Quick Recap – Tahoma School Board Regular Meeting, February 28, 2023 – CTE Presentations and CARES Updates
TSD School Board Regular Meeting, Feb 28, 2023, 6:30pm
Agenda available here
Board directors in attendance: All directors except Michael Wiggins;
Student reps: Aditi Rana on the dais, and Olivia Kizer, Slayton Cooper, and Madison Bennett in attendance
You can watch the full video of the meeting here
by Jennifer Askew
There were a couple of really interesting presentations by students in various CTE programs at this meeting. I would encourage you to watch the meeting recording once the district posts it to the page listed above. Otherwise there weren’t any big decisions made at this meeting, so I’m opting to do a very fast recap.
Public Comment
Valerie Paganelli, former TSD school board director: Is excited to attend the Tahoma 100 Cafe on Thursday. Celebrated the ad hoc budget committee, but questioned their ability to make useful recommendations since they are still learning. Expressed interest in more public discussion of policy revisions during meetings.
This was the only public comment at this meeting.
Video Production CTE Presentation
by students Natalie and Evan with input from teacher Rick Haag
The slides for the Video Production presentation are available here. The students discussed the features of their program, which include cameras and equipment that many colleges don’t even have, as well as a full suite of courses for students to really delve into this field. At the end of the presentation, board president Miller asked about where kids can go on to film school after graduating from TSD. Teacher Haag answered that there are some options at Central Washington University, Easter WU, a huge broadcasting department (but not film dept) at WSU, and film schools in other places like Montana State University. He said that if you want to work in Hollywood though, you really want to aim for a film school in the LA area. That was a focus of their trip to Hollywood.
The students presented extensively on that trip, including their visits to Chapman University – Dodge College Film School which is a full university with a great film school, LA Film School which is more specialized, as well as sound stages, props departments, and other behind the scenes areas at the Warner Brothers and Universal studios that they were able to tour. They favorably compared the available spaces to learn at the two universities with the spaces actually used on film sets they saw. They spoke at length about how much they learned on this trip, and the opportunity that was presented by getting such a behind the scenes view of the schools they may wish to apply to and of the future careers available to them. (Director Hollowell later asked if there are scholarships available for students who need help to attend this trip, and the answer was yes.)
During board questions, director Matt Carreon asked if the district could be doing anything better in this department. Both students answered that the program itself is really well done, but the Covid years were tough, which they stipulated was out of the district’s control. It’s such a hands-on program that many of the students who took the Video Production 1 class during the online period of the pandemic chose not to go on to Video Production 2. Director Haley Pendergraft asked if any of the current CTE film students are on YouTube. It turns out that one of the presenters, Evan, has a very successful YouTube channel called EvanMCGaming!
THS Anatomage Table
by THS Health Sciences teacher Kelly Jarvis and four of her students.
I viewed this meeting on Zoom, and since this presentation required the speakers to move away from the mic’d podium it was unfortunately very difficult to hear. I did gather that the Anatomage table is a new acquisition for the district that the health sciences department teachers and students are very excited about. It is a state of the art piece of 3-D equipment that allows the students to get hands-on experience in various surgeries, etc. that they would normally never get to perform even at the college level. I did take a few screenshots of the presentation:
CTE Four Year Planning Agreement and Perkins Grant Presentation
by CTE director Marty Barber
The Perkins Grant is available through OSPI in WA state. The Perkins Grant money legally has to be spent within the CTE department, not by the district for other technology goals. It typically covers the cost of new, more advanced computers for several CTE labs, as well as some other equipment. Barber pointed out that with the district now going one to one with devices for all students, the department no longer has to pay to replace the old computer carts every five years. This savings allows them to use that money on other equipment instead.
The full, ten page, four year plan can be viewed here. This is just one screenshot, of page 3:
Public Relations CARES Update
by AJ Garcia, Director of PR
The slides for the PR update can be found here. Garcia spoke about the ongoing efforts to improve communication in the district. The entire point of the PR department, he said, is to support two way communication between the district and all stakeholders. They want their information to be “accessible and digestible”, while also being “concise and engaging”. To this end, they are working on making more of the website as well as various forms accessible in other languages. Some forms, like the federal Free and Reduced Lunch form, can’t be changed by the district, but they have been trying to provide more information surrounding it, using an equity lens. The website now has a dropdown menu of various language translations available, and they’re including more hyperlinks rather than PDFs.
The department has also worked to improve district communications, partially by reducing it. Garcia spoke about shortening the length of the Tahoma Matters newsletter, using shorter videos on social media, and cleaning up the website so that all of the various subsections can be more easily found and not so overwhelming. He also spoke of the need to find a tool that better combines all of the current communication tools used by people in the district. The communications audit that was performed right when Garcia started in this role revealed just how many different platforms teachers, students, etc. are using. Finding a replacement tool is complicated and will take a multi-year approach. They first need to do a new audit of the current tools used and what they do. Second, they need to find the right tool that would replace much of the current tools. Then third, they will have to dedicate resources to training communicators on the new tool, or else you just wind up with yet another tool being used by only some people.
Mid-Year Review of Tahoma CARES District Goals and Targets
by Dawn Wakeley, Director of Teaching and Learning
This was a pretty brief update on how the district is successfully working toward the goals set forth by the board two years ago. They are currently working on developing a set of metrics for elementary and secondary levels, and will be presenting and discussing this with the ELT group of principals next. They hope to move forward by spring, and have this fully functional by next fall. They did share early views on what these rubrics might look like, but emphasized these could change.
Director Carreon asked if this sort of measurement has a tendency to pigeonhole students and reduce their opportunities for growth. Wakeley responded that by taking a “Fast Start” approach rather than a “Fresh Start” approach means tracking students all through the school system, with communication between current and prior teachers for each student. This provides the student’s new teacher(s) a fuller picture of this student’s current knowledge and needs, which will enable faster achievement of learning targets through differentiated education. Students don’t start as blank slates, she explained, and knowing where they’re at now can help them accelerate.
Policy Revisions
by various district department leaders
There were a few policy revisions at this meeting, but nothing really big jumped out to me. The discussion by Superintendent Hanson and board President Miller included explaining that the lack of questions at these meeting about policy changes is not reflective of the total work that the board does. The board receives this information before the meeting, and then has the opportunity to engage with the department leads one on one to receive clarifications. Miller is also the board liasion to the finance department and meets with them regularly to get a full understanding of the district budget before meetings. Miller further explained that these policy revisions are the result of rigorous work by department leaders, and he feels the board has been doing a great job at staying on top of the changes (often required by the state or recommended by WSSDA.)
Finance and Enrollment Report
by Bill Hernandez, Chief Accountant, and Lori Cloud, Finance Director and assistant superintendent
This was a pretty standard finance report. Hernandez again spoke about the loss of LEA funding this year, which has impacted our district’s budget to the tune of $1.8 million dollars. They are working with our legislators to ask for a “hold harmless” clause, since the initial budget was made using OSPI numbers which have since changed, as a result of increased property values and new building. The district can’t recoup the lost $1.8 million until it can go out and ask for a new levy, despite the immediate loss of funding from the state. Our district’s current levy is not up for a re-vote until 2024.
An interesting tidbit was that our district is one of very few locally that is expecting to see an increase in enrollment next year, and has suffered significantly fewer enrollment losses during the pandemic. Bellevue, in particular, has been in the news for their large enrollment drop and impending school consolidations, but this is an issue that is impacting schools all over King county.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:39pm.
This meeting summary was written by Jennifer Askew and provided to the Tahoma Values website. Do you have an article you would like to publish on our site? Please contact Tahoma Values at TahomaValues@gmail.com
