April 28, 2025 Work Session Meeting Minutes

 MINUTES OF THE SCHOOL BOARD OF DISTRICT NO. 40,
YAMHILL COUNTY, McMINNVILLE, OREGON

The Work Session was held April 28, 2025 both in person and via Zoom at the
McMinnville School District Office, 800 NE Lafayette Ave., McMinnville, OR 97128 

The link was https://msd40.zoom.us/j/97721628814

Provisional Minutes-Not Board Approved

At 6:30 p.m. the Board of Directors of McMinnville School District opened the work session meeting.  The meeting was called to order by Chair Jason Bizon.  Roll call indicated the following:

BOARD MEMBERS PRESENT:
Chair Mr. Jason Bizon
Vice-Chair Ms. Abbie Warmbier
Ms. Lu Ann Anderson
Ms. Christine Bader
Mr. Gerardo Partida
Ms. Doris Towery
Mr. Larry Vollmer

BOARD MEMBERS ABSENT:
None

ADMINISTRATION:
Steffanie Frost, Director
Cherice Bowden, Board Secretary

AUDIENCE:
Kourtney Ferrua, Jason Hall, Shelly Simonyi, Brian Crain, Hiran Amerasinghe, Lauren Berg, Davey Altree, Dave Furman, Jeremy Vernon, and Melissa Parker. See attached.

• A change was made to the agenda.  The Leadership Academy was moved as the first topic, the Superintendent Search was moved to the second topic on the agenda.

  Leadership Academy
  Kim Price update on the Leadership Academy.  She shared that there are 20 members who are currently in an administrative program or interested in joining an administrative program.  Their goal is to grow a cohort of future cohort leaders. They did five sessions.  Four were in person and the 5th session was a shadow day where every member was able to shadow a different administrator or leader in the district, running from elementary to middle to high and at the District Office.  

  • Hilary Brittan Lack shared that they wanted to ask the question, “What’s holding you back?”  She stated that there may be a lot of reasons why, so they started their session with that.  It was really great because we had our cohort come up with a lot of things, and they were very honest with us, and we created a nice collaborative culture where folks talked about. What were those? What were those reasons? Then we really based a lot of our classes around addressing some of those things.
    They gave an overview of the program:
  • Developed foundational leadership skills 
  • Explored career pathways in school leadership
  • Built a connected cohort of future leaders
  • Gained insight into effective leadership practices
  • Learned strategies for balancing competing priorities
  • Completed administrator shadowing for real-world experience

  Two members shared what was most impactful to them. 

  Erik Cummins is a dean at Duniway MS.  He said, “I think this cohort really stood out to me because education, when you get into it, is at its nature kind of isolating. You know, you’re stuck in your classroom, you have your students but it’s really hard to see that bigger picture because you’re so overwhelmed with what you have to do and that’s just kind of the nature of it, I think. What really stuck to me about this cohort is,  one we got to reflect on what is the bigger picture.  What do we not know? What do we want to know?  What might we be able to contribute is bigger members of this machine that runs and teaches our future generations. But then, I think, what really stood out the most is the shadowing opportunity was just so revealing, not just for myself, but for so many other people to actually get to see behind the scenes of what all these district office people do,  what vice principals and principals do. I think for most of us in the cohort it was something that we didn’t even really understand how it all works. I know a whole bunch of people in this cohort were super motivated afterward. They felt like, wow, this is actually something that maybe I want to pursue, this is something that I want,  to make a change in a difference in a different way.”

  Cassandra Kimura said, “One of the things that I really appreciated about the class was, if you look at that picture, there’s layers of leadership in that picture and that’s something that Janelle Keating in our PLC work talks a lot about.  I appreciated this opportunity to see that there’s some potential future McMinnville leaders there that could work alongside these fine folks.  What I also see in that picture is the dedication in that group, like they are here for our students, they are here for our district and they’re deeply invested in McMinnville as a community. I think that’s true for everybody in that picture. These two ladies made it seem totally , not, maybe not totally very doable and like the genuineness that they brought to each session is some of our reality. It was appreciated by all of us, it was great.  The shadow day with just to see like I’ve worked in at some point every school in our district, except for the high school and to see a different school for an entire day, just brought a little lens of some of the systems are the same, the intricacies of buildings just differ. It was nice to get that little peek from another building.”

  They shared the Building Your Leadership Toolbox document with each board member.  

  Hilary stated that they left it on this note, Can I do this?  YES, you can!  We did it, you can do it too and really create that strong cohort of people to call on going forward. So we really appreciate the opportunity to teach this class and they would both like to do it again.

  Director Bader commented, “Thank you for doing it.  It seems like such a great experience.  She asked, “Is there any support that you need?”  “How can we support you to keep it going?”  She asked, “When you asked the first question to the cohort, what’s holding you back?.  “What did people say and how do you address that over the course of the course?”

  Kim answered, “I don’t know if we will need anything else to keep going. We really learned a lot from each other. We don’t often work and collaborate together, being at different levels, so that was really fun. I think some of the things you would know better than I that were on that list were just not knowing there’s how can I even possibly do this? A couple of them were about the impact. How would you really see the impact as the maybe the building leader? It’s so different than a classroom teacher where you see that smaller group. One of them did say, it doesn’t look very, they were concerned, it didn’t look fun, so we tried to weave that in. We did try to weave that in a little bit but then we  got that ugly poster out,  I wrote on it and it got kind of torn but we thought we can’t rewrite this, this is the meat from the first session, so we got it out every time we put it up at every session and then on the last one, we kind of crossed out what we had addressed throughout those sessions. 

  Director Frost gave a big thank you to Kim and Hilary.  She commented that when they approached them about doing this program and teaching these courses, we didn’t talk about additional compensation or how you are going to make this work.  Hilary and Kim said, “Yes” before any of those questions were answered and they wanted to dive in and help support our future leaders.  She wanted to acknowledge their time and effort it took away from their families and all of their other priorities as building principals. She also commented that through this course Kim and Hilary were willing to follow the requirements for Western Oregon University so that we get college credit for our participants taking the course.

  Superintendent Search
  Lisa Freiley stated that she was there to set the state for the next step of going through and working on an interim superintendent search.  She said, “The single most important thing that a School Board does is hire the superintendent or the person who serves as the educational leader for your school district.” She stated that it is also important to remember that you need to do this as a board because legally under the Oregon law, none of you have any individual authority to make decisions, direct, advocate. Everything works as a group and as a whole.  The one exception is if you decide to delegate certain authority to an individual board member.  Most often than not it ends up being the board chair, but that would allow those individuals to act on the board’s behalf without having to come back to the full board.  Communication is crucial in terms of the conversations that you have in your board meetings and in the sessions that you are going to have when doing the hiring.  Communication means a willingness to be open to listen to all perspectives and viewpoints.  It will be important that you all come to this process with open ears and willing to listen and problem solve through some of it.  It also means having open conversations in meetings and necessarily taking them out of a public session. She stated that she knows there is an inherent desire to sometimes drop back and use email or text messages or phone calls to each other.  She cautioned that everyone is paying a lot of attention to what you are doing and it is very easy to tumble into what she would call a serial meeting.  She wants the board to think about the importance of having all of these kinds of conversations here present, whether it’s in an executive session or public meeting.  She stated that people are going to be interested in what you are doing, which means communication needs to happen not only during a board meeting, but to find other ways to communicate with stakeholders.  She gave the board things to focus on and best practices:

  • Transparency
  • Establish a clear process that feels fair
  • What are the minimum qualifications you are looking for?
  • What your timeline will be and make sure you honor those timelines
  • When things are due
  • When are you going to have a decision out
  • Develop a process for who’s going to be involved, if the process you outlined will just include board members
  • Confidentiality

  She informed them that a lot of these particular pieces that she just outlined will be handled, assisted, and supported by the firm selected.

  Director Anderson commented that a lot of information was shared and she needs to digest all of the information.  She asked, “You were saying that the 8 entities that we may choose or not choose to hire would be a primary lead in guiding us through meeting the requirements for the process as we outlined it with them, or they guide us through that process. Did I hear that correctly?”

  Lisa answered, “Yes, you did. There are, I think it is important to recognize that there’s a statutory structure here a little bit, so the hiring process of the let’s say the CEO of a school district, a superintendent, is required to occur in a public public meeting, right? The one exception to that is, when the board goes through a process to establish criteria, qualifications, timeline. Even go so far as to allow the public to have to comment on some of those things before those are adopted and the firms, any firm that you would hire should be the one that helps make sure you check those boxes, because if you check those boxes, then you’re able to have this conversation in an executive session, which allows for a much more open, transparent, at least among the candidates and the Board members”.

  Vice-Chair Warmbier shared that she went to the National School Board Association Conference in Atlanta recently and went sat in on a session that was specifically about a superintendent search and transition, and a lot of the things that you said they said also, over communicating, especially with the public and having a strategic plan of how we’re going to communicate after we have meetings. We know it’s a public meeting that people could watch, the newspapers probably covering it, but having what we put out there as how people see us. So having that communication with staff and the community would help to make that transparent. I would really like to see that happening as well and giving the opportunity for some stakeholder engagement. This is a quick timeline, so that’s not going to be the same as If we have more months but at least giving that transparency would be important.

  She asked, “Do we have a RFP?”. We haven’t put one out, but we already have companies that have approached us, so are we required to put out an RFP?”

  Lisa answered, “Staff actually put out a request for proposal, which is what you’re required to do under the law. So they solicited, and they reached out to firms that are known to do this type of work.  Here you’re looking for someone who’s kind of dialed into the education parameter and so, has worked in education and has an idea of how, what kind of qualities will make a good educational leader, so they basically posted and sent out to all kinds of these organizations, saying, would you be interested in submitting a proposal.  Those are the ones that you currently have back. So I believe that you’ve complied with the public contracting portions of it that you’re required to do in order to select”.

  The board continued to discuss and ask clarifying questions.  They thanked Lisa.

• Health Adoption
  Director Ferrua, Melissa Parker, Jess Gordon and Page Peterson presented an overview of:

  • State requirements: Links to the health specific laws, MSD board policies and sexuality education opt out OARs and ORS were provided.  

  Director Ferrua commented that as you go through a curriculum adoption, you kind of have two roads to go through. You can choose ones that have been vetted by the State and are on an approved list or districts can go off on their own and go through the rubrics independently. I would say that in the past we’ve done both.  Right now she has recommended to the team that we stick to the list that has been approved by the State of Oregon. Part of the reason for that is, if we do get questions or complaints about our specific curriculum, if it’s one that has been approved by the State, we can just point them to the State and have them take their questions there.

  • Timeline: 
    • Fall/Winter 2024: ODE release of approved list
    • January/February: Convene adoption committee to review materials
    • March/April: Committee aligns materials to district needs and engagement
    • May: Final recommendation brought to board
    • June: Board votes to approve
    • Summer: Training and implementation needs addressed

  The elementary process was reviewed and their top choice as well as the top choices for secondary (mid-level) and secondary (high school).

  Director Ferrua stated that the next step is to bring a shortened version in May, there will be no action but it will allow for public comment before a final decision in June.  See presentation.

  Director Anderson thanked everyone for all the hard work.  She said, “That’s a lot of work to do.”

  Director Vollmer asked, “For middle school is health a standalone class like it is in high school, is it a semester and nine week class?”

  Jess Gordon answered, “The health content at middle school is part of a nine weeks of learning and they have standalone instructors that are not part of core classes”.

  Credit Recovery
  Principal Furman Chris Jones and Jeremy Vernon gave an overview for the MHS Program.  Principal stated that there aren’t specific state policies or guidelines around how credit recovery operates, rather, there’s information about how credit can be awarded and what the options are to award credit at the high school in terms of our district policies.  The language is something along the lines of the school, and the board will support multiple pathways to graduation for students. Credit recovery is part of a kind of tiered system that creates pathways for students to finish high school. 

  He shared and explained the five tiers:
  

  1. 32 credit opportunities
  2. Retake course
  3. Summer school (priority standards recovery)
  4. 9/10 Foundation or transition
  5. Alternative Ed: Cook

  Regional Comparisons for the following schools were reviewed:

  • Beaverton schools
  • Hillsboro schools
  • Forest Grove high school
  • Sherwood high school 
  • Newberg high school
  • Woodburn high school
  • Dayton high school

  Principal Furman shared that for the retake course (repeat courses) he ran it through their leadership team last year. He put it in front of the Board Instructional Subcommittee last year as well and then they put it into the Student Family Handbook and the MHS course bulletin.  

  MHS Summer School:
  Principal Furman shared that summer school is another opportunity for credit recovery for 9th and 10th graders. It lives in just the core subjects, social studies, science, ELA and math, they work through a kind of target based credit recovery on course priority standards. The math courses are particularly good at this, having specific standards that students had struggled with during the year that they’re able to remediate during that time and by remediating that standard they’re able to recover the credit or slightly improve their grade in the class.  For the 11th and 12th graders, this is an opportunity when they may be completing courses in edmentum that are similar to the course that they did not pass to work on recovering the credit for that class.  He explained that edmentum is an online set of curriculum that is used by other school districts.  

  9/10 Foundation:
  Principal Furman explained that as students begin to get increasingly behind they have a course called 9/10 Foundations.  It is a single class period, a first semester freshman could never take it, a second semester freshman who has been attending and struggled academically in the first semester might end up in this course.  It is really designed for sophomores.  

  Director Warmbier asked, “Can a student finish a single semester credit of edmentum in twelve days?”

  Chris answered, “Yes, yes they can.  Sometimes they may even finish two.  Sometimes they don’t finish any. It just really depends on the motivation of the student, how much time they’re willing to put into it and kind of how much support they have”.

  Transition (Credit Recovery):
  Principal Furman explained that after the 9/10 Foundations, if a student continues to struggle and need additional opportunities, we have a course called transition. This is our in building credit recovery course. It’s an opportunity for students to repair their grade or recover credits using edmentum.

  An overview for alternative learning options, alternative learning options for Cook, data for transitions 24-25, Cook 24-25, summer school 23-24, the historical context of Cook for 2008-2020; 2021 to present was shared.  See presentation.

  Acting Superintendent Compensation
  Chair Bizon stated that Director Frost is fulfilling two roles of responsibility.  It has been brought forward by other board members and himself that they needed to equalize compensation for the scope of work that is being performed since April 14, and make the compensation retroactive. Chair Bizon stated that he has had discussions with board counsel Lisa Freiley and he would like to get the Board’s thoughts on additional compensation for the Interim Superintendent for the remainder of the school year.  Through conversations with Lisa Freiley, she suggested a rate of 20-30% of actual compensation to Director Frost’s salary.  He asked for the board’s discussion.

  Director Vollmer stated that he certainly supports being paid for the work that is being done.  In addition to two separate jobs, certainly retroactively and in a very fair and open non secretive manner.  Chair Bizon shared that the comparison between what was compensated to Superintendent Brockett vs the gross salary of Director Frost is about a $56,000.00 difference.  A 20% additional compensation would be about $32,340.00 for the remainder of the year.  We would take the $32,340.00 gross annual and break it down into the three or four months, or whatever the retro time is decided and compensate that additional pay to her.  Chair Bizon would like to bring action forward for first and second reading at the next board business meeting with a proposal.  

  The board continued to discuss and asked additional clarifying questions.

  Director Hall will provide a payroll adjustment memo that has separate compensation with all of the details spelled out for the next board business meeting.

  Directors’ Comments:
  Director Partida shared that last week he went to Willamette ES to deliver the books they allowed him to read.  While he was in the office, one of the Spanish teachers came in and invited him to observe her teaching the class.  He was excited because the kids were really excited and the teacher was really good.  Victoria Brown sent him an invitation to see the music program.  He was dancing and it was great.  He thanked Hilary and Kim for taking the role of the leadership, that is great.  It is going to be a good benefit  for the future.  He appreciates all of it.  He thanked the Health Adoption Team for all of the things they are doing.

  Director Anderson echoed the thanks to all the teams who presented and for all the hard work.  The Oregon Schools Board Association had a day of advocacy last week at the Capitol and she went down and was paired up with our colleagues in Newburgh.  She visited with three representatives; Representative Sharp, Representative Elmer were not available but she met with her staff and Representative Munoz  She was able to leave information on our district and come back with some information that she shared with Director Frost. She regrets that we are not eligible for one of the reimbursement for the summer program, but it’s there at least. The other takeaway she heard from the representatives was that they are very supportive of education, but what they don’t support are omnibus bills.  For example, the two issues regarding special education that we’ve been talking about here both said they support those things, but when it comes as a package sometimes they’ll vote. No, because they don’t like the package; not that they don’t like the bills.  She thought that was very informative.  

  Director Towery gave a huge thank you and a shout out to the Leadership Academy for all the extra work and efforts around that; it  is really impressive to see and hear more about that.  She didn’t actually go to the actual Capitol, but she sat for several hours to testify on behalf of another local organization, and just wanted to give a shout out. There was testimony about our school gardens, so she was excited.  Unfortunately they were moving through names so fast in your two  minutes to testify that she wasn’t able to catch her name, but wonderful testimony on behalf of our school gardens.  It is really incredible work for our kids to be learning that and learning about new vegetables and fruits to be able to eat.  There is all kinds of architecture curriculum that’s being tied around it, math curriculum that’s been wrapped around how they plan out the gardens and measurements and the kids being involved with building those out. She hopes that in the midst of all the programs that need funding, we get some additional funding to expand the work across the district.

  Vice-Chair Warmbier stated that after they go to a conference they usually have some time to share out some of their learning, and we have had much more important things to talk about. She is going to type up her notes from the NSBA Conference, there wasn’t time to share tonight.  She  encouraged Director Vollmer and Director Towery to do the same.  If there are any questions, she is happy to talk about it. She  went to some great sessions knowing the work that is being done and trying to prepare for it.  She reiterates what Lisa Frieley said about this is our most important job to find a superintendent, both the interim and for the long term. She knows that they have all been committed to being here at meetings, and they will have a lot more, and maybe not have two weeks to get ready for things. She apologized for missing hyperlinks. She stated that another thing is just being really clear with communication with the board to make sure that they are moving quickly through this process and giving it the time that it deserves.  

  Chair Bizon shared that there is a new sheet in front of each board member.  It is the OSBA Boardmanship.  As a recommendation from one of the board’s trainings that they went to about having good Governance and remembering their roles and responsibilities.  He said, “I am going to keep mine here to always remind myself what his role and responsibilities are.  He thanked everyone who reached out offering their service as well as the Human Capital Enterprises, the companies that have reached out to Director Frost and said, “It has been truly calming to know that there are some truly talented and tenured superintendent’s willing to come forward in our time of need”.  He thanked OSBA, Lisa Freiley and all who have reached out.

  Meeting Video

  Upcoming dates:

  • First Formal Budget Committee meeting: May 7, 2025 and Second Formal Budget Committee meeting, May 21, 2025
  • Board Business meeting: May 12, 2025 and June 9, 2025
  • Work Session meeting: May 19, 2025 and June 23, 2025

  The Session adjourned at 8:49 p.m.