Athletic combine, Character Strong discussed at Dayton School Board meeting

DAYTON – The Dayton School Board held its regular meeting at 6 p.m., May 18, 2022. All Board members, Aneesha Dieu, Zac Fabian, Grant Griffen, Jeffry McCowen, and Korinda Wallace, were present in the high school auditorium, Superintendent Guy Strot and student representative Madison Richardson. Members of the public attended in person and on Zoom.

The board approved the consent agenda, including hiring two elementary teachers, Angela Kenney and Amanda Wade. It also included the retirement of the high school science teacher, Doug Yenney.

Dr. Clay Cook, the Chief Development Officer for Character Strong, gave a presentation on the program. Character Strong is the program the district plans to implement for socio-emotional training in schools. The training teaches educators how to deliver effective practices for students. The goal is to help students acquire skills that promote self-regulation, responsible decision-making, the ability to build, maintain, and repair relationships with others, and handle interpersonal conflicts.

Public comments were welcomed and included a recommendation from Amy Cox, the Elementary School Principal, who spoke in favor of the program, saying the adults at the school need to learn to work towards common goals.

Griffin moved to approve the Character Strong curriculum, seconded by Fabian. The Board approved Character Strong unanimously.

McKinstry, Spokane, gave the board an update on work by the consulting firm. McKinstry was contracted to assess needed upgrades to the district’s buildings and help identify funding sources to complete the projects. Identified projects include upgrades to electrical systems, electric-based HVAC systems, lighting upgrades, new windows for the high school which would match its historical appearance, and some facade restoration to the high school.

The Dayton School District has the complete list of projects on the web page. Most of the major projects will not be completed until summer 2023. No action by the board was required, and there will be an update at the next regular meeting, June 1, 2022.

Athletic Director, Sam Korslund, read a statement illuminating his experience working with the athletic combine. The thirteen-minute report included a list of challenges, some previously identified but never solved. The list included transportation issues and the lack of joint meetings with both school boards (they had met in joint meetings before the combine was finalized).

He also mentioned discipline policy differences between the districts causing athletes to face different consequences for the same behavior. He has heard complaints of alleged favoritism by coaches towards students from their schools.

In his statement, he said there are no budgets or fiscal transparency for the combined athletic department. He was also concerned that the two school districts continued to promote team spirit with their former mascots and names, not the DW Wolfpack. He felt this has led to an apparent lack of support for the combined teams.

His final concern was regarding higher turnout for middle school sports than for high school, leaving some players feeling they are not getting enough time on the field or on the court.

Two members of the Waitsburg School Board spoke in favor of the combine for middle school through high school. Several student-athletes also shared positive personal experiences competing in the combine. Support for the combine was expressed unanimously by persons making public comments, both from Waitsburg and Dayton.

McCowen made a lengthy statement suggesting the combine did not provide enough playtime for some athletes, but he did not definitively state his support or opposition to the combine.

Dieu said, “Dayton is Dayton school every day. Right. Our kids come here. They’re here. They’re Bulldogs. That’s what they see on our signs. That’s what they see in the front of the school. That’s what they see everywhere. We have sweatshirts, you know. Husband grew up here, has all of that stuff. They’re Bulldogs. You guys have yours. They’re Cardinals. Everything is still there. It’s up on the fence.

“But then, yet you come together, and you see it as a Wolfpack. So honestly, to me, it’s the combined separation of who are we? In reality, it’s an identity crisis between the two schools. It’s causing that character, morale issue between our two schools. Because really, what are they doing? They’re torn. Do we wear a Bulldog sweatshirt today, or do we wear a Wolfpack sweatshirt today? What are we doing? Where are we? What are our brains focused on?”

Dieu promised that the numbers of athletes in the school programs would soon be “immense,” and we would not have the ability to stay together anymore. Dieu said that if any classes were too small to field a team, students could just play for another school.

Some people commenting complained that sixth-grade boys do not get the playtime because the numbers turning out are too high.

The public comments were mostly unregulated, many speakers were not identified, and some speakers spoke over and interrupted each other. Most speakers, however, clearly supported the sports combine as it is.

Jennie Dickinson, chair of Citizens for Education, during the public comment period, spoke of the eventuality of combining school districts with Waitsburg as it would only help solve the problem in academics and athletics due to declining enrollment. She also said that many of the students who have left the district did so not because of the combine but because of the way people treat each other, and that needs to be the focus.

Comments from those who attended in person and those on Zoom showed strong support for continuing the combine but also making a strong effort to fix the problems that linger with it.

Dieu asked the superintendent to do polling of the sixth through twelfth grades to see if there is any actual support for the combine. She said there were a lot of kids not at the meeting who have the opposite view from those who made the effort to attend. Dieu said that maybe the polling needed to be extended out to the community “to see what that does.”

Strot recommended moving the evening’s department reports and actions until the June 1, 2022, meeting since the meeting had been in session for over three and a half hours. The public portion of the meeting adjourned without agreeing on any action.

An executive meeting was convened. The purpose for the meeting as stated on the agenda was to discuss qualifications of an applicant for public employment.