At the August 14 Olympia School District board meeting, agenda items included an amendment to the superintendent’s contract and the Outcome 6 Monitoring report. Outcome 6 is:
OSD students will be critical thinkers who contribute to and collaborate with our local, global and natural world.
In regards to the superintendent’s contract, President Clifthorne noted, “The problem that we had when we adopted the amendment to superintendent’s contract is that we applied the COLA improvement to his 23-24 salary and not his 24-25 salary. And so, we need to strike $263,333 and replace it with $279,903.” Superintendent Murphy’s raise was $16,570.
While constituents argued that clean building performance standards mandated by state law are not a student outcome, and that science curriculum varies across OSD middle schools, the board defended the 8 year-old strategic plan.
The outcome tracking itself has shown less printing across the district and increased energy efficiency with the use of electric buses and solar panels, the installation of 86” Mimio MP4 Interactive Flat Panels across schools, while science-based programming has not become more equitable. CISPUS showed more attendance by non-white students and students with IEPs, but was not reported on by ethnicity (hispanic students).
Regarding Outcome 6, Director Seidel stated, “Climate change is an existential crisis for this world, and I don’t see how you can legitimately say, well, that’s not a student outcome. It is a student outcome, like if kids don’t have a place to live, if they don’t have safety, if we are in a climate catastrophe. And we may say, well, gosh, there’s not a lot we can do, only 100 households, but if every single system puts the kind of effort and care and dedication into that, that you all are putting into it, then we get farther ahead. And I would also say that for those of us who were on this board when this plan was adopted, you might also remember that that was when students went to the city of Olympia and came to us as well, and said we had a moral obligation to make a plan to reduce our carbon footprint. So, it was students who initiated this being part of our strategic plan from the very beginning.”