we're required to raise the prices in order to fund uh the purchase of fruits and vegetables which are more costly than pre-packaged Foods historically we've not had to do that because our balances were such we didn't have to raise our prices as much it didn't make sense if we had a lot of balance to continue to raise prices on our families with some of the things changed within the school corporation specifically we're asking for a 15 increase to the high school a lot of that is due to the adding of additional Personnel in a new line to try to handle the additional students at the high school to move them through a little quicker historically we've also raised prices for Trinity and St Mary's who we provide lunch service to this year we're also asking for a 10 cent increase in Breakfast at all three levels elementary middle and high school with that we're recommending the approval lunch prices increase as shown as I mentioned and stay within the federal guidelines you've heard the recommendation of the administration for the approval of the lunch price increase as shown above to stay within the federal guidelines we have a motion motion motion by Mr Vassar seconded by Miss bazen question or discussion I'd just like to say thanks for the work on this obviously nobody likes to see increases but keeping them minimal and looking out for the best welfare of our taxpayers and parents is always a good thing so appreciate the work involved in this with that being said all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries 5-0 bus bids Mr Reese 5.08 thank you Mr Angel due to some normal I wouldn't say normal delay in delivery of services we've had to alter the timing of when we purchase our buses previously last few years we've done that at the end of the year calendar year and still we're able to get those buses in in time for inspection over the summer that's not been the case here recently those buses are have a longer lead time like many construction items or other big pieces of equipment purchases so we're moving that up six months the idea is to have these buses in line ready for inspection over the summer and the buses that we're trading in are not having in service anymore will no longer need to be fixed as they go through that inspection so with that we're bumping up our purchase into the the June board meeting instead of November December and so with that we're recommending approval of the bus bid lowest overall bitter curl and Bus Sales net cost of 895 440.62 cents you've heard the recommendation of the administration toward the bus bid to the lowest overall bidder curl and Bus Sales for the net cost of 895 440.62 cents they have a motion so moved second motion by Mr Smith second by Mr babjek question or discussion Mr Reese just uh just to clarify we're placing the order today buses next year summer not not beginning of this school year correct the plan is for these buses to be received in the summer of 2020.
and so in January we had that meeting really without any answers Beyond yeah I was reminded this weekend and this is my mistake because I thought Rob was actually a disabled City officials who might be protesting Rachel who was at the table and that was really at that time it's a conversation between the end of January and December I received a call um Dr Stephen Chang who was the president of the University of this colleges during the state of Connecticut and I did apply at school thank you for and he made me aware that a legislator in our community and maybe that could not resonate with me because of the names and shared the challenges around all the crowded here in the community and that perhaps there could be a solution right here in town at a restaurant and so there was a meeting in February to see if there was any potential and so I told them I appreciated the Outreach and uh certainly a meeting with the appropriate for all their president that was fine I called him immediately I said well I don't know if you came and he just called me and uh said we should be so Paul said let's do it and you never know so we had what I'm calling the exploratory meeting to see if there was a fit so what we learned in that meeting is that what's on is being challenged with the timing involvement wow Danbury public schools is continuing to experience an increasing role and so what I noticed quickly is that Dr Chang was trying to bring us together to see if there was an opportunity here and so I I didn't ask well can you also bring his name's office because it December in January and frankly if this thing can be funded it has to be the mayor it was like in cave or whatever and so at that meeting it was mostly for Paul and myself example and you know really just listen just trying to understand what our needs were so it was us the mayor's office amazing most of us I think asked messages that we won't be what would be what we want to get get and really to ask was just tell us how many classes you would need if this could work I mean bathrooms you would need it just to work on the office you would need be said to them which is uh thought it would be probably writing the paper this weekend this really could only work if we could move an academy over because it would be no officer would be no efficiencies found um outside of them so that meeting was in February and it was a compact send us some information and send us some information and you know we can follow along that follow-up meeting what really was restoratory meeting just to see if there's a match here was not scheduled until yeah so again given that this meeting so that the person who set up the meeting is not the chain and trying to get all the talented um lined up again this is not for the 23 24 school year this is for the 24 or 25th but what has not changed from January until in June is that there's and I'll go and group the board on to eat today but there's no earmark money for any of these issues and so it was immediately told today in that very different from what we had at the school in Brookfield during the 21-22 school year and immediately we had to provide upgrades to the entire facility to make it ready for kindergarten Lutheran University well it's not K-12 ready and we need to make you awareness you know studies it would you're probably looking at North 300 000 just to walk the building because it's not great for baseball students it's a different standard again while we're just talking about our basic needs [Music] there is no answer transportation a couple hundred thousand dollars to to say 700 000 support between the kids because they have to sleep lineup we have never posted anything out in terms of Staffing additional costs or a union meetings and you know labor impact because we at this point is really exploratory so we're in this meeting on this exercise 12 30 today and until I get there and I and of course I have the president of locals and state colleges in the conversation of the same and so I I had to say about that pre-controlling I'm talking to the media about something frankly that was in a very early explored corporate stages and it should not happen right so let me just stop and then secondly and this is frankly part of what a lot of things that I'm trying to do on behalf of the district and there are I in January and February I really didn't have anything to bring to the award in terms of anything maybe to raise your attention but I also understand that this should have been a place where him updated you or something special that may or may not crystallize anything mean so I want to make a board aware of that we didn't have these discussions it was a discussion today and so they must have made 15 plus people on the call Wells from the construction Authority at the state of Connecticut folks from and they were really representing City education department the mayor's office is on call the to the customer who's on the call the president of Wisconsin was on the call although his assistants camera in Philadelphia and they're done with its own Paul or the technical questions and so we had sent the number of classrooms a number of offices of a restaurant that would be needed to clarify that we would need at least 30 40 50 buses to move students they it really depends on the timing but we made it clear that we would need to move to it for the entire city of the Empire science part of town and frankly but if this meeting say or the meeting we had before I did not leave the meeting terribly optimistic that this would turn in then again at our meeting today with the president who started Frank it is query and just said you know is there financing to support this if we didn't have answers because they were there are no answers yet and there was a question opposed to there were two legislators in the room that really was building one there when the impression was close to her said there will be a session in February and it's an opportunity then that you know a request to be made to additional money is given the Gap year 24.25 the school wasn't built and see it Mondays could be advocated for in that regard it as of right now there's an original internally I mean locally and you know folks from the state will also ask if they were at the people that was OPM have to get maybe the other organization Das is also at the table and both of those folks were at point blank in any money to be pulled together far away and it was also being very clear that we don't have monies available you know just in the days or something else so if we left the meeting today with uh president Chang uh asking that Paul and I get together with our respective teams and walk through the campus to see if this is even anything now logistically it's impossible because the point that he had raised was that you don't even know if it's possible because we don't even know if your ability to meet the needs of the school so so that was the problem and so he had urged all of us to do that sooner rather than later before we waste any more time he was just talking about it because we don't we don't know uh our respective case after they did encourage us to We Will Walk about it so we can see if you can see that possibly even both granted until one year but it would it would mean a lot and so Paul and I had agreed that we were revisit both of our Capital really soon and see see again see if this match so uh Paul I mean the president at West time is going to be with President James ASAP I'm going to enable it back to us they also had some as you might imagine that they had sort of strong concerns about having by the world essential concerns about our ability to isolate them from the college campus in the college community but they also had concerns about the campus turning into a high school versus being a college campus and where that would be what would be for their potential work instead of trying to build up and build up on evolvement at this school so again I I left the meeting today probably as indeed to me stay optimistic they really blasphemy and optimistic and again the President James to his credit that's a very straightforward questions about money and at this time people do not have answers for the cause associated with improvements including advancing this conversations is likely to be some questions that I anticipate that I didn't know this weekend so I don't know um whether we report a guy is information about my mistake was frankly responding as if I went to the meeting today and uh you know people at a meeting at my group there was there people like me was like you know we're just going to be clear this this is not a done deal you know this is far from it but you know um you know a certainly that would speak I think I addressed to elementary school I'm well aware that it'll be constructed that day a sports re I guess in that we had not committed to anything I mean why didn't our discussion um and again I I don't know what the report I had is information but I was responsibility very detailed questions he was asking responded that way and actually just one of us too much students so for anything for you because and so because we will have about 200 additional students the 24 25 it'll be around 36 this year with two yesterday I mean next year to see what we were exactly the issue is the reason why we came over this 450 number if this wasn't working is that for us to move 200 and then I can say of course you're going to teach two classes here like in about two three classes over there and then Chris is going to go wait a minute you want me to travel for the two four period so now I can only teach two year into there it's so now we have to find out a way how are we going to find another teacher to teach that one class that Chris that I'm traveling with that time it's just not cost efficient abroad it's a little 200 and not be report because we have an old Academy there we're all going to teach you today and so that that's that's what was it just would be conversation yeah I mean that's really broad struggle it's just going to be a hard position because it would be the first time the entire staff not to mention Services come from the special education services start from my ESL or 5.7 and so when we were trying to have discussions around this we really bringing it around which is really 400 it's really an academy or nothing because you know as it is it's going to cost the cost will be ridiculous um if we split it's really not going to be close exactly because by the way it's still with you it's going to give back to school so that's something any questions about it no I think I think you'll even take it with you or so without answer information in the meantime I'm going to try to get something together with some topics of but um yeah um what they think about like the cabinets your journey workshops you know something like that it's just this worksheet here was to determined right if we wanted to have one of these topics or goals as a workshop right yeah it's too cold so so one for the same goals and it's more appropriate than we can separate the two and maybe go back to this specifically making stuff on the walls itself and in the workshop how does this thing set about doing their confidence taking a test with a couple of steps and then you know I have no problem uh yeah Kevin and I will talk a little bit and we'll get get it out to us uh for the year of uh you know the school open and you start back at 14 in September because you know I'm really kind of getting to know it every time we have a meeting you can't hear from yourself however this diagram how we are sitting or four of them because you can't hear on this side and when someone's talking over there you can't hear what you're saying even if they use the mic and the people in the artists can't hear what you're saying and they'll know who he's saying or what so you know who we sort of look at oh I'm sorry use the right way I'm sorry so if we could sort of look at restructuring how was City or summer I I think I think the proper might etiquette I think we need a little tutorial on that maybe you can't put because it's like I always feel myself what a big mouth I'm like leaning into it I mean what's the proper Mike editing just right here and just call horrible into it yeah I I think that's one of the things we should because I I see like talking over here and with the mic's on but I I think we try that before you know yeah well you know either way because when you put that stuff tell everyone to suck back in our meetings if there's anyone interested in interviewing for sister principals on Wednesday we're actually doing four meals for four buildings um two candles in the morning two thousands in the afternoon we're trying to kind of see that I had administrators leaving for the summer and summer school teacher so if anyone I'm considering anytime we do appreciate it comedy foreign and they're doing two things in the afternoon starting around noon time for Middle School it's in my office is available email s all right Alex is an emotion to a journey pretty success [Music]
okay great thank you just I didn't mention I failed to these are all part of the bus replacement plan as we submitted and you approved the state approved back for the 2023 budget wonderful thank you any other questions all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed well she carries 5-0 5.09 Lake Street Elementary School editions Renovations and related work project bid package Mr Reese thank you Mr Angel members of the board happy to bring forward to unite the results of the bid for the Lake Street Renovations and additions and related work I'm not going to go through the list I'll let Mr Angel tackle that tonight but with that I'm happy to announce that the budget for this project was a little over eight million dollars and a total amount of our bids will be asking to approve tonight is just under 7 million at 699 600 996 347 I also point out that either Skillman or the school corporation has experience with all the contractors recommended you've heard the recommendation of the administration for the approval of the contract for Lake Street Elementary School editions Renovations and related work project as follows General trades to Jerry Gary up Construction in the amount of two million four hundred one thousand five hundred dollars for masonry to Adams masonry in the amount of 856 thousand dollars 800.
for roofing to Corrales Roofing in the amount of 341 687 for metal studs drywall and ceilings to golf Inc in the amount of 736 thousand for flooring to Interior finishes in the amount of four oh I'm sorry for flooring to Interior finishes that's the name of the company in the amount of 462 thousand nine hundred thirty dollars for painting to stands painting in the amount of 267 590 for casework the Stone Creek Interior Systems in the amount of 198 000 for plumbing to Gatlin Plumbing and Heating in the amount of 226 thousand six hundred forty dollars for mechanical to Gatlin plumbing and heating the amount of 546 thousand seven hundred dollars and for electrical to Sergeant election and the sergeant Electric in the amount of 962 500 I have a motion for these bids motion by Mr babjek seconded by Mr Smith question or discussion regarding the Lake Street renovation projects Dr Tara could you give us a quick rundown of the improvements that are going to be occurring at the Lake Street yeah so following our plan to get all of the elementary schools up to the same level with Equitable facilities we'll be adding a stage in the gymnasium adding a stem room there as well as some preschool classrooms also throughout the building we will be redoing the HVAC system new carpeting flooring throughout refreshing restrooms eventually replacing all of the furniture in there so it all becomes brand new and also enhancing the entrance and office area there as you walk up to the building so again it looks more like a Crown Point Elementary School now than it than it currently does and again I just want to thank Skillman Corporation and I see Dion out there today so thank you for all your hard work Dion I somewhat feel like we should ask him a question just ask them a question but any other questions all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries 5-0 uh six information re recognition items the superintendent's Discussion Group 6.01 Mr vassen would you like to go first anything on Cedar Lake nothing nothing new in Cedar Lake although beginning on July 1st all of us who serve on those Redevelopment commissions will now have a vote on tfis so Mr Reese we're probably going to be talking with you about some educating us a little further on that so we're doing the right thing for their school corporations because that's coming up real soon thank you Mr Smith Crown Point I missed last month's meeting I actually had a vacation so I don't have anything from Crowley Cars one field have not been contacted I know they are too busy doing other things with their time as of now I'll just leave that alone uh director of Elementary education wait titles change or we're not yet not yet all right because man I was looking around I don't know where we're going here because they don't put the names on this agenda so yeah Miss Ramirez thank you Mr President board members I just wanted to thank members of our elementary administrative team our teachers as well as support staff for some a successful summer school session that we had here in June I really want to thank Brett Munden who is the principal at Lake Street and Kelly Wade who is the assistant principal Jillian Alonso out at Winfield and Patty Hall out at Winfield they were the two sites that hosted all summer school um this summer since we had two centralized locations and it was quite an undertaking to make sure that everything was organized that drop-off pickup communication was solid and they did just an excellent job and along with that I would like to think really our whole administrative team as we've been working through and we had our second leadership Series this morning it's really a great opportunity for all administrators Traders directors at the district Level Elementary secondary to work together and to be able to come together as a team to connect and to make sure that we have a solid foundation for the work that we're all doing and just leaving this morning I think it's a great feeling this evening to know that as we are transitioning into new positions that the strength of the members who are already on the teams will continue and that we are bringing on new team members who are going to continue to really enhance and support the work and the vision that we have so I thank you for your support of our administrative teams throughout the district thank you Ms Ramirez 6.03 director of secondary education Mr Gian Fermi thank you Mr President board members um on the same lines as Mrs Ramirez I wanted to thank our middle school principals and Ministry of teams teachers and the students for completing summer school successfully in a situation where obviously our Taft students and staff needed a place to go and everyone was at Colonel wheeler but if you've been by Colonel wheeler lately it's pretty tough to navigate over there as well so great job by them by successfully finishing and I want to thank our high school administration and of course the teachers and the students over there as they you know we have close to 800 students in PE in the summertime and they've been really creative to keep moving keeping moving and getting those credits in for those those students so a big thank you for all of them and all the work that they've done and then this one last person I want to recognize and I know this was probably her farewell organizing the Crown Point graduation so uh Amy helmuth who's been on the high school administrative team is moving into a new position I'm sure she'll be down the street to help them but she has done such a great job the last four years with that is a monster event and most of you that attendant know that it goes out off without a hitch and a lot of that has to do with her her doing all the detailed work and making sure it's planning and it takes a long time to plan that thing she's really on it so she's just done a great job and we really appreciate all she's done thank you 6.04 director of exceptional education Miss pascus hello Mr President members of the board we just received some good news uh we have a state special education administrators group and a couple years ago they started an aspiring special education leaders cohort and it's a year-long process where they are mentored by a special ed director in the state they attend the state special ed conference twice a year and then have monthly mentoring meetings Andrea Avila one of our coordinators was selected only 20 people in the state are selected so she will undergo this year-long mentorship in hopes that she will then go get her special education director's license so I'm always looking to grow teachers and and leaders so I'm excited for this journey for Andrea and we're so fortunate to have her so thank you Chief academic officer Mr Harmon um school years getting ready to to gear up we have July going to be hitting us next week and um registration is coming we are in the process right now of finalizing our rollover to the new school year as well as a new student information system so we'll be moving from RDS to PowerSchool the goal of that is to have that as seamless as possible something tools that is concerned another thing is we have engaged in PowerSchool from our previous student information system there were components of it that were integrated with that that we need to we need to make sure that we have that with our school so we have been working with different vendors that know PowerSchool and are integrating with them for the high school's sake the the pathways that students are performing or participating in the monitoring that's necessary the state legislation has given uh districts the order to to provide we have built that capacity we're going to be having really a data warehouse with the new system it's going to be through our schools insights as well as our monitoring of students and their interventions we've also linked with a company called public Consulting Group this is the company that for the state for the last 12 years has been integrating the IEPs and the 504s and ilps into the state system so they're accessible we've been pulling that information from the doe to us and now we're gonna we're actually going to have a seamless integration now with that company and all of our IEP information and data within our system which is going to make us more more efficient and the the last thing that we're looking at is the online payment system which isn't going to be as substantial because there's no textbook rental but we are we do have places where we need to be able to have the opportunity to have online payments so we're working with PowerSchool and a vendor that they have worked with uh with that so that we will have a complete system and again hoping not to not to miss a step as we move into PowerSchool from our past student information system so we're looking forward to it but at the same time there's a little bit of just nervousness something brand new and especially the timing of it you want to have a good start for your staff your parents so that's what we're working to thank you thank you 6.06 Chief Financial Officer Mr Reese thank you Mr Angel Mr Hartman slid one in there on me and took one of my topics it's okay as Mr Hartman mentioned and broke the news there will be no textbook rental or any fees charged any parents this year in regards to any classes so during registration no more paying at the end of the end of the year by credit card or by the end of the session to enroll your students no no Supply fees everything will be the same as it was before as far as what's delivered for the students however no parent fees will be charged for the next school year for 23.24.
so we're excited about that and I think Mr Robin for just sliding that one in there to to let us know yeah it was good if you caught that uh my other uh topic I want to discuss tonight is an update on the technology breach that took place last November I've been working with our legal teams and working on our technology Consultants we're working on a deduplication of identified records with that once that's determined notices will be going out within the next month people were impacted also important to remind you since the beginning of this process the district is following legal and regulatory requirements as directed by our legal counsel I have no further information on that topic tonight thank you Mr Reese superintendent of schools Dr Terrell thank you so one of the things that was already mentioned this evening Mr Ramirez brought up we had our second leadership meeting today with all of our admin team and the opportunity there to see our veteran administrators working with our new hires with our younger administrators and the team efforts that go into their cabinet members are typically the leaders of the seven teams that we divide up into and just the conversations that take place there the ability to create relationships across the Pre-K all the way up through 12th grade and Beyond now really the genuineness of it is great and I appreciate the leadership that is brought about by our cabinet members and also our administrative team and those sessions last week I was in all of our buildings and I typically am in all of our buildings but there was a reoccurring thing that came to me as I was going through our buildings and it was typically by our site managers who are employed by Skillman and run everything on each site and three or four of them mentioned to me how um and I'll quote one in particular he said I wish I could work in Crown Point schools for every job that I do he said from top to bottom from the administrators to the teachers to the maintenance workers that are coming into the building to the custodial staff that is within the building he said I have not met a better group of people and how they work with us the things they do for their kids and That Was Then echoed as I went to different buildings and again just running into them in the hallways and talking with them so Dion thank you for your leadership at Skillman and the the quality individuals that you employ but I would also say that in talking with our administrators that cinnamon has echoed right back at them the way that um every campus is a map well Lake Street not yet every other campus is a major projects going on upheaval going on um yet when you talk with our principals about testing season and how that went this spring went off without a hitch if there was an issue there was one conversation took place and all of a sudden that work was shifted to a different area on the campus and there weren't any interruptions that went with it so even at times where things seem to go a little bit awry knowing the way that we have that working relationship has just been amazing when you talk to people about the fact that this 350 million dollar group of projects is going on every campus by the end of the summer will be impacted in a major way it's amazing to think of the things that are coming and how we're getting through this so thank you to Dion and his team for the work they do behind the scenes but also to our team Mike molaski's team in particular and the way that they continue to facilitate these projects we just appreciate it and the it's a great way to represent Crown Point thank you Dr Terrell item seven uh other business of the board uh if nobody has anything right away uh I'm going to give Dion an opportunity Dion any chance we can just get an update for everybody listening at home and ourselves weird things stand for 45 days out uh for the opening a Taft did you say 45 days out I'm counting I mean isn't it like August 11th that sounds good to me I mean 45 days sounds good oh because we have four days left of June I think my Math's pretty close 45 days or more six weeks seven and a half until the kids are in school for the first day so oh you see Dee I knew it it's like drinking water from a fire hydrant right now um it's a Sprint so every day you know Dr Terrell and I walk out there quite a bit and every day you just continue to see more and more progress so if you were to walk in the academic Wing right now for example the last thing we have left to complete this carpeting which should be installed we'll start here in about two weeks it's in the hallway in the hallways all the classrooms all the carpets complete the pain is complete all the furniture is complete in all the rooms the media center actually um Tracy and her staff have been in there cleaning some of the books prepping the media center case work so that space is getting cleaned up and completed the cafeteria if you're walking the cafeteria today the floors are prepped and the floors will be completely installed by the end of this week with furniture for the cafeteria space coming in July 10th and then the actual administration offices will be wrapped up in the next two weeks and right now our focus is as we head out towards the west side of the building wood flooring in the auxiliary gym is starting to be installed tomorrow we've actually started off already and started installing the subfloor painting of the main gym will be completed by tomorrow and then we'll start here in about two weeks installing all of the gym equipment and then flooring so we're going to take it all the way up to the Finish Line you know as many of you know we encountered some hurdles early on just through the planned commission process and we did lose a little time but now how we're making that up is we're making adjustments and calling audibles along the way we're working Saturdays working 10-hour days the guys that are watching brick are out there on Sundays so it's all hands on deck right now it's not going to be perfect but close to it thank you Dean I just I mean you guys have done wonderful work for us throughout the years and I keep getting the question asked I've driven by that school it doesn't look like it's going to be ready I can tell you every word I've had says it's going to be ready hence why I had the opportunity now another board business to bring you to make sure that you can quell those fears is that the right word out there in the public so I knew I had the right guy for the job appreciate it thank you for everything you guys do thank you Dan anywhere else you'd like to hit while you're here if I may well I'll just go around the I'll go around the block so Eisenhower the classroom additions will be done end of July and we're focusing on the interior of the building putting in some of the Cure secured entrances and Renovations in that building wheeler we anticipate the actual Auditorium seating coming in the end of July painting in the spaces going on so the wheeler Auditorium is probably about a week and a half two weeks ahead of Taft but you know we're right on its tail classrooms will be completed at Wheeler Timothy ball we're about two months ahead of schedule Timothy ball at the Learning Center portion there's already Furniture in that space and we're doing major Renovations on the interior MacArthur seems to be the gift that keeps on giving just continue to run into unforeseen conditions here and there but we're managing that process that's why you have us here um just going to the high school started demoing that wall which would be considered the East wall of the cafeteria that's where the cafeteria is going to be expanded so we started demo demo of that space last week that will run all the way up into mid to late August as far as getting that space completed with all the trouser work that needs to go in that area I miss any demolition of the old Taft building demolition of the old Taft building that one's you know it's going a little slower and anticipating probably a few days behind on that one but that's another one we're working with the Demolition contractor they're going to work longer days and Saturdays but we'll be to the point of the building we're going to keep hearing about we anticipate three to four weeks because the gym and the cafeteria is going to be a huge undertaking to demolish that space so a lot of interested people that continue to stop by and observe the building going down but um you can see the unveiling of the administration building so which is coming along great anticipated carpet coming in week of July 10th and then furniture will follow so it's a very high level snapshot but I'd be happy to answer any questions thank you for everything you shared yeah appreciate it I will say I'd like to thank all of you for the opportunity you know Dr Terrell thanks me oftentimes but I'm simply the conduit and Dr Terrell and I communicate on a daily basis and if I don't have the answer I get them the answer but there's just an incredible team on our staff there are 18 individuals between all of our site managers project managers and project Engineers that are just dedicated to these projects we appreciate the opportunity thank you thank you are there any other items in board business that someone had this evening yeah uh if I may sure um I was I was reading a report from the national Center for Education statistics um over the weekend uh which uh publishes the nation's report card if you ever heard of that before it was it was really interesting to read this and their their focus is was on what's happened since covid and uh according to Peggy Carr who is the commissioner of that uh National Center for educational statistics said that more than two years after students returned to in-person classes there are still worrisome signs about student achievement and she cited that the math scores and I don't know what they're using but their math scores were the lowest since 1990 and the reading scores were the lowest since 2004.
and um she said that's just 14 percent of students reported that they read every day and the report also showed that absenteeism that 10 of students missed more than five days of school Nationwide so I read this and I just wonder and I can put this to Dr Terrell or or Jim or Mark or Sabrina or Heather how are we doing on that how are we doing on our student achievement and student growth is there any data that we have on that we're not prepared this evening to bring forward any data we have our assessments and what we look at here I would tell you that while we have concerns here within our district we have fared much better than most through this um but we've been more than happy to look at that yeah thank you any other items under board business tonight just uh well I don't know if I missed the email fall conference for the School Board Association has that information been gone out already for hotels and signups okay I just want to make sure I don't miss an email yeah I think so far just the date has been out there but okay great thanks um yeah I can get the date for you all right any other items well Dr Charles looking that up just so everybody can have the reminder to if they can attend to please attend yes 25th okay that's a Monday Tuesday normally yes 25th okay 26.
thank you so if you mark that down on your calendars see if you can attend um always some valuable information in that yeah that's a great point there is we need to look at that board meeting moving that up because that's our scheduled time so please confer those dates on the 18th to make sure we can at least have a quorum I would imagine with at least three of you having kids in school that you'll be back in plenty of time and vacations will be over for me and Mr Vassar who knows the 18th we'll be moving it prior to that the 18th of September on Monday evening I mean we'll just move it up a week and then um since we're bringing this up I assume we'll still be here for the July meeting is that accurate so the First new Administration probably be that one in August uh probably in September okay I just want to make sure we gave this building it's Kudos and just do is it's how does the board meeting since I've been on the board sure yeah most likely we'll have two more after this evening that will be here if something happens we're able to get in there sooner we'll let you know that that's kind of the plan right now the temperature changes every more something I've looked forward to it was a meat locker in here earlier when Diana and I came in yeah wow yeah our two cohorts over there that usually have blankets and extra sweaters all right just in case we'll move on to item seven or eight point zero one board statements of appreciation recognition Mr Vassar anything you'd like to share tonight Miss Basin uh yeah I just wanted to say regarding graduation that it was absolutely awesome for those who aren't aware we had some fun weather predicaments that pushed us to the the rain date which was the second day and then some impending weather that caused that time to change and I just um I want to commend everyone involved with the communication the the solid decision making and it's always easy to hear you know the complaints on oh they changed the date and we had this printed and it you know I know that that's obviously not ideal however nobody controls the weather but given the circumstances I think it turned out to be probably the most amazing graduation Under The Lights um the weather was absolutely perfect by the time that the students did graduate um and I just think the entire event was really well done so kudos to everybody involved I'm sure that takes a ton of effort on the back end from many people that I'm not even aware of so I don't want to name anybody and Miss anybody but that was really wonderful so I appreciated being a part of that apparently didn't hurt attendance either because it was packed thank you Mr Badger nothing tonight Mr Smith yeah I want to uh recognize an individual who's close to another board member here but uh Ava zulkowski who played in the north south uh All-Star game and for a girls basketball player from Crown Point and she performed well so I think that's a Futures game and it's basically a Junior's game and so no I appreciate you bringing that up because now I'm going to hear about it I thought you were remaining I thought you you were you were playing a little yes being honest so but I think Ava uh what a tremendous athlete and she represented Crown Point so well she always does so I just want to recognize her and her efforts and what a big honor that is tonight thank you I have one as well on the athletic front uh Sheamus malasky um our buildings and grounds directors son won the State title In The discus I want to say 189 feet and a few inches which broke his personal best School record all that so congratulations to Seamus you got another year to do it but not many times the Crown Point gets tracked state champions so kudos to Sheamus and best wishes moving forward for his senior year so with that I think I'll look for a motion to adjourn motion by Miss Basin second by Miss Mr babject all those in favor please signify by saying aye aye those opposed motion carries five zero thank you okay
thank you everyone for joining us and for being patient with us all um welcome to the June 27th 2023 study session which will be followed by a short special meeting of the board uh can we begin with instructions for interpretation for our Spanish-speaking audience absolutely thank you madam president buenos Tardes is [Music] thank you so much first on our agenda tonight is 1.1 the Adams 14 tntp progress towards goals Dr Lydia would you like to introduce this item yes Madam president members of the board thank you so much we have Miss Sarah Lynch here with tntp and this is part of the frequent progress monitors monitoring reports that you get we're going to include the entire year with the data that we have thus far because not every data at that point is here but I think it was a great year for us and you will see that in what is going to be presented so we're very excited about this and I'm going to pass it on immediately to Miss Lynch thank you doctor uh Happy Tuesday uh Madam president steam members of the board Dr Lauria and members of the Adams 14 team who are with us tonight and those who are watching also welcome to the members of the extended Commerce City uh Community who are invested in What's Happening Here who are also watching my name is Sarah Lynch I lead the team of TNT peers who have supported across all four domains a rapid Improvement here in Adams 14.
thank you our special meeting second all those in favor aye aye aye and this takes us to our budget hearing and Mr Germany Madam Madam Clerk and members of the board um and thank you madam clerk for sitting in as our president this evening um we have uh this year both the truth in taxation hearing and a proposed budget hearing which are combined as is allowed by law and mistina dumelian who is our Director of Finance is going to walk us through the information for this hearing the hearing will be immediately followed by our first agenda item in the board meeting being a vote on the budget and the adjacent ways tax levy um so that will immediately follow this hearing let's do one uh Madam clerk members of the board and exec team welcome to tonight's meeting um the first slide we're going to cover says truth and Taxation that is for the adjacent ways tax that we are proposing the amount there is 750 000 it does have a breakdown for you so if you look at line C2 that would tell you the increase of taxes for every hundred thousand dollars of your home's valuation um funds for adjacent ways can only be used for Approved adjacent ways construction projects or maintenance projects so if there was money left over in this account we couldn't repair lights or carpet or anything like that it's also over the oversight for this fund is the school facilities board so every time you have an adjacent ways project it goes through their verification and approval before we can spend these funds the next slide kind of shows you a breakdown we have the numbers that you saw in the new build for next year for lck this is specific to the adjacent ways portion of that we also have the transportation deal South Drive that we have put off for several years at least back to the Creighton days that's the drive that all the buses go down all the delivery trucks that's in pretty poor shape so we've put this off as long as we can and then we just have some minor issues anytime an issue pops up that might be an underlying utility or a sewer line for us or a fencing issue that impacts neighbors we are allowed to use adjacent ways to correct that so that we don't push further things onto our neighbors so that's the adjacent ways truth and Taxation portion the next slide goes into our actual budget hearing um we did assume um an enrollment decline like we have in years past we did however minimize that to attempt to capture as much budget capacity as we could because these budgets actually set the tax rates for our property owners in the district our mno is significantly high right now we've been talking about that for a while the meet and confer recommendations some of those recommendations will obviously hit mno in general and also some of our carry forward so things like the longevity increases those are ongoing costs um the pfp increase for classified staff that comes out of mno so that would be an increase some one-time costs include um the 16 hours for classified staff and the eight hours for certified staff that's a one-time cost so we put that into and the no coming out of Esther we have the hourly increases for the highly qualified AIDS those typically hit hit impact mnl more than any other funding source so we've got all those things coming out we also have some remaining things that were in Esser that are coming back to mno the final two items that were originally an mno that got moved to Esser is the other half of the assistant principal's positions we brought those back in January so in our last budget hearing you heard that that got brought back as of January 1st this budget has the full impact of that cost and in here um and then we also the other big ticket item moving from Esser back to mno are the cost for daily and long-term Subs that's typically anywhere between six hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand a year depending on you know various circumstances across vacancies injuries illnesses those kind of things on the next page you will see the breakdown um and I have a summary on the next page but on this page I did want you to note that for average teacher salary we just put a placeholder in there one percent we expect that to go up if you'll recall at our May budget hearing our projection of three percent went up to seven percent just from the longevity increases for teachers so I do expect this to come up but I need to wait until all of the new teachers are on board and we can actually run a more accurate average for that um we've got some summarizing there on the next slide um it we do have a budget um capacity increase for mnl so that's positive news um however we um also have adjustments that will be made um those will be um coming out on the budget 75 in November so that could be enrollment loss that could be less carry forward than we thought it could be more carry forward than we cost so there are some adjustments that happen later but right now it's projected to be a budget capacity increase we do have the federal pandemic relief funding Revenue in this budget as well it is decreased from last year obviously because we've spent a lot and already um put that into our statements for last fiscal year so that's the only decrease on that front page that you will see um you can see on the next bullet point the increased base level so the base support level has went up and that accounts for some of that budget capacity that's included in this budget and just a reminder that in December we pretty typically always have a budget revision that's required so we'll have that coming forward as well as far as future budget challenges you've seen a lot of these and we've went over these a lot of times but what I want to highlight is the second bullet for declining State revenues and general fund balance because we we have got some new information that's pretty pretty um alarm I won't say alarming but concerning um the tax cuts in we we now have something to look at so for May of 23 2023 it decreased by 44 percent so that's an impact of about 175 million dollar loss to the general fund the esas that we've talked a little bit about those have actually are projected to increase by 72 percent and the funding for that alone is 900 million estimated and then some of the economic factors but also part of the general fund too it comes out of the state's general okay um there are some economic factors um one of the concerning things they have seen is a decline in sales tax which feeds into um several of our funds within the budget we actually were expecting this last year and didn't see it and we're surprised by it we are starting to see the impact now so you may see some decreases in different funds including mno classroom site funds prop one two three there's fund 20 that feeds into this so we have that going as well is there any way to try to anticipate what those changes might look like and amount wise or we just typically get we do get some projections later on in the year um this was the this was the first one I've seen I don't know Jay if you've seen more come out this was the first this is the first item that I've seen come across our desks from a lot of our organizations saying wait a minute we might have some red flags here but later on in the year they'll start projecting that and the numbers will start flowing out to the schools that anticipate a lower amount here lower amount here yeah and there have been some there was a significant problem with classroom site fund years ago where the dollars that flowed in flowed immediately out and so when you had a change like this like there was a year and a camera was 2010 maybe it was 2011 where all of a sudden classroom site fund plummeted and districts struggled to be able to even meet their basic needs out of that fund and this and the state did change the way that those revenues are managed I guess for lack of a better term and so they tried to normalize them to some extent so um it doesn't make it not a it doesn't make the problem go away that sales tax revenues were down but it does it'll it'll help even out the decline in those funds coming to us so there shouldn't be like a stark all of a sudden we're not getting any money from that um because and I don't know the exact nature of the mechanism but they're doing something where they're holding some of those funds back and Doling them out to ensure that there's not like you know a bankruptcy of that account for some reason thank you and I believe that's our last slide so we are opening it for questions at this time do board members have questions Miss Ayers let's give something I just wanted to say you know before I was on the board I went to like an all day long training with uh Jay I forgot what even the organizations I think it was a partnership through asbo and maybe asba together yeah it was very interesting I'm not a math or money person but it um helped me get some insight into this whole process how it's a year-long thing it never really just kind of continues into itself um and I know there's a lot of folks involved and so I just want to tell everyone I appreciate all your work I know this is I there's no way I could do this job so I know it's some people's wheelhouse but and they enjoy it but thank you so much to everyone who's put work into this and continues to put work into it and I know we have other folks who don't necessarily work in your department who also give input from our district so I just want to appreciate everyone for getting this um getting this to us and I hope to talk to Mr Mann about how we can make our budget and process even more accessible to our community because you know that's my that's my I don't even know what word to use I think I think we originally met because you were the same homeowners association meeting where I was there to help shed some transparency on budget things yeah so I think we will be very copacetic on that movie so just thank you to everyone thank you the public they can do so questions I guess if anyone has a question you can come to the podium okay all right thank you very much Mr doomley and that will take us to um our regular meeting do I need to make a motion Hilda to move us no okay I want to just call it to order and do this okay yep [Music] members of the public who wish to address the governing board may do so in person or if you would like to virtually submit a comment please email Hilda Juarez at Hilda H Juarez at creightonschools.org that's on the website by 2PM the day of the meeting so she can send you a link in instructions board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda um and I am going that will take us to the land acknowledgment Creighton School District understands that our community of schools is located on the ancestral land of ohodom Jude and akamil Odom people who have descended from the hohokum and who have inhabited these lands since in Memorial time in Memorial whose name translates literally to people are a vibrant culture and communities spanning countless Generations into the past continuing to thrive in the present and carrying a powerful Legacy for traditional care in keeping of these lands by indigenous people is an aspirational model of community stewardship that we are committed to to honor with practices policy and human relations um and now we'll go to the Pledge of Allegiance Mr Man Would you lead us in that pledge allegiance of the United States of America Republic which it stands one nation under God so roll call myself Amy mccheffrey Miss Ayers and Miss Gibson McLean are here um and welcome statement we want everyone to we want to welcome everyone to tonight's meeting and remind the audience of the request to address board cards that must be completed and submitted to the board secretary if they wish to speak to an agenda item org policy provides for two cards White cards to be submitted in order to speak to an agenda item and blue cards in order to speak during public comments due to open meeting law board members are not allowed to address items that are not on the agenda that takes us to approval of agenda and I would like to table um [Music] sorry my iPad is still acting up so I've got to thank you items n a b and c okay so I would like to table 10 a b and c as those are Miss Korea dolls um agenda items and I would like for her to be able to lead us in the discussion on those second all those in favor bye thank you and we need to vote on the agenda correct otherwise yes as amended yeah yeah [Music] move the governing board approve the agenda as amended I second all those in favor aye aye thank you okay that takes us to public comments and the first I have is Gail Smith and are we going to do three minutes yes [Music] good evening Madam president members of the board I'm here tonight um my agenda is twofold the first in this public comment is to address the bullying that is happening in the schools um as you all are aware from my last comments my son Derek has been assaulted multiple times he has been racially bullied um Derek came home for several months stating to me that he wanted me to shave off his hair that he didn't like his curly hair and that the kids were making fun of his curly hair and I just kept assuring him that I loved his hair and that he should be proud of his hair and just because it's not like everybody else's that it you know it doesn't just because it's different doesn't mean that it's it's wrong and that he should be proud of it and this was going on for months then Derek started coming home and telling me after an incident on the bus that for a long time he's been being called a monkey at school that the kids are making fun of him because of his black skin when I brought this to the attention of administration I was told that they didn't think the kids meant anything by it well maybe one or two of them did and there were no consequences for these kids Derek had so much anxiety that he he was sick he was physically sick the next day and could not go to school and that continued these incidents have happened for a while according to Derek these have been happening for a long time but Dirk doesn't feel like he has a voice in the school he's also been physically assaulted to the point of having to go to the hospital and something needs to be done what I found during this whole incidence of assaults and bullying is that the district's policies do nothing to protect the victim the district policies attack protect the perpetrator and there was nothing for Derek to keep him safe at school and other districts that are close by including um the bolts District their policy or assault is an immediate 10-day suspension those children were not suspended and they attacked my child again the next day on the bus and our policies we need to look at our policies for bullying and reassess how we're going to keep our kids safe and protect our children at school and that I would really like the board to look into this thank you thank you our next public comment is Maru panel good evening my name is Marie panelly that's okay the pen was light um I just would like to um follow with Gail's comment of um I would really like someone to look into the bowling my daughter attended a school in the district and has since moved out of the district and gone to Madison and it was like a breath of fresh air the change in environment because she wasn't getting picked on and she was able to use the restroom and not get locked in or locked out by the bigger kids and um I just really feel like it was something that needs to definitely be looked into yeah thank you thank you the next speaker is Cassie Headley good evening Madam president and members of the board my name is Cassie Headley and I am a Creighton School District teacher and also a parent of two current and one former who just graduated eighth grade from the district I come to you tonight as a parent to bring to your attention the issue of bullying within our schools I made the difficult decision in February to withdraw my eighth grader from the school he had attended since the third grade due to extreme bullying my son who had always loved School began to hate school and it would be a fight every morning to get him up to go to school my happy outgoing son became an introvert and would isolate himself and be quiet he wasn't sleeping he wasn't eating he lost 10 pounds his grades were drastically affected and he missed 16 days of school because he was physically ill he did not tell me for the longest time that this was going on and when he finally did tell me he told me he did not feel safe at school and he felt he would get in trouble for speaking up about the bullying and he felt he did not have a voice for himself my heart broke for my child and of course part of me was angry and frankly I am still angry that this is was going on it was a very hard decision for me to withdraw him and not one that I take lightly but I withdrew him and enrolled him in Creighton Virtual Academy for the remainder of his eighth grade year within two weeks his grades were back up to A's and B's and before he graduated he made honor roll twice he finally felt safe and was excited to log in every day to school and no longer was a fight to get him up he began sleeping and eating this is not okay we need to do better as Educators and make sure our children and students feel safe and that they have a voice to advocate for themselves and know that they can speak up to any teacher or adult when this is happening we also need to make sure that any form of bullying is not tolerated at all I did not want my child and do not want any students to become a statistic and feel that they have to take their own lives because of bullying our children and students deserve better we need to do better and have policies put into effect to protect our children thank you our next comment is from Jessie giambra hello good evening board members and executive team and to the public I wanted to make a comment tonight to be forthcoming about my future plans and I'm personally a person who you know when we get into kind of a recursive cycle I really like to just try to break out of it and try something new and I'm also someone who like my whole life I've just sought after the best teachers ever and I'm doing that again now so thank you for you know this process of approval um in order to allow me to have an opportunity to go to India and I'll be studying a course called return to Earth at Earth University and it's the A to Z of agroecology and I really I did want to try to take a sabbatical so that I could continue working for the district and further the vision of Outdoor Learning and I won't be doing that at this time but I'm still really excited to go and get knowledge and get experience because you know we're just at a time in our in our world where we're like constantly in cycles of just being busy and work and and you know the whole world shut down for covid but it's like the world kind of needs to shut down again but for biodiversity and to change these cycles of you know the distress of the youth and the way that they're taking out their anger and emotions on each other and to really reconnect with our roots and to really reconnect to what's important in our society and to you know find a new relationship with nature because I think that's one of the big things under threat right now and it's like everywhere is talking about a climate crisis biodiversity crisis so I personally volunteers tribute uh to go abroad and to just do everything I can to learn about that and then to come back and I'm from here my roots are here in this school district and so even though I won't be you know working for the district while I'm gone I'm really happy that I'll still be able to you know further the vision and uh just put my best self forward so thank you so much and tata for now I'll be back and my intention is to come back into the classroom in January and to just come back and um you know the whole time it's like you know that the children are just always you know at the front of my mind and in my heart and the families and so yeah I'm just excited to go on this journey and I thank you so much okay that takes us to superintendent report Mr Man thank you um so this week we are wrapping up our summer school program at all of our schools I'm happy to share that we have had nearly a thousand students it's the largest summer school cohort we've ever had in Creighton which is pretty awesome um and that program will run through this Thursday one of the challenges we had with summer school this week and this is the bad news piece is if you'll recall about three years ago we had fire suppression lines burst in the Biltmore front office and flood out our front office and we hoped after that was remediated that we would never see that happen again we hit our hottest day of the year yesterday and unfortunately it had a similar experience with that with that bursting so our Dr Demar has done a wonderful job of making the adjustments that need to be made to feel terrible for her and her team our facilities team has really really come together to help support her and get their whole front office staff moved into the library location and summer school went on as planned today and I think you know I've heard the board talk a lot about the importance of communication and one of the things I was really proud of is that even in her you know depression and despair of the disaster that had occurred um what she said to me was well the good news is I had all the communications already prepared from last time so I was just able to send them out again so she did a great job communicating with family so it's hard sometimes to find the positive thing um and uh you know as the as the summer progresses um you know we're hoping our teachers and the staff that are not with us 12 months are getting some well needed rest because we've got a lot of work to do coming up this fall um and uh just look forward to working with everybody I'm I'm here uh sort of in a adjunct capacity of this afternoon but when we're back in August it'll be my first opportunity to sit with the board officially a superintendent I mean I'm really looking forward to our board study session on that scheduled for later in August so thank you very much thank you um so that brings us to governing board reports Miss Ayers good evening I just have a couple um things um first of all we are finishing up pride month and um my friend writes a a Blog called wake up call and she had one this month and I just want to read a little bit of it because it really struck me um it says I want to be clear in recognizing that Prime month is a time to celebrate the lgbtq plus community and its progress however it is also a time to remember that the fight free quality is not over and it's arguably more at risk now than over the last few decades Pride was started as a protest and will always be until the lgbtq plus Community truly has equal rights which are human rights um so I just wanted to talk about this because as you know I was married to a woman I have been married to a man um and a woman before and um I often talked with my wife about the possibility of having our marriage not recognized as being a partnership and that always scared us unfortunately I lost her last year but I still want to acknowledge that this is still a difficult thing for people in this community and just to support to support that Community um also I would like to uh even though Miss uh Dr Lewis is not here tonight I would like to thank her for all of our work in this District um unfortunately she couldn't be here tonight but I'm not sad that Jay's here um so thank you Dr Lewis for all the work that you've done for this District um and I hope after you get better that you're able to um go do all the stuff that you should be doing on retirement thank you thank you um thank you for sharing um that Heather I appreciate it I think it's good for us to share parts of ourselves and not just be business all the time I think it's good for folks that work in the district and especially for our youth um and even someone who's my age you know going to school I can't imagine my friends being supported in the ways that they are now even if there's still lots more to do and so just to be acknowledged acknowledge your human existence and who you are and like all of who you are any of our kids out there um I hope that they feel that on a daily basis and if they don't I know we have more work to do obviously um so thank you heather I appreciate it um I I don't know I always feel like I should write down something before I come here but that's not how I do things obviously um so I'll just say this you know I left the last meeting um pretty amped obviously um and so I'll say you know I always appreciate folks following up um and I think maybe moving forward um I think for me just like making sure that we're not just doing things at the minimum of what's required um and and when I'm asking for things or saying things I guess I'm not doing it just to be mean or rude I'm doing it because I I expect Excellence for our community because oftentimes we get subpar things and so you know if if a blueprint to me has less detail than 150 000 I spent on my house and we're voting on like a million times that then I am a little skeptical right and so that's just where I'm coming from and hopefully no one took any offense to my attitude or how I get I'm just very passionate about things um and so I'm just hoping moving forward when we're voting on huge amounts of money that were I guess give and I don't know if it's not been the practice in the past but I'm not in the past I'm here and so moving forward if I'm ever given a vote moving forward again on something that's cost that much money I'm just saying my expectation would be that we have a lot more details than what we were presented with at the last meeting obviously I trust moving forward as we go through this process that will continue to have transparency with the community and if we don't I'll continue to push for it so um I'm excited all that saying I hope no one left thinking that I didn't feel excited about the possibility of a new school or what we have there and what we can grow there um I also um I had something in my mind and here I am not remembering what it was I don't even know I'm not going to belabor it I'm not just going to sit here and talk on and on but thanks everyone I think that was really the only thing I was going to address thank you um I just really wanted to say how um much I'm looking forward to working with Mr Mann um and I'm very optimistic about the future of Creighton with our board situation and Mr Mann coming in so that is it um that will take us yes we miss the adoption of the budget budget oh okay I was wondering thank you all right see it was after the approval of the agenda it's it's unusual I see it because it sits in a different place my apologies okay let's go to um item 2B which is adoption of the 2023-2024 budget pursuant to policy DB and approval of the adjacent ways property tax levy sorry catching up okay I moved the governing board adopt the total aggregate School District budget per a a ARS 15 905 for fiscal year 2324 um and the adjacent ways property tax levy second all those in favor aye aye aye sorry I'm a little slow on this one okay all right that takes us to approval of consent oh sorry I moved the governing board approved consent agenda items A through Z in accordance with policy b e d b e second all those in favor aye [Music] all right that takes us to six Educational Services governing board will discuss and consider approval of hiring an outside vendor to conduct a special education audit okay then you have your public comment cards for that yes and we have comments thank you okay we have several public comments for this um the first is um and this is 6a right now just so I don't have to go back thank you um first is Marie Pannell yes good evening um I'm Marie panell um I'm a parent of a former Creighton School student my daughter Abigail I attended Loma Linda from pre-k to second grade I noticed her struggling with numbers and letters in kindergarten and I spoke with the teacher and was told this was normal for her age so I let it go first grade was mostly online because of the pandemic and she continued to struggle with reading and math her teacher was overwhelmed with online and spent most of the time yelling at the kids and assigning for homework what she should have been teaching by the time she got to second grade I suspected very strongly that her struggle was due to dyslexia I found she was behind and told the teacher I thought it might be dyslexia I asked what we could do about that and she said she would ask a few weeks later she got back to me and said that I would have to go and get her tested and then let the school know the results I had no idea how this was to be done so Abigail continued to struggle her teacher also invited Abigail to attend after school tutoring four days a week for the rest of the school year most days she came home with pictures she had drawn during this time what was the tutoring for I decided not to put her in summer school even though I was asked several times by her teacher instead I bought a program to do at home that was for reading for those with dyslexia she blossomed she had asked in the spring if she could change schools and so with all that was going on I decided this was a great idea we changed schools and districts and it was like a breath of fresh air she began to attend Madison Rose Lane and when she began to struggle again I suggested to the teacher that I thought it might be dyslexia this time the teacher offered to have her tested she found she was found to have dyslexia and was two years behind in her reading and one year behind in math an offer of services was made and accepted what was the reason for Abigail to be denied this while at Loma Linda if she was so behind she needed tutoring why was nothing more done I was lied to I feel like because I didn't know what should be done and they could get away with it I feel the school worked to avoid to test her and offer services there's no excuse for this thank you thank you um the next speaker is Janice Swanson foreign hello my name is Janice Swanson and my parent to a five-year-old who was evaluated by the district for Special Event Services when he was three and a half he was just demonstrating disruptive behaviors in his preschool that were not ruined after meetings with this Preschool teachers directors and Southwest human development we landed on having him evaluated by the district as we were concerned about his social emotional development and his sensory needs he was not eligible for services after his first evaluation to which I appealed and disagreed and asked for a second evaluation or for an FBA if not the ability to get an IEEE to obtain a private evaluation the appeal process was never made note to me but thankfully others made me aware of this I was given a second evaluation and was again projected for services right communicated the spirit of his issues including being told that he would be ultimate preschool and submitted several teacher reports and a letter from his preschool directors before his second evaluation he was expelled and was on the verge of being expelled from his second preschool all of which was communicated to the special inbound my son was later referred for and has been in both behavioral therapy and occupational therapy for over a year now and I find it very suspect that other professionals Educators have recognized his need for services but yet this is this District not instead I was made to deal that I was an overreacting parent and he was just being a boy but in reality I was getting honest accounts and trying to address issues as soon as possible before he started I feel this District needs to take a look if there's a second look at the special ed Department I'd say of pale to help my son and per part of this reason he will not be attending this District this coming year thank you thank you very much okay the next um speaker is Gail Smith foreign members of the board I come for before you tonight again um to speak about my experiences with Creighton special education department for the last five and a half years at five months of age my son Derek began receiving feeding therapy and later occupational therapy at Phoenix Children's Hospital at 16 months of age Derek was evaluated and identified as having a fine motor delay a sensory processing disorder and a speech and language delay he began receiving Occupational Therapy Services speech services with a zip and continued his therapies at Phoenix Children's when he aged out of azip services at age three I brought him to the district to be evaluated for special education services the district screened him and said that his deficits were not severe enough to qualify him however they did not evaluate him they used a Peabody that was provided by me from Phoenix Children's Hospital I disagreed with the findings but we had no choice but to continue services at Phoenix Children's at age three and a half Derek entered head start at lck Derek's Head Start teacher reached out to me and expressed concerns with Derek's fine motor development she stated that he avoided coloring writing painting drawing and cutting with scissors he would avoid it at all cost and was easily frustrated when he was required to do so she suggested that I reach out to the district again and have him evaluated I did so and the district sent an ot to screen hem when the OT arrived at the school to screen him he was standing at the gate waiting to be led into the Head Start area with my son and my sister who dropped him off at school from that she had just come from therapy at Phoenix Children's dot stated that he was there to evaluate my son and the teacher introduced him to my son and stated perfect timing this is Derek he's just returning with his aunt from therapy when the OT called me to discuss the findings of the screening he made up a whole story about how he met my son that was not true I immediately called him out on it and said my sister had already told me how you met my son and asked him why he would make up a story like that I brought this incident to the attention of the special education department I felt that lying to a parent during a screening was not only unprofessional but that it was unethical I made the district aware of this that OT still works in the district he stated that he didn't see any problems with my son's fine motor delay that he couldn't pick him out on the playground and had to ask the teacher which one was my son despite being introduced to him at the gate um Derek's fine motor he was continuing with OT therapy during this time before Derek started kindergarten at Mackin okay I'm gonna refer to the attorney okay so we can ask questions even though we're at an agenda item okay all right thank you very much and I appreciate all you moms I'm and it obviously was not easy for you to come here and speak so I appreciate it thank you okay um right so our recommended action here is um move the governing board approve the procurement office don't say that okay okay so based on legal advice that we received in our executive session we are going to I'm not going to repeat it I'm just saying based on what we discussed we are going to change the motion you you may propose a different motion right yeah so the better way to proceed to proceed you if anyone on on the board would like to discuss you know give their opinion and discuss the agenda item and then after if nobody wants to discuss then go ahead and open it up for motion and whoever has a motion to make would make that motion and voted and voted it just makes it very difficult to discuss when it was an executive session so you just share your opinions about this topic in general you don't discuss any leadership yeah you can share anything that's your opinion about this topic okay okay um so on the agenda it is to approve a vendor for a special education on it um just learning about Audits and what they do I don't think it's going to address the concerns that have been brought up um and and I think that there's other ways that we can do this especially with a new superintendent um and so that's my feeling about a special education on it so as I've stated for many many months now um I have heard too many disturbing um allegations from both staff and parents not to do something more than what what we've been doing which is nothing for the past nine months or so so um I think there are a couple options um that we have um to to make a motion on tonight and do you have anything else that you want to share about the topic I mean this is our time to discuss because once we do the motion we're done so anything else you want to say thank you I just it's it's really difficult when an attorney comes in here and tells me I can't really say anything you just can't talk about the specific conversation yeah to the board was about whatever legal topic we were literally anything you've said is your thing to say and you can say it again okay okay I mean I feel like I've been obstructed these past nine months by um by this District in trying to get help for families and staff who have very serious allegations um and we must do something what we discussed um is not even um I'm not happy with with I think what the outcome is I trust Mr Man to um move us forward in the right direction so I feel like I am disappointing um people who come with very serious concerns um by by not um doing what I had hoped we would do but I I have I have 100 trust in Mr Man at this moment to um make some moves in the right direction um I'm kind of at a loss for what else to say I have said a lot already this year so um I'm staying consistent with that um and I I just don't you know I don't like what I'm hearing and it is it is in our hands to do something about it yeah I'll just say that um you know as a board we have to take into consideration a whole lot of things right from legalities to what we're hearing at board meetings to what people say to us outside of board meetings to making sure we're not involving ourselves in some sort of conflict of interest all sorts of things I will say that given all the information that I possess in my brain I do believe that there's something that we need to do here um like knowing and getting uh kind of more information and learning about all the different processes and I'm not just talking about tonight I mean we've had we've had this discussion a few times now um I I think that there's a way for us to move forward um that's both um cost effective that is um hope that I would trust would be effective in moving forward and addresses most of the concerns that that we're concerned about um the other thing I'll say is this um you know it's it's going to take a lot of work on everybody's part but a lot on Mr man's part um to to build back any trust that's been lost to build back any um sense of culture where folks don't feel uh fear in speaking up specifically people that work for this District um it's going to take time right and I know I think maybe we mentioned it a little bit at another meeting but you know it's hard to say after you know folks have been wading through things to like be patient with us what I am asking is that um we are going to do something tonight um but I am asking that there be just a little bit of trust and hopefully we can deliver on that and start to build some of that trust back and when I say we I'm in the district um and I'm hoping that that as we continue to build this back we can also impact some pretty great change on the culture of our district overall I think this is a starting point there are many other things including the issue we tabled tonight that are places that we need to address um so much so that sometimes I feel overwhelmed on like where the heck do we even begin but here we are with one thing that's in front of us tonight and so for um the first thing that I'd like to move is to direct um the superintendent Mr Mann through Finance to gather cost estimates so that the board may consider um cost estimates for a potential evaluation at a different juncture just so that we are able to get that information presented to us and to the public so that we have a little bit more information before we make a decision like that a second all those in favor aye um and additionally I'd like to move um to request that the superintendent um Mr Man form a task force that addresses uh records retention practices and special ed percentages of special ed education evaluations being completed as compared to formal requests for evaluations climate surveys of current special education staff former special education staff and special education parents specifically I'd like this task force and or Mr Mann to follow up with those uh parents and or staff who've made public comment at any point in this past school year additionally we'd like to include focus groups made up of different um I don't know to say interest groups or stakeholders or Affinity groups whatever that looks like from your own expertise we direct you to look into testing accommodations for standardized tests at uh excellencia and also direct you to look into special education classroom self-contained ratios for kindergarten students and any other issues that may come up through these focus groups and the task force and information you get back from these surveys tasks task force and whatnot and we'd like for you to come back and report to the board at minimum on a monthly basis at a board meeting or study session a second all is in favor aye aye and I'll just make one other comment um that yeah we did have a lot of policies on the agenda tonight that we're going to get started on including discipline um a whole bunch and because I I do think we've realized you know that is our role as governing board members and we're feeling I think as board members that some of our policy policies are outdated or not working for us so that is something we are going to attack and I think that will help us move forward in a in a really positive way so thank you very much okay this will take us to all right sorry [Music] all right that will take us to the Asa aasa test scores in English language arts and math and I do have some comments thank you takes a village okay our first um speaker is Ariel Williams so Miss Berg I do have some public comments first I'm sorry sorry oh no Dr Berg sorry hahaha um hello Arya Williams teacher in the district um this stole a lot of interesting comments I will like to say I have experience being called monkey the gorilla noises and then having a stuffed monkey left outside my door and then coming out of my room and then a group of boys just standing there smirking so I understand when your kids are going as a teacher I experience it um so good evening my name is Arya Williams I'm a teacher in the crane school district um someone once said don't let anyone tell you that standardized tests are not an accurate measures um the truth is of the matter they offer a remarkable precise method for gauging the sizes of the houses near the school where the test was administrated um I um I think we should challenge you know the traditional beliefs about education to think critically about the way we approach teaching and learning we should focus on the process of learning rather than the results um We should strive for equity in education and recognize the importance of relationship and collaboration um with that being said I feel like history is repeating itself if you look at um balanced literature even though we all knew kids learn from phonemic awareness and phonics curriculum companies came in trying to make a quick buck and they convinced everyone to go to the balanced literature approach I feel like we're doing the same thing with technology I think we need to roll back the one-to-one Technologies devices in the schools um K5 is not doing anything remarkable with the iPads that like if we were to roll back to one to one outside of State Testing that it would completely crumble their world I know we're in this belief currently that if the kids don't have iPads they're not doing this and then the iPad they won't be um ready for success in the future but reality Millennials um grew up without technology we're coding we made presentations we do graphic design we do animation because we figured it out and I think that these kids will figure it out I don't think that they have to be on the iPad in the school building I think they will be able to eventually figure it out I think their bosses would rather have someone they can read and do basic math been making a presentation on the iPad um I think that we should focus more on number sense I've been in the district and I've never got a number since training in this District but I've gotten it and another District I came from I feel like we need to focus on number sense because that is the foundation of mathematics um it's good to talk about fluency and conceptual understanding but the kids don't have numbers since none of that matters sorry bye thank you um I can finish up your thought that you're on Just for anybody else yeah um provide professional development on um creating efficient productive instructional routines that's something we're missing um teachers often say well wonders don't work for the kids HOA doesn't work for the kids I think teachers need to learn and be trained on how to modify the curriculum So when you say it's not working for the kids what exactly that lesson is not working for the kids that you can modify thank you our next speaker is Barbara Halden good evening both um Administration and public my name is Barbara Halden I was a former teacher in the district and since I left about two years ago almost three years ago I followed very closely what's happening in the district because this district is very near and dear to me so I'm standing here today after I looked at the outcome of the last test and it is shocking and not only for this District it is shocking Nationwide um I think that this district has a tremendous potential you are very small you have um already created one school that is really different with the Creighton Academy you are on the road to create another school that is outstanding this is from what I've seen at the presentation if you can build this school and if you can start teaching in 21st century Style you will get rid of all the problems we are facing at the moment because you will be creating something for our students where they are feeling safe they are feeling loved and they are getting back to where they came from they will have the support because they will have these natural spaces that will help them to understand where they came from and what it this this this planet is all about but you need to really change education as well you cannot only do that on the outside with the buildings you need to go inside and I think you have great teachers you have great support people look at Ms Williams which he just said I just hope that you will find the time and the the strength and just to dare you know that what you are asking your students to do just do it and really really find the strength to step a little bit outside of the box and do something different because I know that this District can be outstanding and you will get so many families that will follow you with that thank you very much thank you and our next speaker is Jesse giambra hello thank you one more comment before I go um well I think you know my response to these test scores is I just feel like it's a reality check and I also feel like it expresses what people have been saying and asking for all year every year and I know we had to go through covid but also these scores have been coming back really terrible for before coven too um and so it's just important to be honest about that and so when I looked at the next steps list I really felt disappointed and other things too and I wanted to just add three suggestions to the next steps list and the first suggestion is please listen to the teachers because they know exactly what is going on and they know exactly what's wrong and they are asking for it but they also don't have a venue to do it in a particularly constructive way or particularly structured way meaning that staff meetings are not the venue because there's not time for that built in and honestly they end up coming to cea and we do the best that we can and so here I am to be to speak on behalf of them as membrane as a as an officer of cea the second thing is our professional development um not to be rude but I personally have learned a lot since I've been here but I haven't been taught anything in about five or six years not in coaching not in professional development not in targeted ways at all and I wish I had and I've heard quotes from people all year that say things like I wish that I could just learn and grow something like that from my mistakes I wish I had people helping me to get better and I do too because I didn't go to school you know to be a teacher I learned it later and so I really do want to learn and grow too things like differentiating to many different levels of students uh you know obviously class size and behavior has a huge impact impact too and so that's on it's on listening to the teachers and what they need and then also just giving them the training that they need in order to do it because when I see like failure like 81 or sorry 91 failure it's like not the students failure to me it's our failure to prepare the teachers to teach the students what they need and we have so many great things going for us I mean I just love the things we're learning and doing at our school but the test isn't going to measure that you know and so obviously it's flawed to begin with but we still can do we need to do something vastly differently in my opinion because what I saw from the next steps was more of the same and it looks like more data but I think we need less data and more common sense because we have the data but the data is flawed because of the iPad thing as a technology teacher I totally agree with the comment about technology um there's just it's just it's it's it's YouTube and games and that's like such a huge distraction and it does contribute to behavior but so my third thing that's a suggestion or recommendation is back to the cultural competency I have it in place in my classroom I have 100 participation in my classroom and cultural cultural competency it's hard to express what that is when it's um you know it's not like a tangible thing but just to finish up we know we have ell students we know we have a hundred kids from the res at Mackin we know that we have these cultures that whose needs we need to meet and we know we have teachers from out of state Etc and I know that there's modules like four hour modules from Tony Sierra one hour modules from aea we can roll out this type of training and there and then to me that's also the success in the behavior and the social and emotional um and every other realm and dimension of what we're experiencing during the school day so thank you so much thank you okay Dr Berg all right good evening Madam president members of the board cabinet um thank you so much for the opportunity to share with you our preliminary very preliminary analysis of our aasa scores um this evening I'd like to start off with um having doctor been open and share some of his thoughts on some of these slides and then we'll go into a slightly deeper analysis I would like to begin by thanking Dr Berg before the board for 25 years of service this is Dr Byrd's last governing board evening with us and ironically the first presentation she did as director was state test scores and her final presentation with us this evening will be a state test scores so thank you Michelle for your service thank you so we wanted to start off tonight a little bit with a little bit of a different frame um you know we certainly agree with much of what's been said about the importance of of holistic learning meeting the needs of all children and I wanted to bring us back with we felt it was important to come back to our strategic plan and those progress indicators because the team that's built the Strategic plan and that's been monitoring it really placed a high level of emphasis on academic excellence and they established multiple indicators to be markers of progress along that way and the three indicators that were established by the strategic planning team had to do with passage rates on these assessments increases relative to the increases Statewide and we wanted to be very upfront about the fact that this year's scores did not come anywhere near the targets that were established in the Strategic plan so we acknowledge that there is substantial work to do in terms of meeting the indicators that we've set for ourselves and um you know as we look across just straight across our scores we observe that the English language arts scores decreased by two percent the math scores stayed the same from the prior year the test was unchanged um you know so that represents fundamentally a flat level of progress and we acknowledge and own the challenges that lie ahead so everything else we're going to talk about we want to reference to that frame we know in our consistent message to our teachers to our kids to our parents is that our kids are way more than test scores our teachers efforts are way more than these scores yet these scores are an important indicator of the impact of our work so with that there are some contextual realities and factors and I do want to just remind the board that if you have questions or want to discuss any of these topics please feel free to jump in at any point um and ask so as I stated you know we're statistically constant from 2022 we did have some increases in passage rates in math anywhere from one to four percent at five of our schools when you look at the other schools there were some decreases as well so that accounts for the the lack of change we did observe in places where scores had slight increases that two things seemed to matter one was the Fidelity of early literacy intensification efforts and the application of strategies learned in the math cadres so where play in schools where in grade levels where there was some some Fidelity to that work there seemed to be an alignment with those increases um we did in looking at our math we saw some areas where the new the new instructional resources into math seem to be having a potential positive impact and of course pandemic disruption remains evident particularly in grade three and Staffing Transitions and position vacancies also are part of the reality of this work in our analysis though this is kind of outside of the test score Arena one of the first things that we look at um when we're trying to understand what has occurred and where to go next is with regard to students experiencing absences and what this slide is intended to show is The Chronic absence rate and so state law policy sets chronic absenteeism as anyone who is experiencing absence is greater than 10 percent of the school year so that's 18 or more days and what we see is that that rate has remained constant for the last for the current school year just finished and the year prior that means that one in four students isn't present for a full school year to experience the instruction and we acknowledge that this needs to be an area of focus for our coming year and you know working on the relationships working on the invitation and the support needs to our kids and their families and certainly we want to acknowledge the safety needs and concerns that kids some of which were shared tonight which may be impacting what we're seeing here the thing I want to point out is that this is all kids K-8 this does not reflect any kind of breaking out of just kids who are tested on aasa so it might be a little bit different we haven't gone in yet to look at you know Middle School versus kindergarten or or upper grades lower grades those kinds of things but that's a piece of the work get to be done Dr Burke so um just every year just to kind of give you a background once uh test scores are made available to us we begin our work immediately however that data is just in raw form so certain factors that the state department continues to work on over the summer such as the high you know like um if someone hasn't started the school year with us or they've moved around that data is not reflected in this and that is something that's going to be continued to be developed as we move closer to when letter grades are released later on in the year um additionally one of the things that we always try to do because we know how we can compare to one another but we feel like it's really important for us to kind of take a look at like what's happening out there and that information doesn't become doesn't come to us publicly right away so we actually work with relationships with other school districts and other Partnerships that we form to be able to get an analysis of schools that are like us neighboring school districts other um you know even schools that aren't like us we want to make sure that we're taking you know a hard look at what these scores mean you know not only you know for you know what's happening in our district but how do they compare for others because I mean it's just my philosophy I don't want to wait for the big test of life for those things to to come out so it's really important for us to do that however because this information is not public we do have like agreements with our partner districts where we don't release information publicly and help they are able to do that so this is a very preliminary analysis is not reflective of all of the school districts out there it's just reflective of those partners that we're willing to share with us on the condition that we were able to maintain that confidentiality because they have constituents that they work with as well so we just want to admit that this is a very very small sample without revealing anything that would then reveal the identity um is there any information you can give us regarding how if these are two similar districts if one's dissimilar and one's similar in terms of demographic size Etc they're both it's hard to look at something like this and not know that and then give it any waiter value so that's why I'm asking it if I may oh yeah remember McLean Gibson McLean these are two districts that are within the Phoenix Union footprint that are demographically similar to Creighton okay thank you and what I also would say is once this data has been more processed and people have had an opportunity to share with their boards and share with their communities and as we get closer to letter grades coming out we will bring to you a more robust set with names oh yeah as long as one on almost everybody's board docs and nobody had no I was all over the place y'all so I was like happy to see this but I wanted some and we'll provide that the other thing I wanted to say just in full transparencies they're not districts where current board members are also staff oh [Laughter] yeah but um but it's more just about that we do really care about that process and we want you to know that that's something that we actively work on um because it really just it gives us a better idea of where we are and the things that we need to work on as well um and I I would say that it takes a lot of work I'm just gonna because I'm a toot the horn of my department because it takes a lot of work and relationship building and Partnerships with other school districts to be able to get this information this is not a practice that is something that is typical that was something that we that people were willing to share even five or ten years ago so I think that it's really important to say that you know I just I feel really proud of of that because it it helps it helps with that message for all of us as Educators in this in this field so um but um again this is raw information so it's all students um and so relationship isn't leaving with you right no for sure [Laughter] absolutely not um they're they're they're hard workers no not at all not at all um so as you can see in as this is Ela um Creighton is relatively stable across all grade levels so we know that um in third you know third is a big grade level for English language arts because that's when our movement move on when reading comes out you can see that we're a little bit closer in um in in comparison to our to our other districts fifth grade tends to be a big a big time with standards standards tend to change after fifth grade I get a little bit more complex and rigorous so we see that our kids are you know are stable across the air um and then sixth grade does does tend to to be a dip um but we also come back in eighth grade and that's when we really want our kids we see that slow growth in a lot of our schools that you know we really want them to be as close you know reach get as high of scores as they possibly can for high school because that's an indication of how they're going to be able to succeed so that's just a couple of things that we look at um and um yeah if we could go on to the next slide we have a similar situation I'm sorry we'll have to pause can I sit on my yes yes of course feel free I'm like a flamingo and it thank you take a little bit of a higher point and then you see a bigger dip down to sixth grade um there's a significant um change in the complexity of Standards which we'll show you um and so what you see is you kind of get that you know you they build those foundational skills to a certain point and then they have to be able to leverage them across very different standards and then you see you start to see again a a slow grow towards that eighth grade eighth grade is a big grade for all districts because of part of the letter grading system is that eighth grade Improvement and so that's an area that we always like to keep an eye on so on this table you'll see that we have the um the change in percent passing from school year 22 and to to school year 23 in English language arts and in most of our grade levels we were relatively flat our highest positive changes in fifth grade and our lowest was in seventh grade um I think Dr dupin kind of explained that in his first uh slide um and then this you can see um what this looks like according to our different um schools um there was little change over um between the two years there was a couple of schools that maybe had a little bit more than others yeah you're on this side yep you're good we're doing English language arts first okay okay so um I as you may I think um our peers back here talked a little bit aasa is what's considered a summative assessment that means that it's cumulative and like what the kids have all learned and and it's sort of we don't want to say autopsy but it's like the past right um but we always try to find a way to ensure that we're looking forward and how can we use this information to help our students and help our teachers to make informed decisions about next steps differentiation those sorts of things and so um we always kind of aspire to like how do we use this data to make those instructional decisions and so this year we did we had a different approach as to um see if there was a difference across the different domains that's about as specific as you can get in looking at this data um and to see if there was something that maybe we weren't keeping our eye on where we you know maybe was it like reading for information you know because that changes a lot over the grade levels was it was there something that you know they were missing some foundational skills and what we found is that it's pretty consistent you know I mean I was even surprised writing was you know it's still in there as well because it's receptive as well as output um so I think you know for us that didn't necessarily tell us um you know hey there's something that's standing out to us but what I think this is a way that this can be productive in a way that we see being able to use this is in conjunction with the other tools that we have right so when we know that like 68 of our students are you know are still below Mastery when it comes to those reading for information or reading for literature like what are those foundational skills that we're doing and so even though it seems like okay we've been talking about this reading it's like well are we really applying those things that we're learning in the trainings to make sure that we're adhering to those and um and if students you know I do know that sometimes we can have too much data I'm not not disagreeing with that but if we can be more smart in the way that we're utilizing our data and so utilizing this along with fast Bridge which is our new screener that we're going to be using and taking a look at like oh how does that align with some with this domain that can make an impact down the road because you can group kids according to skill use your you know different strategies to be able to help and approach them with that so we're hopeful that by use you know knowing that this is where we're at how do we use the tools that we have in conjunction with that to move forward will be helpful for next year and help more with those individualized decisions that teachers make for students in the classroom um as and here we're moving over to math this is a table you'll see that we have um the change in percent from school year 2022 to 2023 and in most grade levels again we were relatively flat with our highest positive change in fifth grade and with um at six percent and our lowest in eighth grade so we did see that and that kind of goes to those standards we know that um and we'll show you those in a minute but just that those foundational skills that tells us that more of our students are getting those um and on here you'll see um that we have according to change the one thing that um I would like to just point out hold on um is that this is this might be an example I'm going to highlight Gateway because we did see a positive change there we know that there was a lot of work in coaching and working with teachers in math on that and um lck we also had a lot of teachers who were participating in math Cadre so the you know we are those are where we're kind of seeing maybe there might be some alignment to some of those strategies that we've used so when we broke down the domain analysis with aasa what we noticed what you know we knew this is that the the standards aren't built the same Ela standards you have those three domains go from kindergarten all the way to 12th grade right um but in math they're broken down into three five six seven and eight so these are the major domains that that students start building from kindergarten through fifth grade [Music] go ahead and go to the next one and then you can see in this is where there's a significant change in the complexity and so when students aren't as strong in those foundational skills that can be very challenging for them to make that jump and leverage it into that other piece so you just go back to the one again Linda sorry I like pretending I'm the one doing it yeah we can do that all right cool thank you you're welcome um so um you know the standards they're structured differently and in three five the focus is more on those foundational um foundational skills and changes to that sixth grade similar complex skills and standards um it shows that there's very different um you know difference between the different domains it just means we need to get stronger in all of those areas right that's what we need to really focus on but it does indicate that we we do have an opportunity here to use tools fast Bridge actually has a math screener that is similar in its structure where it's able to help students to help group students based on skill and need and that's something that we can have you know utilize moving forward for next year DNA also gives us a lot of work and then hmh has a growth in a growth measure and a tool that does allow students to work on their pathway um so when we're looking at this this past year there some of these pieces where we were able to put in place where the I'm going to let you read all of those but I'm just going to kind of summarize some of the big pieces we were able to um put in place a development of an observation protocol that we focused on evidence-based practices for instruction and content specific needs and we're able to use that tool both at the district and the site level and in uh using that tool we had over 80 percent of our of our what we were seeing in classrooms were that teachers were you know it improved over the course of the year but they were utilizing our resources our curriculum units and those pieces um we also were able to continue our efforts to build future capacity in the science of reading through letters aim pathway training and sips coaching and we're also able to provide training to All In Math to all Math teachers and provide extended training through Affinity groups and math Cadre and it's the extended training Through Math Cadre and Affinity groups that is the more in-depth training to do that on a scale with all teachers it's a huge undertaking but all of our teachers were trained in our new programming this year and finally we were able to provide training at the leadership and site level for our data analysis and use our assessment tools like DNA and portfolios to help make those instructional decisions in the classrooms and we were also using this um data analysis principles were able to work individually with teachers to create goals for their students so as we think about the next steps and priorities moving forward some of this has already been spoken to so I like Dr Berg will not read all of them to you over there are a few that I'm going to highlight and one is that evaluation of of data about students is students experiencing absences because that is a critical concern for us and regardless of how good the pde is or how good the instruction is when students aren't here they're not learning so we're going to really seek to prioritize that effort um Dr bird talked about fast Bridge you might be familiar with Dibbles or with ice deep I steep has been the screener that the district has used for 15 20.
we've been in every school in District spaces my role includes reporting out progress to you the Adams 14 board and to the Colorado Department of Education and to the Colorado State Board of Education as a member of the team at tntp I serve as the air traffic controller to make sure that we're being a value-add at all times and not taking or distracting away from the important work Happening Here in Adams 14. today my goal is to share progress towards our six major goals that I came before you I think in August to share after we had set them and tell you the story of our partnership this year and some things you may not know about the work that's happened on the ground uh preview and Dr Lauria has already mentioned the news is really exciting we're seeing tremendous progress in a very short period of time and I would name that it's happening much more quickly here than other places that we some we work which is great so as I shared our goals tonight are simple we're going to map our final progress towards goals knowing that some data hasn't been released and some is embargoed and I want to name the impact of key actions and deliverables we've been asked to work towards this year I also want to say thank you to every member of the community who's sitting here tonight it is not lost on our team how hard every single member of the Adams 14 Community is working to improve the experience of students and families here in Commerce City you're you're also working at the same time to protect local control and recognize that doing both at the same time can be incredibly taxing and difficult the hours you are working are long we've seen the hard work happening we know folks who are closing this building at 10 o'clock at night so just wanted to acknowledge that and and really appreciate being part of this progress as individuals the work you do really matters to the future of Adams 14 and to every single student who is enrolled and therefore you matter tremendously so thank you uh the first time I stood before you I shared co-created six major goals you can see them here at this point you probably know them just as well as anybody else because we talk about them a lot the goals were around retention of teachers and leaders who are meeting exceeding expectations task alignment knowing that the first barrier to knock down for students is great great appropriate assignments and getting those in front of them growing students using start and measure growth improving proficiency uh really third through 12th grade improving average daily attendance and ensuring that students who start the year here in Adams 14 not only finished the year with Adam's 14 but return next year as we work through this desk deck I'll pause and ask some questions and certainly if there are questions that come up along the way that you'd like to ask while we're in in that space please do the major headline is that Adams 14 has a lot to be proud of this year from the work done the team leaned in worked hard to work together and move data in the direction of these six major goals I'm going to start by sharing some facts about the work that you may not be aware of that have led to some exciting results uh the first is that 36 TNT peers have supported the work in Adams 14 this year one of the advantages to working with an organization like tntp is you have access to experts that live throughout the country when needed and so where additional supports have come in this year outside of the main team that have been on the ground in schools we conducted a very large-scale academic diagnostic it got us into every instructional space in the district folks reviewed 450 plus assignments for task alignment be led focus groups with kids with families with teachers and with school leaders um and we created report cards to help us with Baseline data to make some really hard decisions very early on in the work tntp is also supported with easy grants easy Grant support facilitation of PD and strategic planning in addition to the work we're doing on the ground in schools and with members of the ESS team one of the first needs I think came up in a second or third meeting I had with Miss Burke was the need for support around facilitation of PDs together with District leaders TNT Peters have supported 90 hours of facilitated learning opportunities for adults and the net promoter scores coming out of those sessions is very high if you know anything about Educators which you all do they are a hard audience to please 70 percent of the Educators in the Adams 14 Community said that PD was a good use of their time this year the other thing that really came up through the uh through the feedback we collected was that there was feedback asked for teachers really felt heard a few of the things teachers asked for and we're really excited when it was responded to was they wanted to see a video of Adam's 14 teachers teaching and used those as the launch pad for the learning and so TNT peers went out into classrooms and took videos of some of the most exceptional Educators in Commerce City and we used those in PD in addition we were asked to differentiate the pde facilitation by language and so we brought in additional facilitators who were able to facilitate to Educators in Spanish and really focused on the Dual language teachers in those spaces and that's probably where we got the best results in terms of feedback from teachers was when we differentiated in that way which was great as you're aware we've spent we spent a lot of time strategic planning and we didn't do it with a small group of folks we had 33 people who consistently came to six strategic planning meetings those included teachers principals District leaders members of this board and members of the extended Commerce City Community so it really felt like a collective effort and I heard from Jason malberg who is a is a very outspoken he said he felt a part of a process for the first time and that we actively engaged the community in a different way than he had experienced and he's been here a really long time so I respect him tremendously so let's talk about that process we created a vision and after creating that Vision we created a virtual listening tour what was interesting about the virtual listening tours folks didn't have to take a survey they could click a link on their phone and actually speak into their phone to give us feedback in both English and in Spanish we had 488 folks who gave us feedback on the vision and I think we got to a much more concise exciting vision for the community based on that feedback one once we got a little bit further down the road and started to have priorities and goals established we then went back out to the community to ask for feedback 800 stakeholders were involved in giving feedback on the Strategic plan and that number has actually gone up because we continue to elicit feedback at every opportunity to make it really a plan for Adams 14 that folks see themselves in and believe in as important for the future of Adams 14.
many many years and so we took the Bold step moving forward for the coming year to replace I steep with fast Bridge which is much more robust it covers all grade levels and it is a spinning tool that is useful in both reading and math and so we're eager to learn to use it effectively and to gain data for learning um and that was piloted for one year so far is that right yes okay Jeffrey that's correct and it is part of the it's aligned to the new DNA benchmarking system that we piloted two years ago and fully implemented this year so it's all one aligned Suite instead of two separate tools like we've had in the past and then I think in terms of the leadership piece one of the things we want to highlight is the development of an annual goals and progress indicators dashboard Mr Mann in in working with the strategic planning steering committee has really gathered and and framed the idea of having a transparent progress indicators dashboard that we can refer to on an ongoing basis so when we talk about things that do indicate the impact of our work such as absenteeism rates um Benchmark data other components from our strategic plan that we can be communicating about those the fast bridge scores for example on an ongoing basis uh rather than you know once a year or less frequently so we're excited to lean into those strategies and and this man's also leading the effort to make some changes to how our leadership Council team functions relative to teaching learning and and a data wise process so we're actually framing out the development of the agenda so that there's a very frequent focus on the standards that Dr Berg described student progress relative to those standards and then our teacher needs uh relative to supporting the kids on the standards so we've got a busy year ahead and we will continue to bring you information about these data as they become more available and as we learn more but at this time we'd be happy to respond any additional questions or thoughts that you may have Miss Earth yes um first of all thank you Michelle for all the work that you've done I know it must be incredibly hard to leave a family after this long um but good luck on your next Endeavor I know you'll do a great job there thank you so much um second thing I know this is always the time of year that teachers dread um getting these scores back and um I know I dreaded um constantly for a number of reasons none of which have to do I think with my teaching because I feel confident in myself that I am a good teacher um it's taken me a long time to to say that but um I think it's hard for teachers to understand um or parents I guess the community understand that these scores are so little of the things that our students have done and can produce throughout the year and then you get slammed by these test scores um and so it makes us always question um ourselves and I'm sure the principals feel the same way um because they're always a disappointment so um I know what I've done through the year with my students I'm proud of what my students have done throughout the year and I'm sure our teachers are proud and our principals are proud of what our students have done um there are very few teachers in schools that do not work their whole heart and put everything into being a teacher there are very few of them um and so I don't take big stock in these scores um because we just haven't seen the progress that our kids have made throughout the year and if we had a complete picture um we probably wouldn't be um you know so down on ourselves when we get these scores out um so everyone knows how I feel about these scores and um I don't think it's a true reflection of the incredible um smarts that our students have especially when you can see a student coming from Mexico and entering into the United States and being able to take one year from one of our teachers and being able to be fluent English speakers by the time they they get out so um we see that but that's not always necessary necessarily what the public sees and so thank you teachers and thank you staff for everything that you do for our students we know that you're amazing amazing people and you guys are amazing Educators so thank you let's get something um thank you for your service to the district um it's really great when we can have folks who can be in the district for such a long time I I wish we had even more people who've been in the district for 20 25 30 years um so I appreciate you thank you thank you um there's just like so much to unpack when it comes to this stuff as like um a product of this school district someone who then struggled academically in high school a little bit in high school and then a lot in college um and then even as a law student like you know all of it comes back to like your fundamentals right um and then also having worked in education my husband was a math teacher I mean I was surrounded by this for many years um and so I get and I only ever have worked in Title One schools I've never no I've only ever went to Title One school so like I get it right and like as we've acknowledged this evening like there are some shortcomings right um and we see that in even the data from the peer districts and even if that's just small it's still it isn't that I mean it's kind of significant looking at that for me at least um it's hard to just throw away an entire thing and say like you know we can't acknowledge this because of the inequities exist because then we can see the inequities even on a microcosm in our own within our own data within the district right like there's no way that the schools with the most white or the most like socioeconomically advantaged students should be that far ahead of our other students right at other schools it's just not fair um and you know I appreciate trying to like figure out what we're gonna do and and maybe mold it to our our strategic goals um but this District hasn't prepared the majority of students to be successful at any High School since like before I was born like 40 years ago and that has to do with a whole host of things including like a white flight socioeconomic stuff and of course school choice right um that being said I think there's plenty of things we can do moving forward I think some of them are on our next step slide here I think that if we are doing what we should do which is you know listening to people who are in classrooms every day is probably the most important thing um it's easy to draw a lot of parallels with my job and and and kind of the Dynamics of that being in another government position and um you know one of the biggest complaints of Staff Attorneys at my office is the people on the fifth floor were on the fourth you know their bar cards are a little Dusty and they haven't had a client in a while but they like to pontificate to us about how to do our job every day right um and I think a lot of that can be drawing parallels with the same issues here right um so I think that the best thing to do is really really spend some time even before we like finalize this next steps list I'm like what are people who are our experts who are on the ground with our kids every day I think we should be doing okay some of those things that I've heard and I was happy to think that in my mind when I was already thinking about this we're on like the same page but some of the feedback that we've heard tonight and outside of this I've received some emails um and and just looking at this from a broader picture right some of this is from our district culture as a whole from you know the things we've already discussed tonight behavior issues from covid which we can't blame everything on cover but it's certainly still a lingering concern for many things um student safety student wellness staff safety staff Wellness I mean as much as we push trying to make sure our kids are healthy in every sense of the word we have to do the same for each other um and so I think all of those things we don't none of these things exists in silos or vacuums and I know I'm creatures of the choir here and so I think we've really got to make sure that um we're you know it's a multi-faceted problem and we got to have multi-faceted Solutions and so I think outside of what we've just heard here tonight there's other things that we're going to be taking on as the board and as the district to try to that don't necessarily directly sound like they're going to impact something like this but we'll hopefully in the end have a long-term outcome right um and and I'm hoping that if we do things the right way and that we listen to the right people and and listen and then act on what we've heard that we can impact a bunch of different things that then in the end impact this in the long term um I think that uh you know one big thing that we've that we heard um at public comment and that I've gotten emails about and just comments about is is like effective and meaningful and intentional professional development that folks feel like they've taken away something from um you know we we've all uh sat through professional development that we could sleep through or uh probably did sleep through or um could like just feel like we wasted our entire time right or we could have been done doing something else and so um I think part of that then is going back to the people again and finding out what do you want and I'm not saying this to try to kind of Judge what's going on at the district office when it comes to planning this and I know we have committees at play but what I'm hearing is that there's some disconnect there so we need to go back to the folks who are supposedly benefiting from this and making sure that what we're offering is what they want is Meaningful to them and impacts them in the ways that they would like and so I'd really like to see that moving forward um obviously class size is going to be an issue I I don't have the answer to that it's going to be a tough thing moving forward but I definitely think it impacts this um I think that another thing that we can do and we've discussed is like relationships Rapport that really builds into that chronic absenteeism it's absenteeism which is a hard a hard data point to look at um especially having been someone who's like job used to be like going to kids rooms and getting them out of their bed and bringing them to school so I know that we're strapped for like the because it's just every we're strapped to the you know everything right I'm hoping that our our cgas can help with that I'm hoping that we can employ some of the things I've discussed previously about possibly hiring someone with an MSW who can get interns possibly starting a Vista program those are things that are supports that can really help us bring down the chronic absenteeism they can also help with these Behavior implements and of course I'm all over the place here and so I'm just trying to like make sure we're seeing that like you know we don't have the answers right now there's some people that do have some of the answers and there's a whole host of other things that I think are going to impact this um and moving forward and I still think like as much as I hate test scores as much as I think they're inequitable as much as I think they don't measure things that they should um that we're already like on an uneven playing Ground when we begin these scores are abysmal and I don't want to blame it on any one person or group I just think that there's so many things as a district we can do to work on this and I know people are willing and ready to do this otherwise you wouldn't be here and like what Heather said teachers whatever few teachers I don't know who they are that aren't there I don't know how you last so like you're not gonna last if you're not here for the right reasons and so I know people are here for the right reasons and I know we have the will in all of you to like make all of these changes and move with us um and I know that if we just keep chugging along and we keep building and doing what we're hoping to continue to do that this can this can change my you know my hope would be that um you know 10 to 20 years down the road that picture is a lot different right it's a long time to have a status quo of just like super low test scores and not great matriculation and things like that and so I know that our kids you know can be excellent and are many ways and can be excellent even in these ways um and so I'm just excited for us to move forward and really I hope and I and I think the only way to do that is to listen to the people that have the best answers and those are the people that are on the ground every day in the classrooms and start there and then we can move from there so I really appreciate this presentation um I think there are a couple things in this presentation that maybe if I was a teacher I'd be like um that one feels like a little bit of a slap but maybe we can start there and it's okay we can just start a new conversation and figure out how can we adjust some of these next steps to make it feel like it's something that folks are bought into and we're not just going to be shoving things down people's throats and folks aren't invested in it again so thank you so much for the presentation and for letting me go on and on thank you um so it's hard to top either one of those but um I'll just make a couple comments I don't think we've had chronic absenteeism at Creighton prior to covid right it's actually I think in the slide we go back yeah it really was we were you know in in a very low percentage and always with the school letter grade formula we was able to gain points for our excellence in attendance So that obviously has an effect on on on academic achievement and we heard some comments I mean I think the comments we heard tonight are such a little slice of what's Happening um and and you know there's some optimism out there too and I'm optimistic too that you know we can only go up you guys we we have nowhere to go but up right now and we have to be thinking out of the box um and you know we heard some reasons why kids are not coming to school and that's um I don't want to say easy but when we hear these things we should be able to address them you know um I think school refusal I mean I learned about that with my own kid that that is a thing um and you can only pull your kid out of bed in their pajamas so many times you know um it's not okay you know that's not really the solution I've done it too many times um so but these are things we can address and I think that's hard work but we need to be addressing it because it is affecting our student achievement and I think it's you know there's a lot of things like that going on but then there's also you know the fact that we have so many new teachers um and I hear some consistent feedback about there seems to be a mismatch with the standards and what you know teachers and doing and that is about professional development and it's also you know we have these new baby teachers because we have such turnover that is also not easy I know um but there there seems to be a disconnect there too so I mean I know you guys know this um but anyways um again I'm gonna go back to trying being optimistic and for us not to be afraid to step out of the box and um you know try and make it fun for everybody I mean I I think the feedback we did get is at Adventures learning is what we want to be doing but we don't want to make it a joke you know um we need to be serious you know this is the bottom line our kids need to be able to leave here and be successful in high school so thank you very much and thank you Dr Berg for all of your service I appreciate you thank you very much if we're gonna I mean if we're gonna adopt adventurous learning for our students we should be willing to take that on ourselves and that's why we're talking about thinking outside the box again I'm taking it seriously but at the same time obviously whatever the hell you gotta just switch it up if it ain't working move on like we'll figure it out right okay thank you that takes us to okay waiting for the iPad um okay adoption of salary schedules for the 23-24 school year and Mr carbajal will be presenting this for the board but I just wanted to make a quick comment on it before he does I you know we just had a very long discussion about some of the challenges that we have and I think the first important step is to honor our teachers and staff and so um I'm you know very pleased with the fact that what you will see in these salary schedules or the recommendations that came forward from our meet and confer team and um you know that that collaboration I think is really important um and what I heard from the board and from the comments is absolutely true what you saw in next steps are sort of an initial swag based on what we've seen so far we haven't even finished parsing the data yet um but that same type of collaboration is what we're looking to have in order to be able to come up with long-term viable solutions to also improve our outcomes for students so um with that I just wanted to connect the two because I personally believe they're connected and I'll turn it over to Mr Carvajal thank you Mr Man uh Madam president members of the board or you're going to present it uh and brought forward today uh Mr Jamin mentioned is the Creighton School District meeting compare professional relationships committee they have engaged in the interest-based negotiations beginning January this year 202-33 and ended in May 20th 23 and so the highlights that you see listed over here are the recommendations that came forth out of the meeting confer interest rates negotiation um and I just want to add that in order for us to meet all of the needs of our students and change the systems we need to have the right people in the bus the right talent and with these uh recommendations we want to make sure that we keep the talent that we have and also we attract other talent to our Creighton family so we can continue to serve the students in the families of our district and with that I will open the floor for any questions that you may have on the salary schedules any questions questions no I think obviously we've gotten some great presentations already so thank you again for all that okay sorry just waiting for my iPad oh here do you want me to read it sure uh thank you all right I moved the governing board adopt the salary schedules for the 23 24 fiscal year second all those in favor aye thank you okay so we're gonna move on to B approval of executive director for human resources it is quick great pleasure members of the board that I communicate that I can comprehensive search was conducted for the Director of Human Resources um the department uh the human resources department advertised the vacancy on our system as well as on the Department of Education Arizona School Board Association Arizona School administrators Association for school Personnel in the Arizona Association of Latino ministers for superintendents there were seven applicants in the pool for the position and after a rigorous interview process that included a screening for minimum certification certifications according to the job description experience related to the field um and in a very rigorous investor activities that included a 90-day plan for the new um for the new director on the vision and what they will do for our districts to elevate the department to the next level top candidates were selected to interview with a panel comprised of teachers staff and administrators at the panel supported two finalists for the executive team interview so it is our pleasure to bring forward the candidate uh for tonight's name which is recommended is Dr Joe Lauren um Dr Gerald Lauren currently serves as the principal of Monte Vista school he began his career with Creighton School District in 2013 as a special Project Director for for assessment and also serve as a principal of filmor Preparatory Academy he currently holds a Bachelor's of Science in education from Southwestern University as well as a master of counseling from University of Phoenix Dr Lauren received his Doctorate of Education in educational leadership and administration from the Arizona State University in 2013.
uh we had a central plan which means we pushed in significantly more resources at Central than in other spaces and one of the exciting work streams that we worked in this year was with the community engagement work and shifting to Community Schools work approximately 873 parents participated through 20 engagement opportunities at Central Elementary School which is really exciting Matthias is doing incredible work there and parents have really shared the experience to shift in their students experience as the year went on if you all are trying to keep up they're a little out of order and I wanted to name this because I think it's important I know you all are working hard to balance your budget the strategic planning work was paid for through a grant with the oak Foundation of six hundred thousand dollars the strategic planning work uh was at no cost to Adams 14 this year it was it was a gift from the oak Foundation in addition tntp supported the acquisition of 1.4 million dollars through easy Grant support which is exciting because I know it's being used to build out a schools team that's going to be very effective having met the folks that are working on that so let's talk about the work in schools and what that looked for and what that looked like this year one of the things we put in place was leadership coaching across all K-12 schools and so each principal in Adams 14 had a leadership coach and that leadership coach met weekly with each principal and part of the check-in was what you might imagine you do with someone who is like let's check your data what do you want to focus on what's going well where can we be thought Partners in the work to make things better it also included a walk through of the school and so we have a progress monitoring dashboard we know we went to 1 000 plus instructional spaces this year the reason we know that is because every time folks walked into a classroom they used a tool so that their data was rolled up into a dashboard and we've been really able to track district-wide Trends which has been exciting it's also helped as we start to think about more nuanced support moving forward one thing we've heard loud and clear from CDE and also from the state board is they appreciated the transparency the data systems that's that have been co-created here this year using the progress monitoring dashboard and a district-wide assessment strategy allowing us to track progress towards our six major goals it's something that um CDE is talking about with other districts in this work because they thought it was so effective I think the other thing that's allowed us to do is speak to the work accurately in a data-driven way and tntp has been able to get out of the way so Adams 14 can tell your story because the data is at your fingertips through our work with the HR team Partnerships were established with reach University we're really excited about that partnership we are hoping it helps build a teacher pipeline here and just to name Nathan's team has taken up this partnership and they're so excited about the piloting work that's going to happen here in Adams 14.
it is our pleasure to bring to the board this wonderful candidate for our human resources department and Mr Men I believe you have something to add too yeah I just I want to add two things number one first my appreciation to Avon Carvajal for all the effort that he's put in in his time serving as interim and also all of the Care and thought that he put into this process um there were some components of rigor to the process I wasn't even aware of until the finalists came forward and when I saw finalists coming forward with a 90-day plan I thought well people actually pay attention to our board and what they're doing and and Leverage The Good practices that are there I've had the opportunity to work with Dr Lauren since I eat before I even began with the district he's probably tired of me telling the story but I was hired I was still working at my prior District my prior District refused in television interview about dual language programs and I reached out to my new district and they said well you should talk to Dr Lauren our principal at Biltmore Preparatory Academy I immediately found that Not only was he using professional and individual but even when you abandon him to the lights and cameras because I couldn't make it to support him at the television interview he is also apparently amazing on camera and that's when I learned that he also had a background in theater as well so I am very excited that this recommend foundations coming forward but I also have a lot of care and concern you notice there's a lot of Monte Vista support in the room tonight because they very much love him and but they also recognize that sometimes when you love someone very much you have to share them so they're I think also excited to share Dr Lauren with the rest of the district in his new role and we will do everything in our power to make sure that we get them a leader to follow to support them so that was what I wanted to share thank you very much um board members would you like to say anything before we make a motion can I say something after yeah okay yeah um so I move the governing board approved Dr Joel Lauren as executive director for human resources effective July 1 2023 second all those in favor aye um [Applause] Dr Lauren would you like to face doctor would you like to say anything you don't have to he's good on camera uh members of the board um Mr Mann and my friends in the audience I am humbled and I am very honored that you would bestow this on me I have a really strong sense of belonging in this district and that started oddly enough with Michelle Berg she and I met each other at ASU in our doctoral program I didn't know anything about Creighton but over the years that we worked together I learned that Creighton was a special place and I'm so pleased to be part of the community that has become that special place for me I will endeavor to do everything I can to help with all of the things that we heard this morning or this afternoon in this meeting I do have an extensive 90-day plan but Yvonne has added to that list so there's a lot ahead a lot of things to work through I am pleased to be able to use the skills that I've gained over the years as a principal working with certified and classified staff helping to build a community and helping to support growth in our Professionals in all levels in all areas so thank you so much for this opportunity I first want to thank Mr carbajal as well thank you very much for straddling both positions as an interim really really appreciate it and thank you very much Dr Lauren congratulations um I know you guys are going to work together in the transition and congratulations thank you yeah so the same thing Yvonne thank you so much for all the work that you've done and I know that um your community back at the parent Center is very much excited to have you back and I'm so glad you're staying with us um Dr Lauren congratulations I know your staff are gonna are gonna miss you greatly because you are an extraordinary human being I just I find you very kind very thoughtful and I'm very happy for you thank you so much I am happy that you are coming back to our our like a community Resource Family Resource Center and everything that you do in that role um and I thank you for doing both of these roles it's a lot to ask of somebody so appreciate it um it's a parent not even having been here very long the respect that you have and um that you're competent you're professional but at the same time you're someone who's going to be caring and compassionate and empathetic and I think that's perfect for this role and I'm just happy um that we have you here um and so I hope that we can find someone that everyone's happy with to replace you Manifesto so thank you I hope so too I'm going to work really hard with Mr Carvajal to make sure that that happens yes so that takes us to approval of academic director of for curriculum and instruction thank you members of the board uh again a comprehensive service was conducted for the academic director of curriculum instruction um the human resources advertising the following agencies Department of Education Arizona scope or Association Arizona School administrators Association for school Personnel in the Arizona Association of Latino administrators and superintendents there were nine total applicants in the pool for the position and after again after a rigorous interview process that included the screening in basket activities for all the top candidates were selected with a panel comprised of teachers staff and administrators the panel supporter two finalists for the executive team interview and the candidate that it's been recommended is Dr Larisa pombo uh Dr lorisa pombo is currently the director of Elementary initiatives at the Leona Group schools she comes to Creighton School District with 26 years of experience in education Dr pombo holds a bachelor of art masters of education and a doctor of Education in educational leadership Innovation from Arizona State University she began her teaching career in 1997 as a fifth grade teacher at Peoria Unified School District where she was promoting to Improvement Specialists assistant principal and principal we are so happy to bring also this top-notch candidate for recommendation and Mr Men yeah I just wanted to share and like of course ask Dr pombo if this was okay to share um she is not with us this evening it is not because she isn't wonderfully excited about this opportunity um but her family had an opportunity to visit her husband's family who live in Spain um and they have not been clearly it hasn't been an option for several years um and so you know she's an amazing professional her question to me was do you need me to not go on my trip and my answer was I need you to go on your trip and not only enjoy your family but get lots of rest because there's a lot of work to do so um she's she's definitely up for that challenge in the finalist interview she just absolutely blew us away not only with her depth of knowledge and understanding but her focus on collaboration and I think you know we heard some of that this evening um you know when people spoke and from our board that that collaboration is a key element and so I think you know this is well we certainly will will miss Dr Berg and we love her um you know being put in the position to to need a new person in this role I think we have found the absolute perfect person and then I will share one little other anecdote about our new individual not only will she be one of our newest Creighton family members from the perspective of joining our team but she is actually already a member of the Creighton family because she lives in our district so that's actually another cool connection so she very much has a vested interest in the success of our school [Music] I moved the government approved Dr Larissa pombo as academic director for curriculum and instruction effective July 13 2023.
it's really it's it's centering the educator that's creating space and a real inclusive practice that they haven't seen in other places so they're thrilled about that in addition with Miss Burke we established a partnership with one million degrees this money allows folks who haven't finished College to return to college and it helps provide in cases of emergency that may lead to someone dropping out it also helps provide books pay tuition it allows folks who have left both alumni and staff to re-engage in college uh we worked with Nathan's team to create the Ascend program this is a leadership pipeline program it's designed to take campus leaders or folks who are interested in being leaders in this district and provide them with an opportunity to learn some real skills and pitch a project to solve a problem here in Adams 14 and I was really inspired by the projects that participants came up with to solve problems like attendance one person was working on solving The Vaping problem in high schools just really uh collecting or fundraising for band instruments like it was a very wide variety of projects and people got to work within their passions as they did that work I brought this data to academic cabinet last week and I asked what was missing from our partnership and what they hoped I would say to you and so there are some additional points that they've asked me to bring to you tonight that are very exciting the first is that more students were on track based on the access assessment then were not on track so 58 of K-12 students are on track this year in terms of growth that's plus 17 from last year it's a massive Improvement in addition uh 1200 Plus hours of leadership coaching was provided by tntp directly to principals and their instructional leadership teams on campus this one is actually very exciting uh the third bullet point elg really looks at early literacy and is supporting the youngest scholars in foundational reading skills last year schools met one out of 21 goals or five percent of the goals that were set this year schools met 16 of 21 goals 76 percent of the goals that were set that's an improvement of 71 percent over all district-wide that's phenomenal Adams 14 exited 89 students from read plans that's a really big deal for a student in terms of their ability to be in classes that they're excited about and interested in rather than working on foundational reading skills uh in addition what we heard from the academic cabinet is they felt strongly that a more common instructional Vision has really allowed the work to progress quickly and it's been anchored in the Adams 14 student-centered walkthrough the big shift there is that when Educators walk into classrooms now in Adams 14 classrooms they're looking to see how are students experiencing the instruction is the teacher doing what students need those students who are sitting in front of them to master content are they feeling safe and are they able to be productive rather than focusing on what the teacher is saying it's looking at the impact on students which I think was really appreciated by Educators here I heard it from administrators across all schools and lastly we rolled out and installed lesson internalization as an expectation and provided facilitated practice across the district because of this we saw a significant increase in essential content especially in semester two when we really got rolling there so I appreciated the push from academic cabinet I'm going to pause there for a moment I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about our progress towards those six major goals now are there questions that I can answer before I do that yeah I just have a question the students who are on track for English language proficiency it's 50 are those um are those students that compose that 58 percent in dual language schools or are they all in the english-only schools that's a great question uh I I have to look at what you're looking at which slide are you on um this one this one here yes the first bullet oh the first bullet access um Miss Burke do you want to talk about who access targets well yeah I think I I know who it targets but is this data um just overall or because I know that there's a difference between students in bilingual education who are taking access then obviously if they're in an English only school then this makes a lot of sense I just want to kind of gauge where the growth is or how much growth Madam president obado board member Estrada thank you for the question unfortunately I'm not able to speak to this particular data set because I'm not sure exactly where we pulled it so I can go back through but I'm not sure exactly where the 58 came from so I apologize that I'm not able to speak to this one tonight I think it's district-wide so I think it's in across all contents yeah I'm just curious to see if it was if we if we're able to see how many students are on track and dual language or Bilingual School as opposed to the english-only schools yes Madam president members of the board this particular piece of data is across the district however we are seeing our students in bilingual schools are outperforming their peers as far as how fast they progress and so there are performing growth and achievement and then the other only I guess clarification um were the exited 89 students from read plans do we have like a total number of how many read plans we had of this I mean I'm assuming it's tons um just because that's how it is everywhere right but like do we know Miss Perkins we can report back after we find it okay just curious any other questions before I move on to our progress towards our six major goals um I have less of a question um I appreciate the the update and I love hearing about um the additions to the educator Pipeline and the programs such as um the 1 million degrees and reach University um what are we doing um so this is probably more for our team but what are we doing to communicate that with the larger Community like to know that these programs exist um because I I haven't seen anything except through like 1 million degrees is they had a big push with cozy and the department of higher ed do you have the answer for that one first yeah so Madam president Lovato board member Estrada so in our district we at the beginning of the year had 1928 read plans and that's students K-12 at the end of the year we have uh 1 866 and that's a decline from where we were this time last year thank you Miss Sheila our modern person members of the board to um your question about uh communication so it's um I think it's a two layer communication the first one is we have been uh communicating internally with our teachers these are programs that are that we established intended to grow our own so we started internal the ascent program for example we have 24 individuals who participated these are current teachers the ascent program is intended for those teachers who want to grow into a leadership role either at the school or even central office to go through the process so this is for us specific to grow our own the same with the reach program through reach we are helping our classified paraprofessional anybody who is not certified who wants to become a teacher to go through these programs so that we grow our own so those two in specific are intended to be internal the 1 million um one one million degrees yes we have also started with internal reach out to our employees um the goal with this um or the next piece what we're going with this is to start also communicating to even other um at a larger Community neighboring districts so that other staff members who may be working elsewhere and would like to take um to participate in these kind of programs you know will be one of the opportunities that they see uh you know if if they come to our district so it is internal because it's very targeted to our certain employee groups that we have so so it's not um it has not been publicized to the larger Community as of yet thank you that's super helpful every time I have a meeting I learn I'm like okay this is internal and um thank you I think the other Beauty about one million degrees is it also is intended to support Alum who graduate from Adam City High School Lester Arnold Who start and aren't able to finish because of some some issue that's popped up so it's also not only for staff or for Community but for alum who are coming back and saying I need some help finishing up yeah so let's let's let's talk about some results because we're really excited about this um we all know that the Educators who are in classrooms with children matter a ton and it is much easier to continue progress if you have veteran teachers who stick around and really understand the context that they're working in so the first goal we set was around teacher and leader retention we wanted to retain 80 percent of teachers district-wide who are exceeding or meeting expectations as of May 1st we've crushed the skull I'm gonna let you go ahead and take a look we met the school across all schools what I would acknowledge and name here that summertime is a time of uncertainty if things feel uncertain so it's going to be really important to reach out to teachers make sure they know their jobs are safe they're going to have schools to return to their kids love them and will miss them and are excited to see them on the first day of school so this is a goal that we feel really confident that we can meet and we recognize that summer is a time where we need to work hard to make sure our Educators know they're appreciated and cared for these are the folks that met or exceeded expectations using the Randa um right evaluation tool so um Mr if I may jump in here just to clarify um so for those individuals who are meeting or exceeding expectations that is the data that we are collecting here so I do not want it to be confused that at the for example out you know the first one with 100 Adams City High School 100 that we retain 100 of the teachers these are 100 of the teachers that are evaluated out of meet or exceeds level so it's not everyone so this will be different to the data that will come back from the state as far as teacher retention so it's not going to be the same data teacher retention data includes every uh teacher regardless of how they're rated in their Randa or um you know yearly evaluation this is specific to those that are meeting or exceeding we want to ensure they are um we're retaining as Sarah said highly effective highly effective teachers and as we continue in this work we're also going to be working with our administrators with our coaches and with our teachers also to understand um you know what highly effective means and and how to use the tool the Randa to us aiming to grow individuals it is also very common in the different states even to have a very high number of teachers over 90 percent of the teachers in large districts even that are rated at a very high level but then when you look at the student performance you say well students are not quite there so there's a little discrepancy so but that is the calibration and the alignment that with additional support with additional training uh better lesson planning and understanding of what strong instruction looks like and feels like in the classroom we're gonna start calibrating though so I just want to bring that caveat because this will be different to teacher retention at the end of the year well when we get that data I appreciate that oh go ahead okay all right I have a group um with that do you think we can start getting those numbers like how many of our teachers are rated as effective and highly effective and then I had a quick question about leaders how how are we identifying leaders in this group in this slide we've just captured we just captured teachers we did not there was there was a lot of movement going on with leaders so I didn't want to get that here without being 100 accurate but we can get that data Madam president that was my wandering around that because I know with Miranda it's all teachers all ssps and all APS and principals so this is just strictly teachers this is just teachers strictly teachers that is correct but we can have that data for administrators as well so we'll pull that data through HR and roughly I can tell you teachers that are rated highly effective is well into the 90 percent of our teachers rated high at a high level to Dr lauria's point we did pull all data for all teachers across the district regardless of their evaluation status last year 93 percent of teachers were retained as of May 1st this year 96 percent of teachers were retained that's plus three percent which is significant particularly in a time of worry and like working to retain local control this what we've heard from teachers is they believe in the vision they believe in the leadership they feel strongly that they're seen and heard and this they vote with their feet so all so the majority of teachers are sticking around and I want to want to open this up for questions and discussions you all play a really important role so we'd love to hear how you're thinking about supporting the retention of Educators in this District both during the summer and next year because people very much respect the work you're doing and are excited to hear from you but I'm happy to answer your questions also yes I think before we talk about that point thank you Dr Laria for that clarification I I was kind of getting confused with that slide but I do want to touch upon something you mentioned about um how we rate our teachers whether you know effective or highly effective and then what the data shows us and so you said something about calibrating and I just want to um make that or highlight that and into that I think that's important for us to see as a board where um you know sometimes in education we tend to see distinguished sprinkles of teachers and places but then the data doesn't show that and so what are we going to do to ensure that if indeed a teacher is distinguished that should mean that student outcomes are also um at grade level or above so just interesting to see when that will happen and how that correlates with what we see here so thank you um modern vice president for your question members of the board I think when the work will start happening it already started right because the work starts with bringing awareness and and having discussions around a number one student data we're going deep into Data analysis looking at specific students looking at different data points not only one assessment it's looking at different data assessments so that work has already started because it starts with that awareness understand teachers and leaders everyone really at the school understanding that you know when when we have Clarity of what good instruction means or a very high level lesson delivery looks like then we start saying okay well maybe the one that I said it was highly is not that highly because now I know something different so it's going to be um you know a work in progress we already started that work to answer to your specific question and at one point we're gonna have to come into a place where uh we're gonna say okay we're going to be looking at this student different data points of student outcomes growth achievement and really looking at that specific teacher or school rating and then start having conversations about specific teacher to student rating when we look at when we look at evaluation of teachers based not only but you know using student performance there are other pieces that we need to consider especially you know time of the student with the teacher at the beginning point of the student the ending point right so there's much more to the system if we want to start using specific student data as part of the teacher evaluation which is completely you know at a different level of data analysis but that work has started in what we are going to be expecting to see not only supporting teachers and administrators but also the coaching from principal principle coaches right and supervisors is really setting structures where okay now in this visit let's look at your evaluations and let's see you know who is your strongest teacher let's look at the evaluation who is the one that you feel needs the most support let's see that evaluation now let's go and visit to the classrooms and see is that really aligned to what we see in in the classroom happening so um but the work has started in we're gonna start monitoring also to see that there's there's this calibration it takes some some time and this is not unique to our district I've actually seen it in the different states I've been to where we have large number of students I mean of teachers being highly effective or rated highly effective but the student data is not quite supporting that mm-hmm director Zubia did you have a oh yes I'm sure sorry I just turned off my computer accidentally so um yes thank you for all this information uh I appreciate it um I I guess I was piggybacking on the on the question uh regarding the retention of Staff um mainly the teachers and leaders because when I look at this slide it's kind of misleading um just the way it's coming out as far as teachers and and leaders so maybe we should just say in this instance it's only the teachers and then provide something around the leadership later just so that when people are reading it they're not thinking that that's what it is also that it is um the the teachers that meet and exceed expectations I guess to me when I first saw this goal I was hoping that it was really across the board that it was all our teachers um that we are maintaining because we know we we're short-staffed if it keeps coming up that we're short staffed when it comes to teachers and so um for me it would be interesting to see what the expectations are that we're asking them to meet and exceed besides just scores I mean is there something when you ask the question what can we do as a board it'd be really nice to to know what it is that we've talked about what that accountability looks like and if that's what we're doing I guess I just I'm not making myself clear but I don't want to end up in and uh a situation where uh yeah the the scores are are not truly representing what the staff is capable of doing do you see what I'm saying because I know that that happened once when the state put the evaluations were attached to scores and that didn't go well I don't want I hope that we're not going that route because I don't think that that would be a a good way to do it but my other question really on this slide also where it's a little misleading is where we have Hans and 100 of theirs also is um uh have attained that and I my understanding is Hansen and Monica are together so I don't understand why Henson would be on there separately this is through May 1st so the merger is has happened now I think these numbers will look different in September or August we're reporting out on through May 1st I'm just looking at the perception of it if I'm a parent am I looking at this and you're saying that we met the goal of them you know 80 we're retaining 100 of them were retaining them for Hanson do you see how that just comes across as like oh yeah that's that's my school so if you're saying that 100 of them are retained that's to me that means okay the school is Virgin now yes yeah so just a little bit of confusion on there but I appreciate the data and this is good news um I think it's it's a great uh Baseline to to only move forward from here so thank you and to your point these this is the data for all teachers systemwide as of May 1st right so we know our permission when teachers start making changes so we are actually had that conversation with HR to um continue pulling uh and updating the data last year we were in the 24 25 teacher turnover that was reported uh and this is actually the last um or this data will be reported you know the last day of vacation and stops you know the first day because of school so that is going to be the new day so it's going to be changing throughout what I can say is based on the entire number of teachers we are anticipating there's going to be a reduction in that teacher turnover of the 24-25 percent even 26 at some times not the highest in the state because there are other districts that are that have a higher turnover so we're not the highest but we know 25 or around it's a high number but we are anticipating based on the number of vacancies or resignations or teacher separations that we had by December compared to last December and by the end of the school year compared to last end of the school year we are making progress however teachers have the entire summer to make decisions and it could be later in the summer when they decide to to leave so we're monitoring that closely and if I may um secretary um we are not going and I'm glad you asked that question so let me clarify we are not going to a system where we're looking at the scores to evaluate teachers not at all we know that the assessment as it is or many of the assessments that are used in our state do not benefit our students the audit the accountability audit said so this is not me saying that so we know that it's a reality so we are not going to to you know there to see the scores and then that is going to be the teacher evaluation um what I was talking about looking at the different assessments looking at how we assess students because it may not be a test it may be student products it might be student um projects that they that they share in how that is really supporting the feedback that our administrators are giving teachers as far as how they're performing based on how their students are performing as well so no thank you for asking so we can I'm going to repeat it we're not going you know to a model where we're looking at the state scores or different scores to evaluate teachers but we are bringing some calibration so that within our district we know how to measure student progress that is valid that respects the identities of our students and they're also going to be reflective somehow in our evaluations because it's at the end of the day we are going to be looking at the evaluations as a means to help teachers get better at serving our students that's it thank you for asking that question because cannot be misinterpreted that kind of leads into my next question so I believe there was legislation that was passed where um now the evaluations went from 50 50 of student learning versus professional practices to 70 30 are we moving to that next year um and if so how are we supporting not only our teachers so they know they're how how they're getting evaluated by our evaluators because to me that aligns better to our move to um better instructional practices um but I'm just worried about the transition and the the learning to how do you evaluate them but also so our teachers know what to expect in the upcoming year yes Madam president members of the board Mrs Burke will will speak to that because when the state changes we need to adopt to them so we are planning on how to support our teachers and administrators on that piece Madam president olvado members of the board thank you for the question so we do have an internal committee it's called the 1338 committee it is made up of school-based teams uh Union representation and District administrators as well as members from our human resources department they meet annually they look at the legislative updates guidance from the Colorado Department of Education and then we work collectively to be able to establish the metrics and measures that we're going to use to be able to put into staff's evaluations we're still in the progress of doing that and so we don't have it finalized as we move into the later weeks in July so around the 17th of July they're about we'll have this work completed and it's built off of part of our assessment strategy actually earlier today an academic cabinet we were going through this topic specifically with the notes from the committee what they're recommending how it fits into the assessment strategy we have for the district how we make edits for that and the timing of it so that staff are feeling supported as they go through their measures and that we're still meeting the guidance from the state department and any legislation changes foreign I think just to answer the question about how the atoms 14 board could support retention um I think so far this year we've done a lot in terms of trying to um support our superintendent to ensure that that happens the you know one of the major reasons is stress and burnout for teachers right for turnover and just leaving the profession as a whole and so it was just very reassuring to see um Dr laria's work with the school calendar and looking at the data for that and seeing when is it most beneficial to have breaks and things like that and so I think that as a board the more we can support our superintendent with um the decisions that she's making that's impacting this I think is huge another um thing that I was just thinking about what is um teacher induction programs and so looking at how we're doing that if we're doing that and how to better plan for Teacher induction programs so that um we don't lose teachers and we're able to retain them just a clarifying question if you wanted us to share our induction plans induction program plans that we have um yes we um yes Madam president um vice president member of the board we actually this morning met also about the teacher induction and we're looking at the documentation and the manuals and the guidance that we have for Teacher induction we heard loud and clear last year that the induction process was for new teachers to the district would almost hyper focused on instruction delivery and stuff versus some of the you know unfortunate ways that we do things and where to access curriculum and stuff like that so we are taking that feedback we're bringing actually teachers to support plan the induction program we have a teacher right now working this summer so if you would like to share some some of the highlights of what is going to be different during induction including the fact that induction is not going to happen only at the beginning of the year but throughout for new teachers as they come in so uh Dr Bowden for HR yes ma'am thank you so one of the teachers that was involved in the Ascend program spent her Capstone was looking at her induction program and what we could do to make it stronger and better and her Capstone project was absolutely phenomenal so we brought her in this summer she's working directly with us to establish an induction program that lasts the entire year rather than just the first couple of weeks of school the induction program is tied to the arcs the four arcs throughout the year it's aligned with what curriculum and instruction is doing in their professional development and it'll be offered on Monday nights throughout the year and it's going to be more like a college kind of course catalog where a teacher doesn't have to choose or get or only go to six different mandatory induction program developments they'll get to choose what they need based on where they're struggling or where they'd like to improve or how they'd like to grow as an individual and so they'll have lots of different choices we're also tying that in with our Aspire which is our student teaching program so if they're really struggling with classroom management or really making those connections with kids they can choose to go to one of those sessions to supplement what they're doing with induction and um it's it's the mentorship and the Protege are built into that calendar so in the next three to four weeks we'll have our entire year laid out in a calendar where they can pick and choose what's going to work for them and their Mentor as they go through the entire year so we're really really excited I don't know that I've ever seen it like this before she did an amazing job on the Capstone project and it's really exciting to see one of our own teachers come back and say Here's how we can improve not just at my school but at the district level and be able to take that and work across all the departments in the district to make it come to life and we're going to see a great benefit from that so we're really excited about that one super quick having a spanish-only strandless I know I know we heard it was a great uh a great thing to do in RPD is that something that we're looking for for induction as well right now it is not in the calendar the way we have it built but I will be mentioning that tomorrow thank you thank you thank you Sarah we're getting there I'm so excited about the questions I'm so excited about it you all take your take your time uh during the academic diagnostic uh that we we held across all campuses uh this fall we found that 58 of assignments were appropriately leveled for the grade that the students were in I think this is a place I'm most proud this is a place we all came together district-wide and said we know students need access to grade level content it's important that we focus on acceleration students tend to do us just as well on grade level content as they do on remedial content and so as you can see across the year we saw significant Improvement in task alignment across all schools we can take a look at individual schools as well so you can see every single School ended the year significantly above that 58 Baseline of course I have a question um uh the N numbers vary a lot by school I completely understand by Lester because of the enrollment there how can you talk a little bit about how the groups were created to be surveyed in this yeah in order to get data uh in this task alignment category the school leaders and the instructional coaches needed to use the tool it was used differently across campuses and so when leadership coaches were on campus working with principals and they went to school it was a part of the practice when tntp was in the school during 360 learning walks we used the tool with Fidelity and I think it was a question about when no one was there supporting the instructional leaders in that building whether or not they made the choice or not to use the tool that's where you see the difference growth so we set a really audacious goal here the headline this fall coming out of the academic diagnostic was not not great that the average student in Adams 14 grew less than half a year each year and so we knew that in order to do right by kids and families in Commerce City we needed to turn this around very quickly I'm really proud to say that's what happens so if you look across the elementary schools we've we've actually pulled apart the data by school and you can see across almost every school both in ela and in math and an SLA and math taught in Spanish kids grew more than they were growing historically in Adams 14.
second all is in favor aye okay that takes us to 10 which we tabled so it takes us to 11 future agenda items does anyone have a future agenda item um our next can we just have a reminder out loud of our next meeting it's not August August 1 and 15. I have one that I'll add while you're thinking um and that is Hilda I'm gonna need your help on this one but it's I would like to add to all of our policy look at is the policy where we renew staff members because currently the board can't see that list so we're voting blindly um you know what I'm talking about I think we had this discussion previously at another date I'll work with you I'll work with you on that side are we is it our plan then we just tabled it did we table those agenda items for the next meeting then that would be the Assumption okay I'm just making sure I'll work with okay I just want to reiterate the fact that um I brought this up two times and I would really like to see this put into place is the district-wide behavior plan committee um I think we've seen enough comments um tonight included that I feel like that that needs to be maybe a committee or something that really needs to um we need to start focusing on our Behavior plan I think I know and not not to violate the agenda or anything but I think the purpose and obviously Sophia can get to this I think the purpose in those agenda items is not necessarily just to look at the policies themselves but to like it was to start a discussion about something like that so that we can impact those policies and that also in particular and that is something we're we're moving forward and we're a little bit further behind where I'd like to be at this moment in time but some things have shifted and changed faster than expected so um but I I've had some I haven't been able to take as much action as I would like to take yet but I've had some great conversations with cea and I've actually gotten some great not only feedback from them but support in helping us find some individuals who would help to serve on that team because what we really want to do is is get people that not only can be active participants but that can help us both identify problems and help us identify potential Solutions anything else on that well before we adjourn I just wanted to say I hope everyone takes some personal time and does something before we see each other again does something nice for themselves takes a day off more than one day off whatever you can do please have some semblance of a summer so on that I move the governing board adjourn second all those in favor aye aye foreign
I'll give you a moment to look at that just for clarification this is based on Star data the Baseline at the beginning of the year and the end of the year um so it's not Steamers data or anything we used specifically star data for this or Star assessment for this we then wanted to see what growth looked like across the district because we did give start start the star assessment of K-12 first grade through 12 in math and you can see here across all grade levels across the district we saw tremendous growth and in most cases in most grade levels students were growing more than they were historically so what does this mean for students in in atoms 14 and in Commerce City the average amount of growth across the district is 0.7 years this growth we did not hit the 1.5 years growth goal but if an average student now is 14 grew three months more this year than they did historically so we see that as quite the win um one thing that jumps out me out at me is the data around the reading assessments that were done in Spanish I just wanted to throw a quick shout out to Dr Lydia I'm so excited for the footsteps to Brilliance program that's going to roll out because um I really think the more we focus on bilingual and biliteracy education it's not only going to affect our students academically but socially as well so um I loved seeing the the one points something numbers versus the the lower numbers awesome so we're not going to spend a lot of time on proficiency we know the cmass data is embargoed and so we're not ready to share that publicly so instead we looked at growth using the star assessment the star assessment is one of the best best nationally informed assessments for predicting outcomes on CMS and we weren't expecting a ton of growth in terms of proficiency this year it usually takes three years to really impact proficiency numbers in turnaround work and so what you can see at least in the star data is that where we were predicting pretty consistent results from previous years on CMAs with 6.1 of the students estimated to score at or above proficiency on the math assessment and 11.7 percent of students were estimated to score at or above the proficiency Benchmark on the reading test I think early looks at the data this may be lower than what's actually going to come out and we're excited to share that when it's it's no longer embargoed the final two goals were around student attendance and persistence remembering that the goal we set was 95 attendance we know students who Miss more than five percent of school each year tend to really struggle and they don't tend to grow a full year which is why we set the goal there we knew it was audacious uh and that that we probably wouldn't hit it in a single year it was more of a Five-Year Plan and what you can see is really pretty exciting across the elementary schools we saw growth in attendance pretty significant growth at a few campuses on average district attendance went down that is due to Adams City High School attendance it really pulled the district-wide data down if you removed Adam City High School attendance data from the state of the district actually would have grown in terms of overall attendance where we saw incredible results and where we put our learnings into place around attendance was for CMS attendance is super high stakes during State assessments you get points it helps you get out of uh situations that you may be in on and we saw some of the very best data ever in the history of Adams 14 this year on CMAs this kind of blue cde's mind when we shared this data with them overall 95 percent of students attended school during cmass and participated at Adams City High School very different than the overall attendance for the year 98 of students participated in CMS that's incredible it's the best attendance in the last 15 years there uh and at Adam City Middle School uh 99 of students participated which was an increase of 17 uh from last year in terms of C Mass participation now your next question may be what did you do and I think in academic cabinet we spent a ton of time talking all year about how to improve attendance and participation particularly on the most important days of the school year there are some days that matter more we know it's important kids come every day what Adam's 14 put into place during cmass was a daily check-in a check-in a checkout and they tracked every student's attendance for the weeks that cmass was happening and so our big learning is if you look every day and you talk about it every day and you reach out to families every day families are going to show up because they know it's important the other thing that happened here was very much a by any means necessary how can we reduce barriers for families to get kids to come to school and so when I see this data this was like the entire District working together saying no matter what we're going to get kids to school so that we can show the progress that's that's happening here in Commerce City so this is an extraordinary data point I think our recommendation and what we've been talking about in academic cabinets how do we do this at the beginning of the school year coming up to October account so we can get kids and families into the habits and our staff in schools into the habit of communicating regularly so everybody knows the importance of school each day so huge kudos to the staff in Adams 14.
I um in meeting with Dr Lydia for our check-ins when she told me these numbers I almost fell out of my seat I I just thought it was amazing um I know a few years ago um as a parent we we met and we went through a lot of initiatives on what worked and this kind of sounds a lot like that it's reaching out to the students letting them know how important it is that you're here on this day and and having somebody dedicated to say why aren't you here or what can I do to support you to get here um so I'm wondering how we as a board can support something like that I know um the boys mind you my my son and his friends graduated in 2016 but they still talk about um coach Aaron Phillips rest in peace he passed away but he he knew every student in that school at Adams City High School and he would call and say whoa whoa whoa I see your card leaving where are you going and would get them back so I just think the more we communicate to our students that we care we want them here the more that we'll see our numbers continue like this but great job this is amazing news yeah modern personal members of the board like Sarah said I think the beautiful thing of this data is for us to be able to show our own Community we can make it different and we can change the narrative and we can change how we think about school and we can change the fact that oh yeah is that school of course that's going to be the attendance because this is the reality in this was the reality in every single school and um the theme has been happening just one day so it was consistently right where we had staff members getting on a school van and going to pick up the kids like no no you're coming in um so it's almost our own testimony that we can um make it different and um and then pushing out um you know those in in communication strategy that we're working on to to bring this to light to say just like Sarah said you know it's in our own schools we didn't see a video of another District we didn't hear data from another state this is our own students our own data so um you know that this um success gets contagious right because it can be repeated so I'm very proud of the team just like um Sarah share she's proud I we're extremely proud of the team and will continue increasing uh it doesn't matter how many strategies or uh less internalizations we work on with our teachers if our students are not in school we are not going to move the needle so it's important for both things to happen at the same time my last wondering I'm sorry to interrupt because I know you're going to the next one did we celebrate um at Adam City High School in Adams City Middle School okay just curious I wanted to make sure the students and everything but they did every single men we were celebrating was almost like I um I mean 98 like Sarah said it was uh 15 years last time that we've been closed to to this kind of attendance uh certainly not since the new accountability system was put in place we've reached this level so um this is the first time in the history of this accountability era since 2011 that we're gonna be able to meet this threshold for the school and that's going to be a huge difference in our school performance framework so um yes we're um again as promised uh making history for our community as a team of our students and it can it can happen this is proof of that this is not one person driving a strategy this is the entire District coming together and saying it matters we're going to make it happen so just really was exciting to watch happen in real real time we set a persistence goal um this fall because there was a lot of challenge being experienced by the district both from an accredited accreditation perspective and a lot of things in the news in shockby and so we know that affects families it makes them nervous and we wanted to commit to keeping families here and set a goal around keeping families here in Adams 14.
I'm really excited about this data families in Commerce City have chosen to send their kids to Adams 14 and they've kept their kids here even throughout a difficult year you can see a couple of schools that did not meet the expectation Lester Arnold has it has a different population so it's a much harder goal for for that school to hit and then at one of the preschools they did not hit the hit the target but at every other school they did and that's really exciting parents have chosen to keep their kids here in the schools that they started this goal will be final on October count of next year we're measuring from October count to October account uh and we we have been talking about attendance and so I think one thing we heard from parents during focus groups is they just wanted to know like what's the what's the number I need to think about what how do I hit 95 percent uh we did not set a strategic planning goal around attendance and we know it's going to be important even though it's not part of the Strategic plan so nine days is 95 attendance which is why I included this year there can be a rallying cry on campuses just to let families know like we we know uh there are going to be family events and activities and emergencies and health issues what we want to be aiming for is being in being in school all but nine days during the school year so that's what this slide was about we would recommend using this as a way to figure out who needs additional support particularly around summer school addition additional tutoring or transportation for students that fall below this number they probably are going to need some additional support to make sure they're ready for the next grade and I'm not talking about retention I'm talking about filling in the gaps in other ways um as you all are aware uh we we have a strategic plan it is working on getting branded and finalized and we're tweaking some of the goals based on the data that's come out this spring that's really forced us to go back and look did we set goals high enough which is a really good problem to have so I've I removed the slides around like what our strategic planning goals are because we're making some shifts but we will report on that uh the next time I'm sitting in front of you I promise but did want to re-anchor us in the work the district did this year around the Strategic plan uh really creating a vision that lots of folks had imp impact on and I was actually in the group where we took a vision statement that was four or five sentences and just the translation wasn't inspiring and we're able to get this down in a strategic planning meeting um a board member may have also been a part of that group which is exciting so we're excited about this Vision we believe it represents all that atoms 14 is for kids and Families and we know that we have a North star priority moving forward this was created by the 33 folks who were part of the planning process and the 800 people who gave us feedback um and so this this will anchor the work for Adams 14 moving forward as a North star priority and then we have several priorities underneath so people can find themselves in the plan they know why they're important they can see themselves in the solution and hopefully we'll keep everyone very much engaged in the progress we've made this year so happy happy to answer any additional questions you all may have but it's been such a pleasure to be in this work with everyone in this room and Beyond director Molina hi Thomas uh I thank you so much for the presentation um it's well there's a lot of awesome milestones and I know we have a lot of work to do still together um my question is uh I I'm just looking through the I'm trying to find myself in there as a parent and I think I've said this for years and many platforms that um as the whole child includes the parent and I I feel like I know the teachers are really important um I know of course the students are the number one that's why we're all here but are these orphans because I don't see me as a parent on some of these so I'm trying to see where the parents are I do um and I'm speaking as a parent because I'm my kids are some of those statistics uh as far as like the the uh attendance you know I I have a I deal with a sick child that is impacted by the attendance I've been hit by truancy uh so where are we in here that's all um yeah I mean I will take a stab at this and I think uh what I was excited about the last time I was in this space was the recommendation that came from Dak uh what's really important I think as a parent um of any child in any school is you want to know where your child is what are their individual goals what what do they need to do in school to hit those goals and how can you support outside of school and so I was very excited to hear from Doc that they recommended quarterly check-ins with families where they review goals for individual students and how can support how they can support at home I think you're going to see it be a part of the Strategic plan as we move forward and a large majority of those 800 people we got feedback from were family members all right as a parent I still have a child in the district oh yeah I I have a child okay I have a child in the district um and I I would like to see how much more I could support support her I I normally um and then just before I was on the board uh still and even up to now I usually have to go seek myself right directly go to the horse's mouth to find solutions for my child um and and I uh I I hope that uh also I'm gonna go rewind to 2020.
that is probably the closest I've ever felt connected to the district because I wasn't getting a call from this person that would call me to check up on us every almost every day I think so I don't know what kind of program that was but that was a good program because it encouraged me as a parent and I knew I that my district care better not only about my kids education but of our health because we are an environmentally stricken Health impacted community so we never know what's happening in the household so thank you what and I'm gonna I'm gonna pass this back to Dr lyrics I think you want to name something I think when we set and I'll use the attendance goal because you named attendance it's a struggle when you have health concerns and I'm assuming there's a 504 plan in place to support you and and making sure your child gets what they need I think the the goal is if you're not hitting the attendance goal or you're missing more than nine days of school what we're proposing is resources are put in place to ensure that even if you can't be in school you have those gaps filled so that you're ready for the next grade and just to build off of what um director Molina was saying I think attendance is um something that I tend to focus on a lot when we're talking about um just continuous Improvement and family engagement and things like that and I think that um one of the things that I think would benefit when we're talking about Improvement attendance is being proactive in wraparound services so thinking not only like how before I was a 504 coordinator for my school I don't even know what a 504 was and I'm in education and I'm a parent right but like how many of our parents don't know the um the systems the structures the forms the things that they can get to support their kids when um they can't make it to school and so I think for me one of the biggest things when we're talking about attendance is not necessarily only focusing on how what we're going to do to remediate absences or things like that but how can we be proactive in supporting families I was reading an article the other day that one of the um biggest things that help the school district get students back in school was having washing machines at their schools and so thinking about poverty-stricken areas like how that makes an impact and so just thinking about outside of the box like how are we supporting our community and families to make sure that attendance isn't this punitive thing where because of lack of information on how the system the school system is or lack of resources you know just looking at the whole picture yeah I think um for me I always go back to the four domains of Rapid School Improvement and these all hit on that to me and and tied into the climate and culture Community engagement I think that's where we struggle a lot where we have struggled so I don't know um how how we build programs like that or if it's something where we as a board really dig in and study what's happening at Central and the impacts that's happening um or having on on that Community to see if we need to make that drastic move to a community schools district to have services like that to improve student learning um director Zubia yes so I think I was going to clarify your question I think what you were asking is in the work on the plan itself we didn't have like a goal or an objective that was specific for parents um I know we talked about it just so you know I mean we had this room full of ideas hundreds it was the ideation idea Asian phase of everything there's tons and tons of ideas and how to narrow it down um and I think um it's it's implied that obviously children aren't orphans so the majority of what's being requested are asked of is the parents I don't think we had to call that out we don't want to offend parents by saying oh you're parenting you have to as a parent make sure your child's in school we don't want to do that either because people I mean as a parent I know that's my responsibility I think what we did really was focus on more of what it would take to make sure the the two main parts in the school were working which was the student and and the staff and how we can support them knowing that we did talk about exactly what you had asked how do we know as the parent what my child needs to learn on every grade level so what should my child know by the time they get out of first grade out of second grade out of third grade we even talked about having a schedule kind of like we have in in the medical system that tells you what to expect at your neck doctor's visit when your children are young right you have a schedule that goes from birth to 21 pretty much and it tells you what shots they get what they're going to see the doctor for we we talked about something similar for parents that you could have put it on your refrigerator and say at the end of the school Year my child should know XYZ or before next school year this is what they're going to be looking at so we talked at length about that just so that it was like one more tool and parents tool belts but you're right we didn't specifically call out like parent engagement or put a goal to how much would be expected for parents to engage or so forth I mean I don't know there were so many things happening um and so many ideas that now that you said that I'm like oh my gosh we didn't put one in there um just like we didn't put the attendant one for the attendance either but it wasn't because we didn't talk about it I know it was just at the end of the day we all had to narrow down the work and make it realistic and I don't know I don't know how else to respond except you're right we didn't uh call it out explicitly well and to me what I heard today is we're moving towards that we're building the the infrastructure to support I mean we've never had um our instruction aligned to the standard so we we couldn't tell anybody and positively this is what your student's going to learn this week and this is how you can support them um My Hope Is that we get to a point where we have that and we have it aligned in Infinite Campus or whatever we're using where parents can access and can follow along and know what's going on in their students um daily lives because that is one thing I I will give props to my son's school for doing like we we had that set up and I was able to know okay today you worked on XYZ do you have questions you want to talk about it like oh look at this article that I read about it as an adult and it just facilitated um better progress in school yeah members of the board um so um a lot of discussions here and I wanna I was taking a little notes um we we are um focusing and looking at how we re-imagine I know you've used that word before how we engage families in a way that it's genuine in the way that it feels authentic and that it's actually Empowering Families to be a better advocate for their own students in schools what questions to ask teachers what to you know what to expect it was shared here you know in this great level what to expect at the end or in the middle of the the year so we have documents and and we have uh resources have been created where in this first grade for to use an example this is what the student is going to be learning but um the feedback that we heard from families this year in particular and you heard that as well okay you are communicating you're doing better there we just do not understand what you're saying because we still use a lot of jargon and jargon is very specific to Educators so you know I'm outside of Education my daughter who is outside of Education I talked to her you know I was like I don't know what you're saying right because we Educators we we liked our gun in this technical acronyms and stuff right so that feedback is coming back we're using that we you approved a new communication specialist or director I guess is the title I don't know an individual who is familiar with the community is bilingual and it's going to be focusing on um parent engagement family engagement student engagement Community engagement right so we um actually you approved him about a month ago he started this week because I'm telling everybody um you know oh I need you before um July 1st we have a lot of work to do uh one of the individuals that you will consider for um approval I'm presented to you to for your consideration is Miss Idol she is here Espinoza Idol to support clde she was part of the group that came to do audit so she's still on that contract but I'm like you know you're coming full time right so um I just want to say that we are looking at how we use our parent uh liaison's feedback from the community from even principles and from you is at the beginning of the year we increased maybe two years ago we increased uh family engagement lesson engagement or apparent lions at the schools from a part-time to a full-time and the feedback was that did not really make the difference that we wanted to see in as far as increased genuine parent engagement so with our new director we actually today also we had a lot of planning meetings today one of them was um that a different type of training for apparent Liaisons we met with footsteps to Brilliance actually so that how we are going to be aligning not only the resources uh training for parents younger than Pre-K students even resources that we're bringing looking at the student The Graduate profile that was developed last year so by the end of pre-K one two three my student is to be able to do this because this is the goal that we're looking having that Horizon you know start the North Star where students need to be so we're in uh working on that looking at how to bring parents in to get their feedback how you want us to communicate differently we've heard that um and we're taking action on those more visuals than long documents with all this jargon in acronyms in there how to increase parent Knights including and insurance that in our Title One plans for each one of the schools there are specific things during the title night apparent engagement night to work A literacy on math that is also going to be involving parent focus groups and surveys to hear more from them and also working on the wraparound services that you mentioned we are expanding those not only to the two middle schools but also to the high schools to continue that support and we as each year we expand more and more one of the objectives that you um that the Strategic plan cadric came up with is ensuring that 100 of our students have access to wraparound supports to social emotional support right so attendance even we talked about this at length on how attendance is not only because I'm not feeling well right sometimes I don't feel safe in my school I'm not going to go there sometimes our lessons are boring let's call it as they as it is you know some students will not go just to see it and be bored there they'll find other ways to you know entertain themselves so um it's it's it's elevating every aspect and the expectations of every level to increase that attendance but I do want to call out you don't have it here because the document uh the Strategic plan is is um it is a long docket not everything is in this um PowerPoint that Sarah shared but you're the third goal out of four that the board worked on was to ensure that Adams 14 school district will establish and cultivate Partnerships to fully engage all members of the community including its families and students to create a culture that values trust respect and high expectations in the work of the group one of the objectives that was um identified was a 104 actually by the end of 2728 This Is A Five-Year Plan um have an Engaged um 27 28 to 75 of the community stakeholder participants will feel that they are engaged in informed transparently throughout major District processes and decisions through predictable structures and sustain a high level of trust in a two-way communication so um that they can ensure also another objective says that they can ensure all that their own students are experiencing an academic success so to get there means that we are informing parents what they're supposed to be learning bringing them to be our partners in education and also the next piece of um or or step in this process of the Strategic plan that we're going to engage in mid-july is bring the Casual back to look at the measures and how we're going to measure that we discussed uh in one or two um study sessions ago are we actually looking at achievement because as they are written some of our goals here students in the academic for example they're going to achieve this um well if our assessments we know they're not supporting the um our own students are our the personalities of our students the realities of our students then are we going to be measuring ourselves with achievement near achievements they hit this or didn't or that growth right so we are based on your feedback uh based on feedback of the community looking at this thresholds and also looking at how we're going to be measuring those um but one of them to your question director Molina one of the areas the third area to be specific around community and culture that the goal set up before you actually got here uh the caterer worked on objectives for that and it's very specific to parent engagement and parent um genuine partnership with us in the community not only parents only so that's work that is coming but um not mentioning these two slides it's many more slides for the Strategic plan not everything was included I hope that answers your it's coming or at least connects that it's not not included at all in the Strategic plan it is correct hold me accountable for actions not for what I said thank you Dr Lydia um I have one kind of technical question which I should know and when um qualitative question um stars and CMS are they all done electronically on the computer is that the way our students are doing it now okay um have we ever looked at how that's done because I I out of sheer curiosity I actually had like a little bit of time today for the first time and I can't tell you how long so I ventured on to the website of the practice questions and I took third grade math and mind you I love math I pride myself on my math skills and um it it assessed um and I I don't understand this whole core and the way they do stuff now but I I was flabbergasted at the way it was it's very different than the way we grew up doing it um you know you fill in a bubble and um so I guess I'm wondering how we're preparing our students to do this in electronic format like the way the question asked me to show my work I thought that's the way you did it but are we showing them like this is a sample question you're gonna get and this is the answer you should give because somewhere you check something but they have the little box there sorry thank you I'm impressive members of the board uh Mr Burke will respond to you another question thank you madam president thank you for the question so as we prepare students for any type of State assessment we do throw throughout the school year so it's not just a one and done or right before the state so our Specialists that are here at the district office when we're preparing our scope and sequence and lesson plans and internalization we look at cde's released items and we embed those into their upcoming units as it relates to those the teachers work with them during their plcs and put them in as part of their lesson preparation so maybe an exit ticket for students so it's being matched to the right level of rigor so teachers know how to pitch their instruction to the right level of rigor as well and then they get to practice those along the way part of it is also done into formats that are electronic so students get to engage with it both with paper pencil and an electronic format so that they are used to it in any type of option that is presented to them if students have it electronically they always have scratch paper for math specifically so that they can show their thinking and then transfer that and that's part of their test taking strategies which is just part of best practice as we help prepare students which what they would get in a real world scenario as well awesome thank you I'm completely dating myself because I I wasn't expecting that and that's probably that's just how our students grow up now days technology my other question is uh to you Sarah I I love this update so thank you for putting this all together and I know as a board we often discuss like when we have our one-on-ones like how how can we support your work and and maintain that connection um I know it's a little different um than our previous thank god um contractual obligation but I just wonder like with the the data changing it was made like is it helpful to do this once or twice a year should we push this out a little bit should we do it quarterly like how can we support our connection and supporting the work uh I've been here quarterly uh this is where all of the data wrapped up I think we want to continue with the Cadence of coming quarterly I think it's important it's also mandated uh so I think uh having your support and telling the story uh really matters you all are seen as leaders in this community the Educators here respect you they see the district working hand in hand with the board and so I think it's like talking to families getting them to come back if they've chosen to go somewhere else enrollment matters to budgets and really encouraging folks to stick around if they're making some decisions and I think uh when something's not working letting us know so that we can solve it because if one of you is dealing with something or you're hearing from a Community member that they're dealing with something we want to support you in getting your problems solved because it will impact lots of families district-wide I think that's one thing I'll give our board props on is we've gone through so many training things I think we've finally got into a Cadence where we know how to listen to our community and then poor Dr Lauria we call her up or we have our one-on-ones and and we definitely alert of the issue so thank you yeah my team has felt supported uh they they tune in they watch uh and they know that you've you've heard and you respect the work that they're doing what I would name is are our folks all we aren't we aren't salaried employees and so we have a certain number of hours that we can give to The District in terms of our time every single member of my team has worked well above those hours because they're invested in the school leaders they're invest in your teachers and they're invested in your kids and so I just want to acknowledge the hard work of my team because they've really committed themselves to this work um and and they spend a lot of their time thinking about it that's great thank you so much uh board members any further questions comments all right thank you so much thank you thank you please let your team know thank you for all they do and thank you for all the hours that you guys spent putting this together and all the hours worked um getting the the community together to come up with all the the responses that we had so thank you yeah it matters we're here we're in Partnership yeah so I just want to Echo um that partnership and collaboration uh read the discussions uh sometimes heated discussions okay now let's go and have some ice cream or something uh because it's about the work and uh it's really brainstorming how to continue supporting our teachers our schools our our leaders um it's it's hard work transformation is hard work is is not cut for any educator or every educator it takes a very you know um specific set of skills uh because it's draining and it's exhausting so I just wanna Echo you know how supported also you feel from them so it's mutual that that support and um it's quite refreshing because you know we we had a different experience but it's definitely different when the board and the district has a say on who that partner is it's a two-way Road it's a marriage and in a marriage both of them need to agree to uh you know to continue moving on together and I feel definitely that's what has happened here so I'm really excited about continue the work continuing the work we are actually uh presenting to superintendents I was invited to go and present to superintendents in in the summer the work that we are doing in the district and of course the work that part of that presentation is going to be the work of uh in how tntp has supported our work uh yielding great results so I'm quite excited about that [Music] thank you oh two two big items this evening next on the agenda is uh 1.2 budget review um I'll turn it over to Dr Maria and Mr Moss yes Madam president members of the board it should be working the clicker but I'm not sure so um Madame President members of the board um uh we will do an overview of the budget in what we're planning this is the third time in the recent weeks that you actually see this presentation we're going to be calling out the things that are different we are very excited um in and I just want to uh thank our chief uh finance officer and our team it has been long days um of of work and almost like an audience every time you turn we are until you're peeling that audience and uncovering things but um what you're going to hear today is getting us closer to a um to the budget um in in putting the dollars where your goals in the Strategic plan that you have been clear are so this budget is aligned to the strategic planning moving resources closer to the students ensuring that there is Equitable practices in our not only for students but also in our hiring in in um in in our staffing practices so today the goal is for you to look at how we get closer I will call out there we are expecting a few more changes not not massive changes but we as we look into every single line item and uncover some things that should have been in place that were not in place uh we're gonna bring some tweaks that we already know um on uh to you on Thursday for a final presentation for you to consider taking action on on that day we if you still do not feel comfortable we still have until the 30th so we we can come back on the on Friday if you have additional questions or would like for us to change something um just as a recap for everybody outside or our community listening this presentation is structured in a way that is looking at buckets on how we receive funding and how we're using that funding in the expenditures so the first few slides is just a legal and expectations of the things that you know you need to do with the budget in this budget approval process but after a slight nine I think is when we hit now the the numbers and some of the changes are going to be called out for you because you have this presentation ahead of time I I did alert you there were going to be some changes to it and dog is going to go through it calling the mountain please ask any questions this is why this uh session is just a study session for you to ask us many questions we can answer them here we'll answer that and if not we'll can bring him back on on Thursday when we come back together Madam president and members of the board Dr Lauria uh thank you for uh meeting tonight to go over the the newest version of the budget which we just finished up about four o'clock today I believe um the first few slides I'm just going to run through them you guys have seen all those uh there's no changes to them we're still maintaining our five percent uh general fund Reserve that we have to it's actually higher than that we're 20 21 percent um and then we got down to finally we cut so far since the beginning of this process we've cut 7.1 million dollars so I'm extremely pleased with that with all the help of cabinet to the HR staff to the finance staff we have been working non-stop and uh we still have have some work to do um as Dr Lauria said and and once uh I think we could maybe get down another one to 1.5 million if we're lucky so and then we're just going to maintain some things once we get it approved in September we got some new processes in hand that we're going to start playing with it's our position control program within HR and finance and the way it's been done in the past has not been the correct way and they were just copying positions instead of making new positions and leaving people where they're at they were duplicating and so it screwed everything up and we we just caught that here in the last couple days so our staffs are going to meet in probably the first week of July sit down and figure out what are the things that we need to do to make sure this doesn't keep happening we can't just copy a position we got to create a position and so for an example if Dr Lauria is a teacher and she's created in one position and then all of a sudden she moves to a superintendent they should delete that so we still have record of that control position and then give her a new code in position as say the superintendent and leave that code you don't if she leaves you don't put somebody else in that same code number it messes everything up and it double dips on the budgets and in certain areas and things like that that's where we came up today and said oh my God I walked into her and I said we found 2.5 million dollars and just double UPS and so we had to do a lot of manual journal entries today to get that fixed and so I feel very comfortable where we're at um as you're aware the first budget we had 88 million dollars in our total expenditures budgeted we are down to 81.5 million so that's extremely huge I feel very comfortable we decrease the amount that we were going to transfer to the capital reserve fund so you saw that was 4 million something last time now it's we've cut it down to three oh 3088 I believe um with that we're going to use fund balance in the capital reserve this year to offset that and then next year when we start looking at programs we'll boost it back up unless we still have some funds in in reserve our Revenue amount did not change unfortunately but we're working on that and uh so right now we are at a deficit of around six million dollars that we will be taking from fund balance this year um I I think in our discussions with cabinet and everybody next year we will be looking at how the ratios per school to staff are maintained and even my new budget person is saying you guys are overstaffed and pretty much all of your schools and I'm like we know I mean we we've lost a thousand kids in three or four years but we haven't cut any staff and so that's something we really got to look at this coming school year and we'll start earlier rather than later so in September HR and our finance staff is going to pull position control go one by one and make sure everybody's mirrored up exactly right and then we'll have it set then we can start working on the ratios early and start getting that out to principles and let them know you're going to have so many teachers you're going to have so much support and so much stuff within your budget um so you can see our fund balance it's going to adjust some this year but it's pretty much right around the 21 million Mark so yes we are going down about 4 million but I feel I feel very good about that um we didn't cut anything in the schools at all and so all the supports for the students and all those things are still there and we have not touched schools yet at all so their budgets stayed the same pretty much um so if I may highlight here something that is important um for our boards our board members and any Committee Member the last line in there where you see a total fund balance if you go across uh how we revise it for 22-23 it is 21 million um 200 000 and some change that is the expected where we're going to be ending this year after the couple of projects work that we um that you approved this year in um the buildings main mainly a lot of it just just you know injected in in buildings uh what we are proposing for next year if you look two rows to the last column there if you look two columns to the right is also ended up 21 million uh 100 and some change so a very small difference if you recall the last conversation we have this number was going to be 17 or 18 million but with the balancing um cutting um some additional expenses that we that are extra we do not need being a little bit more strategic in how we use our resources pushing things closer to the students that fund balance that it's the one number that you need to keep an eye on how much of the fund balance everything that is being used from fun balance should be approved by board members uh that's your savings account is not my account as a superintendent to expand like the other revenues that is one of the numbers that you need to keep an eye on to see how much is that changing we spoke last last time I wouldn't want it to have it too high we want to start using that because at the end this is monies that we have been saving throughout the years and the question would be why are you not spending that on the students for that one year so we want to make sure that very strategically and intelligently we're going to be using this to improve our especially our those one-time expenses that we have like in buildings you know renovating things in buildings make it better for our students but that is the one number that you also that you want to keep Taps on um throughout the year end in the Years whether you know you know pass by tanning or even okay so then uh the next slides are the uh instructional slides and it's broken out by each of the programs and so as you can see uh that uh you can basically look and see how much salaries increased over the last few years the benefits uh basically every service that we provide within the school district and so you can see down at the bottom of the slide it actually shows that uh the amount that we have budgeted for expenditures on the the prior page matches exactly what your programs are going to spend and we may not spend at all I mean this is these are numbers that we're saying this is what we're going to spend it on but we may not spend 10 million dollars and it may be 70 million that we spend so that's something that we will keep tracking and on a quarterly basis we'll bring that to you and put this on these kind of forums as well and and just help you learn this better I want to get better at uh basically doing uh what is it school Finance 100 or 101 you know and get you to a level to where maybe you're getting in the 200 range so we'll keep working on that yeah I do jumping also to node a number for you to look at because this is uh questions that I've received from the board how much we spend in salaries so as you see the different categories in your instruction student support instructional support staff Support Services Etc you see a line there that is for salaries and employment benefits this year after negotiations we you approved we present it to you and you approved almost five million dollars in staff increases with the step increase and with a cola increase so when you see uh you know going up by one or two million is not that we're hiring necessarily additional individuals these are increases in benefits and salaries that you approved as part of that so it's close to five million dollars so just um wanted to put that out there for you to consider as you look at the numbers um can I ask a quick question um under instructional staff supports for supplies and materials there's um 431 000 reduction in that um do you have some examples of what that is I just want to make sure we're not um taking away the supplies that are in the classrooms I guess I don't know how else to ask that claim for Dad find four on the far side so 1.9 instructional support almost half a million okay so I know where you're at now okay so whenever uh we allocate to the schools it's based off their student count so over the student counts over the last year or two we didn't change anything last year this year we did the allocation the correct way and it actually decreased because of student count numbers dropping okay so one of the things that we have discuss these student supplies student support student things that the students will actually get we're not decreasing to the contrary we're looking in ways to get more of those supports more support to the schools with the field trips is an example that you share that feedback with us so we are ensuring that in Title One those field trips are already embedded in there so schools do not have to do this fundraisings for field trips or you know we have Equitable opportunities for students to participate in at least two field trips a year for every grade level so resources that has been in the the focus of our attention here as we work on that plan we are decreasing however and you will probably hear it in the future we're proposing a decrease in expenditures such as you know food for staff schools can use their activity funds but not materials or general funds for those kind of things so we are monitoring much closer you know those expenses because um we haven't had any guard rails so we're putting guard rails because rather than food for adults although we want to feed our adults and have some chocolate every now and then we want to make sure that we are not using those funds or taking it from students you know so that we can have those things for adults so we are monitoring that better but throughout the budget process it's about how do we provide more supports to students and materials for them so as you can see we've got the charts updated now as well got those done today the revenue still at 78.5 million our expenditures shows it's at 80 81.5 you can see instructional Services is almost is half of our budget and so and that's that's just instruction that doesn't include the pupil services or the instructional staff that we also provide that's those big three make up the biggest amount of our budgets and uh so I I'm really proud about that because that shows we're spending 60 65 percent of our budget to our kids okay and I think that's a big plus this next slide it's still at the 81.
of course 82 percent of our budget is spent on salaries and benefits throughout the district and that's pretty much average at every school district in the state so here's a slide we put together uh show and we showed the uh homeless portion of it that you guys are asking for we receive about 65 000 in Title One funds for homeless we spent 78 this year and so we had a little shortfall of 13-3 but when it's in title it still gets covered so we just put a budget in if it goes over it goes over and and we cut somewhere else within the budget to make up that difference okay so I have a question on that one why are we not spending what we're receiving for gifted and talented with our kids it seems like that's a part that we're missing on our kids our gifted and talented kids so we're getting money for them but we're that it's definitely a shortfall that we're not providing stuff for those kids yeah um president members of the board um Treasurer Amador so the funds that we get I actually had a meeting at eight o'clock in the morning with um uh Tracy oh my gosh they're rainy my the last time just escaping she is the the lead CFO for the state right so I was speaking with her about um the funding in in the expenditures we did speak about gifted and talented and it's basically just enough to cover for the assessments it's not really covering for anything else um besides you know all these additional supports and things that we want to have in our students come from the general funding it's something that we are subsidizing every district is subsidizing I spoke with her about special education and she confirmed that the districts are getting 25 of the expenditure for our special students the state all districts in the state so um the the it's basically 25 cents for the dollar that we spend in special ed so the districts are obligated to subsidize because at the end we will provide services 75 percent of it additional expenditures for special ed um we talked about um Pre-K as well which is here uh the promise is fully funded information we're getting is not quite fully funded so I spoke with her specifically about the digital prohibitions that the governor actually shared with me and the staff his staff shared with me in in a meeting that I approached him on this specific question what are the provisions for districts in schools that are highly impacted in in and will need that those additional funds so um to your question specific for gifted and talented this this goes straight to assessment actually [Music] with 12 000 for the entire District not much so it's set aside for assessments alone centrally in the schools it will work with the schools through other grants to to provide additional support um this is what is uh managed Century for for assessment which is actually what Tracy confirmed today merely assessment is what it covers nothing else but I think like I said last time goes back to a larger conversation with legislature on how we fund schools differently because every time we get more uh cost of living is higher we do not get the same as cost of living for us as you can see in the revenue uh where Castle in was around eight percent we don't even get that so um and we are subsidizing a lot of things that that this State one way or another makes the community believe we're fully funded pre-k is an example so um yeah that's two specific question about gifted and talented we use that for assessment and work differently with the schools to get materials in Opportunities and other opportunities I guess that leads to a question for me how how do we as a board evaluate what is being done and gifted and talented if it's if it's varying from each school like how how do we capture that information um and aggregate to say these are all the services we've provided this is what we spent yeah members of the board um she was jumping in to answer those um answer that question and and also as you um listen to her you know if there's any other way that you would like for us to report that it's a matter of you as a board of green we can add it to a uh one of the Els or one of the reporting that you would like to see I know you're working on these Equitable um policy Yale so to your pleasure something that can be added in there and that will pull reports for you on a not only basis modern president Lovato thank you for the question so we have been using the tools and resources from the Colorado Department of Education they have a rubric that they use to evaluate gifted programming from and so in may we worked with the director of student services and our GT coordinator to be able to evaluate our current programming using that rubric so right now we're going through that evaluation we have reached out to the state department in their gifted area because there's areas that we want to be able to continue and then there's gaps that we have as Dr Lydia mentioned part of the monies we have set aside is really for the assessment and how we identify our gifted Learners and we recognize that historically in Adams 14 these last two to three years both pre-covered and post covid we have been under identifying our gifted Learners and that population and so we've gone back to look at the assessment that we're currently using how is that currently rated uh within nationally rated within the state department is it on the approved website and so we're going back through those it's not as strong as we would like it to be and so we have funds set aside to be able to go back through and adjust the assessment for the 23-24 school year in there we only assess great students in specific grades and then as they follow the multi-tiered systems of support or mtss process then we go back through and evaluate them as needed to be able to see where their gifted area is or if they're on watch in their we subsidy funds whether it's through title other means within the general fund and at schools to be able to support our gifted programming but this year specifically we evaluated our program as a baseline using that tool in rubric and we'll continue to do that each year two times a year so once in December as we go through and close out first semester and then again at the end of the year when we close second semester um so I this is out of just curiosity um I know that this year we were able to in my own school we were able to add students to the GT pool based on access scores is that something that you are all doing here in Adams 14 as well yeah so thank you madam president Madam vice president for the question yes we are currently looking at those and um some of our new members that are joining our Adams 14 team um others that have come in to help with uh looking at our um audit is not the right word but coming in to evaluate some of our practices in items 14 have looked at that and so those one of the changes in addition to a couple others that will be set up for the 23-24 school year so it's more based off of a body of evidence versus a singular or a sole measure yeah very selective and so just thinking about like what other ways we as a district can ensure that we're doing um you know right by our students through the lens of equity especially when it comes to GT um I think is important can I just mention something so I recently learned that for some reason when it came to GT kids our bilingually our linguistically gifted students sometimes we're not being tested because of the language so to me it is important that we start looking at once again that as the additional gift because I like I said I recently heard at a conference that that has changed in Colorado to where now kids can be tested in Spanish as well not just in English but they actually have the GT test or they were going to have it available in Spanish so I just want to make sure that we're I know you probably are on top of that already but and the same hand I know for a long time that there's only like a certain grade level like you said where they get tested but we have a lot of newcomers that come in at different grade levels that are probably never being tested or haven't been tested and I don't know how we would capture them before they get to like the higher grades because I know it usually happens in second grade correct or fourth grade or fifth grade elementary school clarified so Madame President Lovato board member um thank you for the question so as we go forward we are making sure that our assessments and practices that we have are reflective of the student population that we serve recognizing that over 50 percent of our students are linguistically gifted and so we want to count that in there the assessment that we currently uh had been using with in uh gifted education is caught out quite quite outdated and so it's ready for us to be able to revisit and re-look at those and with our new leadership within our superintendent were able to do so where previously we weren't um as we look at the students because they're only tested in specific grade levels when we have staff come together on plc's the Thursday late start that the board just approved in the student calendar that's where our instructional and non-instructional staff get to come together both in electives because we recognize students may have a gifted area in athletics music art and we want to be able to look at those things collectively to say the student is really displaying these outside above and beyond what students or their peers may be displaying and so how do we go through and test in those areas so there's a cognitive one and then there's their creative sites that they also have in there that also get up to be a part of that work and our mtss process the multi-tiered system of support is a way to do that and through our plcs so both of those tools collectively allow us for students who are coming in new to our system whether they're newcomers whether they're transferring them in from another District we get to be able to see those displays of both within their academics and their cognitive components as well as their artistic sites that students have because giftedness can be there's multiple areas where students can be gifted in and just to add more pressure members of the board in Secretary Zubia with our new structure for registration office centralized registration office one of the things to monitor is actually um because one of the services that we're getting ready to provide is when they are new students are coming to register we are assessing students right there so we know there's a language there's somebody in there who can do the assessment right there so when they go to the schools they have that information the the teachers do so one of the monitoring pieces on my end is you know the new students and where we are with any of the assessments so this will be included in there to see how do we monitor so that no student falls you know in in any of any crack that you know he was never tested or she was never tested but there's going to be the new structure is allowing us to put monitoring systems in place to to look at those specific details for new students so just a follow-up because of the Grant I mean the grant the funds because of the budget does that mean that that number is going to be have to increase because I see even with a special ed the difference and I know there's a lot of work that needs to be there so before the budget is finalized or those numbers are we going to see an increase in those numbers when it comes to making sure that we have enough funding to be able to do all of what you just said so right now that's where it stands as of uh just the revenues and expenses to date for this school year so the budget actually is probably around the 10 8 11 million Mark for special ed again and so unless you know like today we we did some Cuts within special ed and also other areas so these numbers will change and it could change tomorrow again and I I know there's at least four more positions we're looking at and you know we will have discussions about those tomorrow and and decide whether or not we want to do that or just leave this budget the way it is right now and move forward and then just start making changes September October November December adjusted budget in January that is correct and now the next slide is something that you guys have seen but then we added the numbers into it so you can see what each Academy is costing at the high school level um in the Middle School level so about uh 1.1 million dollars is what we've budgeted for this year just for to add in these new academies now the other CTE departments and things they're still running so we still got Automotive we still got uh business some of those are still in in within that budget but this is what's newly created that's cost the district more dollars this coming school year because of the something we wanted to do that we should have done 15 years ago is what we're recommending for from the fund balance it's a one-time well this is going to be probably two time uh expense right now it's almost like a school weekend school like I said last time uh but year two is probably going to be carrying over but also some of the expenditures in the Staffing of the great that is leaving that fifth grade is going to be coming down here so we're looking at paper in this uh every year so by year three it's probably going to be a wash with no additional funds but these are one-time things Although our salaries it's a one-time expenditure because once we start facing out the regular High School Comprehensive High School and facing in the academies that there's going to be a a Washington point a transfer you know expenditures so then here's the 5B project and we kind of broke it out the pre-kindergarten move uh cost in almost five hundred thousand dollars just to do playgrounds uh bring in new furniture uh those kind of things spruce up some buildings we're having to build science labs at Hanson now because they don't have any labs there so we're having to build those out this summer there's moving supplies and movers and all sorts of different things built into this whole thing so that there's another 1.1 million dollars that we didn't anticipate for this year as well coming up um that will go away but then we got the 5B for the kindergarten move next year so that's going to be different going through six so we'll have moving expenses next year budgeted the following year when we go into Middle School then we'll have more so it'll build for the next two three years and then it should taper off again and go away okay so those will be one time one-time funds that we'll use and it won't be a recurring cost to the district one-time funds um out of what fun out of the general fund so the wonderful funds are something that you only purchase one time you don't have to purchase for it in three years okay so next year we'll probably have another million dollars that will come to you and say we got to do this again for a million dollars and then the next year here's the cost for the Middle School move here's another million or two million dollars and then the next following year there won't be a cost so it's just a one-time expense and you're done with it it's not like a salary um mention or maybe I dreamed this because I've been doing Finance this these whole past two months but um for projections for the board like for us to be able to see like it's it's helpful for you to say that now right but like um next year when we're looking at the budget I'm not sure that we're going to remember like all of these things and so is there a platform are we buying one do we have one where we can see the projections for the decisions that we're currently making um say for instance for example when we adopt curriculum like I would like to see when we're um deciding on these um or making decisions on these I would like to see somehow how that decision however we vote on it how it'll affect our budget and then projections in the future if that makes sense yes so we are getting that new forecast model that's being built we also have something that Sheila's created probably a few years ago I can't remember when you created it but she's got something built out on a curriculum plan and we can always bring that show you some of that kind of stuff as well and that's kind of what we go by I get with her and I'm like okay what do we need to budget for this year and she pulls it up and that's what we throw in once we get the forecast thing we can put all those things in and forecast sit out for four or five years so that's coming this has 5B that's coming up that we're voting on that's a huge chunk of money if we're able to see before we're making the decision what the impact will be on like the budget like in a presentation like this for example or how that plays in I think that'll help us be more fiscally responsible uh do we approve or do we not approve things yes that'll be coming and and to know whether it's a budgeted item so we already approved and knew it was coming or if it's an unbudgeted item like 5B where we gotta look at other options um I think for me it would be interesting to learn and maybe it's a conversation that I have with you or with our Treasurer but um what what type of threshold have we set for the 5B option to say okay maybe instead of taken directly from the general fund maybe we should um Finance some assets like playground equipment or um Furniture things like that like do we have an area that we need to be watching for where we say hey maybe we should look at financing this and and spreading out the payments versus a one-time hit to the general fund to be honest I'm not a fan of doing any leases at all okay um into a mess with the cop funds you know that's going to be paid out till 20 39 or something like that so it's 20 40.