At a 3-hour board meeting on November 13, the Olympia School District (OSD) Board of Directors led with the first board presentation by the Olympia Schools Supportive Education Council (OSSEC). Director Flores, the board liaison to OSSEC explained the nature of the organization. Flores said, “All the schools within Olympia School District, all the families of students with disabilities, and myself being included, have been welcomed by OSSEC. And we’re unique in that OSSEC is not a PTA or PTO. It kind of spans a third space across the whole district and is able to work with all the schools to help navigate and resolve issues sometimes before they even happen, to make things more inclusive from the lived experience of all of these women who have students in their lives with disabilities.”
OSSEC is open to students, parents, caregivers, and staff in the district. They advocate for OSD students and families receiving support services. OSSEC outlined some of the successes like improved curriculum in DLC classrooms, a wide number of sensory-friendly classrooms, and a common entrance for disabled and general education students at Pioneer Elementary School.
They outlined their unique challenges. A member of OSSEC said their child “went to developmental preschool. I don’t want to count the number of thousands of hours that my son has spent in occupational therapy, autism therapy, speech therapy in order so he can interact with students that are more typically developing. We still don’t see, necessarily, the investment in students that are typical, learning the skills and the importance of interacting with kids that have disabilities and how to do that, and so…if my son can spend literally thousands of hours of his 10 years on this planet doing that, that we have an opportunity to have typical kids have maybe an hour of education around how to incorporate their disabled peers.’
An opportunity the group saw was with a lack of childcare available for students with disabilities. While this could be a potential opportunity for paraeducators in the district during school breaks, it currently comes in conflict with Policy 5251 – Conflict of Interest. The board said they would look at augmenting the policy.
Following their report, the Outcome 4 Monitoring Report began. The outcome reads, OSD students will… have the skills, knowledge, and courage to identify and confront personal, systemic, and societal bias. The report started with an update on multilingual and special education services.
Multilingual Services Coordinator Heather Randolph said, “We set actionable goals with things that we can measure. In terms of an action item for multilingual and special education identification, 18% of the students receiving multilingual services are also receiving services through special education. That was in 2023. By spring of 2025, OSD was going to reduce the percentage of dual identified students, so it’s proportionate. That’s a really quick way of saying, just because somebody doesn’t speak English, they’re not disabled.” Other improvements in the district include a new website in July 2026 with AI-powered translator Weglot. While the district has several biliteracy certifications, it lacks a dual language program, or any foreign language instruction before high school.
Charts outlining the district’s racial and ethnic demographics showed that white employees decreased from 96% to 90% in the last ten years, while the student population is 60.7% white. Executive Director of Human Resources Scott Niemann said, “These figures highlight while diversity among staff is increasing, representation gaps still remain, particularly among certificated and leadership roles. Some of the things that we’ve been focused on as far as equitable hiring and recruitment practices is we’ve changed up how we do some of our screening for applicants.” Over the past 5 years, OSD has implemented more equity-focused screenings in their job posts.
Following Niemann, Capital High School Principal Condee Wood told the group about the districtwide professional development training that the International Institute for Restorative Practices ran this summer, flying in over 16 trainers. Further trainings, with two cohorts of 10 to 20 employees, will go through a facilitated train-the-trainer workshop this year. Wood noted the perception of restorative justice prior to the training, “Among many CHS staff. Without shared understanding or clear systems, restorative work can feel like a lack of accountability, and many had that perception. But as we know, restorative practices don’t replace accountability. When done correctly and done well, they strengthen it. They shift the focus from punishment to learning. Helping students reflect, take ownership, and repair the harm.”
She continued, “They decrease harmful behaviors and increase belonging, self-efficacy, and cultural awareness, which are all key elements of outcome number 4. So, when I arrived last fall at Capitol High School. We had both a challenge and an opportunity to rebuild confidence in restorative practices through consistent and authentic application.” Since introducing restorative justice work, CHS suspensions had reduced to nearly half the number from the year before.
A first reading of Policy 1111 – Oath of Office had minor revisions, but lacked any ‘track changes’ notation to identify them. President Clifthorne praised the suggestion for tracking changes made by community member and district parent, Mike Taylor. We also hope the board takes the advice Taylor gave tonight, “You might want to think about doing some asynchronous presentations where there is more time for discussion, because, the discussion with OSSEC was really great, and I really wish that could have continued more, but we all felt the need to sort of cut stuff short to allow for the board to be presented things But if you had staff record their presentation, you could watch it asynchronously before. Then the staff is still here to do the Q&A, answer questions about that. I think that’s a much more useful for everyone to…have that information, have it digested, and then come to them with questions that we get to see… and the public already has the presentation ahead of time.”