Board Meeting Minutes - Oct. 22, 2001
FEDERAL WAY PUBLIC SCHOOLS
SCHOOL DISTRICT NO. 210 – KING COUNTY
FEDERAL WAY, WASHINGTON 98003
The Board of Education of the Federal Way Public School District No. 210 held a regular Board Meeting at 6:00 P.M., Monday, October 22, 2001, at the Educational Service Center at 31405 18th Avenue South, Federal Way, WA. 98003
Board Members Present:
Jim Storvick, President
Ann Murphy, Vice President
Linda Hendrickson, Director
Audrey Germanis, Director
Charles Hoff, Director
Staff Members Present:
Tom Murphy, Superintendent
Rod Leland, Facilities Director
Sandy Nelson, Technology Director
Mark Jewell, Curriculum Director
Mark Davidson, Chief Operations Officer
Chuck Christensen, Human Resources Director
Carol Matsui, Assistant Chief Operations Officer
Chris Popich, Administrative Assistant
RECONVENE @ 7:00 P.M.
President Storvick: We’ve been in Executive Session for the last half-hour or so. We’ll reconvene now from Executive Session to the Regular Board Meeting and if you’ll join me we’ll have the Pledge of Allegiance and get to it.
Pledge of Allegiance led by President Storvick.
President Storvick: Mr.Superintendent, do you have comments tonight?
SUPERINTENDENT COMMENTS
Superintendent Murphy: I do, thank you. Our next Board Meeting is Tuesday, November 13th. The regularly scheduled day would be Monday, November 12th, but because Veterans Day is Sunday the 11th, Monday is the national holiday. So our meeting will be on Tuesday the 13th. And I thought since this was the last meeting prior to Veterans Day observation I would take just a few minutes to give you some information about what some of our schools are doing to observe Veterans Day. And I sent out an e-mail asking for some quick responses and got a few back - so I’ll just go through these if that’s okay. At Adelaide, students will be highlighting the contributions of veterans through the singing of patriotic songs and classroom presentations in addition to an all-school assembly. At Panther Lake, they will have a number of different musical tributes to veterans and to the United States with a special piece of music – Adagio for Strings by American composer Samuel Barber, accompanied by a light show interpretation of the music. Mr. Kasner asked that I make sure you know that you’re all invited to not only the day performance but the evening performance which will be Thursday, November 15th at 7 p.m. That performance is for the parents and public. At Twin Lakes, the Veterans Day assembly will be sponsored by the PTA and will be on Wednesday, November 13th. Each class will choose patriotism project among a list of 19 choices and these will be displayed for the entire month of November on the office bulletin board. At Sherwood Forest, the music teacher, Rick Reynolds, has put together an assembly that focuses on the history of WWII. Every year on Veterans Day Mr. Reynolds selects a different conflict in our history and focuses on that for the Veterans Assembly. This year it’s World War II. The title of the assembly at Sherwood is Let Freedom Sing. The students are sharing readings about WWII while viewing a power point presentation. The student body will sing a song between each reading and they will begin the assembly with a presentation of a $1200 check to the Red Cross from funds raised by Sherwood students in support of the tragedy that occurred on September 11th. At Wildwood, a unit from Fort Lewis will be assisting in the assembly on the importance of respecting our flag. The students will be singing patriotic songs. In addition the students will be treated at the assembly to a presentation from a gentleman that portrays, and even looks like, Abraham Lincoln. Tom Capp says that he’s seen him perform before and he does an outstanding job. I’m sorry I don’t have the time or the day of that one because that’s something I’d like to see.
Director Germanis (?): It’s probably the same fellow that was at the Martin Luther King celebration at Decatur last year.
Superintendent Murphy: I believe that’s correct, and he did do a wonderful job. At Mark Twain on Friday, November 9th, at 2 p.m. is their Veterans Day assembly. Students will be sharing patriotic songs and essays about America and the freedoms that we enjoy. At Silver Lake, there is an assembly on November 8th at 10:30 a.m. led by students. Individual grade levels are preparing activities, songs, and poems to perform for veterans as well as other students. Silver Lake has invited all veterans who are related to any of their students to attend the assembly. Sacajawea’s assembly is Friday, November 9th. They will have an ROTC group from a surrounding school participate, two guest speakers – one being the Principal, Mr. Cash, who is a veteran and he will be talking about the involvement of prisoners of war in Buffalo soldiers and their involvement in our armed forces over the years. At Illahee they are also having an assembly. I don’t have the day. But a local veteran, Gary Hulsey, will be speaking. And the leadership students are presenting the history of how Veterans Day came about and why Veterans Day exists. The assembly at Mirror Lake is actually being put on by the local Kiwanis Club, Mr. Mike Ballenger. Each classroom is creating a product or project that will be delivered to the Veterans Home in Des Moines. So that’s just a sampling of the kinds of activities that are going on in your school district between now and the Veterans Day observance.
President Storvick: That’s a significant number of activities. Thank you Tom.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
President Storvick: This is the point in the Agenda that we have the opportunity for public comments. For those of you who may be new to a Board Meeting – every item on our four-page Agenda tonight that’s under the Action Items has the opportunity for Public Comment, as does this point in the meeting which is just a general category of Public Comments. If you’d like to make a public comment there are blue slips in the back of the room by Mr. Leland. Please fill it out, indicate your elementary service area, your name and whether you want to speak at a specific Agenda item or if it’s going to be the beginning of the meeting I need to get them fairly soon. We have a few. Hold your comments to about three minutes. I’m not sure who handles the beeper, but you’ll hear the distinctive tone go off – that means you have about 30 seconds or so to wrap up so please do so. The first public comment we have is Teresa Christensen.
Teresa Christensen: Hi. My name is Teresa, this is my daughter Toby. She was attending Truman High School and last year they had a program where… She’s been in special education since she was in kindergarten and last year she made great moves. She moved up five grade levels and her reading and math and it was going really good. The first time in my life that she has really improved that much. Beginning this new year they changed the program – now they have two classes of 100 students a piece, six teachers and there’s no room for Toby. There’s no special education, there’s nothing for her there. When I go to another school to try to get her signed up for something there the special education classes are one period here, one period there. I went to talk the other day at Thomas Jefferson and basically they told me that they didn’t have anything there for her because she can’t focus in a big class, she’s A.D.D. We’ve gotten her help with a psychologist, a psychiatrist, with drugs for her A.D.D. and she’s made great improvements up until now. So I’ve had to change everything now to where I’m trying to teach her at home. I don’t have a license to do that. I don’t exactly know how to do that, other than to keep her up on things she already knows and try to maybe improve her, but I’m not a teacher. And I’m really disappointed in the program they have at Truman now, especially after she has shown such improvements. That’s basically what I wanted to say. I don’t know if there’s anything they can do or look at the program they have at Truman now, but it’s completely different and there’s no place for my daughter there. And as far as I can see the other schools are fully loaded. At TJ they said their first period class had 19 kids in the special education class and 16 desks, so there’s no room there for her. The second period class the teacher said ‘oh you don’t want to put her in there. We have a third period class that she could join in and then maybe get a job after that so she would go to school for one hour and then get a job’. Well, I don’t know. I’d like to see something changed.
President Storvick: Thank you. Mr. Superintendent, do you have any comment?
Superintendent Murphy: I would only ask that perhaps that Mrs. Christensen speak with Mark Davidson.
President Storvick: Mr. Davidson, would you take a moment and catch Mrs. Christensen? And, in fact, Toby you had also signed up to speak.
Toby Christensen: No.
President Storvick: Okay. Louise Story.
Louise Story:
Louise Story: Thank you. My daughter’s situation is very similar to Toby’s. In fact I think they know each other. Other than the fact that my daughter is – credit wise she’s 17, but she’s still in 10th grade except that when the program changed at Truman it no longer fit her learning style at all. She’s been diagnosed ADHD since she was in 2nd grade. She’s been getting therapy. Junior High and High School, the regular schools, did help her as much as they could but I wish we’d gotten her into Truman sooner. But she was there for the last year before things changed. She now has a baby, an 11 month old child, and is working at a job that staff at Truman helped her find and get. She’s been there for about 6 months. But she needs to continue to work to support her family – so she’s getting her GED at Highline. But she would be at Truman if it was still an alternative high school where they were willing to work with her having a job. They have childcare; she was doing very well for the time she was at Truman. She liked it and we were very disappointed. She wanted to try it but when we got the questionnaire that was sent to us for us to continue enrollment because we were already there – when we saw what the questions they had for her and for me about her learning style and everything, none of it fit. It was a lot of independent study and projects and things that kids with learning problems and health impairments – my daughter has had an IEP for several years. That is just not the way they learn and not the way they can complete the required schoolwork for this school district. She has above average intelligence; she has a lot of potential, but she does not do well in a regular classroom and certainly not in one with a lot of independent study. I know some students would do wonderfully with that, but this was an alternative high school for kids who needed a special environment and they were getting it until the changes. Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you Louise. John Hoskinson.
John Hoskinson: My name is John Hoskinson from the Olympic district. I’ve raised great questions about your site based management system here and with our lame duck Board Directors I want to read what the Clover Park survey said about site-based education. "To be effective the school organization needs to demonstrate that it is in control of itself in the terms of goals, expectations, directions, and processes. If a system becomes de-centralized but focused on central aims and purposes, control of the organization can still be manifested. However, if units within the organization pick and choose goals and processes and even add some of their own this system becomes internally contradictory, fragmentary and counterproductive. Without vigorous and harmonious allegiance to the over arching organizational values, the system may become divergent, contentious, conflicting, and discordant. Effective school systems demonstrate constancy of purpose and commonality of fidelity toward the organizational intentions and objectives." I won’t bother to read the school and the parents comments about this thing but all it points out to me is that you people don’t want to get into day to day management, but you sure as hell don’t know how to exercise central control over decentralized management. Another paragraph gets on my subject of all these programs going on in your schools. "Auditors found that in the elementary level several national models of the instruction are being used. Accelerated schools, Coalition of Essential Schools, Higher Order Thinking Skills, Onward to Excellence, School Enrichment, Success for All. At the middle school level the following national models of instruction are being used: Coalition of the Essential Schools and another one. They all prevail in our school district. Both the high schools in the district are usiing Coalition of Essential Schools. However good these individual models may be work was needed district-wide to insure that a student moving through and across grade levels was exposed to a basic district-wide curriculum." Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Hoskinson. And I have to add because you’ve spoken to the Clover Park School District over a number of months…I’m not sure where this came from, it was in my Board mail, but across the board Clover Park has not performed nearly as well as the Federal Way School District on the standardized results.
John Hoskinson: That’s what this study points out. It’s a superior school district.
President Storvick: No, it has not performed as well as Federal Way.
John Hoskinson: That’s right. And they’ve got the same problems you have and you’re not performing that well either. Just because you’re better than them doesn’t make you good.
President Storvick: And that’s not my reference. You’re using a reference of a school district that has performed consistently substandard to Federal Way and I’m confused by the reference and what the intent is with the reference. It’s not marginally different in performance, it’s significantly different.
John Hoskinson: Well Clover Park recognized they weren’t doing very good. They spent $75,000 to have a prestigious outfit come in and do a curriculum management audit to find out how they could do better. They measured what they were doing against five standards and they graded them, and they came up with 11 pages of recommendations as to how they might improve their school district – because they were so marginal. However, everything that makes them so marginal applies to this district and, in my opinion, every other district in the state because you don’t have good curriculum management.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Hoskinson. Noel Spurlock.
Noel Spurlock: Hello my name is Noel Spurlock and my son attends Lake Grove Elementary School. Last spring an incident occurred which involved a police arrest directly across the street from Lake Grove. The children were brought into the school in chaotic method and lock down was accomplished among confusion and a lack of leadership. At the beginning of the school year, there were two playground supervisors monitoring playground activities when there were at times over 400 students at recess. After several complaints and a visit by the school district, the lunch period was rescheduled so less than 225 students are not on the playground at any time. On the 11th of this month several students told a substitute playground supervisor they saw a man peering at them from the south perimeter fence of Lake Grove. The supervisor saw the man, made eye contact with him, and then left the students and walked to the opposite side of the playground to inform the regular playground supervisor. They called the office with the one of two radios that worked and after several questions and approximately five minutes the Principal and a para-educator emerged to look for the man. The students were allowed to remain on the playground and the first, second and third grade students were then sent to recess without identifying or locating the man. The area around Lake Grove includes several acres of trees and dense undergrowth and that you can see on the map on the second page. The green area is all undeveloped. Most of the southern property line of the school borders and area that is completely undeveloped. There are several hundred sex offenders living in King County and some of them within walking distance to Lake Grove. I don’t know if the man peering at the girls was a sex offender lurking in the undergrowth. He may have just been a Pastor from the Bethel Christian Center taking a walk. I don’t know who he was, but neither does anyone else because nobody went and asked him. Every time an incident like this occurs at Lake Grove it always appears that nobody is in charge. I’m not suggesting that anytime an unidentified person is seen at or near the school property they should call out the National Guard. I just want someone to give me a little more secure feeling that situations can be kept under control. I hope it doesn’t require an unfortunate event to finally motivate someone to put together a procedure and insure responsible personnel are trained and can accomplish the tasks required to protect or remove children from a potentially dangerous situation. Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Spurlock and this is a little unusual because quite often, related to the earthquake and some of issues, the feedback we generally get is commendatory so I wonder Mr. Superintendent if you have any brief comments.
Superintendent Murphy: I’m not aware of this situation so this is the first knowledge I have of it.
Noel Spurlock: The district was called and a security person came to the school and questioned some of the girls.
Superintendent Murphy: They probably called Pamela Stanley who is our Director of Security. That call was made from the school?
Noel Spurlock: Yes.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Spurlock. Someone will be back in touch with you. Either the Superintendent or Mr. Davidson or someone from Security. Teri Hickel.
Teri Hickel: I’m going to talk about the Maintenance and Operations Levy, so should I wait until that time? Would that be better?
President Storvick: Sure, I didn’t see the check mark. And that looks like it concludes our initial Public Comment section.
REVIEW OF CONSENT CALENDAR
President Storvick: We’re now at the point where the Board reviews the Consent Calendar.I’ll ask the Board to note that we’re removing Item 2A – the Approval of Truman High School Design Development Document and place the item as Agenda item B1; and we’re also removing Item 4J – The Donation of Computers to Truman High School and placing this item as Item B12 on the Agenda.
APPROVAL OF AGENDA
President Storvick: Is there a motion on the approval of the Agenda?
Director Germanis: President Storvick, before we continue with that I need to add to the Consent Calendar the change for Procedure 1131P, and I’m not sure where you want to put that on the Consent Calendar. It’s the change in the intial makeup of the CAC – the Community Advisory Council. The change was made on the second page 2 of 6 – you’ll see the strike outs that all applicants be accepted for the first year vs. the lottery, and I just need to put that on the Consent Calendar.
President Storvick: Is there any objection from the Board adding this to Consent?
Director Murphy: You could even put it on the regular calendar.
President Storvick: We’ll just move it to the Agenda as Item B13.
Director Germanis: That means I have to stay all the way through to 13? Thank you.
President Storvick: Is there now a motion on the approval of the Agenda as modified?
Director Hoff: I move we approve the Agenda as modified.
Director Germanis: Second
President Storvick: Actually we’ll modify it…we’ll restate your motion for clarify because there were other Agenda specific items that were changed. So to understand Mr. Hoff, you move that the Board of Education approve the Agenda with the following changes: that B-1 is the Truman High School Design Development Document and each item number following it be changed consecutively. Item B-6 – 3000 Series Policies, remove Policy 3420 Student Safety and Welfare; Item B-7 5000 Series policies, renumber Policy 5230 to Policy 5260; and add Policy 5331 Insurance. Add Item B-13, Community Advisory Council procedures.
Director Hendrickson: Audrey seconded it. Can I ask a question? Why is Policy 3420, the Student Safety and Welfare policy being removed?
Superintendent Murphy: It exists in another spot.
Director Hendrickson: It exists in another spot. Where would that spot be?
Superintendent Murphy: This is a duplication.
President Storvick: And I’m going to take an editorial moment here for those that are new to the Board meetings. Our Board Agenda generally runs a page and a half. We are attempting to complete a Policy approval and renumbering process that began a number of years ago to bring it in compliance with the state numbering system. So there are a number of policies that appear on here that normally do not and I won’t say it’s a rush to do this because some of it has been going on for some time, but if you’ve seen the four-page Agenda there are a good number of policies on there and a couple of these last minute changes we probably should have anticipated. It has been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All in favor? Motion carries unanimously.
APPROVAL OF MINUTES
President Storvick: May I have a motion for approval of the minutes?
Director Murphy: President Storvick, I move that the Board of Education approve the minutes of the October 8, 2001, school board meeting.
Director Germanis: I’ll second it, but I need to make a change on it. On page 14 where it references Director Germanis – I didn’t speak at that time. It was an audience member – Tia Jones. So if we could make that reference.
President Storvick: Is that acceptable? Directors Hendrickson and myself were not at that meeting.
Director Murphy: What page?
Director Germanis: It’s page 14 and it indicates that – both times it indicates it was me talking and it was an audience member and you indicated just wait till the Board deliberations – and you cut me off and it wasn’t me. Those were Tia Jones, a community member.
Director Murphy: I’ll accept a friendly amendment to my motion to approve the minutes as corrected.
Director Germanis: Thank you. I’ll second.
President Storvick: All in favor? Motion carries unanimously with Directors Germanis, Murphy and Hoff. Directors Storvick and Hendrickson abstaining – we weren’t there.
ADOPTION OF CONSENT CALENDAR
President Storvick: Is there a motion for the adoption of the Consent Calendar?
Director Germanis: I move that the Board of Education adopt the Consent Calendar with the removal of item 2-A, the Truman High School Design Development Documents, and Item 4-J, Computer Donations.
Director Hendrickson: Second.
President Storvick: All in favor? Motion carries unanimously.
SECTION B – ACTION ITEMS
President Storvick: With the revised Agenda the Truman High School Design Development Document is now Agenda Item B-1. Mr. Superintendent?
TRUMAN DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
Superintendent Murphy: We have any number of people here this evening who would be prepared to answer any questions the Board might have about the design development documents and probably what we’ll do is use Mr. Leland as a person who can direct the appropriate individual to respond to any questions you would have.
Director Hendrickson: Do you want a motion first and then discussion? President Storvick, I move that the Board of Education approve the Truman High School Design Development Documents as presented.
Director Germanis: Second.
President Storvick: It’s been moved and seconded. Discussion?
Director Murphy: I have a series of questions about Truman. I guess I’m a little concerned about some of the things that I’ve seen go on there. When we started the process – adaptable and flexible was our mantra and as we closed into the process and looking at the design that I think we’ve come up with, it looks like it’s the open concept kind of learning environment. And I think that’s pretty much what that shows in here – two large project spaces and that kind of thing. So the original design had several different configurations – the more traditional, the small schools, the project learning or whatever. It is settled on now what looks like pretty much the open concept. There’s not really classrooms. There’s not classroom walls – there are large open spaces. Is that correct?
Rod Leland: No. It is what you are looking at on the drawings you received.
Director Murphy: And these are the drawings up for approval?
Rod Leland: If you’ll recall the comprehensive high school had kind of the same evolution – we started by showing what I’ll call for now the ‘district standard’, which was corridor classrooms both sides. So, in other words, you have a classroom configuration so the school could operate with the programs we currently offer at the three traditional high schools we currently have. And that is the model that we started and I’m looking now at our architects who are over here in the third row back. With that model, that’s the test…can you operate current high school programs we offer at the three traditional schools in here? The reason it can be both at the same time is because it is flexible and adaptable. The walls that you see are what we would call in the building development process "tenant improvements". So, in other words, you build the building so that it can be configured a number of different ways. Then you understand the tenants needs – in this case the Truman program needs – and you configure the walls to support the program they wish to offer. If the program changes in a year or five years, those walls are easily removed or easily moved, reconfiguring the space to meet the needs of the next program. An example of how extensive that’s been is this past week we had a discussion with the mechanical engineer talking about ‘can the mechanical system support that much variation’ and the answer is yes, and that’s part of the design of the school – is that all systems can support easily the ease of reconfiguration to support whatever program’s there. So we have not taken on support or design directly for one program or another. We have tested programs that we are aware of to make sure that this building can meet the needs of any of them.
Director Murphy: In the Truman grant document it says that they are planning on opening school with the open configuration. So what I thought when I looked at this plan – that’s pretty much what they’re planning on their opening day of school. That’s their opening day configuration, so the building as it’s being built does not have any classroom walls? That’s correct. My next questions is – one of my questions, I have many questions – when I walked through Truman last week, what I saw was that there’s already some modifications going on in the building. They had already opened up some of their spaces and I’m wondering – is that money from the Truman bond or was that from the grant fund or how did …?
Rod Leland: That’s from neither. It was a really good example of crudely divided space with materials the district had available from other remodel projects when Truman opened, and over the first five years they were there. So those were demountable walls – almost portable, but not exactly – easily removed…so this summer the principal said we’re moving in this direction – can you do anything? So we did two things: 1) the gym was converted to a space with partitions donated in part by Weyerhaeuser and other supporters I assume (they did that on their own). Carpet was donated by a local carpet representative. The spaces in the south end of the building…we removed most of the walls and I think we built a half wall so they could have computers on both sides, essentially taking advantage of a place where they had computer access before, but they wanted to do it with less restriction from traditional walls.
Director Murphy: Okay, so we took down some walls, added some computer outlets. I did send that question in and I never really got a response on that one. So we spent a little bit of money on the existing building even though it’s going to be gone in a year or two. I guess the reason I want to bring this up is because I don’t think there’s been much public discussion on the whole Truman process. I was out of town the end of June because I was in Albuquerque for a soccer tournament, and when I came back I came back to headlines about staff members leaving the program – several headlines like that and that made me wonder just how much staff involvement was in the whole process and in the grant and it is very apparent that the grant is driving the design of the building. That the grant document is very particular to a kind of learning – more of an open concept project learning technology-driven kind of thing. So I just want to be clear because it is very apparent to me that the grant is driving the configuration of the building which is why it doesn’t have classrooms.
Rod Leland: The only way I can respond to that is to say we’re not using the grant document. We’re using input from the staff and principal at Truman. I didn’t want to make that direct connection as though that was our guiding document. That wouldn’t be accurate.
Director Murphy: Were there three or four people that I think this spring – I think you and Victoria and Pam went and visited some schools that maybe you’re modeling this after? Yes or no?
Rod Leland: Yes or no? No. Conceptually, did we see this kind of groups of students working in this way? Yes we did. All of those buildings were different from a 1925 urban high school to a country school with absolutely no walls. So we saw the range, and in fact in California we saw a converted elementary school still using classrooms. So…not really.
Superintendent Murphy: I think what they did see, however, was they saw successful programs that were created in the design of smaller and project-oriented that were existing in already remodeled or constructed buildings and that was the theme they brought back and that Pam brought back as part of actually the Met School in Providence, R.I., who’s had tremendous success – 100% of their kids graduate from that school and go on to major colleges and universities. For the most part those are students who have not had success in traditional programs and so it’s that concept that was brought back and we had the opportunity to help design the building rather than try to fit the concept into an existing facility. So the design is actually intended to help promote that concept, but also be flexible enough that in five years if we decide that’s not working as well as we’d like it to or there’s something else we want to do, the building easily converts to a different approach.
Director Murphy: I guess for me to go with an open concept school it’s a very difficult thing because it goes against my nature. I think from what I have read and researched the concept works for some kids, but not all kids. I don’t …we heard a little bit here tonight – I think that it probably would be less appropriate for what we would consider the existing Truman students that are there for an alternative education. So I guess part of the question I’m wondering is with the open concept learning – the classroom without walls – the project kind of pick your interest and pursue it kind of thing, are there going to be provisions for special needs kids? What’s there for the students that have some learning disabilities? Do they have special education support; or is it a whole different clientele of kids that this open concept building is going to be serving?
Rod Leland: Let me offer two things. One, Pam Morris-Stendal, the principal of Truman, and if need be we have Butch, our architect that can help answer that.
Pam Morris-Stendal: Couple of things I’ve heard. First of all, you talk about open concept – one big room and no walls. Actually what we have looked at is you’ll see there are some walls that kind of come in at funny little angles. Those go all the way up. There’s no door across the front, but it does allow some visual block on either side, and we’re using some of that right now and it’s in this big gym so it’s a bit noisy so the thought was if we had it just go the ceiling, but not have the walls in front…so it’s not truly what that open concept used to be where it was wide open. Open concept also had some problems because there was a lot of direct instruction – stand in front of the class and lecture – and it was a little crazy to have that much…This is really on more of a project base – they do some small group things and there are some classrooms that they can pull out to, but those little learning team areas actually are working out pretty well as far as having a place that they can keep their stuff and they can have some discussions. So when you say open-concept, it really isn’t wide open – there are some walls.
Director Murphy: It looks pretty wide open to me.
Pam Morris-Stendal: What we’re doing right now is not quite what this is – that’s why there’s some modifications so that it kind of gets a little narrower. Anyway…and I do need to respond that when we went back and looked at some schools, we did look for schools that have really high success rates. One of the schools that we visited was the Met in Providence, R.I. Forty-seven seniors, 47 graduated, 47 were accepted into college. And if you look at the statistics on this also, these are our kids – they have special ed kids, the same types that we have. They have first generation kids going to college that have parents who never graduated from high school and certainly didn’t get to college. They have a real mix of ethnicity which is probably closer to Truman’s than most of the high schools in this district. And a lot of these kids had struggled in the big schools; and you’re right – this school I think can work for all kids, but not all schools work for all kids. We can’t even make the assumption that the big schools that we see right now are working for all kids. If they were we wouldn’t have kids dropping out. So I can’t say this is going to work for everybody. I think everybody has a need. Some kids have a need for a big school that has sports and all that. We don’t have that. Our kids can go to a big school and do that and still come back to Truman and have the program needs they can get.
Director Murphy: Truman students traditionally, almost the whole population let’s say, have high risk factors.
Pam Morris-Stendal: Some of them yes.
Director Murphy: Maybe they’re unmarried with children or maybe they’ve been expelled or they’re ADHD or they have other significant learning disabilities where they’re not able to …they’re at Truman because they can’t achieve in a…
Pam Morris-Stendal: Or choose not to. It’s not a can’t – it’s a choose not to.
Director Murphy: And I guess that I would say that the open concept is almost mutually exclusive with the term direct instruction. Normally it is more self directed project based group learning. And I think that’s what’s going on here at Truman.
Pam Morris-Stendal: What we do is the first hour and a half of the day – the first half hour is called Seminar and that’s a check in. They have what’s called a super calendar – what’s the plan for the day. So the kids do that. They check in with the teacher. They do a Community Meeting that the whole school – all 202 kids sit around and they talk about issues and they get information and so forth – and it gives the kids a chance to be up in front and so they’re doing some skits, they’re doing some presentations, they’re sharing things about whatever the issues and topics might be. So that’s the first half hour. The next hour is direct instruction using seminar, using readings. The kids are now reading and talking about evidence, about what supports their statements. Remember we’re six weeks into this and this is a whole new way for teachers and kids to learn and I’m starting to see some kids who … their terminology, they’re talking about standards. They’re not talking about a grade that much anymore, it’s ‘I’ve got to meet the standard’. What’s the standard look like? Well, I need to be able to read and write – they can start to tell you what it is they’ve got to do. That’s not a grade. That doesn’t tell us anything. The kids can talk about rubrics or criteria for being successful at those standards. They’re talking about (?) seminar, and they even say okay, what’s your evidence and they can go back to the reading and pull out evidence to support what they’re saying. So we have a whole new language we’re teaching the kids and a whole new way of thinking.
Director Murphy: No bells, no walls, no grades, no classrooms? That’s from the web page. So, if you were a special needs student, which most of Truman population has been historically, what support do you have there?
Pam Morris-Stendal: Okay, special needs meaning special ed. or high-risk?
Director Murphy: Let’s just say it’s a special ed. student.
Pam Morris-Stendal: We have a consultant who is an ex-special ed. teacher at .6 that…We have never had, or suppose we never had, a self contained SBD program and so we have realized that there are some kids who need to have a self-contained small environment that need a whole lot of one on one. And so, no, this program probably isn’t going to be the best for them. And we really haven’t had that, although we’ve tried to make it fit for some kids, so we have lost a few of the kids that probably will do just as well in a very small environment in another school. We’ve had a few that have left. And yet I have to say there have been a couple of those kids that I would have said never would have made it and I can’t believe how wonderfully they’re doing. So you don’t know sometimes until you give a student an opportunity to say ‘does this environment and does this teaching and learning style work for you?’ And some of the kids have just taken it and done really well; and there are some that it’s just not going to work for them.
Director Murphy: Part of the article that I read was, and I think it was a counselor or something, that had left saying that the school needs a counselor and you’re not going to have a counselor because the kids are going to be different. Are there…so what’s going on with that?
Pam Morris-Stendal: And we still have the same kinds of kids we have. We have a little broader section of what we’ve got. I think ethnicity-wise you’ll see there’s a change in who we have as students. Let me see, I’m trying to remember what the first part of the question was.
Director Murphy: Is there still a counselor at Truman?
Pam Morris-Stendal: There is not a counselor at Truman. Some of the schools we visited do not have a counselor on-site, but what we do know is if I had 17 students or 20 students and I have them for four years, I know my kids pretty well. And oftentimes all it is is being able to identify there’s a change in behavior and we frequently had our counselor refer out because it went beyond what a school counselor had time or the expertise to do. And so we refer the kids out. We still have; in fact we’re working really hard right now to set up some new connections with Federal Way Youth and Family Services, Valley Cities, different drug and alcohol agencies. We’ve worked really hard to say ‘let’s pull some more services to us’. (tape change)
Director Murphy: To me it sounds like it’s going to be a different mix of kids cause when I think of the students that go to Truman, I think of the really needy, high-risk – I don’t like to say high-risk, but …kids that are like the safety net, have almost fallen through the cracks but we’ve just grabbed them up and they’re in Truman and trying to…
Pam Morris-Stendal: I’ll share with you. This is a story – a mother came and she has two kids at Truman now. And this student happened to be at one of our big high schools and as a sophomore was doing okay. As a junior kind of hit a wall, relationships with teachers weren’t there, felt like she was being shuttled back and forth. This is a kid who’s a reader, this is a kid who wants to go someplace, this is a kid who wants to be an architect. But he was dropping out of school and now he’s found a niche here in the school and he’s one of the kids who we probably would have said was not a high-risk, but he is a high-risk cause he was ready to drop out. And his younger brother was ready to drop out at 9th grade, and the mom said ‘I thought I was going to have two drop-out sons. But you know something, both of those kids have found a niche at Truman. The way you guys are presenting to them and giving them opportunities. It wasn’t going to happen at big schools, they were lost’. But that’s a high-risk kid that as you never would have said was a high-risk kid. White, pretty good as far as academics at that point, but that disconnect in the big school.
Director Murphy: Since the grant in a way driving the interior design of the building, I know I’ve asked you some questions about and it’s because when I came back from my two week trip there were several newspaper articles about staff leaving and that kind of thing which made me think if they were part of the grant design why would they want to leave?
Pam Morris-Stendal: And as I explained in my response, for seven years I have been giving my staff opportunities to read, discuss, talk about what does this school need to look like? I think all the sticky dots we put up and all the commitments we made to "if this is what works for kids we should be doing this". And we’d start down that road and it’s tough work and we’d back off and we kept doing that; and it must have been at Thanksgiving of last year I ethically and morally could no longer support a school that was failing kids. We were not succeeding with all of our kids. It was not okay. I have a moral obligation to find a better way to make it work for our kids. So that was part of the driving force. When I came back after Christmas I told the staff ‘we’re through talking about it and then not making it happen for our kids’. When I did do some traveling I took staff with me and we talked about what does this need to look like? How can we make this happen? So none of this stuff was new. Every single part of that grant is something that somewhere along the way we had talked about working for our kids and saying we need to do this, but we just never had the drive to make it happen. It’s very much like "Breaking Ranks" – everything that’s in that grant proposal follows right along with what "Breaking Ranks" talks about, which was kind of the guiding force for a lot of the schools, ours included. Two or three years ago we jigsawed that and picked out parts of all those little suggestions and said we’re going to make this happen, and we didn’t. And that was me as the leader – I wasn’t making it happen. So when I came back in January after Christmas vacation with some energy and some determination I stepped up and said this is where we’re going you guys. And I gave you kind of a summary of every one of those teachers. One retired; some were not in positions we had filled anyway – they were substitutes, so those were open positions; some decided they wanted to…I mean some had been talking about leaving Truman for a couple years anyway but they just hadn’t made the move. So there was a reason for every single one of those people to move and that was their choice – I would have supported them no matter what they did. I have a wonderful group of people now that are making it happen, and I would invite you to come again here in a few weeks and keep checking up on it, giving feedback – what do you see that you have questions about, because the kids and the staff can tell you why we’re doing what we’re doing and what we’re learning.
Director Murphy: I walked briefly through – was it last week?
Pam Morris-Stendal: I don’t know, I wasn’t there.
Director Murphy: You weren’t there…I didn’t know that. But I went to get a copy of the grant and it was a little after 1 p.m. so between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., and I think it was the self-directed learning time.
Pam Morris-Stendal: Yes, it was. In the morning is when they’re a little more in tune with us and we do the instruction.
Director Murphy: Yes, there were lots of activities outside and different kinds of things. I guess my question, then, would be…I just have a follow-up question for the Superintendent. Pam’s doing something very different with the school that may not fit the needs of some of our at-risk students that you would normally think of attending Truman; and I say that because one spoke this evening. Those students then are going to go back to the regular high school or are we going to have an alternative program to catch those students or is that something we haven't thought about yet?
Superintendent Murphy: No actually I have two comments on that and the first comment is that the old Truman didn’t meet the needs of all the kids who attended there. We lost a lot of kids from the old Truman. It met some kids’ needs, it certainly didn’t meet all kids’ needs. Based on the information that I have about the approach that Pam is taking and how well it has worked in other parts of the country, especially at the Met School, I think we have an opportunity to meet the needs of a tremendous number – a larger number of kids at Truman than we’ve ever met before. And secondly, the obligation of the school district for students with special education needs is clear, and that is we have to have a program that is a free and appropriate public education. And that has to exist at that student’s home school. We cannot tell that student that ‘well, we can’t create one here, you have to go someplace else’. The difficulty that Truman had in the past, frankly, was that some schools would give that information to special ed. kids and they’d end up at Truman and Pam would never turn anybody away. They’d take them and try to make it work without a self-contained BD class, or BD approach, or BD teacher. And that stretched that staff and Pam and that school tremendously, but they tried, but they lost a lot of kids. So the answer is that I believe that this approach has the potential to meet more needs than the old approach ever did, and our obligation to provide a free and appropriate public education for all special education kids is clear and we will do that. And if parents or kids have heard a different information from any of our high schools that will be taken care of - tomorrow.
Director Murphy: Is there a motion on the table? I will just state that I don’t support an open-concept kind of learning environment so I would either want to amend the motion to design the interior with classroom walls, or vote against the motion. So I will probably choose to vote against the motion unless another Board member wants to make that amendment.
President Storvick: Any other Board comments?
Director Hendrickson: I do have some questions for Pam since we’ve started down that road. Pam, I think I heard you say or perhaps the Superintendent said that at the school you visited they had 47 seniors and 47 graduated. How many seniors did you have last year?
Pam Morris-Stendal: Um.
Director Hendrickson: How many students did you have last year?
Pam Morris-Stendal: 161 is what we ended up with, but we go through 300 kids a year to maintain 161. We may have had 30 to 35 or 40 kids who were a senior at some point and I think we had about 6-10 who actually finished by the end of the school year. We were not succeeding with our kids.
Director Hendrickson: And those are fairly typical statistics aren’t they? I guess I just need to comment. We certainly need to serve all the kids. I guess I don’t see that it’s Truman’s responsibility to serve all the kids that are struggling. I think all of the schools need to step up and serve all of the kids and figure out how all of the kids can be successful. Not say the kids who aren’t successful in this school need to go over there and you figure it out. So, for me, we’re all responsible for all the kids – you’re not responsible for all the kids that the system isn’t serving, and I hope you don’t feel that way and I know that sometimes that has been the situation you’ve been put in. A comment about not having a counselor anymore. You had one counselor in the past and you had again how many students?
Pam Morris-Stendal: We had 160 that finished, but we went through…
Director Hendrickson: Okay, so one counselor to serve 160 to 300 kids over the course of the year – to get to know those kids and get to know their families. And in our traditional high schools, Mr. Superintendent, it’s three counselors for 1400 kids?
Superintendent Murphy: Correct.
Director Hendrickson: So I think there’s plenty of research out there that says that model doesn’t work for kids either. That that’s inconceivable that one human being could provide support for hundreds of kids and their families to get them through this system. So I personally applaud the idea that you have broken them down into smaller groups and that people will actually get to know students and their families over a period of time, especially when there are students who may have had difficulty in the system and their families have difficulty understanding the system as well too. And we all know we have a lot of work to make the system more family-friendly, not just at your school.
Pam Morris-Stendal: I will comment to that if I can.
Director Hendrickson: Please.
Pam Morris-Stendal: And that is that in the six weeks we have had two parent evenings for dinner, invite the whole family – over 200 parents showed up for one and now we’ve had our student-led parent conferences and some of our teachers had a 100% and they’re still trying to get the rest of them. They have been the most incredible conferences. I would really encourage any of you to come and sit in on some of those conferences because the parents and kids and teachers are talking about student learning. The kid talk about what they’re going to learn, and what they need. They ask the parents and ask the teachers for help and they have been wonderful. The parent engagement can come when you don’t have so many to work with – so you give up a counselor and you add a teacher so you can get the numbers down.
Director Hendrickson: My final comment is that I know that you are results and we are focused heavily on results – that your results over the years have not been stellar. In fact, they haven’t even been close to good in terms of being able to stand up and say this is what we’re doing for kids, and kids that go to this school leave here with the skills and the knowledge that they need to be successful. And so if changing the program and designing it according to other schools that have been successful serving a broad variety of kids, many of whom may have not been successful in traditional schools, as many of your students have, for me that’s the right thing to do – or at least to try it. Because what we were doing wasn’t getting it, and I want to tell you I think it takes a lot of personal courage to say ‘I can’t do this anymore – morally and ethically I can’t do this to kids anymore’. So I thank you for what you’re doing, and I will support your design.
Pam Morris-Stendal: Thank you.
President Storvick: You can stay up here Pam if you’d like. (laughter) Any other Board comments?
Director Hoff: Yes, in looking this over I share many of the same concerns that Director Murphy does. I don’t see, if this is a high school, any possibility of offering any kind of a science program in here that would encompass two or three credits in science.
Pam Morris-Stendal: There’s one room that’s a project room that will have all the… it will have the venting and all the materials, the plumbing, the electricity that could support a science lab.
Director Hoff: Two sinks.
Pam Morris-Stendal: Remember when you have small classes you don’t need to have the big large areas and that space will definitely work for that if we need it. The other thing is some of our kids will hopefully, as they do some of their projects, they might be able to use either the community as a source for some of their experiments – and not always just within the four walls. I can see a student who wants to work on the environmental kinds of issues and so they might be working with the fisheries and some of their work will be done at a fisheries with people in the industry.
Director Hoff: A couple of other remarks…Director Murphy covered many of them. We are building this in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club and the idea was to possibly have them be able to use some of the space in the evening. If this is a project-based system I don’t think you have anywhere near enough storage or lock-up ability to leave these rooms open for others to use at off-times.
Pam Morris-Stendal: And actually there are some areas we set aside that we will probably close off the rooms that have the open areas and be able to access the area that would be the experiment room, the large room. There are some large areas that they can use. When I talked to the people from the Boys and Girls Club they basically wanted to use some of our rooms as a study hall kind of a place where they could do some classes. They didn’t say they’d have a lot, it would be just like one or two which we could certainly cover with what we’ve got going there. At least when I talked to them I said what kind of needs do you have? Now Highline Community College had different needs but they’re not part of the picture anymore but I think in looking at what’s there it did seem to meet with what the Boys and Girls Club had said they wanted.
Director Hoff: In other words, you’re suggesting they would only use the Commons?
Pam Morris-Stendal: No, there’s a Commons…oh is that the big large area? Okay, there’s two of them - one in each school, and then there’s the project room right next to that.
Director Hoff: The project room cannot be accessed from the Commons without opening the entire …
Pam Morris-Stendal: Okay, and that would be something we could look at – maybe move the door down a little bit so they could access that. That’s a wall – we can move the walls.
President Storvick: And if I recall, the design or the consideration for doing this at Truman had no relationship to what may or may not happen with the Boys and Girls Club, Highline, or any other potential partner. There’s no contingency connected to that at all, other than the efficiencies of using the site.
Director Hoff: Yes, as an off-hours site you have to have some security issues to cover there.
President Storvick: If it doesn’t work, we don’t provide access.
Director Hoff: Finally, since Director Murphy covered most of the open classroom issues that I have and I won’t spend much time on those again, here again when it comes to food service which I guess is a perennial issue with me – we build a kitchen into the center of this building with no outside doors to it which means all the food and garbage has got to come in and out the front door. I find that just not the way one should build a building of this nature.
Pam Morris-Stendal: Now, I might be wrong, but I thought there was a door that’s in part of the large commons area – there’s a door that people can go around. Was I wrong on that one?
President Storvick: It’s probably like a secret door Pam.
Pam Morris-Stendal: A trap door?
(?) We did consider that having access through the commons – it was discussed at the quantities of food that would be coming in and out of there and the number of quantities to be served each day and that we could do that more efficiently just straight to the front door.
Rod Leland: As our consultant on this project and this design and your concern is not a surprise. Mary Asplund joined us for the discussions and as our Director of Nutrition Services we followed her lead in accommodating the location of this to make it optimal at this time to support Pam’s program. The flexibility of the building, the ability to serve two schools from one location.
Director Hoff: Well, I continue to believe that the logistics of a kitchen in the middle of a building with no outside exits is inappropriate. And I’ll just move on to my few comments that Director Murphy didn’t already cover. We heard from some parents here tonight of kids who have ADD and ADHD. I’ve had the opportunity in the last two years to deal with some of those in a community college level situation and I have serious reservations about this large, open-learning environment. We have a great number of sight lines here which lead to wandering eyes being much more concerned about what’s going on in the next instructional area than this area. With kids who have trouble focusing on where they’re … if there’s just two people in the room and it’s the size of a closet some of them have that problem, and yet we have here, depending on where you sit here you can be an observer of many things happening in many other instructional areas. I’m not sure that many of these kids are prepared for that and I think that’s kind of what we heard from a couple parents this evening.
Pam Morris-Stendal: And what we have if you’ll look at the plans, there’s between two of the learning team areas there’s a small area – it kind of looks like a little square in the corners there. Part of what we did is we set up small study areas for the kids, knowing that sometimes they need to either work with a partner, need to work with a teacher, or need to work by themselves – have some quiet space. But that would be one place that they could do that and so those are areas we could put a computer in and the kids would have – I mean, knowing that that’s an issue, it doesn’t have to be an ADD or ADHD kid either – sometimes you just need a little quiet space so we did create that given it might be an issue for some of the kids.
Director Hoff: I guess you could accommodate no more than 15 out of a 100 in those four spaces.
Pam Morris-Stendal: If you look at the proportion of our student population that are special needs students, about 15% of our kids are special ed. And that would be about 15 kids, but not all those kids are ADD or ADHD. We have some kids who are working pretty well right now, just as well if not better than they were before because we had kids who were mainstreamed anyway that were in the classes as it was. So not all kids would need that all the time.
Director Hoff: I guess if I were in your shoes and looking at something like this I think I would probably save one of these and put the other into a much more traditional sense so that you could handle both and as kids had the ability to move into open spaces, there was the open space. But I fear, knowing some of the kids that I see and some of the kids that you and I both know, that a lot of open space here is not going to be very productive.
Pam Morris-Stendal: And I do know that some of our ADD and ADHD kids were not making it in a traditional setting with a classroom with 30 kids, or 15 kids. I mean – I can’t say this is going to work for every kid but I can’t say the traditional system is working for every kid either. So we’re getting better at how we can assist kids in this environment and that’s what we’re doing right now – we’re learning.
Director Murphy: Pam, you know the open concept has come and gone and walls go up and walls come down. I just can’t believe we’re building a school without walls.
Pam Morris-Stendal: And I keep saying – we have walls. But the problem is there’s no door in the wall.
Director Murphy: But a lot of noisy open space.
President Storvick: Let me interject very briefly to give Director Germanis an opportunity to speak and then if we want to revisit issues we’ve already shared we can choose to do so.
Director Germanis: Just a couple of quick comments and basically based on what I heard. Since I’ve been on the Board all I’ve ever heard up here from community members is ‘take a program that works and go with it’. I’ve heard it over and over and over and over, and that’s what we’re doing here. We’re taking a program that works and we’re going with it. Now all I hear is it’s wrong, I wouldn’t do it this way and I swear this is the only thing I’ve heard loud and clear since I got up here was go with the program that works. It hurts me inside when I hear people talk about ‘these kids’ because I think that when we set expectations for children they fulfill them – whether we set them up here or we set them down here. And probably inadvertently over the evening it has been ‘these kids’ and we are setting the expectations and we are setting them up to fail. I believe they are capable of more than we’re giving them credit for. I believe all children are capable of more than we’re giving them credit for. I actually brought this – I’ve read "Who Moved the Cheese" – I don’t know if anybody ever read that or not, but somebody gave me the calendar and I was actually bringing it to Danny today because I took it off last week and it says "Keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll keep getting what you’re getting" which is basically her statement "When you want to enjoy new cheese do the opposite" of what you’ve been doing, not just changed a little bit. I’m in full support of what you’re doing. It’s been proven – that’s what I kept hearing so I can support it.
President Storvick: My turn. Tell me again a little bit about the Met. It sounded like you said that the student success has been demonstrated over time there, and did you also say the students (and I put a quote around it) looks like our student population at Truman? So it’s a fairly – previously at least – it looked like a fairly traditional alternative school in terms of the demographics of the student.
Pam Morris-Stendal: It was a start-up school. It started with 50 kids…
President Storvick: Let me rephrase the question. The student population, the demographics of that and I think Director Murphy referenced it as at-risk student, looked like our student population.
Pam Morris-Stendal: Yes.
President Storvick: I guess I’m going to say the same things I believe I’ve heard from a couple of Board members up here previously, but I was probably one of the most vocal private critics at least on the Board of Truman because I don’t think it even came close – even remotely close to meeting the needs of our students – and I think you and I had some discussions early on about are those needs defined by the student or by the professional educators? And my argument, and your argument was the same basically, that defining the needs of the students was defined by the obligation of the district to educate all students and it simply wasn’t happening. Director Hendrickson referenced that – didn’t talk about the numbers and we don’t need to – but they’re not in the end of the spectrum that anybody took any pleasure on and certainly not the students. I think I share Director Germanis’ concern about, and I’m not speaking to Board members, I’m speaking just in a general sense, that anytime we couch our comments in semantics that enable students to fail by giving them an excuse to fail because they fall into a category of ‘at-risk’. I think that provides a significant disservice, so I very much applaud you and appreciate (and having been on the Board the entire time since this design came forward) and I believe sat through I believe every unanimous vote by this Board in support of the Truman redesign and knowing that it wasn’t driven by a grant, but in fact the grant request went from the district out – it didn’t come from some funding source back to the district – makes it a local control issue and we patterned our behavior and I’m glad you said it Audrey – because we have heard it. If there was nothing I’ve heard on this Board from every Board member and virtually every community member that I’ve heard speak when they’ve hit that 3-minute limit over the four years it’s ‘if something works and you’ve got a model, don’t reinvent the wheel, take it and go with it’ so I consider it extraordinary that we’re having this discussion at this late date because this is all territory we’ve been through. And you’re right, I think it’s brave of Truman and the Superintendent and the people that are still at Truman because there’s significant risk associated with this for the professionals attached and I just think we have to do something different and I’m glad it’s copying a model and not reinventing the wheel so my support is there. And unless there’s further new comment…
Director Murphy: Just for clarification then, we have significant data from multiple sources that say schools with no bells, no grades, no walls, and no classrooms significant self-directed and project learning is successful?
Pam Morris-Stendal: And I can direct you to some schools – the Minnesota New Country School, the Big Picture Schools, the Met in Providence, R.I., the Urban Academy in New York which does have wall; and actually at the Met one of their buildings does have walls. Their new one won’t but they’re doing some work. It’s the concept of what we’re doing and how we’re teaching the kids. The walls are just …you know, not that important. And then if you go to someplace like down in San Diego they have these large open areas for the kids – they call it the Great Room – and the kids are working at stations just like they would in a job where they have computers. They have stations and they’re working in there, but they do have some breakout rooms, like what we have put into the plan.
Director Murphy: So, on the spectrum…teacher directed, student centered…it falls over on student centered.
Pam Morris-Stendal: But remember teacher directed has got to be part of that. We can’t make any assumptions that they know everything. That’s what the teacher is for – to do guiding and instruction facilitating and we do.
Director Murphy: Progressive education, and I didn’t mean to disparage any student, but when you think of struggling students generally it’s because they don’t have enough structure. Generally you can make that claim, so that would be my comment. I didn’t mean to disparage any student, but if you’re struggling a lot of the time it’s because you don’t have enough teacher directives.
President Storvick: And we go back to the discussion this Board’s had on a couple of occasions related to the fact that the student population that you’re speaking of has already demonstrated that that traditional environment has not worked for them. We can’t use the same rationale on both sides of the argument. If it doesn’t work, why continue doing exactly the same thing? And Truman has demonstrated better than any school in our district what doesn’t work. So…(laughter)…and that was not intended to take away the compliments. It is extraordinarily difficult to break a model, and a mindset, to shift a paradigm of any population, and that’s the part I think is brave of the educators and the folks who’ve been involved in this process. So, again, if there’s no, and I don’t mean to cut you short but this is territory we’ve been over on the Board, and it sounds like the vote is fairly clear.
Director Murphy: Did the Board approve the grant, the initial grant?
President Storvick: The Board approved the acceptance of the grant. I believe it was at Truman and I believe it was a 5-0 vote with this Board, and it was taken off the Consent Calendar and there was discussion if I recall correctly too. I know you spoke to it during that meeting.
Pam Morris-Stendal: And I would invite you on November 8th – there’ll be a group of people coming from the Big Picture Schools. They’re going to be speaking at the Coalition for Central Schools Conference on the 9th and 10th of November. They will be at Truman on the 8th and they’re bringing some students and they may bring some parents would be my guess. So that might be an opportunity for you to talk to some people who have lived it, experienced it, and believe in it.
President Storvick (?): What time?
Pam Morris-Stendal: I will have to get that to you. I don’t know yet, I just know that they’re going to be there. Also the author of the book "One Kid at a Time" will be there, Elliott Levine.
Director Hoff: What time will you be having these parent conferences that you invited us to also?
Pam Morris-Stendal: We’ve completed those. Our next round won’t be until probably December, and I can get that information out to you too. But a Harvard doctoral student did his research around that and wrote the book "One Kid at a Time" and that has a lot to do with his research about why this was successful for a group of kids in Providence, Rhode Island.
President Storvick: And you’ll gather that information for the Board and perhaps for the potential folks that will be on the next Board and encourage them to participate.
Pam Morris-Stendal: I have copies of the books for everybody.
President Storvick: Thanks. There is one Public Comment on this. Mr. Gardner.
PUBLIC COMMENT
Lloyd Gardner: Meredith Hill. My question is – did I gather from the conversation that has proceeded here that we had sent a contingent from this school clear back to Rhode Island to look at a school? Is that what has happened, and what kind of numbers and what kind of cost was this? Is that in the budget that’s being approved tonight, has been approved, is going to be approved?
President Storvick: That’s work that has been done, in fact long done.
Superintendent Murphy: That was last year.
Director Murphy: I think the vouchers came through in March of this year.
Superintendent Murphy: I meant the last fiscal school year.
Lloyd Gardner: And the number of people?
President Storvick: We’re getting a count now. I think five.
Lloyd Gardner: Well, I suppose I guess it is startling to me that …
President Storvick: Mr. Gardner, we can get back to you with the actual costs on that and the numbers of people. It was part of the due diligence that the district would do in researching any performance-based activity.
Lloyd Gardner: I would like to leave you with this comment however. And that is it seems a long ways to go to find a school to justify what we’re doing here which may be okay. There are some rare schools around the country but that’s a long distance and I read an awful lot of articles that seem to me suggest there’s a lot of successful schools out there and whether they’re of this kind we’re looking for for Truman, I don’t know, but I guess I think there was some way to get some experience and talk about experience in schools of this type with schools in the nearby areas with a lot less cost than what we have undergone here. It bothers me as a taxpayer. I guess that’s what you wanted to hear.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Gardner. There’s a motion on the table. We’ve had discussion. If there’s no further discussion all in favor? Motion carries. Directors Germanis, Hendrickson, Storvick supporting. Directors Murphy and Hoff not supporting.
ACCOUNTABILITY POLICY
President Storvick: We are now at Agenda Item B-2, which is the Accountability Policy. I believe Mr. Davidson this is you right? I had some notes on his from Board Presidents Conference that this was for information – we crossed it out, called it a first reading and then as I looked through it it looked like it was really information because it doesn’t take the form of policy.
Mark Davidson: I understood it to be information. I have something for …
President Storvick: When it comes back this will come back as Policy 6210, the Principals Evaluation.
Mark Davidson: That’s correct. I wanted to kind of combine kind of an introduction tonight really. That’s why I believe it’s information and not a first reading. I also have Carol Matsui somewhere with me as we get to that – sorry Carol. Thank you. I’m back for another round of accountability and have been thinking (sorry to have you shake your head President Storvick). We are looking at ways of making this do-able. I felt very clearly as I wrote in here that it was a huge chunk of stuff to get our arms around. I think it was really an enormous issue and felt we needed to break this thing into some manageable pieces. I’ve talked with Mr. Murphy and thought of some ways of possibly doing that. As you can see – you’ve read through this and I’m not going to read it for you – the first step I believe would be to place the Principal/Assistant Principal Evaluation at the same level that other certificated evaluation is at – which really is in a policy form, even though it’s done in the contract that is approved by the Board as opposed to our current Principals’ evaluation process which really is procedural. We’ve developed some several models of those over the past I don’t know how many years, to be honest; my history with that goes back only about 12 years or so, but I know we’ve had several ways of doing that and feel that to put this at the same level sends a message that it is really important – the Board is approving the Principal/Assistant Principal Evaluation process. That’s the reason for doing that. One thing I didn’t include and I think Director Murphy may have asked us some questions about that. Originally in this packet was the actual policy itself which does have some cross references to some other policies and to the law so that you have that background information about Principal Evaluation policy. And the proposal, even though this is an informational piece and not yet a first reading, would be simply to take the evaluation which you can see the 11 pages or whatever it is there after the introduction and add that to the policy, rather than have it be part of the procedure as it is now. So that would be the first chunk. As you can see, also going backwards a little bit here, we have some other parts of a potential accountability system that exists as well – Promotion, Graduation Requirements, SLT, Parent/Family Involvement, Waiver Policy, the Teacher Contract and its evaluative pieces, the Strategic Plan goals, and the Community of Readers Plan to get us to those strategic plan goals. I also mention there’s some other ways – other pieces I believe we could head toward after approving this, and that would be the performance targets and accountability continuum – talking about the recognition assistance and intervention for schools and then finally developing the language of the policy itself. It seems somewhat backwards, but I think it’s the way we can put it all together. Director Hendrickson, you have a question?
Director Hendrickson: No I’m still thinking.
Mark Davidson: I think rather than start…we tried starting this thing several times with kind of an introductory language to the policy and it was really ineffective because I think it was way too much. I figure we should work backwards with some pieces, try to then tie them all together at the end and then have you approve the whole thing all at once. Or maybe approve chunks as we go, with a final approval for the policy – and that we do that over the course of several months if it takes that long. In this particular instance, I believe that will be a more effective way of going through this process. So with that…any questions, comments, concerns, anything you have at this point?
President Storvick: Board members?
Director Hendrickson: Is this policy you just handed out – is this current policy?
Mark Davidson: Yes it is. And I took this, frankly, off the web.
Director Hendrickson: That’s what I was guessing. So are you suggesting any changes to this policy or you’re just …
Mark Davidson: Add this Principal/Assistant Principal Evaluation, which is now part of the procedure piece, 6210P, as it says on there. It says "related forms" at the end of that second page of that policy and by the way if anyone in the audience is interested I’ve added a pile of those to the back table as well – the policy itself. I’m suggesting that we add this piece to occur before 6210P and make this form itself actually something that you adopt.
Director Hendrickson: Then my question is, as I read the policy and then I look at the form, there seems to be no connection, no common language, no anything. This speaks to three main areas of responsibility and this talks about a different strands …
Mark Davidson: Thank you. That’s great feedback.
Director Hendrickson: Seems like we might want to have it so that one follows into the other and supports the other.
Mark Davidson: Okay. I also have Carol here for the form itself, and I realize this isn’t a first reading but Carol is here in terms of the development of the form itself.
President Storvick: You’re looking from the Board tonight, Mr. Davidson, for just feedback on whether our interest is for you to revisit and revise the policy itself, include the procedure so it’s adopted as part of policy, and that you would come back with a first reading in November with a policy that looks different than this does.
Mark Davidson: Exactly. With 6210 and comments you would have about the proposal for the accountability policy which …
President Storvick: As it relates to Principals Evaluation…
Mark Davidson: And as the concept relates to trying to tie all these pieces together and maybe I should have broken this into two chunks. That might have made more sense standing up here at this point, but trying to just get us off on that first step. So really there are two things and I apologize for not seeming well organized as I stand here – and that would be again two pieces – one would be a first reading next time of the Principals Evaluation Policy including the form as part of the policy, and rewriting pieces of that…
Director Hendrickson: And is the form pages A-K – the entire chunk?
Mark Davidson: The entire chunk. Thank you, and also
Director Murphy: So that’s the tool. We have the policy just like the Superintendent thing – we have the policy, we have the tool.
Mark Davidson: Correct. I guess I just want the tool to be – I think the tool should be adopted by the Board officially rather than just administrative procedure. That’s my pitch for that particular thing.
Director Murphy: So are you planning to update this to match this?
Mark Davidson: I certainly would look for a way to do that better. That’s welcome comment.
President Storvick: That’s a given I think.
Mark Davidson: Yes, it needs to be cause it doesn’t seem to have a tie.
And I think that shows where we were with the whole…I guess that’s why it needs
to be done.
President Storvick: You have a comment Tom?
Superintendent Murphy: A couple of brief comments. We believe based on the best legal advice we’ve been given that it’s important for you to adopt the actual Principal Evaluation document and approach. That it’s very supportive to have the Board actually adopt that. Secondly, the approach Mark is taking with accountability is we’ve tried in the past, as you know, to deal with the whole amorphous thing at the same time; and what we’re trying to do now is take it in sections and then when the sections are all together then bring it together – when the sections are all laid out, then bring it together and say what kind of language do you need to explain that all of this stuff is tied together? So that’s essentially the direction he’s taking.
Director Murphy: I have some brief questions. On the tool there’s a couple parts – one is the 1-4 ranking system. 1 would be organizer, 2 would be participant, 3 would be steward, and 4 would be leader and then each one of those are defined. Under those I guess one comment I would make, and I know it’s an evaluation tool and evaluation is subjective at times, but some of the wording seems a little vague to me. For example, to get a 4, to be a leader and get a 4 (I imagine 3 meets standard, and 4 is above standard) and the example would be (laughter) …it looks like a report card to me…analyzes feedback from diverse sources. That kind of wording is kind of vague to me.
Director Hoff: Sounds like a good EALR to me.
Director Murphy: Right. The other thing, however, on the goal setting evaluation page - kind of the second part of the tool. It looks like you're actually looking for some result - something that's not going to be as fuzzy, even though it doesn’t signify everything that’s going on. A lot of times things go on in building before they manifest themselves into improved test scores or whatever. How does this – does this figure into the evaluation? And how does it?
Mark Davidson: Yes. And I’d like to think about that. The only thing I would make the comment about this evening, and I understand your comment – how do those tie and what do they mean is what I’m hearing you say is first of all we do have to have an evaluation where results matter. We haven’t had that in the past as you know, so we felt it’s critical. Again I would offer that Carol worked with a relatively large group of principals - how many people were involved?
Carol Matsui: I think we had seven.
Mark Davidson: About seven – so good participation in that and I agree - I don’t know if fuzzy is the word I would use, but the results piece with looking at how students are doing is critical and the other pieces on that scale – the rubric if you will – using that educational term (tape change) …in that real sense and we’re trying to blend the two in this particular instance. But I understand your point and I’ll try to be more …
Director Murphy: There’s two pieces. Is one weighted, is one just information? Is a test score going to be 20% or is it not going to be anything, or how does it figure in?
President Storvick: Since this is in for information let me encourage the Board – we’ve got three weeks between now and the next Board meeting. You hear that piece certainly at least and if other Board members – if there’s information we need to provide to firm up the detail components of the evaluation let’s do what we can to either meet with Mark directly or e-mail it so that the detail work can be done before we get it for first reading, and then we can define it as we go forward.
Mark Davidson: Great, thank you.
Director Murphy: Is there actually a job description for the principal that maybe can come along?
Mark Davidson: Yes, as a matter of fact, there is. I’ll add that to it.
President Storvick: Thank you, Mark.
PUBLIC COMMENT
President Storvick: We have a couple of public comments on this Agenda item. Mr. Hoskinson. And let me encourage you Mr. Hoskinson to remember that we have a challenge with students that swear in our schools, so please watch your language sir.
John Hoskinson: And may I make reference to the Clover Park Report again?
President Storvick: You certainly may.
John Hoskinson: Thank you. Well you know, reading the duties of the Board and of conducting observations, establishing oversight studies, requiring periodic reports and looking at your strategic plan which has five elements: student achievements, student support; home/community partnership; staff focus; staff excellence and fiscal responsibility. As Standard 1 of the audit says: "the school is able to demonstrate and control its programs". Here you write something down. You’re going to manage the school through these five programs. You’re going to give emphasis to this. So if you’re going to give emphasis to it you’re accountability system has to be built around those five elements. This thing that he’s done here – he’s got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 things; the first three items in this thing as I understand it belongs to student support. The parent/family involvement belongs to whole community focus, waiver policy belongs to staff excellence, strategic planning goals belongs under student achievement, and the community of readers, I suppose, would be under student support. If you’re going to manage by these five programs and it says you’re going to have performance indicators for all of them, well why don’t you manage that way? You’re not consistent. This is what the Clover Park report says. It also says that you demonstrate internal connectivity – in other words, you connect your plan to everything you do. You can even put a heading on everything you issue and say it’s under this program. You have to connect everything to your five programs of management, but you’re not doing that. I’m surprised. I spent two hours with two of your officials going through program management. I spent 18 hours working up a whole program for you with program factors under every damn major element, but a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still. Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Hoskinson. Bob Millen.
(?) :Hard act to follow.
Bob Millen: Hi, I’m Bob Millen with the Brigadoon area. I am kind of amazed how we can take such a simple concept of accountability and make it so complicated. To me accountability is just a process of measuring and reporting how well one meets their goals. That’s my understanding of accountability. If we would start from the bottom up and start a student accountability, teacher and principal accountability -–how do we do this? Well, with students we could give them grades – we do that. The teachers give them grades however. How you’d have teacher accountability – well you basically compile how well the grades are that they gave their kids. There’s the breakdown – there’s no accountability there, none whatsoever. You’re just basically grading yourself. That is not measuring, it is purely reporting. You’ve heard me say this before, and I’ll say it again…I believe this district and all districts need yearly tests and it’s easier, obviously, in the elementary and middle schools, but if you had 5th grade teachers making up a 4th grade test and say here is the 4th grade test – we want all kids to pass this test…they will know what they’re supposed to teach to so they can be successful all the way through so they can pass our standard, which we call the WASL (which is only measured at two grades – 4th and 10th). What about in between? Well, we’ve got the Star and this and that, but they’re so convoluted they don’t apply because there’s no direct path. If you’re going to have accountability, you’ve got to have some way to measure it and report it and it needs to be consistent and in my opinion that’s the only way I can think of that can be a consistent way. If you have a consistent test in every grade you can then measure how well the students are progressing from year to year; you can see growth there; you can hold teachers accountable so they can be measured so they can determine how well they are grading, how well their students are progressing from year to year; and therefore principals are the same way because now you have a conglomeration of teachers. The district the same way. I think you need consistent testing starting with the students and then accountability will occur. Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you, Mr. Millen.
MIDDLE SCHOOL DESIGN
President Storvick: Moving along now to Agenda Item B-3, Middle School Design. Mr. Superintendent, do you have any comments or introduction?
Superintendent Murphy: Danny is here to respond to any further thoughts, comments, or questions that you have. This is in front of you for second reading.
President Storvick: You know, Danny, the Board loves getting information at the Board table.
Danny Leaverton: I’m sorry.
President Storvick: You don’t need to apologize. I think everybody tonight is giving us information. It gives us that opportunity to just stop and not pay any attention to the presenter so that we can read what we’ve got.
Danny Leaverton: I was going to put a little joke on there, but decided not to. Good evening, this is the answer to the question I was asked last time by Director Murphy on Showalter. If you look at the scores for Showalter on the WASL you will see they are, as she pointed out at the time in math, reading, and writing at the bottom of that page, not too spectacular. And the reason this was chosen as a middle school model is because if you look at where they started and where they came to you can see the growth they made under the middle school. That’s all I have to say, so I’ll answer any other questions you have.
President Storvick: Board members?
Director Hoff: Each team member has 82 minutes of common planning time every day?
(?) That’s what it says.
Director Hoff: Almost an hour and a half every day.
President Storvick: We seem to be, for the moment, silent. Bear with us for a moment while we…it must have been so amazing you caught us off guard.
Director Germanis: I only had one question. In the design that I see, we’re going to have the kids moving four times a day, or three times a day or something. I can’t remember what it was. They are actually physically moving – that was irrelevant, it didn’t really matter.
Danny Leaverton: Fewer times than they do now.
Director Germanis: But they move. Have we considered at all having the teachers move and having the kids stay where they’re at?
Danny Leaverton: I think that as the schools begin to talk about it they’ll consider all those things.
Director Germanis: Okay, so that still like an open-ended thing. Okay, I just was curious.
Director Murphy: Every teacher’s a counselor. I have some questions. Can I go ahead? I had sent in a while ago and we ran out of time at the last Board meeting – some comments on the vision and perhaps a mission statement for the middle school. And the vision right now consists of 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6 areas and the first one I think sounds good – every student must meet expectations. I would state it that students will be at or above grade level in academic subject matter. The other ones were those good ideas, those healthy environment kinds of things that sound good but make me a little nervous. And I broke them down in my mind. For example, every student must think creatively, identify and solve meaningful problems, communicate and work well with others – so like a creative problem solver. I kind of chunked them down. Every student must develop the skills as knowledge – higher order thinking abilities would be the other one. Every student must lead healthful lives, physically and mentally, so every student must be mentally and physically healthy. Every student must be compassionate and caring, a contributing U.S. citizen, a contributing world citizen. I kind of chunked them down like that. I would ask if we could just simplify and say for a vision: students would be at or above grade level, that students will understand that good conduct, ethical behavior, regular attendance, and continually striving for high quality work provides a positive school-wide learning environment and promotes individual excellence. I would ask that we include teachers in the vision to state that teachers are respected by parents and students as role models and scholars and that teachers are in regular communication with parents. So that’s kind of another take on the vision and I know I had sent it in and it kind of just fell flat, but I’m sharing it with you again. The other thing is a mission statement. And I know that we have a short mission statement for our FW Public Schools. I would like to expand it and have you consider a mission statement that would sound something like this: that the continuation of our republic form of government and heritage requires a well educated citizenry; that to this end we find the fundamental responsibility of the middle schools is the teaching of the knowledge and skills, and providing for a well rounded education; that curriculum is rigorous and purposeful and develops in students an understanding of the tenets of our republic heritage and provides the necessary foundational knowledge and skills to secure the legacy of our free society. We respect the roll of family and recognize parents in their primary roll in the upbringing of their children. And again, I had submitted that probably a couple of months ago and I don’t know if it went anyplace. I have several concerns about the middle school. There’s stuff in here I really like. One of my big concerns is the lack of honors and the idea we’ll have heterogeneous classrooms with differentiated learning and I’m not sure where that’s going to take us, but I know it’s not going to take us to an honors program. So can you explain a little bit … in the document it also said that to have that kind of learning environment that all learning will have to be differentiated. So I’m wondering what that means.
Danny Leaverton: What differentiated means? Is that what you’re asking?
Director Murphy: What that means? That every classroom will have to have that kind of environment I believe?
Danny Leaverton: Differentiated instruction simply means that whatever lesson you’re teaching to a particular class you seek to meet the needs of both the middle, and both ends of the spectrum, so that you create a lesson that works for the honor student and create a lesson that works for the special needs student.
Director Murphy: I guess I’m wondering is the direction – we’re not there yet – but is the direction ultimately that individual learning plan, for a lack of a better word, individual instruction for goals for each child or is it still going to be more group-based instruction? Are we…is it differentiated to each and every child, cause each and every one comes in a different spot. So, is each child going to have a differentiated goal sheet and that kind of thing to work on with instruction?
Danny Leaverton: We simply didn’t get into exactly how to do that. We left it to the schools to have conversation about how they want to accomplish the differentiated instruction.
Superintendent Murphy: The requirement to have all the students reach standard hasn’t changed and there won’t be a sliding standard for students. So the approach may different depending on students’ needs. Our responsibility is still going to be to get everybody to perform at the level where they’ll be successful at the next level. So as the classroom teacher thinks about how to approach the kids in the classroom that’s the differentiation – is in how we’re going to help the kids get to where they need to be. I don’t want us to be thinking that we’re developing a system where some kids have this level of expectation and other kids have this level and other kids have that level as you would have, perhaps, with an individual approach – saying well okay you look at me and I can only get to here and so that’s a judgment you make and that’s the only goal that you have for me. So the goals for achievement for all the kids are going to be high and how we try to help them get there I would think is going to have to take that differentiation in approach. The other comment I did want to make about the honors program is that we haven’t finalized yet exactly what that’s going to look like, and I’ve not yet given up my 51% that Lincoln said that he had to weigh in and say here are some things that I think all these schools ought to have and here’s how I think they ought to have them. And that continues to develop in my own mind and I expect to have some further clarification to you in the mail this week about some areas I think need a little further refinement in this document, or even other areas not covered by this document that I think all the schools need to have for you to consider as you think of this three weeks from now.
Director Murphy: Just a couple other quick questions. In the new middle school design will a student be able to get high school credit?
Danny Leaverton: Yes.
Director Murphy: Yes, so you don’t have to be taking it with high school students or whatever – if you’re taking it with 6th graders or 7th graders…for example if you have a foreign language.
Superintendent Murphy: That’s a great example. Foreign language, math, algebra for example – what the state law says is you don’t have to be in a class with 9th graders. It simply has to be a class that if a 9th grader were in the class they would be earning high school credit. So if we’re running intro to foreign language at the high school and we’re running exactly the same class at the middle school then by law we have to give the student credit for that – high school credit.
Director Murphy: So if it’s the same curriculum then they’ll get the…
Superintendent Murphy: Right.
Director Murphy: That’s very good. I was worried about that. And again in the document it mentions volunteer opportunities and job shadowing for middle schoolers and that’s not going to be a prescribed thing – we don’t have a…
Danny Leaverton: It’s an example that was in the example piece.
Director Murphy: And new report cards will be developed? You probably don’t want to touch that one yet.
Danny Leaverton: A new report card will need to be developed for 6th, 7th and 8th grade.
Director Murphy: Any idea what those might look like? (laughter) I think I know – I’m just asking.
Danny Leaverton: Spells ‘retirement’ to me. (laughter)
Superintendent Murphy: I think we learned some things the last time we went through this so I think you could anticipate that we would use that learning as we move forward.
Director Murphy: The other thing just briefly, and Charlie had mentioned it when he was reading Showalter, the planning time, the recommendation – right now per FWEA agreement there’s 180 hours? This is asking for at least another 30 minutes a day – so another 90 hours at least and that’s the current recommendation.
Danny Leaverton: Correct, yes it is.
Director Hoff: They’re running on a 4-period day is what I see here. And one of those periods is a planning period.
Director Murphy: The other thing just for sake of comment and you had many examples of different schools – Showalter being one of them. Many of them aren’t stellar performing schools and that has me concerned a little bit.
Director Hoff: Knowing what some of us know about Showalter is that this is not prime territory for the best possible raw material for kids. I do see some encouraging things here like homework success a 4-nite per week study session – actually got COSTCO to help out on that.
Director Hendrickson: What does that mean – prime territory for the best raw product – what does that mean?
Director Hoff: Not every child coming into this school has had the background that some of our better achieving kids have got. They have large numbers of ESL kids there, they have large numbers of recent arrivals, they have all of the indexes we look at and say a school does better than this under certain circumstances.
Director Hendrickson: Or that are used for reasons why people don’t expect kids there to learn and then that becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
Director Hoff: I’m just saying when you look at Showalter and say their scores are not particularly good, comparing them to some other that have those kind of criteria they might not be so bad after all.
Director Murphy: 21.4 in math is kind of down there.
Danny Leaverton: It really is down there, but it’s amazing if you look from 4.6 to 21.4 in three years is a pretty good jump.
Director Murphy: Just a matter of analysis.
Director Germanis: Just a matter of comment when we talk about the differentiated classrooms where you’ve got all the groups together – if you take a look at what the FW Public Academy does and people are touting the Academy as being a school to pattern off of – that’s exactly what they do. They don’t take their students out – they take all students regardless. If they need additional help they get additional help, but they’re all in the same classrooms together. And Ray was here telling us how even students that didn’t do well in the grade school arena came to the FW Public Academy and succeeded because they were expected to reach those levels. So I think that’s a really important area of it, to put the groups together like that. For what that’s worth.
Director Murphy: The only other comment I’ll make is when I did go on the OSPI Database and they do have the big thing on middle school and their example schools – most of them aren’t high performing schools yet, and of course the demographics play issue in that kind of thing, but it really seems to me what they were looking for are schools that implemented what they said to be implemented to be successful, not necessarily schools that were successful.
President Storvick: And I think that’s it. Thank you Danny.
President Storvick: We are moving right along. We only have about another two hours on the Agenda and I have to ask…there’s a number of students in here. This is the longest we’ve held students in a meeting since the last time we had a Civics class…
(?): Go for another half hour.
President Storvick: I’ve got to ask – are you from a Civics class or something or are you just here because Board meetings are pretty cool? (laughter)
Director Germanis(?): If I might comment – they are among the most attentive students that we have ever had come from a Civics class. They are actually listening, they are making eye contact with Board members, no one is sleeping yet – so whoevers class you’re from please take that back – a comment that you are doing a fine job of attending a public meeting and representing yourselves and your school.
President Storvick: And they’re not making catcalls which I think we had at one Board meeting. You are actually very well mannered. I appreciate it. They were making some noises in the back of the room – I thought they were hooting at our comments. Is there a length requirement for you to attend? We are typically done by this time – this is just an extraordinarily long Agenda tonight and before we get to the M&O piece, if you need to be excused this is the time we normally wrap up.
Director Germanis: Chris says 8:30 is all they’re required to stay.
Director Hoff: It’s so exciting they just stayed later.
(everyone talking at once)
Director Murphy: May I just ask a question? Is community service or coming to a Board meeting – is that a requirement of your mandatory Civics class? (audience – yes) Is community service a requirement as well? (audience – yes) So you are having to be required to do community service to graduate? (audience – yes)
President Storvick: And you’re required to stay until 8:30? (audience – actually we are required to stay until you guys get out – I’m afraid to say that, but…(laughter) Then what I’ll do …you see who we are up here, but each time each public comment person I’ll state their name and where they live so that if they talk too long you can chat with them later.
MAINTENANCE AND OPERATIONS LEVY
President Storvick: We are actually at the next Agenda item, Maintenance & Operations Levy. Sally McLean couldn’t be here tonight. Mr. Superintendent, do you have introduction and comments on this?
Superintendent Murphy: Very brief comments. You’ve had an opportunity for quite some time to look at the recommendation I’ve brought to you regarding M&O levy. The highlights of the recommendation are that I’m recommending that the election be held the first opportunity in February of the year 2002; I’m requesting that we ask for a two year M&O levy and my recommendation to you is to approve an amount of money that, based on conservative calculations on Sally’s part, will leave the tax rate for the FW taxpayers at exactly the same rate as it is now. And that in essence is the three major components of this recommendation. I will remind you that we had considered coming to you asking you to approve a tech levy for voters, also a bus levy. We’ve reconsidered that and not brought that forward at this time. Those needs haven’t gone away, but we will be talking with you about that, or probably with another Board, sometime in the future about how we want to approach those issues. But tonight anyway the only measure in front of you, the only decision in front of you is my recommendation for the M&O levy.
President Storvick: Thank you. Board members, do you have any questions or comments for the Superintendent before we get to public comment and then following public comment I think we’ll have the motion.
Director Germanis: I just wanted to make a comment from a small business perspective that not only over the past year, but since the events in September have taken place the economy is very difficult as everybody knows. I don’t think that now is the time to ask for more than what we have currently. I think that’s even going to be a stretch to ask people, because I think people are cutting back or trying to cut back. That would be the maximum I could support at this time is to keep it flat.
President Storvick: Hearing no other Board comments at this moment we’ll go to public comments. Teri Hickel who lives in the Rainier View service area.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
Teri Hickel: Thank you Board members. I’m here on behalf of the Citizens for Federal Way Schools. I’m the President this year and we are the committee that manages the school levy and bond campaigns. And we’ve been in communication with Superintendent Murphy about the upcoming levy and as you mentioned a lot has changed since our initial meeting in June. I recently polled our membership about this upcoming levy and I must report that we are virtually split down the middle. Half of our group agrees with Superintendent Murphy’s fiscally conservative approach. They believe because of the flat economy that we have the best chance of winning an election if we keep the rate the same. Some of them believe that some money is better than no money. The other half of our group recognizes that there’s never a good time to raise a rate, but FW has the lowest rate – a per-pupil rate in comparison to surrounding districts, and we’ve had it for quite some time. And we believe we must invest in our teachers and classrooms now, that we have an upcoming teacher shortage which is looming in the future and we want to retain the best. So needless to say that all of us are committed to the kids in this district and all of us will support whatever your decision is and we will be ready to go in February.
President Storvick: Thank you Teri. Bill Boyd.
Bill Boyd: Well good evening, I’m Bill Boyd. I live in the Nautilus service area. I’m a member of Citizens for Federal Way schools but I don’t speak tonight on behalf of the organization. I come to you as a citizen and taxpayer. I understand and respect the reasons the Superintendent has given you for his levy recommendation, but tonight I’m going to ask you for still more bravery. I’m going to ask you for greater risk, and I’m going to ask that you consider going for the largest levy possible. Our schools and their staffs do a remarkable job with the resources they are given. At the same time we need to recognize that Federal Way, like it or not, has become an urban school district with all the expensive complexities that entails. Our students speak 78 languages; we have a substantial population of children with disabilities and challenges who are entitled to an education; we’re also about to build and operate a fourth high school and rebuild Truman. These kinds of challenges require more than working smarter – they require resources. If I’ve figured this correctly and my math may be subject to revision, setting the levy at the 24.9% level will add about 2-1/2% to the overall budget. That’s not enough to say that we’re simply throwing money at problems, but it is enough that if spent wisely this funding can make a major difference. It can add employee hours where they’re needed, including in understaffed school offices, shore up the educational program, and purchase instructional materials for textbook starved classrooms. I believe that if we sell this as an excellence in education levy it stands an excellent chance of passing. Remember that 68% of the voters approved the last levy. Granted in better economic times, but I am convinced that strong support for education still is a deeply held value of this community. To make the case we need to calculate exactly how many dollars would be generated over and above a status quo levy, and then tell the voters precisely how those dollars would be spent, what they would retain from previous years, and what new things they would fund. In some of our past campaigns the benefits have been admittedly rather nebulous. This time we must tell voters down to the last pencil what additional resources a yes vote would buy. This will put Federal Way on the road to once again achieving parity with surrounding districts. It’s an investment in our young people at a time when they must be better prepared for the future than ever. Most importantly, it’s a statement about what kind of community we aspire to be. Now, do I like paying higher taxes? No more than anybody else in this room, but again, by my calculations we’re looking at – for an average home – approximately $38/year. That’s a mocha or two a month. Am I willing to give up a mocha or two a month? Absolutely. As Johnny Cochran might put it – if you want the best, you must vote yes – and I believe the voters will.
Director Murphy: Bill, do you drink mochas? (laughter)
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Boyd. Ron Gintz. We’ve had a long-standing policy, Mr. Gintz, that former elected officials get half the time because they still can’t hold it within the time allowed.
(everyone talking at once)
Ron Gintz: I tried to be half as good as the students about being bored with the Board and it didn’t work very well so…I thought I was going to be home by 8:00.
Director Hendrickson: So did I. (laughter)
Ron Gintz: And I don’t have any handouts so rest assured. But I do want to placate a couple of Directors if I may. Charlie, I got your note – we’re going to have coffee, okay? So you can listen to me. And, Ann, I’m sorry about that last letter, okay?
Director Murphy: You’re forgiven.
Ron Gintz: I am worried, I am genuinely worried and I’ve talked to several council members along the same vein. It almost seems like it’s un-American in Federal Way to raise taxes and I think we’ve become so paralyzed about the thought of raising taxes that we think somehow we’re being fiscally responsible to not raise taxes. Being fiscally responsible says spending the money that you have wisely. It doesn’t mean not raising more money for the needs. So I am desperately afraid for the FWSD that if we maintain a two-year levy and it’s almost, as Bill said…I’m not going to suggest it’s a cop-out, but it’s the least painful thing to ask for. I don’t think there’s much chance that a level levy will pass the first time in February. We had four boom years in this economy, particularly in the Puget Sound area. Where was the school board talking about raising rates – raising levy and M&O rates? In the good times, who stood up and said hey it’s good times – this is the time to go out and raise the rates so that we can give our students more? It’s too easy to say times are bad – we better not raise them now. As we come out of the recession it’s too early coming out of the recession, people are just getting back on their feet. And then two years later we’re into another recession. So I don’t understand when it is a good time to raise rates. I do know a couple of clearly, not even anecdotal, personal experiences. There is a choir teacher at FWHS – she happens to be my cousin’s daughter – Carlene Miles. Tremendous lady, sang at PLU in the Choir of the West, graduated
Director Murphy: She sang here…
Ron Gintz: She graduated in May of 2000. She got the choir director, vocal teaching job at FWHS. I was stunned. I knew she was good, I didn’t think she was that good, until I talked with Karen Fullmer who’s a good friend of mine who was Teacher of the Year two years ago. She teaches at a junior high school in Sumner – vocal music. Karen, why didn’t you apply? I think FW is a pretty plum job myself – why didn’t you apply? I would never go to Federal Way – they don’t support the arts – I would be buying sheet music myself for my students. That is a true conversation I had with a superb teacher. We have a risk of not attracting good teachers – they don’t make more money coming here, they don’t make more money going to Sumner. M&O is not about salaries for teachers, it’s about resources for the classroom. I was going to say I have a young man who I just hooked up with – he’s at my study table which is my dining room table and he’s studying right now, except it’s after nine. I went out and called and Ingrid’s taking him home. He has some real challenges academically. He’s behind. He does not have a math book, he has math handouts. He has missed a lot of school. The teacher teaches on the chalk board and sends the kids home with a handout. I can work through a textbook cause I can look at what chapter, the examples and so forth and get to where I need to be. I’m not very good at math. Fortunately my wife is a math teacher. She can look at the handout and know where the teacher’s going and help the student with it. He doesn’t have a world history textbook, he gets handouts. This is what we’ve done. We went from the most bloated administration, is what I hear, to the leanest administration, but along that path we didn’t divert those funds into resources for the classroom, we cut taxes. And somehow we think that that’s American. I would suggest if we’re not educating our students and providing the resources, how do we expect test scores to go up? I trust the Board absolutely to make good decisions with the money you have. It’s almost as if you don’t trust yourselves. Gosh if you give us more money we’re going to blow it. This the five people that decide the direction of the school district. I’m almost done…I’ve been here once in four years.
(?) Twice
Ron Gintz: Three times was it? Ann knows. I see the classic two/three split. This is all going to change. These two and you’ve held onto Joel’s shoes very well thank you. But these two are probably going to lead this school district in a different direction. You need money to do it. Even if you bring in phonics you gotta have money for programming. So I beg you, step out and say we’re going to ask for more money on the M&O. It may fail. We have no guarantees that a level tax will pass, so please be bold. It’s for resources for the classroom and give our teachers a chance to provide the resources for our kids to learn. Thank you. (applause)
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Gintz. Marie Anne Harkness.
Marie Anne Harkness: My name is Marie Anne Harkness, I’m vice president of Citizens for Federal Way Schools and librarian at Camelot Elementary, parent in the Meredith district, parent of two wonderful children – one starting college and one has just graduated and I think Federal Way did a marvelous job for them. I want to say thank you very much to the Board members who have given so much of their lives to our community. On your way out thank you very much – you’ve done a great job. It’s been hard. It’s been interesting years. I’ve been in the district since 1987 and I want to speak to what it’s like as an employee in the district and the budget. We have had in the library a very stagnant amount of money to work with year after year after year to try and build our library collections for the benefit of our students and our teaching staff. It’s been very difficult to do that and the reason it’s so difficult is because the cost of paper has gone up so dramatically. The cost of newspapers, magazines, books – all of those materials go up every year, but our budget remains the same. So I’m asking you in support of some of the members of Citizens group to please consider raising the levy all the way up to the lid. Our students can use it, our teachers can use it to do a good job for our students. Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you. Lloyd Gardner.
Lloyd Gardner: It’s the old taxpayer thing again. Lloyd Gardner, Meredith Hill. I think I read here that you are planning to have the same levy per thousand of assessed evaluation – is that correct?
Superintendent Murphy: That’s the recommendation.
Lloyd Gardner: Now my house evaluation a couple years ago went up 24.4%. Not everyone’s went up 24.4% and mine didn’t go up that much the next year, but it keeps going up every year. So, in other words, you are getting more money. Certainly our assessed valuations in South King County and all over King County are going up far more than the cost of living which has been running around 2 or 3%. I would think the books and the paper would not go up any more than the cost of living – or something’s wrong there. But in any case it seems to me that when the schools are getting a rather large amount of my taxpayer money from the state – in fact 50% of the general fund – a little less than 50% goes to the K-12 and the rest of it up to maybe 60% goes to education in general. So I think the education people better figure out how to spend their money more wisely. And if they’re not getting the books out to the people that want them, then I guess I think something needs to be done. I guess I’m very disturbed that we seem to feel - that a certain element of our community seems to feel - that they want us old folks on a limited income that they’re going to do something to slap us around so we can’t even keep our houses. Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Gardner. It is interesting though, I don’t think I heard anybody suggest they wanted to do anything with old folks or slapping anybody around.
Lloyd Gardner: Thanks.
President Storvick: That’s okay. Always willing to help. Is there a …?
John Hoskinson: I have a public comment.
President Storvick: For the 2000 Series is what you noted here John. Did you have a comment on this section also?
John Hoskinson: No, I’m sorry.
President Storvick: Is there a motion from the Board we can get on the table, and then have Board discussion on this?
Director Germanis: To enable the District to take care of the general expenses of maintenance, operation and support and to properly meet the educational needs of students attending district schools, I move that the Board of Education adopt Resolution 2001-76 to seek voter approval of the 2003 and 2004 levies.
Director Hendrickson: Second.
President Storvick: It’s been moved and seconded. Discussion? (beeper) I guess not. (laughter)
Director Murphy: There were a couple things brought up that I…whenever I hear that the students don’t have textbooks I don’t like that and I think every year for the past five years I’ve asked that question at the beginning of the school year. Maybe I didn’t ask it this year. But every year I’m told that students do have textbooks, and it seems to me if they don’t what I’m generally told is that the teacher is opting not to work out of a textbook. So I guess I’m concerned. Do we have large amounts of students without textbooks this year?
Superintendent Murphy: For the last, I would think, probably six years – we used to hold onto curriculum money centrally. About six years ago that was dispersed to the schools and the schools were given the authority to – along with the money – purchase textbooks and to keep their students with textbooks. We’ve had from time to time over the last five years parents complain to us, to you, that their students don’t have textbooks – we direct them back to the schools and ask them to talk to the principals and find out why the principals haven’t purchased the books if the teachers are asking for books. I know of no situation where a principal doesn’t have the money to purchase the textbooks that they should have been purchasing for the last six years. There are a lot of decisions being made in classrooms where teachers are deciding not to use textbooks – some of that, as you know, is in U.S. History where the books are so old that they’re falling apart, but the newer books are worse than the old books, and the old ones are out of print and we simply can’t get them anymore. One of the things that we are (tape change)…doesn’t, but right now if somebody doesn’t have a book that’s an individual school problem. They’ve had the money for six years to purchase books.
Director Murphy: So oftentimes what maybe happens is the building makes other spending choices?
Superintendent Murphy: Correct. And if you remember that was the direction that we were headed at that time.
Director Murphy: Maybe for me just to hear the rationale behind the Superintendent’s recommendation again might be beneficial.
Superintendent Murphy: I probably thought – well I know I thought all of the comments that were made. (laughter) I know I thought once in my life – I seem to remember that, I’m not sure when it was but I think it happened at one point in time (laughter). I think I agree with everything that’s been said tonight by everybody who’s been here and that’s why this recommendation is so difficult. I think earlier on, seven or eight months ago, in conversations we had with the Citizens for FW Public Schools, as we looked at the needs that we have – and we have serious needs in our district – and some of them revolve around curriculum adoption. What we haven’t done for seven, eight or nine years is have a curriculum adoption cycle. We’ve gotten back on that track a little bit with the reading adoption last year in K-2. We’re going to have probably a math – I don’t know where Mark Jewell went. We’ll probably come to you with a math adoption this next year, and so we’ve been struggling with how to find money to do that. That’s $500,000 to $800,000. We’ve got needs at the state changes how they calculate the retirement system. We benefited from that this year – that could come back and turn around and bite us next year. As you know we’ve got needs because the legislators – God bless them – don’t understand the meaning of the word ‘all’ in Initiative 732 and don’t understand the meaning of the words ‘shall not supplant’ in Initiative 728. You know the impact on our budget with both of those initiatives and we don’t see those going away. So, given all of that and given the conversations that we’ve had last May and June with the citizens group, I was prepared to come with a different recommendation. A lot of that changed for me, frankly, as we started going through the summer and as I started reading and understanding the state of the local economy and of the national economy. And the culminating effects that we’ve seen to our economy locally and nationally as a result of the tragedy that occurred on September 11th. There isn’t any denying that we’re in for a long haul of economic problems. I don’t think this is a two quarter recession – I think it’s going to be a rolling two quarter recession. I am not convinced that this is the last layoffs that we’re going to see from Boeing. I expect that we’ll see more. Small businesses – listening to Chamber members talk – small businesses are in serious trouble in our community and barely making a go of it. And the state’s projecting a billion dollar shortfall in its budget, and the Governor is asking departments across the state to look at 15% to 20% reductions in personnel. So I’m balancing my obligation to you to provide the best possible education we can for every student in the school district with what I think my obligation is to the local community in general in recognition of what I anticipate is going to be very difficult times. And should this levy pass, and I sure would hope it would on the first go, and should some things change dramatically at the state level we’re going to be in serious budget-cutting situations and circumstances ourselves. If the Governor or the legislature decides that a 15% cut across the entire state budget applies to all of us, then that’s about $9 million out of our budget that we’re going to have to figure out where it’s…how we’re going to replace that. And of course that’s only personnel – that’s the only place you can find that amount of money. Scuttlebutt that we’ve heard from legislators is that the class size reductions the state has made recently in grades K-4 are in serious danger – remember those extra teachers we had with the better schools money? The legislature this last session took the staff development portion of that away. We now hear that that’s on the block. We hear that there’s talk among the legislators of overturning 728 and 732 which they can do. Apparently there’s a provision they don’t have to wait for two years in serious economic times. So there’s a lot at stake for us. Would I like to have the 24.9% and be equal with other folks around the state? I think we’re doing great things now and I think we could do better things with that, but we don’t have the tax base that Renton does. So our folks have to pay more in order for us to generate that kind of money. That was kind of an E.E. Cummings version of this – kind of a rambling dissertation, discourse to let you know that I’ve struggled with this for an awfully long period of time and this is my balance. This is where I feel that I can go to the community and I can tell the community – pass this and we’ll continue to provide great education for your kids. It’s no guarantee that it won’t cause us problems if the state changes things, or if funding changes from the state, but we can do this with this amount of money. Would anybody like to have 3 or 4 million dollars a year to be able to operate? The answer is yes. I don’t believe it’s responsible to ask our community to give us that at this time, and I don’t know when that time is. Ron says now, and I would respectfully disagree.
President Storvick: And I’ll put in my 2 cents. I thought once also Tom. (laughter) And I don’t know that this reflects that thought but frankly I’m not going to – and I know most of the folks that spoke tonight and probably like you, in general agreement with things I heard from citizens and what I heard from Mr. Gardner, with the exception of the bashing folks around – I didn’t agree with that. But the reality is I’m not approaching this from a defensive posture. I think these are adequate funds to do what we need to do. You have – during the evaluation process this year for the Superintendent – the Board was complimentary. That was the public record portion certainly (laughter), and privately complimentary about his narrowing the focus of the district – doing things that occur everyday in private industry and taking those practices into the public sector. And by shifting that focus it feels to me, absent the economic issues, that this is probably a levy request that’s not far off what I would have been supportive of at the outset. I think it’s defensible not from a negative perspective, but it’s defensible because it achieves what you need to do in the district and there is consideration for some variation – and additional management control within the district. So I’m supportive of it simply because I believe it can be a past – which is responsible governance. We are not a taxing authority – we ask for our money. That was a dig. (laughter) I’ve been waiting for that for years Ron. The reality is that it can be passed and I think it achieves the goals that you want it to accomplish at the district and that is continuing to provide a quality education for all students. And you’re absolute right, should a number of things occur – the planets align incorrectly and a number of things occur at the state – we would be in a tough spot if we went for the maximum levy and those things occur we would be in a tough spot. That doesn’t change that dynamic in a quantifiably different manner. It’s still tough so I support it because I support it, not because of the defensive posture. I guess that’s what I was trying to ramble on and say in the same manner that you are. So there. Any other Board comments before we go to action?
Director Murphy: I just – I think it shows we’re really trying to do our part during these times too, and I think everyone everywhere has to do their part. I heard someone say somewhere recently that we’re all soldiers in this war and we all have a roll to play and I think this is ours. The other thing …I think Ron mentioned something about the status quo levy and the tax rates are flat, but like Mr. Gardner says – what’s built in is assessed valuation, so the current levy we’re operating under right now was about $4.5 million more than the two-year levy that preceded it and this levy request is actually about $4.9 million than the one we’re just rolling off of. So over last levy that we’re operating under and this current one still a flat tax rate, we have asked for over $9 million more, so it is more money and I think our Capital Project document, if that’s what it’s called – the Capital Facilities … whatever we sent to King County for the…
Superintendent Murphy: Capital Facilities Plan.
Director Murphy: Right – in that document that we sent this year for the two years preceding it showed that our average annual assessed taxes for local schools had increased $252, so tax dollars are increasing but the tax rates are staying flat and we are getting more money. It’s probably never enough.
(?): Are we up off the bottom in terms of per student?
President Storvick: We will keep it up here.
Director Murphy: In 1998/1999 we collected $924/student and with this levy in the final year it will be $1,139/student. So we’ve been on a …
President Storvick: And you had a comment did you?
Director Hendrickson: Oh, just that these are some of the most difficult decisions – of course, none of the decisions we’ve made seem to be very easy lately – but this is certainly one of the most difficult. And I do appreciate the things that everyone said. It is difficult to balance what people are able to provide for the community with what the needs are of kids, and I don’t believe that I’ve ever said that I think the quality of education is directly proportional to the amount of money that’s spent. We have districts that have a ton of money that have schools that are doing horrible things for kids and then we have districts with not very much money doing great things, so there’s a relationship there and I appreciate Marie Ann’s comments about library funds, and the sheet music. Sometimes those are choices that districts make in how to use resources. Not necessarily if we had more resources those moneys would go to the issues that you identified. So it’s always a matter of what you decide to do with your money and each of us who has a budget at home knows that the people next door are probably sitting there saying what do you mean they don’t have any money? Look at what they spend it on. Everybody has a different set of priorities – that doesn’t mean anybody has any more or any less – people just spend it differently, and it’s really hard. And without taking a shot at not being a taxing authority, the difficulty of making decisions here is people can say well we just won’t vote for you anymore. Well, okay, that’s a reasonable thing to do, but what we have here is we won’t vote for your taxes either and when you have a group of people who have to be the cheerleaders for that taxing effort in the community, it’s important you have support from the people who are putting it before the community as well. So there’s always that need to balance what the interests are of the five people who are on the Board at that time, and it doesn’t do a whole lot of good to go to the lid and have three people on the Board say we need it, and two other people saying no they don’t – cause who do you believe? So it’s a real need to work out something that we can all support and something that the Superintendent thinks will do the job, and that we will then hold him accountable to do that job. So it’s a horrible decision, I wish we had more money always because I think that we do need more than what we have, and I appreciate Bill’s comments – in fact I wrote it down that quality education is a deeply held value in this community. I do believe that is true, and yet it’s an interesting concept how deeply held is it and how is it valued in terms of other deeply held values. Which value comes out on top? And it is disappointing to look at the amount of money per pupil of surrounding communities and then look at FW and say it’s a deeply held value. And I know we have tax rate issues and all that sort of stuff, but it’s a deeply held value, but not that deeply held. So where do you go with it? I don’t know where you go. I’m one who voted to hire that man down there and one who evaluates him and I have to trust his recommendation at this point – that it is the best decision for the district and for our community.
President Storvick: Hearing no further comment we will move to action. There is a motion on the table.
Director Murphy: Can I ask a clarifying question Director Hendrickson? You mentioned a 3-2 vote if the levy were to go up to the max. Since the Superintendent came out with his recommendation - I don’t think you were at the last Board meeting, but we hadn’t even discussed that. So did you want to amend it to go up to the max to see what would happen (laughter). I think you’re speculating.
Director Hendrickson: I’m speculating? After eight years on this Board it’s not speculation anymore. Do I think that…I was trying to explain, and perhaps not well, that over the years putting issues before the public has been an exercise in trying to get unanimous Board support for whatever we’ve put before the community. And so what one Board member may want or wish that we could have isn’t necessarily what comes out in terms of what to do. So…
Director Murphy: I feel badly if you want to vote for the max and you’re not cause you think another Board member wouldn’t – so I just wanted to share that because that statement surprised me. Assuming you’d want to vote for the max.
Director Hendrickson: I don’t know if I’d want to vote for the max, but I think you probably know – I mean we’ve had these conversations before. In general, I would have asked for more than you would have supported over the years, but I feel like it’s important to have Board support for whatever we put out. That is does us no good if part of the Board is out saying this is absolutely necessary and we ask the citizens committee to support it, and other members of the Board are saying no, I don’t think that’s necessary – I think that was a bad choice. It’s hard to convince a community when you don’t have the people responsible for the district agreeing on it. So I’ve been willing to compromise on those.
President Storvick: Did that clarify?
Director (?): No, it’s okay.
President Storvick: The motion is the Board of Education adopt Resolution 2001-76 to seek voter approval of the 2003 and 2004 levies. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. (applause)
We are sliding a little bit behind Agenda, but we’ve been up here for quite a while and have about 50 policies here that we’re going to be discussing so I think we’ll take about a five-minute break.
Superintendent Murphy: Did you remember that we…
President Storvick: Oh, I’m sorry. I thought we were going to go through them one by one. (five minute break) The Board is reconvening from its very brief break.
POLICIES
President Storvick: We are now moving to the Items B-5, B-6, B-7, B-8, B-9 and B-10, which are a series of policies that are up for first reading. I’ll remind the Board that while we just received these - these are part of the … what did you categorize them Mr. Superintendent? In fact, do you have some comments on it? They’re first readings and I think you’re up on each of them.
Superintendent Murphy: Correct. These, if you will remember we have been trying to convert our policies for five or six years to the WASDA policies and what we discovered about a year ago was that there were a whole slew of policies that either hadn’t been addressed or were in a perpetual state of being worked upon, or under review is I guess is what it was. So I asked Suzanne Harris to go through all of the policies, identify those which were still under review, identify those that were lost in the conversion – because there were some policies lost in the conversion – and to put together a matrix of policies that needed to finally be completed since they have been under review for four or five years. And also to tell departments that here are policies that got lost and needed to be created. The intent on all of this was to try to have all of this policy work completed by the end of November so that when we have the orientation for new Board members that we’re able to present the new Board with a complete set of up-to-date policies and procedures. And that’s the timeline that we placed ourself upon. We’re going to be very close to doing that and that’s why you have such a large number of policies in front of you tonight for first reading. What we discussed at the Executive Session, or excuse me, at the Board Presidents Conference, run by the Board President exclusively – managed, run on his own agenda at his own time – he runs that thing with an iron hand…
President Storvick: Mr. Gintz put you up to that, right?
Superintendent Murphy: …was that we understand that the volume of policies and procedures in front of you does not lend itself to discussion tonight. We would ask you to…
Director Hendrickson: Are you sure?
Superintendent Murphy: Well my first inclination was to go through each one of them one at a time, but what we would ask that you do is review the policies and procedures between now and November 5th and send in any questions or comments on any of the policies and procedures to the appropriate Director by the 5th of November. Those that we receive comments on we will work on, and if they’re simply wordsmithing we will take the wordsmithing and slide them over to Consent. If they are substantial comments from Board members we will bring them back to the regular agenda for public discussion. Those that receive no comments or suggestions will also slide to Consent for the next meeting which is November 13th.
President Storvick: Did that all make sense Board members? And we actually do have a public comment request of this one. Mr. Hoskinson asked to speak on the issue of the 2000 Series.
PUBLIC COMMENT
John Hoskinson: May I again make reference to Clover Park?
President Storvick: You may.
John Hoskinson: Their finding was that Board policies are inadequate in scope and quality and are not used sufficiently in guiding operations. Well I can believe that after hearing what I just heard tonight. You’re the governance body, you govern through policy. I’ve been reminded several times you’re a governance body. You’re not the operating manager. I’ve been told that several times, and here I find out the horrible state of your policies. How in the hell can you run the school district without good effective current policies? Anyhow, I know with the new prospective Board members here they’ll conduct observations and they’ll have special oversight studies and they’ll review the required reports and I hope they will give priority to those policies dealing with curriculum and instruction and education. The Clover Park study and the people that did this were very profound on written curriculum, guidelines to the written curriculum, syllabi, and teaching of those matters and the testing of those matters. I would suggest if that was followed you would have a big increase in the cost of books because the teachers wouldn’t want to write out their curricula and would rather refer to a book; and this would enhance the education and the quality education we all want by having a good teaching system and a good curricula system. Thank you.
President Storvick: Thank you Mr. Hoskinson. No further public comments on these agenda items, we are now on Agenda Item B-11 – we never did move the Executive Session piece to the end.
COMPUTER DONATION
President Storvick: There is no action out of Executive Session, which then moves us to Item B-12 and that was the 24 computers donated by the General Services Administration. It was taken off the Consent and actually I think I requested this, and it …
Director Hendrickson: Do you want to re-think that request?
President Storvick: No.
Director (?): He’s only allowed one thought per week.
President Storvick: Is Sally gone? Sally wasn’t here, but Sandy sent us a memo and was probably here waiting. She was going to speak to it to some extent but…did you have any comment Mr. Superintendent?
Superintendent Murphy: The computers that were being donated do not fit the criteria that our tech department has established for technology and computer in the district. So we would request that you deny this donation.
Director Hendrickson: That was a question I had. So help me understand why we need to deny it, why it even came to us? Why did it get this far if they don’t meet the standards?
Superintendent Murphy: We had a choice at Board Presidents to simply take it off and send it back and say we’re not going to do that, or to bring it here and have a public affirmation of the tech standards developed by the department by saying these don’t meet them therefore we are not going to accept them.
President Storvick: There is an opportunity, and in fact just as a little bit of reference, Sandy had indicated to me that these computers specifically had been offered to the district through the district offices and then they were sent away as not meeting the tech standard. Then the offer came up again through a specific school and they were tentatively accepted through that school, even after discussion with Ken Cole, but there may not have been complete clarity on the fact that they didn’t meet the district standards. So the decision in Board Presidents to bring it to the full Board rather than simply taking it off the Consent is, as occurs on some occasion, there is some confusion in policy and by denying the donation it will – as a Board – we will drive the schools to technology department before even considering an acceptance. Does that make sense? You’re looking very confused.
Director Murphy: It was also on the published Consent so it would have to be voted down or tabled if that was going to be the action taken.
Director Hendrickson: Yes, I understand that, so I guess the question is why wasn’t it tabled and I’m trying to understand the process of why it even came to us. Everything that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to in the district and people who don’t follow the rules – do we then have to bring it to the Board and have the Board say these are the rules in order to make it happen? That’s what I just heard the explanation.
President Storvick: No, as I understood it, it was not clear. It’s not that somebody didn’t follow the rules. As I understood it, it is not clear in policy that the school might not be able to do this. And in discussions with Sandy apparently this is a significant issue – not just in this district but in other districts. The community perception that computer equipment has value…
Director Hendrickson: Right, and everybody can donate, but I’m missing the Board piece in it. That’s where I’m lost.
President Storvick: The Board piece is I believe the Board’s never taken a position on donations related to this type of thing. And I agreed with Sandy that I think it’s important that the Board make a clear statement that all of those donations go through Technology and not through the school itself.
Director Hendrickson: I agree with that too. Is that in policy?
President Storvick: As I understand it.
Superintendent Murphy: It’s not policy, it’s operating procedure. It’s operating standards. You don’t have a policy except through the tech plan that you’ve adopted where the equipment is outlined in the tech plan that we say is the kind of equipment that we will operate and work on in the district. But there’s not a policy that says that this is the technology.
President Storvick: And technically, I think Sandy shared with me, these do fit the general model of the tech plan. The question is the cost of a donation costs us more …
Director Hendrickson: I know all of that, I understand all of that but I’m trying to…
President Storvick: I’m saying it for the record because I think that’s the important part. There is no procedure to – if somebody comes to us…
Director Hendrickson: So are we making procedure by virtue of Board order? That’s what I’m trying to understand.
President Storvick: That is part of it – for me anyway. But the other part of it is that this is a donation and has to be dispensed with.
Director Hendrickson: But it didn’t have to be dispensed with in this way. It could have been that staff just said no we’re not going to accept that.
President Storvick: They could have.
Director Hendrickson: I guess I just don’t understand it.
Superintendent Murphy: I guess I’m a little confused on some donations then too, because I don’t know that – is it your intent then that we filter all donations and that if they’re making a donation to the district that we actually have the authority to turn down some donations and that’s not your purview?
Director Hendrickson: If it’s a donation that obligates the district to some other financial piece? I would certainly think that you would be recommending to the Board to approve donations that you think are in the best interest of the district. And if they’re not, why are they here? Why are … that’s where I’m thinking.
Superintendent Murphy: This is the first one I’ve run into that we wouldn’t recommend you accept.
Director Hendrickson: Although on a regular basis… I know from personal experience that the tech department turns people away on a regular basis. They turn individuals away all the time who call and try to donate.
Superintendent Murphy: Individuals, right.
Director Hendrickson: So just because it’s a bigger amount of computers that have the same requirements, why is it up to the level of the Board having to get into it. That’s what I’m not understanding.
President Storvick: I’ll share my rationale. It’s pretty simple. You asked the question if the Board was making policy through this action right now – or procedure through this action. If the Superintendent, for example, had turned this away, given the history of this Board and I don’t mean this as pointing at any individual, but I can certainly appreciate if it got in the press, or got in the news, or even if a Board member heard that the district turned away the donation of 24 Pentium computers, that would raise some questions in a good proportion of our population. I think that’s a decision, personally, and if the Board disagrees then we won’t take action on this, but I think that’s a decision that this Board takes. We’re putting a levy out for community vote. We’re saying we need money and we’re turning away a donation, and the information that I’ve tried to reference a couple times and you’ve said you have that is not public record information; and that is that it costs this district more money to accept this type of donation than it does to turn it away. And technology was discussed at some earlier point as a possible voting piece for additional obligation for our community. It was put off – I’m not sure if it was put off like the bus piece or not, but it was put off certainly for a variety of reasons. The Board should probably make a policy level call on this rather than doing something by simply voting against it. But the reality is we don’t have time to make that policy level call at this point. So if the Board disagrees we just have to table it. That notwithstanding it was on the Consent calendar and was pulled off the Consent Calendar – it’s now an Action Item – the Board does need to make a decision whether they want to take action on the Action Item and reject or accept the donation. Is there any comment? Is there a motion?
Director Germanis: I move that the Board of Education decline the acceptance of the 24 Pentium computers as stated in the Consent Calendar.
Director Hoff: Second.
President Storvick: It’s been moved and seconded.
Director Hendrickson: Can I table it now?
President Storvick: If you get support.
Director Murphy: There’s a motion on the table.
President Storvick: There is a motion on the table. I think you have to get support. You can move to table it if I recall. Let’s see if there’s any further discussion too while… okay, so you can move to table it. It requires a second. Then we’d go immediately to a vote on it.
Director Hendrickson: Okay, I move to table.
President Storvick: Is there a second?
Director Murphy: Are you tabling it to a certain date or just to table – is it coming back or is it just going to lay on the table to perpetuity?
Director Hendrickson: Do I have to table it to a certain time?
Director Murphy: I’m just asking till a Board meeting or what?
Director Hendrickson: My thinking was that if indeed it isn’t clear and there needs to be something in place, just having the Board decline a donation at the Board table doesn’t do a whole lot for me other than put it in the minutes, and who reads the minutes. I mean, if there’s something that needs to happen, it needs to happen. I don’t …
Director Murphy: Did you read the memo from…
Director Hendrickson: I did, and I appreciate that. That’s great information and that’s good information for the Board to know that that’s how decisions are being made. I don’t know why then it needs to come to us if that’s how decisions are being made. It just seems – I’m just looking – what’s the precedent for that then? Okay, what other decisions when people aren’t following administrative procedures do they then…does someone have to bring it to the Board to have the Board make a decision that you don’t do that even though it already says that it isn’t in alignment with administrative procedures. It just feels like we’re - gosh, do we manage by Board decision?
President Storvick: Is there a second? The motion to table fails for lack of a second. Any discussion on the motion that’s on the table which is to reject the donation from the GSA?
Director Murphy: I think the reason the Board has a policy that we accept or reject donations is just for this reason. I think when asked if this was a cost beneficial thing to do Sandy came back with evidence that said that it wasn’t. So, for that purpose, we are rejecting the donation. So I think that in itself sends the message that similar donations will be rejected if they’re not cost beneficial.
President Storvick: And I’ll agree. Anytime there’s a question I think we rarely sit…I think when there’s a question of interpretation and it clearly two administrators disagreed on the interpretation of the procedures related to this, and on something as critical as a donation of technology equipment which can be perceived in a unique manner by our community, I agree that it’s important that – or I believe it’s important – that the Board make the decision on that. That it not be made by an administrator – with no disrespect to the administrative team in the district. Any further discussion?
Director Hendrickson: I respectfully disagree.
President Storvick: Hearing no further discussion all in favor of rejecting the donation which is supporting Director Germanis’ motion say aye. Opposed?
Director Hendrickson: I abstain.
President Storvick: Motion carries. Directors Germanis, Storvick, Murphy and Hoff supporting. Director Hendrickson abstaining.
Director Murphy: President Storvick, since we have turned down a donation will it be more than appropriate for the Superintendent to send a letter to the party who so nicely wanted to donate to us and explain delicately the situation that arises?
Superintendent Murphy: I’ll be happy to do that on behalf of the Board.
President Storvick: And you might, and I’m sure you were going to do this anyway, check with Sandy. I think she had indicated that University Place recently did exactly the same thing and they had significant issues internally and within their community about it – that they overcame.
Superintendent Murphy: Will do.
COMMUNITY ADVISORY COUNCIL
President Storvick: Item B-13, Community Advisory Council. Director Germanis.
Director Germanis: It’s just to adopt the change in procedures 1131P indicated on page two for the selection process – says all applicants for the council will be accepted for the first year. We just need to change the procedures to include that.
Director Hendrickson: I move that we accept the change in procedures as presented.
Director Hoff: I second it.
President Storvick: Any discussion?
Director Hendrickson: Thank you again Audrey.
Director Murphy: Thank you for your work. Go ahead – in unison.
President Storvick: Directors Hendrickson and Murphy thanking her again.
Director Germanis: And while we’re on this, we had our first meeting and it was great. We had a lot of back and forth conversation. The questions were a little too abstract for the group so we – because you’d need a lot more information – so we kind of reworked them; we sent them out to the group, then there was like this e-mail thing going on between all of these people. It was really neat. It was like I’m hands-off now, these guys can go for it and there must have been several back and forths…so I think that it’ll really blossom into something neat. We’ve got the people, we’ve got a President set up and the members that just wanted to do it for one year or that said they’d do it for one year so we’ve got all that stuff. All the housekeeping’s done and we’re ready to report back to you. We have three questions that will be coming back to the Board – or at least some of this Board.
Director Murphy: So are we going to be giving them our Agenda material in advance so they can comment on that, or are they going to be just looking at other items? I thought part of it was that they were going to look at some of the issues before us – like tonight maybe it would have been middle schools or levy – and just bubble up some issues and concerns on the things facing us each Board meeting. Is that going to be occurring or is it going to be something different?
Director Germanis: They meet on a monthly basis, so it will be up to the Board, and we’re going to obviously have a liaison or something that…and I kind of self-appointed it this time just to be that person until this thing gets rolling. To get the feedback from the Board members of what areas you would like. So let’s say you know this was a first reading of middle school and you’d like to get more information on that. You’re going to have to know that they’re a month out, so make sure that that stuff gets to – and right now it would be me to filter those questions – the group so that they have a month to get those answers to you. So as you see things coming up that would be … like for example the 6-10 configuration for public academy. That would be one that they would go out and get some information for you, what does the community think of that and those are things…just realize they are a month out from when you give them the question. But we will be looking to the Board – it will totally be Board directed questions is what the intent was. And I think as we get going it will become easier and there’s probably going to be more than they want to deal with. It’s just slow in the process cause you’re not used to doing it so I’ll be recruiting at least through the first year getting that info. But it was a wonderful group of people. I was really impressed. Really neat group.
President Storvick: Kind of lost my train of thought here. Did we take a vote?
Director Germanis: We didn’t vote yet.
President Storvick: All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries unanimously.
Director Germanis: At least Linda didn’t abstain this time.
BOARD COMMENTS
President Storvick: There is no Special Report even though Mr. Davidson is still here. Board Comments?
(?) That’ll get everyone else out of here.
Director Hendrickson: You did that once already. (laughter)
(?) That’s good.
President Storvick: The only announcement that I have is that the next Board meeting is on Tuesday, November 13th, because Monday, November 12th is the recognition of Veterans Day. Are there any other Board comments?
Director Murphy: A couple quickies. Just for the record, there was some public comment at the last Board meeting about a certain curriculum used at Camp Thunderbird (tape change)…something I would just like to share with the Board is that there’s been lots of stuff going on across the country and in school districts concerning all kinds of things and even the Pledge. And I think it was outlawed in a district and then under protest it was brought back and so there are things going on and I found this thing in my home school 4th grade history book about what the Pledge means and I’ll just briefly share that with you. The Pledge, as you know, is "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". And just to share what this says – it says every school morning students all over our land rise, face the flag of the United States, and with a hand over heart pledge allegiance to the flag. A pledge is a promise to do something, allegiance means devotion or loyalty. When you repeat the Pledge you are promising to be faithful and loyal to your country – the United States of America. You are also saying I believe that the flag stands for my country, I believe in a republic where the people choose who govern them, and I believe our union of 50 states is united, not divided, and I believe that our nation is under God and that he wants liberty and justice for all people.
Director Germanis: Can I get a copy of that? That’s like a requirement for the Boy Scouts to find out about the Pledge of Allegiance, so I would love to have a copy of that please.
Director Murphy: Maybe Chris can copy it for everybody.
President Storvick: To be a contrary voice, and I’ll just say I’m grateful that this Board was not the Board that took action to stop the Pledge of Allegiance. I’m also extraordinarily grateful to live in a country that allows that type of minority voice to be heard, and doesn’t jail those people. So, I can’t remember where I heard it, but freedom is Civics 101 and one of the most difficult challenges is applauding the right of people to oppose that which you stand for, and you’ve spent your life supporting. It’s good to live in a country that allows that.
Director Murphy: It’s a matter of the heart, and it’s how we nurture.
President Storvick: It’s actually a nice definition, so thank you Director Murphy. Are there any other Board comments? Hearing none, this meeting is adjourned.
Meeting adjourned 10:10 p.m.
Jim Storvick, Board President
Tom Murphy, Superintendent
Minutes prepared by Chris Popich
Minutes transcribed by Cathie Harris