Thank you, President Harris.
I also have another poem I'm going to read, so I'll be, I promise, six minutes like last time.
First, as a citizen of the Chippewa Cree Nation of Rockwell, Montana, I do want to recognize that we are on stolen indigenous land.
I am honored to live, serve, and work here in the Coast Salish Territories, in the city of Chief Sealth, who is a descendant of the Suquamish, the Makoshian Guamish.
Thank you to Principal Howard for the exciting visit to Garfield High School last week.
I was grateful to walk and tour and hear about the ways he's supporting his students.
I was especially grateful to connect with another student actually who was also in AP Environmental Science.
We had a student speaker at our last meeting who was in Environmental Science and she had just shared how As a Muslim young woman, she felt really included in their class and also was super obsessed with environmental science and the ways that it felt really cross intersectional into history and English and to the arts.
And also thank you to Principal Chanda Otis, who invited me to visit Meany Middle School yesterday.
I was really excited to go.
to one of our, another one of our D5 schools and she shared about some of their successes and their challenges.
And I got to walk around and meet students and educators and I was most especially excited because we heard about, or excuse me, I heard about their upcoming production of The Lion King and that is in either April or May and I will be there as I remember, I was in elementary school, I used to sing I Just Can't Wait to be King with a Friend, so I'm excited to see the full production there.
Thank you also to Council Members Johnson and Gonzalez as Director Mack said we got to visit with them yesterday as part of our regular monthly meeting to just continue to strengthen our partnership and our relationship.
And then also again just supreme thanks to our CFO JoLynn Berge as well as Director Mack and Director Geary for a very raucous day in Olympia.
I will say there was some very impassioned conversations and meetings we had with certain legislators I won't tell you who but But I will tell you all of the legislators we visited with, and then you can just guess from there.
But we got to visit with Senator Carlisle, Senator Peterson, Senator Nguyen, Representative McCreer, Representative Berquist, Senator Claire Wilson, Representative Pettigrew, Representative Tomiko Santos, as well as Speaker Chopp, and also Senator Frucht.
And while we are truly grateful for the progress our state has made in fulfilling the state's obligation to amplify public education, we are frankly still not there.
We look forward to whatever dollars we'll receive from the state, and hopefully that will at least be able to cover the WSS cuts we had proposed.
And hopefully, and what we talked about were SPED funding, lifting the levy for nurses and counselors, as well as we did have one conversation with Representative, excuse me, Senator Hasegawa, who I forgot to mention, about the state being more inclusive about their testing, particularly for students who have different faiths and different observances.
Another thing I just wanted to mention and really reiterate that President Harris shared was when I ran for school board director Mack and I visited living rooms across the city to talk about certain conversations one of those was about addressing racial equity in our schools and we heard over and over again on the trail I know that the board needed to have and participate in the racial equity training so I'm very excited we're able to do that this weekend with the first of two racial equity trainings and I look forward to sharing how that went in our next board meeting.
I'm also looking forward to next week's exciting meeting.
It's long overdue but I'm grateful that our district and its commitment commitment to being a learning organization is hosting our first ever work session about workforce more specifically community workforce agreements.
And I just want to say a special thanks to Chief Podesta Richard Best and our board for your support in that.
The things I am tracking right now are the loss of a gender-neutral restroom at Washington Middle School, as well as some of their other ongoing issues.
We'll hopefully be having some conversations just to get some more answers about that, as well as the Amplify Science adoption.
And then finally, Policy 2015. 2015 is actually the helpful runway to get ethnic studies as a graduation requirement, so I hope we can resolve all of the issues for Policy 2015 in the time being.
And finally, I wanted to elevate, as I've been trying to do in our board meetings, a poem by one of our students at Middle College High School.
This is from Brianna Tran.
It's called, Give Me Your Tired.
And also I should say this, Prince of La Crosse, this is actually inspired by you because we had a conversation about it in the book at our last meeting and so I've been trying to elevate some of these voices from our students and so thank you for just, you're here, I figured I should say thank you.
The poem is titled Give Me Your Tire.
I can say all that where I come from, to where my parents and their parents were born, but what does it matter, our skin, hair, our eyes?
It's lineage that matters.
The seed which knows how to grow into an apple tree.
The apple falls and the seed grows to an apple tree once again.
That is our ancestors.
The understanding of people is what matters.
The history of why I even ended up here and why I can't find my way back.
I can say all that where I come from to where my parents and their parents were.
I'm in a place which was founded upon the idiocracy of a man and a monarch.
I'm in a place in which men took over a civilization, a faraway land that they did not need.
That was the ugliest time we can revisit.
If so, truth will be called out.
Made their own rules apart from the natives and called it their own country.
Please tell me the story of your origin.
Tell me the story of your ancient peoples.
I come from the mountains in the sky.
Martial arts and medicine.
I come from spicy food and rice in baskets.
I come from tales of mermaids, dragons, and sea serpents.
This was the anthem of my people and not your joke.
This was the symbol of my people, not your production.
This goes for all.
For the freedom of horses should roam and run.
The beating of the drum should continue to play.
The most richest of lands should have remained untouched.
Those chants' meanings would be the song that lived.
To the continents of the world, tell me your story.
What is the story of thy lineage?
Thank you.