And then going to CGCC and ASU mix facility made us realize that going to these places is such a unique and cool opportunity. And it's sad that a lot of our students in the district don't get the same opportunities. And yeah. All right. Then our next thing is support on extracurriculars. We have amazing extracurriculars at Higgley, but I do feel that they are not highlighted as much as they could be. A lot of our sports, like especially at Higgley, football is highlighted like crazy, which they totally deserve because they're an amazing program, but a lot of other programs are doing just as incredible things and do not get the recognization they deserve. Like our best buddies at Higgley is a great program. And then Wish Makers at or Make a Wish at Williamsfield does huge things for that program and I feel like they could be highlighted more.
Um we did so anonymously uh where we said please do not put your name on this. Everybody had the same colored post-it note. We said just identify who you are. Identify which of these behaviors is you. um we asked them to do that so that we can take that data and compare it throughout different points of the following year. We're going to collect it again when school returns then a few more times just so we can notice the trends. Um we noticed that if we had these behaviors listed out, people will be more able to reflect and see like okay I am a talker when I'm in meetings. I like to talk and I like to dominate the conversation. So, we hope with pointing these out to people, they can be more receptive to all of these different things that we're telling our teachers. This is what you can say.
questions. Good evening. Um, tonight we're just going to talk briefly about the financial results um for the period ended um April 30th, 2025. Um the um overall forecast for the end of the year is unfavorable by $361,887 which is $51,870 worse than the previous month. General education is forecasted to be favorable at that number. We split it from general education and special education. The general education piece is for casted to be favorable 231,213 which is favorable um 28,636 from the previous month. Special education is forecasted to be unfavorable 593,100 which is 80,506 worse than the previous month. Um Salaries and benefits are projected to be um under budget by 144,000 roughly showing a positive change of um $54,000. And we do have some other variances in purchase services, legal services. We had a um couple of repairs uh for the high school. We had a big big plumbing um repair and we also had some elevator repairs.
Students wearing the purple cord, please stand. Students wearing the purple cord have completed the requirements for Rampart High School journalism. Students wearing the orange cord, please stand. Students wearing the orange cord are inducted members of and have completed each of the academic requirements for membership in the International The Thespian Society. [Applause] Students wearing a pink cord, please stand. Students wearing the pink cord were accepted into the 2025 Colorado All State [Music] [Applause] Choir. Students wearing the red and navy cord, please stand. These seniors have completed a district career and technical education program that helped them develop the knowledge, skills, and abilities necessary to be post-secary and workforce ready in one of the following: certified nursing assistant, emergency medical technician, or automative automotive service [Applause] technology. Students wearing the green cord, please stand. Students wearing a green cord are candidates for the state and district recognition of the seal of biiteracy.
actually. But oddly enough, it felt as if we known each other for years, sharing the same wavelength. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm no 4.57, but I do know a thing or two about having a dream and giving it all I've got to make sure it became my reality. Ever since Weston's freshman year, his dream has become has been to become validictorian. And ever since I was a little girl, my dream has been to play division one softball and to one day live in New York City. When I think about what our younger selves would say today, all I can hear them chanting is, "We did it. We did it." Wes and I can both advocate that when you have a dream you find worth chasing, you have to choose that dream over and over again. You have to choose devotion over distractions. You have to choose long-term fulfillment over temporary fun.
CR always says we can do hard things. We all took the courageous step to come here to this unique school. And I hope just like me, you see that the people make it worth it. We remember taking the tour before enrolling and Nathan telling us the same story every time. We are all really close and if one person breaks up, we all know about it. And boy am I glad that that's the truth. High school feels like an ending, and I can't imagine not spending next year here. Jake, if you still want to fail some of my classes and keep me here, I'm not opposed. But I know this is just an end to a chapter of all of our stories. And how lucky are we that our stories over overlapped for these moments? From CR explaining physics and chemistry to us to debating with Stuart, March Mammal Madness with Readinger, Emerging Leaders with Miss Lindsay, our mentors who are academic adviserss but also best friends.
This is not a new issue in our city. Elections may not be the same thing as a statistically representative survey, but they are the basis for our democracy, and the ongoing efforts to discredit the legitimacy of the planning process strike me as having a faint whiff of election denialism. Some may think that a realistic solution to the housing crisis would be to wave a magic wand and conjure a large number of deed restricted houses built under the existing exclusionary zoning regime. But if you truly support the mission of the Community Land Trust and the Housing Commission, why wouldn't you want the scarce land that is available to be used for as much housing as possible? Instead, their so-called solution is to promise the false stream of 1950s style suburbia to a few lucky lottery winners. It's borderline comical to site Sunhog population and job growth estimates as an argument in favor of keeping exclusionary zoning.
That's the RDP. The unmet need has four mechanisms. As I said to you, these aren't actual projects. These are zoning mechanisms, overlay districts, redevelopment plans. The first two I'm going to I'm going to talk about quickly and then the other two we'll talk about as we get through the slides. A mandatory set aside ordinance is an ordinance that is is um applied burrowwide. It basically says that if you as a a homeowner or a builder want to build five units or more, uh you go in for a use variance or or something changes with zoning. If you provide five units or more, you must provide a set aside of at least one affordable housing unit per every five units. That's a mandatory set aside ordinance that then um allows for the municipality to capture affordable housing as municip as the municipality potentially approves five or more units on a on a property.
And again, we celebrated those mid midyear student successes. Quarter three, we continued with professional development. This was the quarter that we did our crisis prevention intervention training which is a three-day training um which was amazing. We also started our alternative uh or our alternative state assessment. We had a little dip in numbers. We had a couple students transfer out um they withdrew from our school or they were dismissed from services which is an amazing thing to celebrate. And then we got our audit So again alternative assessment there are two different parts of alt assessment. There is the alt alpha which is our alternative aella testing for our e students and then we start gearing up for our um MSAA which is the correlation to our state testing. We found our audit findings which I'll talk about on the next slide. Uh state assessment preparation a lot of that's just a lot of courses.
our JRFTC, our like army class at Higgley has won state I think like three years in a row and I feel like they do not get any attention and they truly deserve it cuz they work honestly the hardest out of all of us. And I just think that more support with that and more organization could just be great for the community and just like the district as a whole. And then also when it comes to support like teachers, I feel like a lot of the clubs are not supported by teachers, but that's just because they do not get the support they need. When a club is a lot of extra work and a lot of teachers are not willing to put in the extra work because they are not being supported through a club. So they are just expected to know how a club works, how it's ran.
These are the questions you can ask. These are the tools you can use to encourage growth in the workplace. Um, we're going to be also using these the documents that we created to further along just our team's accountability being the culture club and then our team's ex at our school. Uh, now we finished it off with some intention cards telling everybody write out your intention for the rest of the school year. We only have a few weeks left. You got to finish strong. We want to finish in a positive way. So, just stating your intention, taking a look at it every day just to remind yourself of different ways. I think it's important that um as we talk about modeling uh empowering staff to put these structures in place that we think about as we implement the intention cards for next year and going into next year um of people having the selfawareness um using that data as Sarah was talking about um and then monitoring our outcome and as Dr.
Um and uh that's what contributes to some of the over budget condition in facilities um repairs and maintenance. But we are winding down and uh we have one more full month. That will be the month of May and just a few days in June um to to finish up and um um you know we're looking forward to ending um the year with as accurate um an accounting as we can. Thank you, Mr. Robins. uh Mr. Bush will give comment on that when we get to the finance report. So give context to some of the things that Mrs. Robins has just provided. So with that we are going to go to the approval of the uh of the financial report. Can I have a motion to accept the uh the financials provided by the business manager please? As of uh the business financials as of uh April 30th, 2025.
Students wearing a white cord, please stand. These students have been active participants in and completed the requirements for the AVID advancement via individual determination [Applause] program. Students wearing the bronze cord, please stand. Students wearing the bronze cord signifies the students who participated in an international balorate diploma program course candidacy and tested in at least two international balora diploma program courses during grades 11 and [Applause] 12. Students wearing an IB stole please stand. Students wearing the white stole have participated in and fulfilled the requirements of the international balorate diploma program in both grades 11 and [Applause] 12. Students wearing a gold collar, please stand. [Applause] Students wearing a gold collar are our honor graduates, having achieved an overall grade point average of 3.8 or higher um over the course of seven semesters. And students wearing a red cord, please stand. These students have earned straight A's at Rampart High School over the course of seven consecutive semesters.
You have to bounce back harder than you were knocked down. Choose to be comfortable with missing out and trust that where you are headed is worth every ounce of grit, persistence, and sacrifice along the way. Weston represents the dreamchasers like you and me. He stands for the passion and discipline needed on any journey to chasing a dream. So, with the privilege to introduce Weston and shed light on his accomplishment, I leave you with this. Don't give up on the dream that you find worth chasing. And most importantly, do not let doubt or discouragement keep you from your I made it moments. It's been a blast to chase my dream within the four walls of Liberty High School, but even more so, an honor to introduce to you Weston Monson. You might have to bend down. All right, there we go. Cool. Um, the dictionary defines cliche as opening one's graduation speech with a dictionary definition.
Thank you, Miss Webster, for always listening. Take a minute, wave to your mentor and appreciate everything everything they have done for you and your academic success and your well-being. While the village gave us an environment to grow, the people inside it gave us the spirit to reach beyond what we thought possible. These teachers have truly been the most impactful characters in our stories, filling us with hope and determination. The village never made us feel limited. We were always made to feel like we could make a change and make a difference. That we are never too young to start something. Every business idea was encouraged. If you wanted a class, the teachers made it happen. We wanted a play. We got Alice in Wonderland. Something you want changed right to our government officials. You want a prom and a homecoming? You plan it. A volleyball team?
Of course, the current trend lines are flat because it's illegal for more people and businesses to move here. If we ever reach a 15% vacancy rate and abandoned properties are blighting the city, we can maybe start talking about a problem of over supply. The idea that infrastructure costs of new development will disproportionately fall on owners of old existing buildings is pure fiction. New developments are required to pay impact fees and long-term owners enjoy capped property taxes. things like power, water, sewers, schools, libraries, buses, etc. all become more efficient and cheaper per person when more people use them. Then there's the intellectually dishonest argument of embodied carbon that draws a line around the city limits and pretends that the rest of the world doesn't exist. There's also the hypocrisy of mourning the loss of places like Brown Court while refusing to make similar developments legal elsewhere in the city.
The other item is what's known as a development fee ordinance. So a development fee ordinance is required uh to be adopted in order to meet the unmet need. And that is basically a a fee that is charged on non-residential and residential new build. And so think about a new house that's being built. Um, anywhere up to 1.5% of that assessed value of that structure goes to what's known as an affordable housing trust fund. That trust fund is then utilized to help provide for affordable housing. And so that trust fund is meant to really create the funding source for future affordable housing. So it doesn't come out of the general fund, the general municipal fund. um that development fee ordinance uh requires a certain percentage uh on residential and then non-residential is a statemanded mandated 2.5% of the assessed value. So there's a development fee ordinance in the appendix to the housing element fair share plan.
So as the test coordinator for that part, I went through all of that training. Ad came out um the assist of technology department and they provided a half day on-site make and take training which was amazing for our staff. They got to meet some of the AB staff and and they provided some really amazing things that they were able to implement in the classroom. We continue to look at student needs working with Mrs. box in our NTSS process and we started looking at staff needs. We had a couple of staff members um either leave and then we fill their positions. So our audit findings overall were very positive. I am so proud of my team. We have [Music] we have a few corrective actions that were identified along with professional development provided for certified staff for those corrected actions. Again, they have one student who takes the alt alpha in February and and their skills they just they were amazing.
But as that's not how it should be like they should be taught and should be helped. And I just feel like that'll be a huge benefit to the schools if they were just more supported all around. Okay, next up is teaching life skills. Um, a lot of students, we all agreed on that in high school maybe adding uh more curriculum or even a class if that's possible. Um, teaching financial literacy like bills and taxes. A lot of students after school, high school like are have to jump right into it and they don't know everything. And I feel like that is something that uh could be very bene beneficial for our community. And yeah, then another thing is we had mental health awareness. A lot of the younger kids, especially in like sixth grade, we're talking about that kids are already struggling with mental awar mental health.