see an adjustment. Based on the information in the report, remember that we're funded on the previous

1:36:41 year. Right. So it has little to do with our enrollment this year because we're funded on last year's number. Okay. I guess I was expecting, because last year, the October report, this report mentioned, discussed the decreased revenue because of the lower enrollment. And so- Correct. Last year we got an adjustment by Oregon Department of Ed- Oh, okay ... by this time last year. Okay. So- So- Any idea when we would expect to see the adjustment? I'm not going to project when ODE is going to give that adjustment. Okay. Any other questions on this particular item? No. Are we-

1:37:26 So I would move that we approve 5A5, the financial statement. And I'll second. So motion on the floor by Director Cole, second by Director Light. Call for the vote unless there's any other questions or comments. Hearing none, go ahead and call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. And so the motion carries four to zero. The next item, 5A6, the approval of the financial institution, was pulled by me, not by any disagreement with what was said, but wanted to make sure

1:38:11 that the board and the public are also aware. What was the reasons behind that? Was there a difference in interest rate? Does it change any parameters of the previous agreement as far as penalties, et cetera? No. So, as mentioned when we were going through the approval of the financial institution, this is through our borrowing. This agreement sets up an escrow account. The escrow account is set up with the bank from the borrower. It's just like when you all- Yeah Go out for a home loan. Yeah. There's an escrow account. That financial institution is established by the lender. So this financial institution, Zion Bank Corp, was established by the lender. That's not on our current list of banks that were approved.

1:38:57 That's why I needed to bring it back because I want to make sure that we're compliant with our resolution. Right. We are earning... This is an interest-bearing escrow account. Mm-hmm. Last week it was at 3.6%, so we are earning a reasonable rate on this money. So somewhat buying down the interest that we're paying. Yeah, trying to. The way that it's going to work is, as we receive invoices from our contractor, we submit those to the escrow account. They actually pay the contractor directly- Okay ... instead of us having to write a check and go through the process of getting reimbursed. Yeah. But the interest rate is we're given that credit.

1:39:42 Okay. Other comments or questions? Okay, well, thanks for the clarification. Thank you. I think that's very helpful. So I will go ahead and move to approve consent agenda item 5A6. I'll second. Moved by Director Leib, seconded by Director Cole. Call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Any against? Motion carries, 4 to 0. And thank you, Brett, for that information. Yeah. Appreciate that. The next item on the agenda is consent agenda item A7, and that was pulled by Director Langworthy.

1:40:28 Yeah. I had been interested in the personnel report of when people are leaving. And I got to wondering, I heard that we used to share positions, the school assignments, and years of service for departing employees, and I was wondering why we didn't. I have heard that it's against our policy, but I couldn't find any specific policy in Springfield or Oregon law in regard to that. And then I got to looking around some other schools. I saw Bethel,

1:41:13 they do report not only the resignation and retirement, but who the person is, what they used to do, how long they had contributed to their district. And I'm just wondering why don't we do that? I understand that some employees will want to have some privacy, and that's great, but it would be important for us to know if someone's retiring, did they spend... Like, I'm looking at Bethel right now, 25 years. That would be great to be able to know and it would be great to have this type of information.

1:42:00 And I'm just wondering why we don't do that and why this is a choice. I think what we have discussed is that we're going to provide the board some information. We just have to be careful we don't violate privacy rules, and we don't reveal names. But we are working on providing the board with a report on who retired and the general reasons. We have not contemplated the number of years they've served. Oh, yeah, because I'm looking at Salem-Keizer, they share that. First name, last name, resonation, where they taught. I'm looking at Bethel.

1:42:47 They have their names. This one person retired, a social studies teacher, was there for 30 years. I just would like to have- As they say, I have no dog in this fight, but yeah, if there's a policy, I would like to know what it is. And I'd like to know why we can give the name of the new hires, but we can't give the names of the people that are leaving. It seems weird. There's either privacy or there's not, so... Yeah. Thank you. Just again, looking at other districts, Bend-La Pine, same thing. And we used to do that in the district, and I used it as a tool to go around and thank teachers for their service, or classified folks,

1:43:33 or administrators for their service. And so, yeah, if it's a requirement of state law or some statute that we're unaware of, then I would agree with that. But if not, I would like to revisit and take a look at the information that we're providing. Yeah, I think that is within my purview, and I'll work with the staff on that, right? I think it's our decision on what to share, but we certainly want to give the board the information they require as long as we can. So that's not a problem. I just need to do some research again. Okay. I'm getting more and more veteran, but still just over 100 days, so. Well, thank you. Appreciate you taking this on. Of course, yeah. And also, I did one of the previous things on the board asked for our survey, and I sent that to all of y'all this

1:44:21 evening. That has the exit survey, so you can see the questions we ask. It's a very in-depth and comprehensive survey that we get information from our departing employees. Okay. Thank you. Or they have the option to. They don't have to fill out the survey. Yeah. And they also have the option to come in and talk to HR rep or their supervisor in person and give us feedback. So they do have that. Thank you. That was my next question. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Do you happen to recall when you sent that out? I- Yes, I do. Like, 6:05 or something like that. Today? Yes. Okay. I was going to say, I don't recall seeing that, but- No, yeah ... a lot of emails. So, thank you. Thank you for the follow-up. Yes, thank you.

1:45:08 So Director Langworthy, are you satisfied to move forward then? Yes. Would you like to make the motion? Sure. I make the motion to approve action item 5A7, to approve personnel report resolution number 26-27.014. I'll second. Okay. Moved by Director Langworthy, seconded by Director Cole. Any further comments or questions? Hearing none, call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. And motion carries four to zero.

1:45:55 The next item up for consideration is action item 5A8, the approval of the ODE restraint and seclusion report, resolution 26.27.015. So in our packet, was given sort of the basic report, but I just had questions. We've gotten some information, some data, some more anecdotal. Just wondering what does this report actually state to ODE? What are we saying when we present this?

1:46:41 So there is a guidance technical assistance manual associated with the law regarding restraint and seclusion, and in that guidance manual, there is the responsibility for the district to submit this report to the Department of Education about the number of restraints and seclusions that take place in the district. And then in that, we are required to make available to the public, including the board, the information that is presented to the Department of Education. The formatting got a little bit funky, so- Yeah. Yeah ... yeah. And I don't know what happened in the conversion to PDF, but

1:47:27 you'll see redactions in specific areas because the N is so small that it would reveal student identifiable information. So the only one that you can see, and the public sees, is the pure number, and then we redact all of the numbers associated with the demographic information. So I see that we had a total incidence of restraint and seclusion of eight. Then last year we had a presentation on PBIS data where we looked at the triangles. Is this inclusive in that number, or are these only major infractions and they're defined by

1:48:15 restraint and seclusion, or? There's a specific definition of restraint and seclusion. And discipline is not associated with restraint or seclusion. Restraint and seclusion is about safety, and there are very strict guidelines on when restraint can be used for that purpose. And it has to be in a situation where there's imminent danger for either the student involved in the behavior or any students or adults around that student. So any lesser infraction is not included in this number. That would be what the SWIS data would show?

1:49:01 Correct, and I just want to make sure we're careful with language because we don't restrain students because of infractions. We restrain students if there's a safety concern, an imminent safety concern. So I don't want to confuse discipline and disciplinary action with restraint because one of the restrictions within the guidance manual is associated with that. You cannot use restraint for disciplinary action or seclusion. What would be an imminent danger? For a student, for themselves, if, for example, they were going to run out into a busy street. And I use that example because I have had conversations with the Department of Education around

1:49:50 whether it would be appropriate to restrain a student if they were going to run out in the street, and the question back to us and the staff is how busy is the street? Wow. Oh. Hmm. As it stands now, are staff not able to physically guide a student out of a classroom who's having challenges? Because that's not imminent danger? That would be a much deeper conversation, but I will say that there are very strict guidelines on when a student is in an escalated state and whether we can have certain types of physical contact and what is construed as restraint or not.

1:50:37 Okay. And staff also must be trained on that restraint. Not just anybody can do that. They have to be trained. Yeah, I see where that's a requirement of this report. Thank you for that. Do we track at all sort of the outcomes or the distractions to other students at all if we have these incidences? So within behavioral data at every building, they track a variety of data, including the typical behavioral infractions, and then suspensions in school and out-of-school suspensions.

1:51:22 And if there are issues that are out of the classroom and administration becomes involved, then that is tracked at the building level. Okay. The reason I ask the question is at least anecdotally, I've heard from families who have pulled their kids from SBS, because they didn't feel it was a safe or a quality learning environment. So I'm just wondering if we're having conversations around that or how to address that so we make sure that we give the students, all students, the education that we promise. So that satisfies my questions. Thank you so much. Appreciate knowing.

1:52:09 Is there an opportunity that I could get this behavior... What'd you call it? You called it, uh- The restraint- The- Yeah ... guidance for preventing restraint and seclusion in Oregon's public education programs. May of '24 was the last time this was updated, and I'd be happy to send it to you. There is in-depth information on what the ODE and the federal government expects of readjusting behavior support plans when there are escalations in student behavior, and I'd be happy to talk with you about this, but I can send you the raw materials as well.

1:52:54 If you could start with that. Are there other board members who would be interested in- Whenever we send things out, we're going to send it to the entire board. Okay, thank you. Whether you're interested or not. Unfortunately, it's 38 pages, but yes, I will- Is it? Well, don't print it then. But you know, seriously, prior to the legislative session, if there's work that the board should be advocating for or modifications to the laws, I think that falls to our responsibility, so might as well start the conversation early. Thank you. I have a question. So how do we handle students with violent behaviors while ensuring they receive their education still? That seems like a tough balance. This is one of the priorities, and I think what

1:53:42 I would like to have an opportunity to give you a comprehensive answer to these because student discipline and this is one of the things that we will include in the report because with this, there's not a quick, easy answer. Yeah. I think there's a lot of things that go on. I think our general, we are a public school- Mm-hmm ... and so we accept everyone- Mm-hmm ... but we also have the belief that kids must be free to learn and students free to teach. And so we try to take a restorative process in working with the students, and it's an individual case-by-case basis. We have things like behavior intervention plans. Staff is required to do functional behavior assessments for students who need deeper intervention, and so there's no real good, easy, short answer.

1:54:29 And I think it'd be, since that is a priority, I'd love for you to give us an opportunity to go in depth and give you a comprehensive answer. Good, yeah, because my next question was going to be, what are the district procedures for handling and keeping the staff members safe? So that would be one of my big questions there. Right. And we absolutely believe staff have to be safe, but we've handled a number of complaints about that as well. Mm-hmm. And so there's a real tight line we have to walk, and I think it's good to help us guide our discussions as we move forward. Thank you.

1:55:14 So I'm going to go ahead and move for approval of action item 5A8. That's the approval of ODE restraint seclusion report resolution 26.27.015. I'll second. Moved by Director Light, seconded by Director Cole. Any other comments or questions? Didn't she already make that motion? She moved on the personnel report. Oh, okay. Sorry. Yeah. Thank you. So I'm moving on the next item, so yeah. It all blurs together. Yes. All right, so call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries four to zero.

1:56:03 Okay. So before we move on, that should take care of consent agenda. However, those items that we pulled that need revision, that we're going to bring back, the minutes, we should address those as tabling. Also, there was the addition of the special minutes from- Yeah, that's still to come. Okay. That's on item 5AC. 5C, actually. I move that we table action items 5A2 and 3, the June 22nd and June 8th minutes.

1:56:50 I'll second. So, motion by Director Cole, second by Director Brew. Call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. That motion carries four to zero. Now we'll move on to agenda item 5 - No, 5 ... or 5 action items B, and that was the motion from Director Cole? Yes. I move that the board take no further action related to the complaint discussed in executive session, and delegate authority to the chair to draft a response to the complainant based upon the board's discussion. Second. Motion on the floor by Director Cole, seconded by

1:57:36 Director Brew. I'll go ahead and call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries four to zero. And then finally, action item 5 [C] , which is the addition of the agenda item. Yeah. So, in our packets last couple of meeting, there was special meeting minutes for June 8th, in addition to the business meeting minutes. And so I was confused, because it wasn't on the agenda for either meeting. So, if there's nothing... I mean, we could approve them. I didn't see anything that wouldn't...

1:58:23 I don't see any changes that I think need to be made, but- I think perhaps we have some- Meeting that all in one meeting, but it was separated because we had to take it into executive session prior to our meeting. It's one document to approve, not two. Okay. So that includes the prior meeting and the regular meeting. Is that correct? The minutes. Yes. Uh-huh. It- Okay. So then, can we change the title? Because it says special min...

1:59:08 Okay. No, that was pulled That's fine. I guess if it's that way, it seems like we should take action because it reads in the packet just like a separate set of minutes. And so if it's confusing to me, I imagine it might be confusing to other folks that when we approved the business, because we approved, or we will approve the business minutes,

1:59:53 but these are titled special meeting minutes. And so to me, then the question is did we approve this when we took action on the other minutes? It's not clear to me. I tend to agree because you called the meeting to order, we did business, then we adjourned the meeting, and then we opened the business meeting. Yes. So- So there should be two separate- In my- ... notes ... in my mind. It's different than if we open the meeting, retired to an executive session, had that, and then returned to the meeting. This, we opened the meeting, closed the meeting, then opened a new meeting and- Okay. Yeah.

2:00:38 And I don't remember whether we recessed to executive session or we adjourned to executive session. So lacking that clarity, can we bring this back? Well, we've already approved the business meetings. Actually, I think that one's tabled. What's that? I believe that one's tabled. Oh, it was tabled. Okay. Well then, let's chase it down and be accurate. Seems like the leading from the board is treated as two. I'm seeing a head nod from Director Langworthy. So it seems like we should err on the side that makes most sense to the board and to the public, so. And we reflect that. So it's already been tabled then?

2:01:24 Yeah. The business meeting were, so I guess if this is an action item, I guess I would move that we table the approval of the June 8th special meeting minutes. Okay. Second. So motion on the floor by Director Cole, seconded by Director Brew. Ask for a clarification. So these are two... Are these the one minutes, or do we combine these? And so I think the board is asking if they can be separated and presented as two separate meetings. Is that correct? Yeah. All I'm basing it on is the paperwork that we have,

2:02:12 the first page says, June 8th, special meeting minutes. And then you, in our packet, you turn it over, it says June 8th business meeting minutes. And our agenda says we're approving the June 8th business meeting minutes. It doesn't say anything about the special meeting minutes. We've gone to the trouble to designate the minutes as special minutes, it seems. So yeah, whether it's a separate... It needs to be clarified, I guess. We've ta- Yeah, I appreciate it. I understand. And it looks like you did adjourn. I think if you had recessed, you could put them all together as one. So I'll need to check with our attorney- Yeah ... and make sure we're doing it the right way as well.

2:02:58 Thank you Okay, so at this point we'll move on then to agenda- You need to vote on that. So call for the- I move to table. Did somebody second? Table, and then Director Brew seconded. So call for the vote. All in favor indicate by saying aye. Aye. Motion carries four to zero. Now moving on to agenda item six, reports and information. Dr. Stover, the first agenda item is yours. Yes. Board priorities update. And I'm going to combine both of them together, so let me get hooked up to the... We have a PowerPoint for you.

2:03:50 Would it be easier for me to move over there? Yeah. About... Yeah. All right. Thank you. Oh, there we go. Okay, excellent. A little less drama this time. Okay, so I'm going to first do the priority updates, and then, with the board's permission, I'll just move into my superintendent updates, if that works for you.

2:04:37 But before I do that, I think, and this was addressed in some of the opening comments, but we want to make sure that we are honoring our-- Today is Indigenous Peoples' Day, and we want to make sure we're honoring that. And I found this quote, and I think it's really appropriate. "Honoring Indigenous Peoples' Day is an active year-round commitment to relationship building, cultural safety, and sovereign respect." And I would like to hope that that's how we operate. I know that we are working, even this week, to hire a director. We have interviews this week for the Chiffon Center, and so we're kind of pressing reset on that and really working to ensure that

2:05:22 we have great relations because hundreds of our students are a part of the indigenous community. Thank you. I would also be remiss if I didn't, again, accentuate that we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month. And here's a couple of things that we're doing, but I just want to publicly acknowledge that we are celebrating that, and close to a quarter of our students identify as Latinx, so it's a very important part of who we are in Springfield. Now getting onto the priorities, here is my update for that, and it's very short. Here's my understanding of the top board priorities, which were understanding the elementary curriculum and where we are with

2:06:07 assessment data. And what I mean by where we are with assessment data is providing regular reports to the board about the outcomes we're achieving yearly, not just waiting for one big, bless you, assessment kind of presentation. The second one was, as we just talked about, exploring student behavior and discipline issues. Ensuring staff and community involvement through surveys and focus groups. And that was a lot. It was teacher surveys, it was community surveys, surveying staff who were leaving, those types of things. And then establishing a facilities committee to explore a range of issues, including, but not limited to, enrollment, land sales, potential levies, potential school

2:06:52 consolidation, facility upkeep, and et cetera. So those were the big priorities, and we tried to, where we thought we could, push in some of the kind of sub-priorities to create those four things. And so I just want to make sure that I believe we're all in agreement of that and this is what we're going to work for. Assuming that, work from. Yes. Part of the discussion under the facilities committee was about land development. So I'd just like to make sure- Yeah, and that's land sales, land development is what I-- Maybe I just did that wrong, but that's what I meant by that. Well, land could be an outright sale. Right. It could also be developed. Right. So I want to make sure that when we- Land use issues

2:07:37 ... land use issues. I'll- Land use possibilities. Yes. They're not issues. All right. Land use possibilities. Fair enough. I will make sure we change it on that. Thank you for that feedback. And so here's what we're going to present at our next meeting to finish up. I'm going to give you a straw man of the goals, why it matters, the deliverables, and the timeline that we're going to have for each of these four priorities. As I said, I will provide a rough draft document and list these areas. And then during the work session, because it is a work session, we're hoping that you'll help improve it. We want to make sure we accurately captured what the

2:08:23 board wants and at the right level of depth. And then I think once we get that, we might want to even think about a retreat to discuss these priorities in more depth, kind of a mid-year retreat. So that's what I'll bring to you at our work session. I just didn't want the public, because obviously we had a public comment related to that, is that we're not thinking it. We're not actually taking action. We are, but these are complex problems, and quick, unfocused action could lead to sloppy decisions and sloppy programs. We want to make sure that we are thoughtful, taking the right deliberation, and then moving quickly. I'm of the mind that when we really

2:09:08 focus the problem, when we spend time framing the problem, it makes solving the problem a whole lot easier. So that's kind of pushing me out on board priorities. Bless you. It's contagious or something, the sneezing. And it's a habit. I can't hear somebody sneeze without saying, "Bless you." I don't want my mom to fuss at me. Old wives'. Yes, exactly. So that's what I have for the updates. Okay. All right. If it's a- And we'll get copies of the presentation. Yes, and I've already actually- Sent them through ... I sent the rough draft, but these nice cleaned up slides that Ryan Richardson helped me with, we'll get those to you as well. It's a big file, so we might have to share them. Okay, so the next I want to do is give you an update on our one-year

2:09:55 action plan, as I have done the previous meetings. So far here's what we've done. I've continued to meet with parent and advocacy groups. We've continued school visits, including visits with board members that I'm going to continue working on. I think I've met with six school staff so far. I have another one, I believe tomorrow. I've attended home games for football, soccer and volleyball. for both schools. The one thing I'm missing is I have yet to attend a Thurston volleyball home game, though I did attend the Springfield Thurston home

2:10:40 volleyball game that was at Springfield. I've attended school nights and PTA events, and we have some coming up. And then I know I originally, when I presented my plan of action for the year, is that we would have a full presentation, kind of like the document we're going to create that outlines what I've learned. Because our survey closes in October and I would still like a little bit more think time, I'm going to give you at the work session, kind of like, here's what I'm thinking, here's an outline, and then the actual document will be at the November business meeting. Thank you. Okay. All right.

2:11:26 As I said, we encourage everyone to complete the SPS parent survey. It's going along really well. We've received nearly 700 responses. It closes on the 30th, and we're going to be transparent and share the results, not only with the school board, but also with the greater Springfield community. One of the things that was in the action plan that we are finishing up this week, and we'll actually have a meeting with all of our principals, is the Shadow a Student Day, where we asked district instructional staff and principals to spend a day actually following a student's schedule dressed as a student. Apparently, my dress is probably a student in the '90s or '80s, I don't know.

2:12:12 But you can see some pictures. We have Callie at Riverbend who is actively-- seems like she's having a really good time at recess. In that picture, I was at a College Now class, and we were discussing essays, college entrance essays. And I was talking with the young man about which essay he liked and why, just because I was curious. And then we see our director of high school, Mindy Leroux, was enjoying lunch during her Shadow a Student Day. I've gotten preliminary anecdotal feedback that everybody who's done it has enjoyed it, and they're really seeing things they didn't see before. So I'm excited to-- We have a protocol that we're going to discuss this Thursday

2:12:59 with all of our principals and instructional staff, and that will be, again, something I use in my kind of what I need to investigate further. So lots of stuff going. The one thing I have not done that's not in here, but I still plan to do, but it'll have to be after a report just how time is working out. I'm still going to co-teach lessons with staff and be a part of that. That just hasn't happened yet. It's great. I've had plenty of volunteers who want me to do that. So that's great. I look forward to that. Do you have to dress as a teacher then for that? Yeah, maybe. I think we have an eclectic variety of dressing for our staff.

2:13:46 In other news, we're going to share about some construction updates as we have said we were going to do. Some revamped instructional space, some lunch menu news. And our Springfield Education Foundation Night of Stars, which is upcoming, and some assessment results, conclusions that we're drawing. So here is the current completion dates of the projects we're working on, and ones that we're about to begin. Here you see a picture, I believe this is Walterville.

2:14:32 Is this Walterville or-- Walterville, easy for me to say, steel beam placement. So that's a picture of it being done to shore up that building. Here you can see some stringing tension cables at Centennial, and there's an actual completed classroom at Two Rivers, Dos Rios. Do we have an end date on the overall trust repair project? I believe we said our goal is around February. Right. Probably go into March now. But we originally said February, but we've had some change orders, as you know. For instance, Walterville took a lot longer than we anticipated because of the

2:15:20 epoxy that the board voted on in a previous meeting. Okay. We're almost wrapped up there, but any kind of change in the schedule has the domino effect. Sure. But we're still It's going fairly well so far. And we were at Thurston, I was walking with the principal, and we just happened to go in and ask about, "Hey, how's this going?" We spoke with the Essex construction people who were there. And one of the trusses had actually snapped, and it was because we had a temporary wall near the wrestling room that held it up. So it's definitely repair work that needed to be done. It was a little bit more extensive than we thought, but we're making our

2:16:08 schools extremely safe for our students, which is the important part. Well, thanks to both of you for the update. Yeah, I certainly didn't take these pictures. I really appreciate Brett helping me out. Also, as many of you know, this was a great collaboration, and as you heard from our students, the opening of the greenhouse. And actually, the student that I shadowed is in this picture. So I appreciate she's on the far left-hand side as you're looking at it. But here's some pictures of the greenhouse, and this was a great collaboration between the Facilities Department, Springfield Education Foundation, and the high school. And we created a great space for our students to extend the learning there.

2:16:55 And you can see also one of the classes I was a part of during my shadowing day was advanced forestry. And so we can see our advanced forestry teacher in that picture as well. And then, yes, we had the debut of the crispy chicken bowls. And it just shows our commitment that our nutrition services has to making sure that we get feedback from our students, and we're creating meals that they'll actually eat. Not only will they take, but they'll actually eat. Orange chicken was one of those that I discovered when I was serving carrot. It's a very popular item. And now we're going to crispy chicken. And we had a kickoff of

2:17:43 Buddy to- Is that you in the suit? No, it is not, because I would never be in a such a suit. I don't get in suits. I don't go in dunking tanks. I don't kiss pigs or anything like that. I will serve ice cream. Bam, prime. Yeah. I will serve ice cream and congratulate folks, but I don't do that. Have not yet for 37 years. My one exception is, and it wasn't for school, I did go into a dunk tank for the Special Olympics. That was last year. That was the first time in 36 years that I had done anything like that. So maybe with age, I'm softening. I'm not sure. I guess so. Yeah. And then we are excited about our 17th annual Night of Stars to support

2:18:30 SPS. The Springfield Education Foundation and the education foundations that we have across the state are real gems, and they provide that little extra funding to see great ideas, to do things we just don't have the budget for, like the greenhouse, or it would take a lot longer to. And to meet the needs of our students. That's really important as well. Some of our kids come to us not 100% ready to learn, and the work of the Springfield Education Foundation enables that. I don't want to bring up a sore subject. But we are the benefits of every time University of Oregon scores a touchdown on football games, we get $1,000, up to $40,000,

2:19:15 Springfield Education Foundation. The Portland State game was very good. The game last Saturday was not as much. So we have confidence in the team that they're going to do well moving forward. They have our encouragement. They have. I want them to score at least 40 touchdowns at home. And then finally, as you know, ODE has released the assessment results, and if you look in all three of the subjects that the Department of Education assesses the three-year trend, we are rising on the three-year trend. And specifically, if you look at English language arts and math, our improvement is actually above the state average

2:20:02 for three-year improvement in both ELA and in math. We do have a little work to do in science, but that's one of the reasons why we are using the fifth-grade science test as our local assessment. Another thing it shows when you have focused action leads to great results. We are in our fourth year of really working on literacy skills, making sure our students have phonemic awareness and understand phonics. And as you can see, we are just one point away within the standard of error for third-grade literacy. That's going to have a virtuous effect as we go down the line, because it is so key for our students by third grade to have that solid understanding.

2:20:47 Not saying it's impossible for students not to catch up, it's not, but the work it requires becomes increasingly harder the more they are off grade level. And again, I will say, I'm not the biggest fan of state testing, for many reasons, but it does give a good indicator of the district as a whole because we have a big enough sample set. It's one indicator. It should be as you like to say, Jonathan, triangulate with other information, but it is one that's showing that the district is moving in a positive direction, and especially when you're comparing it against the state. And our growth in math is especially well above the state average. So we're excited about that.

2:21:35 And that is what I have for you today. Okay. Any questions? Okay. I guess not. Okay. So thank you. Thank you very much. Look forward to the presentation on the 8th. Yes. In the little bit next meeting in October. Sneak peek. The teaser. So brings us to agenda item 6C, board communication and comments, in no particular order. I'm not sure if I mentioned last meeting, but I guess the one thing I got to meet with Superintendent Stover out at Briggs and toured Briggs with him, and yeah,

2:22:21 and meet the new principal there. And, so yeah, that was an enjoyable trip. I appreciate that. All right. Thank you. Anything, Director Brew? Yeah, so I haven't had the chance to do that yet, but I look forward to the opportunity. I've been- Once you stop building houses. Yeah, I know. I'm out of town a lot, but I appreciate it, and I will make time for that. I also want to, for those who are here and are online, we're going to be preparing some evaluation material for Superintendent Stover, so if you have any particular areas of interest, please forward it to

2:23:07 the board. We'd like to hear from folks. Thank you. And kind of skewed off here. Excuse me. Yeah, tonight I was definitely hoping to hear about the three associations, and where we're at with them coming forward to have a space at the table during board meetings. So I'm going to ask to put them on for the October 26th board meeting. You're looking for an update?

2:23:53 I- That's sort of where we're at in that conversation. Yeah, I'm looking for an update on that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, thank you, Stover, for getting out there in the community and talking with the staff and shadowing. I would really like to hear more of how that went for everyone, and I think I heard, Brian, you shadowed a second grader. Yeah. That's- It's fun. That would be fun. And yeah, so I appreciate what you guys have been doing. It's nice to get perspective. That's a really important thing for us to do as humans.

2:24:41 Going forward, something that has been on my mind a lot is AI, is screens. And I know it's on our board priorities, but as a parent, I can't help but just observe the news and, honestly, it keeps me up at night. And I look forward to a discussion. I look forward to looking over policy. I think it's really something that we need to do. It feels urgent to me. So I do look forward to that conversation in the future. One thing we did, I think Jeff has said that he's run

2:25:28 some audits of how much time our high schoolers are using on the computer, and I think it's less than an hour is the average right now for high school students. So I think we're tracking well there. Mm-hmm. But we'll have some more data and we definitely need to develop some policy, which I'll work with the policy committee on. Yeah, that's great. I have a 27-year-old, and then I have an 11-year-old, and it's just vastly different raising children nowadays than it was 27 years ago. I cannot go ask my mom how she did it, you know? I can't even ask past Amber how I did it because just the information, well, it just really doesn't exist and I would hope

2:26:15 that we can really look at where we are presently in our times. I think assisting, educating parents on how do we put on these, assist our kids in learning what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. We should look at, we have YouTube on our kids' screens. My kid in fifth grade can watch YouTube, and a lot of the kids can recite commercials, and I'm just wondering what our values are with this, because I surely did not see any commercials growing up. And, I just don't want to be promoting big tech, and

2:27:05 I think we just need to have a big conversation. So thank you very much. The last time I think we spoke about AI, my understanding is there are districts that have policies already in place, and I would suggest maybe we start there by taking a look at those. And although we may not be having an enormous problem in our district, it's a reality that's in the future. So preparing students for that reality, I think is really, really important. I've been actually- I'm pretty astounded at the number of tech firm muckety mucks who have expressed concern.

2:27:53 I sent to the board a piece that Bill Gates did on the dangers of AI, but there's been quite a few others that have, and I think we need to pay attention to that. In addition, again, it comes back to things beyond AI, this social media responsibility, digital world. Are we preparing our kids from kindergarten on? So that's the broader conversation that I would like to see. I want to make sure that it's intentional and not aspirational. So. We'll see. And let's see. For my part, again, I've had the good fortune to be free during the day so I could go out, and I attend the ribbon cutting for the greenhouse, and it was so cool.

2:28:40 I love having those opportunities for kids and hope we can use that in a variety of ways, culinary program, et cetera. So that was very cool. And then I went to the Thurston-Springfield game, and I think both teams played really hard, but you know the way sports works, somebody has to come out on top. So congratulations to the Thurston team. Yeah, looking forward to the things that we talked about tonight and digging in deeper, taking a look at the community schools model when we go down to Anaheim. I think there's a lot of good things on the horizon, and I want to thank you for getting out there and keeping your ears open and listening and talking to people. So thank you.

2:29:26 So we're going to move on then to agenda item 6D. This should be quick. It's just sort of an update of where we're at and sort of the timeframe. So Brett, are you the best person? You put out the RFP, there's a closing date coming up, et cetera. So if you could just sort of review that information. Sure. So we did distribute the RFP on October 2nd. We had questions, any questions from the potential responders were due on October 9th. We did receive some of those questions, so we put answers to those questions out today, and then the proposals are due on Friday by 4:00 PM. And we have scheduled the review of proposals

2:30:11 by all five board members. The five board members are going to be the only scorers in this process, which is different from last time. And that's going to be from, it says October 16th, but obviously it closes at 4:00, so through the 23rd. So we're giving a week that we would need individual board members to come in and evaluate the proposals in the office here. And Damien Lodadi, our purchasing manager, the one that's kind of running this, would be the one that we would connect you with, and she would be sharing those and sharing the scoring matrix, which has already been developed based on the RFP. And then following that, there will be a clear,

2:30:56 well, maybe clear, identified rank order of who those scored respondents are. We'll share that information, and then the board would need to make a decision on whether or not you'd like to conduct interviews of firms as part of the selection criteria. We left it open as part of the process. We didn't predetermine that. We wanted to give the board some flexibility in determining whether or not that was going to be a necessary step. Moving forward, speaking with Chair Light, there was discussion about potentially holding a special board meeting to make a selection or waiting until the November board meeting. I think what will be the determining factor in there is perhaps when you

2:31:44 see some timelines from some of these respondents, that'll maybe give you a better idea of how quickly you need to move. I think you may be okay going to November, but once the responses are received, then you'll have a better idea. Yeah, it could be in the process when we review that one comes out clearly on top, and we don't need to do the interviews. But that would be one wrinkle if we decide to do interviews on the RFPs, that would add time. So it's just something I wanted the board to be aware of. We do have the option of setting a separate meeting, a special meeting to address that if we feel we need that. But yeah, we're well on the path to getting things going on that search.

2:32:30 There are five areas that the evaluation will be based on. One area is experience and qualifications. The second area is work plan, which would include their plan, their timeline, things of that nature. The third area is board and community engagement. So what is their plan to solicit input? The fourth would be budget. How much are they charging for these services? And then the fifth is references and past performance with school districts. And then, of course, that's the main criteria, and then, as I mentioned, you'd potentially have an opportunity to interview as well. So in the prior search for the interim, as those of you who were on the board at the time recall, that there were a lot of differences

2:33:15 between them, and by no means the cost was a differentiating factor. So I'm looking forward to... We close then this Friday. This Friday at 4:00. 16th? Correct. Okay. Yep. So can you send out just the number at that point? Yeah. So we know- I can send out a quick message on Friday saying we had this many. You'll hear us use terms like responsible and responsive. That means that they've met all the criteria in the RFP. And that's a really important part- Mm-hmm ... that we are very diligent about making sure that everything's done according to the criteria so that everybody's being judged on the

2:34:00 same thing. Will you be sending the applications to the board members sometime after that, but prior to our coming in to actually score them? No, we'd like to... Our process, we did this a little different last time, but our process with RFPs is that people come into the district office on an individual basis and review those in the office, and we'll set aside a space for folks, and we, like I said, we have all week, from early in the morning till into the evening- Okay ... make those available. And the reason that we don't is, a lot of these firms don't want their RFPs out there. There's a lot of proprietary

2:34:47 information. We also want to ensure that it's an objective and confidential process up to the point where the board makes a decision. And again, it's the five board members, there's not going to be any staff evaluating these. Thank you. Any questions from board members? I'd just like to say just thank you, Brett, and also to Damian. Yeah. Great work on it. Yeah, she's done a really good job with this, and yeah. We did have a question on whether or not the HR department would be doing background checks on these candidates or the firms. We responded that we expect the firms to do background checks on all the candidates that would be brought forward. Obviously, our HR department is going to be a critical component to this to make sure that there's fair and equitable hiring practices.

2:35:34 But there's a lot of responsibility on the firm. Okay, thank you. So I wanted to add just one thing to my communication, which I obviously can't read my own notes because it's right here. Yes. But again, Dr. Stover mentioned the possibility of maybe scheduling a follow-up retreat. So I would be supportive. There was a lot of things that we're sort of catching up on and further discussion, further clarity. So at least in my calendar, I'm looking at early December before our December 14th meeting as a possibility sometime. I don't think it needs to be a full day, but

2:36:20 be thinking about maybe what that would look like and some possible calendar dates that might work if we decide to go in that direction. Good. So our next meeting is October 26th. It is a work session, starts at 6:00 PM. This meeting is adjourned. Is that right? What's that? Is that right? Is it going to be at 6:00? Or is it going to be at- It's 1:00. 1:00. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, let me make that update. It was changed because some people need to fly to another place. So is it at 1:00 PM in the afternoon on the 26th? So, the last thing is, speaking of trends, a couple meetings ago we were at a little under

2:37:06 five hours, and last time it was a little under four. We're trending up. It's two hours and 40 minutes. So this meeting is adjourned at 8:41. Good catch